He wondered whether her godmother had warned her against him, and when she excused herself from dancing with him at the next Assembly was sure of it
But the warning came from Lord Bridlington. Mr. Beaumaris’s marked attentions to Arabella, including, as they had, so extraordinary a gesture as the adoption of Jemmy, had aroused the wildest hopes in Lady Bridlington’s shallow brain. If any of his previous amatory adventures had led him to perform a comparable deed, she at least had never heard of it. She began to indulge the fancy that his intentions were serious, and had almost written to give Mrs. Tallant a hint of it when Lord Bridlington dashed her hopes.
“You would do well, ma’am, to put your young friend a little on her guard with Beaumaris,” he said weightily.
“My dear Frederick, and so I did, at the outset! But he has become so particular in his attentions, showing such a decided preference for her, and trying to fix his interest with her by every means in his power, that I really begin to think he has formed a lasting attachment! Only fancy if she were to formsuch a connexion, Frederick! I declare, I should feel it as much as if she were my own child! For it will be all due to me, you know!”
“You would be very unwise to put such a notion into the girl’s head, Mama,” he said, cutting short these rhapsodies. “I can tell you this: Beaumaris’s intimates don’t by any means regard his pursuit of Miss Tallant in that light!”
“No?” she said, in a faltering tone.
“Far otherwise, ma’am! They are saying that it is all pique, because she does not appear to favour him above any other. I must say, I should not have expected her to have shown such good sense! You must know that men of his type, accustomed as he is to being courted and flattered, are put very much on their mettle by a rebuff from any female who has not been so foolish as to pick up the handkerchief he has carelessly tossed towards them. It puts me out of all patience to see anyone so spoiled and caressed! But be that as it may, you should know, Mama, that bets are being laid and taken at White’s against Miss Tallant’s holding out against this siege!”
“How odious men are!” exclaimed Lady Bridlington indignantly.
Odious they might be, but if they were laying bets of that nature at the clubs there was nothing for a conscientious chaperon to do but warn her charge once more against lending too credulous an ear to an accomplished flirt Arabella assured her that she had no intention of doing so.
“No, my dear, very likely not,” replied her ladyship. “But there is no denying that he is a very attractive man: I am conscious of it myself! Such an air! such easy address! But it is of no use to think of that! I am sadly afraid that it is a kind of sport with him to make females fall in love with him.”