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  ‘Just so!’ he said sympathetically. ‘I think we had better part, don’t you?’

  ‘Sometimes,’ said Lady Buxted, with suppressed passion, ‘I think you must be the most odious, unnatural creature that ever drew breath! No doubt if it had been Endymion who had applied to you you would have been all compliance!’

  These bitter words appeared powerfully to affect the Marquis, but after a stunned moment he pulled himself together, and recommended his sister, in faint but soothing accents, to retire to bed with a paregoric draught. ‘For you are sadly out of curl, Louisa, believe me! Do let me assure you that if ever Endymion should ask me to give a ball in his honour I shall take steps to have him placed under restraint!’

  ‘Oh, how detestable you are!’ she exclaimed. ‘You know very well I didn’t mean – that what I meant – that –’

  ‘No, no, don’t explain it to me!’ he interrupted. ‘It is quite unnecessary, I promise you! I perfectly understand you – indeed, I’ve done so for years! You – and I rather fancy, Augusta too – have persuaded yourself that I have a strong partiality for Endymion –’

  ‘That – that moonling!’

  ‘You are too severe: merely a slow-top!’

  ‘Yes, we all know that you think him a positive pattern-card of perfection!’ she said angrily, kneading her handkerchief between her hands.

  He had been idly swinging his quizzing-glass on the end of its long riband, but was moved by this interjection to raise the glass to one eye, the better to survey his sister’s enflamed countenance. ‘What a very odd interpretation to put upon my words!’ he remarked.

  ‘Don’t tell me!’ retorted Lady Buxted, in full career. ‘Whatever your precious Endymion wants he may have for the asking! While your sisters –’

  ‘I hesitate to interrupt you, Louisa,’ murmured his lordship untruthfully, ‘but I think that extremely doubtful. I’m not at all benevolent, you know.’

  ‘And you don’t make him an allowance, I collect! Oh, no, indeed!’

  ‘So that’s what’s wound you up, is it? What a very hubble-bubble creature you are! At one moment you revile me for behaving scaly to my family, and at the next you come to cuffs with me for honouring my obligations to my heir!’

  ‘That block!’ she ejaculated. ‘If he is to become the head of the family I shan’t be able to bear it!’

  ‘Well, don’t put yourself into a taking on that score!’ he recommended. ‘Very likely you won’t be obliged to bear it, for the chances are that you’ll predecease me. I can give you five years, you know.’

  Lady Buxted, unable to find words adequate to the occasion, sought refuge in a burst of tears, reproaching her brother, between sobs, for his unkindness. But if she thought to soften his heart by these tactics she was the more mistaken: amongst the many things which bored him feminine tears and recriminations ranked high. Saying, with unconvincing solicitude, that if he had guessed that she was out of sorts he would not have inflicted his presence on her, he took his leave, sped on his way by the fervently expressed hope of his sister that she would at least live to see him come by his deserts.

  She stopped crying as soon as the door shut behind the Marquis; and might have recovered some degree of equanimity had not her elder son chosen to come into the room a few minutes later, to ask her, with a sad want of tact, whether his uncle had been visiting her; and, if so, what he had had to say to her proposal. Upon learning from her that Alverstoke had been as disobliging as she had always known he would be, he looked grave, but said that he could not be sorry, for, having thought the matter over carefully, he could not like the scheme.

  Lady Buxted’s disposition was not a loving one. She was quite as selfish as her brother, and far less honest, for she neither acknowledged, nor, indeed, recognised her shortcomings. She had long since convinced herself that her life was one long sacrifice to her fatherless children; and, by the simple expedients of prefixing the names of her two sons and three daughters by doting epithets, speaking of them (though not invariably to them) in caressing accents, and informing the world at large that she had no thought or ambition that was not centred on her offspring, she contrived to figure, in the eyes of the uncritical majority, as a devoted parent.

  Of her children, Carlton, whom she rather too frequently alluded to as her First-Born, was her favourite. He had never caused her to feel a moment’s anxiety. From being a stolid little boy, accepting his mama at her own valuation, he had grown into a worthy young man, with a deep sense of his responsibilities, and a serious turn of mind which not only kept him out of the scrapes into which his livelier cousin Gregory fell, but which made it quite impossible for him to understand what Gregory, or any other of his contemporaries, found to amuse them in their larks and revel-routs. His understanding was moderate, and his processes of thought as slow as they were painstaking, but he was not at all conceited, merely priding himself on his commonsense. Nor was he jealous of George, his younger brother, whose intelligence he knew to be superior to his own. He was, in fact, proud of George, thinking him a very needle-witted boy; and although his lucubrations had shown him that such ardent spirits as George’s might well lead that promising youth from the path of virtue, he never divulged this apprehension to his mother, or informed her of his intention to keep a watchful eye on George, when George’s schooldays came to an end. He neither confided in her, nor argued with her; and not even to his sister Jane had he ever uttered a word of criticism of her.

  He was four-and-twenty years of age, but as he had as yet shown no disposition to assert himself it came as an unpleasant surprise to his mother when he said that he knew of no reason why Jane’s come-out ball should be held at his uncle’s house, and at his expense. He sank rapidly in her affection; and, her temper being already exacerbated, they might soon have been at dagger-drawing if he had not prudently withdrawn from the engagement.

  He was grieved to discover presently that Jane partook of her mother’s sentiments upon this occasion, asserting that it was detestable of Uncle Vernon to be so disobliging, and so hardfisted as to begrudge the expenditure of a few hundred pounds.

  ‘I am persuaded, Jane,’ said Buxted gravely, ‘that you have too much propriety of taste to wish to be so much beholden to my uncle.’

  ‘Oh, fiddle-faddle!’ she exclaimed angrily. ‘Pray, why shouldn’t I be beholden to him? I’m sure it’s no more than his duty, after all!’

  His upper lip seemed to lengthen, as it always did when he was displeased; he said in a repressive voice: ‘I make every allowance for your disappointment, but I venture to think that you will find a party here, in your own home, very much more enjoyable than a vast rout at Alverstoke House, where more than half the guests, I daresay, would be quite unknown to you.’

  His second sister, Maria, who, with her own come-out in view, was quite as indignant as Jane, was unable to contain herself, but barely waited for him to come to the end of his measured speech before demanding why he talked such gammon. ‘More enjoyable to hold a nip-farthing ball here, with no more than fifty persons invited, than to make her first appearance at Alverstoke House? You must be all about in your head!’ she told his lordship. ‘It will be the shabbiest affair, for you know what Mama is! But if my uncle were to give a ball, only think how magnificent it would be! Hundreds of guests, and all of the first consequence! Lobsters, and aspic jellies and – and Chantillies, and creams –’

  ‘Invited to the ball?’ interpolated Carlton, with ponderous humour.

  ‘And champagne!’ struck in Jane, paying no heed to him. ‘And I should have stood at the head of the great staircase, with Mama, and my uncle, in a white satin gown, trimmed with rosebuds, and pink gauze, and a wreath!’

  This beautiful vision caused tears to well into her eyes, but failed to arouse enthusiasm in either Maria or in Carlton, Maria objecting that with her freckles and sandy hair she would look like a quiz; and Carlton saying that he wondered at it that his sisters should think so much of worldly trumpery. Neither thought