Some instinct warned the Duke that he beheld Trouble. A prudent man would at this point retire to his room, denying all knowledge of the fair visitor, and leave Mrs. Appleby to get rid of her, which, he judged, she would very soon do, if left undeterred. But the Duke had either too little prudence or too much chivalry to adopt this course; he went down the stairs.
Both ladies looked up quickly, one greeting him with a blinding smile, and the other with a stare of outraged virtue. "Oh, sir, please I had to come!" said Belinda.
"This young woman, sir," said Mrs. Appleby grimly, "appears to have business with you, for all she cannot give you a name! And I will take leave to tell you, sir, that mine has always been a respectable house, and such goings-on I will not have!"
"Oh, hush, Mrs. Appleby!" begged the Duke. "I am acquainted with this lady!"
"Of that I make no doubt, sir!" retorted Mrs. Appleby.
The Duke sought wildly in his mind for an explanation likely to satisfy the landlady, and could hit upon only one. "She is Tom's sister!" he said, devoutly hoping that Belinda would not deny it. "She has come in search of him, of course!"
Belinda, who seemed to have a mind very responsive to suggestion, nodded her head at this, and smiled at Mrs. Appleby.
"Indeed!" pronounced that lady. "Then perhaps you will have the goodness to tell me what your business is, miss?"
"To find Tom," replied Belinda happily.
"I never heard such a tale, not in all my life I didn't!" exclaimed Mrs. Appleby, outraged. "Why, you're no more like him than I am! Sir, I'll have you know—"
"And I have brought all my things with me, because I dare not go back, so if you please, sir, will you take care of me?" added Belinda, turning her melting gaze upon the Duke.
"Not in my house he will not!" declared Mrs. Appleby, without hesitation.
By this time a small audience, consisting of the waiter, the boots, the tapster, and two chambermaids had gathered in the lobby, and the Duke, acutely unhappy at finding himself the centre of so much curiosity, said: "Please step up to the parlour, Miss—Miss Mamble! And do you come up too, Mrs. Appleby! I will explain it to you in private!"
Belinda got up readily from the chair. The Duke took the bandboxes from her; and Mrs. Appleby, after demanding to know if her various servants could find nothing better to do than to stand there gaping, said that no amount of explanation would reconcile her to Belinda's presence in the inn. But as Belinda and the Duke were by this time halfway up the stairs she was obliged to follow them, maintaining a threatening monologue all the way.
The Duke ushered Belinda into his parlour, set down the bandboxes, and firmly shut the door upon her. He turned to confront Mrs. Appleby.
That redoubtable lady at once broke into speech. If, she declared, Mr. Rufford had the least hope of her keeping that Hussy under her roof for as much as one hour he was sadly mistaken! To be sure, she might have guessed, after the events of this day, that something of the sort would happen, but boys' mischief was one thing, and goings-on of this nature quite another.
"Mrs. Appleby," interrupted the Duke, "can you seriously suppose that I nourish the slightest improper design towards that child? Why, she is hardly out of the school-room!"
"I know nothing of
your
designs, sir," retorted Mrs. Appleby, "but hers are plain enough, and give her a room in my house I will not!"
"Then I must give her mine, and sleep on the sofa in the parlour," said the Duke calmly.
Mrs. Appleby fought for breath.
"You cannot," proceeded the Duke, "turn a child of that age into the street at this hour. Indeed, I am persuaded you are by far too good a woman to think of doing so."
"Let her," said Mrs. Appleby terribly, "go back to wherever it was she came from!"
"It is quite impossible that she should do so. I see I shall have to entrust the whole story to your ears," said the Duke.
He then proceeded, somewhat to his own astonishment and considerably more to Mrs. Appleby's, to weave about the unconscious persons of Belinda and Mr. Thomas Mamble a lurid and fantastic story in which defaulting trustees, cruel stepfathers, and hideous persecution figured prominently, if somewhat obscurely. He cast himself for the role of secret envoy, but being quite unable to think of any reason for an envoy's presence in Baldock, took refuge in an air of mystery which so much bewildered Mrs. Appleby that she ended by weakly saying that Belinda might have a small bed-chamber at the back of the house for one night only, and that not because she believed one word of Mr. Rufford's story, but because she was not, she hoped, an unmerciful woman.
The Duke, feeling worn-out by the exercise of so much imagination, mopped his damp brow as soon as Mrs. Appleby had sailed away to prepare the small back bed-chamber, and nerved himself to enter his parlour He found that Belinda, having shed her bonnet and pelisse, had made herself comfortable in an easy chair by the fire, and was eating one of the few apples Tom had left in the basket on the side-table. She greeted her host with her angelic smile, and said: "How disagreeable she is! Will she let me stay here, sir?"
"Yes, for tonight she will," he replied. "But I do not understand! Why have you come? What is it you wish me to do for you?"
She looked at him in surprise and faint reproach. "But you said you wished you might take me with you!" she reminded him.
The Duke, who clearly saw an abyss yawning at his feet, said with a great deal of uneasiness in his voice: "Did I? Yes, well, but—but I cannot take you with me!"
"Can't you?" said Belinda wistfully. "Then what must I do, please, sir?"
"My dear girl, how can I possibly advise you?" protested Gilly. "I do not even know why you have left your uncle!"
"Oh, he is not my uncle!" said Belinda blithely.
"Not your uncle? He is your guardian though, is he not?"
"He said he would be," agreed Belinda, "but he never gave me any of the things he promised me, and besides, I don't like it at that horrid little inn, so perhaps I won't have him for a guardian any more. I thought I might have you for one instead," she added confidingly.
"No," said the Duke firmly, "that is quite impossible!"
Belinda sighed, but appeared to resign herself to her disappointment. She took another bite out of her apple, and fixed her eyes expectantly on the Duke's face.
"Does Liversedge know you have come to me?" he demanded. She shook her head. "But how could you contrive to escape unseen? and how did you reach Baldock? You cannot have walked all the way, surely?"
"Oh, no! I only walked to the pike-road, and a kind gentleman took me up in his carriage," Belinda explained. "And he said he would be very glad to take me to his house, only that perhaps his wife would not like it. I daresay she is a disagreeable lady, like that one downstairs. Ladies are nearly always so, are they not? I like gentlemen better."
The Duke did not find this difficult to believe. He refrained from comment, however, merely repeating: "How did you contrive to escape from that place?"
"Well, Uncle Swithin's head hurt him, so he went to lie down upon his bed, and everyone else was gone into the tap-room. Besides, Mr. Mimms would not care if he saw me go, because he doesn't hold with females."
"I see. But what made you run away? Did Liversedge blame you for what happened at the inn this afternoon? Was he perhaps angry with you?"
"Oh, yes! He said he wished he had not saddled himself with me, for I am too stupid to be of the least use to him, and he says he will send me back to Mrs. Pilling!" replied Belinda, large tears gathering in her eyes.
"Pray do not cry!" begged the Duke. "Who is Mrs. Pilling?"
"She is a very cross lady, not at all kind to me, and she will very likely put me in prison," said Belinda, the tears welling over.
The Duke, who had had previous experience of the ease with which Belinda wept, watched in a fascinated way the large drops rolling down her cheeks without in the smallest degree impairing her beauty, and could not find it in his heart to blame Matthew by having succumbed to so much pathetic loveliness. After a moment, he said: "I wish you will not cry! No one will put you in prison, I assure you!"
Belinda obediently stopped crying, but said in a doleful voice: "Yes, she will, sir, for I have broken my indentures."
Light began to break in upon the Duke. "Were you apprenticed to Mrs. Pilling?" he asked.
"Oh, yes, and I was learning to trim the hats very well, but then Mr. Liversedge said that if I went away with him I should live like a lady, and have a purple dress, and a ring to put on my finger. So I went with him, but Mrs. Dovercourt was cross, and I did not like it in Oxford above half, and now I think I would like not to live with Mr. Liversedge any more. But I daren't go back to Bath, because besides putting me in prison Mrs. Pilling would very likely beat me as well."
"Does she do so?" demanded the Duke, quite shocked at the thought that anyone could so maltreat the lovely Belinda.
"Yes, because I am very stupid," explained Belinda, without rancour. "And Mr. Liversedge boxed my ears, too, though I said just what he told me I must. I am very unhappy!"
"No, no, don't be unhappy!" said the Duke, terrified lest she should dissolve once more into tears. "No one shall beat you, or box your ears, I promise! You must tell me where your home is, and I will—"
"I haven't got a home," said Belinda.
"Oh!" said the Duke, somewhat dashed. "But you have relatives, have you not, Miss—What is your name?"
"Belinda," she answered, with a look of surprise.
"Yes, I know, but your other name? Your surname?"
"Oh, I haven't any other name!" she told him. "I'm a foundling."
"A foundling!" he ejaculated. "Then you do not even know who your mother and father were?"
"Oh, no!" she said. "If you please, sir, may I have another apple?"
He handed her the basket. "Of course. But, my poor child, have you no relatives to whom you can him for help?"
"Oh, no!" she said again, shaking her head so that her golden curls were set quivering and bobbing. "Foundlings don't, you know."
"I didn't know. That is, I had never thought—It is very dreadful!"
She agreed to this, but more with the air of one willing to please than with any particular chagrin.
"What in heaven's name am I to do with you?" said the Duke, looking harassed.
Belinda said hopefully: "You did say that you wished you might give me the purple silk dress," she suggested.
He could not help laughing. "No, no, that is not what I meant!"
She sighed, and the corners of her mouth drooped tragically. "No one ever gives me a purple silk dress," she mourned, a sob in her voice.
The Duke had never had occasion to bestow much thought on female attire, but now that he came to consider the matter dispassionately he was bound to own that there was much to be said in extenuation of all those who had refused to let Belinda have her heart's desire. The combination of those bright gold curls and a dress of purple silk would be shocking enough, he imagined, to stun all beholders. He made haste to divert her thoughts. "Belinda, have you no friend to whom you might go?"
She appeared to bend her mind seriously to this question; and after staring with wrinkled brow at the Duke for a moment or two, suddenly dazzled him with one of her brilliant smiles, and said: "Oh, yes, I have a friend that was used to work at a mantua-maker's, only she was married, and went away from Bath. I should like of all things to visit her, for I daresay she has a baby now, and I am excessively fond of babies!"
"Where does she live?" asked the Duke.
Belinda sighed. "She went to a place called Hitchin, but I don't know where it is, and I only recall it because it sounds like kitchen, and I think that is very droll, don't you, sir?"
"Hitchin!" he exclaimed, his harassed air lightening a little. "But Hitchin lies only a few miles from here! I daresay no more than six or seven, perhaps not as much! If you think you would like to visit this friend, I will take you there tomorrow! Do you know her direction?"
"Oh, no!" said Belinda unconcernedly.
Again the Duke was dashed "Well, do you know her name?" he asked.
Belinda laughed merrily at this. "Why, of course I know her name! It is Maggie Street!"
"Then depend upon it we shall soon find her!" he said, much relieved.
At this moment, Mrs. Appleby entered the parlour, and announced that as Miss's bedchamber was now ready for her she would escort Miss to it.
"Yes, please do so!" said the Duke. "And perhaps you would be so good as to bring up a glass of milk to her, for I fear she is rather hungry."
"Very good, sir," replied Mrs. Appleby stiffly. "Come with me, miss, if you please!"
She picked up the bandboxes, and swept them and Belinda inexorably out of the room, leaving the Duke feeling extremely exhausted, but not a little thankful that he was not to be saddled with Belinda for the rest of his life, as at one moment he had feared that he might be.
Chapter 12
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