‘Sherry, no! Oh, no, no, how can this be so? I have met her at the most exclusive houses, indeed, I have!’
‘So have you met Lady Maria Berwick at the most exclusive houses, and a score of others! Do you desire to model your conduct upon theirs? Good God, willnothingteach you?’
She was trembling. ‘Sherry, if I have done wrong I am very sorry, but how could I guess? Lady Fakenham saw no harm –’
‘What?She knows of this and did nothing to put a stop to it?’
‘No, oh no! She is in the country still. But at Fakenham Manor, when I beat Lady Fairford – Sherry, you were pleased! You said you were proud of me!’
He stared at her. ‘That! A private sport, amongst friends, under my aunt’s eye! What has that to say to anything? How could you suppose it comparable to a public race at Epsom, of all places, with the whole world free to bet on it, and every Tom, Dick, and Harry to watch it? I think you must be mad indeed!’
She pressed her hands to her cheeks. ‘I didn’t think – I didn’t know – Oh, Sherry, don’t be angry with me!’
‘Not angry with you! When you fall from one scrape into another, disgracing yourself, and me, and – You say you did not know! Did not your cousin tell you? Did she not come here expressly to warn you that you must on no account do such a thing?’
‘Yes,’ Hero gasped. ‘But I did not heed her, for she said such stupid things, and you told me she was nothing but a dowd! I thought she was just –’
He broke in on this, his expression so alarming that she almost cowered in her chair. ‘So I told you not to heed her, did I? I might have supposed it would come to that, might I not? I said it!Iencouraged you to race! Of course! It was I who told you to throw good money after bad at faro, was it not, my girl? To borrow from usurers, too, and –’
‘Oh, Sherry, don’t, don’t! Oh, if only I had listened to Cousin Jane and Ferdy!’
‘Ferdy?’ he exclaimed. ‘Did he warn you, then?’
She nodded miserably. ‘Yes, but I didn’t heed him because he is just as silly as Cousin Jane, and I thought – I thought you would be pleased if I beat Lady Royston!’
An unearthly cry broke from the Viscount, and he clutched his locks with all the appearance of a man driven to the verge of distraction. Hero covered her face with her hands and wept.
The Viscount, regaining control over himself, took a hasty turn about the room, a heavy frown on his brow. He cast a brooding glance at his wife, and said shortly: ‘It’s of no use tocry. That won’t mend matters. The odds are you have ruined yourself already with the only people who signify.’
Hero could find nothing in this pronouncement to encourage her to stop crying, but she tried hard to do so, blowing her little nose and resolutely swallowing her sobs while his lordship continued to pace about the room. After watching him timidly for a few moments, she got up and ventured to approach him, saying in an imploring tone: ‘Oh, Sherry, pray forgive me! I will not race – indeed, indeed, I would never have engaged myself to do so had I known you would dislike it so excessively! Sherry, I did not mean to do wrong! Oh, if I were not so ignorant!’
He paused, looking at her. ‘No, you did not mean any harm. I know that well enough. Are you trying to tell me it is my fault? Well, I know that too, but it don’t make matters any easier.’
She caught one of his hands and held it in a warm clasp. ‘No, no, it is not your fault!’ she said. ‘It is I who am so stupid and so tiresome, and I am sosorry!’
‘Well, it is my fault,’ he replied. ‘I should never have married you as I did. If I had not been such a rattlepated fool I should have known – Well, there’s no sense in going over that now, for the mischief’s done. The thing is you were never fit to be cast upon the town with no one but me to tell you how to go on.’
She dropped his hand, her cheeks whitening, her eyes fixed on his face. ‘Sherry!’ she whispered.
He resumed his pacing. He was no longer scowling so heavily, but he looked suddenly much older and a little careworn. Suddenly he stopped and said crisply: ‘There’s only one thing for it. You have no mother to advise you, so it must be for mine to teach you what you should know. I should have put you in her hands at the outset! However, it is not too late: I shall take you down to Sheringham Place to-morrow. Tell your maid to pack your trunks in good time. I’ll give it outthat you’re indisposed, and are gone into the country to recover your strength.’
‘Sherry,no!’ she panted. ‘You cannot be so cruel! I will not go! Your mother hates me –’
‘Stuff and nonsense!’ he interrupted. ‘I tell you there’s nothing else to be done! I don’t say my mother ain’t a deuced silly woman, but she knows the way of the world, and she can –’
She clutched at the lapels of his coat. ‘No, no, Sherry, don’t send me to her! To go home in disgrace –’
‘No one need know why you go. Why the devil should anyone wonder at your visiting your mother-in-law?’
‘Cousin Jane will know, and all my friends there, and Lady Sheringham would tell everyone how wicked I have been!’
‘Fudge Who said you had been wicked, pray?’
‘She will say so! She has said from the start that I had ruined your life, and now she will know it is true! Sherry, I had rather you killed me than sent me back like that!’
He removed her hands from his coat-lapels, saying sternly: ‘Stop talking in that nonsensical fashion! I never heard such fustian in my life! Can you not see that I am doing what I ought to have done at the outset?’
‘No! no! no!’
