“Peregrine Taverner,” said Worth, with a certain deliberation, “is an extremely wealthy young man, and if anything were to happen to him his sister would inherit the greater part of his fortune,”
“Very well, let us by all means drown him in the lake,” said the Captain gaily. “Plainly, he must be disposed of.”
“He is being disposed of,” said the Earl, without the least trace of emotion in his level voice. “For the past five days he has been inhaling poisoned snuff.”
Chapter XV
The arrival of Captain Charles Audley was a happy circumstance, for the departure to London on that day of Mr. Brummell, Lord Petersham, and both the Marleys had produced all the inevitable languor attendant on the breaking-up of a party. The Taverners, with Miss Fairford and Lord Alvanley, were engaged to remain at Worth over the week-end, but although an Assembly at a neighbouring town, where some militia were quartered, a day’s hunting, and a card-party were promised, there was an insipidity, a flatness, that was hard to shake off. The appearance, however, of Captain Audley banished every feeling of regret for the absence of four of the original members of the party. His gaiety was infectious and his manners, for all their oddity, were so generally charming as to render him always acceptable. His having but just come from the Peninsula made him first in consequence; the ladies hung on his lips, and the gentlemen, in a quieter fashion, were very ready to hear all the information he could give them of the state of affairs in Spain. The only respect in which he fell short of the female expectations at least was his refusal to describe the act of dashing gallantry to which it was felt that his wound must have been due. He would not talk of it, insisted that the wound was not the result of any noble action at all, and beyond learning that it had been incurred at the affair of Arroyo del Molinos upon the twenty-eighth day of October, and that he had been lying in hospital ever since (which Lady Albinia and Mrs. Scattergood were aware of already), they could discover nothing about it. But on any other subject he was ready to converse, and his arrival was soon felt to be an advantage. He paid unblushing court to Miss Taverner, was kind to Miss Fairford, quizzed his aunt and cousin, took Peregrine secretly over to a dingy tavern in the nearest town to witness a cockfight, and was voted in less than no time to be a most amiable young man. He was not above being pleased; he could derive as much enjoyment from making up a pool of quadrille to oblige his aunt as from playing whist for pound points; and found as much to amuse him at the local Assembly as he would have found at Almack’s.
“You are blessed with the happiest nature, Captain Audley,” Miss Taverner said smilingly. “Whatever you do, you are pleased to be doing, and your spirits infect everyone else with the same liveliness.”
“If I could not be pleased in such company I must be an insufferable fellow!” he replied warmly.
“You are certainly a flatterer.”
“Only so modest a creature as yourself could think so.”
“I am silenced. Do you find this mode of address generally acceptable amongst the heiresses of your acquaintance?”