She stared wildly up into his face. “Oh, yes, but— How could I? You are not to be teased with my affairs, I am sure! Besides—oh, I could not!”
“Not at all!” he said. “Pleasure! Collect it concerns Miss Charing’s cousin: very delicate matter, but no need to conceal anything from me: know all about it!”
“You do?” she cried. “But it does not concern him! At least—Oh, what shall I do?”
Mr. Standen, deftly catching her muff, which she released as she began to wring her hands, restored it to her, and said very sensibly: “Take a turn about the Square with me. Can’t stand here: have all the fools in town gaping at us!”
Miss Broughty, a biddable girl, weakly accepted the support of his proffered arm, and allowed herself to be led along the flagway. She was at first unable to do more than utter disjointed and inexplicable ejaculations, but soothed by Mr. Standen’s unintelligible but consolatory murmurs she was very soon pouring her troubles into his ear.
It might have been supposed that Freddy, whose intellect was not of the first order, would have found it impossible to grasp the gist of an extremely tangled and discursive story, but once more the possession of three volatile and excitable sisters stood him in good stead. Recognizing at a glance, and as swiftly discarding, all the irrelevant details with which Miss Broughty obscured her tale, he very soon mastered the essential fact, which was that Sir Henry Gosford had requested her Mama’s permission to solicit her hand in marriage, and that if she refused to bestow this upon him, her Mama would kill her.
Well aware that to bring the voice of sober reason to bear upon the exaggerations of agitated females was both fruitless and perilous, Freddy wisely let this pass, and listened in sympathetic silence to an enumeration of the various hideous fates Miss Broughty considered preferable to marriage with Sir Henry. If he did not feel that she was made of the stuff that could face with fortitude the prospect of being crucified, or boiled in oil, he did realize that she was in very great distress, and making sincere efforts to escape a somewhat sordid destiny. At the first opportunity, and emboldened by her many references to her Camille, he asked her if the Chevalier knew of this disaster. Two large tears trembled on the ends of her lashes, and she replied: “Oh, no, no, for what would be the use? Mama will never, never consent to my marrying him, and it would cast him into such agony!”
It was at this point that his brilliant stroke of policy came into Freddy’s head. He was so much dazzled by it that he was obliged to hush Miss Broughty, who was distracting him with her monologue. “Can’t think, if you keep talking,” he explained. “Very important I should think: got a notion!”
She was obediently silent, looking up every now and then into his face, but not venturing to address him again. They had come within sight of Lady Buckhaven’s house once more before he emerged from his abstraction, and said abruptly: “Going to take you to m’sister. Your Mama likely to come seeking you there?”
She trembled. “Oh, if she were to guess—! But she will not miss me directly, for she is in town herself, and she does not know I ran away from my uncle’s house as soon as she went out. But—”