The Viscount gave this his profound consideration. ‘No,’ he pronounced finally. ‘She won’t do that. Don’t see how she could. I mean, only think, Hero! I’m not a dashed adventurer, eloping with an heiress! I’m devilish eligible! She’ll be obliged to swallow it with a good grace. Dare say she’ll look to you to find husbands for those insipid girls.’
‘Well, if you think I could, I would try very hard to do so,’ said Hero seriously.
‘No one could find husbands for such parcel of dowdies,’ replied his lordship, with brutal candour. ‘Besides, I don’t like them, and I won’t have them in my house. Come along! We’ve wasted enough time. Someone will be bound to come looking for you, if we dawdle here much longer. Hi, Jason!’
‘Come now?’ gasped Miss Wantage. ‘But I have nothing with me, Sherry! Must I not pack a portmanteau, or at least a bandbox?’
‘Now, will you have sense, Hero? Do you expect me to come driving up to the front door to pick you up? If you go back, and start packing a portmanteau you’ll be discovered.’
‘Oh, yes, but – You don’t think I should creep out of the house when it is dark, and join you here?’
‘No, I don’t,’ replied his lordship. ‘I don’t want to kick my heels in this damned dull place for the rest of the day! Besides, there’s no moon, and if you think I’m going to drive you up to town in the dark, you’re mightily mistaken, my girl! I can’t see what you want with a portmanteau. If the rest of your gowns are anything like the one you have on now, the sooner you’re rid of them the better! I’ll buy you everything you want when we get to London.’
‘Oh, Sherry, will you?’ cried Miss Wantage, her cheeks in a glow. ‘Thank you! Let us go quickly!’
The Viscount sprang down into the lane, and held up his hands. ‘Jump, then!’
Miss Wantage obeyed him promptly. Jason, who had led the horses up to them, regarded her fixedly, and then turned an enquiring eye upon his master.
‘I’m taking this lady up to London, Jason,’ announced the Viscount.
‘Ho!’ said the faithful henchman. ‘Ho, you are, are you, guv’nor?’
‘Yes, and what’s more, I don’t want a word said about it. So no tattling in whatever boozing-den you go to, mind that! And no tattling in the stables either!’
‘I can keep me chaffer close,’ replied Jason, with dignity. ‘But it queers me what your lay is this time!’
The Viscount tossed Miss Wantage up into the curricle, gathered the reins in his hand, and prepared to mount beside her. ‘I’m going to be married.’
‘You, never!’ gasped Jason. ‘But she ain’t the right one, guv’nor! Lor, you must have had a shove in the mouth too many, and I never suspicioned you was lushy, so help me bob! Werry well you carries it, guv’nor! werry well, indeed! Gammoning me wot knows you you was sober as a judge, and all the time as leaky as a sieve! But what’ll you say when you comes about, me lord?A rare set-out that’ll be, and you a-blamin’ of me for letting you make off with the wrong gentry-mort!’
‘Confound your impudence, of course I’m sober!’ said the Viscount wrathfully. ‘You keep your nose out of my affairs! What the devil are you laughing at, Hero?’
‘I think he’s so droll!’ gurgled Miss Wantage. ‘What is a gentry-mort?’
‘God knows! The fellow can’t open his mouth without letting fall a lot of thieves’ cant. Not fit for your ears at all. Stand away from their heads! all’s right!’
The curricle moved forward. Jason sprang nimbly up behind, and said over the top of the lowered hood: ‘I’m not a-going to keep me sneezer out o’ your affairs, guv’nor. Be you ee-loping?’
‘Of course I’m not – Good God, so I am!’ said his lordship, much struck.
‘Becauseifyou be,’ pursued Jason, ‘andifyou don’t wish no one to know nothing about it, that young gentry-mort didn’t ought to be a-settin’ up there beside you like she is.’
‘By Jove, he’s in the right of it!’ exclaimed the Viscount, reining in suddenly. ‘We shall have half the countryside blabbing that they saw you driving off with me! There’s nothing for it: you’ll have to sit on the floor-boards, and keep yourself hidden under the rug, Hero.’
Her experience of life not having engendered in Hero any expectation of having either her dignity or her comfort much regarded, she made no objection to this proposal, but curled up at the Viscount’s feet, and allowed him to cast the rug over her. Since his method of driving was of the style known as neck-or-nothing, she was considerably jolted, but she made no complaint, merely clasping her arms around the Viscount’s top-boots, and pressing her cheek against the side of his knee. In this fashion they covered the next few miles. The Viscount pulled up beyond the second toll-gate, giving it as his opinion that theywere now reasonably safe from any chance encounter with persons who might recognise them.
‘I don’t mind staying where I am, if you think it would be better for me to do so, Sherry,’ Hero assured him.
‘Yes, but you’re giving me cramp in my left leg,’ said the single-minded Viscount. ‘Get up, brat, and for the lord’s sake smooth your hair! You look the most complete romp!’
Miss Wantage did her best to comply with this direction, but without any marked degree of success. Fortunately, the exigencies of the particular mode of hairdressing affected by his lordship obliged him to carry a comb upon his person. He produced this, dragged it through the soft, tangled curls, tied the hood-strings under Hero’s chin, and, after a critical survey, said that it would answer well enough. Miss Wantage smiled trustfully up at him, and the Viscount made a discovery. ‘You look just like a kitten!’
She laughed. ‘No, do I, Sherry?’
‘Yes, you do. I think it’s your silly little nose,’ said the Viscount, flicking it with a careless forefinger. ‘That, or the trick you have of staring at a fellow with your eyes wide open. I think I shall call you Kitten. It suits you better than Hero, which I always thought a nonsensical name for a girl.’
‘Oh, it is the greatest affliction to me!’ she exclaimed. ‘You can have no notion, Sherry! I would much rather you should call me Kitten.”
