to you.” He looked round the room. “Where the deuce is the fellow?” he demanded.
“In one of the other rooms. Oh, Freddy, dare I trust you?”
“Well, upon my word!” he exclaimed, affronted. “Seems to me that if you didn’t know that when you made me become engaged to you you must be as badly dicked in the nob as Dolph!”
“Yes, yes, but this is not my secret, and I promised I would betray it to no one!”
“What secret?” said Freddy, blinking.
“Well—Freddy, you are fond of Dolph, are you not?”
“No,” replied Freddy. “What I mean is, sorry for the poor fellow, of course. Dash it, couldn’t be fond of him!”
“No, I suppose—At all events, you wouldn’t harm him, would you, Freddy?”
“Of course I wouldn’t harm him!”
“Even if you could not quite like what he meant to do?” Kitty said anxiously.
Suspicion gleamed in his mild eye. No one could have called Mr. Standen quick-witted, but the possession of three sisters had considerably sharpened his instinct of selfpreservation. “Depends what that is,” he said cautiously. “If it has anything to do with you, Kit—”
“No, I promise you it has not!”
“Sounds to me like a smoke,” he said, by no means convinced. “Because if it hasn’t anything to do with you —”
“Only that I am going to help him!”
Mr. Standen thought this over, and came to the conclusion that there was only one way in which his unfortunate relative could be helped. “If you’re hatching a scheme to poison Aunt Augusta, I won’t have anything to do with it!” he said.
“How can you be so absurd? Of course I am not!”
“Good thing, if one could do it,” said Freddy handsomely. “Thing is, bound to be a scandal. If it ain’t that, what do you mean to do?”
“Let us go and find Dolph!” said Kitty. “Mind, Freddyl even though you may not approve of it, you won’t breathe a word to your Aunt Augusta!”
The suggestion that he could be thought capable either of enacting the role of informer, or of bandying unnecessary words with Lady Dolphinton, so much revolted Mr. Standen that he was moved to expostulate. Kitty begged pardon hastily, and dragged him into the adjoining room. Here Lord Dolphinton and Miss Plymstock were discovered, seated side by side upon a plush-covered settee in the middle of the room, his lordship plunged in gloom, and Miss Plymstock soothingly patting his hand. When they perceived Miss Charing and her escort, they both rose, Dolphinton looking frightened, and Miss Plymstock pugnacious.
“I think, Hannah, that you have already met Mr. Standen,” said Kitty. “I have told him nothing, but I think we ought to admit him into our confidence, and I have come to ask your permission to do so.”
“How d’ye do?” said Miss Plymstock, extending a hand sensibly gloved in York tan. “Miss Charing was so obliging as to say that you would not take exception to Foster’s being a good deal in her company, but I thought to myself that she was very likely mistaken. You’re Foster’s cousin Freddy, ain’t you?”
Considerably taken aback, Freddy admitted it. His hand was crushed in a hearty grip; Miss Plymstock said in her blunt fashion: “I daresay you won’t like it above half, but I mean to marry Foster, and you don’t look to me like one who would try to throw a rub in the way!”
“No, no!” uttered Fretty feebly, casting a wild glance in Miss Charing’s direction.
“Miss Charing is being so kind as to lend us her aid,” pursued Miss Plymstock. “For my brother don’t like the match any more than the Countess would, I can tell you, and how to meet Foster, with the spies we both have set about us, is more than either of us knew how to do. But Sam—that’s my brother—only knows I bear Miss Charing company on some of her expeditions; and the Countess is pleased enough to think Foster is fixing his interest with her; and if she knows I go along too, as I don’t doubt she does, she don’t think any more than that Miss Charing takes me for propriety, which is what anyone would expect; and if she saw me she wouldn’t spare me a second glance, I’ll lay my life, for I’m no beauty, and never was.”
Mr. Standen, reeling under the impact of this forthright speech, had scarcely recovered himself sufficiently to murmur a polite rejoinder, when he received (as he afterwards expressed it to Miss Charing) a floorer from Lord Dolphinton, who said: “Yes, you are. Very beautiful. Kind of face I like.”
Mr. Standen took another look at the homely countenance confronting him, realized that his unfortunate cousin was of unsounder mind than he had supposed, and said kindly: “Exactly so!”
“Well, that’s all a hum,” said Miss Plymstock bracingly. “What’s more, my brother’s in trade, and so was my father before him, and I’ve no fortune. I’m telling you so to your head, because no good ever came of hoaxing people. If you think I ain’t fit to match with an Earl, why, I know that as well as anyone, but I shall make Foster a better wife than any of the grand ladies he might offer for, and so I assure you!”
Much alarmed by the unmistakeably belligerent note in Miss Plymstock’s voice, Freddy hastened to say: “Nothing to do with me! Not my affair, y’know!”
“You would not try to intervene, would you, Freddy?” Kitty asked.
“No, no! Word of a gentleman! In fact, rather not have anything to do with it!” said Freddy, in a burst of candour.
But Miss Charing was not at all inclined to permit him to adopt this craven attitude. She obliged him to sit down between herself and Hannah upon the settee, while she poured into his unwilling ear the full tale of his cousin’s difficulties. Miss Plymstock punctuated the recital with corroborations and occasional emendations; and Lord Dolphinton stood before the group, watching Freddy with very much the look of an anxious spaniel doubtful whether he was to receive a pat or a kick. Freddy found his intent gaze unnerving, and several times begged him to sit down. Lord Dolphinton shook his head. “Mean to marry Hannah,” he said.
“That’s right, old fellow,” responded Freddy. “No need to stand there staring at me, even if you do.”
“Keep an eye on you,” said his lordship. “See what you’re thinking. Hannah says you won’t like it. I don’t think you won’t like it. Been watching you. Don’t look to be in a miff. You ain’t in a miff, are you, Freddy?” Reassured on this head, he regarded his cousin with fond gratitude, and said: “You know what, Freddy? I like you. Always did. I like you better than Hugh. Like you better than Jack. Better than Biddenden. Don’t like. him at all. Don’t like Claud much either.”
“Yes, well, much obliged to you, Dolph!” said Freddy patiently. “But it ain’t a bit of use thinking I can help you in this fix, because I dashed well can’t!”
“Kitty’s going to help us,” said Dolphinton, with simple faith.
“That’s as may be,” interposed Miss Plymstock. “There is no need for you to tease yourself, Foster, for we shall contrive in some way or another; but it seems to me it’s for Mr. Standen to say whether Miss Charing may stand our friend or not. And if you don’t choose she should, sir, there’s no one could blame you, for I don’t doubt that Foster’s Mama will kick up a rare dust, and behave mighty unpleasantly to her.”
“It don’t signify what my Aunt Augusta does,” replied Freddy, for the second time in his career astonishing Kitty by a display of courage which seemed to her to verge on foolhardiness. “Can’t do Kit a mischief: shouldn’t let her. Daresay she’ll set up a screech. Thing is, Kit don’t live with her, and nor do I. Shan’t have to listen to anything she says.”
Miss Plymstock, listening to this eminently practical speech with warm approval, was moved to grasp Mr. Standen’s hand again. “You’re a sensible man!” she said gruffly. “Now, you listen to what your cousin says, Foster, and think if it ain’t what I’ve been drumming into your head this age past! Once the knot’s tied between us, and I have you safe, there’s nothing your Mama can do to hurt you, and so I promise you! You tell him that’s true, Mr. Standen!”
“Yes, I daresay it is,” agreed Freddy, recovering his hand, and hoping very much that she would not feel herself impelled to wring it a third time. “The thing is, the knot ain’t tied, and I’m dashed if I see how it is to be, if Dolph’s being spied on all the time.”
“We shall think of a way,” said Kitty.
Her betrothed regarded her with misgiving. “Yes, but it won’t do if you think of sending ‘em off to Gretna Green, or anything like that, Kit. Not one to throw a rub in your way, but that’s coming it too strong!”
“Yes, indeed! In any event, Miss Plymstock thinks it would not answer, so you may be easy!”
Mr. Standen, however, was not at all easy; and he took the earliest opportunity of telling Kitty so.
