The Corinthian

“Oh, the grass might stain my dress!”

“It seems to me,” said Pen severely, “that if you are bothering about your dress you cannot be in such great trouble.”

“Oh, but I am!” said Lydia, sinking down on to the turf, and clasping her hands at her bosom. “I do not know what you will say, or what you will think of me! I must have been mad! Only you were kind to me last night, and I thought I could trust you!”

“I dare say you can,” said Pen. “But I wish you will tell me what is the matter, because I have not yet had any breakfast, and—”

“If I had thought that you would be so unsympathetic I would never, never have sent for you!” declared Lydia in tremulous accents.

“Well, it is very difficult to be sympathetic when a person will do nothing but wring her hands, and say the sort of things there really is no answer to,” said Pen reasonably. “Do start at the beginning!”

Miss Daubenay bowed her head. “I am the most unhappy creature alive!” she announced. “I have the misfortune to be secretly betrothed to one whom my father will not tolerate.”

“Yes, I thought you were. I suppose you went to meet him in the wood last night?”

“Alas, it is true! But do not judge me hastily! He is the most unexceptionable—the most—”

“If he is unexceptionable,” interrupted Pen, “why won’t your father tolerate him?”

“It is all wicked prejudice!” sighed Lydia. “My father quarrelled with his father, and they don’t speak.”

“Oh! What did they quarrel about?”

“About a piece of land,” said Lydia mournfully.

“It sounds very silly.”

“It is silly. Only they are perfectly serious about it, and they do not care a fig for our sufferings! We have been forced to this hateful expedient of meeting in secret. I should tell you that my betrothed is the soul of honour! Subterfuge is repugnant to him, but what can we do? We love each other!”

“Why don’t you run away?” suggested Pen practically.

Startled eyes leapt to hers. “Run where?”

“To Gretna Green, of course.”

“Oh, I could not! Only think of the scandal!”

“I do think you should try not to be so poor-spirited. However, I dare say you can’t help it.”

“You are the rudest boy I ever met!” exclaimed Lydia, “I declare I wish I had not sent for you!”

“So do I, because this seems to me a silly story, and not in the least my concern,” said Pen frankly. “Oh, pray don’t start to cry! There, I am sorry! I didn’t mean to be unkind! But why did you send for me?”

“Because, though you are rude and horrid, you did not seem to me like other young men, and I thought you would understand, and not take advantage of me.”

Pen gave a sudden mischievous chuckle. “I shan’t do that, at all events! Oh dear, I am getting so hungry! Do tell me why you sent for me!”

Miss Daubenay dabbed her eyes with a wisp of a handkerchief. “I was so distracted last night I scarce knew what I was doing! And when I reached home, the most dreadful thing happened! Papa saw me! Oh, sir, he accused me of having gone out to meet P—to meet my betrothed, and said I should be packed off again to Bath this very day, to stay with my Great-Aunt Augusta. The horridest, most disagreeable old woman! Nothing but backgammon, and spying, and everything of the most hateful! Sir, I felt myself to be in desperate case! Indeed, I said it before I had time to recollect the consequences!”

“Said what?” asked Pen, patient but bored.

Miss Daubenay bowed her head again. “That it was not—not that man I had gone to meet, but another, whom I had met in Bath, when I was sent to Great-Aunt Augusta to—to cure me of what Papa called my infatuation! I said I had been in the habit of meeting this other man c- clandestinely, because I thought that would make Papa afraid to send me back to Bath, and might perhaps even reconcile him to the Real Man.”

“Oh!” said Pen doubtfully. “And did it?”

“No! He said he did not believe me.”

“Well, I must say I’m not surprised at that’

“Yes, but in the end he did, and now I wish I had never said it. He said if there was Another Man, who was it?”

“You ought to have thought of that. He was bound to ask that question, and you must have looked very silly when you could not answer.”

“But I did answer!” whispered Miss Daubenay, apparently overcome.

“But how could you, if there wasn’t another man?”

“I said it was you!” said Miss Daubenay despairingly.

Chapter 10

The effect of this confession upon Pen was not quite what Miss Daubenay had expected. She gasped, choked, and went off into a peal of laughter. Affronted, Miss Daubenay said: “I don’t see what there is to laugh at!”

“No, I dare say you don’t,” said Pen, mopping her eyes. “But it is excessively amusing for all that. What made you say anything so silly?”

“I couldn’t think of anything else to say. And as for its being silly, you may think me very ill-favoured, but I have already had several suitors!”

“I think you are very pretty, but I am not going to be a suitor,” said Pen firmly.

“I don’t want you to be! For one thing, I find you quite odiously rude, and for another you are much too young, which is why I chose you, because I thought I should be quite safe in so doing.”

“Well you are, but I never heard of anything so foolish in my life! Pray, what was the use of telling your father such fibs?”

“I told you,” said Lydia crossly. “I scarcely knew what I was saying, and I thought—But everything has gone awry!”

Pen looked at her with misgiving. “What do you mean?”

“Papa is going to wait on your cousin this morning.”

“What!” exclaimed Pen.

Lydia nodded. “Yes, and he is not angry at all. He is pleased!”

“Pleased? How can he be pleased at your holding clandestine meetings with a strange man?”

“To be sure, he did say that that was very wrong of me. But he asked me your name. Of course I don’t know it, but your cousin told me his name was Wyndham, so I said yours was too.”

“But it isn’t!”

“Well, how was I to know that?” demanded Lydia, aggrieved. “I had to say something!”

“You are the most unprincipled girl in the world! Besides, why should he be pleased just because you said my name was Wyndham?”

“Apparently,” said Lydia gloomily, “the Wyndhams are all fabulously wealthy.”

“You must tell him without any loss of time I am not a Wyndham, and that I haven’t any money at all!”

“How can I tell him anything of the kind? I think you are being most unreasonable! Do but consider! If I said now that I had been mistaken in your name he would suppose you to have been trifling with me!”

“But you cannot expect me to pretend to be in love with you!” Pen said, aghast.

Lydia sniffed. “Nothing could be more repulsive to me than such a notion. I am already sorry that I mentioned you to Papa. Only I did, and now I don’t know what to do. He would be so angry if he knew that I had made it all up!”

“Well, I am very sorry, but it seems to me quite your own fault, and I wash my hands of it,” said Pen.