This idyll was interrupted by Lady Silverdale, who came into the room, saying in the voice of one who had passed the limits of her endurance: “I do think, Hetta, that you might have come to tell me—” She broke off, and exclaimed in scandalized accents: “Hen-ri-etta!” Then, as Desford looked quickly round, and she perceived who it was who was embracing her daughter, her note changed. “Desford!” she cried joyfully. “Oh, my dear, dear boy! Oh, how happy this makes me! Hetta, my darling child! Now I don’t care what happens!”
“But, Mama!” objected Hetta, wickedly quizzing her. “You told me that nothing would prevail upon you to give your consent to my marrying Des! Why, you even congratulated me on my fortunate escape from such a fate!”
“Nonsense, Hetta!” said Lady Silverdale, very properly dismissing this untimely reminiscence. “It has been the one wish of my life! I have always been excessively fond of him, and, what’s more, I have never wavered from my conviction that he is just the man for you!”
“Thank you, ma’am!” said Desford, raising her hand to his lips. “I hope I may be just the man for Hetta, but all I know is that she is just the woman for me!”
“Dear Ashley! Very prettily said!” she approved. “It is what one so particularly likes in you! To be sure, I was not quite pleased with you when you brought Wilfred Steane’s child here, but that’s not of the smallest consequence now! But I must say, Hetta, it was as much as I could do to say what was proper when she told me, just now, that she had accepted an offer from Mr Nethercott. It seemed to me that there was to be no end to the gentlemen she steals from you! First it was Desford; then it was Charlie—not, of course, that he is one of your suitors, but the principle is the same—and now it’s Mr Nethercott! Well, she’s welcome to him, for I never thought him worthy of you, never! Desford, you will stay to dine with us, of course. Hetta, run and warn Ufford—No, I’ll see him myself, and Charlie must talk to Grimshaw about champagne. Bless you, my dear ones!” With these words she went away to confer with the cook, her gait at startling variance from the tottering steps which had brought her into the room a few minutes earlier.
The lovers then resumed their previous occupation, only to be almost immediately interrupted by Simon, who strolled in, checked on the threshold in surprise at the sight which met his eyes, and burst into a shout of laughter. Reproved in no uncertain terms by his elder brother, he was quite unrepentant. “Oh, isn’t there anything to laugh at!” he said, kissing Hetta’s cheek, and painfully wringing the Viscount’s hand. “Here’s the pair of you, smelling of April and May ever since I can remember, and it ain’t until I put it into your heads that it occurs to either of you to stop huffling and get spliced! Well, I told you you didn’t know how nacky my best was, Des, but you know now!”
He then took his leave of them, declining an invitation to join the dinner-party on the score of its being imperative that he should be in London before it became too dark to see his way. “I’m off to Brighton in the morning,” he explained. “But if you should get into any more scrapes, Des, just send me word, and I’ll post straight back to rescue you!”
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Charity Girl Page 27
