She rattled on in this style until it became time for them to return to their own box, her eyes flickering all the while from Kitty’s face to Freddy’s, and back again. She enquired solicitously after Mr. Penicuik, after the Legerwoods, after Mr. Westruther, whom she had not seen for an age: could it be that he was still out of town? She wanted to know if Kitty was being tolerably well entertained in London: did Meg mean to procure a voucher for her, admitting her to Almack’s? Had Freddy taken her driving in Hyde Park? But this was something Kitty must grant Dolphinton the pleasure of doing! She must know that he was an excellent whip: drove the prettiest turn-out. “You must take Kitty up beside you one afternoon, Foster: you will like to do that, I know!”
“Like to do that,” he repeated obediently, but looking so miserable that Kitty was hard put to it to refrain from laughing.
“And, I must say,” she told Freddy, once they were out of earshot, “I hope he does not offer to take me, for I am persuaded he would overturn me!”
“No, there you’re wrong,” replied Freddy. “Wouldn’t think it, but he’s a first-rate fiddler. Bruising rider too, if ever he had the chance! She don’t let him hunt, but we had him down to stay in Leicestershire once. Never saw the poor fellow so happy! Dashed if he didn’t lay his leg over the ugliest customer m’father ever had in the stables! Brute went like a lamb with him, what’s more. You’d be quite safe. Not that I think he’ll take you: looked devilish blue, didn’t he?”
She agreed, but, knowing the Countess, she was not surprised when he came to pay a morning’Call in Berkeley Square the following day, escorting that determined lady. The Countess, graciously embracing her niece, had come to congratulate her on her situation. She had been calling in Mount Street, to enquire after the invalids, and had learnt from her dearest sister that Meg was increasing. But her ungrateful niece, observing with amazement the affability she showed towards Miss Charing, thought that she had come rather to ingratiate herself with a girl whose adoption by Mr. Penicuik she had deplored for years. She heard Dolphinton, acting under his mother’s goad, make an assignation to take Kitty for a drive in the Park that very afternoon, and was quite at a loss to understand the meaning of these strange tactics. “For what,” she argued, when these unwelcome visitors had left the house, “can she hope to achieve, when she is apprized of your engagement to Freddy? I perfectly understand how greatly she must have wished you to marry Dolph, when my uncle made you his heiress, for Mama says that his estates are much embarrassed, and she, you know, is shockingly expensive! Did you remark the furs she was wearing? I could not but stare, and wonder how she contrived to rig herself out so handsomely on a jointure which Mama says cannot have been large!”
“Well, she does not!” said Kitty. “Poor Dolph is so foolish that you may depend upon it that it is she who still holds his purse-strings! That is what Uncle Matthew says, at all events; and also that there is nothing amiss but what a little management and economy might well set to rights. Though I am bound to own,” she added conscientiously, “that that is just what Uncle Matthew would say!”
Meg laughed, but said: “It may be so, yet still I don’t see why she should think it worth while to encourage Dolph to take you driving!”
“Encourage! PoorDolph! She compelled him!” exclaimed Kitty, unable to suppress a giggle.
“Well, I know she did, but I was never more surprised in my life than when I heard you say you would go with him! Why, Kitty?”
“Oh, Freddy assures me he won’t overturn this phaeton of his!” said Kitty blithely. “I could not refuse, when I knew that odious woman would be so cross to him if I did! Besides, I mean to discover why she made him invite me! What should I wear, Meg, to go out driving in a phaeton?”