Everyone but Miss Morville, who was studying the Fashion Notes in the latest Ladies’ periodical, waited with suspended breath for the climax to this engagement. They were disappointed, or relieved, according to their several dispositions, when the Dowager said, after a short silence, pregnant with passion: ‘You will do as you please in your own house, St Erth! Pray do not hesitate to inform me if you desire me to remove to the Dower House immediately!’
‘Ah, no! I should be sorry to see you do so, ma’am!’ replied Gervase. ‘Such a house as Stanyon would be a sad place without a mistress!’ Her face showed no sign of relenting, and he added, in a coaxing tone: ‘Do not be vexed with me! Must we quarrel? Indeed, I do not wish to stand upon bad terms with you!’
‘I can assure you that no quarrel between us will be of my seeking,’ said the Dowager austerely. ‘A very odd thing it would be if I were to be picking quarrels with my son-in-law! Pray be so good as to apprise me, in the future, of the arrangements which you desire to alter at Stanyon!’
‘Thank you!’ Gervase said, bowing.
The meekness in his voice made his cousin’s brows draw together a little; but Martin evidently considered that his mother had lost the first bout, for he uttered a disgusted exclamation, and flung out of the room in something very like a tantrum.
The Dowager, ignoring, in a lofty spirit, the entire incident, then desired Theo to ring for a card-table to be set up, saying that she had no doubt St Erth would enjoy a rubber of whist. If Gervase did not look as though these plans for his entertainment were to his taste, his compliant disposition led him to acquiesce docilely in them, and, when a four was presently made up, to submit with equanimity to having his play ruthlessly criticized by his stepmother. His cousin and the Chaplain, after a little argument with Miss Morville, who, however, was resolute in refusing to take a hand, were the other two players; and the game was continued until the tea-tray was brought in at ten o’clock. The Dowager, who had maintained an unwearied commentary throughout on her own and the other three players’ skill (or want of it), the fall of the cards, the rules which governed her play, illustrated by maxims laid down by her father which gave Gervase a very poor opinion of that deceased nobleman’s mental ability, then stated that no one would care to begin another rubber, and rose from the table, and disposed herself in her favourite chair beside the fire. Miss Morville dispensed tea and coffee, a circumstance which made the Earl wonder if she were, after all, one of his stepmother’s dependents. At first glance, he had assumed her to be perhaps a poor relation, or a hired companion; but since the Dowager treated her, if not with any distinguishing attention, at least with perfect civility, he had come to the conclusion that she must be a guest at Stanyon. He was not well-versed in the niceties of female costume, but it seemed to him that she was dressed with propriety, and even a certain quiet elegance. Her gown, which was of white sarsnet, with a pink body, and long sleeves, buttoned tightly round her wrists, was unadorned by the frills of lace or knots of floss with which young ladies of fashion usually embellished their dresses. On the other hand, it was cut low across her plump bosom, in a way which would scarcely have been tolerated in a hired companion; and she wore a very pretty ornament suspended on a gold chain round her throat. Nor was there any trace of obsequiousness in her manners. She inaugurated no conversation, but when she was addressed she answered with composure, and readily. A pink riband, threaded through them, kept her neat curls in place. These were mouse-coloured, and very simply arranged. Her countenance was pleasing without being beautiful, her best feature being a pair of dark eyes, well-opened and straight-gazing. Her figure was trim, but sadly lacking in height, and she was rather short-necked. She employed no arts to attract; the Earl thought her dull.
Family prayers succeeded tea, after which the Dowager withdrew with Miss Morville, charging Theo to conduct St Erth to his bedchamber. ‘Not,’ she said magnanimously, ‘that I wish to dictate to you when you should go to bed, for I am sure you may do precisely as you wish, but no doubt you are tired after your journey.’
It did not seem probable that a journey of fifty miles (for the Earl had travelled to Stanyon only from Penistone Hall), in a luxurious chaise, could exhaust a man inured to the rigours of an arduous campaign, but Gervase agreed to it with his usual amiability, bade his stepmother good-night, and tucked a hand in Theo’s arm, saying: ‘Well, lead me to bed! Where have they put me?’
‘In your father’s room, of course.’
‘Oh dear! Must I?’
Theo smiled. ‘Do my aunt the justice to own that to have allotted any other room to you would have been quite improper!’
The Earl’s bedchamber, which lay in the main, or Tudor, part of the Castle, was a vast apartment, rendered sombre by dark panelling, and crimson draperies. However, several branches of candles had been carried into the room, and a bright fire was burning in the stone hearth. A neat individual, bearing on his person the unmistakable stamp of the gentleman’s gentleman, was awaiting his master there, and had already laid out his night-gear.
‘Sit down, Theo!’ said St Erth. ‘Turvey, tell someone to send up the brandy, and glasses!’
The valet bowed, but said: ‘Anticipating that your lordship would wish it, I have already procured it from the butler. Allow me, my lord, to pull off your boots!’
The Earl seated himself, and stretched out one leg. His valet, on one knee before him, drew off the Hessian, handling it with loving care, and casting an anxious eye over its shining black surface to detect a possible scratch. He could find none, and, with a sigh of relief, drew off the second boot, and set both down delicately side by side. He then assisted the Earl to take off his close-fitting coat, and held up for him to put on a frogged and padded dressing-gown of brocaded silk. The Earl ripped the intricately tied cravat from about his throat, tossed it aside, and nodded dismissal. ‘Thank you! I will ring when I am ready for you to come back to me.’
The valet bowed, and withdrew, bearing with him the cherished boots. St Erth poured out two glasses of brandy, gave one to his cousin, and sank into a deep chair on the other side of the fire. Theo, who had blinked at the magnificence of the dressing-gown, openly laughed at him, and said: ‘I think you must have joined the dandy-set, Gervase!’
‘Yes, so Martin seemed to think also,’ agreed Gervase, rolling the brandy round his glass.
‘Oh – ! You heard that, then?’
?
?Was I not meant to hear it?’
‘I don’t know.’ Theo was silent for a moment, looking into the fire, but presently he raised his eyes to his cousin’s face, and said abruptly: ‘He resents you, Gervase.’
‘That has been made plain to me – but not why.’
‘Is the reason so hard to seek? You stand between him and the Earldom.’
‘But, my dear Theo, so I have always done! I am not a lost heir, returning to oust him from a position he thought his own!’
‘Not lost, but I fancy he did think the position might well be his,’ Theo replied.
‘He seems to me an excessively foolish young man, but he cannot be such a saphead as that!’ expostulated Gervase. ‘Only I could succeed to my father’s room!’
‘Very true, but dead men do not succeed,’ said Theo dryly.
‘Dead men!’ Gervase exclaimed, startled and amused.
‘My dear Gervase, you have taken part in more than one engagement, and you will own that it could not have been thought surprising had you met your end upon a battlefield. It was, in fact, considered to be a likely contingency.’
‘And one that was hoped for?’