‘I am sure Lord Wrotham took excellent care of her.’
‘Well, I’ll thank him to take care of someone else’s wife!’ said his lordship irascibly.
Miss Milborne began to feel alarmed. She abandoned her formal manners and asked directly: ‘Sherry, you are not jealous of George, are you?’
‘Who said anything about being jealous of George?’ retorted the Viscount. ‘I suppose I need not care to have him walking off with my wife, without so much as a by your leave, or – However, that’s neither here nor there! But what the devil he wants with my Kitten when he’s been making a cake of himself over you for the past six months is more than I can fathom!’
Miss Milborne passed over this unflattering description of Lord Wrotham’s devotion, and said: ‘I am persuaded you have not the least cause to feel uneasy. There was nothing in his manner last night to warrant any jealousy on your part, upon my honour!’
‘There had better not be, by Jove!’ said his lordship, his eye kindling.
There was no opportunity for further discussion. A widow’s lozenge-coach had drawn up alongside the Milborne’s barouche, and the Dowager Lady Sheringham was already leaning out of the window to bestow a greeting upon her dear Isabella. She acknowledged her son with a sigh and a sad smile, but appeared to derive some comfort from the spectacle of him conversing with Miss Milborne. Her manner, if not her actual words, held so strong a flavour of the might-have-been that Miss Milborne felt her colour rising, and the Viscount, recalling his engagements, sheered off in a hurry.
‘Ah, my love!’ murmured Lady Sheringham. ‘If only things had been otherwise! I live in dread of his bitterly regretting his rash marriage. When I saw him beside your carriage, I could not suppress the thought that –’
‘I am persuaded, ma’am, that you need harbour no fears for his happiness!’ Miss Milborne said quickly, conscious of the ears of the box of her carriage.
‘I wish I might believe you are right,’ sighed the dowager, who had a sublime disregard for servants. ‘I own I was dismayed to learn from Mrs Burrell that my daughter-in-law, as I suppose I must call her, elected to appear at Almack’s last night with that dreadful young Wrotham as her cavalier. But I knew how it would be from the outset! I believe he is for ever in her company.’
Miss Milborne was spared the necessity of answering by the somewhat acid and over-loud comments of a hackney-carriage driver whose progress was being impeded by the lozenge-coach. Lady Sheringham was obliged to desire her coachman to drive on, leaving her young friend to digest at her leisure her sinister remarks.
Lord Wrotham, meanwhile, by a superhuman effort of will, continued to hold aloof from the Beauty, not, indeed, as his well-wishers hoped, from a resolve to be done with her, but in the hope that this change of treatment might induce her to look more kindly upon his suit. One of his married sisters, who desired nothing so much as to see him married to an heiress, had given him a great deal of worldly advice, and however poor an opinion he might hold of his sisters’ advice in general, he thought that Augusta very likely knew what she was talking about when the subject under discussion was the capriciousness of the female sex. So far, events seemed to have borne out Augusta’s dictum: Wrotham had not failed to perceive the effect his escorting Hero to Almack’s had had upon Miss Milborne. It had gone to his heart to respond only with a bow to the most welcoming smile he had received from the Beauty for many weeks, but he had done it; and if it gave him a good deal of pain to see her subsequent passages with Sir Barnabas Crawley, at least he was shrewd enough to suspect that these were designed to make him jealous. He determined to make no sign for several days, and spent a happy hour indevising a romantic gesture which must melt a heart already thawing towards him. Miss Milborne had told him once that violets were her favourite flowers. The fact that she had chosen to present him with this information at a moment when he had laid an enormous bouquet of roses at her feet was a little daunting, but he had treasured up the knowledge against a future occasion, and he now perceived how to put it to excellent account. It was not perhaps the easiest task in the world to obtain violets at this season of the year, but to a forceful young man in love all things were possible. Miss Milborne should receive a posy of violets in an elegant holder upon the evening of Lady Fakenham’s ball. She would surely know who must have sent them, but just in case there should be any mistake he would enclose his card with the flowers, with a brief message written upon it. He was unable to decide betweenWear these for my sake, andIf you wear these to-night I shall know what to thinkand he ended by carrying this problem to Hero.
Hero naturally thought the whole notion very pretty, and could not conceive how any female could resist wearing flowers which had cost so much time and trouble to procure. But as she had a very practical mind she felt herself obliged to point out to George that Isabella could hardly wear a posy of violets in a filigree holder. George saw the force of this argument, but when he had written out another card, with the wordsCarry these for my sake, he could not like the alteration.
‘Well, I know what I should write if I were you, George,’ said Hero. ‘I should just writeWith my love.’
‘With my homage!’ corrected George reverently.
‘Yes, if you choose, but for my part, I think it would be more touching to putlove.’
‘How if I wrote,Carry these and you carry my heart?’ said George, attacked by sudden inspiration.
Hero gave a gasp, and said in a shaken tone: ‘I don’t at all know why it should be so, dear George, but – but Ithinkthat would make me want to laugh, if I were Isabella.’
‘It would?’ he exclaimed, shocked.
She nodded.
‘Well, I do not understand how it could possibly do so. However, I dare say you may be right. I should like to mention my heart, though. Would it make you laugh if I wrote,Hold these to-night, my heart is in them– orwith them, or perhapsgoes with them?’
‘Yes, it would,’ replied Hero frankly.
‘I should not like to run such a risk,’ he said, looking very much put out. ‘I think I will writeWear these for my sake, after all. Dash it, she will know what I mean!’
Having settled this to his moderate satisfaction, he soon took his leave of Hero, and went off in tolerably good spirits. He met Sherry on the doorstep, but he was too intent on pursuing his quest for violets to do more than exchange a brief greeting with him. Sherry regarded his retreating figure with dark suspicion, and went straight upstairs to the drawing-room to demand of his wife if George lived in Half Moon Street?
She said innocently: ‘I thought he lived in Ryder Street? Has he moved from there, Sherry? He said nothing of it to me, and he was with me not five minutes ago.’
‘I’m well aware of that!’ said his lordship tartly. ‘And I should like to know what he was doing here! I suppose you will say he called to see me!’
‘Oh no, I don’t think he wanted to see you, Sherry! He came to ask my advice about something. You won’t mention it, will you? He is going to send a bouquet of violets to Isabella for the Fakenhams’ ball. He says they are her favourite flowers.’
‘Oh!’ said his lordship. ‘Well, I don’t see what he wants with your advice!’
‘He did want my advice, but I think I ought not to tell you what it was about, because I dare say he would not like it known,’ confided Hero.
‘It seems to me,’ said Sherry severely, ‘that Bella Milborne ain’t the only female George has an eye to!’
