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it is not
mine,’ said her spouse with an ironic look. ‘Be that as it may, and
indeed taking the case of Prudence and Patience into consideration,
I am doubly reluctant—’
    But
Mrs Lambourn had all her ammunition at her fingertips and loosed a
shaft that silenced the enemy once and for all. ‘Do you tell me
that you would put a bar in the way of your daughter’s pleasure?
Why should not poor Verity also see something of the world? And
that she deserves this treat, you will scarcely deny.’
    Mr
Lambourn was far from denying anything of the kind. He was well
aware that to Verity’s lot had fallen the care and entertainment,
and to some extent the education, of her three younger sisters for
the last few years, for Mrs Lambourn’s attention had been almost
entirely taken up with anxious solicitude over her one and only son
in his infant days. For it was in these early years that she had
lost several of those seemingly endless baby girls, as they
succumbed to various ailments that proved beyond the power to mend
even of the zealous practitioner who had at length become her
son-in-law.
    That
she was assisted in this delicate task by every one of her
daughters, all of whom adored their baby brother, in no way
mitigated the good lady’s conviction that young Master Lambourn was
the child most in need of maternal devotion.
    The
reverend could not acquit himself of an almost equal devotion to
his only son, and consequently went through periodic torments of
remorse at the neglect from which he imagined his girls to be
suffering. If he suspected his wife’s chief motive in packing her
fourth daughter off to Tunbridge Wells, he said nothing of it,
merely agreeing that Verity deserved her good fortune and taking
care to thank Lady Crossens in suitable style.
    Her
ladyship’s manner of receiving these thanks, however, left him in
no doubt that the whole scheme had been concerted between the two
ladies for one purpose only.
    ‘ I’ll do my best to get her off your hands, Harry, but, as I
told Grace to her face, I don’t hold out much hope. Tunbridge ain’t
what it was, but if any eligibles under sixty come within hailing
distance I’ll spread my net, never fear.’
    It
was on the tip of Harry Lambourn’s tongue to withdraw his consent,
his sense of what was fitting revolting against the idea of any of
his daughters being given in matrimony to a man his own age or
older. But he knew her ladyship to affect an exaggerated form of
speech and so held his peace.
    In
truth, for all her crochets and complaints of Harry Lambourn’s
boundless and reckless charity, for he could ill afford it, Lady
Crossens was very fond of the vicar of Tetheridge parish, which
came largely under her patronage as the major landowner of the
area. She had early become an ally of poor Grace Lambourn in the
formidable task confronting her with so many female offspring, and
had often enough lamented to her that she had no son or grandson
who might take one of them to wife and so provide for the
rest.
    Whether in fact she would have permitted such an unequal
alliance had such been the case, Mrs Lambourn privately doubted.
But in fact Lady Crossens had ever been childless and had no
suitable nephews or near connections whom she might have offered up
on the altar of matrimony to succour one of the Lambourn sisters.
And her husband’s heir was already a family man. Nor, since she had
been invalidish for many years, was she part of the fashionable
social whirl, and could not therefore take a stray Lambourn under
her wing for the season in London.
    What she could do,
however, she did with a good heart, and, if some little return for
her generosity was to be made out by services in kind, who could
cavil at it? So Prudence and Patience had both had their chance in
the admittedly limited opportunities of Tunbridge Wells.
    And
now there was Verity, who had most fortunately reached an
appropriate age just when Lady Crossens should feel well enough
once more to