April Lady

Lavalle’s bill. Its existence weighed so heavily upon her conscience that she found herself unable to utter a word. A deep flush stained her cheeks, and her eyes, after a hurt moment, dropped from his.

“You must forgive me!” His voice had an ironical inflexion that made her wince. “My want of delicacy sinks me quite below reproach, doesn’t it? I fancy it gave Allandale a disgust of me too.”

She managed to say, in a stifled tone: “I didn’t think—I didn’t know about your fortune!”

“Didn’t you?” he said lightly. “How charming of you, my dear! Your manners make mine appear sadly vulgar. Don’t look so distressed! I am persuaded no man ever had so beautiful, so polite, or so amiable a wife as I have!” He glanced at his watch. “I must go. I don’t know what nonsense Letty may have taken into her head, but I hope I may trust you not to encourage her in it. Happily, it appears to be out of Allandale’s power to marry her without a substantial portion. She’s under age, of course, but I’d as lief not be saddled with that kind of a scandal!”

A smile, a brief bow, and he was gone, leaving her with her brain in a whirl. There was little thought of Letty in it. For the first time in their dealings Cardross had hinted that he had looked for more than complaisance in his wife; and his words, with their edge of bitterness, had made Nell’s heart leap. It was almost sacrilege to doubt Mama, but was it, in fact, possible that Mama had been wrong?

She went slowly upstairs, to be pounced on by Letty, bursting with indignation, and the desire to unburden herself. She listened with half an ear to that impassioned damsel, saying yes, and no, at suitable moments, but assimilating little from the molten discourse beyond the warning that her sister-in-law would be forced to take desperate measures if Cardross continued on his present tyrannical course. Before it had dawned on Letty that she had no very attentive auditor to the tale of her wrongs a message was brought up to the drawing-room that the Misses Thorne had called to take up their cousin on a visit to some exhibition.

Nell soon found herself alone, and at leisure to consider her own problems. These very soon resolved themselves into one problem only: how to pay for a court dress of Chantilly lace without applying to Cardross. If Cardross had offered for her hand not as a matter of convenience but for love, this was of vital importance. Nothing could more surely confirm his suspicion than to be confronted with that bill; and any attempt to tell him that she had fallen in love with him at their first meeting must seem to him a piece of quite contemptible cajolery.

No solution to the difficulty had presented itself to her by the time the butler came to inform her that the barouche had been driven up to the door, and awaited her convenience. She was tempted to send it away again, and was only prevented from doing so by the recollection that civility obliged her to make a formal call in Upper Berkeley Street, to enquire after the progress of an ailing acquaintance.

She directed the coachman, on the way back, to drive to Bond Street, where she had a few trifling purchases to make; and there, strolling along, with his beaver set at a rakish angle on his golden head, and his shapely legs swathed in pantaloons of an aggressive yellow, she saw her brother.

The Viscount had never been known to extricate himself from his various embarrassments, much less anyone else; but to his adoring sister he appeared in the light of a strong ally. She called to the coachman to pull up, and when Dysart crossed the street in response to her signal leaned forward to clasp his hand, saying thankfully: “Oh, Dy, I am so glad to have met you! Will you be so very obliging as to come home with me? There is something I particularly wish to ask you!”

“If you’re wanting me to escort you to some horrible squeeze,” began the Viscount suspiciously, “I’ll be dashed if I—”

“No, no, I promise you it’s no such thing!” she interrupted. “I—I need your advice!”

“Well, I don’t mind giving you that,” said his lordship handsomely. “What’s the matter? You in a scrape?”

“Good gracious, no!” said Nell, acutely aware of her footman, who had jumped down from the box, and was now holding open the door of the barouche. “Do get in, Dy! I’ll tell you presently!”

“Oh, very well!” he said, stepping into the carriage, and disposing himself on the seat beside her. “I’ve nothing else to do, after all.” He looked her over critically, and observed with brotherly candour: “What a quiz of a hat!”

“It is an Angouleme bonnet, and the height of fashion!” retorted Nell, with spirit. “And as for quizzes—Dy, I never saw you look so odd as you do in those yellow pantaloons!”

“Devilish, ain’t they?” agreed his lordship. “Corny made me buy ‘em. Said they were all the crack.”

“Well, if I were you I wouldn’t listen to him!”

“Oh, I don’t know! Always up to the knocker, is Corny. If you ain’t in a scrape, why do you want my advice?”

She gave his arm a warning pinch, and began to talk of indifferent subjects in a careless way which (as he informed her upon their arrival in Grosvenor Square) made him wish that he had not chosen to walk down Bond Street that morning. “Because you can’t bamboozle me into believing you ain’t in a scrape,” he said. “I thought you were looking hagged, but I set it down to that bonnet.”

Nell, who had led him upstairs to her frivolous boudoir, cast off her maligned headgear, saying wretchedly: “I am in a dreadful scrape, and if you won’t help me, Dy, I can’t think what I shall do!”

“Lord!” said the Viscount, slightly dismayed. “Now, don’t get into a fuss, Nell! Of course I’ll help you! At least, I will if I can, though I’m dashed if I see—However, I daresay it’s all a bag of moonshine!”

“It isn’t,” she said, so tragically that he began to feel seriously alarmed. She twisted her fingers together, and managed to say, though with considerable difficulty: “Dysart, have—have you still got the—the three hundred pounds I gave you?”

“Do you want it back?” he demanded.

She nodded, her eyes fixed anxiously on his face.

“Now we are in the basket!” said his lordship.

Her heart sank. “I am so very sorry to be obliged to ask you!”

“My dear girl, I’d give it you this instant if I had it!” he assured her. “What is it? a gaming debt? You been playing deep, Nell?”

“No, no! It is a court dress of Chantilly lace, and I cannot—cannot!—tell Cardross!”

“What, you don’t mean to say he’s turned out to be a screw?” exclaimed the Viscount.

“No! He has been crushingly generous to me, only I was so stupid, and it seemed as if I had so much money that—Well, I never took the least heed, Dy, and the end of it was that I got quite shockingly into debt!”

“Good God, there’s no need to fall into flat despair, if that’s all!” said the Viscount, relieved. “You’ve only to tell him how it came about: I daresay he won’t be astonished, for he must know you haven’t been in the way of handling the blunt. You’ll very likely come in for a thundering scold, but he’ll settle your debts all right and regular.”

She sank into a chair, covering her face with her hands. “He did settle them!”

“Eh?” ejaculated Dysart, startled.

“I had better explain it to you,” said Nell.

It could not have been said that the explanation, which was both halting and elusive, very much helped Dysart to a complete understanding of the situation, but he did gather from it that the affair was far more serious than he had at first supposed. He was quite intelligent enough to guess that the whole had not been divulged to him, but since he had no desire to plunge into deep matrimonial waters he did not press his sister for further enlightenment. Clearly, her marriage was not running as smoothly as he had supposed; and if that were so he could appreciate her reluctance to disclose the existence of yet another debt to Cardross.

“What am I to do?” Nell asked. “Can you think of a way, Dy?”

“Nothing easier!” responded Dysart, in a heartening tone. “The trouble with you is that you ain’t up to snuff yet. The thing to do is to order another dress from this Madame Thing.”

“Order another?” gasped Nell.

“That’s it,” he nodded.

“But then I should be even deeper in debt!”

“Yes, but it’ll stave her off for a while.”

“And when she presses me to pay for that I buy yet another! Dy, you must be mad!”