Gwendolen Read online

  The last of these conjectures seemed to her, on the whole, the least improbable of the lot, and her anxiety that it might be true caused her to say downrightly to Lyndale, as he led her into the set, "What is the matter between you and Neil? Have you been quarrelling with him?"

  He turned an amused face upon her. *'With young Fairhall? What in heaven's name should I quarrel with him about?"

  "I don't know," said Gwendolen, regarding him closely. "Cammie, perhaps? You seem to be growing very particular in your attentions to her!"

  "Do I?" Lyndale enquired, without, she noted, a flicker of surprise or self-consciousness. "Still, I can't see why that should concern Fairhall. He has obviously set his sights upon you now."

  "Oh, don't be idiotish!" said Gwendolen impatiently. "You can see as well as I can that he is still head-over-ears in love with her, and is only making up to me so that he can continue to see her. And I do think," she went on severely, "that it is too bad of you to interfere, and puff her up with expectations that you have no intention of satisfying!"

  She looked into his face as she spoke, in order to see what effect her words would have upon him, and was somewhat surprised to note that, for once, there was an unwanted expression of faint perturbation in his lordship's eyes.

  "You don't mean," he enquired abruptly after a moment, "that she really does want to marry me, Miss Quarters?"

  Gwendolen stared at him. "Well, that is a very odd thing for you to say!" she exclaimed. "I should have thought, from the way you have been making up to her, that it was your endeavour to bring her to that point!" Her own eyes suddenly kindled dangerously. "Do you mean to tell me, my lord," she demanded, "that you have been amusing yourself at that child's expense? I must say, I should have expected better of you!"

  “Well, I should rather have thought the shoe was on the other foot myself," Lyndale said, "but if you mean have I any serious intentions concerning your young sister. Miss Quarters, I assure you that I can relieve your mind upon that score."

  She cast a fulminating glance at him, but nevertheless felt herself fortunate that the movement of the dance separated them at that moment, for she felt that the conversation had somehow got into deep waters and that she had no notion how to go on with it. On the one hand, she was furious with Lyndale over the casual manner in which he had denied that his attentions to Campaspe had any serious meaning; and on the other she was very much relieved that such was the case, for she certainly did not feel that Campaspe's future happiness lay in marriage to Lyndale. By the time she and his lordship came together again, the conflict between these two points of view had become so severe that she could scarcely speak civilly to him, which did not seem to disconcert him in the least. As soon as the set was at an end, Campaspe appeared beside them on the arm of Mr. Clurton and, dismissing the latter, bore Lyndale off.

  "I do wish," said Jane in gentle anxiety, also appearing beside Gwendolen at that moment on the arm of her Mr. Williams, "that Mama had not had the headache this evening, or that Aunt Pris had not been called back to Brighton! I know it is quite respectable for you, at your age, to have charge of Campaspe, but, really, she pays not the least heed to you, and the way she is behaving towards Lord Lyndale this evening quite puts me to the blush!"

  "Yes, I know; there is no doing anything with her," Gwendolen said, "and he is quite as bad, for encouraging her. Oh, Mr. Williams," she added hastily, as she saw Lord Wilfrid bearing down on her through the crowd with an unwontedly purposeful air, "will you be so very kind as to stand up with me for this next set? You see, I particularly do not wish to dance with Lord Wilfrid Boulting."

  Mr. Williams, after a moment of appearing a good deal taken aback by this highly unconventional application, said with grave gallantry that he would be honoured; Jane looked shocked; and Gwendolen, reflecting resignedly that Jane probably thought her behaviour quite as unbecomingly forward as Campaspe's, turned to face Lord Wilfrid.

  "My dearest Gwen—" he said, bowing low over her hand and then raising it to his Ups with a peculiarly significant smile. He added, in a deeper, injured tone, "You are not wearing my roses—my peace-offering, so to speak—"

  "No—no, I am not," Gwendolen agreed, a trifle disjointedly. "You see, Neil—Lieutenant Fairhall—expected me to wear his, and as I couldn't oblige both him and you, I am wearing neither."

  "Indeed!" said Lord Wilfrid, only partially mollified. ^'But I hope this does not mean, dearest Gwen, that I am not forgiven. The violence of my feelings—"

  Gwendolen, uncomfortably aware that Mr. Williams, who could not leave because of his engagement to dance with her, could overhear every word Lord Wilfrid was saying, and disbelieving utterly, at any rate, in Lord Wilfrid's having any violent feelings whatever except for those of an overweening amour propre, said rather unkindly that she supposed everyone said things they didn't mean sometimes and walked off with Mr. Williams.

  But after having been bored almost to tears by the latter gentleman's laborious conversation and awkward partnering in the dance during the ensuing set, even Lord Wilfrid's company seemed less disagreeable to her, and she was almost resigning herself to standing up with him for the next set, as she saw him approaching her across the crowded room, when a servant suddenly appeared at her elbow and addressed her.

  "Begging your pardon, ma'am—but would you be Miss Quarters?"

  Gwendolen acknowledged that she was and, in some surprise, saw the man produce a folded note and hand it to her.

  "Lord Wilfrid, of course!" she thought at once, as the man moved away and she unfolded the note, though why Lord Wilfrid should have troubled to write to her when he had every opportunity to speak to her that evening, and indeed seemed bent upon doing so at the present moment, she found it difficult to guess.

  But the moment she had unfolded the note, she saw that she had been entirely mistaken in her surmise. It was Campaspe's sprawling schoolgirl hand, not Lord Wilfrid's dashing one, that leapt up at her from the page, and by the time she had perused the first sentence. Lord Wilfrid had gone completely from her mind—which was scarcely surprising, for by then she was already frozen with horror.

  Dear Gwen, the brief missive read. By the time you read this I shall be gone off to marry Lyndale. Don't fall into a pucker, or let Mama do so, as I am sure you will both agree that this is the best way out of all our difficulties. Pray pack up my best things and send them to the White Hart in Bath, though Lyndale says not to trouble because he will provide for me, but I should like to have my new Pamela bonnet, Campaspe.

  Mechanically, Gwendolen refolded the note and pushed it into her reticule, her mind in such a mad whirl that she was only vaguely conscious that Lord Wilfrid was now standing before her and was addressing her with his usual meticulous courtesy.

  "I—I beg your pardon!" she exclaimed, almost at random. "I was not attending, I fear! Such a vexatious thing—someone has trodden upon my gown and torn the lace! Will you excuse me?"

  And she walked off quickly towards one of the small anterooms that opened from the ballroom, leaving Lord Wilfrid staring after her with an expression of great affront upon his face.

  She must, she felt, be alone for a few minutes so that she could think what to do! Fortunately, the room was empty, and, sinking down into the nearest chair, she took Campaspe's note from her reticule and spread it out to peruse it once more.

  By the time you read this I shall be gone off to marry Lyndale—and yet within the hour she, Gwendolen, had had it from Lyndale's own lips that he had no serious intentions towards the child! Odious, abominable man! It was bad enough for Lord Wilfrid, who was known throughout the ton as a cynical man of the world, to offer a carte blanche to a young woman of one-and-twenty, who had certainly cut her eyeteeth and would be well aware of the risk she would be taking if she accepted it. But for Lyndale, under the guise of offering honourable matrimony, cold-bloodedly to seduce a girl just out of the schoolroom was conduct so infamous as to choke her with rage. She must stop him, and by the greatest o
f good fortune, owing to Campaspe's childish infatuation with her new Pamela bonnet, she knew exactly where to come up with him—but how was she to get to Bath?

  Of course, the most obvious solution was to ask Neil to take her home at once, tell her father what had happened, and rely upon him to go after Lyndale.

  "But no—good God, that will never do!" she thought at once, horrified. "He would be sure to call Lyndale out, and I should have his blood upon my head!"

  The idea of applying to Neil was as quickly negatived for the same reason, for certainly she could no more depend upon the impetuous young soldier merely to rescue Campaspe without becoming embroiled in a quarrel with her seducer than she could upon her hot-headed father.

  "I shall simply have to go after her myself!" she thought in despair. "But how? I haven't more than five shillings with me, and even at home I haven't enough by me to pay the post charges to Bath! And if I ask Papa to give me such a sum at this hour of the night, he will certainly demand to know what I want it for!"

  It was at that moment that the thought of Lord Wilfrid came into her head.

  Lord Wilfrid, said a cool, triumphantly logical voice inside that head, wished to take her to Bristol. Lord Wilfrid had a phaeton and fast horses. Bristol was some dozen miles from Bath. Once in Bristol, she could no doubt manage to persuade his lordship on some pretext or other to take her to Bath. Once in Bath she could rescue Campaspe and send Lord Wilfrid to the rightabout.

  It all worked out as neatly as a problem in mathematics, and if Lord Wilfrid somewhat unfairly came off with all kicks and no ha'pence, as her old nurse had used to say, that, she considered, was his own fault for having paid no attention to what the gypsy had told him at the races that afternoon.

  "Aye, serve the purpose—that's the word for you, fair gentleman," the gypsy had said, and had offered to save him a deal of trouble by reading his palm—a reading which no doubt would have revealed to him the fact that he was about to be made use of by an unscrupulous young woman.

  "But—very well! If I must be unscrupulous to save Campaspe, I shall be unscrupulous!" thought Gwendolen defiantly; and, refolding the note and replacing it in her reticule, she went off to the ballroom to find Lord Wilfrid.

  This was not difficult to do, for Lord Wilfrid, having apparently decided not to take offence at her abrupt departure, but to put her lack of politeness in taking leave of him down to the natural perturbation of a female upon finding something amiss with her dress in a public place, was standing just where she had left him, awaiting her return.

  "Oh, Lord Wilfrid!" she addressed him at once, speaking in the best counterfeit she could call up at the moment of a young lady in a state of considerable romantic confusion. "Pray forgive me for leaving you so suddenly, but I found, when it came to the point, that I required a few moments in which to compose myself! You see, I have made up my mind!" She looked up soulfully into Lord Wilfrid's face, which understandably bore a faintly puzzled frown upon it, and murmured, "Venice! With you! Only it must be at once, my—my dearest Wilfrid! Tonight! This very moment! I feel my courage will desert me else!"

  Lord Wilfrid had a well-earned reputation in the Polite World for an aplomb unshakable under any circumstances—a reputation once put to the severest of tests when a young woman who had formerly been under his protection had forced her way past the porter at White's and confronted him in the card room with an extremely vocal and highly profane demand for money before an assemblage that had included two Royal Dukes. But even Lord Wilfrid looked momentarily nonplussed upon being faced during the course of a ball with a call for an immediate elopement, made by a young lady who only that afternoon had spurned the very idea of one in no uncertain terms.

  "My dearest Gwen—" he drawled, sparring for wind, as his fellow habitués at Gentleman Jackson's Bond Street Boxing Saloon might have expressed it. "My dear girl—tonight? You can't mean, literally—"

  "Oh, but I do!" Gwendolen said fervently, "It is just what I do mean! Do take me away at once, dear Wilfrid, or I know I shall never screw up my courage to the sticking point again! You said the Duke's yacht was ready to sail—"

  "And so it is," Lord Wilfrid acknowledged, "but—you have not come prepared? Your clothes—necessaries—?"

  "Oh, I care nothing for that," declared Gwendolen, brushing aside the very thought of these mundane matters. She seized upon a phrase from Campaspe's note. "Besides, I am sure you will provide for me!"

  Lord Wilfrid, who had regained something of his poise by this time, said gallantly that he would be delighted to do so, but he nevertheless appeared about to raise some further cavils to this impetuous elopement when Gwendolen, who had learned in the nursery that she had the valuable asset, usually given only to those people who seldom cry at all, of bringing tears to her eyes at will, did so.

  "Oh, please!" she said imploringly. "If I do not go now, I shall never, never have the courage again, and you can't know how tired I am of this horrid, humdrum existence!"

  Lord Wilfrid looked down at the pleading blue eyes under those enchanting, flyaway black brows, the crystal drops just overflowing them and making them seem as bright and soft as stars on a summer night. He opened his mouth to speak and then closed it again. Obviously, when one had the bird in one's net, one did not tempt fortune by letting it go free on the foolish assumption that one might catch it again when it might be more convenient to do so. And an immediate elopement, after all, presented few problems with which he was not prepared to cope.

  "Very well, my dearest!" he said, making up his mind. "Tonight it shall be, then! Should you object to driving to Bristol in my phaeton? My travelling chaise is at Beauworth—"

  Gwendolen said hastily that she had not the least objection to the phaeton, and could they start at once?—to which Lord Wilfrid agreed, stipulating only that they must first stop at the George, where he was putting up, so that he might provision himself for the journey.

  Gwendolen then suddenly bethought herself of the fact that she would be abandoning Jane at the ball with absolutely no clue as to what had happened to her two sisters unless she left her a note. So she requested Lord Wilfrid to send a servant for ink and paper, which he did rather reluctantly, having found, in a wide experience in such matters, that it was far better to wait, as he had once expressed it, until the fait was accompli before letting any third party into the secret.

  But Gwendolen was adamant, promising, however, not to confide any of the details of the elopement to Jane, which in point of fact she had no intention of doing. Indeed, Lord Wilfrid would have been a good deal surprised and even mystified had he been able to peruse the hastily scrawled missive that she entrusted to the servant who had brought her the writing materials, with instructions to wait at least a half hour before giving it into the hands of Miss Jane Quarters.

  Dearest Jane, it ran, Cammie has got herself into a scrape and I am off to rescue her. It is probable we shan't return until morning, but pray tell Mama and Papa that there is nothing for them to fly up into the boughs about. I shall take good care of Cammie. Gwen.

  It occurred to her, as she penned this missive, that she had no clear idea as to how she and Cammie were to return from Bath to Cheltenham with no more than a few shillings between them; but she did not allow this consideration to trouble her for long. After all, there was always Lord Wilfrid, and then Lyn-dale would be there as well. If she could not succeed, she thought, in at least procuring coach-fare from one of these two guilty would-be seducers, she must consider herself a downright widgeon!

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  MEANWHILE, CAMPASPE WAS speeding most romantically in Lyndale's curricle under a thundery night sky towards Gloucester, where her bridegroom-to-be (or at least so he figured in her mind) turned his horses' heads south along Bristol pike road.

  It might have occurred to a disinterested observer, however, that for a bridegroom-to-be, his lordship was displaying a most unloverlike lack of interest in his passenger. He rarely addressed her, occupying much of
his time instead in whistling cheerfully as he guided his team expertly along the dark road. Campaspe, however, was not a disinterested observer, nor was she (as she was discovering somewhat to her own surprise as she was being borne swiftly along towards Bath and her future destiny as the Marchioness of Lyndale) the coolly calculating young woman, cynically determined upon making a highly advantageous match for the sake of her family, that she had imagined herself to be during the past several hours.

  When Lyndale, as they had found themselves briefly alone at the races that afternoon while walking from his curricle to the Duke of Tardiff’s marquee, had replied to one of her outrageously inviting sallies with a sudden and entirely matter-of-fact proposal that they elope to Bath that very evening, Campaspe had at first felt nothing but triumph. How easy it had been, she told herself in smug self-congratulation, to solve at one fell swoop all the problems that had been driving everyone in the family, from worldly wise Aunt Pris to poor woolly-headed Jane, almost to distraction over the past week.

  She had gone home in a whirl of plots and mystery, and it was not until after she was actually at the Assembly Rooms and the musicians had struck up the music for the second set, during which she and Lyndale proposed to leave the ball and set out upon their journey to Bath, that cold fingers of doubt had first clutched her heart. A little later, mounting into Lyndale's curricle, it had suddenly come upon her with the blinding force of revelation that all she really wished to do was to run home to her mother, hide her face in that maternal bosom, and cry as heartily as Jane had ever cried over Alain de Combray.