Mr Ringwood, learning what had befallen, animadverted bitterly on the folly of one friend and the moral cowardice of the other, and announced his intention of calling on Lady Sherry himself upon the following morning.
It was too late. Mrs Bagshot, coming away from her interview with Hero in high dudgeon, had lost no time in sending off an express to Sherry at Melton, informing him in good round terms of his wife’s latest escapade, drawing a horrid picture of its inevitable result, graphically describing the evils of a lady’s name being bandied about the clubs in connection with Horseracing and Betting, and comprehensively washing her hands of the whole business.
This missive reached Sherry in the eve of what promised to be one of the best runs of the season, and it drew from him such an explosion of wrath that Mrs Goring, who happened to be passing through the hall with a pile of clean linen, dropped six shirts and eight handkerchiefs on to a floor made muddy by his lordship’s boots, and promptly succumbed to a fit of hysterics.
Sherry arrived in London at dusk on the day of Ferdy’s ill starred visit to Half Moon Street, having driven himself in his curricle all the way. He was tired, chilled, and he had missed a capital day’s sport. Informed by his startled butler that my lady was dressing for a party, he mounted the stairs two at a time, entered his wife’s room without ceremony, and, ignoring the presence of her abigail, demanded furiously: “What the devil is this I’m hearing about you?”
The abigail shrank back in alarm; Hero, seated before her mirror, gazed at him in blank dismay, and faltered: “Sherry! Sherry! I didn’t expect — I don’t — ”
“No, by God, I’ll wager you didn’t expect me!” he said. He pulled Mrs Bagshot’s letter from his pocket and thrust it into Hero’s hand. “Read that!” He became aware of the abigail, and rounded on her promptly. “What the deuce are you doing here? Outside!”
The abigail then momentarily surprised her young mistress by asserting in a very noble way her fixed resolve to support and protect her ladyship, even though she should be assailed by wild horses. Hero was much affected by this wholly unexpected championship, but begged her to leave the room. Maria cast the Viscount a look of loathing which embraced the entire race of men, and retired to regale Mrs Bradgate and the kitchenmaid with a recital of all the circumstances in her own career which had led her to look upon the male sex as being in all essentials lower than Beasts in the Field.
Hero, meanwhile, was perusing in a dazed manner her cousin Jane’s letter. She gave a little exclamation and looked up, stammering: “But, Sherry, why? Why? I made sure you would not have the least objection!”
“No objection?” he thundered. “No objection to your making such a show of yourself? Bets laid on you in all the clubs! Every goggling fool in town sniggering at you, and believing you to be as bad as Letty Lade!”
“But Lady Royston — ”