“Yes, and so I would have done had I wished to startle you into dropping your guard!” Theo retorted, laughing. “What I might have felt myself impelled to do had you appeared to me to be hard-pressed I know not! Something heroic, no doubt! But stop bamming, Gervase! What have you been doing to make Martin ready to murder you?”
“Why, I have been flaunting my title and my dandified airs in the eyes of his inamorata, and he fears she may be dazzled!”
“Oh! I collect that you have somehow contrived to meet Miss Bolderwood?”
“Yes, and I wish you will tell me why no one has ever told me of her existence! She is the sweetest sight my eyes have alighted upon since I came into Lincolnshire!”
Theo smiled, but perfunctorily, and turned a little aside, to lay the foils in their case. “She is very beautiful,” he agreed, in a colourless tone.
“An heiress too, if I have understood her father! Shall I try my fortune?”
“By all means.”
Gervase glanced quickly at his averted profile. “Theo! You too?”
Theo uttered a short laugh. “Don’t disturb yourself! I might as well aspire to the hand of a Royal Princess!” He shut the sword-case, and turned. “Come! If General Hawkhurst has honoured you with a visit, you had better make yourself a little more presentable.”
“Very true: I will do so at once!” Gervase said, rather glad to be relieved of the necessity of answering his cousin’s embittered words. From the little he had seen of both, he could not but feel that the staid Drusilla would make a more suitable bride for Theo than the livelier and by far more frivolous Marianne; he must, moreover, have been obliged to agree that there could be little hope that Sir Thomas would bestow his only child on a man in Theo’s circumstances.