A visit from Captain Audley helped still further to restore her to some degree of tranquillity. He came in shortly after Mrs. Scattergood’s return, and bore Miss Taverner off for a drive. She at first declined it, but allowed herself in the end to be persuaded.
“Miss Taverner,” he said, “you are for moping indoors, and indulging your fancy in every flight of the most horrid imagination! Confess, you have been picturing dungeons, oubliettes, ambushes—in a word, all the terrors that lurk between the pages of the best romances! But it will not do: we live in the nineteenth century, and instead of receiving demands for a fabulous ransom, you are a great deal more likely to find that Perry has posted off to buy some horse which he has been informed is so perfect in all its paces that it would be a shocking thing to miss the chance of striking a bargain. Ten to one, the explanation will be something very like that, and when you scold him for giving you such a fright he will be mightily indignant, talk of the letter he sent you through the post, and discover it in the pocket of his driving-cloak.”
“Ah, if I could only think so!” she sighed.
“You will find that it is so, I assure you. Meanwhile, I have a strict charge laid on me not to allow you to fret. You are to regard me, if you please, as Worth’s proxy, and in that character I command you, Miss Taverner, to put on your driving-habit, and come with me. Look out the window, and tell me if you can be ungrateful enough to refuse!”
She did look out, and smiled faintly to see Worth’s team of greys being led up and down by a groom. “At any other time I should be tempted,” she said. “But to-day—”
“Miss Taverner, do you dare to oppose my brother in this fashion?” he demanded. “I cannot credit it!”
Mrs. Scattergood added her persuasions to his. Miss Taverner submitted, and was soon sitting on the box-seat of the curricle, the reins in her capable hands. Captain Audley, exerting himself to divert her, was by turns audacious, droll, witty, sensible, but none of his sallies drew so animated a look nor so unforced a smile from her as his offer, when the curricle drew up on Marine Parade again, to escort her to London if no news of Peregrine was heard within the week.
“I don’t doubt we shall have news,” he said, “but if we do not by Thursday next, I will engage to go with you and Maria to town, and to conduct you to Bow Street myself.”
“Oh, if you would!” she cried. “To be staying here, unable to do anything to the purpose, ignorant of the steps Lord Worth is taking—it is not to be borne!”
“You have my promise,” he said. “But until then try to do as Worth bade you. Be patient, do not set tongues wagging, and do not imagine the worst!”