“You will think me abominably stupid, I fear, but I think I can never have met your Papa, and thus do not know what I shall call him when we meet.”
“Papa is Sir Thomas Bolderwood,” she replied at once. “Very likely you might not have encountered him, for we came to live at Whissenhurst only a few years ago, and you have all the time been abroad.”
“I must be grateful to whatever lucky chance it was that brought Sir Thomas into Lincolnshire,” said Gervase.
She received this with a laugh, and a little shake of her head. She was young enough to feel embarrassment at broad compliments, but she betrayed none: plainly, she was accustomed to being very much admired, although the coming London Season, as she presently confided to the Earl, was to be her first. “For one does not count private parties, and although I was almost seventeen last spring, Mama could not be prevailed upon to present me, though even my Aunt Caroline, who is so strict and stuffy, counselled her most strongly to do so. However, this year I am to be presented, and I shall go to Almack’s, and the Opera, and everywhere! ”
The Earl, concluding from this artless prattle that Miss Bolderwood moved in unexceptionable circles, began to wonder why no mention of her family had been made to him by his stepmother. In all her consequential enumerations of the persons likely to leave their cards at Stanyon he could not recall ever to have heard her utter the name of Bolderwood. But as he led Cloud into the village through which they were obliged to pass on their way to Whissenhurst Grange, an inkling of the cause of this omission was conveyed to him by an unexpected encounter with his half-brother.
Martin, who was hacking towards them in the company of a young gentleman who sported a striped waistcoat, and a Belcher tie, no sooner perceived who was the fair burden upon Cloud’s back than he spurred up, an expression on his brow both of astonishment and anger. “Marianne!” he exclaimed. “What’s this? How comes this about? What in thunder are you doing on St. Erth’s horse?”
“Why, that odious Fairy of mine, having thrown me into the mire, would not allow me to catch her!” responded Marianne merrily. “Had it not been for Lord St. Erth’s chivalry I must still be seated miserably by the wayside, or perhaps plodding along this very dirty road!”
“I wish I had been there!” Martin said.
“I wish I had been there!” gallantly echoed his companion.
“I am very glad you were not, for to be seen tumbling off my horse could not at all add to my consequence! Oh, Lord St. Erth, are you acquainted with Mr. Warboys?”