“I’ll do that, me dear, never fear!”
“Yes, but do you know how you will contrive to do it?”
“Leave it to me, Deb: that’s my part in the business.”
She was not quite satisfied with this answer, but since he only laughed when she pressed him to tell her what his plan was, she was obliged to accept it, merely stipulating that no severe harm should befall the victim. “Not that I care,” she explained. “I should not care if you killed him, but it would be bound to lead to trouble, and we don’t want that!”
Mr Kennet agreed that they did not want trouble, and went away to compose another letter to Mr Ravenscar, in the same flowing hand. But this letter he had no intention of showing to Miss Grantham, concurring to the full in Mr Wantage’s dictum, that what Miss Deb knew nothing about she’d not grieve over.
Meanwhile, there was nothing further for Deborah to do but to await the coming of Wednesday evening, and to nourish thoughts of the direst vengeance. She had no expectation of receiving any more news of Mr Ravenscar, and was consequently much astonished to see, on looking out of the window on the following day, a carriage draw up outside the house, bearing the Ravenscar crest on the panel. As she stared at it, the footman sprang down to open the door, and let down the steps. But the figure that alighted from the carriage was not Mr Ravenscar’s. Miss Grantham recognized Arabella Ravenscar’s trim form, and felt almost ready to faint from surprise.
Miss Ravenscar tripped up the steps to the front door, and sent in her card. Silas Wantage brought this to his mistress, and handed it to her, saying darkly that he doubted it was all a trick, and recommending that he should be allowed to send the young party about her business. Miss Grantham, however, felt a good deal of curiosity to know what could have brought Arabella to see her, and directed her henchman to desire Miss Ravenscar to step upstairs.
A few moments later, Arabella was ushered into the room, a charming vision in a sprigged muslin dress with a pink tiffany sash, a pink silk coat, and a ravishing hat tied under her chin with pink ribbons. She paused on the threshold, eyeing her hostess with her head tilted a little, like a bird, Miss Grantham thought. The big, pansy-brown eyes were half-doubtful, half-mischievous.
Miss Grantham, herself very prettily dressed in a pale green saque, and with her hair in simple ringlets, moved forward to greet her visitor, quite forgetting that she had previously appeared to Miss Ravenscar in a most vulgar guise. “How do you do?” she said politely.
The doubt vanished from Arabella’s face. She ran forward, and caught Deborah’s hands, exclaiming! “There! I knew I should like you! Oh, how badly you did behave, to be sure! But I told my aunt you had such laughing eyes that I could not but like you! Do you mind my coming to see you without my Mama? She will never go anywhere, you know, and besides that, she is against you, just like all of them! Only Adrian said you were not like that in the general way, and I made up my mind I would come and see you for myself.”