“I was no such thing!” cried his lordship, stung on the raw. “Good God, ma’am, you don’t think I could graze the wheel of five coaches if I’d shot the cat, do you?”
His mother let her handkerchief drop from a suddenly nerveless hand. “Graze the wheels of five coaches?” she faltered, looking at him as though she feared for his sanity.
“Five of ’em all in a row, and never checked!” asserted the Viscount. “Sheerest piece of curst ill fortune that I overturned old Ware’s phaeton! Must have misjudged it. Cost me the wager, too. Backed myself to graze the wheels of the first seven vehicles I met past the Hyde Park turnpike without oversetting any of ’em. Can’t think how I came to bungle it. Must have been old Ware’s driving. He never could keep the line: a mere whipster! No precision of eye at all!”
“Unhappy boy!” exclaimed his mother in throbbing accents. “Are you dead to all sense of shame? Horace, speak to him!”
“If he does,” said the Viscount, his chin jutting dangerously, “he’ll go out through that window, uncle or no uncle!”
“Oh!” moaned his afflicted parent, sinking back on her couch and putting a hand to her brow. “What, what, I ask of you, brother, have I done to deserve this?”
“Hush, my dear Valeria! Calm yourself, I beg!” said Mr Paulett, clasping her other hand.
“No wonder poor Isabella rejected his suit! I cannot find it in me to blame her!”
“Alas, one cannot but feel for the sake of the estate it may be for the best!” said Mr Paulett, strategically retaining his clasp on that frail but protective hand. “Loth as I am to say it, I cannot consider poor Sherry fit to assume the control of his fortune. Well for him that it is held in trust for him!”
“Oh, is it well for me?” interjected poor Sherry wrathfully. “Much you know about it! And why my father ever took it into his head to make you a trustee beats me! I don’t mind Uncle Prosper — at least, I dare say I could handle him, if it weren’t for you, for ever putting a spoke in my wheel! And don’t stand there bamming me that you’re mighty sorry Bella wouldn’t have me, because I know you’re not! Once I get the confounded Trust wound up, out you’ll go, and well you know it! If my mother chooses to let you batten upon her, she may do it, but you won’t batten on me any longer, by Jupiter you won’t!”