Depressed with reaction and heavy with unwonted sleeping by daylight, she was glad to go from her dressing-table to the carriage waiting to take herself and her aunt for the customary drive. It was but a moment before her mind was startled into its accustomed activity.

“Mr. Warner has disappeared again.” Mrs. Nunn tilted her lace parasol against the slanting sun. “Poor Maria!”

“Disappeared?”

“That is the general interpretation. Maria, with whom he was to dine to-night, received a note from him this morning asking to be excused as he was going away for some time; and when Hunsdon rushed down to Hamilton House—unshaved and without his plunge—he was told that the poet was gone; none of the servants could say where nor when he would return. So that is probably the last of the reformed poet. I suppose last night’s excitement proved too much for him.”

Anne’s feeling was almost insupportable, but she forced her tone into the register which Miss Bargarny and her kind would employ to express lively detached regret. “That would be quite dreadful, and most ungrateful. But I do not believe—anything of the sort. No doubt all that reading of his own work stirred his muse and he has shut himself up to write.”

“Well, as he always shuts himself up with a quart of brandy at the same time, that is equally the end of him as far as we are concerned. For my part I have never been able to make out what all of you find in him to admire. He would be quite ordinary to look at if it were not for a few good lines, and I never heard him utter a remark worth listening to. And as for fashion! Compare him last night with Lord Hunsdon or Mr. Abergenny!”

“I think myself he made a mistake not to appear in a rolling collar and a Turkish coat and turban! I don’t fancy that he emulates Lord Hunsdon or Mr. Abergenny in anything.”

“At least not in devotion to you, so you will not miss him. And you have nothing to regret, if he was the fashion—thanks to Maria—for awhile; a young girl should never suffer detrimentals to hang about her. Which of your beaux do you fancy most?” she demanded in a tone elaborately playful.

“Which? Oh, Lord Hunsdon is the better man, and Mr. Abergenny the better beau.”

“I don’t fancy that Mr. Abergenny’s attentions are ever very serious,” said Mrs. Nunn musingly. “He certainly could make any young lady the fashion, but he is fickle and must marry fortune. But Hunsdon—he is quite independent, and as steady as”—she glanced about in search of a simile, remembered West Indian earthquakes, and added lamely—“as the Prince Consort himself.” Then she felt that the inspiration had been a happy one, and continued with more animation than was her wont: “You know they are really friendly.”

“Who?”

“The Prince Consort and Hunsdon. It is almost an intimacy.”

“Why not? I suppose a prince must have friends like other people, and there are not many of his rank in England. I do not see how the Prince Consort could do better than Hunsdon. The Queen certainly must approve.”

“I am glad you so warmly commend Hunsdon. I have the highest respect for him myself—the very greatest.”

“If you mean that you wish me to marry him, Aunt Emily—have you ever reflected that it might cool your friendship with Lady Hunsdon? She does not like me and I am sure would oppose the match. I may add, however, that Lord Hunsdon has so far made no attempt to address me.”

“I don’t fancy you are more blind than everybody else in Bath House. I am gratified, indeed, to see that you are not. You are mistaken in thinking that your marriage with Hunsdon would affect my friendship with Maria. It is true that she has conceived the notion that you have an independent spirit, and is in favour of Mary Denbigh at present; but she is too much a woman of the world not to accept the inevitable. And we have been friends for five-and-forty years. She could not get along without me. I have not been idle in this matter. I sing your praises to her, assure her that you have never crossed my will in anything. Last night I told her how sweetly you had submitted to buying that coloured gown, and to wear that fillet—it becomes you marvellously well. I have also told her what a tractable daughter you were.”

“I couldn’t help myself. I had not a penny of my own——”

“One of the unwritten laws of the world you now live in is to tell the least of all you know. The fact remains. You were tractable—submissive. You never made a scene for poor Harold in your life.”

“He wouldn’t have known if I had.”

“Well, well, I am sure you are submissive, and always will be when your interest demands it. I admire a certain amount of spirit, and your difference from all these other girls, whatever it is, makes you very attractive to the young men. Abergenny says that you are an out-of-door goddess, which I think very pretty; but on the whole I prefer Hunsdon’s protest: that you are the most womanly woman he ever set eyes on.”

“It has more sense. I never read in any mythology of indoor goddesses. Opinion seems to differ, however. Lady Mary said to me yesterday: ‘You are so masculine, dear Miss Percy. You make us all look the merest females!’”

“Mary Denbigh is a cat. You know she is a cat. She would give Maria many a scratch if she caught Hunsdon. But she will not. It is all in your own hands, my dear.”

Anne did not make the hoped for response. She did not even blush, and Mrs. Nunn continued, anxiety creeping into her voice: “You need never be much thrown with Maria. She would settle herself in the dower house which is almost as fine as Hunsdon Towers. In town she has her own house in Grosvenor Square. Hunsdon House in Piccadilly—one of the greatest mansions in London—would be all your own.”

But she could not command the attention of her niece again, and permitting herself to conclude that the maiden was lost in a pleasing reverie, she subsided into silence, closed her eyes to the beauty of land and sea, and also declined into reverie, drowsy reverie in which pictures of herself in all the glory of near kinship to a beautiful and wealthy young peeress, were mixed with speculations upon her possible luck at cards that night. She had lost heavily of late and it was time she retrieved her fortunes.

At dinner and in the saloon later the talk was all of the poet’s disappearance. Some held out for the known eccentricities of genius, others avowed themselves in favour of the theory that respectable society had risen to its surfeit the night before. The natural reaction had set in and he was enjoying himself once more in his own way and wondering that he had submitted to be bored so long. Anne went to bed her mind a chaos of doubt and terror.