“I will allow her to be a pretty-enough young female,” said Frederick fairmindedly, “but there is a levity in her bearing which I cannot like, and all this gadding-about which she has led you into is not at all to my taste.”
“Well, I can’t conceive why you should have come running home in this foolish way!” retorted his mother.
“I thought it my duty, ma’am,” said Frederick.
“It is a great piece of folly, and people will think it excessively odd in you! No one looked to see you in England again until July at the earliest!”
She was mistaken. No one thought it in the least odd of Lord Bridlington to have curtailed his tour. The opinion of society was pithily summed up by Mrs. Penkridge, who said that she had guessed all along that that scheming Bridlington woman meant to marry the heiress to her own son. “Anyone could have seen how it would be!” she declared, with her mirthless jangle of laughter. “Such odious hypocrisy, too. to hold to it that she did not expect to see Bridlington in England until the summer! Mark my words, Horace, they will be married before the season is over!”
“Good gad, ma’am, I don’t fear Bridlington’s rivalry!” said her nephew, affronted.
“Then you are a goose!” said Mrs. Penkridge. “Everything is in his favour! He is the possessor of an honoured name, and a title, which you may depend upon it the girl wants, and—what is a great deal to the point, let me tell you!—he has all the advantage of living in the same house, of being always at hand to minister to her wishes, squire her to parties, and—Oh, it puts me out of all patience!”
But Miss Tallant and Lord Bridlington, from the very moment of exchanging their first polite greetings, had conceived a mutual antipathy which was in no way mitigated by the necessity each was under to behave towards the other with complaisance and civility. Arabella would not for the fortune she was believed to possess have grieved her kind hostess by betraying dislike of her son; Frederick’s sense of propriety, which was extremely nice, forbade him to neglect the performance of any attention due to his mother’s guest. He could appreciate, and, indeed, since he had a provident mind, applaud Mrs. Tallant’s ambition to dispose of her daughters creditably; and since his own mother had undertaken the task of finding a husband for Arabella, he was prepared to lend his countenance to her schemes. What shocked and disturbed him profoundly was the discovery, within a week of his homecoming, that every gazetted fortune-hunter in London was dangling after Arabella.
“I am at a loss, ma’am, to guess what you can possibly have said to lead anyone to suppose that Miss Tallant is an heiress!” he announced.
Lady Bridlington, who had several times wondered much the same thing, replied uneasily: “I never said a word, Frederick! There is not the least reason why anyone should suppose such an absurdity! I own, I was a trifle surprised when—But she is a very pretty girl, you know, and Mr. Beaumaris took one of his fancies to her!”