He strode into the room, and paused, looking grimly at his prospective bride. She was standing beside a large wing-chair, one trembling hand resting on its back, her eyes huge in her white face, and her breathing uneven. She looked very young, very pretty, and very apprehensive, and she showed no disposition to come forward to greet her betrothed until her mother said, in a voice of honeyed reproof: “Emily dear!” After that, she advanced, and said: “How do you do?” putting out her hand.
“Effusive!” said Rotherham. “You must not behave as though I were your whole dependence and delight, you know!”
“She is a little tired,” explained Lady Laleham, “and she has been a very silly, naughty child, which she knows she must confess to you.”
His eyes went to her face, an arrested expression in them.
“L-Lady Serena said I n-need not t-tell, Mama!”
“We are very much indebted to Lady Serena, my love,” Lady Laleham returned smoothly, “but you will allow Mama to know best what you should do.” She met Rotherham’s fierce stare with perfect coolness, a faint smile on her painted lips. “The poor child is afraid that you will be very angry with her, Lord Rotherham, but I have assured her that where there is full confession there must always be forgiveness, particularly when it is accompanied by deep repentance.”
The wretched Emily, perceiving that her betrothed was looking like a thundercloud, began to feel faint. But Rotherham was not thinking about her. He was seeing the ground being cut from beneath his feet by a stratagem which he recognized, in a cold fury, to be masterly. And he could think of no way to prevent Emily from casting herself upon his mercy. Out it all came, in halting, shamefaced sentences from Emily, skilfully embroidered by her mother. She had thought he was very angry with her, when she had received his letter; he had stayed away from her for so long that she feared he no longer loved her; Gerard had told her such dreadful things that she had taken fright. But Lady Serena had come to the rescue just when she was wishing she had not done such a wicked thing; and Lady Serena had assured her that she had nothing to fear from Lord Rotherham. So she had come home and had been crying her eyes out ever since because she was so very, very sorry. Finally, would he forgive her, and believe that she would never do it again?
He became aware that she had finished speaking, and saw that her eyes were fixed on his face in a look of painful inquiry. He said abruptly: “Emily, do you love Gerard?”
“Oh,
No way of escape there. There was only one way out, and that was to play the outraged lover, and repudiate the engagement It could not be done. To push her into flinging that handsome diamond ring he had given her in his face was one thing; to push her into eloping with his ward, and then to round on her, was quite another. He wondered what pressure her mother had brought to bear to make her so anxious to marry him. She was no longer thinking of riches and position. If he could get rid of Lady Laleham, he might be able to reach an understanding with Emily—if she was capable of understanding anything, which she did not look to be.
“I think it would be as well if we talked this over alone,” he said.
Lady Laleham had no intention of allowing this. Unfortunately, Emily’s terror of him was greater than her dread of her mother, and she gave him no support, but shrank towards Lady Laleham.
At which moment the door opened, and a startling vision surged into the room. “I thought as much!” said Mrs Floore ominously. “And who gave you leave to entertain guests in my house, Sukey?” She retained her clutch on Mr Goring’s supporting arm, and added: “No, you stay here, Ned! There’s nothing that’s happened here this day you don’t know, and a true friend you’ve been, like your father would have been before you!”
Rotherham, with difficulty withdrawing his eyes from the magnificence before him, glanced at Lady Laleham. What he saw in her face afforded him considerable solace. Fury and chagrin were writ large in it, and beneath these emotions, unless he much mistook the matter, fear. So this was the mysterious grandmother about whom he had quizzed Emily on his first meeting with her! He bent his penetrating stare upon her again, as she settled herself in the chair of her choice, and directed Mr Goring to pull forward a footstool.
Mrs Floore was doing justice to the occasion in a staggering gown of lustring, with tobine stripes of a rich ruby, and a quantity of floss trimming. This splendid robe was draped over panniers, fashionable in her youth, and was worn over an underdress of satin. A medley of brooches adorned the low-cut corsage, and round her short neck she had clasped several strings of remarkably large pearls. A turban of ruby silk and tinsel was embellished with a cluster of ostrich plumes, and from the lobes of her ears hung two large rubies.
“That’s right,” nodded Mrs Floore, shifting the position of the stool a trifle with one red-heeled and buckled shoe. “Now let me take a look at this precious Marquis I’ve heard so much about!”
Lady Laleham, with an unconvincing smile pinned to her mouth, murmured to Rotherham: “Dear Mama is quite an eccentric!”
“I’m not an eccentric, and I’m not deaf!” said her dear Mama sharply. “I’m a plain woman that came of good merchant stock, which, though I may not have your fine-lady airs and graces, my dear, I’ve got more sense than to be ashamed of! And another thing I’ll tell you is that you’d do better to introduce this Marquis to me than to stand there biting your lips, and wondering what he must be thinking of your ma! He can think what he likes, and if Emma means to marry him—which, however, isn’t by any means a settled thing!—the sooner he gets used to her grandma the better it will be for him!”
“How do you do?” said Rotherham, slightly bowing, his tone indifferent, but his eyes keenly surveying this amazing old lady.
She gave him back stare for stare, taking him in from the heels of his boots to the crown of his black locks. “Good gracious, you’re a regular blackamoor!” she exclaimed. “Well, they say handsome is as handsome does, but from all I can make out, my lord, you haven’t done very handsome yet.”
“You must not mind Mama: she is so droll!” said Lady Laleham.
“It’ll be more to the point if I don’t mind him,” observed Mrs Floore, who was clearly in a belligerent mood. “You must excuse me staring at you, my lord, but I never did see such peculiar eyebrows! Now, I shouldn’t wonder at it, Emma, my pet, if half the time you thought he was scowling at you it was nothing but the way his eyebrows grow, which he can’t help, though, of course, it’s a pity.”
Rotherham kept his countenance set in its forbidding lines. At any other moment, he would have exerted himself to please Mrs Floore, for he was strongly attracted to her; but since her attitude appeared to be hostile he saw in her his one hope of salvation, and began to consider how best to annoy her.
“Dear Mama,—you know that Emily wished to see Lord Rotherham in private!” said Lady Laleham. “Don’t you think, perhaps—”
“No, I don’t,” replied Mrs Floore bluntly. “What’s more, it wasn’t Emma that wanted to be private with him, and if she had done, I don’t see much privacy for her with you standing over her, Sukey!”
“You forget, Mama, that I am her mother.”
“Well, and if I do, whose fault is that?” demanded Mrs Floore. “You act motherly, and maybe I
“None at all!” said Lady Laleham. “Lord Rotherham has been most forbearing, just as I knew he would be, and has not uttered one word of censure, has he, Emily?”
“No, Mama,” said Emily, in a small, scared voice.
“It’s to be hoped he hasn’t!” said Mrs Floore, her eyes snapping. That’s not to say he won’t hear a word of censure from me—in fact, a good many words! Yes, it’s all very well to be high in the instep, my lord, and to look at me as though I was a spider, and very likely you’re thinking I’m just a vulgar old woman, but what I say is that if anyone’s to blame for what’s happened it’s you!”
“I’ve no objection to vulgarity,” replied Rotherham. “What, however, I do not tolerate is interference. That had better be understood immediately.”
Mrs Floore seemed to swell. “Ho! So when I tell you I won’t have my granddaughter made miserable, that’s interference, is it?”
“If Emily is made miserable by me, the remedy is in her own hands.”
“Mama, pray be quiet!” cried Lady Laleham. “Such nonsense! As though she has not every reason to be the happiest girl alive!”
“You may toad-eat his lordship as much as you like, Sukey, but don’t you run away with the idea you can tell
