They descended the steps of the house to the garden and the Green Park’s gravel walk up to Piccadilly. There they had view of Lord Fleetwood on horseback leisurely turning out of the main way’s tide. They saw him alight at the mews. As they entered the square, he was met some doors from the south corner by his good or evil genius, whose influence with him came next after the marriage in the amazement it caused, and was perhaps to be explained by it; for the wealthiest of young noblemen bestowing his name on an unknown girl, would be the one to make an absurd adventurer his intimate. Lord Fleetwood bent a listening head while Mr. Gower Woodseer, apparently a good genius for the moment, spoke at his ear.
How do we understand laughter at such a communication as he must be hearing from the man? Signs of a sharp laugh indicated either his cruel levity or that his presumptuous favourite trifled—and the man’s talk could be droll, Lady Arpington knew: it had, she recollected angrily, diverted her, and softened her to tolerate the intruder into regions from which her class and her periods excluded the lowly born, except at the dinner-tables of stale politics and tattered scandal. Nevertheless, Lord Fleetwood mounted the steps to his house door, still listening. His ‘Asmodeus,’ on the tongue of the world, might be doing the part of Mentor really. The house door stood open.
Fleetwood said something to Gower; he swung round, beheld the ladies and advanced to them, saluting. ‘My dear Lady Arpington! quite so, you arrive opportunely. When the enemy occupies the citadel, it’s proper to surrender. Say, I beg, she can have the house, if she prefers it. I will fall back on Esslemont. Arrangements for her convenience will be made. I thank you, by anticipation.’
His bow included Henrietta loosely. Lady Arpington had exclaimed: ‘Enemy, Fleetwood?’ and Gower, in his ignorance of the smoothness of aristocratic manners, expected a remonstrance; but Fleetwood was allowed to go on, with his air of steely geniality and a decision, that his friend imagined he could have broken down like an old partition board under the kick of a sarcasm sharpening an appeal.
‘Lord Fleetwood was on the point of going in,’ he assured the great lady.
‘Lord Fleetwood may regret his change of mind,’ said she. ‘The Countess of Fleetwood will have my advice to keep her footing in this house.’
She and Henrietta sat alone with Carinthia for an hour. Coming forth, Lady Arpington ejaculated to herself: ‘Villany somewhere!—You will do well, Henrietta, to take up your quarters with her a day or two. She can hold her position a month. Longer is past possibility.’
A shudder of the repulsion from men crept over the younger lady. But she was a warrior’s daughter, and observed: ‘My husband, her brother, will be back before the month ends.’
‘No need for hostilities to lighten our darkness,’ Lady Arpington rejoined. ‘You know her? trust her?’
‘One cannot doubt her face. She is my husband’s sister. Yes, I do trust her. I nail my flag to her cause.’