Arabella

“Well, if he is,” said Arabella frankly, “I am sure you are no such thing, and I beg your pardon for saying it that evening!”

“Don’t apologize to him, ma’am!” said Lord Fleetwood gaily. “It is time someone gave him a set-down, and that, I assure you, smote him with stunning effect! You must know that he thinks himself a notable Corinthian!”

“What is that, pray?” enquired Arabella.

“A Corinthian, ma’am, besides being a very Tulip of Fashion, is an amateur of sport, a master of sword-play, a deadly fellow with a pistol, a Nonpareil amongst whips, a—”

Mr. Beaumaris interrupted this mock-solemn catalogue. “If you will be such a dead bore, Charles, you will provoke me to explain to Miss Tallant what the world means when it calls you a sad rattle.”

“Well?” demanded Arabella mischievously.

“A fribble, ma’am, not worth your attention!” he replied, rising to his feet. “I see my cousin over there, and must pay my respects to her.” He smiled, bowed, and moved away; stayed for a minute or two, talking to Lady Wainfleet; drank a glass of wine with Mr. Warkworth; complimented his hostess on the success of her party; and departed, having done precisely what he had set out to do, which was to place Miss Tallant’s feet securely on the ladder of fashion. The news would be all over town within twenty-four hours that the rich Miss Tallant was the Nonpareil’s latest flirt.

“Did you see Beaumaris paving court to that dashed pretty girl?” asked Lord Wainfleet of his wife, as they drove away from Lady Bridlington’s house.

“Of course I did!” replied his wife.

“Seemed very taken with her, didn’t he? Not in his usual style, was she? I wonder if lie means anything?”

“Robert?” said his wife, with something very like a snort. “If you knew him as well as I do, Wainfleet, you would have seen at one glance that he was amusing himself! I know how he looks in just that humour! Someone ought to warn the child to have nothing to do with him! It is too bad of him, for she is nothing but a baby, I’ll swear!”

“They’re saying in the clubs that she’s as rich as a Nabob.”

“So I have heard, but what that has to say to anything I don’t know! Robert is quite odiously wealthy, and if ever he marries, which I begin to doubt, it will not be for a fortune, I can assure you!”

“No, I don’t suppose it will,” agreed his lordship. “Why did we go there tonight, Louisa? Devilish flat, that kind of an affair.”

“Oh, shocking! Robert asked me to go. I own I was curious to see his heiress. He said he was going to make her the most sought-after female in London.”

“Sounds like a hum to me,” said his lordship. “Why should he do so?”

“Exactly what I asked him! He said it might be amusing. There are times, Wainfleet, when I would like to box Robert’s ears!” ‘

VII

Not only in his cousin’s bosom were vengeful thoughts nourished against Mr. Beaumaris. Lady Somercote, not so doting a mother that she supposed any of her sons would be likely to prove more attractive to the heiress than the Nonpareil, could with pleasure have driven the long diamond pin she wore in her hair between his ribs; Mrs. Kirkmichael thought bitterly that he might, considering the number of times she had gone out of her way to be agreeable to him, have bestowed a little of his attention upon her lanky daughter, a gesture which would have cost him nothing, and might have given poor Maria a start in the world; Mr. Epworth, uneasily aware that for some inscrutable reason he was consistently cast in the shade by the Nonpareil, went the round of the clubs, saying that he had a very good mind to give Beaumaris a set-down at no very distant date; his aunt recalled that she had once quarrelled violently with Lady Mary Beaumaris, and said that it was from his mother Beaumaris had inherited his flirtatious disposition, adding that she was sorry for the woman he eventually married. Even Mr. Warkworth and Lord Fleetwood said that it was rather too bad of the Nonpareil to trifle with the season’s biggest catch; while several gentlemen who slavishly copied every detail of Mr. Beaumaris’s attire wished him safely underground.

There was one voice which was not raised to swell this chorus of disapprobation: Lady Bridlington was in raptures over Mr. Beaumaris. She could talk of nothing else throughout the following day. While he sat beside Arabella, not a smile, not a gesture had escaped the good lady’s anxious eye. He had paid no heed to any other girl in the room; he had plainly advertised to his world that he found Miss Tallant charming: there was no one in London more amiable, more truly polite, more condescending, or more in her ladyship’s good graces! Over and over again she told Arabella that her success was now assured; it was not until her first transports had somewhat abated that she could be rational enough to drop a word of warning in Arabella’s ear. But the more she thought of Mr. Beaumaris’s pronounced attentions to the girl, the more she remembered how many innocent maidens had fallen victims to his spear, the more she became convinced that it was necessary to put Arabella on her guard. So she said in an earnest voice, and with a slightly anxious look in her eye: “I am persuaded, my love, that you are too sensible a girl to be taken-in! But, you know, I stand to you in place of your Mama, and I think I should tell you that Mr. Beaumaris is a most accomplished flirt! No one could be more delighted than I am that he should have singled you out, but it will never do, my dear, if you were to develop a tendre in that direction! I know I have only to drop a word in your ear, and you will not be offended by it! He is a confirmed bachelor. I could not tell you the number of hearts he has broken! Poor Theresa Howden—she married Lord Congleton some years later—went into a decline, and was the despair of her afflicted parents! They did think—and I am sure that nothing could have been more pronounced for all one season than—But no! Nothing came of it!”

Arabella had not been the reigning belle for twenty miles round Heythram without learning to distinguish between the flirt and the man who was in earnest, and she replied instantly: “I know very well that Mr. Beaumaris means nothing by his compliments. Indeed, I am in no danger of being taken-in like a goose!”

“Well, my love, I hope you are not!”

“You may be sure I am not. If you do not see any objection, ma’am, I mean to encourage Mr. Beaumaris’s attentions, and make the best use I may of them! He believes himself to be amusing himself at my expense; I mean to turn him to very good account! But as for losing my heart—No, indeed!”

“Mind, we cannot depend upon his continuing to single you out!” said Lady Bridlington, with unwonted caution. “If he did, it would be beyond anything great, but there is no saying, after all! However, last night’s work was enough to launch you, my dear, and I am deeply thankful!” She heaved an ecstatic sigh. “You will be invited everywhere, I daresay!”

She was quite right. Within a fortnight, she was in the happy position of finding herself with five engagements for the same evening, and Arabella had had to break into Sir John’s fifty-pound bill to replenish her wardrobe. She had been seen at the fashionable hour of the Promenade in the Park, sitting beside the Nonpareil, in his high-perch phaeton; she had been almost mobbed at the theatre; she was on nodding terms with all manner of exalted persons; she had received two proposals of marriage; Lord Fleetwood, Mr. Warkworth, Mr. Epworth, Sir Geoffrey Morecambe, and Mr. Alfred Somercote (to mention only the most notable of her suitors) had all entered the lists against Mr. Beaumaris; and Lord Bridlington, travelling by fast post all the way, had returned from the Continent to discover what his mother meant by filling his house with unknown females in his absence.

He expressed himself, in measured terms, as being most dissatisfied with Lady Bridlington’s explanation. He was a stocky, somewhat ponderous young man, with more sobriety than properly belonged to his twenty-six years. His understanding was not powerful, but he was bookish, and had early formed the habit of acquiring information by the perusal of authoritative tomes, so that by the time he had attained his present age his retentive memory was stocked with a quantity of facts which he was perhaps a little too ready to impart to his less well-read contemporaries. His father’s death, while he was still at Eton, coupled with a conviction that his mother stood in constant need of superior male guidance, had added disastrously to his self-consequence. He prided himself on his judgment; was a careful steward of his fortune; had the greatest dislike of anything bordering on the unusual; and