Miss Daubenay dabbed her eyes with a wisp of a handkerchief. ‘I was so distracted last night I scarce knew what I was doing! And when I reached home, the most dreadful thing happened! Papa saw me! Oh, sir, he accused me of having gone out to meet P – to meet my betrothed, and said I should be packed off again to Bath this very day, to stay with my Great-Aunt Augusta. The horridest, most disagreeable old woman! Nothing but backgammon, and spying, and everything of the most hateful! Sir, I felt myself to be in desperate case! Indeed, I said it before I had time to recollect the consequences!’
‘Said what?’ asked Pen, patient but bored.
Miss Daubenay bowed her head again. ‘That it was not – notthatman I had gone to meet, but another, whom I had met in Bath, when I was sent to Great-Aunt Augusta to – to cure me of what Papa called myinfatuation! I said I had been in the habit of meeting this other man c-clandestinely, because I thought that would make Papa afraid to send me back to Bath, and might perhaps even reconcile him to the Real Man.’
‘Oh!’ said Pen doubtfully. ‘And did it?’
‘No! He said he did not believe me.’
‘Well, I must say I’m not surprised at that.’
‘Yes, but in the end he did, and now I wish I had never said it. He said if there was Another Man, who was it?’
‘You ought to have thought of that. He was bound to ask thatquestion, and you must have looked very silly when you could not answer.’
‘But I did answer!’ whispered Miss Daubenay, apparently overcome.
‘But how could you, if there wasn’t another man?’
‘I said it was you!’ said Miss Daubenay despairingly.
TEN
The effect of this confession upon Pen was not quite what Miss Daubenay had expected. She gasped, choked, and went off into a peal of laughter. Affronted, Miss Daubenay said: ‘I don’t see what there is to laugh at!’
‘No, I dare say you don’t,’ said Pen, mopping her eyes. ‘But it is excessively amusing for all that. What made you say anything so silly?’
‘I couldn’t think of anything else to say. And as for its beingsilly, you may think me very ill-favoured, but I have already hadseveralsuitors!’
‘I think you are very pretty, but I am not going to be a suitor,’ said Pen firmly.
‘I don’t want you to be! For one thing, I find you quite odiously rude, and for another you are much too young, which is why I chose you, because I thought I should be quite safe in so doing.’
‘Well you are, but I never heard of anything so foolish in my life! Pray, what was the use of telling your father such fibs?’
‘I told you,’ said Lydia crossly. ‘I scarcely knew what I was saying, and I thought – But everything has gone awry!’
Pen looked at her with misgiving. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Papa is going to wait on your cousin this morning.’
‘What!’ exclaimed Pen.
Lydia nodded. ‘Yes, and he is not angry at all. He is pleased!’
‘Pleased? How can he be pleased at your holding clandestine meetings with a strange man?’
‘To be sure, he did say that that was very wrong of me. But he asked me your name. Of course I don’t know it, but your cousin told me his name was Wyndham, so I said yours was too.’
‘But it isn’t!’
‘Well, how was I to know that?’ demanded Lydia, aggrieved. ‘I had to say something!’
‘You are the most unprincipled girl in the world! Besides, why should he be pleased just because you said my name was Wyndham?’
‘Apparently,’ said Lydia gloomily, ‘the Wyndhams are all fabulously wealthy.’
‘You must tell him without any loss of time I amnota Wyndham, and that I haven’t any money at all!’
