‘Kind and gentlemanlike?’ repeated Dysart, in accents of withering scorn. ‘Well, upon my soul, Nell, seems to me you’re as big a ninnyhammer as Mama! To be taken in by one of her Banbury tales, when there was Cardross making a regular cake of himself over you! If that don’t beat the Dutch!’
She hung her head, but said in a faint voice: ‘It was stupid of me, but there was more than that, Dy. You see, I knew about Lady Orsett. Letty told me.’
‘That girl,’ said the Viscount severely, ‘wants conduct! Not but what I shouldn’t have thought you needed telling, because everyone knew she was his chère amie for years. And don’t you put on any die-away airs to me, my girl, because, for one thing, it’s no use bamming me you didn’t know anything about my father’s light frigates; and, for another, Cardross’s way of life before you married him ain’t your concern! Lady Orsett’s got Lydney in tow now, so that’s enough flim-flam about her!’
‘Has she, Dy?’ Nell said eagerly.
‘So they say, I don’t know!’
‘Oh, if it were not for this dreadful debt how happy I should be!’ she sighed.
‘Nonsense! Make a clean breast of the whole to Cardross, and be done with it!’
‘I’d rather die! Don’t you understand, Dy? How could he believe me sincere, if I told him now, when I am in debt again, that I didn’t care a button for his fortune?’
The Viscount checked the scoffing retort that sprang to his tongue. He did understand. After a thoughtful moment, he said: ‘He’d think it was cream-pot love, would he? Ay, very true: bound to! Particularly,’ he added, in a voice of censure, ‘if you’ve been treating him with a stupid sort of indifference, which I’ve a strong notion you have! Oh, well! we shall have to think of some way of raising the blunt, and that’s all there is to it!’
Too grateful for his willingness to come to her aid to cavil at his freely-worded criticisms, Nell waited hopefully, confident that he would be able to tell her how to extricate herself from her difficulty. Nor was she mistaken. After a turn or two about the room, he said suddenly: ‘Nothing easier! I can’t think why I didn’t hit upon it at once. You must sell some of your jewellery, of course!’
Her hand went instinctively to her throat. ‘The pearls Mama gave me? Her very own pearls? I could not, Dysart!’
‘No need to sell them, if you don’t care to. Something else!’
‘But I haven’t anything else!’ she objected. ‘Nothing of value, I mean.’
‘Haven’t anything else? Why, I never see you but what you’re wearing something worth a king’s ransom! What about all those sapphires?’
‘Dysart! Giles’s wedding-gift!’ she uttered.
‘Oh, very well! But he’s always giving you some new trinket: you must be able to spare one or two of ’em. He’ll never notice. Or if you think he might, you can have ’em copied. I’ll attend to that for you.’
‘No, thank you, Dy!’ she said, with despera
te firmness. ‘I won’t do anything so odiously shabby! To sell the jewels Giles has given me – to have them copied in paste so that he shouldn’t know of it – Oh, how detestable I should be to deceive him in such a way!’
‘Well, what a high flight!’ said Dysart. ‘It’s no worse than going to a cent-per-cent – in fact, it ain’t as bad!’
‘It seems worse!’ she assured him.
‘I’ll tell you what it is, Nell!’ he said, exasperated. ‘If you let this excessive sensibility of yours rule you, there will be no way of helping you out of this fix! If you don’t care to have your trinkets copied, tell Cardross you lost them! I daresay you would not like to lose the sapphires, but you aren’t going to tell me your heart would break for every one of the trinkets he’s given you!’
‘No, indeed it would not, if I really did lose them, but every feeling revolts from the thought of selling them for such a reason!’
She spoke with so much resolution that it seemed useless to persist in argument. The Viscount, never one to waste his time over lost causes, abandoned his promising scheme, merely remarking that of all the troublesome goosecaps he had encountered his sister bore away the palm. She apologized for being so provoking, adding, with an attempt at a smile, that he must not tease himself any more over the business.
But every now and then the Viscount’s conscience, in a manner as disconcerting to himself as to his critics, cast a barrier in the way of his careless hedonism. It intervened now, just as he was congratulating himself on being well out of a tiresome imbroglio.
‘Very pretty talking, when you know dashed well I can’t help but tease myself over it!’ he said bitterly. ‘If there’s one thing more certain than another, it’s that if I hadn’t borrowed that three hundred from you, you wouldn’t be in this fix now! Well, there’s nothing for it: I shall have to get you out of it. I daresay I shall hit on a way when I’ve had time to think it over, but I shan’t do it with you sitting there staring at me as though I was your whole dependence! Puts me out. There’s no saying, of course, but what I may have a run of luck, in which case the matter’s as good as settled. I’ve got a notion I ought to give up hazard, and try how it will answer if I stick to faro.’
He then took his leave, bestowing an encouraging pat on his sister, and recommending her to put the whole business out of her mind. There were those who would have taken the cynical view that he would speedily put it out of his, but Nell was not of their number: it did not so much as cross her mind that her dear Dy, either from indolence or forgetfulness, might leave her to her fate. And she was quite right. There was an odd streak of obstinacy in Dysart, which led him, at unexpected moments, to pursue with dogged tenacity the end he had in view; and although his intimates considered that this streak was roused only by the most cork-brained notions, they were agreed that once such a notion had taken firm possession of his mind he could be depended on to stick to it buckle and thong.
Emerging from the house after a genial discussion with his brother-in-law’s porter on the chances of several horses in a forthcoming race, he paused at the foot of the steps, considering whether he should summon a hackney, and take a look-in at Tattersall’s, or stroll to Conduit Street, where, at Limmer’s, he would be sure to encounter a few choice spirits. While he hesitated, a tilbury, drawn by a high-stepping bay, swept round the angle of the square, and he saw that the down-the-road-looking man in the tall hat, and the box-coat of white drab, who was handling the ribbons with such admirable skill, was Cardross. He had no particular desire to meet the Earl, with whom he knew himself to be no favourite, but he waited civilly for the tilbury to draw up beside him.
‘Hallo, Dysart!’ said the Earl, handing the reins over to his groom, and jumping down from the carriage. ‘Are you just going in, or just coming out?’
‘Just coming out,’ replied Dysart, watching the tilbury being driven away. ‘That’s a nice tit you have there: looks to be a sweet goer. Welsh?’
‘Yes, I’m pretty well pleased with him,’ agreed Cardross. ‘Very free and fast, and has a good knee action. Oh, yes! pure bred Welsh: I bought him from Chesterford last week. Do you care to come in again?’