False Colours

you tell me anything! If your mother wishes me to know the whole she’ll tell me fast enough, bless her!” He added uneasily: “No need to edge her on to tell me, mind!”

Kit reassured him on this head; and he went off, feeling that he had done as much for his young friend as could have been expected of any man of his years and elevated position.

Lady Denville, when informed next day of this interlude, not only went into a peal of laughter, but showed a regrettably mischievous desire to devise some way of entangling her hapless adorer in an imbroglio which she proudly claimed to be of her own making.

“No, Mama!” said Kit firmly. “You’ll do no such thing! We’re devilish obliged to the old court card, and I won’t have him roasted! No one could blame him for wanting to steer clear of this affair: if we save our groats without kicking up the very deuce of a scandal it’s more than I’d bargain for!”

“I won’t do anything you don’t like, dearest,” she promised. “But you mustn’t be so downhearted!”

“Not downhearted! Henhearted!”

“No, no, Kit!” she protested, dismayed to hear him make such an admission. “Never that! Besides, why should you be? I own that there may be difficulties ahead, and, of course, our situation is often most awkward, but we shall come about!”

“What makes you think so, love?” he asked, regarding her in affectionate exasperation.

“One always does—and particularly when one thinks one is quite knocked up. Only consider how many times I have been in the briars! I have always contrived to bring myself home, even when my case appeared to be desperate! Now, why are you laughing, wicked one? It’s perfectly true! The thing is that it’s no use for us to fret ourselves over what can’t be helped. Depend upon it, something will happen, or I shall have a notion suddenly, which will bring us off prosperously. I very often do, you know—really nacky ones!”

“I know you do,” he said. “All I beg of you is that you won’t have one without telling me!”

“Dearest, how can you be so foolish? I shall be obliged to tell you, because if I do think of a clever scheme you will have to bear your part in it.”

“That’s exactly what I’m afraid of,” he said frankly.

“You’re hipped, and I know why,” she said. “It was the lobster! I felt a trifle queasy myself, in the middle of the night, but I have some excellent powders, which Dr Ainslie gave me, so I swallowed one, and was right again in a trice. Come up to my dressing-room, poor boy, and I’ll mix one for you!”

“No, Mama, it was not the lobster!”

“Very well, dearest, I won’t tease you—though I assure you the powders aren’t in the least nasty. Don’t be in a worry, will you? When Evelyn comes home everything will be tidy again, remember!”

“You know, Mama, we have been saying that since the start of this masquerade—and God knows I wish he would come home!—but does it ever occur to you that when he does we shall find ourselves in a worse hobble than ever?”

“It must have been the lobster!” exclaimed her ladyship.

He laughed, but said: “No, do, pray, consider, love! If Evelyn were to walk in today, what are we to do? I could disappear, but not even Ambrose would be deceived for more than half-an-hour—far less Lady Stavely! It’s one thing to hoax people for an evening, quite another to do so in such circumstances as these! At the outset, none of them knew me very well and Lady Stavely not at all. But they know me now! They couldn’t meet me at breakfast, and Evelyn at dinner, and not detect the difference between us!”

“No, very true!” she said, much struck. “That is very awkward! I wonder why it should not have occurred to me? We must lose no time in trying to hit upon a—Oh, but I see just how to overcome the difficulty! Evelyn must pretend to be you, of course!”

Mr Fancot, declaring that he had now received a settler, went off, dutifully trying to think of some way of entertaining his male guests. Like the Dowager, Sir Bonamy (except under the press of extraordinary circumstances) never left his bedroom until noon; so when Kit learned from Norton that Mr Cliffe had gone out with Mr Ambrose, to see how he had come on under the gamekeeper’s tuition, his thoughts turned, very naturally, to the ladies. His search for his aunt could not have been described as more than perfunctory; but he had the great good fortune, as he stood in the hall, wondering where to look for Miss Stavely, to see her coming down the wide staircase. She was charmingly dressed in a simple, high-necked gown of French muslin, but just as he was thinking how well she looked, he saw that there was a pucker between her brows, and a troubled expression in her eyes. He said quickly: “What is it, Cressy? Something has happened to vex you?”

She paused looking down at him, and hesitated for a moment before answering. Then the crease disappeared from her brow, and she smiled, and descended the last stairs, saying: “Well, yes! That is to say, it has vexed me, but not nearly as much as it has vexed Grandmama! I am afraid it has made her out of reason cross, but I have convinced her that it is absurd to lay the blame at poor God-mama’s door! Or at Papa’s! Neither of them would do such a thing! It is one of Albinia’s high pieces of meddling, of course—trying to clinch the matter! I collect you haven’t yet seen the London papers?”

He shook his head; and she held out to him the journal she was carrying. As he took it, he saw that it was folded open at a page largely devoted to social announcements and discreetly phrased on- dits. He looked quickly up, his brows asking a question. She answered it only by wrinkling her nose distastefully, and indicating with her forefinger the paragraph to which she wished to draw his attention. It stated, after enumerating the various persons of consequence to be found recruiting nature at Worthing, that the Dowager Lady Stavely (a well-known summer visitor to that elegant resort) was this year absent from the scene, having taken her granddaughter, the Hon. Cressida Stavely, to Ravenhurst Park, the principal seat of the Earl of Denville, where they were being entertained by the noble owner, and his mother, the Dowager Countess. The writer of this titillating paragraph understood, coyly, that an Interesting Announcement was shortly to be expected from this quarter.

“My mother never sent this to the paper!” Kit exclaimed, flushing with annoyance. “Or anything that could have given rise to such a piece of impertinence!”

“No, of course she did not! I haven’t the least doubt of its being Albinia’s doing—trying to force my hand! Furthermore,” added Cressy, brooding darkly over it, “I shall own myself astonished if I don’t discover that she exerted herself to the utmost to persuade my father to insert a notice announcing that I had become engaged to marry the Earl of Denville! What a paper-skull she is! She should have known him better! You may imagine how much it has set up Grandmama’s bristles!” She began to laugh. “I don’t know which has enraged her most: the detestably sly hint, or Albinia’s impudence in having presumed to take it upon herself to give the Post information about her movements!”

Kit’s eyes were kindling. “And she thought that Mama—Mama!—would stoop to —”

She interrupted him, laying a hand on his arm, and saying quickly: “Oh, pray, don’t you rip up, Denville!” She gave a tiny choke of laughter. “She did Godmama the justice to say, even in the height of her rage, that she would not have thought it of her, which is more than she said of poor Papa, when she decided it must have been his doing! In fact, she said that it was just like him! I assure you it is not, however.”

The angry look was fading, but as Kit glanced again at the paragraph his lips curled contemptuously. “Insufferable! Your mother-in-law should have her neck wrung! As for the sneaking tattlemonger who composed this masterpiece—!” He tossed the paper aside. “He took good care, you’ll observe, to write nothing which I can either contradict or force him to apologize for!” His face softened, as he turned towards her again. “I don’t know why I should fly up into the boughs, when it is you who are the victim—except for that reason! My poor girl, I’m well aware of the embarrassment it must cause you to feel! Don’t let it cut up your peace, or influence your decision!”

An odd little smile flickered for a moment in her eyes. “No, I shan’t do that. As for Albinia, I left Grandmama writing to her. You may depend upon it that it will be a thundering letter! I dare say she had liefer have her neck wrung than receive it. Indeed, I could almost pity her, for my father will be vexed to death, and although he is in general easy-going to a fault he flies into a worse passion than Grandmama, if one succeeds in putting him out of temper. The impropriety of this horrid piece of gossip will strike him most forcefully: I wish it may not lead to a serious quarrel between him and Albinia.”

“Do you? I’m not so charitable!”