The Nonesuch

A less determined girl might have been daunted at this point; but it had been truly observed of Miss Wield that there were no lengths to which she would not go to achieve her ends. Rather than have abandoned her project she would have walked to Leeds. Indeed, she was trying to make up her mind whether to pursue this dreary course, carrying a bandbox; or to ride, carrying nothing, when a welcome sound came to her ears. She ran to the window, and saw Mr Calver driving up to the house in his hired whisky.

Tiffany flung up the window, and leaned out to hail him. “Oh, Mr Calver, how do you do? Have you come to take me out? I shall be with you directly!”

He looked up, sweeping off his high-crowned beaver. “Very happy to do so! No need to bustle about, however: I must pay my respects to Miss Trent, you know.”

“Oh, she has gone to Nethersett, and won’t be home for hours!” Tiffany answered. “Only wait for ten minutes!”

This was not at all what he had hoped to hear; nor had he much desire to sit beside Tiffany while she tooled the whisky round the immediate countryside. There seemed to be no object to be gained by dangling after her any longer; and teaching her to drive was an occupation which had begun to pall on him. However, he could think of no better way of passing the time, so he resigned himself.

He was rather startled, when she came running out of the house some twenty minutes later, to see that she was arrayed in a modish pelisse, with a hat embellished by several curled ostrich plumes on her head, and a large bandbox slung by its ribbons over her arm.

“Here—!” he expostulated. “I mean to say—what the dooce—?”

Tiffany handed the bandbox to him, and climbed into the whisky. “You can’t think how glad I am that you came!” she said. “I was quite in despair! For I must go to Leeds, and Ancilla set off in the gig quite early, and I don’t know where Courtenay may be!”

“Go to Leeds?” he repeated. “But—”

“Yes, it is the most vexatious thing!” she said glibly. “The dressmaker had sent home my new ball-dress, which I particularly wish to wear at the Systons’ party, and the stupid creature has made it too tight for me. And how to get to Leeds, with the coachman away, and no one to accompany me, I’d not the least notion, until you came driving up the avenue! You’ll take me, won’t you? That will make everything right!”

“Well, I don’t know,” he said dubiously. “I’m not sure I ought. Seems to me Miss Trent might not think it quite the thing.”

She laughed. “How can you be so absurd? When I have been driving with you for ever!”

“Yes, but—”

“If you don’t escort me, I shall go alone,” she warned him. “I shall ride there, and that won’t be the thing at all. So if you choose to be disobliging—”

“No, no! I suppose I’d better drive you there, if you’re so set on it. You can’t go alone, at all events,” he said, giving his horse the office. “Mind, though! it won’t do if you mean to remain for hours with this dressmaker! I should think it will take us close on a couple of hours to get to Leeds and back again. Did you tell anyone where you was off to?”

“Oh, yes!” she assured him mendaciously. “Ancilla won’t be in a worry, so you need not be either. And I shan’t be with Mrs Walmer above half-an-hour, I promise you!”

He was satisfied with this; and although he had little faith in her ability to emerge from a dressmaker’s establishment in so short a space of time, he reflected that he must be certain of finding Miss Trent at home if it was three or more hours before he brought Tiffany back to Staples.

Tiffany beguiled the drive with lighthearted chatter. Having surmounted the first obstacle to her flight, she was in high good-humour, her eyes glowing with excitement, laughter never far from her lips. Already, in her imagination, she was the petted darling of her Uncle James, and had prevailed upon him to remove from the City to a more fashionable quarter of the town. The humiliation of the previous evening’s party, and the shock of discovering that Lindeth had become engaged to Patience, were rapidly fading from her mind, and would be wholly forgotten as soon as she had put Yorkshire behind her. Fresh, and far more dazzling conquests lay ahead. She had never cared a button for Lindeth, after all; and as for the rest of her court, they were a set of bumpkins whom she would probably never set eyes on again.

Arrived in Leeds, Laurence, who was unfamiliar with the town, requested her to direct him to a decent posting-house, where the whisky could be left, and the horse baited. “Then I’ll escort you to the dressmaker. It won’t do for you to be jauntering about this place alone,” he said, surveying the crowded street with disfavour.