"What is amiss?" asked Mr. Ravensworth, as he took the Major into a sitting-room.
"Amiss!" returned the excited Major. "I would advise you not to fall into Level's way just now. How the mischief came you to bring Blanche over?"
"We accompanied Lady Level to England at her request: I took no part in influencing her decision. Lady Level is her own mistress."
"Is she, though! She'll find she's not, if she begins to act in opposition to her husband. Before she was married, she had not a wish of her own, let alone a will—and there's where Level was caught, I fancy," added the Major, in a parenthesis, nodding his head knowingly. "He thought he had picked up a docile child, who would never be in his way. What with that and her beauty—anyway, he could not think she would be setting up a will, and an obstinate one, as she's doing now, rely upon that."
Major Carlen was striding from one end of the room to the other, his cloak catching in the furniture as he swayed about. Arnold thought he had been drinking: but he was a man who could take a great deal, and show it very little.
"The case is this," said he, unfastening the troublesome cloak, and flinging it on to a chair. "Level has been in England a week or two; amusing himself, I take it. He didn't want his wife, I suppose; well and good: men like a little society, and as long as they keep their wives in the dark, there's no reason why they shouldn't have it——"
"Major Carlen!" burst forth Mr. Ravensworth. "Lord Level's wife is your daughter. Have you forgotten it?"
"My step-daughter. What if she is? Does that render her different from others? Are you going to climb a pole and cry Morality? You are a young married man, Arnold Ravensworth, and must be on your good behaviour just now; it's etiquette."
Mr. Ravensworth was not easily excited, but the red flush of anger darkened his cheek. He could have thrust the old rascal from the house.
"Level leaves his wife in France, and tells her to remain there. Germany? Well, say Germany, then. My lady chooses to disobey, and comes to England, under your wing: and I wish old Harry had driven you to any place rather than the one she was stopping at. She reaches town to-day, and drives to Lord Level's rooms in Holles Street, whence he had dated his letters to her—and a model of incaution he was for doing it; why couldn't he have dated from his club? My lady finds or hears of something there she does not like. Well, what could she expect? They were his rooms; taken for himself, not for her; and if she had not been a greater simpleton than ever broke loose from keeping, she would have come away, then and there. Not she. She must persist in putting questions as to this and that; so at last she learned the truth, I suppose, or something near it. Then she thought it time to leave the house and come to mine: which is what she ought to have done at first: and there she has been waiting until now to see me, for I have been out all day."