Cotillion by Georgette Heyer Page A

w-world, and it is all out of chivalry, and not in the least because he loves m-me, or wants to inherit Uncle M-Matthew’s fortune!”
    Mr. Standen, perceiving that her eyes were swimming in tears, made a praiseworthy attempt to avert a scene the mere threat of which was already making him acutely uncomfortable. “Well, no need to cry over that !” he said. “Never heard such a tale! Bag of moonshine, that’s what it is! Lord, though, to think of Hugh’s being such a Captain Sharp!”
    “George said it too. And Hugh means to educate me, and he says there is nothing I can do to earn my own bread, and they all of them seemed to think I should be glad to marry one of you, and I ran out of the room, and then what must Fish do but say that it was romantic! Romantic ! It was too much, Freddy! I made up my mind I would just show them; So I stole the housekeeping-money, and I came here, because I know the Ashford stage stops here, and from Ashford, you know, I can get to London.”
    “Oh!” said Freddy. “Very good notion, I daresay. At least—No wish to throw a damper, but what are you going to do there?”
    “That’s just it!” said Kitty, her face much flushed, and large tear-drops trickling down her cheeks. “I was too angry to think of that, but I thought of it when I was walking along the lane, and I don’t know what I’m going to do, or where I am to stay, for I haven’t a friend in the world, and every word Hugh said was true !”
    “No, no!” said Freddy feebly.
    Miss Charing, after an abortive search for her handkerchief, began to mop her face with a corner of her cloak.
    Mr. Standen’s dismay gave place to shocked disapproval. “Here, Kitty, I say! no!” he protested. “Take mine!”
    Miss Charing accepted, with a loud sob, the delicate handkerchief held out to her, and blew her small nose with determination. Mr. Standen, reflecting that he had several handkerchiefs in his portmanteau, applied himself to the task of consolation. “No sense in crying,” he said. “Think of some shift or other! Bound to!”
    This well-meant suggestion caused Kitty’s tears to flow faster. “I have been thinking and thinking, and there is nothing I can do! And, oh, I would rather die than go back to Arnside!”
    At this moment, an interruption occurred. The landlord, not unnaturally consumed with curiosity, had hit upon an excuse for re-entering the coffee-room. He came in bearing a steaming bowl of rum-punch, which he set down on the table, saying: “Your punch, sir. You did say nine o’clock, sir, didn’t you? Just on nine now, sir!”
    Mr. Standen could not recall that he had said anything at all, and he was about to repudiate the punch when he realized that it was clearly the moment for him to fortify himself. He was thankful to perceive that Kitty had stopped crying, and had turned her face away. He ventured to offer her a glass of ratafia. She shook her head silently, and the landlord, setting two glasses down beside the bowl, said: “Perhaps Miss would fancy just a sip of punch, to keep the cold out. Snowing quite fast, it is, though not laying, sir. I hope no bad news from Mr. Penicuik’s, sir?”
    Freddy, who had been hurriedly inventing a tale to account for Miss Charing’s unconventional presence in the Blue Boar, now rose to the occasion with considerable address. “Lord, no! Nothing of that sort!” he said airily. “Stupid looby of a coachman forgot his orders, that’s all! Ought to have fetched Miss Charing an hour ago. She’s been visiting: obliged to walk back to Arnside. Started to snow, so she had to seek shelter.”
    If the landlord thought poorly of a story which featured a host so lost to propriety as to permit an unattached damsel to leave his house at dusk, on foot and unescorted, and which left out of account the modest carpet-bag, at present reposing in the passage outside the coffee-room, Kitty at least had no fault to find with it. No sooner had Mr. Pluckley departed, than she