Bath Tangle

awaiting them in the drawing-room for some twenty minutes or more. Fanny went to take off her bonnet and pelisse, but Serena chose to go immediately to the drawing-room, and entered it, saying: “Well! This is a surprise! What brings you to Bath, Rotherham?”

He was standing before the small wood-fire, glancing through a newspaper, but he cast this aside, and came forward to shake hands. His expression was forbidding, and the tone in which he answered her decidedly acid. “I shall be grateful to you, Serena, if you will in future be so good as to inform me of it when you intend to change your habitation. I learned of this start by the merest chance.”

“Good gracious, why should I?” she exclaimed. “I suppose I need not apply to you for permission to come to Bath.”

“You need not! Responsibility for your movements was spared me. You are free to do as you please, but since I am your Trustee you would save me annoyance, and yourself inconvenience, if you will advertize me when you wish new arrangements made for the payment of your allowance! I imagine it would not suit you to be obliged to send all the way to Gloucester for any monies you might need!”

“No, to be sure it would not!” she agreed. “It was stupid of me not to have recollected that!”

“Quite featherheaded!”

“Yes, but the thing is that I have a considerable sum by me, and that is how I came to forget the matter. What a fortunate circumstance that you should have put me in mind of it! I must write to ask Mr Perrott to make a new arrangement too, or who knows when I may find myself in the basket?”

“As it is he who collects the larger part of your income, it would certainly be as well.”

“Could you find no one in town with whom to pick a quarrel?” she asked solicitously. “Poor Ivo! It is too bad!”

“I am not picking a quarrel. It would surprise you, I daresay, if I told you that I rarely quarrel with anyone but yourself.”

“Ah, that’s because very few people have the courage to pick up your gauntlet!” she said, smiling.

“An amiable portrait you draw!”

“But a speaking likeness!” she countered, a laughing challenge in her eye.

He shook his head. “No: I choose rather to prove you wrong. We won’t quarrel this time, Serena.”

“As you wish! Will you alter the arrangement for my tiresome allowance, if you please?”

“I have already done so. There is the direction,” he replied, handing her a piece of paper.

“Thank you! That was kind of you. I am sorry to have been so troublesome. Did you come all the way from town just for that?”

“I had business at Claycross,” he said curtly. “You seem to be comfortably established here. How do you go on?”

“Very prosperously. It was a relief to escape from Milverley.”

He nodded, but made no comment, merely saying, after a brief, keen scrutiny of her face: “Are you well? You look a trifle peaked.”

“If I do, it is because black doesn’t become me. I mean to lighten my mourning, and have ordered a charming grey gown.”

“You are mistaken.”

“What, in going into half-mourning?”

“No, in thinking black does not become you. Are you sure that Bath agrees with your constitution?”

“Yes, indeed! Now, don’t, I beg of you, Rotherham, put it into Fanny’s head that I am looking hagged! I think I did become a little out of sorts, but Bath will soon set me to rights.” She glanced at him, and added, with difficulty: “I have not learned yet not to miss Papa. Don’t let us speak of that! You know how it is with me! I don’t care to talk of what so much affects me, and making a parade of grief is of all things the most repugnant to me.”

“Yes, I know,” he replied, “You need not be afraid. I have nothing to say on that subject, for there is nothing to be said. Your aunt, by the by, charged me with all manner of messages to you. I met her at the Irebys’ party a couple of nights ago. It is wonderful, Serena, how much she likes you when a hundred miles or so separates you from her!”

She laughed. “Very true! My love to her, if you please, and tell her that I quite depend upon her letters for the latest on-dits. Where are you putting up, Ivo? Do you make a long stay in Bath?”

“At the York House. I return to town tomorrow.”

“How shabby! You will stay to dine with us at least! We keep unmodishly early hours here, I warn you.”

He hesitated. “I can hardly sit down to dinner with you in my riding dress, and I brought no other.”

“Ah, so you did mean to pick a quarrel with me!” she rallied him. “Fanny will pardon your top-boots, and I hope you don’t mean to stand on ceremony with me!” She turned her head, as Fanny came into the room, and said: “Here is Rotherham, so full of punctilio he will not dine with us in his riding dress! Persuade him, Fanny, while I make myself tidy!”

She returned presently to find them apparently in perfect charity with one another, Rotherham having been so obliging as to furnish Fanny with all the latest news of the Royal Marriage preparations. Since it was rarely that he had been known to pander to such feminine curiosity, Serena could only suppose that he was determined on amiability. Nothing occurred during the evening to make her change her mind. He indulged Fanny’s taste for gossip, without betraying too much contempt for it; and entertained Serena with a pungent description of what he described as the flutter in the Whig dovecot. Both ladies were pleased, and if an elliptical reference, which made Serena’s eyes dance, was incomprehensible to Fanny, or the conversation turned on Mr Canning’s journey home from Lisbon, she had her embroidery-frame to occupy her, and was merely glad to see Serena in such spirits. Such phrases as: “Pretty well to be employing a frigate for one’s pleasure!” and: “Never was there such a job!” put her forcibly in mind of agonizing evenings at Milverley, or in Grosvenor Square, when she had been obliged to strain every nerve in the effort to follow just such conversations. It was no longer her duty to do so, and she could only be thankful.

Her wandering thoughts were reclaimed presently, for the talk seemed to have switched from the despotic behaviour of someone called Ferdinand, to a subject of more interest. Rotherham was asking Serena who was at present visiting Bath.

“My dear Ivo! At the start of the London season? None but dowdies!”

Fanny protested that she was too severe, but Serena laughed, and shook her head. “General Creake, old Lady Skene, Mrs Piozzi, Madame D’Arblay and her set: Mrs Holroyd, Mrs Frances, Miss Bowdler—need I continue?”

“You need not, indeed! I had hoped you might have found some more enlivening company.”

“I have!” Serena said.

“I mistrust that smile,” Rotherham said dryly. “Who is it?”

“I’ll tell you one day. At present my lips are sealed!” she replied, with an air of mock solemnity.

“That means, I imagine, that you know well I should disapprove.”

“I daresay you might, but very likely you would not, and in any event it doesn’t concern you.” She glanced mischievously at Fanny, and added: “I find the acquaintance excessively enlivening!”

“But Lady Spenborough does not?”

“Fanny has such grand notions! Besides, she is my mama-in-law, and feels it to be her duty to chaperon me very strictly!”

“Now, Serena—!”

“I don’t envy her that task. I shan’t gratify you by trying to discover the mystery, but I wish you will take care what you are about.”

“I will. It is not precisely a mystery, only, although I daresay I might safely tell you about it, I believe I ought not, at this present.”

He looked frowningly at her, but said nothing. She began to talk of something else, and the subject was not again mentioned until Rotherham took his leave. Serena having run out of the room to fetch a letter which she desired him to frank, he said abruptly: “Don’t let her run into some scrape! You could not prevent her, I suppose: I know that headstrong temper!”

“Indeed, you are mistaken!” Fanny assured him.

He looked sceptical, but was prevented from saying more by Serena’s coming back into the room with her letter.