“You knew, Povey, when you told me that Miss Smith was asleep, that she had left the house,” said Hester quietly. “No, do not try to answer me! You have done very wrong. I don’t wish to talk to you. Indeed, I don’t feel that I shall be able to forgive you.”
Povey instantly burst into tears, but to her startled dismay her tenderhearted mistress seemed quite unmoved, leaving the room without so much as another glance thrown in her direction.
Lady Hester found Sir Gareth awaiting her at the foot of the stairs. She put Amanda’s note into his hand, saying remorsefully: “It is just as you suspected. I have been dreadfully to blame!”
“You! No, indeed!” he returned, running his eye over the note. “Well, she doesn’t tell you so, but I imagine there is no doubt she went away with your uncle.” He gave the note back to her, saying, as he saw her face of distress: “My dear, don’t look so stricken! There is not so very much harm done, after all. I own, I wish I knew where Theale is taking her, but I daresay they will not be difficult to trace.”
“It is quite shameful of Fabian!” she said, in a tone of deep mortification.
He replied lightly: “For anything we yet know she may have prevailed upon him to take her to Oundle, where, I don’t doubt, she will try to give him the slip.”
“You say that to make me feel more comfortable, but pray don’t!” she said. “There can be no excuse for his conduct, and the dreadful thing is that there never is! Even if she made him think she indeed had relations at Oundle, he cannot have thought it proper to remove her from Brancaster in such a way. And I very much fear that he has not taken her to Oundle. In fact, it would be much more like him to carry her off to his hunting-box, which I should have no hesitation in saying is what he has done, only that he must know that is the first place where you would look for her.”
“Well, if we are to speak frankly of your uncle, I will own that that is precisely what I fear he may have done,” said Sir Gareth.
“Oh, yes, pray say what you like! I assure you, none of us would disagree with you, however badly you think of him, for he is almost the most severe misfortune that ever befell us. But it would be quite foolhardy of him to have taken her to Melton Mowbray!”
“I suspect that he thinks I shan’t attempt to follow him,” replied Sir Gareth dryly. “Your brother and his wife certainly believe me to have brought my mistress to Brancaster, and your uncle’s conduct now leads me to suppose that they are not alone in that belief.”
“I don’t know very much about such matters,” said Hester thoughtfully, “but I shouldn’t have thought you would do that.”
“You may be perfectly sure I would not!”
“Oh, yes, I am! I told Almeria so. I cannot but feel that it would be such a silly thing to do!”
“It would also be an extremely insulting thing to do,” he said, smiling at her tone of serious consideration. “How Theale came to credit me with so much ill-breeding is something that perhaps he will explain to me presently.”
“Well,” said Hester, wrinkling her brow, “I think it is just the sort of thing he would do himself, which would account for it. But what has me in a puzzle is why you should think he would not, in that event, expect you to follow him. I should have thought it quite certain you would do so—unless, of course, not pursuing people who steal your mistress is one of those rules of gentleman’s etiquette which naturally I know nothing about.”
“No,” he answered, laughing, “it is not! But if I had been so lost to all sense of propriety as to have brought my mistress with me, when my errand was to beg you to honour me with your hand in marriage, I must indeed have found it an awkward business—to say the least of it!—to recover Amanda from your uncle.”
“Yes, so you must!” she agreed, pleased to have the problem elucidated. “Dear me, how excessively shabby of Fabian to try to take advantage of your position! You know, whenever he is in a scrape, one always hopes that he has gone his length, but he seems never to be at a loss to think of something worse to do. How very vexing it is for you! What shall you do?”
“Try to discover which road he took when he left this house, and go after him. What else can I do? I made myself responsible for Amanda, and although she deserves to be well spanked I can’t let her run into mischief that might so easily mean her ruin. I have already desired your butler to send a message to the stables.” He held out his hand, and she put hers into it, looking fleetingly up into his face. “I owe you an apology,” he said. “Believe me, if I had guessed how troublesome she would be, I would not have burdened you with Amanda.” He smiled suddenly. “One advantage, however, must have been gained. I was obliged to tell your father the truth—or some part of it, and as he plainly considers me to be touched in the upper works I imagine he will congratulate you on your good sense in refusing to have anything to do with me!”
She flushed, and very slightly shook her head. “Don’t let us speak of that! I wish I might be of some assistance to you now, but I cannot think of anything I could usefully do. If Fabian has gone to Melton, he will have taken the road to Huntingdon, because although the more direct way is through Peterborough the road from Chatteris to Peterborough is very narrow and rough, and he will never venture on to it for fear of being made to feel ill. He is a very bad traveller.” She paused, and seemed to reflect. “Will you feel obliged to call him out? I don’t know what may be the proper thing for you to do, and I don’t wish to tease you, but I can’t help feeling that it would be more comfortable if you did not.”
His lips quivered, but he replied with admirable gravity: “Just so! I shan’t go to such desperate lengths as that, and although I own it would give me a good deal of pleasure to draw his cork—I beg your pardon! make his nose bleed!—I daresay I shan’t even do that. He is too old, and too fat—and heaven only knows what tale Amanda may have beguiled him with! I only wish I may not figure as the villain of it.”
“Now, that,” said Hester, roused from her gentle tolerance, “would be really too naughty of her, and quite beyond the line of what is excusable!”
He laughed. “Thank you! I must go now. May I write to tell you the outcome of this nonsensical adventure?”
“Yes, indeed, I hope you will, for I shall be very anxious until I hear from you.”
He raised her hand to his lips, and kissed it, pressed it slightly, and then released it, and went away up the stairs. Lady Hester remained for a moment or two, staring absently at nothing in particular, before going slowly back into the breakfast-parlour
Chapter 8
The first check to Amanda’s new plan of campaign was thrown in the way by Mr. Theale, who disclosed, when midway between Brancaster Park and Huntington, that he had ordered his coachman to drive straight through that town to the village of Brampton, where, he said, they would pause for breakfast and change of horses. He did not tell her that he preferred, on the whole, not to be seen in her company in a town where his was naturally a familiar figure; but was prepared, if questioned, to dilate upon the excellencies of the posting-house at Brampton: a hostelry which had never, as yet, enjoyed his patronage. But she did not question him. Successful generals did not allow their minds to be diverted by irrelevancies: they tied knots, and went on.
The set-back was not as severe as it might have been, had she been still adhering to her plan of seeking employment at one of the town’s chief posting-houses. This scheme she had abandoned, knowing that the George, the Fountain, and no doubt the Crown as well, would be the first places where Sir Gareth would expect to find her. But she had ascertained from the obliging Povey that stage-coaches to various parts of the country were to be boarded in Huntingdon, and it had been her intention to have bought herself a ticket on one of these, to some town just far enough away from Huntingdon to have baffled Sir Gareth. A village situated two miles beyond Huntingdon would not suit her purpose at alclass="underline" it might be hours before a coach passed through it; if she succeeded in escaping from Mr. Theale there, and walked back to Huntingdon, she would run the risk of meeting Sir Gareth on the road, or find, when she reached the coach-office, that he had been there before her, and had directed the clerk to be on the watch for her. Mr. Theale’s society, she decided, would have to be endured for rather longer than she had hoped.