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  ‘Have some more Madeira,’ said Sir Richard soothingly.

  ‘Well, thank you, yes, I will. But don’t think I’m here to badger you about something which don’t concern me, because I’m not!’

  ‘Richard!’ said Lady Wyndham deeply, ‘I dare no longer meet Saar face to face!’

  ‘As bad as that, is he?’ said Sir Richard. ‘I haven’t seen him myself these past few weeks, but I’m not at all surprised. I fancy I heard something about it, from someone – I forget whom. Taken to brandy, hasn’t he?’

  ‘Sometimes,’ said Lady Wyndham, ‘I think you are utterly devoid of sensibility!’

  ‘He is merely trying to provoke you, Mama. You know perfectly well what Mama means, Richard. When do you mean to offer for Melissa?’

  There was a slight pause. Sir Richard set down his empty wine-glass, and flicked with one long finger the petals of a flower in a bowl on the table. ‘This year, next year, sometime–or never, my dear Louisa.’

  ‘I am very sure she considers herself as good as plighted to you,’ Louisa said.

  Sir Richard was looking down at the flower under his hand, but at this he raised his eyes to his sister’s face, in an oddly keen, swift look. ‘Is that so?’

  ‘How should it be otherwise? You know very well that Papa and Lord Saar designed it so years ago.’

  The lids veiled his eyes again. ‘How medieval of you!’ sighed Sir Richard.

  ‘Now, don’t, pray, take me up wrongly, Richard! If you don’t like Melissa, there is no more to be said. But you do like her – or if you don’t, at least I never heard you say so! What Mama and I feel – and George, too – is that it is time and more that you were settled in life.’

  A pained glance reproached Lord Trevor. ‘Et tu, Brute?’ said Sir Richard.

  ‘I swear I never said so!’ declared George, choking over his Madeira. ‘It was all Louisa. I dare say I may have agreed with her. You know how it is, Richard!’

  ‘I know,’ agreed Sir Richard, sighing. ‘You too, Mama?’

  ‘Oh Richard, I live only to see you happily married, with your children about you!’ said Lady Wyndham, in trembling tones.

  A slight, unmistakable shudder ran through the Corinthian. ‘My children about me…Yes. Precisely, ma’am. Pray continue!’

  ‘You owe it to the name,’ pursued his mother. ‘You are the last of the Wyndhams, for it’s not to be supposed that your Uncle Lucius will marry at this late date. There is Melissa, dear girl, the very wife for you! So handsome, so distinguished – birth, breeding: everything of the most desirable!’

  ‘Ah – your pardon, ma’am, but do you include Saar, and Cedric, not to mention Beverley, under that heading?’

  ‘That’s exactly what I say!’ broke in George. ‘“It’s all very well,” I said, “and if a man likes to marry an iceberg it’s all one to me, but you can’t call Saar a desirable father-in-law, damme if you can! While as for the girl’s precious brothers,” I said, “they’ll ruin Richard inside a year!”’

  ‘Nonsense!’ said Louisa. ‘It is understood, of course, that Richard would make handsome settlements. But as for his being responsible for Cedric’s and Beverley’s debts, I’m sure I know of no reason why he should!’

  ‘You comfort me, Louisa,’ said Sir Richard.

  She looked up at him not unaffectionately. ‘Well, I think it is time to be frank, Richard. People will be saying next that you are playing fast and loose with Melissa, for you must know the understanding between you is an open secret. If you had chosen to marry someone else, five, ten years ago, it would have been a different thing. But so far as I am aware your affections have never even been engaged, and here you are, close on thirty, as good as pledged to Melissa Brandon, and nothing settled!’

  Lady Wyndham, though in the fullest agreement with her daughter, was moved at this point to defend her son, which she did by reminding Louisa that Richard was only twenty-nine after all.

  ‘Mama, Richard will be thirty in less than six months. For I,’ said Louisa with resolution, ‘am turned thirty-one.’

  ‘Louisa, I am touched!’ said Sir Richard. ‘Only the deepest sisterly devotion, I am persuaded, could have wrung from you such an admission.’

  She could not repress a smile, but said with as much severity as she could muster: ‘It is no laughing matter. You are no longer in your first youth, and you know as well as I do that it is your duty to think seriously of marriage.’

  ‘Strange,’ mused Sir Richard, ‘that one’s duty should be invariably so disagreeable.’

  ‘I know,’ said George, heaving a sigh. ‘Very true! very true indeed!’

  ‘Pooh! nonsense! What a coil you make of a simple matter!’ Louisa said. ‘Now, if I were to press you to marry some romantical miss, always wanting you to make love to her, and crying her eyes out every time you chose to seek your amusements out of her company, you might have reason to complain. But Melissa – yes, an iceberg, George, if you like, and what else, pray, is Richard? – Melissa, I say, will never plague you in that way.’

  Sir Richard’s eyes dwelled inscrutably upon her face for a moment. Then he moved to the table and poured himself out another glass of Madeira.

  Louisa said defensively: ‘Well, you don’t wish her to cling about your neck, I suppose?’

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘And you are not in love with any other woman, are you?’

  ‘I am not.’

  ‘Very well, then! To be sure, if you were in the habit of falling in and out of love, it would be a different matter. But, to be plain with you, you are the coldest, most indifferent, selfish creature alive, Richard, and you will find in Melissa an admirable partner.’

  Inarticulate clucking sounds from George, indicative of protest, caused Sir Richard to wave a hand towards the Madeira. ‘Help yourself, George, help yourself !’

  ‘I must say, I think it most unkind in you to speak to your brother like that,’ said Lady Wyndham. ‘Not but what you are selfish, dear Richard. I’m sure I have said so over and over again. But so it is with the greater part of the world! Everywhere one turns one meets with nothing but ingratitude!’

  ‘If I have done Richard an injustice, I will willingly ask his pardon,’ said Louisa.

  ‘Very handsomely said, my dear sister. You have done me no injustice. I wish you will not look so distressed, George: your pity is quite wasted on me, I assure you. Tell me, Louisa: have you reason to suppose that Melissa expects me to – er – pay my addresses to her?’

  ‘Certainly I have. She has been expecting it any time these five years!’

  Sir Richard looked a little startled. ‘Poor girl!’ he said. ‘I must have been remarkably obtuse.’

  His mother and sister exchanged glances. ‘Does that mean that you will think seriously of marriage?’ asked Louisa.

  He looked thoughtfully down at her. ‘I suppose it must come to that.’

  ‘Well, for my part,’ said George, defying his wife, ‘I would look around me for some other eligible female! Lord, there are dozens of ’em littering town! Why, I’ve seen I don’t know how many setting their caps at you! Pretty ones, too, but you never notice them, you ungrateful dog!’

  ‘Oh yes, I do,’ said Sir Richard, with a curl of the lips.

  ‘Must George be vulgar?’ asked Lady Wyndham tragically.

  ‘Be quiet, George! And as for you, Richard, I consider it in the highest degree nonsensical for you to take up that attitude. There is no denying that you’re the biggest catch on the Marriage Mart – Yes, Mama, that is vulgar too, and I beg your pardon – but you have a lower opinion of yourself than I credit you with if you can suppose that your fortune is the only thing about you which makes you a desirable parti. You are generally accounted handsome – indeed, no one, I believe, could deny that your person is such as must please; a