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‘Sure, ’tis no gentleman he is, at all!’

  ‘’Twas on the subject of gentlemen that we –’

  ‘Quarrelled,’ supplied her aunt.

  ‘Disagreed,’ amended his lordship.

  ‘Disagreed,’ nodded Diana. ‘I asked him whether Mr Everard was not some grand gentleman, and he evaded the point.’

  ‘I vow ’tis slander!’ cried Jack. ‘I merely said that Everard was no gentleman at all.’

  ‘There! And was not that evading the point, Sir Miles?’

  ‘Was it? Sure, I’m inclined to agree with him.’

  ‘I declare you are both in league against me!’ she cried, with greater truth than she knew. ‘I mean, was he perhaps a titled gentleman?’

  ‘But how should Jack know that?’

  ‘Because I am sure he knows him – or, at least, of him.’

  ‘Listen, Mistress Di,’ broke in my lord, shooting a warning glance at O’Hara. ‘I will tell you all about Mr Everard, and I hope you will be satisfied with my tale.’ He paused and seemed to cudgel his brain. ‘First he is, of course, titled – let me see – yes, he is a Duke. Oh, he is certainly a Duke – and I am not sure but what he is royal – he –’

  ‘Now you are ridiculous!’ cried Miss Betty.

  ‘You are very teasing,’ said Diana, and tried to frown. ‘First you pretend to know nothing about Mr Everard, and then you tell me foolish stories about him. A duke, indeed! I believe you really do know nothing about him!’

  As Carstares had hoped, she refused to believe the truth.

  ‘He is playing with ye, child,’ said O’Hara, who had listened to Jack’s tale with a face of wonder. ‘I warrant he knows no Everard – eh, Jack?’

  ‘No, I cannot say that I do,’ laughed his lordship.

  ‘But – but – you said –’

  ‘Never mind what he said, Miss Di. ’Tis a scurvy fellow he is.’

  She regarded him gravely.

  ‘Indeed, I almost think so.’

  But the dimple peeped out for all that! The next instant it was gone, and Diana turned a face of gloom to her aunt, pouting her red lips, adorably, so thought my lord.

  ‘Mr Bettison,’ she said in accents of despair.

  At these mystic words, Jack saw Miss Betty frown, and heard her impatient remark: ‘Drat the man!’

  He looked towards the house, and perceived a short, rather stout, young man to be walking with a peculiar strutting gait towards them. The boy was good-looking, Carstares acknowledged to himself, but his eyes were set too close. And he did not like his style. No, certainly he did not like his style, nor the proprietary way in which he kissed Diana’s hand.

  ‘How agreeable it is to see you again, Mr Bettison!’ said Miss Betty with much affability. ‘I declare ’tis an age since we set eyes on you!’

  ‘Oh, no, Aunt,’ contradicted Diana sweetly. ‘Why, it was only a very short while ago that Mr Bettison was here, surely!’ She withdrew the hand that the young man seemed inclined to hold fast to, and turned to John.

  ‘I think you do not know Mr Bettison, Mr Carr?’ she said. ‘Mr Bettison, allow me to present you to Mr Carr. Sir Miles I think you know?’

  The squire bowed with a great deal of stiff hostility. Carstares returned the bow.

  ‘You will excuse my not rising, I beg,’ he smiled. ‘As you perceive – I have had an accident.’

  Light dawned on Bettison. This was the man who had rescued Diana, confound his impudence!

  ‘Ah, yes, sir! Your arm, was it not? My faith, I should be proud of such a wound!’

  It seemed to Carstares that he smiled at Diana in a damned familiar fashion, devil take his impudence!

  Diana sank down on the cushion again, and shook some more strands out on to his knee.

  ‘How quick you have been! Now we will do the blue ones.’

  Bettison glared. This fellow seemed prodigious intimate with Diana, devil take him! He sat down beside Miss Betty, and addressed my lord patronisingly.

  ‘Let me see – er – Mr Carr. Have I met you in town, I wonder? At Tom’s perhaps?’

  This country bumpkin would belong to Tom’s, reflected John savagely, for no reason at all. Aloud he said:

  ‘I think it extremely unlikely, sir. I have been abroad some years.’

  ‘Oh, indeed, sir? The “grand tour”, I suppose?’

  Mr Bettison’s tone was not the tone of one who supposes any such thing.

  John smiled.

  ‘Not this time,’ he said, ‘that was seven years ago.’

  Mr Bettison had heard rumours of this fellow who, it was murmured, was nought but a common highwayman.

  ‘Really? After Cambridge, perhaps?’

  ‘Oxford,’ corrected Carstares gently.

  Curse his audacity! thought Mr Bettison.

  ‘Seven years ago – let me think. George must have been on the tour then – Selwyn, I mean, Miss Beauleigh.’

  Jack, who had made the tour with several other young bucks fresh down from college, accompanied as far as Paris by the famous wit himself, held his peace.

  Mr Bettison then launched forth into anecdotes of his own tour, and seeing that his friend was entirely engrossed with Miss Diana and her silks, O’Hara felt it incumbent on him to draw the enemy’s fire, and taking his own departure, to bear the squire off with him. For which he received a grateful smile from my lord, and a kiss blown from the tips of her fingers from Mistress Di, with whom he was on the best of terms.

  Fourteen

  Mistress Diana is Unmaidenly

  The idyllic summer days passed quickly by, and every time that my lord spoke of leaving, the outcry was so indignant and so firm that he hastily subsided and told himself he would stay just another few days. His shoulder, having mended up to a certain point, refused quite to heal, and exertion brought the pain back very swiftly. So his time was for the most part spent with Mistress Di out of doors, helping her with her gardening and her chickens – for Diana was an enthusiastic poultry farmer on a small scale – and ministering to her various pets. If Fido had a splinter in his paw, it was to Mr Carr that he was taken; if Nellie, the spaniel, caught a live rabbit, Mr Carr would assuredly know what to do with it, and the same with all the other animals. The young pair grew closer and closer together, while Miss Betty and O’Hara watched from afar, the former filled with pride of her darling, and satisfaction, and the latter with apprehension. O’Hara knew that his friend was falling unconsciously in love, and he feared the time when John should realise it. He confided these fears to his wife, who, with young David, was staying at her mother’s house in Kensington, in a long and very Irish letter. She replied that he must try and coax my lord into coming to stay with them, when her charms would at once eclipse Mistress Diana’s, though to be sure, she could not understand why Miles should not wish him to fall in love, for as he well knew, ’twas a prodigious pleasant sensation. If he did not know it, then he was indeed most disagreeable. And had he ever heard of anything so wonderful? – David had drawn a picture of a horse! Yes, really, it was a horse! Was he not a clever child? Further, would her dearest Miles please come and fetch her home, for although Mamma was prodigious amiable, and wanted her to stay several weeks, she positively could not live without her husband an instant longer than was necessary!

  As soon as O’Hara read the last part of the letter he brushed Carstares and his love affairs to one side, and posted straight to London to obey the welcome summons.

  Bit by bit my lord discovered that he was very much in love with Diana. At first his heart gave a great bound, and then seemed to stop with a sickening thud. He remembered that he could not ask her to marry him, disgraced as he was, and he immediately faced the situation, realising that he must go away at once. His first move was to Mr Beauleigh, to tell him of his decision. On being asked why he must so suddenly leave Horton House, he explaine