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Updated: May 24, 2025
This little conspiracy was crowned with success; and when the carriage was announced, Lionel Beauchamp was nowhere to be seen. "It's nonsense waiting for him, Lady Mary," said Mr. Cottrell. "As Miss Bloxam is not dancing, you had better be off at once; I will come with you, and Beauchamp can take my place in the break. What has become of him and Sylla Chipchase, goodness only knows!"
"You got rid of me, you know you did, because you felt lazy and unequal to the exigencies of the situation." Of course Pansey Cottrell knew that this was all fooling; but then, like many other middle-aged gentlemen, he rather liked such fooling with a pretty girl; in fact, was somewhat given to what may be designated as fatherly flirtation.
"But, my dear Lady Mary," rejoined Cottrell, whose sense of the humorous was again highly gratified by the outcome of the trip to Trotbury, "I really cannot see that you have any cause for complaint. Things look to me progressing very favourably in the direction you wish." "My dear Pansey," replied her ladyship, solemnly, "you do not understand these things quite so well as I thought you did.
She wouldn't then, at all events, be beaten at all points of the game by her pet aversion Mrs. Wriothesley." And once more Mr. Cottrell chuckled over the situation. "Piccadilly, eh?" he muttered, looking out of the window. "I don't feel a bit like bed. Egad, I'll turn in here and have another cigar;" and so saying Mr.
Rumour, in the shape of Pansey Cottrell, declares, Miss Sylla, that you are 'immense' in all this sort of thing." "Mr. Cottrell, as you will soon discover, has been imposing upon you to a great extent," replied Sylla; "but still I shall be glad to be of any use I can." "Our difficulty is this," interposed Mrs. Sartoris: "when I have acted, it has always been in a regular play.
Pansey Cottrell could scarce refrain from laughing outright as he advanced to shake hands with Sylla Chipchase, the identical young lady whom he had met last autumn in Suffolk, and who had now turned up at Todborough, looking more provokingly pretty than ever.
Cottrell had not as yet made his appearance, Lady Mary very thoughtfully sent a message up to his room to inform him of what was in contemplation. The breakfast party had nearly all dispersed, even the late comers had thrown their napkins on the table, and yet the hostess, usually one of the first to bustle off upon her own private affairs, still lingered over the Morning Post.
It was a secret that had been penetrated by only a few of his intimates, but there was lurking in Pansey Cottrell a spirit of mischief that sometimes urged him to contravene the schemes of his associates. It was never from any feeling of malice, but from a sheer sense of fun. The present state of affairs, for instance, tickled him immensely.
She pictured, as Cottrell would have divined, herself and her former foe once more pitted against each other as rivals, and recalled rather bitterly that campaign of four or five years back, when another niece of that lady's successfully carried off an eligible parti that she, Lady Mary, had at that time selected as suitable for her eldest daughter.
"Well," replied Cottrell, with a malicious twinkle in his eyes, "there is no real harm in the girl; but she'd flirt with a bishop if she sat next to him at dinner. And as for men going wild about her, we had two or three very pretty women at Hogden's last year; and the manner in which some of those fellows wavered in their allegiance was positively shameful."
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