Bath Tangle

in your thimble, and leave room to spare, you have remarkable powers, of discernment, my dear!”

“Ah, but you are so clever, Serena!” Fanny said simply.

“I?” exclaimed Serena incredulously.

“Oh, yes! Everyone says so, and indeed it is true!”

“My dear Fanny, what in the world are you at? I have not the smallest pretensions to anything more than common sense!”

“But you have! You have a well-informed mind, and you always know what to say to people. Why, when the Castlereaghs were staying with us last year, I was quite lost in admiration at the way you contrived to talk to him! When I could think of nothing to say but the merest commonplace!”

“Good gracious, what nonsense! That style of thing, I promise you, is nothing but a trick! You forget how long I have been knocking about the world. When you are as old as I am you will be doing the same.”

“Oh, no! I never shall be able to,” Fanny said, shaking her head. “I am quite as stupid as Emily Laleham, and I’m sure you must often be quite provoked by me.”

“Never till this moment!” Serena declared, with a slightly heightened colour, but in a rallying tone. “Good God, if ever I have another suitor I’ll take good care to keep him out of your way! You would make him believe me a blue-stocking, and after that, farewell to my chance of contracting even a respectable marriage!”

That made Fanny laugh, and no more was said. But Serena was shocked to realize how truly she had spoken. Much as she loved the gentle creature, she was sometimes provoked by her simplicity, and often longed for the companionship of someone with wits to match her own.

It was hard, too, to accustom herself to what she thought a dawdling way of living, and harder still to abandon her hunting. That, while she was in deep mourning, she must always have done, but she might, had either Fanny or her cousin shared her passion, have enjoyed some gallops. But Fanny was a very nervous horsewoman, willing to amble with her along the lanes, but cast into an agony of apprehension at the mere suggestion of jumping the smallest obstacle; and Hartley regarded horses as nothing more than a means of getting from one place to another.

She had felt herself obliged to send her hunters to Tattersall’s, retaining only one little spirting thoroughbred mare, which could be stabled at the Dower House. The stables there had not been built to accommodate more than six horses, and although Hartley had politely begged her to consider the Milverley stables as much her own as they had ever been her pride would not allow her to be so much beholden to him. Fanny, knowing what a grief it must be to her, was aghast, but Serena, who could not bear to have a wound touched, or even noticed, said lightly: “Oh, fiddle! What’s the use of keeping hunters one can’t ride? I can’t afford to have them eating their heads off, and I know of no reason why my cousin should!”

Shortly before Christmas, they received a visit from Lord Rotherham. One of his estates, not his principal seat, which was situated in quite another part of the country, but a smaller and more favoured residence, was Claycross Abbey, which lay some ten miles beyond Quenbury. He rode over on a damp, cheerless day, and was ushered into the drawing-room to find Serena alone there, engaged, not very expertly, in knotting a fringe. “Good God, Serena!” he ejaculated, checking on the threshold.

She had never been more glad to see him. Every grudge was forgotten in delight at this visit from one who represented at that moment a lost world. “Rotherham!” she cried, jumping up, and going to him with her hand held out. “Of all the charming surprises!”

“My poor girl, you must be bored!” he said.

She laughed. “Witness my occupation! To tears, I assure you! I was so extravagant as to send to London for a parcel of new books, thinking to be kept well entertained for at least a month. But having been so improvident as to swallow Guy Mannering almost at one gulp—has it come in your way? I like it better, I think, than Waverley—I am left with The Pastor’s Fireside, which seems sadly flat; a History of New England, for which I am not in the correct humour; a most tedious Life of Napoleon, written in verse, if you please! and, of all imaginable things, an Enquiry into Rent! Fanny has failed miserably to teach me to do tambour work that doesn’t shame the pair of us, so, in desperation, I am knotting a fringe. But sit down, and tell me what has been going on in the world all this time!”

“Nothing that I know of. You must have seen that Wellington and Castlereagh carried it against old Blücher. For the rest, the only on-dits which have come in my way are that Sir Hudson Lowe has his eye on a handsome widow, and that the Princess of Wales has now taken to driving about the Italian countryside in a resplendent carriage drawn by cream-coloured ponies. Rehearsing an appearance at Astley’s, no doubt. Tell me how you go on!”

“Oh—tolerably well! What has brought you into Gloucestershire? Do you mean to spend your Christmas at Claycross?”

“Yes: an unwilling sacrifice on the altar of duty. My sister comes tomorrow, bringing with her I know not how many of her offspring; and my cousin Cordelia, labouring, apparently, under the mistaken belief that I must be pining for a sight of my wards, brings the whole pack down upon me on Thursday.”

“Good heavens, what a houseful! I wonder you should not rather invite them to Delford!”

“I invited them nowhere. Augusta informed me that I should be delighted to receive them all, and as for taking Cordelia’s eldest cub into Leicestershire at this season, no, I thank you! I have more regard for my horses, and should certainly prefer Gerard not to break his neck while under my aegis.”

She frowned, and said, with a touch of asperity: “It is a pity you cannot be kinder to that boy!”

“I might be, if his mother were less so,” he responded coolly.

“I think it is not in your nature. You have neither patience nor compunction, Ivo.”

“On your tongue the stricture sits oddly, my dear Serena!”

She flushed. “I hope that at least I have compunction.”

“So do I, but I have not seen it!”

Her eyes flashed, but she choked back a retort, saying, after a moment’s struggle: “I beg your pardon! You remind me—very properly!—that your conduct towards your wards is no concern of mine.”

“Good science, Serena!” he said approvingly. “I am now thrown in the close, and shall make no attempt to come up to time. You are at liberty to censure my conduct towards my wards as much as you please, but why waste these remarks on me? Cordelia will certainly drive over to pay you a visit, and will be delighted to learn your opinion of me: it is identical with her own!”

Fanny entered the room as Serena exclaimed: “Oh, can we never be for ten minutes together without quarrelling?”

“I believe it has been rather longer than that, so we may plume ourselves upon the improvement,” he replied, rising, and shaking hands with Fanny. “How do you do? You have no occasion to look dismayed: I came only to pay my respects, and have already stayed too long. I hope you are well?”

She had never known how to reply to such speeches as this, and coloured hotly, stammering that she was so glad—hoped he would stay to dine—they had not expected—

“Thank you, no! I have no business with Spenborough, and paused here only on my way to Milverley.”

“You need not vent your anger on poor Fanny!” Serena said indignantly.

“I have no compunction!” he flung at her. “My sister spends Christmas at Claycross, Lady Spenborough, and has charged me to discover from you whether you are yet receiving visitors.”

“Oh, yes! We shall be very happy to see Lady Silchester. Pray, assure her—! It is most kind!”

He bowed, and took his leave of them. Fanny gave a sigh of relief, and said: “I am so thankful! Mrs Stowe tells me that the turbot had to be thrown away, and to have been obliged to have set an indifferent dinner before Lord Rotherham would have made me feel ready to sink! How he would have looked! What has put him out of temper?”

“Must you ask? I did, of course!”

“Dearest Serena, indeed you should not!”

“No, I did mean not to quarrel, only I said something severe—Well! It was true enough, but I never thought it would touch him on the raw! I’m sorry for it, but I daresay if we had not quarrelled over that we should have done so over something else.”

“Oh, dear! But perhaps he won’t visit us again!” said Fanny hopefully.