The stricken look vanished. Hero turned impulsively towards him. “Oh, would you teach me to handle a pair? Gil — the particular friend who taught me to drive my phaeton — would not let me drive his curricle, but I have a great desire to! That is, if Lady Saltash will permit me to.”
Mr Tarleton assured her that her ladyship would have no objection to such a harmless pastime, and so indeed it proved. Lady Saltash chuckled and gave permission; and very soon it became quite an accepted thing for Mr Tarleton to drive up to the house in Camden Place any fine morning and to take up his eager pupil. They drove about the country in the immediate vicinity of the town, and Hero had such a real aptitude that it was not long before she was acquitting herself creditably enough for her to wish that Mr Ringwood could see her progress. While she held the reins in her hands she could almost forget the trouble that lay in her heart. She was often merry, always entirely natural, never dreamed that anyone so elderly as her companion could be falling in love with her, thought him one of the kindest men she had encountered, and so treated him in a confiding way that completed his downfall. Mr Tarleton felt himself to be growing daily younger in her presence, began to think seriously of matrimony, and racked his brains to think how best to make his suit attractive to so youthful, so unconventional, and so romantic a lady. A still, small voice within him, whispering that he would regret this madness, he resolutely ignored. It occurred to him that he had hitherto led the most humdrum of lives, and that to indulge in a little madness would be a welcome relief.
Chapter Twenty-One
UPON LEAVING GRILLON’S HOTEL, SHERRY BETOOK himself home to Half Moon Street, meeting on the way Lord Wrotham, who was driving his sulky down Piccadilly towards St James’s Street. The Viscount hailed him and he drew up. His restless, handsome countenance betrayed no pleasure in the encounter, however; and he greeted his friend with a scowl and a curt: “Well, what?”
“Oh, the devil! are you in the sullens again?” retorted Sherry. “What a fellow you are, George! I’ve a deuced good mind not to tell you something you’d give a deal to hear!”
George shrugged his shoulders. “Do as you please! I don’t know what should have happened to put you in spirits. When last I saw you — ”
“Never mind that!” interrupted Sherry. “If you wanted to pick a quarrel with me, you should have done it then, for by God, I was in the humour to quarrel with anyone who offered! Change my mind now. Thought you’d like to know the Beauty is back in town.”
George made as if to give his horse the office to start. “If you have come to smash up to me merely to tell me that, you have wasted your time! She might be in Jericho for aught I care!”
“Point is she ain’t in Jericho. She’s on her way to Bath with my mother. I am escorting the pair of them there tomorrow.”
The rigid look was wiped suddenly from Lord Wrotham’s face. “What?” he ejaculated.