“I wonder what she imagines I can do to stop Letty? Short of incarcerating her at Merion—By the by, I must go to Merion next week. Useless, I suppose, to ask you to go with me?”

She showed him a face of sudden dismay. “Next week! But the Beadings’ masquerade—!”

He raised his brows. “Is it so important? For my part, masquerades at Chiswick—”

“No, indeed, but you did promise Letty she should attend it! It is the first she has ever been to, and she has had the prettiest domino made, and—and I must own I think it would be dreadfully shabby to tell her now that she cannot go!”

“Hang Letty! Can’t she—No, I suppose not. Very well: I won’t tease you to go with me.”

“I wish I might,” she said wistfully.

He smiled at her, but rather quizzically, and picked up another of the invitation cards. “A quadrille ball at the Cowpers’! How dashing! It will be a horrible squeeze: must we go?”

The post had brought her ladyship a polite reminder from Mr. Warren, Perfumier, that a trifling account for scent, white nail-wax and Olympian Dew, was outstanding. It had lain hidden by Lady Cowper’s invitation, and was revealed when the Earl picked this up. Only a few guineas were involved, but Nell instinctively put out her hand to cover it. The movement caught his eye; he glanced down, and she at once removed her hand, flushing, vexed with herself.

“What other delights are in store for us?” he asked, picking up another card. “Assemblies and balls seem to be in full feather: you will be knocked up by all this raking! Don’t drag me to this affair, I beg of you!”

“That? Oh, no! It is to be a petticoat-party. You—you will be present at our own dress-party, won’t you?”

“Of course.”

There was a short silence. After that one glance the Earl had not again looked at Mr. Warren’s account, but it seemed to his guilty wife imperative to divert his attention from it. She said a trifle breathlessly: “Cardross, what a very elegant dressing-gown that is! I think I never saw you wear it before.”