This temperate praise exercised a rather damping effect upon her spirits, but these soon rose again, for Mr. Stonehouse showed unmistakeable signs of wishing to engage her attention. While Freddy and his sister exchanged desultory remarks about their various acquaintances in the audience, he drew his chair rather closer to Kitty’s, and politely enquired if she was enjoying her visit to the Metropolis. He seemed surprised to learn that it was her first; and when she told him innocently that Freddy had been so obliging as to take her to Westminster Abbey and to the Tower, looked quite stunned.
“F-Freddyl” he repeated. “D-did you say W’Westminster Abbey]”
“Yes, and also the Tower. We meant to go into St. Paul’s as well, but the guide book seemed not to think highly of the interior, so we did no more than look at the outside. But we saw the Elgin Marbles!”
“N-not Freddy!” he said incredulously.
“Yes, indeed he did! Though I am bound to own that he did not care much for them.”
“I shouldn’t think he w-would,” said Mr. Stonehouse. “I c-can’t imagine how he was p-prevailed upon to go!” He coloured, and added apologetically: “No, I d-don’t mean that! I C’Can, of course, but it’s very surprising! The best of good fellows, you know, b-but—” His voice broke. “Elgin Marbles!” he uttered. “Oh, Word!”
Freddy, overhearing, said severely: “Yes, but there’s no need for you to spread it all over town, Jasper!”
“I c-couldn’t resist it!” said Mr. Stonehouse frankly. “D-didn’t you admire ‘em, Freddy?”
Since Mr. Standen felt strongly on the subject, it was fortunate that his sister created a diversion at that moment by calling Kitty’s attention to a box on the opposite side of the house. “Look, Kitty! There is the Chevalier, just come in with Lady Maria Yalding and her sister! Freddy I If she has not brought Drakemire with her! Well!”
Kitty, following the direction of her eyes, saw a party of four people in the box. A stout woman, very fashionably dressed but neither beautiful nor in quite the first blush of youth, was disposing herself in her chair, assisted by the Chevalier, who held her fan and her reticule for her, and carefully arranged her elaborately trimmed cloak over the back of the chair. A thinner edition of herself, who bore more the appearance of a hired companion than of a sister, sat down beside her, somewhat perfunctorily attended by the fourth member of the party, a dessicated man with a misogynistic expression.
“Lady Maria is the fat one, and that’s her elder sister, Lady Jane,” explained Meg. “Annerwick’s daughters, you know: he has five, and all as plain as puddings! No fortune, of course: Mama says that old Lord Annerwick ran through thirty thousand pounds before he was twenty-five years old even!”
“Good gracious!” said Kitty, looking in surprise towards Lady Maria’s box. “I had supposed her to be very rich indeed! She wears so many jewels and feathers!”
“Oh, yes! For, by the luckiest chance, Mr. Yalding wished to marry her, and although he was quite an ungenteel person—I believe, in fact, a merchant!—the Annerwicks could not but be thankful.”
“Didn’t want to marry her,” interpolated Freddy. “Wanted to be in the
“N-no, but it d-did Lady M-Maria good,” said Mr. Stonehouse. “He left his whole f-fortune to her. She saw to that! D-dragon of a female!” He glanced across the house. “Stupid, too. Who’s the young b-blade making—” He stopped abruptly, his question cut short by a nip from Meg’s fingers.
But Freddy, who had moved beyond the reach of his sister’s hand, answered it. “Cousin of Miss. Charing’s. French fellow. Think he’s dangling after her, Kit?”
“Oh, Freddy, surely he would not do so?” exclaimed Kitty, shocked.
“Might,” said Freddy. “Wouldn’t myself, but plenty of fellows have. Well, bound to! Worth a hundred thousand, they say. Trouble is, she’s a dashed queer-tempered woman. Uphall made a push to fix his interest with her. She’d have had him, too, but he couldn’t bring himself up to scratch.
Told me he’d sooner be rolled-up. Says it ain’t so bad in a sponging’house—once you get used to it. Good God! For the lord’s sake, don’t look to the left, Meg! Aunt Dolphinton!”
With great presence of mind, Meg unfurled her fan, and plied it so that it hid her profile. “Has she seen us?” she hissed.
“Don’t know, and I’m dashed well not going to look. She’s got Dolph with her, that’s all I can tell you. We shall have to take a stroll outside after the act, or she’ll start beckoning to us. You know what she is!”
Just then the curtain rose, and although Freddy’s enjoyment of the drama was marred by what he felt to be the urgent necessity to evolve a scheme that would enable them all to escape a compulsory visit to Lady Dolphinton’s box, Kitty instantly forgot the ordeal ahead, and sat throughout the act in a trance of rapt interest, her lips just parted, her gaze riveted, and her hands tightly clasping her fan. At the fall of the curtain Freddy made a creditable attempt to hustle the ladies out of the box before his redoubtable relative had had time to observe them; but owing to Meg’s having lost her handkerchief, and to Kitty’s having to be roused from her lingering trance, this failed. Before he could achieve his end, a knock fell on the door, and the Chevalier entered, so that the project had to be abandoned.
Kitty could not but be glad. That her handsome cousin should dangle after a fortune was a suggestion that distressed her. His prompt appearance in Freddy’s box seemed to give the lie to it; and nothing in his demeanour betrayed the least desire on his part to return to Lady Maria’s side. In full view of his hostess, he stayed chatting, very gay and debonair; and when Kitty, rendered quite uncomfortable by a fixed stare from the opposite box, told him that she feared he might be offending Lady Maria, his brows flew up in surprise, and he exclaimed: “But, no! How should it be possible? I have informed her that my cousin is present—my cousin whom for so many years I have not seen!”
“Well, she looks very cross,” said Kitty.
“I am not very well acquainted with Lady Maria, but it seems that she suffers from bad humours,” he said, with a droll look. “But I should not say so! I am, in effect, an ingrate! She has been most kind to one who is without friends in London, and—you understand my lips are sealed!”
“All very w-well,” said Mr. Stonehouse, when, by tacit consent, he and Mr. Standen withdrew from the box to take an airing in the corridor, “b-but if he hasn’t any f’friends in London, w-why did he c-come here? N-not one of the Embassy people, is he?” He added hastily: “I don’t m-mean to say that he isn’t p-perfectly respectable! It just struck m-me that it was odd!” He became aware of a lanky figure in his path, and put up his glass. “Oh! Dolphinton! How d’ye do?”
Lord Dolphinton addressed himself to his cousin, briefly and to the point. “Mama says you are to bring Kitty to her box,” he stated. “Freddy, I didn’t know you were going to bring Kitty to town, did I?”
Mr. Standen, though irritated by this peremptory command, was not deaf to the note of appeal in Lord Dolphinton’s voice. “No, no!” he said soothingly. “At least, I don’t know what you knew, Dolph, but no need to get into a taking, old fellow! Too late to bring Kit along to see my aunt now! You go back and tell her so! Bring her after the next act!” He then turned his relative gently round, and gave him an encouraging thrust, remarking to Mr. Stonehouse, as Dolphinton ambled away: “Sevenmonths’ child, y’know: daresay it accounts for it! Better go back and warn Kit!”
“Freddy!” said Mr. Stonehouse, detaining him. “What i.>; this? I m-mean, Elgin MMarbles—WWestminster Abbey—! Are you g-going to be m-married?”
“No, no!” Freddy said involuntarily. Recollecting himself, he added: “What I mean is—only betrothed! Keeping it a secret, Jasper! Family reasons!”
“Oh!” said Mr. Stonehouse, much mystified. “Of c-course, if you d-don’t want it known, I shan’t s-say anything! But why—”
“Curtain’s going up!” interrupted Freddy desperately, retreating into his box much in the fashion of a rabbit hotly pursued by a terrier.
Chapter X
Considerably to their surprise, and not a little to their relief, Lady Dolphinton received the engaged couple later in the evening with a degree of affability which was as rare as it was unexpected. She was a hard-featured woman, with a predatory mouth, a smile that never reached her eyes, and an air of consequence. At no time had
