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  She laughed. 'You don't change much, Miles! You always were a care-for-nobody, and you always will be! I wish you may succeed with your Abigail. She's the youngest sister, isn't she? I never met her, but I'm acquainted with Mary Brede, and have been avoiding James Wendover and his odious wife for years.'

  'Yes, that's what I mean to do,' he said.

  His next visit was to a slightly portly gentleman, residing in Mount Street, who stared unbelievingly at him for a moment, before ejaculating: 'Calverleigh!' and starting forward to wring his hand. 'Well, well, well. After all these years! I hardly recognised you, you old devil!'

  'No, I had to look twice at you, too. You're as fat as a flawn, Naffy!'

  'Well, at least no one would take me for a dashed blackamoor!' retorted Mr Nafferton.

  After this exchange of compliments, the two middle-aged gentlemen settled down, with a bottle between them, to indulge in reminiscences which, had they been privileged to hear them, would have startled Mr Nafferton's wife, and

  considerably diminished his credit with his heir.

  'Lord, how it takes me back, seeing you again!' said Mr Nafferton a trifle wistfully. 'Those were the days!'

  'Nights, mostly,' said Mr Calverleigh. 'How many times did you end up in a lighthouse? I lost count! What became of the Dasher, by the way?'

  'Dolly!' uttered Mr Nafferton. 'To think I should have forgotten she was used to be your peculiar!' He chuckled. 'You'd never recognise her! She set up a fancy-house a dozen or more years ago! Drives in the park in a smart barouche, with one or two of her prime articles, and looks like a duchess! Behaves like one, too! No Haymarket ware in her house: all regular Incognitas! Or so I'm told!' he added hastily.

  Mr Calverleigh grinned, but merely said: 'Became an Abbess, did she? Yes, she always was as shrewd as she could hold together. Where's this fancy-house of hers?'

  Armed with this information, his next visit was to a house in Bloomsbury, where he sent in his card. Miss Abigail Wendover would certainly not have approved of this excursion.

  Mr Calverleigh, ushered into a saloon, was still inspecting the elegance of its furnishings with deep appreciation when the lady upon whom he had come to call entered the room, his card in her hand, and exclaimed: 'It is you! Good God! I couldn't believe it!'

  Mr Calverleigh, laughter in his eyes, took two long strides towards her, caught her in his arms, and heartily embraced her.

  She returned the embrace, but said: 'Now, that's quite enough! I'll have you know I'm a respectable woman now!'

  Mr Calverleigh, most reprehensibly, gave a shout of mirth.

  'Well, you know what I mean!' said the lady, bridling a little.

  'Yes, to be sure, I do. Who gave you the gingerbread,

  Dolly?'

  'Oh, he was a regular rabshackle!' she disclosed. 'You wouldn't have known him, for he was long after your time. I never liked him above half, but he was full of juice, and I'm bound to say he bled very freely. What I mean is, he was very generous to me,' she amended, suddenly attacked by a fit of alarming primness.

  Mr Calverleigh was unimpressed. 'No, is that what you mean? Come down from your high ropes! Do you remember the night a party of us went on a spree to Tothill Fields, and you broke a bottle of Stark Naked over the head of the fellow that was trying to gouge my eyes out?'

  'No, I don't!' she said sharply. 'And if you hadn't got into a mill with a bruiser and a couple of draymen because you was as drunk as Davy's sow I wouldn't have had to demean myself ! If I did do anything of the sort, which I don't at all remember!'

  'I must be thinking of someone else,' said Mr Calverleigh meekly. 'What was the name of that towheaded bit of game Tom Plumley brought along with him?'

  'That fussock!' she exclaimed, in a voice vibrant with scorn. 'Why, she hadn't enough spunk to hit a blackbeetle on the head! Now, give over, Miles, do! I don't say I'm not glad to see you again: well, it's like a breath of old times, but that's the trouble! Seeing you makes me forget myself, and start talking flash, which is a thing I haven't done in years! What's more, you didn't come here to crack about old revel-routs! And if, Mr Calverleigh,' she added, with another transition into gentility, but with a twinkle in her sharp eyes, 'you have come here in search of a bit of game, I must warn you that you will find no cheap molls in this establishment, but only young ladies of refinement.'

  'That's very good, Dolly!' he approved. 'Did it take you long to learn to talk like that?'

  'Out with it! What is it you want?' she demanded, ignoring

  this sally.

  'Just what you said, of course,' he replied. 'A young lady of refinement!'

  Fifteen

  The Leavenings had hired lodgings in Orange Grove. Not an ideal situation, perhaps, admitted Mrs Leavening, when Selina pointed out to her its several disadvantages, but it was a fine, open place, and no need at all to summon up a chair every time she wanted to visit the Pump Room, or do a little shopping. As for the Abbey bells, she didn't doubt that they would soon grow to be so accustomed to them that they would scarcely notice them. 'Well, my dear,' she told Selina placidly, 'when you get to be of our age, you must have learnt that you won't find anything that's exactly what you want, so, if you've a particle of commonsense, you'll take the best that's offered you.' She then said, with a chuckle: 'Mr Calverleigh will laugh when he hears of it! He would have it, only because I like looking out of the window at what's passing in the street, that I should never be happy but in the centre of the Town!'

  Abby had been taking no more than a polite interest in the Leavenings' plans, but these words affected her powerfully. She said: 'If he ever does hear of it! Does he mean to return to Bath, ma'am?'

  She spoke with studied nonchalance, but Mrs Leavening was not deceived. The quizzical gleam in her eye brought the blood into Abby's cheeks, but all she said was: 'Well, my dear, as his rooms are being kept for him at the York House, it's to be supposed he does!'

  That was the only ray of sunlight permitted for many days to break through the clouds surrounding Miss Abigail Wendover. She was enduring a time of trial, for which not Miles Calverleigh alone was responsible, but also her dear sister, and her cherished niece.

  Influenza had left Fanny irritable and depressed. It was quite unnecessary for Dr Rowton to say that this uncharacteristic mood was attributable to her illness, and only what was to be expected. Abby knew that, but neither her own good sense nor the doctor's reassurance made it easier for her to bear patiently the extremely wearing demands made upon her spirits by a convalescent who, when not sunk in gloom which affected everyone in her vicinity, peevishly found fault with everything, from the strength of the tea carried up to her room on her breakfast-tray, to the intolerable dullness of the books so hopefully chosen by Abby at Meyler's Library; or stared resentfully out of a rain-spotted window at a leaden sky, and sighed: 'If only it would stop raining! If only I could go out!'

  Poor little Fanny, said Selina, was quite unlike her merry self: an understatement which kindled a spark of amusement in Abby's shadowed eyes. Dr Rowton told Abby, in his blunt way, that the sooner she stopped indulging Fanny the better it would be for herself, and Fanny too; but Dr Rowton did not know that there was another and deeper cause of Fanny's crotchets than influenza. Abby did know, and even when she most wanted to slap her tiresome darling her heart went out to her. She was herself suffering from much the same malady, and if she had been seventeen, instead of eight-and-twenty, no doubt she would have abandoned herself to despair, just as Fanny was doing.

  Fanny's megrims might impose a severe strain upon Abby's nerves, but it was Selina who rasped them raw, and broke down her command over herself.

  Selina had seen Mrs Clapham, and she knew that it was all Too True. She had seen her in the Pump Room, whither a twinge of rheumatism had sent her (braving the elements in her carriage, with the hood drawn up) that morning. She had not at first known who she was, for how should she? She had merely been thinking that the bonnet she was wearing was in excellent s