"Hallo!" he said, "you out here! Seldom you come out into the open air, isn't it?--Be much better for her if she came out oftener, wouldn't it, Wainwright? This is the stuff that they talk about in this country life. Why, in London a girl goes out and rides in the Row twice a-day, and walks and rides in Bond Street, and all that kind of thing, and get's plenty of exercise, don't you know? Whereas in the country it is so infernally dirty, and the roads are all so shamefully bad, and there are such a set of roughs about--tramps and that kind of people--that girls don't like going out; and yet they tell you that the country is more healthy than London! All dam stuff!"
"Well, Miss Derinzy's looks certainly do credit to the country, though I regret to hear that they are not thoroughly to be relied on. She has been telling me she suffers a great deal from illness."
"Oh, has she?" said the Captain, looking up nervously; "the deuce she has! Look here, Netty, don't you think you had better go in and dress yourself for dinner, and that kind of thing? It is quite cold now, and you haven't got any hat, and your aunt might make a row--I mean, mightn't like it, you know. Run in, there's a good girl; we shall all be in soon.-- Don't you go, Wainwright; I want to show you a view from the top of that hill--the Beacon Hill, they call it; it's about the only thing worth seeing in the whole infernal place."
When Captain Derinzy went in to dress for dinner, he said to his wife:
"It is a deuced good thing that I am a long-headed fellow and have my wits about me, and all that kind of thing. I found this young Wainwright walking with Annette, and he told me she had been telling him about her illness and all that. So I thought it best to separate 'em at once; and I sent her off into the house, and took him away to the Beacon Hill, though he seemed to me to be wanting to go after her all the time."
[CHAPTER XIX.]
TWO IN PURSUIT.
The festivities of Harbledown Hall were at an end, the amateur theatricals had been given--to the great delight of those performing in them, and to the excessive misery of those witnessing them--on two successive nights: the first to the invited neighbouring gentry, the second to the tenantry and servants. The guests were dispersed to various other country houses, and among them Miss Orpington and her father had taken their departure; but not to the same destination: the young lady, under the chaperonage of her aunt, was going to stay with some people, the head of whose family was an eminent tea-broker in the City, who, some years before, would not have been received into what is called society, but who was now so enormously rich that society found it could not possibly do without him. Society dined with him and danced with him at his house in Hyde Park Gardens, invited his wife and his daughter to all sorts of entertainments during the season, voted his two ugly dumpy sons the pleasantest fellows in Europe, and went regularly to stay with him during the autumn at his most charming country place at Brookside near Hastings.
As an acknowledgment of all these kindnesses the tea-broker had caused himself to be put into Parliament, and took his place with tolerable punctuality amongst the conscript fathers, never failing in obedience to the suggestions of the whip of his party, and, when he was not in the smoking-room, sleeping the sleep of the righteous on the back benches of the House.
The party at Brookside promised this year to be a particularly agreeable one; and as Miss Orpington had arranged for an introduction with the Yorkshire baronet with money, and that gentleman saw his way to unlimited sport during the day and unlimited flirtation during the evening, they agreed to console themselves even for the absence of the young lady's papa.