“Lord, I shall never forget the day we called in Cavendish Square, and found that it was he who was our guardian! You were as mad as fire!”
“It is a recollection that should be forgotten,” replied Miss Taverner. “Lord Worth’s manners are—are not always conciliating, but of the propriety of his motives we can never stand in doubt. We owe him a debt of gratitude, Perry.”
“I am very sensible of it. To be sure, we were completely taken in by my cousin. And to drug me, and put me aboard his yacht—Lord, I thought he was going to murder me when he forced that stuff down my throat!—was the neatest piece of work! I had no notion I should like being upon the sea so much! Evans was in a great pucker lest I should be angry at it, but, ‘Lord,’ I said, ‘you need not think I shall try to swim to shore! This is beyond anything great!’”
Miss Taverner sighed, and gave up the struggle. Peregrine continued to talk of his experiences at sea until it was time to go to bed. Miss Taverner could only be glad that since he had formed the intention of driving to Worthing upon the following day any further descriptions of ground-swells, squalls, wearing, luffing, squaring the yards, or reefing the sails must fall to Miss Fairford’s lot instead of hers. It was a melancholy reflection that although she would have been ready to swear, a day before, that she could not have borne to let him out of her sight again, if he should be restored to her, three hours of his company were enough to make her look forward with complaisance to his leaving her directly after breakfast next morning. Even when he was not recounting his adventures his conversation had a nautical flavour. He talked of crowding all sail to Worthing, of bringing to, and hauling his wind, and of making out a friend at cable’s length. An empty wine-bottle became a marine officer, landsmen on board a ship were live lumber, and a passer-by in the street was described as being as round as a nine-pounder. A number of sea-shanties being sung loudly and inaccurately all over the house finally alienated even Mrs. Scattergood’s sympathy, and by eleven o’clock on Thursday nothing could have exceeded both ladies’ anxious solicitude to set him on his way to Worthing.
Miss Taverner then sat down to await her guardian. He did not come. Only Captain Audley called in Marine Parade that morning, and when Miss Taverner asked, as carelessly as she could, whether his lordship was in Brighton, the Captain merely said: “Julian? Oh yes, he is here, but I fancy you won’t see him to-day. York arrived in Brighton yesterday, you know.”
Miss Taverner, who was inclined to rate her claims quite as high as the Duke of York’s said, “Indeed!” in a cold voice, and turned the subject.
There was no appearance of Worth at the ball that night, but upon Miss Taverner’s return to Marine Parade she found a note from him lying on the table in the hall. She broke the seal at once, and eagerly spread open the single sheet.
Old Steyne, June 25th, 1812.
Dear Miss Taverner — I shall do myself the honour of waiting on you tomorrow morning at noon, if this should be convenient to you, for the purpose of resigning into your charge the documents relating to your affairs with which I have been entrusted during the period of my guardianship. Yours, etc.,
Worth.