At this point, her helpmate thought it time to intervene. Gareth was beginning to look vexed. A charming fellow, Gary, with as sweet a temper as any man alive, but it was not to be expected that he would bear with complaisance his sister’s strictures on the lady whom he had chosen to be his bride. Why, from amongst all the females only too ready to receive the addresses of a handsome baronet of birth and fortune, he should have selected Hester Theale, who had retired after several unsuccessful seasons to make way for her more marriageable sisters, was certainly a baffling problem, but not one into which Warren thought it seemly to enquire. He therefore cast an admonitory look at his wife, and said: “Lady Hester! I am not particularly acquainted with her, but I believe her to be an unexceptionable young woman. Brancaster accepted your offer, of course.”

“Accepted it?” said Beatrix, emerging from her handkerchief. “Jumped at it, you mean! I imagine he must have swooned from the shock!”

“I wish you will be quiet!” said Warren, exasperated by this intransigent behaviour. “Depend upon it, Gary knows what will suit him better than you can! He is not a schoolboy, but a man of five-and-thirty. No doubt Lady Hester will make him an amiable wife.”

“No doubt!” retorted Beatrix. “Amiable, and a dead bore! No, Warren, I will not hush! When I think of all the pretty and lovely girls who have done their best to attach him, and he tells me that he has offered for an insipid female who had neither fortune nor any extraordinary degree of beauty, besides being stupidly shy and dowdy, I—oh, I could go into strong hysterics!”