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“Oh,” said Maidie, and was annoyed to feel herself blushing.
Delagarde went to the door. “There is nothing improper in it as long as you are here,” he said, oddly irritated by the suggestion. But he bid them both goodnight, and withdrew.
Maidie glanced at Lady Hester. “Perhaps it is a pity I missed the ball. I might have made some progress.” She added, on a note of melancholy, “I believe Lord Delagarde has a poor opinion of my chances.”
Lady Hester came across and patted her cheek, smiling. “Nonsense, my love. He does not believe the half of what he says. Pay him no heed!” She moved to the door. “But come! We have been most remiss. Poor Ida has not been informed of your return, Maidie. I wish to ask her why she did not tell us where you had gone.”
But the Worm, when Maidie and Lady Hester went in to her next door, was found to be suffering from head-ache and a raging fever. The two ladies had too much to do in making her more comfortable to concern themselves over the duenna’s lapse of memory.
“I am sure that must have been it,” Maidie whispered, when the Worm, having swallowed a dose of laudanum, was seen to be sinking into slumber. “Poor Worm was probably too ill to heed what I said to her. I should have told you myself. Pray don’t let us trouble her on the matter. Let her believe it is my fault, and I forgot to say anything.”
Lady Hester drew her out of the room, and agreed to this, but adding a severe injunction to her not to sit up late. “Your abigail may take the night watch, and in the morning we will call in the physician.”
But Maidie, too worried to sleep very soundly, twice awoke and went in to check on the Worm. A truckle bed had been set up for Trixie, but the conscientious maid had not used it, and was taking such good care of Miss Wormley, Maidie was able to go back to her bed with a quiet mind.
She cancelled her engagements for the next few days, spending a deal of time with the Worm, a sacrifice which induced her sponsor to harbour kindlier thoughts towards her.
“She is a good-hearted little creature, at least,” he told Lady Hester as they set out upon Tuesday evening’s entertainment without her.
“Oh, it is no great hardship to Maidie to miss a party.”
Delagarde found himself irrationally annoyed by this observation. “You think she is using Miss Wormley’s illness as an excuse, then?”
“I did not say that. Maidie is very fond of Ida. Her concern is quite genuine.”
“Miss Wormley may count herself fortunate. There are few things—outside of astronomy, of course—which rouse Maidie’s concern.”
“But a moment ago, Laurie, you were extolling her kind heart. What are you at now?”
“Nothing.”
Delagarde was silent for a moment. He was conscious of a degree of dissatisfaction for which he could not account…had been conscious of it for some days. That it had to do with Maidie’s descent upon him he could not doubt: the disturbance to his ordered existence; the unsettled state of his mind, always in some way or another concerned with the irksome female’s activities; the discomfort of an uncertain temper, for Maidie had the unhappy knack of arousing it. But none of these things were at the root of his discontent. How could they be, when he had felt it so much aggravated by the discovery of Maidie’s all-consuming crusade with the heavens?
“I do not know what to make of her!” he announced suddenly, as if unable to keep his thoughts any longer to himself.
“In what respect?”
He turned, trying to see his great-aunt’s features in the semi-darkness. “You have a fondness for her, have you not, Aunt Hes? But can you truthfully say you understand her?”
Delagarde thought she smiled, but he could not be sure.
“Don’t you?”
The response, enigmatic as ever, infuriated him. “Have I not just said I do not? This star-gazing, for one thing.”
“What about it?”
“One must admire her grasp of the subject. It argues a strong intelligence. But…” He paused, grappling with his thoughts, struggling with a rising emotion to which he could put no name. “I cannot like the—the obsession. Excluding all else. It is not natural. It is unfeminine. It makes one feel—yes, shut out.” The phrase, for some unfathomable reason, laid fuel to his ire. “She will never get a husband. No man will bear it!”
“Then I dare say Maidie is right to insist upon a marriage of convenience,” said Lady Hester calmly.
“Possibly,” conceded Delagarde stiffly, and by no means soothed. “I wish her joy of it. And pity the poor fool who must spend his nights in a cold bed while his wife warms herself purely by starlight.”
Chapter Ten
Resuming an active part in the social round, Maidie found herself possessed by a certain lethargy. A tiny hope, largely unformed, that Delagarde might truly have been interested in her talk of astronomy, that it might have become the basis of a growth in mutual understanding, died quickly. He would not now concern himself at her absences from the house—apparently the only thing which had concerned him.
Had he not kept very much out of her way for some considerable time? Only the to-do over her disappearance had made him pay attention to her. Now, it appeared, he considered himself free to let her make her own way. For, on Thursday evening, once having given his escort to the ladies during the short journey in his town carriage to a soirée held by Lady Riseley, the mother of his close friend, he kept his distance. It was not, as might have been supposed, because he felt himself obliged to give attention to his friend, for Lord Riseley made it his business to see to Maidie’s comfort, and introduced her also to Mr Everett Corringham.
