Cotillion

Lord Dolphinton nodded several times, grateful to her for her ready understanding. “Very happy to oblige!” he said. “Not at all plump in the pocket—no, not to mention that! Just say—always had a great regard for you! Do me the honour to accept of my hand in marriage!”

“Upon my word!” ejaculated Biddenden. “If one did not know the truth, one would say you were three parts disguised, Foster!”

Lord Dolphinton, uneasily aware of having lost the thread of a prepared speech, looked more miserable than ever, and coloured to the roots of his lank brown locks. He cast an imploring glance at Miss Charing, who at once rose, and went to seat herself in a chair beside him, patting his hand in a soothing way, and saying: “Nonsense! You said it very creditably, Dolph, and I perfectly understand how it is! You have offered for me because your Mama ordered you to do so, haven’t you?”

“That’s it,” said his lordship, relieved. “No wish to vex you, Kitty—really very fond of you!—but must make a push!”

“Exactly so! Your estates are shockingly mortgaged, and your pockets are quite to let, so you have offered for me! But you don’t really wish to marry me, do you?”

His lordship sighed. “No help for it!” he said simply.

“Yes, there is, because I won’t accept your offer, Dolph,” said Miss Charing, in a consoling tone. “So now you may be comfortable again!”

The cloud lifted from his brow, only to descend again. “‘No, I shan’t,” said his lordship wretchedly. “She’ll take a pet. Say I must have made poor work of it.”

“What astonishes me,” said Biddenden, in an aside to his brother, “is that my Aunt Augusta permitted him to come here without her!”

“Didn’t want to,” said Dolphinton, once more startling his relatives by his ability to follow the gist of remarks not addressed to himself. “Uncle Matthew said he wouldn’t let her cross his threshold. Said I must come alone. I didn’t object, only she’ll say I didn’t do the thing as she told me. Well, I did! Offered for you—said I was an Earl—said I should be honoured! Won’t believe it, that’s all!”

“Oh, don’t distress yourself!” said Biddenden. “We three are witnesses to testify to your having expressed yourself with all the ardour and address imaginable!”

“You think I did?” said Dolphinton hopefully.

“Oh, heaven grant me patience!” exclaimed his cousin.

“Indeed, you stand in need of it!” said Hugh sternly. “You may be quite easy, my dear Foster: you have done just as my aunt bade you. I believe I may say that no persuasions of hers could have prevailed upon our cousin to have changed her nay to yea.”

“Well, you may,” conceded Miss Charing. “Only I am very well able to speak for myself, I thank you, Hugh! Are you wishful of making me an offer?”

Lord Dolphinton, his mission honourably discharged, turned an interested gaze upon his clerical cousin; Lord Biddenden exclaimed: “This is intolerable!” and Hugh himself looked a trifle out of countenance. He hesitated, before saying, with a constrained smile: “There is a degree of awkwardness attached to this situation which might, I fancy, be more easily overcome were we to converse alone together.”

“Yes, but you cannot expect George and poor Dolph to remove to a room where there is no fire!” objected Miss Charing reasonably. “It would be useless to apply to Uncle Matthew for leave to kindle any more fires tonight: you must know that! Nothing puts him into such a taking as habits of wasteful extravagance, and he would be bound to think it a great waste of coals to make a fire for George or for Dolph. And as for our situation’s being awkward, if I do not regard that I am sure you need not. In fact, I am happy to be able to tell as many of you as I can that I have not the smallest wish to marry any of you!”

“Very likely you have not, Kitty, but that you should express yourself with such heat—or, I may say, at all!—is very unbecoming in you. I am astonished that Miss Fishguard—an excellent woman, I am sure!—should not have taught you a little more conduct!”  It occurred to Lord Biddenden that a quarrel with Kitty would scarcely forward the project he had in view, and he added, in a more cordial tone: “But, indeed, I must own that such a situation as this must be considered in itself to have passed the bounds of propriety! Believe me, Kitty, I feel for you! You have been made the object of what I cannot but deem a distempered freak.”

“Yes, but fortunately I am very well acquainted with you all, so that I need have no scruple in speaking the truth to you,” Kitty pointed out. “I don’t want Uncle Matthew’s odious fortune, and as for marrying any gentleman who offered for me only because I have the advantage of a handsome dependance, I would rather wear the willow all my days! And let me tell you, Hugh, that I did not think that you would do such a thing!”

The Rector, not unnaturally, was a little confounded by this sudden attack, and made her no immediate reply. Lord Dolphinton, who had listened intently to what she had to say, was pleased to find that he was able to elucidate. “Shouldn’t have come,” he told his rigid cousin. “Not the thing for a man in orders. George shouldn’t have come either. Not in orders, but not invited.”

“Not want to inherit a fortune!” exclaimed Biddenden, the enormity of such a declaration making it possible for him to ignore Dolphinton’s unwelcome intrusion into the argument. “Pooh! nonsense! You do not know what you are saying!”

“On the contrary,” said the Rector, making a recovery, “her sentiments do her honour! My dear Kitty, none is more conscious than myself of what must be your reflections upon this occasion. Indeed, you must believe that I share them! That my great-uncle would make me the recipient of his fortune was a thought that has never crossed my head: if I have ever indulged my brain with speculations on the nature of his intentions, I have supposed that he would bequeath to his adopted child a respectable independance, and the residue of his estate to that member of the family whom we know to be his favourite great-nephew. None of us, I fancy, could have called in question the propriety of such a disposition; none of us can have imagined that he would, whatever the event, have left that adopted child destitute upon the world.” He saw the startled look in Miss Charing’s eyes, and said, with great gentleness: “That, dearest Kitty, is what he has assured us he will do, should we or you refuse to obey his—I do not scruple to say—monstrous command!”

“Destitute?” repeated Kitty, as though the word were unknown.

Lord Biddenden pulled a chair forward, and sat down beside her, possessing himself of one of her hands, and patting it. “Yes, Kitty, that is the matter in a nutshell,” he said. “I do not wonder that you should look shocked! Your repugnance must be shared by any man of sensibility. The melancholy truth is that you were not born to an independance; your father—a man of excellent family, of course!—was improvident; but for the generosity of my uncle in adopting you, you must have been reared in such conditions as we will not dwell upon—a stranger to all the elegancies of life, a penniless orphan without a protector to lend you consequence! My dear Kitty, you might even have counted yourself fortunate today to have found yourself in such a situation as Miss Fishguard’s!”

It was plain, from the impressive dropping of his voice, that he had described to her the lowest depths in which his fancy was capable of imagining her. His solemn manner had its effect; she looked instinctively towards the Rector, upon whose judgment she had been accustomed, of late years, to depend.

“I cannot say that it is untrue,” Hugh responded, in a low tone. “Indeed, I must acknowledge that whatever may be my uncle’s conduct today, however improper in my eyes, you are very much beholden to him for his generosity in the past.”

She pulled her hand out of Lord Biddenden’s warm, plump clasp, and jumped up, saying impulsively: “I hope I am not ungrateful, but when you speak of generosity I feel as though my heart must burst!”

“Kitty, Kitty, do not talk in that intemperate style!” Hugh said.

“No, no, but you do not understand!” she cried. “You speak of his fortune, and you know it to be large! Everyone says that, but I have no cause to suspect it! If he yielded to a generous impulse when he adopted me, at least he has atoned for that during all these years! No, Hugh, I won’t hush! Ask poor Fish what wage she has received from him for educating me! Ask her what shifts she has often and often been put to to contrive that I should not be dressed in rags! Well, perhaps not rags, precisely, but only look at this gown I am wearing now!”

All three gentlemen obeyed her, but perhaps only Lord Biddenden recognized the justice of her complaint. Hugh said: “You look very well, Kitty, I assure you. There is a neatness and a propriety—”