Sprig Muslin Read Free Page B

are enough to try the patience of a saint! Let me tell you, my girl that it is Sir Gareth Ludlow whom we are to entertain here next week, and if you dislike him you must be out of your senses!"
    She had been somewhat aimlessly disposing the despised shawl about her shoulders, as though, by rearranging its shabby folds, she could render it less objectionable to her father, but at these words she let her hands fall, and said incredulously: "Sir Gareth Ludlow, sir?"
    "Ay, you may well stare!" said the Earl. "I daresay you will stare more when I tell you why he comes!"
    "I should think it very likely that I should," she agreed, in a reflective tone. "For I cannot imagine what should bring him here, or indeed, how he is to be entertained at this season."
    "Never mind that! He is coming, Hester, to make you an offer!"
    "Oh, is he?" she said vaguely, adding, after a thoughtful moment: "Does he want me to sell him one of Juno's pups? I wonder he should not have told me so when we met in town the other day. It is not worth his while to journey all this distance—unless, of course, he desires first to see the pup."
    "For God's sake, girl—!" exploded the Earl. "What the devil should Ludlow want with one of your wretched dogs?"
    "Indeed, it has me quite in a puzzle," she said, looking at him enquiringly.
    "Paperskull!" said his lordship scathingly. "Damme if I know what he wants with you! He's coming to offer for your hand!"
    She sat staring at him, rather pale at first, and then flushing, and turning away her face. "Papa, pray—! If you are funning, it is not a kind jest!"
    "Of course I'm not funning!" he answered. "Though it don't surprise me you should think so. I don't mind owning to you. Hester, that when he broke it to me that it was my permission to address you that he was after I thought either he was foxed, or I was!"
    "Perhaps you were—both of you!" she said, trying for a lighter note.
    "No, no! No such thing! But for him to be taking a fancy for you, when I daresay there are a dozen females trying to fix his interest, and everyone of 'em as well-born as you, besides being younger, and devilish handsome into the bargain—well, I never was nearer to being grassed in all my life!"
    "It isn't true. Sir Gareth never had a fancy for me. Not even when I was young, and, I think, quite pretty," said Hester, with the ghost of a smile.
    "Oh, lord, no! Not then!" said his lordship. "You were well-enough, but you couldn't have expected him to look at you when the Lincombe chit was alive."
    "No. He didn't look at me," she agreed.
    "Well, well!" the Earl said tolerantly. "She had 'em all beaten to flinders. By all accounts, he never cast so much as a glance at any other girl. And I've made up my mind to it that that's why he's offered for you." He saw that she was looking bewildered, and said with some impatience: "Now, don't be a pea-goose, girl! It's as plain as a pikestaff that what Ludlow wants is a quiet, well-bred female who won't have her head stuffed with romantic nonsense, or expect him to be thrown into a transport of passion. The more I think of it, the more it seems to me that he's acting like a man of sense. If he's still hankering after Clarissa Lincombe, it wouldn't suit him at all to offer for some out-and-outer who would expect him to be dangling after her for ever, carried away by the violence of his feelings, or some such flummery. At the same time, it's his duty to marry, and you may depend upon it he made up his mind to that when that brother of his got himself killed in Spain. Well, I don't scruple to tell you that I never thought to see such a piece of good fortune befall you, Hester! To think that you should make a better match than any of your sisters, and at your age, too! It is beyond anything great!"
    "Beyond anything—oh, beyond anything!" she said, in a queer voice. "And he is coming here, with your consent! Could you not have asked me first what my sentiments were? I do not wish for this splendid match,