Miss Wychwood thanked her and accepted the invitation, reflecting, rather ruefully, that she was condemning herself to exactly the sort of party which she found intolerably boring. Another thought occurred to her, which she found peculiarly disconcerting: it flashed through her brain that she was dwindling into a duenna. It was a lowering reflection, but since she had not yet reached her thirtieth year, and had not noticed any diminution in the number of her admirers, she did not allow it to oppress her. And she had her reward when Lucilla came up to her, her eyes shining like stars, and said: “Oh, Miss Wychwood, Corisande has invited me to a party on Thursday! May I go to it? Pray don’t say I must not!”
“Perhaps, if you are very good, I shan’t say that,” replied Miss Wychwood gravely. “In fact, I have just this moment accepted Mrs Stinchcombe’s kind invitation to us both.”
Lucilla laughed, but at once turned to thank Mrs Stinchcombe, and did it so prettily that Mrs Stinchcombe afterwards told Annis that the child’s manners matched her lovely face.
All the way up the hill to Camden Place Lucilla bubbled over with delight in the promised treat, and intense pleasure in having met (thanks to her dear, dear Miss Wychwood!) anyone so charming and so truly amiable as Miss Corisande Stinchcombe. Edith Stinchcombe was excessively agreeable, too, although not yet emancipated from the schoolroom; and as for Mrs Stinchcombe, could Miss Wychwood conceive of a more indulgent or more excellent parent for any girl to have? According to the testimony of her daughters, Mama always understood exactly how one felt, and was never cross! So very unlike Aunt Clara’s friends! Only fancy!—she permitted Corisande to go shopping, as long as Edith, or their brother, accompanied her, without being escorted by Edith’s governess! Not that Miss Frampton was in the least like the unlamented Miss Cheeseburn, who had helped Aunt to make Lucilla’s life a positive burden to her! “Corisande says Miss Frampton is the greatest dear, and so jolly that she and Edith like her to go out with them! Oh, and Corisande says, ma’am, that she knows of a shop in Stall Street where one may purchase reticules at half the price they charge in Milsom Street, and she says she will take me there, if you see no objection to it!”
Miss Wychwood, responding suitably to these confidences, perceived that she was doomed to be bored for the rest of Lucilla’s stay by references to What Corisande Said.
On the following evening, to their surprise, Ninian walked into the drawing-room, announcing that he had brought her traps to Lucilla, and had given them into the butler’s charge. He was looking bright-eyed and decidedly belligerent; and it was obvious that he was labouring under a strong sense of ill-usage.
“Oh, Ninian!” Lucilla exclaimed. “How very kind of you! I never expected to get them so soon! But there was no need for you to have put yourself to the fag of bringing them to me yourself!”
“Oh, yes, there was!” he retorted grimly.
“No, no, Sarah could well have brought them without an escort!”
“Well, she couldn’t, because she isn’t there! Such a dust as I walked into! Talk of riots and rumpuses—! And why even my mother should be thrown into a taking when they must all of them have known you hadn’t been murdered, or kidnapped, because they knew I’d gone away with you, had me floored!”
“Do you mean Sarah isn’t here?” cried Lucilla.
“That’s exactly what I mean. She and your aunt got to dagger-drawing, because your aunt worked herself into a rare passion, and rang a regular peal over her, saying it was her fault for neglecting you, and I don’t know what besides, and she nabbed the rust, and rubbed up all manner of old sores, and the end of it was that she packed her boxes, and flounced off in a rare tantrum!” He observed, with displeasure, that Lucilla was dancing round the room in an ecstasy of delight, and added, with asperity: “You may think that a matter for rejoicing, but I didn’t, I can tell you!”
“Oh, I do, I do!” Lucilla said, executing a neat step, and clapping her hands. “If you knew how much I was dreading Sarah’s arrival—!”
Miss Wychwood intervened at this point, to ask Ninian if he had dined. He thanked her, and said yes, he had stopped to bait on the road, and must not remain for more than a few minutes, because it was growing late, and he had not yet arranged for accommodation in Bath. “Which is something about which I need your advice, ma’am,” he disclosed. “The thing is—well, owing to one cause and another, I’m a trifle behind the wind at the moment! Until quarterday, in fact! As soon as my allowance is paid I shall be tolerably well up in the stirrups again, but it won’t do to be getting under the hatches, so I mean to put up at one of the cheaper hotels, and I thought you would very likely be able to direct me to a—a suitable one!”
Lucilla stopped dancing round the room, and asked, in astonishment: “Why, do you mean to remain in Bath?”
“Yes,” replied Ninian, through gritted teeth, “I do! That will show them!”
Before Lucilla could ask for enlightenment on this somewhat obscure utterance, a second, and even more timely, intervention was provided by Limbury, who came in with the tea-tray. Further discussion was suspended; and when Ninian had drunk two cups of tea, and eaten several macaroons, his seething rancour had subsided enough to enable him to give the ladies a fairly coherent account of the trials he had undergone at the hands of his loving relations. “Would you believe it?” he demanded. “They blamed me for the whole!”
“Oh, how unjust!” cried Lucilla indignantly.
“I should rather think so! For how the devil could I have prevented you from running away, I should like to know?”
“You couldn’t. No one could!” she asserted. “They ought to have been grateful to you for coming with me!”
“Well, that’s what I thought!” he said. “What’s more, if anyone was to blame for driving you out of the house it was Them, not me!”
“Did you tell them so?” asked Lucilla eagerly.
“No, not then,but in the end I did, when I got into a pelter myself! That was when I found that your aunt’s prostration was being laid at my door, if you please, instead of at yours! I don’t know what she might have said to me, because I didn’t see her—thank God! She fell into hysterics when it was discovered that you had run away, and then had strong convulsions, or spasms, or whatever she calls ’em, and was laid up in bed, with our doctor in attendance, and my mother trying to restore her with burnt feathers, and sal volatile, and smelling-salts; and my father almost pushing Sarah out of the house, because the mere thought that she was still at Chartley threw your aunt into fresh spasms! Well, I did say, What a wet-goose! and Papa—Papa!—said I had much to blame myself for! And Mama said how could I have reconciled it with my conscience to have abandoned you to a total stranger, and never would she have believed that a child of hers could have behaved so heartlessly! And when it came to Cordelia and Lavinia starting to reproach me—but I precious soon put a stop to that!—I—I lost my temper, and said Very well, if they thought it was my duty to protect her from you,ma’am, I’d go straight back to Bath, and stay there! And—and I’m afraid I said that any place would be preferable to Chartley, and even though you were a total stranger I was sure of a welcome in your house, which was more than I had had in my own home!”
“Oh, well done,Ninian!” exclaimed Lucilla enthusiastically clasping his arm, and squeezing it. “I never dreamed you were so full of pluck!”