The Nonesuch

“No, my dear, and well do I know it! I shouldn’t wonder at it if it was that which took his fancy. If you was to ask me, I should say that there’s nothing will make a gentleman sheer off quicker than the feel that he’s being hunted! Lord! the females that set their caps at Mr Underhill! Of course, he wasn’t a grand town beau, like Sir Waldo, but he was thought to be a great catch, and might have had his pick of all the girls in Huddersfield. And what must he do but set his fancy on me, just because I didn’t pay any more heed to him than I did to any of my beaux!”

Miss Trent, only too glad to encourage this divagation, said: “I don’t think that was why he set his fancy on you, ma’am, but I can readily believe that you had any number of beaux!”

“Well, I had,” admitted Mrs Underhill, gratified. “You wouldn’t think it, to look at me now, but, though it don’t become me to say so, I was used to be a very pretty girl, and had so many compliments paid me—But that’s not what I was wanting to say to you!”

Miss Trent, having learnt by experience that however far her employer might wander from the point she rarely lost sight of it, resigned herself.

“You won’t take it amiss when I tell you, my dear, that when I saw the look in Sir Waldo’s eyes whenever he had them fixed on you, which nobody could mistake, though I’d be hard put to it to describe it to you, if you was to ask me, it cast me into quite a quake, thinking that he was intending to give you a slip on the shoulder, as the saying is.”

“Dear ma’am, I am—I am very much obliged to you for your concern, but indeed you have no need to be in a quake!”

“No, that’s just what I think myself,” said Mrs Underhill, nodding wisely. “I’d have dropped a hint in your ear otherwise, you being so young, for all you try to gammon everyone into thinking you are an old maid! But, ‘no,’ I said to myself, ‘a libertine he may be’—not that I’ve any reason to suppose he is, mind!—‘but he ain’t making up to Miss Trent meaning nothing more than marriage with the left hand: not with her uncle being General Sir Mordaunt Trent, as he is!’ Well, it stands to reason, doesn’t it?” She paused, eyeing Ancilla in some bewilderment. “Now, whatever have I said to throw you into whoops?” she demanded.

“Oh, I beg your pardon, ma’am!” Ancilla said, wiping her streaming eyes. “But it is so—so absurd—!”

“Exactly so! But don’t you tell me he ain’t making up to you, because I’m not as blind as a beetle, which I’d have to be not to see what’s going on under my nose!”

Ancilla had stopped laughing. She was rather flushed, and she said haltingly: “I think, ma’am—I think you refine too much on Sir Waldo’s gallantry. I am persuaded he has no other intention than to amuse himself with a little flirtation.”

Mrs Underhill’s face fell; but after thinking it over for a minute, she brightened, saying: “No, you’re out there, my dear. It’s Tiffany he flirts with, which, of course, he oughtn’t to do, but, lord, they all do it, even the Squire, and you can’t blame them, so pretty and saucy as she is! But he don’t look at her the way he looks at you—no, and he don’t talk to you as he does to her either! What’s more, if she ain’t in the room he don’t look up every time the door opens, hoping she’s going to come in!”

Her cool composure seriously disturbed, Ancilla said involuntarily: “Oh, Mrs Underhill, d-does he do so when—Oh, no! Surely not?”

“Lord bless you, my dear, of course he does!” replied Mrs Underhill, with an indulgent laugh. “And if it is you—well, often and often I’ve thought to myself that if he was to smile at me the way he does at you I should be cast into a regular flutter, as old as I am!”

Miss Trent felt her cheeks burning, and pressed her slim hands to them. “He—he has a very charming smile, I know!”

“I’ll be bound you do!” retorted Mrs Underhill. “Mark my words if we don’t have him popping the question before we’ve had time to turn round! And this I will say, my dear: I couldn’t be better pleased if you was my own daughter! Not that he’d do for Charlotte, even if she was old enough, which, of course, she isn’t, because, from all I can discover, he’s nutty upon horses, and well you know that she can’t abide ’em!”

Miss Trent gave a shaky laugh. “Yes, indeed I know it. But—Dear Mrs Underhill, pray don’t say any more! You mustn’t encourage me to—to indulge ridiculous dreams! Sir Waldo knows exactly how to make himself very—very agreeable to females, and, I daresay, has broken many hearts. I am determined he shall not break mine! To suppose that he—a matrimonial prize of the first stare!—would entertain for as much as one moment the notion of contracting so unequal a match ...” Her voice failed; she recovered it again to say, with an attempt at a smile: “You won’t speak of this to anyone, I know!”