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‘These masquerades are not at all the thing, you know,’ said Mr Wrexham.
Mr Ledbury blushed more vividly still. ‘Sir, from the circumstance of my having been employed since the age of fifteen, first in the Peninsula, and later in America, returning thence only just in time to take part in the late conflict at Waterloo, I have never been on the town, as the saying is. Had I suspected that any impropriety would attach to my escorting Miss Wrexham to such a function, I must have been resolute in refusing to lend myself to the project.’
‘Letty’s notion, was it?’ said Mr Wrexham, with what none of his listeners could feel to be more than tepid interest.
His mother and sister gazed at him in uneasy astonishment. Mr Ledbury, emboldened by his mild aspect, plunged into a recital of his ambitions, his present circumstances, and his future expectations. Mr Wrexham, lost in dreams of his own, caught such phrases as ‘eldest son’, – ‘my father’s estate in Somerset’, and soon interrupted the flow, saying: ‘I wish you will not talk so much! It is time you had your company: you had a great deal better exchange into another regiment, but I cannot discuss that with you at this hour!’
Mr Ledbury, transported to find his Letty’s brother so much less formidable than he had been led to expect, delivered himself of a rehearsed peroration. In the maximum number of words he conveyed to Mr Wrexham the intelligence that, if it were possible, he would prefer Letty to renounce all claim to her inheritance. This noble speech at last jerked Mr Wrexham out of his abstraction, and caused him to retort with considerable acerbity: ‘Happily, it is not possible! I wish you will go away, for I am in no mood for these heroics! Come and talk to me tomorrow morning! You wish to marry my sister: very well, but you must transfer! She will make you the devil of a wife, but that, I thank God, is no concern of mine!’
With these words of encouragement, he inexorably ushered his guest off the premises, barely allowing him time to take a punctilious leave of Lady Albinia, and a fond one of Letty. When he returned to the drawing-room, he found his mother and sister with their heads together, but whatever they were so earnestly discussing remained undisclosed. ‘Giles,’ said Letty anxiously, ‘did you perfectly understand? Edwin has offered for me!’
‘I dare say an estimable young man, but he uses too many words,’ commented Mr Wrexham. ‘Do you think he would like to transfer into a cavalry regiment?’
Alarmed, she laid her hand on his arm. ‘Giles, are you sure you are well?’
‘Perfectly!’ he said, lifting her hand, and gripping it. ‘I was never better!’
She cried sharply: ‘Giles! You have found her!’
‘I have found her! The sweetest face I ever beheld, Letty! Mama, I hope you do not mean to succumb to the vapours, for I wish you to make a call of ceremony in Harley Street tomorrow!’
A Husband for Fanny
1
His attentions,’ said the widow, fixing a pair of large, rather anxious brown eyes on her cousin’s face, ‘are becoming most marked, I assure you, Honoria!’
‘Fiddle!’ said Lady Pednor.
The widow, who had just raised a delicate cup to her lips, started, and spilled some of the morning chocolate into the saucer. A drop fell on her dress. She set the cup and saucer down, and began to rub the mark with her handkerchief, saying despairingly: ‘There! Only see what you have made me do! I dare say it will never come out!’
‘Very likely it will not,’ agreed her hostess, in no way repentant. ‘You will be obliged to buy a new dress, and that, let me tell you, Clarissa, will be an excellent thing!’
‘I cannot afford a new dress!’ said the widow indignantly. ‘All very well for you, as rich as you are, to talk in that unfeeling way, but you know –’
‘I am not rich,’ said Lady Pednor composedly, ‘but I can afford a new dress, because I do not squander every penny I possess upon my daughter.’
Mrs Wingham blushed, but replied with spirit: ‘You have no daughter!’
‘What is more,’ continued her ladyship, unheeding, ‘I will accompany you to buy the dress, or I dare say you will choose just such another dowdy colour!’
‘Purple-bloom, and very suitable!’ said Mrs Wingham defiantly.
‘Extremely so – for dowagers!’
‘I am a dowager.’
‘You are a goose,’ replied her cousin calmly. ‘It would be interesting to know what you spent on that spangled gauze gown Fanny wore at Almack’s last night!’ She paused, but Mrs Wingham only looked guilty. ‘Pray, what is to be the end of all this extravagance, Clarissa? You will be ruined!’
‘No, no! I have saved every penny I could spare ever sinc
e Fanny was a baby, just for this one season! If only I can see her creditably established, it will have been worth it! And although you may say “fiddle!” if you choose to be so uncivil, it is true about Harleston! From the moment of your bringing him up to me at Almack’s that night, I could see that he was instantly struck by my darling’s beauty. And never can I be sufficiently obliged to you, Honoria!’
‘If I had thought that you would be so foolish, my dear, I never would have presented him,’ said Lady Pednor. ‘Harleston and Fanny! Good God, he must be forty if he is a day! How old is she? Seventeen? You are out of your senses!’
The widow shook her head. ‘I don’t wish her to be poor, and –’ She broke off, and looked away from her cousin. ‘Or to marry a very young man. It doesn’t endure, the sort of attachment one forms when one is young, and young men don’t make comfortable husbands, Honoria. With such a man as Lord Harleston – in every way so exactly what one would desire for one’s child! – she would be very happy and never know care, and – and the disagreeable effects of poverty!’
‘My love,’ said Lady Pednor, ‘because your mama made a bad bargain for you when she married you to Tom Wingham, is not to say that every young man must prove to be a monster of selfishness!’
