“Good gracious, Charles!” said Lady Ombersley. “What in the world has she done to put you out?”
He declined to answer this, merely saying that Sophy was pert, headstrong, and so badly brought up that he doubted whether any man would be fool enough to offer for her. His mother refrained from inquiring further into Sophy’s iniquities, but instead seized the moment to suggest that as a prelude to finding a husband for her she should be allowed to give an evening party, with dancing. “I do not mean a large affair,” she hastened to add. “Perhaps ten couples, or so — in the drawing-room!”
“By all means!” he said. “That will make it quite unnecessary for you to invite young Fawnhope!”
“Oh, quite!” she agreed.
“I should warn you, Mama,” he said, “that we encountered him this morning! My cousin greeted him an as old and valued acquaintance and begged him to call on her here!”
“Oh, dear!” sighed Lady Ombersley. “How very unfortunate, to be sure! But I daresay she does know him, Charles, for she was with your uncle in Brussels last year.”
“She!” said Charles witheringly. “He had no more notion who she was than the Emperor of China! But he will certainly call! I must leave you to deal with that, ma’am!”
With these very unfair words he strode out of his mother’s room, leaving her to wonder in what way he supposed her to be able to deal with a morning call paid by a young man of unexceptionable birth, who was the son of one of her oldest friends. She came to the conclusion that he had no more idea than she, and banished the matter from her mind, bending it instead to the far more pleasant problem of whom to invite to the first party she had held in two months.
She was presently interrupted by the entrance of her niece. Remembering Charles’s dark words, she asked Sophy, with an assumption of severity, what she had done to vex him. Sophy laughed, and almost stunned her by replying that she had done nothing but steal his curricle and tool it round the city for half an hour.
“Sophy!” gasped her ladyship. “Charles’s grays? You could never hold them!”