Bath Tangle

nothing to do with Emily’s troubles.”

Fanny dried her tears, but said: “I didn’t think you could be so unfeeling! It ought to be stopped!”

“Stopped! No, that it cannot be!” Serena said. “Put that out of your head, Fanny! It has been announced, and must go forward!”

She spoke so sternly that Fanny was quite startled. “But, Serena, you did not think so!” she could not help saying.

“No! I did not, and so the more reason this engagement should not be broken! It will not be: we may trust the Laleham woman for that!” She paused, and then said: “Well! I must not delay to send him my felicitations. It had better be done immediately, in fact.”

“Serena, if I ought to do the same, I am sorry, but nothing would prevail upon me to felicitate either of them on an event of which I most deeply disapprove!” Fanny said, with unwonted vehemence.

Serena had already seated herself at the writing-table, and spoke without turning her head. “Unnecessary! I will say on your behalf everything that is proper to the occasion.”

“I wish very much that you would not!” Fanny said.

No answer was vouchsafed to this decidedly pettish remark, but after a moment Serena said: “After all, it turns out very well for me! No moment than this could be better for the announcement I have to make! He will be much too absorbed in his own affairs to cavil at my engagement.”

“Yes, indeed!” Fanny said, brightening a little.

Silence fell, broken only by the scratch of Serena’s quill. Fanny, seated in the window, and leaning her chin in her hand, remained lost in melancholy thought until her attention was attracted by the sight of an old-fashioned landaulette drawing up immediately beneath the window. The next instant she uttered a sharp exclamation. “Serena! Mrs Floore! She must be coming to tell you the news! Good gracious, what a figure she is, in that hat! My love, some gentleman is handing her out, and I vow and declare to you the carriage is within an ace of tipping over under her weight! Quick! shall I tell Lybster to say we are gone out?”

“Certainly not! Why should you?” replied Serena, shaking the sand from her letter, and pulling open the little drawer in which Fanny kept her wafers.

“Oh, I don’t know, but I wish she had not come here! I shall not know what to say to her!”

“Nonsense! You will say all that is proper.”

“Perhaps she will not be able to mount the stairs!” said Fanny, with a nervous giggle.

But although the performance of this feat took time it proved to be not beyond Mrs Floore’s powers. With the aid of the baluster-rail and Mr Goring’s stalwart arm she arrived, panting but triumphant, on the first floor, and paused to take breath. Observing that Lybster was about to throw open the door into the drawing-room, she stopped him by the simple expedient of grasping his sleeve. Affronted, he gazed at her with much hauteur, and said in freezing accents: “Madam?”

“Looby!” enunciated Mrs Floore, between gasps. “You wait! Trying to push me in—like a landed salmon!”

“One moment, if you please!” said Mr Goring, quite unperturbed either by his old friend’s unconventional behaviour or by the butler’s evident disgust. He removed the fan from Mrs Floore’s clutch, and opened it, and began to ply it briskly.

“Thank you, Ned!” she said presently. “Lord, how the heat does draw one out!”

Concluding that she now felt ready to meet her hostess, Lybster opened the door, and announced in the voice of one refraining from comment: “Mrs Floore, Mr Goring, my lady!”

Fanny came forward, with her hand out. “How do you do? I am so glad you have come to visit us, ma’am: pray, will you not be seated? Lybster, some wine, if you please!”

He bowed, and withdrew; but as his gait was stately he was not gone from the room in time to escape hearing Mrs Floore say gratefully: “Bless your sweet face! Your butler was all for having me believe he didn’t know but what you’d stepped out, for which I’m sure I don’t blame him, but, “Lord,” I said, “you’ve no need to be scared! Her ladyship will see me fast enough, take my word for it!” Which he did, so here I am. And I brought Mr Goring along with me, just in case I should be overcome by the heat, which is a thing that happened to me once, right in the middle of the South Parade, and caused as much excitement as if a circus had come to town, Ned! Make your bow to Lady Spenborough!”

Mr Goring, who had been shaking hands with Serena, showed no signs of resenting this peremptory command, but turned to greet his hostess. She made him politely welcome, but had scarcely time to offer him her hand before Mrs Floore was again claiming her attention.

“If you’ve seen the newspapers this morning, my lady, you won’t wonder what brings me here!”

“No, indeed: most—most interesting news, ma’am! You must be excessively pleased, I am sure!”

“Well,” said Mrs Floore, “I don’t deny it’s a fine thing to be marrying a Marquis, for I daresay they don’t grow on every tree, and a very odd sort of a woman I’d be if I didn’t feel puffed-up enough at this moment to burst my stay-laces. If Emma likes him, I’m very glad he is a Marquis; but if she don’t, he might be fifty Marquises, and still I’d say she’d be better off with a plain man she could like!”

“We must suppose that she does like him, ma’am,” Serena said smiling.

“Begging your pardon, my dear, we don’t have to suppose anything of the kind!” said Mrs Floore bluntly. “You know that daughter of mine, and so, I’ll be bound, does her ladyship! What poor little Emma might like is the last thing in the world she’d trouble her head about, and that’s the truth, small pleasure though it is to me to say such a thing of my own flesh and blood!”

Fortunately, since Fanny knew not what to reply to this forthright speech, Lybster came back into the room at that moment, so that she was able to create a diversion by supplying her guests with refreshment. Serena said: “No doubt you have had letters from them, ma’am?”

“I’ve had one from Sukey, my dear, but Emma’s not one for writing letters. And if she had written to me I wouldn’t know any more than I do now, because it’s my belief that Prawle made her learn off by heart a set of letters out of the Complete Letter-Writer, and told her never to use any other ones. As for Sukey, naturally she’s in high delight! In fact, anyone would think she was in love with this precious Marquis herself, for she gives him such a character that if I credited the half of what she writes I should very likely think he was an Archangel. So, since Ned, who happened to be with me when Roger came in with the newspaper and the letters, couldn’t tell me any more about him than that he was a famous sportsman, I made up my mind I’d come straight round to see you, Lady Serena, for, “Mark my words,” I said to Ned, “her ladyship will know all about him!” And you needn’t mind speaking out in front of him, my dear, any more than if he was my son, which I’m sorry to say he isn’t! What’s more, he’s pretty well acquainted with Emma, for he saw a great deal of her when she was staying with me, and went with us to the Assemblies, and the theatre, and such-like.”

Serena glanced at Mr Goring, but his countenance gave nothing away.

“Yes, Lord Rotherham is very well known in the world of sport, I believe,” Fanny said, in a colourless voice.

Mr Goring raised his eyes from the contemplation of the wine in his glass, and directed a level look at her.

“Well, I don’t know that I like the sound of that, to start with!” said Mrs Floore dubiously. “If he’s a racing man, that means betting, and I’ve got one gamester on my hands already, and I don’t want another!”

Fanny was too overcome by the thought of Rotherham’s being on Mrs Floore’s hands to venture on a response. Serena laughed out, and said: “Don’t be alarmed, ma’am! Rotherham’s fortune is extremely large, and he is a great deal more addicted to boxing, and shooting, and hunting than to gaming!”

“Well, I’m glad to hear you say so, my dear. Not that I hold with boxing, because it’s low, and not the sort of thing I should expect a Marquis to be fond of. However, Ned tells me it’s quite the established mode among the smart beaux, and at all events he won’t go dragging Emma into boxing-saloons. But if he thinks to make her go out shooting and hunting with him it won’t do at all! Why, she’d be frightened to death!”

“I expect, ma’am, that he must be aware that—she doesn’t—share his tastes in that direction.”

“If he don’t know it now he will the very first time he sees her crying her eyes out all because the cat’s got hold of a mouse!” said Mrs Floore. She looked piercingly at Serena. “Tell me this, my dear! How old is he?”

“He is thirty-eight,” replied Serena calmly.

“Thirty-eight! Lord, that’s more than twenty years older than she is!” cried Mrs Floore, aghast.

“True. He is not cross-eyed, however,” Serena said, with a faint smile.