“Good gracious, no, child! That would be a fatal thing to do, and I hope he would have more sense! He will merely say it has been greatly exaggerated—enough lo frighten away the fortune hunters, but what will not weigh with an honest man! Do not give it another thought!”
Arabella was unable to obey this injunction. It was long before she could think of anything else. Her impulse was to fly from London, back to Heythram, but hardly had she reached the stage of calculating whether she still possessed enough money to pay her fare on the first coach than all the difficulties attached to such a precipitate retreat presented themselves to her. They were insuperable. She could not bring herself to confess to Lady Bridlington that her own was the wicked, ill-bred tongue accountable for the rumour, nor could she think of any excuse for returning to Yorkshire. Still less could she face the necessity of telling Papa and Mama of her shocking behaviour. She must remain in Park Street until the season came to an end, and if Mama was sadly disappointed at the failure of her schemes, at least Papa would never blame his daughter for returning to her home unbetrothed. She perceived clearly that unless something very wonderful were to happen this must be so, and felt herself guilty indeed.
Not for several hours did her mind recover its tone, but she was both young and optimistic, and after a hearty burst of tears, followed by a period of quiet reflection, she began insensibly to be more hopeful. Something would happen to unravel her difficulties; the odious Frederick would scotch the rumour; people would gradually grow to realize that they had been mistaken. Mr. Beaumaris and Lord Fleetwood would no doubt write her down as a vulgar, boasting miss, but she must hope that they had not actually told everyone that it was she who had been responsible for the rumour. Meanwhile there was nothing to be done but to behave as though nothing were the matter. This, to a naturally buoyant spirit was not so hard a task as might have been supposed: London was offering too much to Arabella for her to be long cast-down. She might fancy all her pleasure destroyed, but she would have been a very extraordinary young woman who could have remembered her difficulties while cards and floral offerings were left every day at the house; while invitations poured in to every form of entertainment known to ingenious hostesses: while every gentleman was eager to claim her hand for the dance; while Mr. Beaumaris took her driving in the Park behind his match-grays, and every other young lady gazed enviously after her. Whatever the cause, social success was sweet; and since Arabella was a very human girl she could not help enjoying every moment of it.
She expected to see some considerable diminution in her court once Lord Bridlington had let it be known that her fortune had been grossly exaggerated, and braced herself to bear this humiliation. But although she knew from Lady Bridlington that Frederick had faithfully performed his part, still the invitations came in, and still the unattached gentlemen clustered round her. She took fresh heart, glad to find that fashionable people were not, after all, so mercenary as she had been led to think. Neither she nor Frederick had the smallest inkling of the true state of affairs: she because she was too unsophisticated; Frederick because it had never yet occurred to him that anyone could doubt what he said. But he might as well have spared his breath on this occasion. Even Mr. Warkworth, a charitably-minded gentleman, shook his head over it, and remarked to Sir Geoffrey Morecambe that Bridlington was doing it rather too brown,
“Just what I was thinking myself,” agreed Sir Geoffrey, scrutinizing his neck-tie in the mirror with a dissatisfied eye. “Shabby, I call it. Do you think this way I have tied my cravat has something of the look of the Nonpareil’s new style?”
Mr. Warkworth directed a long, dispassionate stare at it. “No,” he said simply.
“No, no more do I,” said Sir Geoffrey, said but unsurprised. “I wonder what he calls it? It ain’t precisely a Mail-coach, and it certainly ain’t an Osbaldeston, and though I did think it had something of the look of a Trone d’amour, it ain’t that either. I can tie every one of them. ”
Mr. Warkworth, whose mind had wandered from this vital subject, said, with a frown: “Damn it, it is shabby! You’re right!”
Sir Geoffrey was a little hurt. “Would you say it was as bad as that, Oswald?”
“I would,” stated Mr. Warkworth. “In fact, the more I think of it the worse it appears to me!”