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By the time Miss Fairfax reached his side, Mr Monksley, a fresh-faced young man, with very blue eyes and a decided chin, had recovered consciousness. Finding himself looking straight up into the countenance of his Lucilla’s guardian, he at once embarked on a speech, which would no doubt have become extremely impassioned had not the Earl cut it short by saying, ‘Yes, you may tell me all that later, but you had better be still now until the surgeon has attended to your shoulder.’
Tenderly clasping one of Mr Monksley’s hands, Miss Gellibrand said in resolute accents, ‘Nothing you can say, Shane, will prevent my going to Gretna as soon as Edmund is well enough!’
‘Nonsense!’ said his lordship. ‘These Gretna weddings are not at all the thing, and you had better put such romantic fustian out of your head at once.’
‘Believe me, my lord,’ said Mr Monksley faintly, ‘nothing but the sternest necessity could have prevailed upon me to propose so clandestine a union to one for whom I entertain feelings of the deepest respect!’
‘I wish you will not talk to me like a play-actor!’ said his lordship irritably. ‘If you must marry my ward, let it at least be in a respectable fashion!’
‘Angel!’ cried Miss Gellibrand, lifting a glowing face.
His lordship regarded her with the utmost disfavour. ‘If it is angelic to be more than willing to rid myself of a most tiresome charge, I am certainly an angel,’ he said witheringly.
The arrival of a surgeon, carrying an ominous black bag, created a timely diversion. Mr Monksley’s broken shoulder was set and securely bound; two of the serving-men carried him upstairs to a bedchamber; and it was not until he had been comfortably disposed between sheets, and was being fed with spoonfuls of broth by his adoring Lucilla, that Miss Fairfax had leisure to go in search of her employer. She found him in the parlour belowstairs, giving some directions to the landlord. When he saw her, he smiled, and held out his hand, a gesture which made her feel very much inclined to burst into tears. The landlord having bowed himself out of the room, she said, however, in as prosaic a tone as she was able to command, ‘Mr Monksley is feeling much easier now. You have been so very kind, sir!’
‘Oh, the devil take Monksley, and Lucilla too!’ said his lordship. ‘We have more important things to consider. What in thunder are we to do, Mary Fairfax? I told that abominable old woman that we were going to be married at Gretna Green. But no consideration on earth would prevail upon me to behave in such a preposterous fashion! Besides, I cannot possibly take you to Gretna without another rag to your back than what you stand up in.’
‘My dear sir, there is no need for you to trouble your head about it,’ said Miss Fairfax, trying to smile. ‘I told Lady Wilfrid there was no question of our going to Gretna.’
‘You did, did you?’ said the Earl, looking at her rather keenly.
‘Yes of course, sir. Where – where is Lady Wilfrid?’
‘Gone to put up at the George, where I heartily hope she may find the sheets damp!’
‘But – but why?’ stammered Miss Fairfax.
‘Because,’ said the Earl, ‘I told her that we were going to be married just as soon as I can procure a licence!’
Miss Fairfax had the oddest sensation of turning first hot and then cold. ‘You are being absurd!’ she said, in a voice which did not seem to belong to her.
‘Mary,’ said his lordship, taking her hands in his, and holding them fast, ‘have those shocking faults of mine given you a disgust of me?’
‘No,’ said Miss Fairfax weakly. ‘Oh, no!’
‘I don’t know how I came to be such a fool (but you said I was stupid), yet – would you believe it? – it was not until my aunt accused me of it that I knew I had been in love with you for years!’
Miss Fairfax trembled. ‘But you can’t! Marry to disoblige your family? Oh, no, no!’
‘My family be damned!’ said the Earl. ‘I wish you will look at me, Mary!’
‘Well, I won’t,’ said Miss Fairfax, making a feeble attempt to free her hands. ‘I did think that you regarded me sometimes with – with a certain partiality, but I know, if you do not, how shocking such a match would be, and I won’t marry you. I shall look for another eligible situation.’
‘No one will employ you without a testimonial, and I shan’t give you one.’
‘I think you are extremely disagreeable, besides being mad!’ said Miss Fairfax, in a scolding tone.
‘Yes,’ said the Earl, taking her in his arms. ‘And I have also the most overbearing manners, so you may as well stop arguing with me, and kiss me instead.’
Miss Fairfax, apparently struck by this advice, abandoned her half-hearted struggles, said, ‘Oh, my dearest!’ in a wavering voice, and subsided meekly into his embrace.
Runaway Match
AS THE POST-CHAISE and four entered the town of Stamford, young Mr Morley, who had spent an uncomfortable night being jolted over the road, remorselessly prodded his companion.
‘We have reached Stamford,’ he announced. ‘We change horses here, and whatever you may choose to do, I shall bespeak breakfast.’
Miss Paradise, snugly ensconced in her corner of the chaise, opened a pair of dark eyes, blinked once or twice, yawned behind her feather muff, and sat up.
