“Oh, Freddy, surely he would not do so?” exclaimed Kitty, shocked.
“Might,” said Freddy. “Wouldn’t myself, but plenty of fellows have. Well, bound to! Worth a hundred thousand, they say. Trouble is, she’s a dashed queer-tempered woman. Uphall made a push to fix his interest with her. She’d have had him, too, but he couldn’t bring himself up to scratch.
Told me he’d sooner be rolled-up. Says it ain’t so bad in a sponging’house—once you get used to it. Good God! For the lord’s sake, don’t look to the left, Meg! Aunt Dolphinton!”
With great presence of mind, Meg unfurled her fan, and plied it so that it hid her profile. “Has she seen us?” she hissed.
“Don’t know, and I’m dashed well not going to look. She’s got Dolph with her, that’s all I can tell you. We shall have to take a stroll outside after the act, or she’ll start beckoning to us. You know what she is!”
Just then the curtain rose, and although Freddy’s enjoyment of the drama was marred by what he felt to be the urgent necessity to evolve a scheme that would enable them all to escape a compulsory visit to Lady Dolphinton’s box, Kitty instantly forgot the ordeal ahead, and sat throughout the act in a trance of rapt interest, her lips just parted, her gaze riveted, and her hands tightly clasping her fan. At the fall of the curtain Freddy made a creditable attempt to hustle the ladies out of the box before his redoubtable relative had had time to observe them; but owing to Meg’s having lost her handkerchief, and to Kitty’s having to be roused from her lingering trance, this failed. Before he could achieve his end, a knock fell on the door, and the Chevalier entered, so that the project had to be abandoned.
Kitty could not but be glad. That her handsome cousin should dangle after a fortune was a suggestion that distressed her. His prompt appearance in Freddy’s box seemed to give the lie to it; and nothing in his demeanour betrayed the least desire on his part to return to Lady Maria’s side. In full view of his hostess, he stayed chatting, very gay and debonair; and when Kitty, rendered quite uncomfortable by a fixed stare from the opposite box, told him that she feared he might be offending Lady Maria, his brows flew up in surprise, and he exclaimed: “But, no! How should it be possible? I have informed her that my cousin is present—my cousin whom for so many years I have not seen!”
“Well, she looks very cross,” said Kitty.
“I am not very well acquainted with Lady Maria, but it seems that she suffers from bad humours,” he said, with a droll look. “But I should not say so! I am, in effect, an ingrate! She has been most kind to one who is without friends in London, and—you understand my lips are sealed!”
“All very w-well,” said Mr. Stonehouse, when, by tacit consent, he and Mr. Standen withdrew from the box to take an airing in the corridor, “b-but if he hasn’t any f’friends in London, w-why did he c-come here? N-not one of the Embassy people, is he?” He added hastily: “I don’t m-mean to say that he isn’t p-perfectly respectable! It just struck m-me that it was odd!” He became aware of a lanky figure in his path, and put up his glass. “Oh! Dolphinton! How d’ye do?”