“It was my aunt’s doing.”
“To be sure, little ’un,” quoth Mr. Lot, with a glum grin, “and you didn’t enjoy yourself at all, eh? Julia Perkaby’s a fine wench, Richard. What! Don’t know when a woman’s got a pair of deuced fine eyes in her head?”
Mr. Lot laughed loudly and slapped Jeffray on the shoulder with a vigor that was not wholly inspired by cousinly regard. Peter Gladden was standing at the hall door with a lantern in his hand; the Hardacre coach-horses were pawing the gravel without.
“Come, Sir Peter, I don’t think we are prime-beef here.”
Richard was still gazing ruefully at Jilian, watching her enfold her auburn head in a light-blue wrapper.
“I am very sorry,” he said, in a humble aside.
Miss Hardacre made him a fine courtesy.
“La, cousin, don’t apologize,” she said, “we have had a delicious evening. I am sure Miss Julia’s dancing was superb.”
VI
A sharp skirmish occurred in the great drawing-room that night after that stately chamber had been emptied of its guests. Richard, chafing under Sir Peter’s honest outburst of wrath and Miss Jilian’s ironical reproaches, charged the Lady Letitia with deliberately insulting these good people whom he had summoned to Rodenham in all the innocence of his heart. The Lady Letitia, throned on a brocaded fauteuil before the dying fire, regarded her nephew with amused contempt, and proceeded to convince him of the disinterested wisdom of her plot.