The eyes were quickly raised; the colour receded. “In Bath! Oh, no! The doctor said I must not be excited! Mama said she would explain to him. Besides—he must not meet Grandmama!”
“Indeed!” Serena said dryly. “May I ask if he is never to meet Mrs Floore?”
“No, no! I could not
“I don’t wish to seem to criticize your mama, Emily, but you are making a mistake. You must not despise your grandmama.”
Emily burst into tears. Fortunately, one of the shady arbours with which the gardens were liberally provided was close at hand, and unoccupied. Having no desire to walk through a public place in company with a gustily sobbing girl, Serena guided Emily into the arbour, commanding her, in stringent accents, to compose herself. It was a little time before she could do this, and when her tears ceased to flow they left her face so much blotched that Serena kept her sitting in the arbour until these traces of emotion had faded. By way of diverting her mind, she asked her if she had enjoyed her visit to Delford. From the disjointed account Emily gave her of this, she gathered that it had not been wholly delightful. Emily seemed to waver between a glorious vision of herself ruling over the vast pile, and terror of its servants. She was sure that the housekeeper held her in contempt; she would never dare to give an order to the steward; and she had mistaken Lady Silchester’s dresser for a fellow guest, which had made Mama cross. Yes, Lady Silchester had been acting as hostess for her brother. She was very proud, wasn’t she? There had been a great many people staying at Delford: dreadfully alarming people, who all looked at her, and all knew one another. There had been a huge dinner-party, too: over forty persons invited, and so many courses that she had lost count of them. Lord Rotherham had said that when next such a dinner-party was held at Delford she would be the hostess.
This was said with so frightened a look up into Serena’s face, the pansy-brown eyes dilating a little, that Serena was satisfied that it was not her bridegroom but his circumstances which had thrown Emily into such alarm. She wondered that Rotherham should not have realized that to introduce this inexperienced child to Delford under such conditions must make her miserably aware of her shortcomings. What could have induced him to have filled his house with exalted guests? He might have guessed that he was subjecting her to a severe ordeal; while as for summoning, apparently, half the county to a state dinner-party, and then telling the poor girl that in future she would be expected to preside over just such gatherings, Serena could think of nothing so ill-judged. Plainly, he had wanted to show off his chosen bride, but he should have known better than to have done it in such a way.
She found that Mrs Floore shared this opinion. She was hugely gratified to know that his lordship was so proud of her little Emma, but thought him a zany not to have realized how shy and retiring she was. Mrs Floore was in a triumphant mood, having routed her daughter in one swift engagement. Unfortunately for Lady Laleham, who wished to remove Emily from her grandmother’s charge as soon as she herself was restored to health, Sir Walter had suffered severe reverses, and these, coupled with the accumulated bills for her own and Emily’s expensive gowns, had made it necessary for her to apply to her mother for relief. Mrs Floore was perfectly ready to send her as much money as she wanted, but she made it a condition that Emily should be left in her charge until her own doctor pronounced her to be perfectly well again. Lady Laleham was obliged to accede to these terms, and Emily’s spirits immediately improved. A suggestion, put forward by her ladyship, that she should join her daughter in Beaufort Square was so bluntly vetoed by Mrs Floore that she did not repeat it.
“Which I knew she wouldn’t,” Mrs Floore told Serena. “She’s welcome to play off her airs in her own house, but I won’t have her doing it in mine, and so she knows! Well, my dear, I don’t deny Sukey’s been a rare disappointment to me, to put it no higher, but there’s a bright side to everything, and at least I have the whip hand of her. Offend me, she daren’t, for fear I might stop paying her the allowance I do, let alone cut her out of my Will. So now we must think how to put Emma in spirits again! I’ll take her to the Dress Ball on Monday, at the New Assembly Rooms, and Ned Goring shall gallant us to it. There’ll be nothing for Sukey to take exception to in that, nor his lordship neither, even if they was to know of it, which there’s no reason they should, because there’s no waltzing, you know, and not even a cotillion on the Monday night balls.”
“But I thought Emily was to be very quiet!” said Serena, laughing. “Was she not knocked up by balls in London?”
“Ay, so she was, but it’s one thing to be going to them night after night, and never in bed till two or three in the morning, and quite another to be going to one of the Assemblies here now and then! Why, they never go on beyond eleven o’clock at the New Rooms, my dear, and only till midnight at the Lower Rooms, on Tuesdays! What’s more, it won’t do the poor little soul any good to be hipped, and to sit moping here with only me for company! I’ll take her to the next Gala night at the Sydney Gardens, too, which is a thing I’ve never done yet, because this is the first time she’s visited me during the summer. I’ll be bound she’ll enjoy watching the fireworks, and so I shall myself.”
Serena, looking at that fat, jolly countenance, did not doubt it. Mrs Floore was in a rollicking humour, determined to make the most of her beloved granddaughter’s visit. “For it’s not likely she’ll ever stay with me again,” she said, with a sigh. “However, she shall do what the doctor tells her she should, never fear! And one thing he says is that she mustn’t sit cooped up within doors this lovely weather, so if you would let her go walking with you sometimes, my lady, it would be a great kindness, and what she’d like a deal better than driving in the landaulet with me, I daresay, for that’s mighty dull work for a girl.”
“Certainly: I shall be glad of her company,” Serena replied. “Perhaps she would like to ride with me.”
This suggestion found instant favour with Mrs Floore, who at once made plans for the hire of a quiet hack. Emily herself was torn between gratification at being asked to ride with such a horsewoman as Lady Serena, and fear that she might be expected to leap all sorts of obstacles, or find herself mounted on a refractory horse. However, the animal provided for her proved to be of placid, not to say sluggish, disposition, and Serena, knowing her limitations, took her for just the sort of expeditions that would have suited Fanny. Whenever opportunity offered, she did her best to instruct Emily in the duties of the mistress of a noble household; but the questions shyly put to her by the girl, and the dismay which many of her answers provoked, did not augur very well for the future. She supposed that Rotherham, himself careless of appearances, disliking the formality that still obtained in many families of ton, was indifferent to Emily’s ignorance of so much that any girl of his own rank would have known from her birth.
August came, and still Emily remained in Bath. To any impartial observer, she seemed quite to have regained her bloom, but Mrs Floore, looking her physician firmly in the eye, said that she was still far from well. He was so obliging as to agree with her; and upon Emily’s happening to give a little cough, shook his head, spoke of the unwisdom of neglecting coughs, and prescribed magnesia and bread-pudding as a cure.
Major Kirkby, finding that he was frequently expected to squire Emily as well as Serena, told Fanny that he was in a puzzle to discover what there was in the girl to endear her to Serena. A pretty little creature, he acknowledged, but gooseish. Fanny explained that it was all kindness: Emily had always looked up to Serena, and that was why Serena took pity on her. But the Major was not satisfied. “That is all very well,” he objected, “but she seems to believe herself to be in some sort responsible for Miss Laleham! She is for ever telling her how she should conduct herself in this or that circumstance!”
“I wish she would not!” Fanny said impulsively. “I would like Emily to conduct herself so awkwardly as to give Lord Rotherham a disgust of her, for I am persuaded she will be miserable if she marries him! How Serena can fail to see that, I know not!”
“I don’t think Serena cares for that,” he said slowly. “She appears to me to be wholly bent on training Miss Laleham to make Rotherham a conformable wife. I can tell you this, Lady Spenborough: she does not mean
“But what concern is it of hers?” cried Fanny. “Surely you must be mistaken!”
“I asked her very much that question myself. She replied that it had been no very pleasant thing for him when she jilted him, and she would not for the world have him subjected to another such slight.”
Fanny looked very much surprised, but when she had thought it over for a minute, she said: “She has known him all her life, of course, and no matter how bitterly they quarrel they always seem to contrive to remain on terms with each other. But it is very wrong of her to interfere in this! I don’t believe Emily wants to marry Rotherham. She would not dare to tell Serena so, I daresay, and Serena takes care not to leave her alone with me, because she knows what my feelings are on that head.”
He smiled. “So if Serena interferes in one direction, you would be happy to do so in the other?”
“Oh, no, no! Only if Emily confided in me—if she should ask my advice—I would counsel her most strongly not to marry a man for whom she feels no decided preference! A man, too, so much older than herself, and of such a
