The Hoyden Part 47

"What do you mean, Randal?" demands his aunt, with a snort that would have done credit to a war-horse. "To whom are you addressing your remarks? Are you calling _me_ indelicate?"

"Oh no--not for worlds!" says Mrs. Chichester, who is choking with laughter, and who only emerges from behind her fan to say this, and go back again. "Who could? But we feared--we thought you were going to say her _skirt."_

"It is my opinion that you fear nothing," says Miss Gower, with a withering glance at the fan. "And let me tell you that there are _other_ people,"--with awful emphasis--"besides Mrs. Tyneway who would do well to put a tucker round their----"

"Ankles!" puts in Mrs. Chichester sweetly.

"No; their----"

"What was her dress made of?" breaks in Margaret hurriedly, who is afraid of their going too far with the irascible old lady.

"Goodness knows! She was all black and blue, at all events!"

"No! You don't say so?" exclaims Mr. Gower, with a tragic gesture.

"So her husband has been at it again!"

At this they all roar, as people will, at _anything,_ when they have nothing else to do. Even t.i.ta, who, though smiling always, is looking rather depressed, gives way to a merry little laugh. Hearing her, Margaret blesses Randal for his silly old joke.

"Oh, Randal! you are too stupid for anything," says t.i.ta, showing all her pretty teeth.

"You have for once lighted on a solemn truth," puts in Randal's aunt grimly. "Let us hope you are getting sense."

"Or a wise tooth," says Colonel Neilson, with a friendly smile at t.i.ta. "Lady Rylton is very _nearly_ old enough to be thinking of that now."

"As for that wretched Mrs. Tyneway," says Miss Gower, taking no notice of him, "if her husband did so far take the law into his own hands as to make her black and blue, I, for one, should not blame him."

"That's funny!" says Mrs. Chichester, giving her a saucy little smile.

"What is funny, may I ask?"

"To hear you defend a man. I thought you despised them in a body."

"I have my own views about them," says Miss Gower, with a sniff.

"But I admit they have rights of their own."

"Fancy allowing a man to have rights nowadays!" cries Mrs.

Chichester, uplifting her long arms as if in amazement. "Good heavens! What a wife you would have made! Rights?" She looks up suddenly at Captain Marryatt, who is, as usual, hanging over the back of her chair. "Do you think a man has any rights?"

"If you don't, I don't," returns that warrior, with much abas.e.m.e.nt and perhaps more sense than one would have expected from him.

"Good boy," says she, patting his hand with her fan.

"I suppose husbands have some rights, at all events?" says Sir Maurice.

He says it quite lightly--quite debonnairly, yet he hardly knows why he says it. He had been looking at t.i.ta, and suddenly she had looked back at him. There was something in the cold expression of her face, something defiant, that had driven him to make this foolish speech.

"Husbands? Pouf! They least of all," says Mrs. Chichester, who loves to shock her audience, and now finds Miss Gower ready to her hand.

"Where is your husband now, Mrs. Chichester?" asks Colonel Neilson, quite without _malice prepense_.

Margaret gives him a warning glance, just a little too late. Though indeed, after all, what is there to warn about Mrs. Chichester? She is only one of a thousand flighty young women one meets every day, and though Captain Marryatt's infatuation for her is beyond dispute, still, her infatuation for him has yet to be proved. Margaret had objected to her, in her own mind, as a companion for t.i.ta--t.i.ta, who seems too young to judge for herself in the matter of friends.h.i.+ps.

"I don't know, I'm sure," returns Mrs. Chichester, lifting her shoulders. "Miss Gower will tell you; she knows everything. Miss Gower," raising her voice slightly, and compelling that terrible old woman to look at her, "will you tell Colonel Neilson where my husband is now?"

_Poor_ Colonel Neilson! who is beginning to wish that the earth would open and swallow him up.

"It argues ill for you that you should be obliged to ask such a question," says Miss Gower, with a lowering eye.

"Does it? How dreadful!" says Mrs. Chichester. She looks immensely amused. "Do you know I heard the other day that he was married again! It can't be true--can it?"

She appeals once again to Colonel Neilson, as if enjoying his discomfiture, and being willing to add to it through pure mischief.

However, she is disappointed this time. Colonel Neilson does not know what to do with her appeal to him, and remains discreetly silent. He can see she is not in earnest.

"At all events, _if_ true," says Mrs. Chichester, looking now at Miss Gower, and speaking in a confidential tone, "I am sure John will let me know about it."

"John" is Major Chichester.

Marryatt is leaning now so far over her that he is whispering in her ear.

"Is this--_is_ this true?" questions he, in low but vehement tones.

"It--it may be. Who can tell?" returns she, with beautiful hesitation.

She subsides once again behind the invaluable fan. To him she seems to be trembling. To Margaret, who is watching her angrily, she seems to be laughing.

"You have evidently great faith in your husband," says Miss Gower, with what she fondly believes to be the most artful sarcasm.

"Oh, I have--I have!" says Mrs. Chichester, clasping her hands in an enthusiastic fas.h.i.+on.

"And he in you, doubtless?"

"Oh, _such_ faith!" with a considerable increase in the enthusiasm.

Miss Gower looks at her over her spectacles. It is an awful look.

"I shall pray for you to-night!" says she, in a piously vindictive tone.

"Oh, thanks! Thanks! How _kind_ of you!" says Mrs. Chichester, with extreme pathos.

There is an explosion on her left. Mrs. Chichester looks mournfully in that direction to see the cause of it. There is only Mr. Gower to be seen! He, as usual, is misconducting himself to quite a remarkable degree. He is now, in fact, laughing so hard but so silently that the tears are running down his cheeks. To laugh out loud with his aunt listening, might mean the loss of seven hundred a year to him.

"What's the matter with you? Aren't you well?" asks Mrs. Chichester, in a loud voice, calculated to draw attention to him.

She feels that here is an opportunity given her to pay off old scores.

"Oh, don't," gasps Gower, frantically struggling still with his laughter. "If she hears you, she'll be down on me like a shot. As you are strong, be merciful!"

"Very well; remember you are in my debt," says she, who _au fond_ is not ill-natured. At this moment t.i.ta pa.s.ses down the balcony to where her husband is standing on the top of the steps that lead to the gardens beneath.