She said innocently: “I thought he lived in Ryder Street? Has he removed from there, Sherry? He said nothing of it to me, and he was with me not five minutes ago.”
“I’m well aware of that!” said his lordship tartly. “And I should like to know what he was doing here! I suppose you will say he called to see me!”
“Oh no, I don’t think he wanted to see you, Sherry! He came to ask my advice about something. You won’t mention it, will you? He is going to send a bouquet of violets to Isabella for the Fakenhams’ ball. He says they are her favourite flowers.”
“Oh!” said his lordship. “Well, I don’t see what he wants with your advice!”
“He did want my advice, but I think I ought not to tell you what it was about, because I dare say he would not like it known,” confided Hero.
“It seems to me,” said Sherry severely, “that Bella Milborne ain’t the only female George has an eye to!”
“Oh no, Sherry!” Hero said earnestly. “Indeed, you are quite wrong! Why, you cannot mean that you suspect George of having an eye to me? Oh, Sherry, how nonsensical! I assure you, he does nothing but talk of Isabella!”
“Well, I don’t know,” said Sherry, looking her over critically. “The fact of the matter is you seem to have grown so devilish pretty since I married you that there’s no knowing what will happen next.”
She blushed rosily. “Have I, Sherry? Have I really? I expect it is just the new way I have of dressing my hair, and all my grand gowns.”
“Yes, very likely,” he agreed. “I must say, I never thought you above the ordinary myself, but if you go on like this the lord only knows where it will end!”
“But, Sherry, you do not mind my growing to be pretty, do you?”
“Oh, I don’t mind it!” replied his lordship. “The thing is, I didn’t bargain for it, that’s all, and if you are to have fellows like George for ever haunting the house, I can see it will be a dashed nuisance. And now I come to think of it, George ain’t the only one! There’s Gil! Hardest case I ever met in my life, and what must he do but take you out driving to Salt Hill, just as though he were in the habit of driving females, which he ain’t. Yes, and who was that curst rum touch I found with you last week?”
“Mr Kilby, do you mean, Sherry?”
“I dare say. Not that it signifies, for I fancy he won’t come here to make sheep’s eyes at you again!”
She gave a little giggle. “I must say, I think you were very uncivil and disobliging to him, Sherry. I don’t know what he can have thought!”
“Oh, don’t you?” retorted Sherry grimly. “Well, he knew dashed well what to think, let me tell you!” He returned unexpectedly to the original bone of contention. “But that’s neither here nor there. Whoever heard of a fellow’s wanting the advice of a chit like you, I should like to know? Rather too brown, Kitten! In fact, a dashed sight too brown!”
“But indeed he did, Sherry! The case is that he has great hopes that Isabella may relent towards him, and he wished to know my opinion of a — well, a little billet that he means to send her, with the flowers for Lady Fakenham’s ball. But you must not mention the matter, for indeed I think he would not wish me to have spoken of it!”
As he really knew very well that he had not the least cause to regard Lord Wrotham with suspicion, Sherry consented to be satisfied with this explanation, and the matter was allowed to drop.
An interview with his man of business, a few days later, provided his lordship with other, and more serious, affairs for thought. Mr Stoke felt it to be his duty to bring certain disagreeable facts to his lordship’s notice. Since this interview followed on a more than ordinarily Black Monday at Tattersall’s, the Viscount escorted his wife to the Fakenhams’ ball in a mood of considerable dissatisfaction. His friend, Revesby, in whom he had confided, had done his best to raise his spirits by asserting his conviction that the luck would shortly turn, and had even introduced him to the newest gaming hell, which was located in Pickering Place, and conducted on such discreet lines that the Viscount would not have been surprised to have been asked to give a password before being admitted by the individual who conversed with him through an iron grille in the door. He had played macao into the small hours of the morning, but with indifferent success; and although Sir Montagu was of the opinion that initial losses were to be regarded as auspicious, it was an undeniable fact that his lordship was not in his usual sunny spirits when he arrived at the Fakenham mansion in Cavendish Square.
“Scorched, dear old boy?” asked Mr Fakenham, who had also visited Tattersall’s on settling day. Sherry grimaced at him.
“You’ll come about,” said Ferdy encouragingly. “Thought I was aground myself, until Brock gave me the office to back Sweeter When Clothed last Wednesday.”
“I laid my blunt on First Time of Asking,” said his lordship gloomily.
Ferdy shook his head. “Mistake,” he said. “Ought to have listened to Brock. Very knowing one, Brock. Come and have a glass!”
This advice seemed good to Sherry, and he went off with his cousin to try whether champagne punch would recruit his spirits. They would have taken Lord Wrotham along with them, but his lordship, whose expressive dark eyes were glowing with mingled anticipation and excitement, declined to leave the ballroom. But the evening was not destined to come up to Wrotham’s expectations. Miss Milborne, receiving the bouquet of violets by the hand of her Mama’s black page, was torn by conflicting emotions. She could not but be touched by Wrotham’s having taken such pains to obtain for her flowers which he believed to be her favourites. She recalled, with a twinge of her conscience, having bestowed this mendacious piece of information on him, and her more compassionate feelings prompted her to carry his offering to the ball, instead of the yellow roses left at the door earlier in the day with his Grace of Severn’s compliments. But several circumstances militated against this impulse. In the first place, Wrotham had been inspired at the eleventh hour to send the flowers with the second of his messages in place of the first. Wear these, and I shall know what to think, ran the inscription on his lordship’s card. This was going too fast for Miss Milborne, who felt that until she herself knew what to think it would be better for his lordship to remain in his present uninformed state. She was ready to indulge herself and her numerous suitors with a little harmless flirtation, but she was a good-hearted girl, and unless she was prepared to accept Wrotham’s hand in marriage she did not feel that she should carry to the ball flowers which came to her with so pointed a message attached to them. As she thought the matter over, a slight indignation mingled with her compassion for one so stricken. Really, it was the outside of enough, she thought, that George should neglect her for nearly a fortnight, and then toss a posy of violets to her with an ultimatum attached to it! There was yet another consideration — and not the least of them — that led to George’s violets being rejected. Miss Milborne, whose striking beauty could well support the trying colour, was wearing a new gown of pale puce satin and net to the ball, and with this George’s violets could not be said to agree. Miss Milborne laid the violets aside, and pinned a spray of Severn’s roses to her corsage, determining, as she did so, to soften the blow to George by treating him with more than ordinary kindness.
Alas for such good intentions! No sooner did George, on the watch for her arrival, clap eyes on those yellow roses than he turned pale, and abruptly left the ballroom. In his disordered state he would undoubtedly have rushed from the house had he not encountered his hostess in the ante-chamber. Lady Fakenham, who had known him from his cradle, asked him severely where he was going, and without giving him time to reply bore him inexorably back into the ballroom, and presented him to a young lady who gratefully accepted his reluctant hand for the quadrille which was forming. By the time he had performed his part in this, all the impropriety of fleeing from the house had been recollected, and he retired to prop the wall by the door, his arms folded, and his stormy gaze following Miss Milborne’s progress down a country dance. Since Severn was her partner, he was unable to support this spectacle for long, and soon sought refuge in a small chamber adjoining the ballroom. This had been designed to accommodate any persons who preferred a quiet rubber of whist to the more fatiguing exercise of dancing, but George’s aspect was so forbidding that a timid-looking man, who peeped into the room, withdrew in haste to inform his companions that he rather thought they had better find another room for their projected game.