Mr. Rivenhall, for all his resolve to hold his cousin at arm’s length, could not resist the temptation of recounting this passage to her. She enjoyed the joke just as he had known she would but put an abrupt end to his amusement by exclaiming involuntarily, “How well he and Miss Wraxton would suit! Now, why did I never think of that before?”
“Possibly,” said Mr. Rivenhall frostily, “you may have recalled that Miss Wraxton is betrothed to me!”
“I don’t think that was the reason,” said Sophy, considering it. She lifted an eyebrow at him. “Offended, Charles?”
“Yes!” said Mr. Rivenhall.
“Oh, Charles, I wonder at you!” she said, with her irrepressible gurgle of mirth. “So untruthful!”
As she beat a strategic retreat upon the words, he was left to glare at the unresponsive door.
He told his mother roundly that Sophy’s conduct went from bad to worse, but the full measure of her iniquity did not burst upon him until two days later, when, upon ordering his groom to harness his latest acquisition to his tilbury, he was staggered to learn that Miss Stanton-Lacy had driven out in this equipage not half an hour earlier.
“Taken my tilbury out?” he repeated. His voice sharpened. “Which horse?” he demanded.
The groom shook visibly. “The — the young horse, sir!”
“You harnessed the young horse for Miss Stanton-Lacy to drive?” said Mr. Rivenhall, giving his words such awful weight as almost to deprive his henchman of all power of speech.