“To be sure I am. What’s more, got my own notion of what’s in the wind.” He nodded portentously, but added: “Don’t mean to say anything about that: not my affair! Trouble is—beginning to think he’s too damned loose in the haft!”
“I have thought that any time these past seven years,” said Lord Legerwood.
“You have?” said Freddy, regarding him with affectionate pride. “Always say you’re the downiest man I know, sir! Up to every rig and row in town!”
“Freddy, you unman me!” said his father, profoundly moved. “No one, I believe, has yet called me a slow-top, but I own I am happy to learn that you are—er—keeping an eye on your sister.”
“Yes, but no need to fear there’ll be any brats coming through a side-door,” said Freddy bluntly. “For one thing, can’t, with Meg increasing; for another—Jack’s got his eye on a devilish prime article. Don’t think he would, either: dash it, not such a rum touch as that!”
With this assurance Lord Legerwood had to be content, for his son’s confidences were at an end. Freddy saw no reason to inform his parent that he had been thunderstruck to discover that Miss Charing had, by means unknown to him, become acquainted with the damsel whom he had. no hesitation in designating a prime article. He had already viewed with disapprobation her friendship with an illfavoured female of obviously plebeian origin; his feelings when he called in Berkeley Square and found his affianced bride entertaining Miss Broughty held him spellbound upon the threshold, his jaw dropping, and his eyes starting from his head. When Miss Broughty presently took her leave, he nerved himself to expostulate with Kitty, representing to her that to be striking up an acquaintanceship with the daughter of a lady whom he did not scruple to call an Abbess, if ever he saw one, could in no way add to her consequence. “It won’t do, Kit! Take it from me!”
To his intense discomfiture he came under the beam of Miss Charing’s wide-eyed, enquiring gaze. “What does an Abbess signify, Freddy?” she asked. He was thrown into disorder, and replied hastily: “Never mind that! Wouldn’t understand if I told you! Thing is, the woman’s putting that girl up to the highest bidder. Oughtn’t to say such things to you, but there it is!”
“I know she is,” responded Kitty calmly. “She is quite the most odious woman imaginable! I am so sorry for poor Olivia! Indeed, Freddy, you would pity her if you knew the whole!”
“Yes, I daresay I should. No harm in being sorry for her, but it won’t do to be making a friend of her.”
“But, Freddy, surely there can be no objection! Though we may dislike Mrs. Broughty, Olivia’s birth is respectable, for she is related to Lady Batterstown, and she, I know, is a friend of your Mama’s!” Freddy sighed. “Trouble is, Kit, you ain’t been on the town long enough to know the ins and the outs! Oliver Broughty was a dashed loose screw, by all I’ve ever heard, and it don’t make a ha’porth of odds if he was some kind of a third cousin to Lady Batterstown, or if he wasn’t. In fact, he was, but it’s what I was telling you t’other day: every family has its scaff and raff! We have! Thing is, don’t foist ‘em on the ton!”