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  “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.

  “Because if you be,” pursued Jason, “and if you 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 floorboards, 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 round 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 tollgate, giving it as his opinion that they were now reasonably safe from any chance encounter with persons who might recognize 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.”

  “Very well, that’s settled,” said Sherry, giving his horses the office to start again. “What we have to do now is to decide what the devil I’m to do with you when I get you to London.”

  “You said you would buy me some new clothes,” Hero reminded him, not without a touch of anxiety.

  “I’ll do that, of course, but the thing that’s worrying me a trifle is where you are to sleep tonight,” confessed Sherry. “We shan’t have time to be married today, you know.”

  “No, not if we are to go shopping,” agreed Hero. “I could come home with you, couldn’t I?”

  “No, certainly not! Wouldn’t do at all!” responded Sherry decidedly. “Besides, I haven’t a home. I mean, I live in a lodging off St James’s Street, and it’s not a situation that would suit you. What’s more, there’s no room for you. I suppose I could take you to Sheringham House, but I shouldn’t think you’d be very comfortable there, with only old Varley and his wife in charge of the place, and everything under holland covers.”

  “Oh no! Please don’t take me there!” begged Hero, quite daunted by such a prospect.

  Jason, who had been listening with the greatest interest to the conversation, interposed at this point to give it as his opinion that nothing could be more prejudicial to the smooth conduct of the elopement than for Varley, who he described as a tattling old chub who could be counted on to whiddle the whole scrap, to get wind of the lay. The Viscount, who, in common with every other young blood, was fond of interlarding his conversation with cant terms, found no difficulty in understanding this dark warning. On the whole he agreed with it, but he said with some severity that these strictures on an old family retainer had their origin in Varley’s discovery of an attempted theft of his watch-and-chain, some months previously.

  “And that puts me in mind of something I forgot!” he exclaimed, turning his head over his shoulder. “Dashed if I wasn’t in such a pucker when I left home that it went clean out of my head! I don’t know what you stole while we were there, but you can’t have been two days in the place without biting something. Hand it over!”

  “Keep your glims on the road, guv’nor, keep your glims on the road!” Jason besought him. “I never mills any ken of yours! I’ll cap downright I never did, nor I never will!”

  “Jason!” said his lordship, in minatory accents.

  The Tiger gave a sniff. “I forked a couple of meggs from the tallow-faced old cull,” he admitted sulkily. “He never tipped me a Jack, he didn’t.”

  “Do you mean you filched a couple of guineas from my uncle?” demanded Sherry.

  “Well, how was I to know you didn’t want him forked?” asked Jason. “You never said nothing to me about it, guv’nor, nor I didn’t think he was a friend o’yourn!”

  “Oh, well, if that’s all, there’s no harm done!” said Sherry cheerfully. “Not but what it was probably my money, if we only knew.”

  “Does he always steal things, Sherry?” whispered Hero, round-eyed.

  “Oh, yes, always! He can’t help it, you know.”

  “But is it not very awkward?”

  “No, it doesn’t worry me,” Sherry replied simply, “never takes anything of mine. It used to be a devilish nuisance when he would keep on forking my friends — he had my cousin Ferdy’s watch five times before I broke him of it — but he don’t do that now, and in any event most people know that if they lose anything when they’ve been with me they have only to tell me about it. Always hands over the booty if I ask him for it. That reminds me! Hi, Jason! Don’t you dare steal anything from this lady! Mind, now! I’ll turn you off without a character if she misses so much as a handkerchief.”

  “You wouldn’t never, guv’nor!” gasped the Tiger, horrified.

  “Well, no,” admitted Sherry. “I dare say I wouldn’t. But I’d break every bone in your body, so don’t you forget it!”

  This merciful mitigation of the threat appeared to relieve the Tiger’s mind. He heaved a sigh, and very handsomely offered to allow himself to be nibbled to death by ducks if he should so far forget himself as to take even a pin from his prospective mistress.

  The Viscount, accepting this assurance, told Miss Wantage that she might rest at ease. “Matter of fact, I don’t suppose he would think of robbing you,” he confided. “Still, we may as well be on the safe side. Queer little fellow! Do anything in the world for me, and damme if I know why!”

  “How old is he?” inquired Hero.

  “Haven’t a notion, my dear. Don’t think he has either. Shouldn’t think he can be more than eighteen or nineteen, though.”

  “He’s so very small!”

  “Oh, there’s nothing in that! Trained for a jockey at one time, till they kicked him out of the stables for thieving. You know, I’ve been thinking, Kitten, and it’s my belief I’d best take you to Grillon’s.”

  “Had you, Sherry? Where is that?”
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br />   “Albemarle Street. It’s a hotel. Devilish flat and respectable, but that can’t be helped.”

  “Will you stay with me there?” Hero asked, a little nervously.

  “Good God, no! That would mean the devil to pay! We shall have enough to do as it is, concocting some kind of a tale to account for a chit of your age jauntering about without a chaperon, or an abigail. Yes, by George, and you haven’t any trunks either! We ought to have brought a cloak-bag, and a few bandboxes. Grillon’s will never take you in without! Why didn’t I think of that before?”

  “That’s just like you, Sherry,” observed Miss Wantage patiently. “You never would pay the least heed to anything I said, and then you blamed me when things went awry! Always! You know very well I asked you to let me pack a portmanteau. Now what shall we do?”

  “Well, it can’t be helped. And I never said a word of blame, not one!”

  “No, but you were just about to,” replied Hero, with a mischievous look. “I know you, Sherry!”

  He grinned. “Little cat! I’ll tell you what we shall do. We’ll drive straight to my lodging; send my man, Bootle, out to buy your trunks; take a hackney to Bond Street; purchase what you stand in need of for the night; take everything back to my lodging; pack ’em up; and drive off to Grillon’s with ’em. I shall say you’re my sister — no, that won’t do: ten to one, they know I haven’t got a sister! I’ll say you’re my cousin. Going back to school in Bath. Come up from Kent — that’s true enough! — spending the night in London — I promised I’d meet you — abigail broke her leg getting out of the chaise — taken to hospital — no female relative in town — what am I to do? Nothing for it, of course! Take you to a respectable hotel! Couldn’t be better!”

  Miss Wantage having no fault to find with this scheme, the rest of the journey was pleasantly beguiled by elaborating the Viscount’s ingenious story, filling in a few details, and laughing heartily over the approaching discomfiture of their respective relations. When the metropolis was reached, a slight squabble arose between them through Miss Wantage’s urgent desire to look about her, and the Viscount’s determination that she should keep her hood drawn well forward to hide her face. This soon blew over, however, and nothing could have been sunnier than Miss Wantage’s mood when she presently jumped down from the curricle outside the Viscount’s lodging.

  His lordship’s valet, Bootle, was of necessity a long-suffering and phlegmatic personage, but the sudden arrival of his master, with a shabby young lady on his arm, palpably shook his iron calm. By the time he had grasped that he beheld his future mistress, he had schooled his countenance into an expression of one inured to calamity, and expectant of any outrage. When he learned that he was to sally forth immediately, to procure such baggage as was suited to a lady of quality, his feelings were only betrayed by the faintness of the voice in which he uttered the words: “Very good, my lord!”

  But when the Viscount had swept Miss Wantage out again, he so far forgot himself as to confide to the interested proprietor of the lodgings that if Fate had not decreed that he should have a swollen jaw upon the day fixed for the Viscount’s return to his ancestral home, and if the Viscount had been less obliging in granting him a holiday to have the offending tooth drawn, a chain of circumstances, which he foresaw could only end in disaster, would never have been set up. The proprietor, a literal-minded gentleman, said that he had never seen Mr Bootle nor anyone else, for that matter, managing to check any of his lordship’s starts. He apostrophized his lordship as a regular dash, turf or turnpike, a vulgarism which offended Bootle so much that he went off to execute the Viscount’s commission without vouchsafing another word to his crony.

  The Viscount, meanwhile, conveyed Miss Wantage to a certain mantua-maker’s establishment in Bond Street, where he was not unknown. Here, after a few moments’ brief and startlingly frank colloquy with the astonished proprietress, he handed Miss Wantage over, to be fitted out as became her station. Nothing occurred to disturb the harmony of these proceedings, except a slight contretemps arising out of Miss Wantage’s burning desire for a very dashing confection of sea-green gauze, with silver ribbons, and the Viscount’s flat refusal to permit her to wear any garment so outrageously unsuited to a young lady supposedly on her way to a select seminary in Bath. This trifling quarrel was adjusted by the mantua-maker, who, foreseeing a valuable customer in the future Lady Sheringham, spared no pains to exercise all the tact at her command. She suggested that his lordship should buy a demure (and extremely expensive) gown for Miss Wantage to wear in the immediate future, at the same time laying by, for a later occasion, the sea-green gauze which had so taken Miss’s fancy. The Viscount agreed to this, and was at once obliged to call Miss Wantage to order for hugging him in public.

  By the time these purchases, with a few other of a more intimate nature, had been made; a hat to match the muslin dress chosen at a milliner’s shop farther down the street; a pair of lavender kid gloves procured; such items as brushes, combs, and Joppa soap added to the list of necessities; and a faithful promise made to Miss Wantage that she should visit this entrancing thoroughfare again upon the morrow to make further purchases, dusk was falling. The betrothed couple returned to the Viscount’s lodgings, Miss Wantage in a state of inarticulate bliss, and her cavalier divided between amusement at her pleasure in her first new gown, and a strong inclination for his dinner. Bootle having proved himself worthy of his trust, nothing further remained to do but to pack the various purchases in two neat trunks, and to summon another hackney to convey them to Grillon’s Hotel.

  Seated in this homely vehicle, Miss Wantage slipped a small, gloved hand into Sherry’s, and said in a quivering voice: “Thank you, Sherry! Oh, I wish I could tell you — ! You see, no one has ever given me anything before!”

  “Poor little soul!” said his lordship, patting her in a friendly way. “There, don’t cry! You may have anything you like now, you know. Anything except that shocking hat with the purple feathers, that is! Mind, you’re not to buy that tomorrow, Kitten! I shall have it taken straight back, if you do!”

  “No, Sherry, I promise I won’t,” said Miss Wantage submissively.

  Chapter Four

  UPON THE FOLLOWING MORNING, NOT VERY much after ten o’clock, two young gentlemen sat at breakfast together in the front parlour of a house in Stratton Street. The apartment, which was the lodging of Mr Gilbert Ringwood, bore all the signs of being a bachelor abode, the furniture being old-fashioned, and designed rather for comfort than for elegance. A mahogany sideboard supported an array of bottles, rummers, tankards, and punchbowls; a pair of foils was propped up in one corner of the room; several riding-whips hung on the wall, amongst a collection of sporting prints and engravings; three snuff jars, a box of cigars, and a marble clock adorned the mantelpiece; and the imposing mirror hung above it had tucked into its rather loose frame various cards of invitation, and two advertisements: one of a forthcoming event at the Royal Cockpit, and the other of a sparring contest to be held under the auspices of Mr John Jackson at the Fives-Court, Westminster. Further testimony to the sporting proclivities of the owner of this apartment was provided by a pile of Weekly Dispatches, and a copy of the Racing Calendar, which reposed on the writing-desk by the window.

  In the centre of the room stood an oblong table, spread with a white cloth, and laid with such dishes as might be supposed likely to tempt the appetites of Mr Ringwood and his boon-companion, the Honourable Ferdinand Fakenham. These, however, were poor. Neither gentleman had been able to fancy the soused herrings, or the buttered eggs, and had done no more than toy with a few slices from the sirloin, and swallow the merest mouthful of a fine York ham. Rejecting the chocolate which had been made for them in a silver pot, they washed down such morsels as they selected for consumption with ale poured from a large brown jug into sizeable tankards.

  Mr Ringwood, who, as was proper, sat at the head of the board, was nattily attired in a coat of superfine cloth with pearl buttons; a pair of exquisite Unme
ntionables; and Hessian boots of startling cut and gloss; but Mr Fakenham, from the circumstance of having slept in his coat, was at present arrayed in one of Mr Ringwood’s dressing-gowns. This was a resplendent garment of brocaded silk, whose rich purple sheen accorded extremely ill with the pallor of Mr Fakenham’s amiable, if slightly vacuous, countenance.

  It had not been from any fixed design that the Honourable Ferdinand had spent the night on the sofa in his friend’s lodging. An evening whiled away at the Castle Tavern, Holborn, had engendered in him an affection for Mr Ringwood that led him to accompany this gentleman back to Stratton Street, in preference to directing his erratic footsteps in the direction of the parental home in Cavendish Square. Whether from a natural disinclination to proceed farther on his way, or from a hazy belief that he had reached his proper destination, he had entered the house, arm in arm with his friend, ambled towards the sofa, and stretched himself out upon it, wishing Mr Ringwood — for he was the soul of politeness — a very good night. Mr Ringwood, always a thoughtful host, had spread a carriage rug over his willowy form, and had sent in his man to remove his boots. As an afterthought, he had himself taken a nightcap in to his guest, and had fitted it tenderly on to his head.

  Since neither gentleman was of a loquacious disposition, and both were suffering in some slight degree from the aftermath of a convivial evening, few words were exchanged over the breakfast table. Mr Ringwood brooded gloomily over the racing news in the morning’s paper, and Mr Fakenham sat with his clouded gaze fixed on nothing in particular. The sound of a vehicle approaching at a smart pace up the street awoke no interest in either mind, but when it drew up outside the house, and a brisk knocking almost immediately fell upon the door, Mr Fakenham palpably winced, and Mr Ringwood closed his eyes with the air of one suffering exquisite discomfort. He opened them again a moment later, for an impatient footstep sounded in the passage, and the door burst open to admit Lord Sheringham, who came briskly in with all the objectionable appearance of one who had not only gone sober to bed, but had also risen betimes.