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  He could not help laughing, but he shook his head, saying: 'You are always so humoursome, Miss Hetta, that one can't but be diverted by your jokes. Are you never serious?'

  'Well, not for very long at a time!' she replied. 'I fear I am like Beatrice, and was born to speak all mirth and no matter! But come, we were discussing little Cherry's situation, not mine! She really is a damsel in distress!'

  'Hers is indeed a hard case,' he said heavily.

  'Yes, but I have every hope that it won't be long before she receives an offer!'

  'From Lord Desford?' he interrupted, watching her face closely.

  'From Desford?' she exclaimed involuntarily. 'Good God, no! At least, I most sincerely hope not! It would never do!'

  'Why do you say that? If he has fallen in love with her – '

  'My dear sir, I daresay Desford must be the last man to forget what he owes to his name, and his family! What in the world do you imagine Lord Wroxton would say to such a match?'

  'Do you mean to say that Lord Desford will marry to oblige his father?' he demanded.

  'No, but I am very sure he won't marry to disoblige him!' she said. 'When I said that I hoped it wouldn't be long before she received an offer I meant that if we can but introduce her into some household where she will be expected to help to entertain the visitors I have little doubt that she will receive an offer – perhaps several offers! – from perfectly respectable suitors, to whom her father's reputation won't signify a button.'

  'You must permit me to say, Miss Hetta, that her father's reputation ought not to signify to any man who loved her!'

  'Yes, that is all very well,' she said impatiently, 'but you cannot expect a Carrington to ally himself to a Steane! It isn't even as if they were of the true nobility! Lord Nettlecombe is only the second baron, you know, and his father, from all I have heard, was a very rough diamond.'

  'A man need not be contemptible because he was a rough diamond.'

  'Very true!' she retorted. 'He might be an admirable person! But unless I have been quite misinformed he was certainly not that! There is bad blood in the Steanes, Mr Nethercott, and although it hasn't come out in Cherry, who knows but what it might show itself in her children?'

  'If these are your sentiments, Miss Hetta, I must wonder at it that you dared to expose your brother to the risk of falling in love with her!' he said, in a quizzing tone, but with a grave look.

  She responded lightly: 'Yes, and I must own that I had the strongest misgivings! But Desford said that there was no need for me to tease myself over that, because it wouldn't happen. He says that boys of Charlie's age seldom fall in love with girls no older than they are themselves, but languish at the feet of dashing man-traps. And he was perfectly right, as he by far too often is! – Charlie thinks poor Cherry a very mean bit! Which is a good thing, of course, but I do trust that by the time he is old enough to think of settling down he will have outgrown his taste for dashing man-traps!'

  'Is that Lord Desford's opinion?' asked Mr Nethercott, unable to keep a sardonic note out of his voice.

  It passed her by. She said, wrinkling her brow: 'I don't think I ever asked him, but I'm very sure it would be, because, now you put me in mind of it, I recall that the first females he ever dangled after were years older than he was himself, and not at all the sort of women anyone but a confirmed noddicock would have dreamt of asking to marry him. And that, you know, Desford never was, even in his most ramshackle days!'

  Her eyes lit with reminiscent amusement as she spoke, but a glance at Mr Nethercott's face informed her that he did not share her amusement, so she very wisely brought their têteà-tête to an end, by getting up from her chair, and inviting him to go with her to the library, where Charlie, still confined largely to the sofa, would be delighted to enjoy a comfortable cose with him.

  Eight

  In the meantime the Viscount was being afforded ample opportunity to regret his chivalry. He spent the day following his return to Arlington Street in a number of abortive attempts to discover Lord Nettlecombe's where abouts, even (though with extreme reluctance) going to the length of overcoming his strong dislike of Mr Jonas Steane, and calling at his house in Upper Grosvenor Street. But Mr Steane, like his father, had gone out of town; and although he had not left his house entirely empty the ancient caretaker who was at last induced to respond to the summons of a bell pulled with enough vigour to have broken the wires, and to a crescendo of knocks, was unable to give Desford any more precise information than that Mr Steane had taken his family to Scarborough. No, he disremembered that he had ever been told the exact direction of his lodgings: all he knew was that the servants had been given a fortnight's holiday, but would be back again at the end of the following week, with orders to give the house a proper clean-up before the family returned to it. No, he hadn't never heard that Lord Nettlecombe had gone off to Scarborough too, but if anyone was to ask him he'd be bound to say he didn't think he had, being as he was at outs with Mr Steane. Finally, with the praiseworthy intention of assisting the Viscount, he said that he wouldn't wonder at it if Mr Steane's lawyer knew where he was to be found; but as he was unable to furnish Desford with the lawyer's name, misdoubting that no one had ever told him what it was, being that it wasn't no concern of his, the suggestion that Desford should seek him out was not as helpful as he plainly believed it to be.

  It was at the end of a singularly unrewarding day, when the Viscount sat down to dine in solitary state in his own house, that his deeply sympathetic butler, distressed by his master's sad lack of appetite, and extremely harassed expression, racked his own brains, and was suddenly inspired to present him with the most promising advice of any that had yet been proffered. He said, as he refilled the Viscount's glass: 'Has it occurred to your lordship that Lord Nettlecombe may have retired to his country seat for the summer months?'

  The Viscount, who had been lost in gloomy consideration of the difficulties which confronted him, looked up quickly, and ejaculated: 'Good God, what a fool I am! I'd forgotten he had one!'

  'Yes, my lord,' said Aldham, placing a cheesecake before him. 'I have only a few minutes ago remembered it myself. So while you were partaking of your first course I took the liberty of consulting the Index to the House of Lords, which I recalled having seen on your lordship's bookshelves, and although this volume is ten years old I fancy the information it contains may still be relied upon. It states that Lord Nettlecombe's country seat is situated in the County of Kent, not far from Staplehurst. One cannot suppose that it will be difficult to find, for it is known as Nettlecombe Manor.'

  'Thank you!' said the Viscount warmly. 'I am very much obliged to you! Indeed, I don't know where I should be without you! I'll post off to Staplehurst tomorrow morning!'

  He did so, demanding his breakfast at an unfashionably early hour, so that his chaise had gone beyond the stones before such members of the ton who still remained in London had emerged from their bedchambers. His postilions had no difficulty at all in locating Nettlecombe Manor, for a few miles before Staplehurst was reached a signpost pointed the way to the house. It was approached by a narrow lane, bordered by high, straggling hedges, and with grass growing between the wheel-ruts. This did not hold out much promise that my Lord Nettlecombe's house would justify the description of it as a 'Country seat', but it was found to be, if not a mansion, quite a large house, set in a small park, and approached by a short carriage-drive, which led from a pretty little lodge, and showed signs of having undergone extensive weeding operations. When the chaise drew up before the main entrance, and the Viscount jumped lightly down from it, he saw that the house was being repaired, a circumstance which, as he later said acidly, should have been enough to inform him that whoever was residing in the house he was not Lord Nettlecombe.

  This was soon proved to be the case. My lord had hired the house to a retired merchant, whose wife, he informed Desford, had been mad after what he called a grand Country Place for years. 'Mind you, my lord,' he said, with a fat chuckl