s a result of Felix’s visit, Lady Elizabeth went to visit Lady Jevington on the following morning. It was surprising, but understandable, that Alverstoke should take an interest in so engaging a young gentleman; but it appeared, from Felix’s artless conversation, that his interest extended to Jessamy—whom he permitted to drive his cherished horses; and that was by no means so understandable, unless this unprecedented behaviour sprang from a wish to gratify the Beauty of the family. Eliza had learnt all about the divine Charis from one of her oldest friend’s rare letters, but she had not set much store by Sally Jersey’s prophecy that Alverstoke would marry a girl who had not yet attained her twentieth birthday. Sally might say that it was always so with hardened bachelors, but she fancied she knew her brother rather better than Sally did, and she had dismissed the prophecy as a mere on-dit.

Dining tête-à-tête with him, she was careful to evince little curiosity about the Misses Merriville, merely saying: “I hope you mean to introduce them to me. If they are as delightful as Felix, I don’t wonder at it that you consented to befriend them! How do they go on? Did you contrive to fire them off successfully?”

“Yes, and without the smallest exertion. I had merely to present them to the ton. I wish you might have seen Louisa’s face when they came into the room! She had met Frederica already, and was agreeably surprised, I fancy, to discover that she is neither in the first blush of youth, nor a beauty, but a passably goodlooking young woman, with a great deal of commonsense, and a somewhat masterful disposition. Louisa was therefore unprepared for Charis.” A reminiscent smile curled his lips. “I suppose I must have seen the Beauties of close on twenty seasons, but I must own I have never seen one comparable to Charis Merriville.” He raised his wineglass, and drank a little. “Face and figure are perfection, and her expression most winning. Impossible to find a fault! Even her carriage is graceful; and it is universally agreed that her manners are particularly pleasing.”

Startled, and considerably dismayed, Eliza said: “Good gracious! I must certainly meet this paragon!”

“You may do so tomorrow, if you choose. She will be at the assembly the Seftons are holding, I imagine. You had better accompany me to it—if only to spare me the gush of reproaches Maria Sefton would swamp me with for not having brought you. I shall be astonished if Charis doesn’t take your breath away.”

Unlike her sisters, Eliza had never tried to provide her only brother with an eligible wife. Relations between them had always been amicable, even mildly affectionate, but no strong ties bound any member of the Dauntry family to another. Happily married to her John Kentmere, absorbed in her progeny, and rarely visiting London, she had little interest in Alverstoke’s future, and had once infuriated Louisa by saying that his marriage was no concern of hers. But installed once more in Alverstoke House, picking up the threads of her old life, she did feel some concern, for it seemed to her that he was on the verge of contracting an alliance which could only end in disaster. However beautiful she might be, this school-room-miss of his would become a dead bore to him within a year of their marriage—probably even sooner! She had set no great store by Lady Jersey’s disclosures, and even less by an impassioned letter from Louisa, recommending her to try what her supposed influence over Alverstoke would do to save him (and the Family) from a shocking mesalliance; but the dithyramb Alverstoke had sung in praise of Charis Merriville had the effect of sending her off next day to visit Augusta. With all her faults, Augusta did not want for sense or judgment.

Lady Jevington received her with temperate pleasure, enquired, with meticulous civility, after the health of her family, and expressed the hope that she would replenish her wardrobe while she was in London. “For I should be failing in my duty as your eldest sister, Eliza, if I did not tell you that that outmoded gown you are wearing gives you a very off appearance,” she said. “No doubt you have come to London for that purpose.”

“Well, I haven’t,” replied Eliza. “I’ve come to discover if it’s true that Vernon had fallen head over ears in love with some highly finished piece of nature not yet out of her teens.”

“Not to my knowledge,” replied Lady Jevington, with majestic cairn. She favoured her sister with a thin smile, in which tolerance and contempt were nicely mixed. “I collect that Louisa has been writing to you. Louisa is a fool.”

“Yes, but Sally is no fool, and she too wrote to me that Vernon stands within an ace of committing what I can’t but feel would be the greatest imprudence of his life!”

“I have never,” stated Lady Jevington, “rated Sarah Fane’s understanding above the average.”

“Augusta, he described the girl to me last night in such terms as I have never heard him use before!”

“He was hoaxing you,” said Lady Jevington.

Eliza frowned in perplexity. “Do yon mean to say that she is not so excessively lovely? But, if that’s so, why should he—”

“I do not think I have ever seen a more beautiful girl than Charis Merriville—and rarely one who is more prettily behaved,” pronounced her ladyship judicially. “She made an instant hit when she appeared at Ver-non’s ball, which was not wonderful, and now has more than half the eligible bachelors languishing at her feet. Gregory,” she added, with unruffled composure, “is one of them. But nothing will come of that, and I am happy to know that his first fancy should have alighted on a modest girl of excellent principles. I daresay it will do him a great deal of good.”

Eliza said impatiently: “Yes, but Vernon? If he is not in love with the girl, what in the world prevailed upon him to bestir himself, not only on her behalf, but on her brothers’ as well? It is not at all like him!”

“I do not pretend to be in his confidence, but I am tolerably well-acquainted with him, and I believe he presented the Merriville girls merely to spite Louisa, and Lucretia. That Woman,” said Augusta, with awful restraint, “was not behindhand in badgering him to hold a ball at Alverstoke House, to mark Chloë’s come-out, as well as Jane’s. One may guess the means he used to compel Louisa to chaperon the girls! He is at liberty to indulge his freakish whims as he pleases, but I consider that his conduct was most reprehensible. Indeed, I strongly advised him not to yield to Louisa’s and Lucretia’s importunities.”

Restraining the impulse to remind her that Alverstoke had never been known to listen to sisterly advice, Eliza said: “I dare say he might have invited the Merrivilles to his ball to punish Louisa, but that doesn’t account for the rest of it. One of his so-called wards—Felix: the most delightful urchin!—invaded the house yesterday, and it was perfectly plain that he looks upon Vernon as a certain source of indulgences. He doesn’t stand in the least awe of him either, which tells its own tale. Now, why, pray, should Vernon, who is utterly indifferent to our children, interest himself in the Merrivilles, if not because he wishes to make himself acceptable to their sister?”

“That, no doubt, is the reason. But unless I am much mistaken it is the elder and not the younger sister for whom he has conceived a decided tendre.”

Eliza stared at her. “Good God, how is this? He told me she was passably goodlooking, not in her first youth, full of commonsense, and masterful!”

“Very true,” agreed Lady Jevington. “I believe her to be some four-and-twenty years of age, but from the circumstances of her mother’s early demise, which left her the virtual mistress of the household, one would suppose her to be older. I think her a young woman of character, and I have come to the conclusion that she will suit Alverstoke very well.”

“Augusta!” Eliza gasped. “A woman who is no more than passably goodlooking for Alverstoke? You must be all about in your head! When, pray, has he had a tendre for any but regular out-and-outers?”

“And when, my dear Eliza, have any of these out-and-outers, as you call them, failed to bore him within a few months?” retorted Augusta. “Frederica cannot, I own, hold a candle to Charis, in respect of beauty; but she has a great deal of countenance, and a liveliness of mind which Charis lacks. They are both agreeable, well-bred girls, but Charis is a lovely ninnyhammer, while Frederica, in my judgment, is a woman of superior sense.”

A trifle stunned by this measured pronouncement, Eliza said: “Augusta, am I all about in my head? Do you seriously mean to tell me that you think one of Fred Merriville’s daughters an eligible match for Alverstoke?”

“It is not, perhaps, the match I should have chosen for him,” admitted her ladyship. “Upon reflection, however, I believe it will do very well. Unless you are prepared to face with equanimity the prospect of seeing that Block, Endymion, step into Alverstoke’s shoes, you will agree that it is of the highest importance that Alverstoke should marry, and set up his nursery, before he becomes wholly abandoned to the single state. I think I may say that I have spared no pains to introduce to his notice every eligible female of my acquaintance. I shall not attempt to deny that my exertions were useless—as were Louisa’s! But that was to be expected!” she said, momentarily descending from her Olympian heights. “If I were to tell you, Eliza, of Louisa’s folly—!” She checked herself, resuming her dignity, and said: “But that is of no moment. Suffice it to say that neither her nor my efforts were attended by success.” She paused again, but continued after a moment, with austere resolution, and fixing her sister with a quelling eye. “My natural partiality,” she stated, “has never blinded me to the faults in Alverstoke’s character, but much as I deprecate them, I feel bound to say, in common justice, that they are not to be laid wholly at his own door. Setting aside the indulgence that was granted him from the hour of his birth, he has been so much courted, flattered, and positively hunted, that much as one may deplore the cynicism with which he regards females one cannot wonder at it. I assure you, Eliza, I have frequently blushed for my sex! And that, I fancy, is why he seems bent on fixing his interest with Frederica. You may depend upon it that I have closely observed her. But if you were to ask me whether she is aware of his interest in her, or would welcome an offer from him, I should be obliged to reply that I do not know. All I can say is that I have never seen her throw out the smallest lure to him, or betray by the least sign that she cherishes for him any warmer feeling than a cousinly friendship.”

Digesting this, Eliza said slowly: “I see. You think that intrigues him, and you may well be right. But it seems very odd to me that both Louisa and Sally believe him to be in love with the other sister!”

“He is being extremely cautious,” said Augusta.

“It must be for the first time!”

“Exactly so! I am of the opinion that he does not yet know his own mind. But I consider it significant that he is taking pains—also, I daresay, for the first time!—to do nothing that might make Frederica the subject of malicious on-dits. Even Louisa has failed to perceive that there is a very different expression in his eyes when he talks to Frederica than the quizzing look he gives Charis.”

“Well!” said Eliza. “I had no notion of this, or that matters had become so serious! To be sure, it did occur to me, when we sat cosing together last night, and when Felix set out to cajole him, that he was not as—as inhuman as he was used to be! If that is Frederica’s influence at work—Oh, but Augusta, you can’t have considered! Only think of her encumbrances! He told me himself that Felix and his brother are in her charge; can you conceive of his being willing to undertake any part of that responsibility?”

“By what I hear,” responded Augusta dryly, “he has already begun to do so. I am heartily glad of it: it has given him something to think of besides his own pleasure. I have never made any secret of my conviction that idleness has been his ruin. His wealth has made it possible for him to indulge his every extravagant whim without even troubling himself to count the cost; he has never been obliged to consider anyone but himself; and what is the result? He was bored before he was thirty!”

“So you advocate the guardianship of two schoolboys as a remedy?” Eliza gave a chuckle, as she passed her own sons under mental review. “Well, he certainly wouldn’t be bored!” she said. She began to draw on her gloves. “I hope to make the acquaintance of the Misses Merriville this evening, and am now doubly anxious to do so. It will be hard to convince me, however, that such a female as you have described would make Alverstoke a suitable wife.”

But when she drove away from the Seftons’ house that night, she was much inclined to think that Augusta might be right. She felt strongly drawn to Frederica, liking her frank, natural manners, her air of quiet elegance, and the laughter in her eyes. That must have been what had attracted Alverstoke, she decided—if he was attracted. It was impossible to make up her mind on that question, for while, on the one hand, he plainly stood on terms of friendly intimacy with her, on the other, he did not linger beside her for many minutes, but strolled away to engage Mrs Ilford in a light flirtation. Lady Elizabeth noted, with approval, that Frederica’s eyes neither followed him, nor afterwards searched for him in the crowded room. Augusta was right, she thought: the girl has quality. But to describe her as passable merely was to do her a gross injustice: she was certainly dimmed by her sister’s brilliance, but in any other company she would rank as a very pretty girl. She possessed, moreover, the indefinable gift of charm, which, unlike Charis’s fragile beauty, would remain with her to the end.

She said smilingly: “I must tell you that I have quite lost my heart to your brother Felix! You are aware, I daresay, that I made his acquaintance yesterday. A most engaging child!”

Frederica laughed, but shook her head. “Yes, but he is very naughty, and is quite in my black books—if he would but care for that! I strictly forbade him to plague Lord Alverstoke, who has been much too kind to him—indeed, to all of us!—already.”

“Oh, but he didn’t plague him! He told us that you had forbidden him to do so, and assured my brother that he was only asking him—!”

“Oh, dear, what a dreadful boy he is! I do beg your pardon: he told me that you said you wished to watch this ascension, and I’m very sure you don’t, ma’am!”

“On the contrary! I shall enjoy it excessively—and in particular the spectacle of my brother being brought round a small and probably grubby thumb!”

“Certainly grubby!” said Frederica ruefully. “Isn’t it odd that you may send a little boy out as neat as wax, and within half-an-hour he will be a perfect shag-rag?”

“Yes, and in that respect they are all exactly alike. I have three sons, you know, Miss Merri—Oh, no, why should we peel eggs? Frederica! We are cousins, are we not?”

“Well, I think we are,” said Frederica. “Only—only rather remote, I’m afraid!” She hesitated, and then said candidly: “It must seem very odd to you that I should have asked Lord Alverstoke to befriend us. The thing was he was the only relation whose name I knew. My father had several times spoken of him, so—so I was so bold-faced as to apply to him. I was very anxious, you see, that my sister should have a London season.”

“I can readily understand that,” Eliza said, looking towards Charis, who made one of a group of young people on the opposite side of the room. “I see she has Endymion Dauntry on a string: if he were not so handsome one would take him for a mooncalf! Is that his sister, Chloë, talking to young Wrenthorpe? How monstrous that he should be so much the better-looking!” She withdrew her gaze, and smiled at Frederica: “Alverstoke tells me that you are under the chaperonage of an aunt, but that she is not here tonight: I should like to make her acquaintance, so I shall pay her a morning visit, if you think she would not dislike it?”

“She could not do so, but I fear you would not be very likely to find her at home,” said Frederica. Her brow was creased, and she sighed. “It is a most unfortunate circumstance—well, a very sadcircumstance!—that my uncle, who lives in Harley Street, is dangerously ill, not expected to recover, which, indeed, one would not wish him to do, for he has been a sufferer from a painful and incurable disease for a long time. My Aunt Seraphina feels it to be her duty to support her sister, and spends almost the whole of every day in Harley Street. My Aunt Amelia is in great affliction, which seems to suspend her every faculty. She is—er—all sensibility, and the least thing overpowers her.” She added hastily: “Not that I mean to say this is a little thing!”

“I know just what you mean,” interposed Eliza. “Poor soul! I sincerely pity her, but I shall spare you any flowery commonplaces. I fancy we are alike in preferring the word with the bark on it: it is in the highest degree unfortunate that this should have happened just now! You must be most awkwardly placed, without your chaperon. Well, I mean to stay in London for a few weeks, so perhaps I may be able to come to your rescue.”

“Oh no, no! It is most kind of you, but that doesn’t signify! My aunt dislikes ton-parties, and rarely accompanies us to them. Indeed, she only consented to come to Upper Wimpole Street on the understanding that she need not do so. I thought that perhaps it would present a—a more correct appearance if she were known to be with us. But, in point of fact, I’ve always been Charis’s chaperon. You see, by the time she was seventeen I was quite beyond the age of needing a chaperon myself—whatever Cousin Alverstoke may say!”

“What does he say?” enquired Eliza.

“Everything that is disagreeable!” replied Frederica, laughing. “He thinks me sunk beneath reproach—positively a hurly-burly woman!—because I don’t take my maid with me when I go out! It is too absurd! As though I were a green girl, which anyone can see I am not!”

“No: but not, if I may say so, at your last prayers!”

Frederica smiled. “I daresay no female ever reaches her last prayers. But that doesn’t signify: the thing is that if my uncle were to die now it would be most improper, wouldn’t it? for Charis to attend any such parties as this.” The laughter sprang into her eyes again; she said comically: “Oh, dear! How odious that sounds! But when one has schemed and contrived, as I have, to bring a very beautiful and very dear sister to London for at least one season—it—it does seem hard to be obliged to forgo it all because an uncle, whom we scarcely know, and who is not a blood-relation—though a kind, worthy man!—should die at such an ill-chosen moment!”

A responsible twinkle came into Lady Elizabeth’s eyes, but she replied quite seriously: “Yes, I see. Awkward! But if he is only related to you by marriage I am much inclined to think that you need do no more than go into black gloves.”

“But not dance in black gloves!” objected Frederica.

Lady Elizabeth thought this over. “Perhaps not. I am not perfectly sure about dancing, but I do know that we were in black gloves for one of my great-aunts when my mother presented Louisa, and I seem to remember that she went to parties every night. I don’t care a rush for proper modes myself, and should have supposed that you do not either.”

“I’m obliged to care, for my sister’s sake. What might be thought eccentricity in Lady Elizabeth Dauntry would be condemned in Miss Merriville as very unbecoming conduct,” said Frederica dryly.

Eliza wrinkled up her nose distastefully. “I suppose that’s true. How detestable! Well, the only thing to be done is to—”

But at that moment she was interrupted by Lady Jersey, who came up to her with her hands outstretched, exclaiming: “Eliza! Oh, goodness me, I hadn’t the least notion—My dearest wretch, how dared you come to London without one word to me?”

So Frederica, moving away, did not learn what, in her ladyship’s opinion, was the best thing to be done. She could only hope that Mr Navenby, who had punctiliously asked her leave to address himself to Charis, might succeed in winning that soft heart. Since Charis showed a tendency to burst into tears whenever his name was mentioned, the hope was not strong; but when Frederica compared him to Endymion she found it hard to believe that Charis, ninnyhammer though she was, could really prefer a handsome block to so admirable a young man. Indeed, she had been so much exasperated by the sight of Charis gazing worshipfully up into Endymion’s face, at Almack’s, two days previously, that she had quite tartly requested her not to make such a figure of herself at the Seftons’ party.

“You cast just such sheep’s eyes at young Fraddon, when you fancied yourself in love with him,” she reminded her wilting sister. “But then you were only seventeen. You are past nineteen now, and indeed, my dear, it is tune that you showed a little commonsense! Instead, you show less! Will Fraddon had more than his handsome face to recommend him, and, had your tendre for him endured, neither I nor his parents would have raised any objection to the match. It didn’t, however, and now you choose to make a goose of yourself over another, and far less eligible, handsome face! Charis, surely you must know that I am not more opposed to such a match than is Mrs Dauntry—or, I don’t doubt, Lord Alverstoke? No, no, don’t cry! I don’t mean to be unkind, and I promise you I perfectly understand how you came to be dazzled by so magnificent a—a clodpole! Only try to give your thoughts a more rational direction! How could you be happy with a man whom his own relations think a block?”

The effect of this practical homily was to cast Charis into a fever of apprehension, which she communicated to Endymion at the first opportunity that offered. No sooner had he succeeded, at the Seftons’ assembly, in drawing her apart from the throng of her suitors than the story was poured into his ears, and his beloved was entreating him not to come near her for the rest of the evening. “I have the most dreadful feel that Frederica has divulged the secret of our attachment to Alverstoke!” she said tragically. “You cannot have failed to notice the way he watched us, when you first came up to me! I declare, I was ready to sink, when I looked up, and found his piercing gaze upon me!”

Endymion had not, in fact, noticed this unnerving circumstance, but he agreed that it was sinister. After painful cogitation, he said: “There’s only one thing for it: I must sell out!”

“Oh, no, no!” Charis breathed. “Never would I let you do so for my miserable sake!”

“Well, to own the truth, I’ve never cared for military life above half,” confided Endymion. “But the thing is that Cousin Alverstoke will very likely cut off my allowance, if I sell out, and then, you know, we should find ourselves obliged to bite on the bridle. Should you object to being a trifle cucumberish? Though I daresay if I took up farming, or breeding horses, or something of that nature, we should soon find ourselves full of juice.”

“I? she exclaimed. “Oh, no, indeed! Why, I’ve been cucumberish, as you call it, all my life! But for you it is a different matter! You must not ruin yourself for my sake.”

“It won’t be as bad as that,” he assured her. “My fortune ain’t handsome, but I wasn’t born without a shirt. And if I was to sell out my cousin couldn’t have me sent abroad.”

“But could he do so now?” she asked anxiously. “Harry says the Life Guards never go abroad, except in time of war.”

“No, but he might contrive to get me sent off on a mission.”

Her eyes widened. “What sort of a mission, dear love?”

“Well, I don’t know precisely, but we’re always sending missions somewhere or other, and very often they have a military man attached to them. Diplomatic stuff,” explained Endymion vaguely. “Like Lord Amherst going to China, a couple of years back, and staying there above a twelvemonth. Something to do with mandarins,” he added, in further elucidation of the mystery. “Wouldn’t suit me at all, but there’s no saying what I might happen if I don’t sell out. Got a devilish lot of influence, Alverstoke.”

Since it never entered her head that nothing short of Royal influence could avail to obtain a place for Endymion on any diplomatic mission, Charis was instantly assailed by a hideous vision of death and disaster. If the ship which bore so precious a burden escaped wreck, he would either perish at the hands of unknown, but probably murderous mandarins, or succumb to one of the deadly fevers peculiar to Eastern countries. Her face perfectly white, she said, in a low, passionate voice, that to avert such a fate she would be prepared to renounce him. Endymion was much moved, but, not having visualized any of the disasters which had sprung so immediately to her mind, he did not feel that the situation, even at its worst, called for so great a sacrifice. But when Charis suddenly begged him to leave her, because Lady Elizabeth was looking at them, he did feel, and forcibly, that they could not go on, he said, in this devilish havey-cavey way.

“Oh no! It is the greatest misery to me!” Charis agreed.

“Ay, and so it is to me, seeing you by scraps and not getting on in the least,” said Endymion gloomily. “I’ll tell you what, Charis: we must talk about it—decide what’s to be done, you know. Dashed if I won’t bring Chloë and Diana to see the balloon tomorrow! Ay, that’s the barber! You can tell your sister you wish to speak to Chloë: no harm in that! I’ll play least-in-sight, and while everyone’s watching the balloon we’ll slip off together. Shouldn’t think it will be difficult: bound to be a devilish crowd in the park.”

“No, no!” she said distressfully. “If you bring your sisters to see the ascent, you must promise not to come near me! Felix has persuaded Lord Alverstoke to take him there, and you may depend upon it that he will bring his carriage as close to ours as he may!”

“Alverstoke going to watch a balloon go up?” exclaimed Endymion incredulously. “You’re bamming!”

“No, indeed I’m not! He is taking Lady Elizabeth too, so you see—!”

“He must be getting queer in his attic! Well, I mean to say—! Alverstoke! Why the deuce must he take it into his head to come and play boots with everything? What a dam—what a dashed thing! Seems to me the end of it will be that we shall have to take a bolt to the Border!”

“Endymion!” she uttered, in shocked dismay. “You couldn’t ask me to do anything so dreadful! You’re joking me! It would be beyond everything!”

“Yes, I know it would. My Colonel wouldn’t like it, either. But we can’t stand on points for ever, love! Got to bring ourselves about somehow!”

“We will—oh, I know we shall succeed in the end! Hush, here comes Lord Wrenthorpe!”