She left a pause, her brows raised questioningly, but the youthful lady before her did not seem to be very willing to fill it. After hesitating for a few moments, she stammered: “If you please, ma’am, will you just call me Lucilla? I—I have a very particular reason for not wishing anyone to know my surname—in case they come in search of me!”

“They?” enquired Miss Wychwood, wondering what kind of an adventure she had stumbled on.

“My aunt, and his father,” said Lucilla, nodding towards her escort. “And very likely my uncle too, if he can be persuaded to bestir himself!” she added.

“Good God!” exclaimed Miss Wychwood, her eyes dancing. “Can it be that I am assisting in an elopement?”

The haste with which both the lady and the gentleman repudiated this suggestion was attended by so much vehemence, and with so much loathing, that Miss Wychwood was hard put to it not to burst out laughing. She managed to keep her countenance, and said, with only a tiny tremor in her voice: “I beg your pardon! Indeed, I can’t think how I came to say anything so shatter-brained, for something seemed to tell me at the outset that it was not an elopement!”

Lucilla said, with dignity: “I may be a sad romp, I may be a little gypsy, and my want of conduct may give people a disgust of me, but I am not lost to all sense of propriety, whatever my aunt says, and nothing could prevail on me to elope with anyone! Not even if I were madly in love, which I’m not! As for eloping with Ninian, that would be a nonsensical thing to do, because—”

“I wish you will keep your tongue, Lucy!” interrupted Ninian, looking very much vexed. “You rattle on like a regular bagpipe, and see what comes of it!” He turned towards Annis, saying stiffly: “I cannot wonder at it that you were misled into supposing that we are eloping. The case is far otherwise.”