Arabella

Not only in his cousin’s bosom were vengeful thoughts nourished against Mr Beaumaris. Lady Somercote, not so doting a mother that she supposed any of her sons would be likely to prove more attractive to the heiress than the Nonpareil, could with pleasure have driven the long diamond pin she wore in her hair between his ribs; Mrs Kirkmichael thought bitterly that he might, considering the number of times she had gone out of her way to be agreeable to him, have bestowed a little of his attention upon her lanky daughter, a gesture which would have cost him nothing, and might have given poor Maria a start in the world; Mr Epworth, uneasily aware that for some inscrutable reason he was consistently cast in the shade by the Nonpareil, went the round of the clubs, saying that he had a very good mind to give Beaumaris a set-down at no very distant date; his aunt recalled that she had once quarrelled violently with Lady Mary Beaumaris, and said that it was from his mother Beaumaris had inherited his flirtatious disposition, adding that she was sorry for the woman he eventually married. Even Mr Warkworth and Lord Fleetwood said that it was rather too bad of the Nonpareil to trifle with the season’s biggest catch; while several gentlemen who slavishly copied every detail of Mr Beaumaris’s attire wished him safely underground.

There was one voice which was not raised to swell this chorus of disapprobation: Lady Bridlington was in raptures over Mr Beaumaris. She could talk of nothing else throughout the following day. While he sat beside Arabella, not a smile, not a gesture had escaped the good lady’s anxious eye. He had paid no heed to any other girl in the room; he had plainly advertised to his world that he found Miss Tallant charming: there was no one in London more amiable, more truly polite, more condescending, or more in her ladyship’s good graces! Over and over again she told Arabella that her success was now assured; it was not until her first transports had somewhat abated that she could be rational enough to drop a word of warning in Arabella’s ear. But the more she thought of Mr Beaumaris’s pronounced attentions to the girl, the more she remembered how many innocent maidens had fallen victims to his spear, the more she became convinced that it was necessary to put Arabella on her guard. So she said in an earnest voice, and with a slightly anxious look in her eye: ‘I am persuaded, my love, that you are too sensible a girl to be taken-in! But, you know, I stand to you in place of your Mama, and I think I should tell you that Mr Beaumaris is a most accomplished flirt! No one could be more delighted than I am that he should have singled you out, but it will never do, my dear, if you were to develop a tendre in that direction! I know I have only to drop a word in your ear, and you will not be offended by it! He is a confirmed bachelor. I could not tell you the number of hearts he has broken! Poor Theresa Howden – she married Lord Congleton some years later – went into a decline, and was the despair of her afflicted parents! They did think – and I am sure that nothing could have been more pronounced for all one season than – But no! Nothing came of it!’

Arabella had not been the reigning belle for twenty miles round Heythram without learning to distinguish between the flirt and the man who was in earnest, and she replied instantly: ‘I know very well that Mr Beaumaris means nothing by his compliments. Indeed, I am in no danger of being taken-in like a goose!’

‘Well, my love, I hope you are not!’

‘You may be sure I am not. If you do not see any objection, ma’am, I mean to encourage Mr Beaumaris’s attentions, and make the best use I may of them! He believes himself to be amusing himself at my expense; I mean to turn him to very good account! But as for losing my heart – No, indeed!’

‘Mind, we cannot depend upon his continuing to single you out!’ said Lady Bridlington, with unwonted caution. ‘If he did, it would be beyond anything great, but there is no saying, after all! However, last night’s work was enough to launch you, my dear, and I am deeply thankful!’ She heaved an ecstatic sigh. ‘You will be invited everywhere, I daresay!’

She was quite right. Within one fortnight, she was in the happy position of finding herself with five engagements for the same evening, and Arabella had had to break into Sir John’s fifty-pound bill to replenish her wardrobe. She had been seen at the fashionable hour of the Promenade in the Park, sitting beside the Nonpareil, in his high-perch phaeton; she had been almost mobbed at the theatre; she was on nodding terms with all manner of exalted persons; she had received two proposals of marriage; Lord Fleetwood, Mr Warkworth, Mr Epworth, Sir Geoffrey Morecambe, and Mr Alfred Somercote (to mention only the most notable of her suitors) had all entered the lists against Mr Beaumaris; and Lord Bridlington, travelling by fast post all the way, had returned from the Continent to discover what his mother meant by filling his house with unknown females in his absence.

He expressed himself, in measured terms, as being most dissatisfied with Lady Bridlington’s explanation. He was a stocky, somewhat ponderous young man, with more sobriety than properly belonged to his twenty-six years. His understanding was not powerful, but he was bookish, and had early formed the habit of acquiring information by the perusal of authoritative tomes, so that by the time he had attained his present age his retentive memory was stocked with a quantity of facts which he was perhaps a little too ready to impart to his less well-read contemporaries. His father’s death, while he was still at Eton, coupled with a conviction that his mother stood in constant need of superior male guidance, had added disastrously to his self-consequence. He prided himself on his judgement; was a careful steward of his fortune; had the greatest dislike of anything bordering on the unusual; and deplored the frivolity of those who might have been expected to have been his cronies. His mother’s elation at not having spent one evening at home in ten days found no echo in his heart. He could neither understand why she should want to waste her time at social functions, nor why she should have been foolish enough to have invited a giddy girl to stay with her. He was afraid that the cost of all this mummery would be shocking; had Lady Bridlington asked for his counsel, which she might easily have done, he would have advised most strongly against Arabella’s visit.

Lady Bridlington was a trifle cast-down by this severity, but since her late husband had left her to the enjoyment of a handsome jointure, out of which she always shared the expenses of the house in Park Street with Frederick, she was able to point out to him that the charge of entertaining Arabella fell upon her, and not upon him. He said that the wish to dictate to his Mama was far from him, but that he must persist in thinking the affair most ill-advised. Lady Bridlington was fond of her only son, but Arabella’s success had quite gone to her head, and she was in no mood to listen to sober counsels. She retorted that he was talking a great deal of nonsense; upon which he bowed, compressed his lips, and bade her afterwards remember his words. He added that he washed his hands of the whole business. Lady Bridlington, who had no desire to see him fall a victim to Arabella’s charms, was torn between exasperation, and relief that he showed no sign of succumbing to them.

‘I will allow her to be a pretty-enough young female,’ said Frederick fairmindedly, ‘but there is a levity in her bearing which I cannot like, and all this gadding-about which she has led you into is not at all to my taste.’

‘Well, I can’t conceive why you should have come running home in this foolish way!’ retorted his mother.

‘I thought it my duty, ma’am,’ said Frederick.

‘It is a great piece of folly, and people will think it excessively odd in you! No one looked to see you in England again until July at the earliest!’

She was mistaken. No one thought it in the least odd of Lord Bridlington to have curtailed his tour. The opinion of society was pithily summed up by Mrs Penkridge, who said that she had guessed all along that that scheming Bridlington woman meant to marry the heiress to her own son. ‘Anyone could have seen how it would be!’ she declared, with her mirthless jangle of laughter. ‘Such odious hypocrisy, too, to hold to it that she did not expect to see Bridlington in England until the summer! Mark my words, Horace, they will be married before the season is over!’

‘Good gad, ma’am, I don’t fear Bridlington’s rivalry!’ said her nephew, affronted.

‘Then you are a goose!’ said Mrs Penkridge. ‘Everything is in his favour! He is the possessor of an honoured name, and a title, which you may depend upon it the girl wants, and – what is a great deal to the point, let me tell you! – he has all the advantage of living in the same house, of being always at hand to minister to her wishes, squire her to parties, and – Oh, it puts me out of all patience!’

But Miss Tallant and Lord Bridlington, from the very moment of exchanging their first polite greetings, had conceived a mutual antipathy which was in no way mitigated by the necessity each was under to behave towards the other with complaisance and civility. Arabella would not for the fortune she was believed to possess have grieved her kind hostess by betraying dislike of her son; Frederick’s sense of propriety, which was extremely nice, forbade him to neglect the performance of any attention due to his mother’s guest. He could appreciate, and, indeed, since he had a provident mind, applaud Mrs Tallant’s ambition to dispose of her daughters creditably; and since his own mother had undertaken the task of finding a husband for Arabella, he was prepared to lend his countenance to her schemes. What shocked and disturbed him profoundly was the discovery, within a week of his homecoming, that every gazetted fortune-hunter in London was dangling after Arabella.

‘I am at a loss, ma’am, to guess what you can possibly have said to lead anyone to suppose that Miss Tallant is an heiress!’ he announced.

Lady Bridlington, who had several times wondered much the same thing, replied uneasily: ‘I never said a word, Frederick! There is not the least reason why anyone should suppose such an absurdity! I own, I was a trifle surprised when – But she is a very pretty girl, you know, and Mr Beaumaris took one of his fancies to her!’

‘I have never been intimate with Beaumaris,’ said Frederick. ‘I do not care for the set he leads, and must deplore his making any modest female the object of his gallantry. The influence he exerts, moreover, over persons whom I should have supposed to have had more –’

‘Never mind that!’ begged his mother hastily. ‘You told me yesterday, Frederick! You may think Beaumaris what you please, but even you will not deny that it lies in his power to bring whom he will into fashion!’

‘Very likely, ma’am, but I have yet to learn that it lies in his power to prevail upon such men as Epworth, Morecambe, Carnaby, and – I must add! – Fleetwood, to offer marriage to a female with nothing but her face to recommend her!’

‘Not Fleetwood!’ protested Lady Bridlington feebly.

‘Fleetwood!’ repeated Frederick in an inexorable tone. ‘I do not mean to say that he is precisely hanging out for a rich wife, but that he cannot afford to marry a penniless girl is common knowledge. Yet his attentions towards Miss Tallant are more marked even than those of Horace Epworth. And this is not all! From hints dropped in my presence, from remarks actually made to me, I am persuaded that the greater part of our acquaintance believes her to be in the possession of a handsome fortune! I repeat, ma’am: what can you have said to have given rise to this folly?’

‘But I didn’t!’ cried poor Lady Bridlington almost tearfully. ‘Indeed, I took the greatest pains not to touch on the question of her expectations! It is false to call her penniless, because she is no such thing! With all those children of course the Tallants can do very little for her upon her marriage, but when her father dies – and Sophia, too, for she has some money as well –’

‘A thousand or so!’ interrupted Frederick contemptuously. ‘I beg your pardon, ma’am, but nothing could be more plain to me than that something you have said – inadvertently, I daresay! – has done all this mischief. For mischief I must deem it! A pretty state of affairs it will be if we are to have the world saying – as it will say, once the truth is known! – that you have foisted an impostress upon society!’

This terrible forecast temporarily outweighed in Lady Bridlington’s mind the sense of strong injustice the rest of her son’s remarks had aroused. She turned quite pale, and exclaimed: ‘What is to be done?’

‘You may rely upon me, ma’am, to do what is necessary,’ replied Frederick. ‘Whenever the opportunity offers, I shall say that I have no notion how such a rumour came to be spread about.’

‘I suppose you must do so,’ agreed his mother dubiously. ‘But I do beg of you, Frederick, not to take the whole world into your confidence on the subject! There is not the least need for you to enter into all the details of the poor child’s circumstances!’

‘It would be quite improper for me to do so, ma’am,’ replied Frederick crushingly. ‘I am not responsible for her visit to London! I must point out to you, Mama, that it is you who have engaged yourself – unwisely, I consider – to establish her suitably. I am sure I have no desire to prejudice her chances of matrimony. Indeed, since I understand that you mean to keep her with you until some man offers for her, I shall be happy to see her married as soon as possible!’

‘I think you are very disagreeable!’ said Lady Bridlington, dissolving into tears.

Her peace of mind was quite cut-up. When Arabella came into the room presently, she found her still dabbing at her eyes, and giving little sniffs. Quite dismayed, Arabella begged to be told the cause of this unhappiness. Lady Bridlington, glad of a sympathetic audience, squeezed her hand gratefully, and without reflection poured forth the sum of her grievances.

Kneeling beside her chair, Arabella listened in stricken silence, her hand lying slackly within Lady Bridlington’s. ‘It is so unkind of Frederick!’ Lady Bridlington complained. ‘And so unjust, for I assure you, my dear, I never said such a thing to a soul! How could he think I would do so? It would have been quite wicked to have told such lies, besides being so foolish, and vulgar, and everything that is dreadful! And why Frederick should think I could be so lost to all sense of propriety I am sure I don’t know!’

Arabella’s head sank; guilt and shame almost overpowered her; she could not speak. Lady Bridlington, misreading her confusion, felt a qualm of conscience at having so unguardedly taken her into her confidence, and said: ‘I should not have told you! It is all Frederick’s fault, and I daresay he has exaggerated everything, just as he so often does! You must not let it distress you, my love, for even if it were true it would be absurd to suppose such a man as Mr Beaumaris, or young Charnwood, or a great many others I could name, care a button whether you are a rich woman or a pauper! And Frederick will make everything right!’

‘How can he do so, ma’am?’ Arabella managed to ask.

‘Oh, when he sees the opportunity, he will say something to damp such ridiculous notions! Nothing very much, you know, but making light of the story! We need not concern ourselves, and I am sorry I spoke of it to you.’

With all her heart Arabella longed for the courage to confess the whole. She could not. Already Lady Bridlington was rambling on, complaining fretfully of Frederick’s unkindness, wondering what cause he had to suppose his mother ill-bred enough to have spread a false tale abroad, and wishing that his father were alive to give him one of his famous scolds. She said instead, in a subdued tone: ‘Is that why – why everyone has been so very polite to me, ma’am?’

‘Certainly not!’ said Lady Bridlington emphatically. ‘You must have perceived, my love, how many, many friends I have in London, and you may believe they accepted you out of compliment to me! Not that I mean to say – But before you were at all known, naturally it was my sponsorship that started you in the right way.’ She patted Arabella’s hand consolingly. ‘Then, you know, you are so bright, and pretty, that I am sure it is no wonder that you are so much sought-after. And above all, Arabella, we must remember that the world always follows what is seen to be the mode, and Mr Beaumaris has made you the fashion by singling you out, even driving you in his phaeton, which is an honour indeed, I can tell you!’

Arabella’s head was still bowed. ‘Does – does Lord Bridlington mean to tell everyone that I – that I have no fortune at all, ma’am?’

‘Good gracious, no, child! That would be a fatal thing to do, and I hope he would have more sense! He will merely say it has been greatly exaggerated – enough to frighten away the fortune-hunters, but what will not weigh with an honest man! Do not give it another thought!’

Arabella was unable to obey this injunction. It was long before she could think of anything else. Her impulse was to fly from London, back to Heythram, but hardly had she reached the stage of calculating whether she still possessed enough money to pay her fare on the first coach than all the difficulties attached to such a precipitate retreat presented themselves to her. They were insuperable. She could not bring herself to confess to Lady Bridlington that her own was the wicked, ill-bred tongue accountable for the rumour, nor could she think of any excuse for returning to Yorkshire. Still less could she face the necessity of telling Papa and Mama of her shocking behaviour. She must remain in Park Street until the season came to an end, and if Mama was sadly disappointed at the failure of her schemes, at least Papa would never blame his daughter for returning to her home unbetrothed. She perceived clearly that unless something very wonderful were to happen this must be so, and felt herself guilty indeed.

Not for several hours did her mind recover its tone, but she was both young and optimistic, and after a hearty burst of tears, followed by a period of quiet reflection, she began insensibly to be more hopeful. Something would happen to unravel her difficulties; the odious Frederick would scotch the rumour; people would gradually grow to realise that they had been mistaken. Mr Beaumaris and Lord Fleetwood would no doubt write her down as a vulgar, boasting miss, but she must hope that they had not actually told everyone that it was she who had been responsible for the rumour. Meanwhile there was nothing to be done but to behave as though nothing were the matter. This, to a naturally buoyant spirit, was not so hard a task as might have been supposed: London was offering too much to Arabella for her to be long cast-down. She might fancy all her pleasure destroyed, but she would have been a very extraordinary young woman who could have remembered her difficulties while cards and floral offerings were left every day at the house; while invitations poured in to every form of entertainment known to ingenious hostesses; while every gentleman was eager to claim her hand for the dance; while Mr Beaumaris took her driving in the Park behind his match-grays, and every other young lady gazed enviously after her. Whatever the cause, social success was sweet; and since Arabella was a very human girl she could not help enjoying every moment of it.

She expected to see some considerable diminution in her court once Lord Bridlington had let it be known that her fortune had been grossly exaggerated, and braced herself to bear this humiliation. But although she knew from Lady Bridlington that Frederick had faithfully performed his part, still the invitations came in, and still the unattached gentlemen clustered round her. She took fresh heart, glad to find that fashionable people were not, after all, so mercenary as she had been led to think. Neither she nor Frederick had the smallest inking of the true state of affairs: she because she was too unsophisticated; Frederick because it had never yet occurred to him that anyone could doubt what he said. But he might as well have spared his breath on this occasion. Even Mr Warkworth, a charitably-minded gentleman, shook his head over it, and remarked to Sir Geoffrey Morecambe that Bridlington was doing it rather too brown.

‘Just what I was thinking myself,’ agreed Sir Geoffrey, scrutinising his necktie in the mirror with a dissatisfied eye. ‘Shabby, I call it. Do you think this way I have tied my cravat has something of the look of the Nonpareil’s new style?’

Mr Warkworth directed a long, dispassionate stare at it. ‘No,’ he said simply.

‘No, no more do I,’ said Sir Geoffrey, sad but unsurprised. ‘I wonder what he calls it? It ain’t precisely a Mail-coach, and it certainly ain’t an Osbaldeston, and though I did think it had something of the look of a Trône d’amour, it ain’t that either. I can tie every one of them.’

Mr Warkworth, whose mind had wandered from this vital subject, said, with a frown: ‘Damn it, it is shabby! You’re right!’

Sir Geoffrey was a little hurt. ‘Would you say it was as bad as that, Oswald?’

‘I would,’ stated Mr Warkworth. ‘In fact, the more I think of it the worse it appears to me!’

Sir Geoffrey looked intently at his own image, and sighed. ‘Yes, it does. I shall have to go home and change it.’

‘Eh?’ said Mr Warkworth, puzzled. ‘Change what? Good God, dear boy, I wasn’t talking about your necktie! Wouldn’t dream of saying such a thing to my worst enemy! Bridlington!’

‘Oh, him!’ said Sir Geoffrey, relieved. ‘He’s a gudgeon!’

‘Oughtn’t to be gudgeon enough to think everyone else is one. Tell you what: wouldn’t do him any good if he did hoax everybody with that bag of moonshine! She’s a devilish fine girl, the little Tallant, and if you ask me she wouldn’t have him if he were the only man to offer for her.’

‘You can’t expect him to know that,’ said Sir Geoffrey. ‘I shouldn’t wonder if he hasn’t a suspicion he’s a dead bore: in fact, he can’t have! Stands to reason: wouldn’t prose on as he does, if he knew it!’

Mr Warkworth thought this over. ‘No,’ he pronounced at last. ‘You’re wrong. If he don’t know he’s a dead bore, why does he want to frighten off everyone else? Havey-cavey sort of a business: don’t like it! a man ought to fight fair.’

‘It ain’t that,’ replied Sir Geoffrey. ‘Just remembered something: the little Tallant don’t want it to be known she’s as rich as a Nabob. Fleetwood told me: tired of being courted for her money. They were all after her in the north.’

‘Oh!’ said Mr Warkworth. He asked with vague interest: ‘Where does she come from?’

‘Somewhere up north: Yorkshire, I believe,’ said Sir Geoffrey, inserting a cautious finger into one of the folds of his necktie, and easing it a trifle. ‘I wonder if that’s better?’

‘Well, that’s a queer thing. Saw Clayton the other day. He comes from Yorkshire, and he don’t know the Tallant.’

‘No, and Withernsea don’t either. Mind you, I won’t swear it was Yorkshire! Might have been one of those other devilish rural places – Northumberland, or something. Know what I think?’

‘No,’ said Mr Warkworth.

‘Shouldn’t be surprised if she’s the daughter of some merchant or other, which would account for it.’

Mr Warkworth looked shocked. ‘No, really, dear old boy! Nothing of that sort about the girl! Never heard her utter a word that smelled of the shop!’

‘Granddaughter, then,’ said Sir Geoffrey, stretching a point. ‘Pity, if I’m right, but I’ll tell you one thing, Oswald! I wouldn’t let it weigh with me.’

Upon consideration, Mr Warkworth decided that he would not either.

Since these views were fairly representative, Arabella was not destined to suffer the mortification of seeing her usual gallants hang back when next she attended the Assembly at Almack’s. Lord Bridlington was escorting his mother and her guest, for besides being very correct in such matters, he liked Almack’s, and approved of the severity of the rules imposed on the club by its imperious hostesses. A number of his contemporaries said openly that an evening spent at Almack’s was the flattest thing in town, but these were frippery fellows with whom Lord Bridlington had little to do.

His politeness led him to engage Miss Tallant for the first country-dance, a circumstance which made the unsuccessful applicants for her hand exchange significant glances. They saw to it that he should have no further opportunity of standing up with her. Not one of them would have believed that he had no desire to do so, much preferring to stroll about the rooms, telling as many people as could be got to listen to him all about his travels abroad.

The waltz, which was still looked at askance by old-fashioned persons, had long since forced its way into Almack’s, but it was still the unwritten law that no lady might venture to take part in it unless one of the patronesses had clearly indicated her approval. Lady Bridlington had taken care to impress this important convention upon Arabella’s mind, so she refused all solicitations to take the floor when the fiddles struck up for the waltz. Papa would certainly not approve of the dance, she knew: she had never dared to tell him that she and Sophia had learnt the steps from their friends the Misses Caterham, a very dashing pair. So she retired to a chair against the wall, beside Lady Bridlington’s, and sat fanning herself, and trying not to look as though she longed to be whirling round the floor. One or two more fortunate damsels, who had watched with disfavour her swift rise to popularity, cast her glances of such pitying superiority that she had to recollect a great many of Papa’s maxims before she could subdue the very improper sentiments which entered her breast.

Mr Beaumaris, who had looked in midway through the evening – in fact, a bare ten minutes before the doors were relentlessly shut against late-comers – apparently for no other purpose than to entertain the wife of the Austrian Ambassador, saw Arabella, and was amused, guessing her emotions correctly. Suddenly he cast one of his quizzical looks at Princess Esterhazy, and said: ‘Shall I ask that chit to dance?’

She raised her delicate black brows, a faint smile flickering on her lips. ‘Here, my friend, you are not supreme! I think you dare not.’

‘I know I dare not,’ said Mr Beaumaris, disarming her promptly. ‘That is why I ask you, Princess, to present me to the lady as a desirable partner.’

She hesitated, glancing from him to Arabella, and then laughed, and shrugged. ‘Well! She does not put herself forward, after all, and I find her style excellent. Come, then!’

Arabella, startled to find herself suddenly confronted by one of the most formidable patronesses, rose quickly.

‘You do not dance, Miss Tallant. May I present Mr Beaumaris to you as a very desirable partner?’ said the Princess, with a slightly malicious smile cast at Mr Beaumaris.

Arabella could only curtsy, and blush, and be sorry to find that she was so ill-natured as to be conscious of feelings of ignoble triumph over the ladies who had been kind enough to look pityingly at her.

Mr Beaumaris led her on to the floor, and encircled her waist with one arm, taking her right hand in a light clasp. Arabella was naturally a good dancer, but she felt extremely nervous, partly because she had never attempted the waltz, except in the Misses Caterham’s old schoolroom, and partly because it was so strange to be held in such close proximity to a man. For several turns she answered Mr Beaumaris very much at random, being preoccupied with her feet. She was so much shorter than he that her head only just reached his shoulder, and since she felt shy she did not look up, but steadfastly regarded the top of his waistcoat. Mr Beaumaris, who was not in the habit of devoting himself to such very young ladies, found this bashfulness amusing, and not unattractive. After he thought she had had time to recover from it a little, he said: ‘It is a nice waistcoat, isn’t it, Miss Tallant?’

That did make her look up, and quickly too, her face breaking into laughter. She looked so lovely, and her big eyes met his with such a frank, ingenuous expression in them, that he was aware of a stir of something in his heart that was not mere amusement. But he had no intention of going to dangerous lengths with this or any other pretty chit, and he said, in a bantering tone: ‘It is customary, you know, to exchange polite conversation during the dance. I have now addressed no fewer than three unexceptionable remarks to you without winning one answer!’

‘You see, I am minding my steps,’ she confided seriously.

Decidedly this absurd child was a refreshing change from the generality of damsels! Had he been a younger man, he reflected, he might easily have succumbed to her charm. It was fortunate that he was thirty, and no longer to be caught by a pretty face and naïve ways, for he knew well that these would pall on him, and that he wanted something more in the lady whom he would one day marry. He had never yet found just what he was looking for, did not even know what it might prove to be, and was perfectly resigned to his bachelordom.

‘It is not at all necessary,’ he said. ‘You dance delightfully. You do not mean to tell me that this is the first time you have waltzed?’

Miss Tallant certainly did not mean to tell him anything of the sort, and was already regretting her impulsive confidence. ‘Good gracious, no!’ she said. ‘The first time at Almack’s, however.’

‘I am happy to think, then, that mine was the honour of first leading you on to the floor. You will certainly be besieged by every man present now it is seen that you have no objection to the waltz.’

She said nothing, but fell to studying his waistcoat again. He glanced down at her, a hint of mockery in the smile that hovered about his mouth. ‘How does it feel, Miss Tallant, to be the rage of town? Do you enjoy it, or have your northern triumphs given you a distaste for this sort of thing?’

She raised her eyes, and her chin too. ‘I am afraid, Mr Beaumaris, that you betrayed what I – what I begged you not to speak of!’

There was a distinctly sardonic look in his eye, but he replied coolly: ‘I assure you, ma’am, I have mentioned your circumstances to one person only: Lord Fleetwood.’

‘Then it is he who –’ She broke off, flushing.

‘Very probably,’ he agreed. ‘You must not blame him, however. Such things are bound to leak out.’

Her lips parted, and then closed again. He wondered what she had so nearly said: whether he was to have been treated to her society manners, or whether she had been about to tell him the truth. On the whole, he was glad that she had thought better of it. If she took him into her confidence, he supposed he would be obliged, in mercy, to bring this game to a close, which would be a pity, since it was providing him with a great deal of entertainment. To have elevated an unknown provincial to the heights of society was an achievement which only one who had no illusions about the world he led could properly appreciate. He was deriving much enjoyment too from observing the efforts of his devoted copyists to win the provincial’s hand. As for Arabella herself, Mr Beaumaris shrugged off a momentary compunction. She would no doubt retire in due course to her northern wilds, marry some red-faced squire, and talk for the rest of her life of her brilliant London season. He glanced down at her again, and thought that it would be a pity if she were to retire too soon. Probably, by the end of the London season he would be only too thankful to see her go, but for the present he was very well satisfied to gratify her by a little flirtation.

The music ceased, and he led her off to the floor, to one of the adjoining rooms, where refreshments were served. These were of a very simple nature, the strongest drink offered being a mild claret-cup. Mr Beaumaris procured a glass of lemonade for Arabella, and said: ‘You must let me thank you for a delightful few minutes, Miss Tallant: I have seldom enjoyed a dance more.’ He received only a slight smile and an inclination of the head in answer to this which were both so eloquent of incredulity that he was delighted. No fool, then, the little Tallant! He would have pursued this new form of sport, in the hope of teasing her into retort, but at that moment two purposeful gentlemen bore down upon them. Arabella yielded to the solicitations of Mr Warkworth, and went off on his arm. Sir Geoffrey Morecambe sighed in a languishing way, but turned his rebuff to good account by seizing the opportunity to ask Mr Beaumaris what he called the arrangement of his neckcloth. He had to repeat the question, for Mr Beaumaris, watching Arabella walk away with Mr Warkworth, was not attending. He brought his gaze to bear on Sir Geoffrey’s face, however, at the second time of asking, and raised his brows enquiringly.

‘That style you have of tying your cravat!’ said Sir Geoffrey. ‘I don’t perfectly recognise it. Is it something new? Should you object to telling me what you call it?’

‘Not in the least,’ replied Mr Beaumaris blandly. ‘I call it Variation on an Original Theme.’