“You are wasting your breath, ma’am,” he replied, inexorably removing her hand from his sleeve, and continuing his progress towards the stairs.
Baffled, she delivered a Parthian shot. “At any hand,” she said shrilly, “you can’t say it was me that wouldn’t offer the girl a home!”
Chapter 10
For several minutes after he left Lord Nettlecombe’s lodging the Viscount seethed with anger, but by the time he was half-way to the High town this had diminished, and the comical side of the late interview struck him, so forcibly that the sparkling look of wrath in his eyes vanished, and the hardened lines about his mouth relaxed. As he recalled some of the things which had been said he began to chuckle; and when he pictured the scenes which must have goaded Nettlecombe to marry the most economical housekeeper he had ever employed he found that he was within ames-ace of positively liking the vulgar creature.
He wished very much that there was someone with him to share the joke: Hetta, for instance, whose sense of the ridiculous was as lively as his own. He would tell her all about it, of course, but recounting an absurd experience was not the same as sharing it. It was to be hoped she didn’t make the mistake of marrying that prosy fellow whom he had found dangling after her at Inglehurst, for he wouldn’t suit her at alclass="underline" he was just the kind of slow-top to ask her in a puzzled voice what she meant when she made a joke. Come to think of it, none of Hetta’s suitors—and, lord, how many of them there had been!—had ever seemed to him worthy of her: queer that such an intelligent girl should be unable to recognize at a glance men who were quite beneath her touch! Recalling her numerous suitors he could not bring to mind one whom he had liked. There had been several dead bores amongst them; at least two bladders, who never stopped gabbing; and any number of men who were, in his opinion, very poor sticks indeed.
These reflections had led his mind away from the immediate problem confronting him, but the recollection of it soon recurred, and put an end to any desire in him to laugh at the failure of his mission, or to speculate on the strange vagaries of females. A less determined man might have felt that he had been tipped a settler, and have thrown his towel into the ring, but the Viscount had a streak of strong determination running through his easy-going nature, and he had no intention of being beaten on this, or any other, suit. He had certainly suffered a set-back, so what he must now do was to think of some other way of providing for Cherry’s future well-being. None immediately occurred to him. He wondered what she was doing, whether she was happy at Inglehurst, or whether she was too anxious to be happy; and realized with a slight sense of shock that it was now nine days since he had left her there.
Had he but known it, Cherry was blissfully happy, and only now and then thought about her future. She had fitted into her surroundings as though she had lived at Inglehurst all her life; and she seemed to take as much pleasure in making herself useful to her hostesses as in the small parties Lady Silverdale gave to her neighbours. Indeed, Henrietta thought that she took more, for her disposition was retiring, and her shyness tied her tongue, so that when she was seated at the dinner-table beside a stranger her conversation was inclined to be monosyllabic. Henrietta ascribed this to Lady Bugle’s treatment. She had relegated the poor child to the background, and had so systematically impressed upon her that she was far less important than her cousins, and must never put herself forward as though she thought herself their equal, that it had become second nature to her. Henrietta hoped that she would overcome her almost morbid shrinking from strangers for such excessive shyness was, in her view, a handicap to any penniless female obliged to make her own way in the world. It was unfortunate, too, that she was noticeably more ill-at-ease with the various young gentlemen who visited the house than with their fathers. However, once she became acquainted with them she grew less self-conscious, and chatted to them quite naturally. With Sir Charles, and young Mr Beckenham, she was soon on friendly terms; but she treated Tom Ellerdine, who showed a disposition to make her the object of his youthful gallantry, with marked reserve. Henrietta could not help feeling that it was a pity.
Lady Silverdale did not agree.. “For my part,” she said, “I think her a very pretty-behaved girl. I own, my love, it quite astonishes me that she is not in the least pert, or coming, as so many girls are nowadays, for one never expected a Steane to be so well-conducted, and her mama was not at all the thing. Not that I ever knew her, because she eloped with Wilfred Steane out of the schoolroom, you know, which shows the most shocking want of delicacy, and just what one would expect in any sister of that Bugle woman!”
“Dear Mama, I am perfectly ready to join you in abusing Lady Bugle, but that is going too far!” expostulated Henrietta laughingly. “She is a horrid creature, but I’m persuaded that she is quite boringly respectable!”
“Good gracious, Hetta, how you do take one up!” Lady Silverdale complained. “You know very well what I mean! She’s an excessively underbred woman, and that, you will allow, dear little Cherry is not! I think it remarkable that she shouldn’t be, for we all know what the Steanes are like, and although I never heard anything said against the Wissets they did not move in the first circles. I believe old Mr Wisset was an attorney, or something of the sort. And when you consider that Cherry has had no other home than her aunt’s house it has me in a puzzle to know how she came by her pretty, modest manners. She certainly cannot have learnt them from Amelia Bugle!”
“No, I fancy she must have learnt them from Miss Fletching,” said Henrietta. “From what Cherry has told me, she must be an excellent woman—and it is to Mr Wilfred Steane’s credit that he placed Cherry in her school, even if he did forget to pay the bills!”
“Well, it may be so,” acknowledged Lady Silverdale, reluctant to perceive any saving grace in Mr Wilfred Steane’s character, “but for my part I should rather suppose that he chose the first school that hit his eye. And I am much inclined to think that Cherry’s manners spring from her disposition—so very amiable and obliging, and with such delicacy of principle!—than from any lesson Miss Fletching could have taught her. You know, dearest, how very rarely I take a fancy to anyone, but I own I have taken a strong fancy to Cherry, and shall miss her sadly when she leaves us. Indeed, if Nettlecombe refuses to adopt her, which wouldn’t surprise me in the least, because he was always known to be as close as wax, and has “become positively freakish of late years—I have a very good mind to keep her here!”