“You are the most disagreeable man I have ever met!” said Miss Taverner, a break in her voice.
“You have told me as much before, Miss Taverner, and my memory, I assure you, is peculiarly retentive. Console yourself with the reflection that in a short time now you will be able to forget my very existence.”
She said unsteadily: “I do not suppose that I look forward to that day more eagerly than you.”
“I have never made any secret of the fact that my guardianship of you has been irksome in the extreme. But do not anticipate too much, Miss Taverner. You are still my ward. These affecting passages with your cousin would be better postponed.”
“If you imagine I have—I have an understanding with Mr. Bernard Taverner you are wrong!” she said. “I am not going to marry him!”
He looked down at her, and it seemed for a moment as though he was about to say something. Then Mrs. Scattergood came up to them, and the opportunity was lost. He escorted both ladies out to their carriage, and it was only at parting that Miss Taverner could trust her voice sufficiently to say: “I have been wanting to thank you, Lord Worth, for giving your consent to Peregrine’s marriage.”
“You have nothing to thank me for,” he replied rather curtly, and bowed, and stood back to let the carriage move forward.
Chapter XIX
Why she had been so anxious to inform her guardian that she did not mean to marry Mr. Bernard Taverner was a question that occupied Miss Taverner’s mind for an appreciable time. If an answer to the riddle did occur to her she at least would not admit it to be the correct one, and as no alternative answer presented itself to her she was forced to conclude that the agitation of the moment had made her speak at random.
Mrs. Scattergood, observing her spirits to be low, supposed that she must be looking forward with a good deal of melancholy to her brother’s marriage, and did what she could to cheer her by promising to stay with her for as long as her companionship was required, and by prophesying many pleasant visits to the young couple at Beverley. But the truth was that the prospect of being separated from Peregrine was not oppressing Miss Taverner’s spirits as much as the thought of her own approaching freedom. She did not know what was to become of her. Lord Worth was provoking, tyrannical, and very often odious, but he managed her fortune for her to admiration, and disposed of importunate suitors in a way that she could not hope to equal. She might quarrel with him, and resent his interference in her schemes, but while he stood behind her she had a feeling of security which she had scarcely been aware of until now when she was so near to having his protection withdrawn. And when he was not being disagreeable and over-bearing he had been kind to her. He had given her a recipe for snuff, and allowed her to drive his greys, and invited her to stay in his house. Until that unfortunate encounter at Cuckfield she had been liking him very well. Naturally she could never like him after his intolerable behaviour on that fatal day, but in spite of that the thought that in a short while she would be able to forget his very existence had so lowering an effect upon her that she was hard put to it to keep the tears from her eyes. And if, as an alternative to this course, he intended her to marry his brother he would find that he had made a mistake. She foresaw that she was doomed to a lonely spinsterhood.