The Nonesuch

It might have been supposed that the violence of her emotions would have exhausted her by the time the King’s Arms was reached; but she was made of resilient fibre, and the recital of her wrongs and the condemnation of every one of her companions were merely the prelude to a storm which, as experience had taught Miss Trent, would involve her, when it broke, in embarrassment, startle everyone within earshot, and culminate in a fit of shattering hysterics. She knew it to be useless to reason with Tiffany; so when they reached the posting-house she almost dragged her into the parlour which Lindeth had hired for the day, and left her there, saying mendaciously that she was going to procure some hartshorn. Tiffany had already begun to cry in an ominously gusty way, but Miss Trent did not believe that she would work herself into hysterics if no one was present to be shocked or distressed by her passion. She was quite capable, of course, of doing something outrageous when she had lashed herself into one of these fits; but Miss Trent, after rapidly reviewing the circumstances, thought that the worst she could find to do in the middle of Leeds would be to order her aunt’s coachman to put the horses to, and to have herself driven back to Staples immediately. When John-Coachman refused to obey this order, as he certainly would, there would really be nothing left for her to do but to smash the china ornaments on the mantelpiece.

Miss Trent might regard the situation in this practical light; but she was much more worried than she had allowed Tiffany to suspect. Her first duty was undoubtedly to that intransigent damsel, and by no stretch of the imagination could this duty be thought to include taking her into the back-slums of the town; but when Mrs Chartley had permitted her daughter to join the expedition she had done so in the belief that she would be respectably chaperoned. Neither she nor Miss Trent, of course, could have foreseen the accident which had made this double chaperonage so difficult; but that she would think it extremely reprehensible of Miss Trent to leave Patience to the sole protection and escort of Lord Lindeth was beyond doubt, or (in Miss Trent’s own opinion) censure. Somehow the two conflicting duties must be reconciled. Try as she would, Miss Trent could hit upon no better solution to the problem than to enlist Sir Waldo’s support, just as Lindeth had suggested. If he could be induced to keep Tiffany amused until Patience’s protégé had been restored to his parents the unfortunate episode might yet end happily.

So it was not to procure hartshorn for Tiffany that Miss Trent hurriedly left the parlour, but to make all speed to the infirmary, whence she meant to send Lindeth off post-haste to find his cousin.

In the event. Sir Waldo entered the King’s Arms just as she was about to leave the house. Never had she been more thankful, nor more relieved! She exclaimed impulsively: “Oh, how glad I am to see you! Sir Waldo, you are the one person who may be able to help me in this fix, and I do beg that you will!”

“You may be sure that I will,” he replied, looking a little startled, but maintaining his calm. “What fix have you fallen into, and what must I do to extricate you from it?”

She gave a shaky laugh. “Oh, dear! I must seem to you to have flown into alt! I beg your pardon! It wasn’t precisely I who fell into a fix, but—”

“Just a moment!” he interrupted. “Do you know that there is blood on your dress?”

She cast a cursory glance down her own person. “Is there? Yes, I see—but it’s of no consequence!”

“Well, as you don’t appear to have sustained any injury, I’ll accept your word for that,” he said. “Whose blood is it?”

“I don’t know—I mean, I don’t know what his name is! A little boy—but I must tell you how it all happened!”

“Do!” he invited.

As concisely as she could, she put him in possession of the facts, making no attempt to conceal from him that it was not the accident which had thrown her into disorder, but Tiffany’s obstructive behaviour. “I know it must seem incredible that she should fly into one of her rages at such a moment,” she said earnestly, “but you know what she is!”

“Of course I do! It is exactly what I should have expected of her. How could it be otherwise when the role of heroine in this stirring drama was snatched from her, and she found herself a mere spectator? Where is she now?”