“But I am sure it is,” he persisted. Confound it, this was a little overdoing modesty! He had no desire to eat the girl! “You left it inside the coach, and it has your address upon it. See!” And he tried to place it in her hands.
But she drew back with a look of reprobation of which he would not have believed her eyes capable. “It is not mine, sir,” she said. “Be good enough to leave us!” And then, drawing herself up, mild creature as she was, “You are intruding, sir,” she said.
Now, if Vaughan had really been guilty of approaching her upon a feigned pretext, he had certainly retired on that with his tail between his legs. But being innocent, and both incredulous and angry, he stood his ground, and his eyes gave back some of the reproach which hers darted.
“I am either mad or it is yours,” he said stubbornly, heedless of the ring of staring children who, ceasing to play, had gathered round them. “It bears your name and address, and it was left in the coach by which you travelled yesterday. I think, Miss Smith, you will be sorry afterwards if you do not take it.”
She fancied that his words imported a bribe; and in despair of ridding herself of him, or in terror of the tale which the children would tell, she took her courage in both hands. “You say that it is mine?” she said, trembling visibly.
“Certainly I do,” he answered. And again he held it out to her.
But she did not take it. Instead, “Then be good enough to follow me,” she replied, with something of the prim dignity of the school-mistress. “Miss Cooke, will you collect the children and bring them into the house?”
And, avoiding his eyes, she led the way across the road to the door of one of the houses. He followed, but reluctantly, and after a moment of hesitation. He detested the scene which he now foresaw, and bitterly regretted that he had ever set foot inside Queen’s Square. To be suspected of thrusting an intrigue upon a little schoolmistress, to be dragged, with a pack of staring, chattering children in his train, before some grim-faced duenna—he, a man of years and affairs, with whom the Chancellor of England did not scorn to speak on equal terms! It was hateful; it was an intolerable position. Yet to turn back, to say that he would not go, was to acknowledge himself guilty. He wished—he wished to heaven that he had never seen the girl. Or at least that he had had the courage, when she first denied the thing, to throw the parcel on the seat and go.
It was not an heroic frame of mind; but neither was the position heroic. And something may be forgiven him in the circumstances.
Fortunately the trial was short. She opened the door of the house, and on the threshold he found himself face to face with a tall, bulky woman, with a double chin, and an absurdly powdered nose, who wore a cameo of the late Queen Charlotte on her ample bosom. Miss Sibson had viewed the encounter from an upper window, and her face was a picture of displeasure, slightly tempered by powder.