The Shocking Miss Anstey by Robert Neill Page B

short as he met her eyes. ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘There has never been a Lady Barford. He didn’t marry.’
    ‘Oh!’
    ‘It’s common enough.’
    ‘I suppose so. Who was the mother?’
    ‘Someone in the village. That’s common enough, too.’
    ‘The only thing that isn’t,’ said John suddenly, ‘is that Barford was honest about it. He owned the boy and looked after him. Apple of his eye, as Mary says. It sometimes works that way.’
    ‘Ye-es. Well, I suppose I must go.’
    It was scarcely half past three when he walked across the park in the warm sun of afternoon. He went past the lake, and as he came to the fringe of cedars he saw Lord Barford, now in a sky-blue coat above his pantaloons, walking on the lawn before his library windows. His greeting came at once, and they exchanged politenesses until they were settled in the library with the sherry and a rich dark madeira to support it.
    ‘They go together,’ said Barford, ‘the one bringing out the flavour of the other. It’s a taste that can be criticized, I know.’
    He said it lightly, as if to hint that he was not to be disturbed by that, and he glanced through the open window at the sunlit lawn before he spoke again. He was very much at ease, and he seemed to appreciate his surroundings as well as the wine.
    ‘Do you know John Wickham well?’ he asked. ‘Hardly as much. Just a week together, in a ship I commanded.’
    He explained what they had done, and Barford listened carefully, asking a question or two that showed him as the man who had been Ambassador to Lisbon and knew something of the operations on that coast. Then he gave a smiling nod.
    ‘A pretty piece of work,’ he commented. ‘I’ll congratulate you both. No, I mean it. I’ve said I’ve a bond with the Navy, and as for John--well, apart from his own merits and its being my own regiment, I’m glad for his father’s sake. He was my good friend.’
    ‘Sir Harry Wickham?’
    ‘Sir Harry Barford Wickham, to be exact. It’s a family friendship, you see. His father and mine were in the regiment together, and they sold out together. Seventeen-forty-six, that was, after Fontenoy and the Jacobite affair.’
    ‘And Wickham settled here?’
    ‘Oh, not at once. He had an odd adventure first, but he was here four years later with another man’s--well, I won’t say wife, but another man’s widow, a very recent widow. They arrived together, most lovingly.’
    ‘With the village witch, I hear?’
    ‘Oh, you’ve heard that, have you?’ Barford sat back, and for an instant he paused, with his eyes thoughtful. Then he went steadily on, with nothing but polite interest showing in his face. ‘Yes, she came with them--young and charming, it seems--and they seem to have thought the world of her. But we seem to be forgetting the wine. I told you that madeira follows sherry.’
    He leaned forward for the decanter, very much the host, and carefully filled the glasses. Then he sat back, holding his wine to the light, glancing for a moment at the lawn and the graceful cedars.
    ‘All I was trying to say,’ he went on, ‘was that the Wickhams are almost of my family. Harry Wickham and I were almost brought up together, and he married my sister. Now he’s gone, by a stray musket shot, and I feel alone. You’ll call me a man of sentiment, perhaps?’
    ‘Indeed I shall not. I’ve seen too much of war.’
    ‘I beg your pardon. I should have remembered. We’ll say a man of sensibility--if it’s not a term of contempt in these days.’
    ‘Surely not?’
    ‘Things are not what they were. An evil wind has been blowing from France, a wind of change and violence--of revolution, as they called it---and the graces have withered. A man of breeding is now a man who breeds dogs, or perhaps horses--which is not what we used to mean. But I become trite. All I wished to observe was that you and John did a very pretty operation together, and I’m glad of it.
    John, when all is said, is my nephew, and