“Alas, that you should have so little sensibility!” quavered his parent. “The jewels which your dear pap clasped about my throat when we were first married — ”
“No, he didn’t,” interrupted Sherry. “My grandfather was alive then, and, what’s more, my father had the devil of a work to induce my grandmother to give ’em up when the old man died! Yes, and you went into one of your miffs, ma’am, and said she had no right to ’em! Remember it as it was yesterday.”
Perceiving that the widow showed every sign of sinking into a swoon, Hero hastily said that indeed she did not wish to have the emeralds until her mama-in-law was dead. But this turned out to have been an unfortunate remark, as it gave the widow an opportunity of saying that she had no doubt her son and his wife were eagerly awaiting that day. She added that it could not be far distant, and this so much annoyed Sherry that he became quite obstinate about the emeralds, and said that if they were not delivered at his house within a week he should instruct old Ditchling to collect them.
“Perhaps,” said the dowager, her colour much heightened, “you would also wish me to send your wife the pearl set and the diamond studs?”
“Yes, by Jupiter, I would!” declared Sherry. “I’m glad you put me in mind of them: they’re just the things for Hero!”
“Oh, Sherry, don’t, please!” whispered Hero.
“Nonsense! The pearls are always handed over to the brides in my family: nothing new in that!” said Sherry briskly. “Come along! If you are to go on this expedition with George, it is time we took our leave!”
The dowager was so overcome by the reflection that she had tumbled into a pit of her own digging that she could barely master her voice sufficiently to bid her visitors farewell. Hero curtsied, as though she had still been a little girl in the schoolroom; the Viscount dropped a chaste salute upon the trembling hand held out to him; and they both withdrew with feelings of great relief at having, as Sherry put it, “brushed through the ordeal tolerably well.”
A civil note from Isabella, accepting Hero’s obliging invitation, was reposing upon the spindle-legged table in the passage which served the house in Half Moon Street as a front hall, and at three o’clock George arrived, with his friend, Mr Gumley. One glance at this gentleman sufficed to enlighten Hero as to the cause of Sherry’s rude laughter: he had plainly been chosen for his lack of address, and palpable terror of the female sex. He was a plain young man, and although George assured Hero, in an under-voice, that when he overcame his shyness he could be perfectly conversable, he stammered so much that whenever he made a remark, which was not often, it was even more painful for his listeners than for himself. However, he appeared to derive deep, if silent, satisfaction from the spectacle he had been brought to witness, and managed to tell Hero, when they finally parted company, that he had enjoyed himself excessively.
Hero, although she was naturally interested in the first balloon she had ever seen, did not spend an afternoon of unmixed enjoyment. For this the behaviour of Miss Milborne was to blame. Nothing could have been more affectionate than Miss Milborne’s manner towards her hostess, and nothing more wayward than her behaviour towards her maddened lover. Hero was unable to acquit her of coquetry, and was indeed quite shocked to see how she would blow first hot and then cold upon the unfortunate Lord Wrotham. Whether she regretted having given him as much encouragement as lay in a rose dropped from her corsage, or whether she resented the introduction into the party of so unprepossessing a gentleman as Mr Gumley, no one could tell, but although she relented towards him from time to time, even allowing her hand to rest in his for a moment longer than was necessary when he handed her down from the barouche, she was for the most part a little pettish in her manner, and made it plain that he could do nothing to please her. Hero, who had a warm affection for George, could not refrain once from looking at her in a very speaking way, but the Beauty seemed not to notice the reproach in her old friend’s eyes. She launched into a sprightly description of a masquerade she had attended a week earlier, and although Hero might be extremely young and unversed in the ways of spoiled beauties, she could not but recognize that Miss Milborne’s reason for introducing this topic lay in the circumstance of her having been gallanted to this party by his Grace of Severn.