in the habit of encouraging his attentions would certainly be doomed to failure. I had thought better of Adrian.”
“You can’t blame him,” said Lady Mablethorpe. “What experience has he had of such people? Ten to one, the girl told him some affecting story about herself! Besides, she is quite lovely, according to what Sally Repton says. I suppose there is no hope of her deciding in Ormskirk’s favour?”
“Not the smallest chance of it, I imagine. Ormskirk won’t marry her.”
Lady Mablethorpe showed signs of dissolving into tears. “Oh, Max, what is to be done if she won’t relinquish him?”
“She must be made to relinquish him.”
“If it were not for the unsettled state of everything on the Continent, I should feel inclined to send him abroad! Only I daresay he would refuse to go.”
“Very likely.”
Lady Mablethorpe dabbed at her eyes. “It would kill me if my son were to be caught by such a female!”
“I doubt it, but you need not put yourself about, ma’am. He will not be caught by her.”
She was a little comforted by this pronouncement. “I knew I could rely upon you, Max! What do you mean to do?”
“See the charmer for myself,” he replied. “St James’s Square, you said?”
“Yes, but you know how careful these houses have to be, Max, on account of the law-officers. I daresay they won’t admit you, if you have no card.”
“Not admit the rich Mr Ravenscar?” he said cynically. “My dear aunt! I shall be welcomed with open arms.”
“Well, I hope they won’t fleece you,” said Lady Mablethorpe. “On the contrary, you hope they will,” he retorted. “But I am a very ill bird for plucking!
“If Adrian meets you there, he will suspect your purpose. He will certainly think that I sent you.”
“Deny it,” said Ravenscar, bored.
Lady Mablethorpe started to deliver herself of an improving lecture on the evils of deception, but, finding that her nephew was quite unimpressed, stopped, and said with a somewhat vindictive note in her voice: “I beg that you will take care, Max! They say the girl is like a honey-pot, and I’m sure I’ve no wish to see you caught in her toils.”
He laughed. “There is not the slightest need for you to concern yourself about me, ma’am. I am neither twenty years of age, nor of a romantic disposition. You had better not tell Adrian that I have been here. No doubt I shall see him in St James’s Square this evening.”
She held out her hand to him, a good deal mollified. “You are a most provoking man, Max, but indeed I don’t know what I should do without you! You will manage it all. I depend entirely upon you!”
“For once,” said Mr Ravenscar, raising her hand formally to his lips, “you may quite safely do so.”
He took his leave of her, and departed. She opened her book again, but sat for a few moments gazing into the fire, her mind pleasantly occupied with daydreams. Once extricated from his present predicament, she had great hopes that her son would have learnt his lesson, and keep clear of any further entanglements. The account Ravenscar had brought of his half-sister’s activities had not been entirely palatable, but Lady Mablethorpe was a broad-minded woman, disinclined to set much store by the vagaries of a young lady of only eighteen summers. To be sure, it was unfortunate that Arabella should be such a flirt, but what, in another damsel, would have been a shocking fault, was, in such a notable heiress, a mere whimsicality of youth. Flirt or not, Lady Mablethorpe had every intention of seeing Arabella married to her son. Nothing, she thought, could be more suitable. Arabella had birth, fortune, and prettiness; she had known her cousin intimately since babyhood, and would make him a very good wife. Lady Mablethorpe had not the smallest objection to the child’s liveliness: she thought it very taking, coupled, as it had always been, with a graceful, playful deference towards her aunt.
The recollection of the nameless suitor in a scarlet coat momentarily disturbed her ladyship’s complacent dream. She soon banished it, reflecting that Max could be counted upon to put a stop to any such nonsense. Callous he might be, but he was not at all the man to stand idle while Arabella bestowed herself and her eighty thousand pounds on some nobody in a line regiment. For herself, Lady Mablethorpe was obliged to admit that it would be a shocking thing for Arabella to bestow these rich gifts on any other man than young Lord Mablethorpe.
She was not, she insisted, a mercenary woman, and if her dearest boy disliked his cousin she would be the last to urge I, him into matrimony with her. But eighty thousand pounds, safely invested in the Funds! Any woman of common prudence must wish to see this fortune added to the family coffers, particularly since (if Max were to be believed) the staggering sum of ten thousand pounds would shortly have to be disgorged from the amassed interest of Adrian’s long minority. In this connexion, thought her ladyship, it was a fortunate circumstance that the conduct of all the business of the Mablethorpe estate had been left in Max’s capable hands rather than in the Honourable Julius Mablethorpe’s. There was no doubt that Max had a very shrewd head on his shoulders. Thanks, in a great measure, to his management, Adrian would find himself when he came of age (and in spite of the loss of that ten thousand pounds) the master of a very pretty fortune. It would not compare, of course, with the Ravenscar wealth, a melancholy circumstance which had for years caused her ladyship a quite irrational annoyance. She had even, upon occasion, wished that she had a daughter who might have married Max.
She could have borne it better if she could have had the satisfaction of seeing him squandering his wealth. But this solace was denied her. Mr Ravenscar had simple tastes. He kept up a large house in Grosvenor Square, to be sure, and his country estate, Chamfreys, was a noble mansion, with a deer park, some very good shooting, and a vast acreage attached to it but he held no magnificent house-parties there, which he might, thought his aggrieved aunt, very well have done, with his stepmother to play hostess. That would have given the second Mrs Ravenscar something better to think about than her health. The second Mrs Ravenscar’s health was a subject which, while it in no way concerned her, never failed to irritate Lady Mablethorpe. Her ladyship inhabited a very pretty house in Brook Street, but would infinitely have preferred to live in Grosvenor Square, where she could have entertained on a large scale. It was thus a source of continual annoyance to her that her sister-in-law should declare that the delicate state of her nerves could not support the racket of London, and should spend the best part of her time at Bath, or Tunbridge Wells. Such parties as Max gave, therefore, were either bachelor gatherings, or of a nature which must preclude his asking his aunt to act as hostess for him. She wondered that he should care to live in solitary state in such a barrack of a house!
She wondered too, being herself a woman of gregarious tastes, that he should care so little for all the accepted pleasures of his world. You might look in vain for Mr Ravenscar at balls, ridottos, and masquerades: ten to one, he would be at a cockfight, or rubbing shoulders with prize-fighters in some vulgar tavern in Whitechapel. He was a member of a number of fashionable clubs, but rarely visited most of them. His aunt had heard that he played a good deal at Brooks’s, where the play was very deep, and she knew that his horses were the envy of his friends; but these were positively his only extravagances. While the town swarmed with Bucks and Jessamies, and even men who did not aspire to these heights of fashion would spend hours on the designing of a waistcoat, and fortunes on rings, fobs, shoebuckles, and pins, Mr Ravenscar wasted neither time nor money on anything but his boots (which were admittedly excellent), and had never been seen to wear any other ornament than the heavy gold signet ring which adorned his left hand.
He was thirty-five years of age, and it was now a considerable time since any but the most optimistic of match-making mothers had entertained hopes of his casting the handkerchief in her daughter’s direction. There had been a time when he had been the most courted man in London; invitations had showered upon him; the most wily traps had been laid for him; but the indifference with which he regarded all eligible females (an indifference which he was never at any pains to hide), his cold reserve, and his habit of pleasing himself upon all occasions, had at last convinced the disappointed matrons that there was nothing whatever to be hoped for from him, not even some pretty, expensive trinket to mark his regard for those ladies who thought themselves his friends. Mr Ravenscar gave nothing away. No use thinking that he would gallantly offer to frank you at whist, or silver loo; he was far more likely to rise from the table further enriched by your losses. It was small consolation to reflect that ladies of easier virtue with whom his name had been coupled from time to time had never been able to flaunt jewels of his bestowing: it merely showed him to be abominably tight-fisted, a shocking fault! He was held to be a proud, disagreeable man; his manners were not conciliating; and although the gentlemen said that he was a good sportsman, meticulous in all matters of play and pay, the ladies were much inclined to think him a rakish fellow, with a pronounced taste for low company.
