“Dear me, no! why should I?” she returned. “I am glad you don’t find it abominably insipid, which I feared you might.”
“No party which you grace with your exquisite presence could be insipid, believe me! I have only one fault to find with this one: I cherished the hope of being permitted to bring you down to supper, only to find myself cut out by Carleton here! But for one circumstance, Carleton, I should ask you to name your friends!”
Mr Carleton was so patently uninterested and unamused by this lively nonsense that Annis was impelled to step into the breach caused by his silence. She said smilingly: “It’s to be hoped the one circumstance was the impropriety of spoiling my party!”
“Alas, no! It was mere cowardice!” he said, mournfully shaking his head. “He is such a devilish good shot!”
Mr Carleton accorded this sally a faint, contemptuous smile, and stepped back politely to allow Major Beverley to approach Miss Wychwood. He then strolled away, and was next seen talking to Mrs Mandeville. He left the party before the dancing began, declining unequivocally to join the whist-players for whose entertainment Miss Wychwood had had two tables set up in the book-room. Nettled by this cavalier behaviour, she raised her brows, when he took leave of her, saying sarcastically: “But dare you leave Lucilla in such dangerous company?”
“Oh, yes!” he replied. “From what I’ve seen, young Beckenham and Elmore will take good care of her. And since the only dangerous company seems to be bent on fixing his interest with you rather than with Lucilla there’s no need for me to play the careful guardian. It’s not a role which suits me, you know. Ah—accept my thanks for an agreeable evening, ma’am!”
He bowed, and left her. She was so much infuriated that it was long before her wrath abated sufficiently to permit the suspicion to enter her head that his outrageous conduct sprang from anger at what he no doubt considered her encouragement of Denis Kilbride’s familiarities. While she continued to move amongst her guests, outwardly as serene as ever, uttering smiling nothings, her brain was seething with conjecture. She had been prepared to play the game of flirtation with Mr Carleton, but it was now plain that idle flirtation was not what he had in mind. It seemed incredible that he could have fallen in love with her, but his anger could only have been roused by jealousy, and such fierce jealousy as had led him to say the most wounding things he could think of to her had nothing to do with flirtation. It clearly behoved her to set him at a distance, but even as she resolved to do this it occurred to her that perhaps he believed her to be ready to accept an offer from Denis Kilbride, and instantly it became a matter of the first importance to disabuse his mind of this misapprehension. It was in vain that she told herself it didn’t matter a button what he believed: for some inscrutable reason it did matter.
The last of her guests did not leave until eleven o’clock, a late hour by Bath standards, for which the success of the impromptu hop was responsible. Several very young ladies were too shy to waltz, or perhaps too conscious of parental eyes of disapproval on them; but although the waltz was barred from both the Assembly Rooms even the starchiest and most old-fashioned of the dowagers knew that it would not be long before it penetrated these strongholds, and confined their objections to sighs and melancholy head-shakings over times past. As for the matrons with daughters to launch into society, few were to be found whose principles were so rigid as to make the spectacle of their daughters seated against the wall preferable to the shocking, but gratifying, sight of these dashing girls twirling round the room in the embrace of a succession of eligible young gentlemen.
Miss Wychwood confined her part in these mild revelries to keeping an eye on them, seeing to it that inexperienced girls unaccompanied by their mamas did not stand up more than twice with the same man, and finding partners for neglected damsels. Since nearly all the young people were well acquainted there was not much of this to be done: indeed, it was more important to take care that the impromptu dance did not develop into a romp, which, with so many very young persons who had known one another from the nursery onwards, was more than likely it would.
She was many times solicited to dance, but smilingly refused to stand up with even a gallant old friend, who might well have been her father. “No, no, General!” she said, twinkling up at him. “Chaperons don’t dance!”
“Chaperon? You?”he said. “Moonshine! I know to a day how old you are, puss, so don’t talk flummery to me!”
“Next you will say that you dandled me when I was an infant!” she murmured.
“At all events, I might have done so. Now, come, Annis! You can’t refuse to stand up with such an old friend as I am! Damme, I knew your father!”
“I should like very much to stand up with you, but you must excuse me! You may think it absurd, but I am being a chaperon tonight, and if I were to stand up with you how could I refuse to stand up with anyone else?”
“No difficulty about that!” he said. “You have only to say that you stood up with me because you didn’t care to offend an old man!”
“Yes, no doubt I could if you weren’t well known to be the wickedest flirt in Bath!” she retorted.
This pleased him so much that he chuckled, threw out his chest a little, apostrophized her as a saucy minx, and went off to dally with all the best looking women in the room.
Miss Wychwood enjoyed dancing, but she was not tempted to take the floor on this occasion. There was no one with whom she wished to dance; but no sooner had she realized this truth than a question posed itself in her mind: if Mr Carleton, instead of leaving the party in something remarkably like a dudgeon, had stayed, and had invited her to dance a waltz with him, would she have been tempted to consent? She was forced to admit to herself that she would have been very strongly tempted, but she hoped (rather doubtfully) that she would have had enough strength of mind to have resisted temptation.
In the middle of these ruminations, Lord Beckenham came up, and sat down beside her, saying: “May I bear you company, dear Miss Annis? I do not ask you to dance, for I know you don’t mean to dance this evening. I cannot help being glad of it: it gives me the opportunity to enjoy a comfortable cose with you, and—to own the truth—I don’t care for the waltz. I am aware that it is the height of a la modality, but it never seems to me to be quite the thing. You will say I am old-fashioned, I fear!”
“Quite Gothic!” she answered flatly. “Excessively uncivil, too, when you must know that I delight in waltzing!”
“Oh, I intended no incivility!” he assured her. “You lend distinction to everything you do!”
“For goodness’ sake, Beckenham, stop throwing the hatchet at me!” she said tartly.
He gave an indulgent laugh. “What an odd expression to hear on your lips! I myself am not familiar with modern slang, but I hear a great deal of it from Harry—more, indeed, than I like!—and I understand throwing the hatchet means to flatter a person, which, I promise you, I was not doing! Nor am I doing so when I tell you that I have rarely seen you look more beautiful than you do tonight.” He laughed again, and, laying his hand over hers, gave it a slight squeeze. “There, don’t eat me! Your dislike of receiving compliments is well known to me, and is what one so particularly likes in you, but my feelings overcame my prudence for once!”
She drew her hand away, saying: “Excuse me! I see Mrs Wendlebury is about to take her leave.”
She got up, and moved across the room towards this formidable dame, and, having said goodbye to her, responded to a signal from Mrs Mandeville, and went to sit beside her.