Cotillion

and said with slight concern: “Anything amiss, sir?”

“No—oh, no!” replied Lord Legerwood, recovering himself. “I almost believe that you will think of a way, for I perceive that you have depths hitherto unsuspected by me, my dear boy. Tell me, if you please, if I am correct in assuming that my part in this is to discover for you, if I can, who and what is your Chevalier?”

“That’s it,” said Freddy, gratified by such ready understanding. “Very much obliged to you if you would, sir.”

“I will do my poor best,” bowed his lordship. “Meanwhile, permit me to congratulate you upon the change you have wrought in Kitty’s appearance! I collect that yours has been the guiding hand: alas, I knew when I saw her the other evening that my poor Meg could have had little to say in the choice of her apparel!”

Freddy looked pleased. “Elegant little thing, ain’t she?” His brow clouded. “Shouldn’t have worn those topazes, though. Wouldn’t let me give her a set of garnets. Pity!”

Lord Legerwood, although noting this peculiar reluctance on Miss Charing’s part to receive gifts from her betrothed, refrained from comment. He merely said, polishing his eyeglass: “Oblige me, Freddy, by telling me if Jack Westruther is often to be found in Berkeley Square?”

Freddy’s brow darkened. “Too dashed often, for my raste. No need for you to trouble yourself, though. Keeping my eye on Meg!”

Lord Legerwood, sustaining yet another shock, said faintly: “You are?”

“To be sure I am. What’s more, got my own notion of what’s in the wind.” He nodded portentously, but added: “Don’t mean to say anything about that: not my affair! Trouble is—beginning to think he’s too damned loose in the haft!”

“I have thought that any time these past seven years,” said Lord Legerwood.

“You have?” said Freddy, regarding him with affectionate pride. “Always say you’re the downiest man I know, sir! Up to every rig and row in town!”

“Freddy, you unman me!” said his father, profoundly moved. “No one, I believe, has yet called me a slow-top, but I own I am happy to learn that you are—er—keeping an eye on your sister.”

“Yes, but no need to fear there’ll be any brats coming through a side-door,” said Freddy bluntly. “For one thing, can’t, with Meg increasing; for another—Jack’s got his eye on a devilish prime article. Don’t think he would, either: dash it, not such a rum touch as that!”

With this assurance Lord Legerwood had to be content, for his son’s confidences were at an end. Freddy saw no reason to inform his parent that he had been thunderstruck to discover that Miss Charing had, by means unknown to him, become acquainted with the damsel whom he had. no hesitation in designating a prime article. He had already viewed with disapprobation her friendship with an illfavoured female of obviously plebeian origin; his feelings when he called in Berkeley Square and found his affianced bride entertaining Miss Broughty held him spellbound upon the threshold, his jaw dropping, and his eyes starting from his head. When Miss Broughty presently took her leave, he nerved himself to expostulate with Kitty, representing to her that to be striking up an acquaintanceship with the daughter of a lady whom he did not scruple to call an Abbess, if ever he saw one, could in no way add to her consequence. “It won’t do, Kit! Take it from me!”

To his intense discomfiture he came under the beam of Miss Charing’s wide-eyed, enquiring gaze. “What does an Abbess signify, Freddy?” she asked. He was thrown into disorder, and replied hastily: “Never mind that! Wouldn’t understand if I told you! Thing is, the woman’s putting that girl up to the highest bidder. Oughtn’t to say such things to you, but there it is!”

“I know she is,” responded Kitty calmly. “She is quite the most odious woman imaginable! I am so sorry for poor Olivia! Indeed, Freddy, you would pity her if you knew the whole!”

“Yes, I daresay I should. No harm in being sorry for her, but it won’t do to be making a friend of her.”

“But, Freddy, surely there can be no objection! Though we may dislike Mrs. Broughty, Olivia’s birth is respectable, for she is related to Lady Batterstown, and she, I know, is a friend of your Mama’s!” Freddy sighed. “Trouble is, Kit, you ain’t been on the town long enough to know the ins and the outs! Oliver Broughty was a dashed loose screw, by all I’ve ever heard, and it don’t make a ha’porth of odds if he was some kind of a third cousin to Lady Batterstown, or if he wasn’t. In fact, he was, but it’s what I was telling you t’other day: every family has its scaff and raff! We have! Thing is, don’t foist ‘em on the ton!”

Kitty wrinkled her brow. “It is true that Lady Batterstown seems not to have been very kind to the Broughtys. One cannot but feel that had she but befriended Olivia the poor girl might have achieved a very creditable alliance, for you cannot deny, Freddy, that she is most beautiful!”

“That ain’t enough,” said the worldly-wise Mr. Standen.

“Well, but it seems as though sometimes it is!” argued Kitty. “Olivia has been telling me about the beautiful Miss Gunnings, who were no better connected than she is, and yet, when their Mama brought them to London, they took the town by storm, and one of them married two Dukes!”

“No, really, Kit!” protested Mr. Standen. “Doing it too brown! Couldn’t have!”

“But indeed she did! First she was married to the Duke of Hamilton, and when he died she married the Duke of Argyll!”

“Oh, when he died!” said Freddy, glad to have this point elucidated. “No reason why she shouldn’t. Not but what this little ladybird won’t marry a Duke, let alone a couple of ‘em. Well, I put it to you, Kit! I don’t know how it was when these Gunning-girls of yours were on the town, but the only Duke I can think of who hasn’t been married for years is Devonshire, and it’s not a bit of use laying lures for him, because it’s common knowledge he tried to fix his interest with the Princess Charlotte, and it ain’t likely he’d take Olivia Broughty instead!”

“Of course I don’t mean that she should marry a Duke!” replied Kitty. “Only it would be too dreadful if she was sold—for one can call it nothing else!—to such a creature as Sir Henry Gosford!” She saw that these words had made a profound impression, and said triumphantly: “You are shocked, but I assure you—”

“I should dashed well think I am shocked!” interrupted Freddy. “You aren’t going to tell me that fellow visits Meg?”

“No, of course not—”

“Then where the deuce did you meet him?”

“I didn’t meet him! Meg pointed him out to me once, when we were driving in the Park, but she only said that he was a horrid old rake, and she did not even give him a common bow in passing! It is Olivia who has told me all about him, and I do think you must have felt for her, Freddy, had you been here! She is being quite persecuted with his attentions, and because he is so rich, and Lady Batterstown has not put Olivia in the way of receiving more eligible offers, Mrs. Broughty encourages his advances! Indeed, she positively forces him upon Olivia! How it will end I dare not think, for Olivia regards him with the greatest repugnance, and yet she is so much afraid of her Mama that she knows not what to do, and says that she fears sometimes that she may be compelled to do something desperate—though what this could be I don’t know. I cannot think that she would take the terrible step of putting a period to her existence!”

“Well, there ain’t any need for you to think it,” said Freddy, quite unmoved by this flight. “No wish to vex you, but Gosford ain’t the only buck throwing out lures to the girl!”

She said innocently: “No, no, she has received not one offer, Freddy!”

Mr. Standen, feeling himself quite unequal to the task of explaining to her the precise nature of the offers likely to be received by Miss Broughty, gave it up. He might have pointed out that dazzling beauties, unaccepted by the ton, and permitted to appear in public accompanied only by a cousin of unmistakeable vulgarity who showed only too ready a disposition to efface herself if a modish buck ogled her charge, did not commonly achieve brilliant alliances, but, on the contrary, were more in the habit of being offered cartes blanches by such connoisseurs as Mr. Westruther. Freddy was well aware of his cousin’s pursuit of the fair Olivia. He did not think that the attentions of such a notable Corinthian were distasteful to her; but he was very sure that however ardent Jack’s passion for her might be it would not carry him to the altar in her company. Whether he would succeed in mounting her as his latest mistress was a question which had not hitherto exercised Mr. Standen’s mind, since it had in no way concerned him. He now hoped very much that Mr. Westruther’s circumstances were not affluent enough to tempt Mrs. Broughty, for he perceived, nebulously but with dismay, that such a liaison would be attended by quite hideous complications. Mr. Standen, being blessed with sisters, entertained not the slightest doubt that Kitty, befriending Olivia, would be the recipient of all the secrets of her bosom. At the best, a certain crusading instinct in Miss Charing would undoubtedly lead her to kick up the devil of a dust, he thought. At the worst—but here tvtr. Standen’s powerful reasoning broke down, and he floundered in a sea of conjecture.