“The truth is, I met with a slight accident,” replied Ravenscar, taking a glass of Burgundy from the tray which a waiter was handing him. As he raised it to his lips, the ruffle fell back from his hand, and his bandages were seen.
“Good God, what have you done to your hand, Max?” asked Lord Mablethorpe, in swift alarm.
“Oh, nothing very much!” Ravenscar replied. “I told you I had met with a slight accident.”
“Have you been set upon?” demanded Crewe. “Is that it?”
“Yes, that is it,” said Ravenscar.
“I hope it may not impair your skill with the ribbons!” said Filey.
“I hope not, indeed,” answered Ravenscar, with one of his derisive looks.
“Gad, Ravenscar, do you suppose it was an attempt to stop you driving tomorrow?” exclaimed a gentleman in an old fashioned bag-wig.
“Something of that nature, I fancy,” said Ravenscar, unable to resist an impulse to glance at Miss Grantham.
“What the devil do you mean by that, Horley?” demanded Sir James belligerently.
The gentleman in the bag-wig looked surprised. “Why, only that there has been a great deal of money laid on the race, and such things do happen! What should I mean?”
Filey’s high colour faded; he muttered something about having misunderstood, and swung out of the room, saying that he would try his luck at the hazard-table.
“What’s the matter with Filey?” inquired Crewe. “He’s become devilish bad-tempered all at once!”
“Oh, haven’t you heard?” said a man in an orange-and-white striped waistcoat. “You know he was mad to marry one of the Laxton girls? Pretty child, only just out. Well, the Laxtons are trying to hush it up, but I had it from young Arnold himself that the filly’s bolted!”
“Bolted?” repeated Crewe.
“Vanished, my dear fellow. Can’t be found! No wonder our friend’s sore!”
“Well, I don’t blame her,” said Crewe. “Filey and a chit out of the schoolroom! Damme, it’s little better than a rape! But where did she bolt to?”
“No one knows. I told you she’d vanished. And the best of it is the Laxton’s daren’t set the Runners on to her track for fear of the story’s leaking out! Wouldn’t look well at all forcing a child of that age into marriage with a man of Filey’s reputation!”
“It wouldn’t come to that!” objected Mr Horley.
“Oh, wouldn’t it, by God? You don’t know Lady Laxton, when there’s a fortune at stake,” chuckled the man in the orange-striped waistcoat.
Lady Bellingham, feeling that her cup was now full to overflowing, cast a despairing look towards her niece, and wondered why a mouthful of cold partridge should taste of ashes.
“It is not to be supposed,” said Lord Mablethorpe carefully, “that Filey will wish to marry any female who shows herself so averse from his suit.”
“If you think that, you don’t know Filey!” said Crewe. “He would think it added a spice to matrimony.”
Under cover of this general conversation, Lucius Kennet had moved across the room to Miss Grantham’s side, and now said in her ear: “Do you tell me you persuaded him to give up the bills, me dear? Sure, you could have knocked me down with a feather when he walked in as cool as you please!”
“I have not got the bills,” she replied.
“You have not got them? Then what the devil ails you to be letting him go, Deb?”
“I didn’t. He escaped.”
He looked at her with suspicion. “He did not, then! I tied his hands meself. It’s lying you are, Deb: you set him free!”
“No, I did not. Only he asked me for a candle, and I let him have one, never dreaming what he meant to do! He burned the cord round his wrists, and when I went down to the cellar he was free: There was nothing I could do.”
He gave a low whistle. “It’s the broth of a boy he is, and no mistake! So that’s why his hands are bandaged! Will he be able to drive?”
“He says so. I am sure I do not care!”
She was disinclined to converse further on the subject, and moved away, only to fall a victim to Lord Mablethorpe, who drew her into a corner of the room to ask her if she had heard what had been said about Phoebe Laxton’s disappearance. She answered rather curtly that she did not know what it should signify, but Mablethorpe was not satisfied, and said the question of Phoebe’s future was troubling him very much.
Miss Grantham was pleased to hear this, but she had borne much that evening, and felt disinclined to embark on a discussion of Phoebe’s affairs in a crowded supper-room. She answered rather briefly, therefore, and incurred Lord Mablethorpe’s censure for the first time in her life.
“It’s very well, Deb, but she cannot stay here for ever, and I don’t think you are bothering your head much about her,” his lordship said gravely.
“I have other things to think of,” said Deborah.
“I am sure you must, but she has no one but you to think for her, or to take care of her, remember!”
This was said with a gentle dignity which Miss Grantham had not met before in her youthful swain. She reflected that close association with Miss Laxton was investing his lordship with a sense of responsibility, and liked him the better for it. “It is very hard to know what to do for the best,” she said. “I quite thought that her parents would have relented. They may still do so.”
A little crease appeared between his brows. “Even so-!” He paused, and went on again after a moment’s hesitation: “She has confided in me to some extent, Deb. I dare say she may have told you more. But I have heard enough to realize that she can never be happy at home. Those parents-! If it were not Filey it would very likely be someone as bad. Lady Laxton cares for nothing but money. I should feel we had betrayed Phoebe if we let her go back. She is not like you, she needs someone to protect her.”
This naive pronouncement made Miss Grantham feel much inclined to inform him that to have someone to protect her was every woman’s dream, but she refrained, and said instead that she did not know what was to be done. She added that she must go upstairs to the card-rooms, and left him feeling more dissatisfied with her than he would have believed, a week before, that he could be.
If the truth were told, his lordship had been finding his
Then there was her manner towards himself, which occasionally chafed him. She was often rather impatient with him, as though she found his youth and inexperience exasperating; and she had developed a habit of ordering him about more than he liked. There had even been moments when the memory of a governess he had had in early childhood most forcibly recurred in his mind. He was by no means a fool, and he had begun to perceive that Miss Grantham’s seniority gave her an advantage over him which might well preclude hi assuming the mastery over his own establishment. Lord Mablethorpe had a sweetness of temper which made him universally liked; he was very young still, and diffident; but he was no weakling, and he was growing up fast.
Miss Grantham, well aware of these facts, was riding him hard as she thought proper, allowing the decision and forcefulness of her own character to throw Miss Laxton’s gentle: and more yielding nature into strong relief. Mablethorpe, she knew, could not fail to make comparison between them; and it would be an odd thing if a young man who was bullied, in a kind way, by one woman, did not find the admiration and dependence of another a refreshing change.
He did find it refreshing. Miss Laxton’s fragility, her helplessness, her implicit trust in him, had made an instant appeal to his chivalry. From the first moment of meeting her, when she had clung to his hand, he had felt protective towards her. She had said that she knew herself to be safe with him, and later she had said that she would be guided by his judgement, and had asked for his advice. No one had ever expressed a desire to benefit by Lord Mablethorpe’s advice before; and since his mother, his uncle Julius, and his cousin Max were all persons of decided opinions, he had never received any very noticeable encouragement to put forward his own views on subjects of major importance. His life had, naturally enough, been ordered for him, and although he was fast approaching his majority it would be some time before these relatives, who were all so much older and wiser than
