“Yes, very likely,” he agreed. “I must say, I never thought you above the ordinary myself, but if you go on like this the lord only knows where it will end!”
“But, Sherry, you do not mind my growing to be pretty, do you?”
“Oh, I don’t mind it!” replied his lordship. “The thing is, I didn’t bargain for it, that’s all, and if you are to have fellows like George for ever haunting the house, I can see it will be a dashed nuisance. And now I come to think of it, George ain’t the only one! There’s Gil! Hardest case I ever met in my life, and what must he do but take you out driving to Salt Hill, just as though he were in the habit of driving females, which he ain’t. Yes, and who was that curst rum touch I found with you last week?”
“Mr Kilby, do you mean, Sherry?”
“I dare say. Not that it signifies, for I fancy he won’t come here to make sheep’s eyes at you again!”
She gave a little giggle. “I must say, I think you were very uncivil and disobliging to him, Sherry. I don’t know what he can have thought!”
“Oh, don’t you?” retorted Sherry grimly. “Well, he knew dashed well what to think, let me tell you!” He returned unexpectedly to the original bone of contention. “But that’s neither here nor there. Whoever heard of a fellow’s wanting the advice of a chit like you, I should like to know? Rather too brown, Kitten! In fact, a dashed sight too brown!”
“But indeed he did, Sherry! The case is that he has great hopes that Isabella may relent towards him, and he wished to know my opinion of a — well, a little billet that he means to send her, with the flowers for Lady Fakenham’s ball. But you must not mention the matter, for indeed I think he would not wish me to have spoken of it!”
As he really knew very well that he had not the least cause to regard Lord Wrotham with suspicion, Sherry consented to be satisfied with this explanation, and the matter was allowed to drop.
An interview with his man of business, a few days later, provided his lordship with other, and more serious, affairs for thought. Mr Stoke felt it to be his duty to bring certain disagreeable facts to his lordship’s notice. Since this interview followed on a more than ordinarily Black Monday at Tattersall’s, the Viscount escorted his wife to the Fakenhams’ ball in a mood of considerable dissatisfaction. His friend, Revesby, in whom he had confided, had done his best to raise his spirits by asserting his conviction that the luck would shortly turn, and had even introduced him to the newest gaming hell, which was located in Pickering Place, and conducted on such discreet lines that the Viscount would not have been surprised to have been asked to give a password before being admitted by the individual who conversed with him through an iron grille in the door. He had played macao into the small hours of the morning, but with indifferent success; and although Sir Montagu was of the opinion that initial losses were to be regarded as auspicious, it was an undeniable fact that his lordship was not in his usual sunny spirits when he arrived at the Fakenham mansion in Cavendish Square.