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  The Viscount was visibly lost in wonder at such ready address in one whom he had not been used to think quick-witted; Hero, still covered in confusion, slid a grateful hand into one of Mr Ringwood’s and clutched it eloquently, saying in a subdued tone:‘Yes, that is what I meant, Gil!’

  During the interval, when they repaired to the saloon for refreshments, the Viscount bore Mrs Hoby off without so much as glancing at his wife. Mr Ringwood procured her a glass of lemonade, and would have struggled to make polite conversation had she not interrupted him, saying with the devastating candour which characterised her:‘Gil, I don’t know how I came to say it! He is very angry with me, isn’t he?’

  ‘No need to refine too much upon it,’ said Mr Ringwood kindly.‘Dare say he’ll have forgotten about it by the end of the evening. Never one to take a miff, Sherry!’

  ‘I forgot that we were not alone,’ said Hero unhappily. ‘My wretched tongue! If only my cousin had not been present!’

  ‘Yes, but Kitten!’ expostulated Mr Ringwood,‘you ought not to know anything about Sherry’s – well, what I mean is –’

  ‘I know,’ Hero said. ‘Bit of muslin.’

  Mr Ringwood choked over his lemonade. ‘No, I don’t! No, really, Kitten, you must not say such things!’

  ‘Love-bird,’ Hero corrected herself docilely.

  Mr Ringwood regarded her in considerable perturbation. ‘You know what it is, Kitten: if you use expressions like that in company you’ll set up the backs of people, and find yourself all to pieces. You will indeed! Sherry has no business to talk as he must in front of you!’

  ‘It isn’t Sherry’s fault!’ Hero said, firing up in defence of her free-spoken husband.‘He is for ever telling me what I must not say! The thing is that I don’t perfectly remember what I may say, and what I may not. I dare say I ought not to call that dancer a fancy-piece either?’

  ‘Upon no account in the world!’ Mr Ringwood said emphatically.

  ‘Well, I must say I think it is very hard. What may I call her, Gil?’

  ‘Nothing at all! Ladies know nothing of such things.’

  ‘Yes, they do. Why, it was my cousin Cassy who first told me about Sherry’s opera-dancer, so that just shows how mistaken you are!’

  ‘Well, they pretend they do not, at all events!’ said Mr Ringwood desperately.

  ‘Oh, do they? But Sherry told me himself that everyone has an opera-dancer, or something of the sort, and there is nothing in it. Gil, have you –’

  ‘No!’ said Mr Ringwood, with more haste than civility.

  ‘Oh!’ said Hero, digesting this. She raised her eyes to his face and heaved a tiny sigh. ‘I am not a prude, Gil.’

  ‘No,’ agreed Mr Ringwood feelingly.

  ‘And I am not going to be missish, for my cousin says there is nothing gentlemen dislike more. But I cannot help wishing – a very little – that Sherry had not an opera-dancer either.’

  Mr Ringwood made an inarticulate sound in his throat and took his embarrassingly outspoken charge back to her box. Here they were joined in a few moments by the Viscount and Mrs Hoby, and as the curtain went up almost immediately, there was no opportunity for any further confidences.

  The whole party left the Opera House in the Sheringhams’ barouche, Mrs Hoby maintaining a sprightly flow of small-talk until she was set down at her own door. Mr Ringwood went on to Half Moon Street with the Sheringhams, and cravenly refusing an invitation to enter the house with them, parted from them on the doorstep and walked the remainder of the way to his lodging. It went to his heart to ignore the pleading tug Hero gave his sleeve, but he was of the decided opinion that he would make a very uncomfortable third in the quarrel that was obviously brewing.

  The door being opened to the returning couple by the butler, Hero, after one surreptitious glance at his lordship’s ominous face, said:‘I am so tired! I think I will go straight up to my room.’

  ‘Send your abigail to bed!’ returned his lordship. ‘I want a word with you in private.’

  The agitating prospect of a word alone with a husband who was looking like a thunder-cloud made Hero feel quite sickx with apprehension. She would have liked to have kept the abigail at her side, but as it seemed more than probable that Sherry would order the woman out of the room if he found her there when he came up, she dared not do it.

  He entered without ceremony not five minutes after the door had closed behind the abigail. Hero had just locked the pearl set away in her jewel-case, and without these gauds she looked much younger, in fact, so like the tiresome little girl the Viscount had bullied in his schooldays, that he straightaway forgot the dignified speech he had been preparing all the way home from the Opera House, and strode across the room to her, seized her by the shoulders, and shook her unmercifully. ‘You abominable little wretch, how dared you?’ he demanded wrathfully. ‘Didn’t I tell you – didn’t I warn you to guard that damned, indiscreet tongue of yours? “Oh, Sherry, is that your opera-dancer?”No, it was not my opera-dancer, and you may take that with my compliments!’

  Tears started to Hero’s eyes. Released, she pressed a hand to one tingling cheek, and quavered: ‘Oh, Sherry, don’t! I didn’t mean to say it! I forgot we were not alone!’

  ‘If you had the smallest elegance of mind,’ said his lordship furiously, ‘it would not have entered your head to have said it!’

  ‘Well, but, Sherry, she did so look at you, and smile, that I could not but wonder. . . . But I quite see that I should not have said a word about it, and I am very sorry, and I will never do so again.’

  ‘It will be better for you if you do not!’ retorted her implacable spouse.‘If I know anything of females, that cousin of yours will spread it all over town in a week – or she would if she moved in the first circles, which she don’t! And that’s another thing! I do not know how you come to have a cousin of such bad ton, but I can tell you that if you mean to be seen for ever in her company it will not do!’

  Stung by the injustice of this, Hero retorted:‘It was you who said that I was fortunate in having a relative in town! You said that there could not be the least objection to my visiting her!’

  ‘I had not spent an evening in her company when I said that – if I said that!’ replied Sherry grimly.

  ‘It seemed to me that you were very well amused by her!’ Hero flung at him.‘I am sure you laughed enough at the things she was saying to you!’

  ‘Well, I won’t have you jauntering about with her any more!’ said Sherry, in a very imperious style. ‘Mind that!’

  ‘I shan’t!’ promptly replied Hero, losing her temper. ‘I shall make a friend of anyone I choose, and I shall go where I choose, and I shall do what I choose, and I shall –’

  ‘Will you, by God!’ interrupted his lordship, descending purposefully upon her.

  Hero retired strategically behind a small table.‘Yes, I shall, and it is of no use to say Will I, by God! because it was you who said we would not interfere with one another, you know it was!’

  The Viscount halted and stared at her suspiciously.‘I said that? I’ll swear I never in my life said anything so damned silly!’

  ‘Yes, you did! You said I should not find you the sort of husband for ever kicking up a dust over trifles! You said that as long as I was discreet –’

  ‘Well, you ain’t!’ said his lordship, pouncing on this. ‘In fact, there was never anyone less discreet! And as for letting you do precisely as you choose, yes, a pretty piece of business you would make of that, my girl! With no more sense than that damned canary Gil was fool enough to give you, and no more notion of how to behave in society than Jason has!’

  ‘I don’t steal!’ hotly exclaimed his wife.

  ‘I never said you did!’

  ‘Yes, you did, because you said I was like Jason, and of all the odious things to say –’

  ‘I did not say you were like Jason! All I said was that you had no more idea –’

  ‘It is just the same, and it is just like you, Sherry, to
say it is all my fault, when it was you who told me about bits of muslin and opera-dancers!’

  ‘How the deuce was I to know that you would blurt it out like a regular hoyden?’ demanded his lordship.

  ‘Well, you ought to have known I might very likely do so,’ Hero said candidly. ‘You have been acquainted with me for a long time, and I have made you as m-mad as fire with me times out of m-mind, through s-saying things I ought not. And Gil says you have no business to talk as you do in front of me, so it is just as much your fault as mine!’

  ‘Oh!’ said his lordship awfully. ‘So that’s it, is it? Not content with putting me to shame in public, you must needs discuss the matter with Gil! Upon my word, Hero, if that don’t beat all! I might have guessed how it would be! No doubt you asked him if he had an opera-dancer too!’

  ‘Yes and he said –’

  ‘What?’ thundered the Viscount.

  ‘He said he had not,’ ended Hero simply.

  The Viscount appeared to have some difficulty in getting his breath.‘Hero!’ he uttered at last.‘Have you no sense of propriety?’

  ‘Yes, I have!’ replied Hero, her bosom swelling. ‘I have much more than you have, Sherry, for I do not have opera-dancers, or get foxed, or – Oh, I wish you will go away! You are unkind, and unforgiving, and unreasonable, and I hate you!’

  ‘I am obliged to you, ma’am!’ said the Viscount, seeking refuge in sudden and awe-inspiring dignity.‘I have not the least notion of inflicting my presence on you another instant, and I will wish you a very good-night!’

  On this grand valediction he stalked from the room, closing the door with unnecessary violence, and leaving his overwrought wife to the indulgence of a hearty bout of tears.

  They met next morning at the breakfast-table, both very conscious of the previous night’s quarrel. The Viscount bade Hero a punctilious good-morning, and buried himself in the newspaper. Hero poured out the coffee, and slowly consumed a roll. After a slight pause, she cleared her throat of an unaccountable lump, and said: ‘Sherry?’

  The Viscount lowered the paper.‘Well?’

  ‘Will you have a little ham?’ said Hero, quite dismayed by this forbidding aspect.

  ‘No, I thank you, I will not.’

  ‘Or – or some more coffee?’

  ‘No,’ said the Viscount, retiring once more into the paper.

  Hero fortified herself with a few sips of her own coffee. She tried again. ‘Sherry?’

  ‘Well, what is it now?’

  ‘N-nothing!’ said Hero, on a distinct sob.

  ‘For heaven’s sake,’ said his lordship, ‘don’t start to cry!’

  ‘Perhaps I had best g-go out of the room then, because I c-can’t help crying when you’re so dreadfully unkind to me!’ offered Hero.

  ‘I’m not unkind to you.’

  ‘Oh, Sherry, it is so very like you to say that, when you know very well you have used me quite shockingly!’ Hero said, a smile quivering on her lips. ‘You always did so! But you never called me ma’am in that horrid way before, and I would rather you boxed both my ears than did that, indeed I would!’

  ‘Serve you right if I did!’ said his lordship, stretching out a hand across the table.‘No, really, Kitten, I’m devilish sorry I hurt you! But of all the things to have said – ! However, you won’t do it again!’

  ‘No, truly I won’t!’ Hero assured him, tucking her hand in his. A reluctant grin stole across the Viscount’s face.‘Lord, I’d have given a monkey to have seen Gil’s phiz when you asked him if he had an opera-dancer!’ he said.

  ‘Do you think he may not have liked it?’ Hero asked anxiously. ‘He is such a particular friend that I thought I might say what I pleased to him. And I did want to know, because you said that everyone had them, and –’

  ‘Oh, my God, the things I say!’ groaned Sherry. ‘I wish you will forget them, brat! and as for my opera-dancer, that is all over and done with now that I am a sober married man, so let us have no more talk of it!’

  ‘I won’t say another word,’ promised Hero, brightening perceptibly.‘Can you not have them if you are married?’

  The Viscount laughed and tossed a bill across the table. ‘Not if you have a wife who spends as much money on a couple of trumpery hats as that!’ he replied.

  ‘Oh dear!’ Hero said, conscious-stricken.‘Ought I not to have done so? Only, one is the hat I wore when we drove out to Richmond, and you particularly commended it, Sherry!’

  ‘No, no, there’s no harm done!’ Sherry said, tweaking one of her ringlets. ‘Extravagant little puss! Wear it again to-day! I’ll drive you round the Park, if you care to go with me. I want to try the paces of that pair of chestnuts I bought at Tatt’s last week.’

  ‘Yes, indeed I do!’ Hero said, every cloud vanishing from her horizon.

  Ten

  IT WAS NOT,OF COURSE, TO BE EXPECTED THAT THIS WAS THE only tiff which disturbed the peace of the house in Half Moon Street. A young lady, reared in the heart of Kent and uninstructed in the niceties of social etiquette,was to be depended on to make mistakes, and to get into all the minor scrapes which lurked in the path of any high-spirited damsel bent on cutting a dash in the world. The Viscount had been aware when he married his Hero that she knew nothing of the ways of the Polite World, but partly through a misplaced confidence in his mother’s willingness to take Hero under her wing and partly through an airy belief that Hero would soon learn the ropes, he had not anticipated that he would be required to play a large rôle in her début. The fashionable ladies of his acquaintance were seldom dependent upon their husbands for their amusements, nor had they to be extricated from the consequences of ignorance. The Viscount had, in fact, plunged into matrimony with the lighthearted intention of squiring his wife to a few parties and assemblies, driving her out occasionally in the Park, and being pleasant to her over the breakfast-cups. Such concessions as these to convention would scarcely interfere with the pursuit of his usual amusements. As for Hero, the Viscount was not an ill-natured or an unreasonable young man, and he meant to make no objection to her forming her own court, with its attendant cicisbeos, and even (if discreetly conducted) its amorous intrigues. He supposed that she would hold her card-parties, and possibly fritter her pin-money away at silver-loo; buy herself her favourite number in the lotteries at Richardson’s; air all her most expensive toilets in the Park; and generally conduct herself like any other female of birth and fortune. It had never occurred to him that he would return from a shooting-match at Epping to be met by the intelligence that her ladyship would not be at home to dine with him, as she had gone with a party of friends to Margate on the steam-boat; nor that he would stroll into the Royal Saloon, in Piccadilly, in search of such amusement as this Turkish kiosk of a building offered, only to be brought up short by the spectacle of his wife partaking of supper in one of the booths, in company with a very fast young widow, and two of the wildest blades of his acquaintance. The fact that it was just such a party as he himself was in the habit of frequenting in no way mitigated his shocked wrath. The widow, with whom he was well acquainted, hailed him with arch good-humour, and received for her pains a frosty glance, and the very stiffest of bows; the two young blades, recognising from experience the unmistakable signs of an enraged spouse, suddenly became painstakingly discreet in their dealings with my Lady Sheringham; and only the erring wife herself remained unaffected by his lordship’s joining the party. This he did, and those who were used to look upon him as a regular out-and-outer who might be depended on to become the life and soul of a gathering of this order would have been hard put to it to recognise him in the punctilious young gentleman who took his seat at the rustic table, and proceeded to cast a damper over the evening. He removed Hero at the earliest possible moment, and lectured her all the way home on the impropriety of her appearing at such places, and in such company. She was at once contrite, but said that Mrs Chester, the smart widow, had claimed friendship with him, so that she had supposed that she must be unexception
able. The Viscount was confounded by this, and ended the discussion by saying hastily that that was neither here nor there, and she was on no account to go to the Royal Saloon again. She promised that she would not, and the affair blew over. But a week later, the Viscount, having been made aware by the veriest accident of his wife’s fell intent, was only just in time to prevent her visiting a haunt known as the Peerless Pool. She was perfectly docile as soon as she was assured that no lady of quality would visit the Pool, and made so little lament at having her projected party of pleasure spoilt, that his lordship was touched, and voluntarily sacrificed his own plans to take his unsophisticated bride to Astley’s Amphitheatre, where they saw a spectacular piece entitled Make Way for Liberty, or The Flight of the Saracens. This was an unqualified success, and Sherry, who had thought himself above being pleased by such an artless entertainment, enjoyed himself amazingly, deriving even more amusement from Hero’s naïve wonder than from the marvels exhibited on the stage.

  At her request, he made a list for Hero of the fashionable places it would not be consonant with her dignity for her to be seen at. She conned it carefully, but it proved to be incomplete. The Viscount walked into his house early one afternoon to find a twisted note from his wife awaiting him on the table in the hall. ‘Dearest Sherry,’ ran this missive, ‘only fancy! Gussie Yarford, Lady Appleby, I mean, came to visit me, and she has a famous scheme for such a frolic! We are to go in our plainest gowns to Bartholomew Fair, and she says there can be not the least objection, for Wilfred Yarford and Sir Matthew Brockenhurst are to go along with us, so I know you will not mind if I am not back in time for dinner.

  ’ The Viscount let out a strangled groan, and so far forgot himself as to clutch at his fair locks. His friend, Mr Ringwood, who had accompanied him to his home, regarded him with anxious solicitude.

  ‘She’s gone to Bartholomew Fair!’ said Sherry, in despairing accents.

  Mr Ringwood thought this over and shook his head. ‘Can’t do that, Sherry. Not the thing at all. Shouldn’t allow it.’