“No,” said Miss Taverner seriously. “I believe you are right.”
“These niceties are beyond me,” complained the Captain. “I suppose I may as well go bury myself now you are got on to the subject of snuff together. You will be talking till midnight.”
“Oh no!” said his lordship. “To talk on any subject till midnight would be a great bore. But you put me in mind of something very important. Where is Worth? Has he put his name down for some of the Martinique snuff Fribourg and Treyer are importing?”
“He has not told me, but you may ask him yourself. He will be here later in the evening. Do not on any account look to the right, Miss Taverner! Monk Lewis is eagerly awaiting his opportunity to approach you, and once he succeeds in engaging your attention you will not be rid of him under half an hour. I never knew a man to talk so much!”
Mr. Lewis, however, the author of that celebrated novel Ambrosia, or the Monk, was not one to be easily baulked of his prey. He soon button-holed Miss Taverner, and proceeded to fulfil Captain Audley’s prediction until she was rescued from him by Sir John Lade, who came up to inquire whether she had a fancy to sell her bays. She had no such fancy, nor did she care for Sir John, who smelled of the stables, and used the language of his own grooms, but she was grateful to him for interrupting the flow of Mr. Lewis’s conversation, and treated his repeated offers to buy her horses with more patience than could have been expected of her.
The temperature at which the Regent kept his rooms was always hard to bear, and by half-past eleven Miss Taverner had developed a headache, and was thinking longingly of her bed. But card tables had been set out in the Green Drawing-room, which adjoined the Saloon on the south side, and Mrs. Scattergood was happily engaged in a rubber of Casino there, and would be certain to remain for another hour. Miss Taverner wondered why her guardian did not come, and decided privately that the party was more than ordinarily insipid. She was just about to sit down on a ruby silk ottoman as far as possible from the fire when her name was spoken, and she looked up to see the Regent at her elbow.
“At last I am able to snatch two words with you!” said the Regent jovially. “I do not know how it is, but I have not had the chance to come near you all night. Now that will not do, you know! And I have something very pretty to show you, too: something which, I flatter myself, will take your fancy.”
She smiled, and returned a civil answer. A faint aroma of Maraschino hung about him, and although he was not by any means the worse for drink, she could not help suspecting that he had taken just enough to make him a little reckless.
“Yes, yes, you shall see it!” he promised. “And you shall take it away with you, too, if you care to please me. But it is not here; we must slip into the Yellow Drawing-room to find it. Come, let me offer you my arm! I do not believe you have seen that room, have you? It is quite my favourite.”
“No, sir, I do not recall—But perhaps Mrs. Scattergood—”