His advice was too sensible to be lightly ignored. She thought about it, realized the justice of what he had said, and went to call on Worth, driving herself in her phaeton. To request his coming to Brook Street would mean the presence of Mrs. Scattergood; she supposed there could be no impropriety in a ward’s visiting her guardian.
She was ushered into the saloon, but after a few minutes the footman came back, and desired her to follow him. She was conducted up one pair of stairs to his lordship’s private room, and announced.
The Earl was standing at a table by the window, dipping a sort of iron skewer into what looked to be a wine-bottle. On the table were several sheets of parchment, a sieve, two glass phials, and a pestle and mortar of turned boxwood.
Miss Taverner stared in considerable surprise, being quite unable to imagine what the Earl could be doing. The room was lined with shelves that bore any number of highly glazed jars and lead canisters. They were all labelled, with such queer-sounding names as Scholten, Curacao, Masulipatam, Bureau Demi-gros, Bolongaro, Old Paris. She turned her eyes inquiringly towards his lordship, still absorbed in his bottle and skewer.
“You must forgive me for receiving you here, Miss Taverner, but I am extremely occupied,” he said. “It would be fatal for me to leave the mixture in its present state, or I would have come to you. Have you left Maria Scattergood downstairs, may I ask?”
“She is not with me. I came alone, sir.”
There seemed to be a fine powder in the wine-bottle. The Earl had extracted a little with the aid of the skewer and dropped it into the mortar, and had begun to mix it with what was already there, but he paused at Miss Taverner’s words, and looked across at her in a way hard to read. Then his gaze returned to the mortar, and he went on with his work. “Indeed? You honour me. Will you not sit down?”
She coloured faintly, but drew forward a chair. “Perhaps you may think it odd in me, sir, but the truth is I have something to say to you I do not care to say before Mrs. Scattergood.”
“I am entirely at your service, Miss Taverner.”
She pulled off her gloves and began smoothing them. “It is with considerable reluctance that I have come, Lord Worth. But my cousin, Mr. Taverner, advised me—and I cannot but feel that he was right. You are after all our guardian.”