“Ah! I see how it is,” said Mr. Tottenham. “You have been carried off, Earnshaw, and made a prey of against your will. Don’t ask me for my opinion, yes or no. Take what good you can of to-night, you will have a pleasant waking up, I promise you, to-morrow morning. The question is, in the meantime, how are you to get home? Every soul is gone, and my little brougham is waiting, with places for two only, at the door. Send that fellow away, and I’ll take you home to your mother.”
But poor Gussy had very little heart to send her recovered lover away. She clung to his arm, with a face like an April day, between smiles and tears.
“He says quite true. We shall have a dreadful morning,” she said, disconsolately. “When can you come, Edgar? I will say nothing till you come.”
As Gussy spoke there came suddenly back upon Edgar a reflection of all he had to do. Life had indeed come back to him all at once, her hands full of thorns and roses piled together. He fixed the time of his visit to Lady Augusta next morning, as he put Gussy into Mr. Tottenham’s brougham, and setting off himself at a great pace, arrived at Berkeley Square as soon as they did, and attended her to the well-known door. Gussy turned round on the threshold of the house where he had been once so joyfully received, but where his appearance now, he knew, would be regarded with horror and consternation, and waved her hand to him as he went away. But having done so, I am afraid her courage failed, and she stole away rapidly upstairs, and took refuge in her own room, and even put herself within the citadel of her bed.
“I came home with Uncle Tottenham in his brougham,” she said to Ada, who, half-alarmed, paid her a furtive visit, “and I am so tired and sleepy!”
Poor Gussy, she was safe for that night, but when morning came what was to become of her? So far from being sleepy, I do not believe that, between the excitement, the joy, and the terror, she closed her eyes that whole night.
Mr. Tottenham, too, got out of the brougham at Lady Augusta’s door; his own house was on the other side of the Square. He sent the carriage away, and took Edgar’s arm, and marched him solemnly along the damp pavement.
“Earnshaw, my dear fellow,” he said, in the deepest of sepulchral tones, “I am afraid you have been very imprudent. You will have a mauvais quart d’heure to-morrow.”
“I know it,” said Edgar, himself feeling somewhat alarmed, in the midst of his happiness.
“I am afraid—you ought not to have let her carry you off your feet in this way; you ought to have been wise for her and yourself too; you ought to have avoided any explanation. Mind, I don’t say that my feelings go with that sort of thing; but in common prudence—in justice to her——”