'Am I?' He reflected for a moment. 'No, I don't think so. I'd three uncles, and none of 'em took the smallest interest in me. After all, why should they?'
'For no reason at all, I daresay! Are you trying to make me – oh, what is it the hunting men say? – fly from a scent? Yes, that's it. Well, you won't do it! I also made the acquaintance of your nephew today, and I don't scruple to tell you that I like him even less than I had expected I should!'
'No, did you? Your expectations must have been much higher than you led me to suppose!'
'No, but – oh, I suppose I did expect him to be a man of charm! I don't find him charming at all, and I can't conceive how Fanny came to fall in love with him! Now, tell me to my head, can you?'
'Oh, easily!' he replied. 'He is a very pretty fellow, you must allow! Turns out in excellent trim, too, and has both air and address.'
'Oh, yes!' she said bitterly. 'Playing off his cajolery! He tried to turn me up sweet, but it's my belief he is one who hides his teeth. And when he smiles there's no smile
in his eyes: only – only a measuring look! Surely you must have seen it?'
'Well, no!' he confessed. 'But that might be because he didn't
smile very often when he was with me. Or perhaps because he saw no need to – er – measure me!'
She said quickly: 'You didn't like him either, did you?'
'Oh, no! But how many people does one like?'
She frowned over this, momentarily diverted. 'Upon first acquaintance? I don't know: not very many, perhaps. But one need not dislike them, and I do dislike Mr Stacy Calverleigh!'
'Yes, I thought you did,' he said gravely.
'And I don't believe, for all his protestations and caressing ways, that he truly loves Fanny, or would have made the least push to engage her affections had she not been possessed of a large fortune!'
'Oh, lord, no!'
She turned her head, looking up into his face with pleading eyes, and laying one of her expensively gloved hands on his arm. 'If you too think that, won't you – oh, Mr Calverleigh, won't you do anything to save my poor Fanny?'
He was regarding her with the smile which, unlike his nephew's, sprang to life in his eyes, but all he said was: 'My dear girl – No, no, don't poker up! It was a slip of the tongue! My dear Miss Wendover, what do you imagine I could do?'
Never having considered this, she was at a loss for an answer. She said lamely: 'Surely you must be able to do something!'
'What leads you to think so?'
'Well – well, you are his uncle, after all!'
'Oh, that's no reason! You've told me already that I am an unnatural uncle, and if that means one who don't meddle in the affairs of a nephew over whom he has no authority, and who might, for aught he cares, have been any other man's nephew, you are undoubtedly right!'
'Not authority, no! But whatever you may say the relationship exists, and you must have influence, if you would but exert it?'
He looked down at her in some amusement. 'You know,
you have some remarkably hubble-bubble notions in that charming head of yours! How the devil should I have influence over a nephew who met me for the first time this afternoon?'
She perceived the force of this argument, but the conviction that he could drive off Stacy, if he chose to do it, remained with her. It was irrational, to be accounted for only by the strength she believed she had detected in his harsh-featured countenance, and by a certain ruthlessness which underlay his careless manners. She said, with a tiny sigh: 'I suppose you can have none. And yet – and yet – I think you could, if you but wanted to!'
'For my part,' he retorted, 'I think you are very well able to button it up yourself, without any assistance from me.
There did not seem to be anything more to be said, nor was she granted the opportunity to pursue the subject, her attention being claimed just then by Mr Dunston, who had been watching her jealously for some minutes, and now came up to beg for the privilege of taking her into the tea-room presently.
They met again, two days later, in Edgar Buildings; and however little pleased Abby may have been to find Mr Stacy Calverleigh in Mrs Grayshott's drawing-room, making himself agreeable to his hostess, and winning Fanny's favour by the engaging solicitude with which he treated Mr Oliver Grayshott, she was undoubtedly pleased to see his uncle, and betrayed it by the sudden smile which lit her eyes, and the readiness with which she put out her hand.
She discovered that her arrival had interrupted a lively discussion. Mr Grayshott's medical adviser, visiting him earlier in the day, had professed himself very well satisfied with his progress, and had endorsed a somewhat recalcitrant patient's belief that it would do him a great deal of good to abandon the sofa, and to get out for a little air and exercise. A drive up to Lansdown, and a gentle walk there, enjoying the view of the Bristol Channel, was what he recommended; but when Mr Grayshott took exception to this programme, saying, very improperly, that he would be damned if he allowed himself to be driven to Lansdown or anywhere else, as though he were dying of a deep decline, the doctor laughed, and said: 'Well, well, go for a ride, if you choose! It won't do you any harm, provided you don't go too far, or exhaust yourself.'
This was by no means what Mrs Grayshott wanted. She believed Oliver to be a long way from complete recovery, unable to forget how grey and worn he had looked after the journey from London; and she could not like his scheme of riding out of Bath with his sister as his only companion. Lavinia was a nervous horsewoman, requiring constant surveillance: not at all the sort of escort one would choose to send out with an invalid; and Fanny, instantly offering to accompany the Grayshotts, was no more acceptable to the widow. Fanny was not nervous. Mrs Grayshott, herself no horsewoman, had heard her described by one of her admirers as a clipping rider, a regular good 'un to go, which was an encomium to strike dread into a mother's anxious heart. And then, to make matters worse, Stacy Calverleigh, who had met the two girls in Queen's Square, and accompanied them to Edgar Buildings, proffered his services, laughingly assuring Mrs Grayshott that he would engage himself to bring the party back to her in good time, and none the worse for wear.