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known to my sister Clara, Denville! I believe you have not previously met, though you are acquainted, I fancy, with my eldest sister, Lady Ebchester.’
    Kit, casting a swift glance round the room, saw that one of the middle-aged ladies present was favouring him with a slight smile, and an inclination of her turbaned head, and said promptly: ‘Yes, indeed! But—’ drawing a bow at what he believed to be a fairly safe venture—‘I have not hitherto had the pleasure of making Miss Clara Stavely’s acquaintance. Your servant, ma’am!’
    ‘And my brother!’ said Stavely, edging Kit away from the Dowager’s vicinity. ‘You must let me present Mr Charles Stavely to you, Denville!’
    ‘Overdoing it, George!’ said Mr Stavely, in a caustic undervoice. ‘I’ve been acquainted with Denville since his come-out.’ He nodded to Kit, and gave him two fingers, observing that he hadn’t seen him in the club lately.
    Kit, realizing that he had placed rather too much reliance on his mother’s airy assurance that Evelyn was not acquainted with any other of his betrothed’s relations than her father, now knew that it behoved him to tread with even greater wariness than he had foreseen. He responded that he had lately been out of town, and passed on, to be presented to two ladies, one of whom said that they had met before, though no doubt he had forgotten the occasion. Since any gentleman, accustomed, as Kit was, to a succession of routs, balls, and official receptions, was familiar with this gambit, he dealt with it easily enough. He was then spared any further introductions by the intervention of Lady Ebchester, who shook hands with him in a very robust way, adjuring her brother in a pungent aside to stop trying to addle the poor boy’s brains by presenting him to every member of the family.
    ‘They all know who he is,’ she said trenchantly, ‘and if he don’t know who we are, so much the better for him! If I had guessed you meant to invite the whole family, stock and block, I wouldn’t have come here tonight, and nor, I dare say, would he. Anyone but a chucklehead would have known that it would only serve to make Mama as cross as crabs!’ She waved him aside, and addressed herself to Kit, saying: ‘No need to take fright! I don’t know what maggot my brother got into his head, but very likely you’ll never set eyes on most of these old quizzes again. How does your mother do?’
    ‘Very well, ma’am, and desired me to convey her compliments to you.’
    ‘Mighty civil of her—or of you!’ she replied. ‘We’ve never been on better than bowing terms. So you’re going to marry my niece! I wish you happy: it won’t be her fault if you’re not.’
    ‘Then we shall be, ma’am, for I am determined it shan’t be mine.’
    ‘You’re full of pretty speeches,’ she said, putting him forcibly in mind of the Dowager. ‘I see young Lucton wanting to edge in a word. Heaven knows what he’s doing here, for he’s the merest connexion! However, I dare say you’re glad to see a face you do know!’
    She nodded dismissal, and he turned away to confront a young gentleman of dandified appearance, who was hovering close at hand, and who greeted him with a broad grin, and drew him a little apart, saying: ‘I warned you, Den! Devilish, ain’t it? Dashed nearly sherried off to Brighton this morning: can’t think why I didn’t!’
    ‘A want of nerve!’
    ‘No, no, that wasn’t it! The old lady don’t take a particle of interest in me. Fact is, I wanted a word with you. You haven’t forgotten that little matter I broached to you, have you?’
    ‘No, but to own the truth I’ve been too busy to think about it.’
    ‘What a fellow you are!’ said Mr Lucton. ‘No wish to press you, but you said you’d give me an answer within a day!’
    ‘Oh, lord, did I?’ said Kit, thankful for the first time in his life for his twin’s well-known forgetfulness. ‘I was called away suddenly, and it went out of my