“But you never stand up for the country dances!” Isabella reminded him.
“I’ll stand up for this if it kills me!” swore his lordship.
Hero’s set was already made up, and he was obliged to join the second set. This was not what he wanted, but Miss Milborne could only be thankful, since the prospect of standing up with a gentleman who was bent on catching the eye and ear of another lady in the same set was not one which she could view with anything but misgiving.
Hero, of course, saw his lordship lead out Miss Milborne, and she at once felt that her cup was full. She would have liked to have fled from the ballroom to indulge in a hearty bout of tears, but since she could not do this she became extremely animated instead, and laughed and talked, and presented all the appearance of a young lady who was enjoying herself prodigiously. The Viscount, marking this callous behaviour, promptly imitated it; and as Miss Milborne had just seen Lord Wrotham’s striking figure in the doorway she had no hesitation in encouraging her childhood’s friend to flirt with her as much as he liked. Since his more extravagant sallies were interspersed by comments, delivered in a furious undervoice, on his wife’s shameless conduct, she was in no danger of overestimating the worth of the compliments he paid her.
Whatever might have been the Viscount’s intentions when the dance ended, they were frustrated by the descent upon him of Mr Guynette, the Master of Ceremonies. Mr Guynette was well accustomed to handling reluctant gentlemen, and before his victim was aware of what was happening, he had presented him to quite the plainest damsel in the room, a circumstance which should have brought home to his lordship the unwisdom of neglecting to write his name in the Master’s subscription book. Common civility obliged Sherry to ask the plain young lady to stand up with him, and as she had no hesitation in accepting the invitation, he was condemned to another half-hour of purgatory. The first cotillion followed, which Hero danced with George; and then everyone went in to tea. Isabella had by this time collected the usual court round herself, of which the most prominent member seemed to be Sir Montagu; Hero and Mr Tarleton were seated at a table which had no vacant place when the Viscount succeeded in edging his way into the crowded tea-room; so the end of it was that his lordship was forced to join several unpartnered gentlemen by the buffet. Here he found Lord Wrotham, who was wearing his well-known thundercloud aspect; and such was the state of his mind that he forgot that he had parted from Wrotham on the worst of bad terms, and hailed him thankfully as a kindred spirit.
“Of all the abominably stupid evenings!” he ejaculated. “It is ten times worse than Almack’s!”
“I should like to know,” said George, eyeing him broodingly, “what the devil you meant by telling me it was I who had engaged Miss Milborne’s affections?”
“Never told you any such thing!” replied the Viscount. “Not but what she as good as told me so. What’s put you in a miff?”
“I begged to be allowed to take her in to tea, and she said she was promised to Monty. I stood up with her for the second country dance, and she behaved as though she had never met me before in her life!”
“Well, let that be a lesson to you not to dance attendance on my wife!” said Sherry, with asperity.
“She cannot think that there is anything beyond common friendship between Kitten and me!” George said.
“Who asked you to call my wife Kitten?” demanded the Viscount belligerently.
“You did,” replied George.
“Oh!” said Sherry, dashed.
“I will not believe the Incomparable could credit such nonsense!” George declared, flushing. “Why, what reason have I ever given her to think that I would so much look at another female?”
“Well, upon my word!” exclaimed Sherry. “If that don’t beat all! If kissing my wife at the Fakenhams’ ball isn’t reason enough — ”
“She knew nothing of that!”
“Oh yes, she did! Kitten tried to persuade her to beg you not to meet me!”
“Good God!” George uttered, turning pale. “Then was that why — I must speak with her!”
“You won’t do it here,” said Sherry, with gloomy satisfaction. “Come to think of it, a pretty pair of cakes we must look, you and I, running after a couple of females who won’t have anything to do with us! And nothing to drink but this curst tea!”
“She will have Monty!” George said heavily.
“Not she!”
“She is going in his curricle on some damned expedition tomorrow. She told me so. I will not waste my time here any longer. I shall go back to the White Hart. They have a very tolerable Chambertin there.”
“Dashed if I won’t come with you!” said Sherry.
“You cannot. You are escorting Lady Sheringham and Miss Milborne.”
“I’ll come back in time to take ’em home,” said Sherry, “unless — By Jove, I might force Ferdy to give up his place in the cotillion to me!”
“What’s the use of that?” George said. “I’ve done much the same thing before now, but the fact of the matter is a ball is no place for private conversation. You are for ever being separated by the movement of the dance, and it all ends in a quarrel.”
“Well, I dare say you may be right,” Sherry said. “And if I bore Kitten off — ”
“You can’t do that!” George said, shocked. “Devilish strict at these balls! What’s more, if she refused to go with you, you’d look a bigger cake than you do now.”
“Yes, my God, so I should!” agreed Sherry. “I was a fool to have come! Let us go, George!”
So the two ladies who had spared no pains to demonstrate their indifference to their lordships had the doubtful pleasure of seeing them withdraw from the festivities. They should have been gratified to find their hints so well understood, but gratification was not the emotion uppermost in either swelling bosom.
After seeking a certain amount of relief in pointedly ignoring one another for the next hour, each lady developed the headache, and discovered in herself an ardent desire to go home.
Chapter Twenty-Four
HERO, WHO HAD PASSED A SLEEPLESS NIGHT, arose next morning with a headache indeed, and with suspiciously swollen eyes. Lady Saltash took one look at her, and sent her back to bed, recommending her to glance in her mirror, and decide for herself whether she wished to show her husband, or anyone else, that woebegone face.
“Oh, ma’am, do you think he will come this morning?” Hero asked. “I am persuaded he is thinking only of Isabella! When I saw him stand up with her for the country dance — Sherry! — I felt ready to sink!”
Her ladyship laughed. “Why, what else should a man of spirit do, pray, when you was flirting so scandalously with that boy out of the nursery? Silly puss! The affair is going on famously! Sheringham scarcely took his eyes off you the whole time he was in the Rooms!”
Hero’s lips trembled. “He left while we were having tea. I thought — I wondered if perhaps he would come up to me after tea, and make me dance with him, but — but — ”
“I dare say! And carry you off willy-nilly, perhaps? At a Bath Assembly! Unheard of!”
Hero smiled faintly. “I don’t think he would care for that. It would be just the sort of thing Sherry would do, if he wanted to. Only he didn’t want to. If — if he should come here this morning, ma’am, would you perhaps be so very obliging as to see him, and — and discover, if you are able, what his sentiments truly are?”
“Make yourself easy, my love: I will see him,” promised Lady Saltash.
But her ladyship was not called upon to see him. He did not come to Camden Place that morning, for Mr Ringwood had arrived in Bath by the night mail.
The mail coach having run punctually, he was set down at the White Hart a few minutes after ten o’clock, and found Lord Wrotham breakfasting. He joined him at this meal, as soon as he had shaved, and changed his travelling dress; and listened in stolid silence to the slightly disjointed account his lordship gave him of the imbroglio, which seemed hourly to be growing more complicated. A considerable part of George’s recital was naturally concerned with the behaviour of the Incomparable, but Mr Ringwood paid little heed to this. When he had heard George out, he grunted, and said: “Pack of gudgeons!”