Wednesday,
12 December 1804
Bath

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A ROUT-PARTY, WHEN DEPICTED BY A PEN MORE ACCOMPUSHED THAN MY own, is invariably a stupid affair of some two or three hundred souls pressed elbow-to-elbow in the drawing-rooms of the great. Such an efflorescence of powder shaken from noble wigs! Such a crush of silk! And what general heartiness of laughter and exclamation—so that the gender tones of one's more subdued companions must be raised to a persistent roar, rendering most of the party voiceless by dawn, with only the insipid delights of indifferent negus and faltering meat pasties as recompense for all one's trials.

So Fanny Burney has described a rout, in Cecilia and Camilla; and so I should be forced to record my first experience of the same, in a more modest volume I entitle simply Jane, had not Fate intervened to render my dissipation more intriguing. For last night I endured the most fearsome of crushes—a post-theatrical masquerade, forsooth, with myself in the role of Shepherdess—at no less exalted an address than Laura Place, and the Dowager Duchess of Wilborough's abode, with attendant hundreds of her most intimate acquaintance.

And what, you may ask, had Miss Jane Austen to do in such company? So my father gendy enquired, at the moment of my setting out from Green Park Buildings (where all my dear family have been situated but two months, having lost our former lodgings in Sydney Place to the infamous Coles), my brother Henry at my side, a most formidable Richard the Third, and his wife, Eliza, done up as Marie Antoinette.

“Why, Father,” I replied, with a wave of my Shepherdess's crook, “you must know that the invitation is all my brother's, procured with a view to amusing Eliza, who must have her full measure of Bath's diversion during so short a visit to the city, and in such a season. Bath at Christmastide may yet be called a trifle thin, in requiring the larger crowds of Easter to lend it style; and if Eliza is not to be thoroughly put out, we must seize our diversion where we may. A masquerade, and at the express invitation of a Dowager Duchess, cannot be let slip. Is not this so, Henry?”

“Indeed,” my brother stammered, with a look for his elegant wife, who appeared to have entirely swallowed her little dog, Pug, so pursed with false innocence was her mouth. Eliza is but a slip of a lady, tho’ in her present towering headdress, complete with ship's models and birds of paradise bestowed about her heavily powdered curls, she bid fair to rise far above her usual station.

I must confess to a greater admiration for Eliza's queen than for Henry's king—for though both may be called cunning by history's judgement, Eliza has the advantage over Henry, in having at least seen Marie Antoinette in all the Austrian's former glory, and thus being capable of the incorporation of that lady's vanished style in her present dress; while Henry is dependent upon the merest notion of humped backs and twirling moustachios, or a general reputation for squintyness about the eyes, for the affectation of his villain.

“And our own dear Madam Lefroy is to be in attendance at the Duchess's party as well, Father,” Eliza added. “It is to form the chief part of her final evening in Bath—she returns to Hampshire on the morrow—and we cannot part without some notice on either side. I am sure you would not wish us to neglect so amiable a neighbour, so dear a friend. For who shall say when we shall meet again?”

“But are you even acquainted with the Duchess, my dear Jane?” my father asked, in some bewilderment.

“Assuredly—” Henry began.

“—not,” I concluded.

“That is to say,” my brother amended hastily, “the acquaintance is entirely mine, Father. I have performed some trifling service for the Wilborough family, in the financial line. The rout tickets came to me.”

“I had not an idea of it, my dear boy.” The expression of pleasure that suffused my father's face, at this indication of his son's advancement in his chosen profession of banking, made the falsehood almost worth its utterance.

“But now we must be off,” Eliza interjected firmly, “or lose another hour in search of chairs, for our own have been standing at the door this quarter-hour.¹ It has quite struck eleven, and how it snows! Do observe, my dear sir, the unfortunate chairmen!”

Bath's climate is usually so mild as to escape the advent of winter, but this night at least we were subject to a fearsome blast. And thus, as my father clucked in dismay from the drawing-room window, all benevolent concern for the reddened cheeks and stamping feet of the unlucky fellows below, we hurried down to the street, where indeed our chairs had been idle already some minutes, and setded ourselves comfortably for the trip to Laura Place—or would have, had not my Shepherdess's crook refused the conveyance's close accommodation. This small difficulty resolved, by the abandonment of the offending object on the stoop of Green Park Buildings, the chairmen heaved and hallooed, and off we went—with only the occasional bobble to recall the untidiness of the snowy streets, and the likelihood of a yet more strenuous return.

I profited from the brief journey, by indulging in a review of the causes of our exertion, for pleasure was unfortunately the least of them. However circumscribed my usual society in Bath—which is generally limited to my Aunt Leigh-Perrot's insipid card parties, and the occasional indulgence of the theatre when my slim purse may allow it—I am not so desperate for enjoyment as to spend a decidedly snowy midnight done up as a Staffordshire doll, in a gay throng of complete strangers more blessed and happy in their mutual acquaintance. Nor are Henry and Eliza so mad for rout-parties as my father had been led to believe. My brother and sister² had succumbed to my entreaties for support, and had gone so far as to prevaricate on my behalf. From an awkwardness of explanation, I had deliberately withheld from the Reverend George Austen the true nature of our visit to Laura Place. We were gone in the guise of revellers, indeed, but laboured in fact under a most peculiar commission.

Lord Harold Trowbridgc, my dark angel of recent adventure—confidant of the Crown, adversary of whomever he is paid to oppose, and general Rogue-about-Town—is the Dowager Duchess of Wilborough's younger son. He is also in the throes of some trouble with a lady—nothing unusual for Lord Harold, although in this instance, the novelty of the lady's being not only unmarried, but related to him, must give the mendacious pause. In short, his niece, Lady Desde-mona Trowbridge—an Incomparable of the present Season, a girl of eighteen with all the blessings of fortune, beauty, and breeding to recommend her—has thrown off the protection of her family and friends; has left all in London whose interest should form her chief consideration and care; and has fled to the Dowager Duchess in Bath. The agent of her flight? The redoubtable Earl of Swithin, who claims an interest in the lady's future happiness. In short, the Earl has offered for her hand—and caused the fair Desdemona considerable vexation and grief.

Lord Harold observed the flight, and respected his mother's wishes to leave the girl to herself for a time; he remained in Ixmdon, and restrained His Grace the Duke from summoning the chit immediately back home; he forbore to visit Laura Place himself, and urge the reclamation of sense; and when the Lady Desdemona showed neither an inclination to quit her grandmother's abode, nor to suffer very much from her voluntary exile, being engaged in a delightful round of amusement and shopping in the weeks before Christmas—he applied, at last, to me.

My niece is a lady of excellent understanding, Lord Harold wrote in his barely legible hand, but possessed of the Trowbridge will She is headstrong and entirely capable of acting against her own interest. I am most concerned that she not fall prey to the basest of fortune hunters—whose attentions she might unwittingly encourage, from a misplaced sense of pique, or an inclination to put paid to Lord Swithin s plans. Is it impossible—do I ask too much— that you might observe her movements for a time, my dear Miss Austen? And report what you observe? I wish chiefly to know the nature of Desdemona ^ys acquaintance—in whose circle she spends the chief part of her days—and the names of those gentlernen upon whom she bestows the greatest attention. You would oblige me exceedingly in the performance of this service; for tho” Her Grace might certainty do the same, she is, as you may be aware, not the strictest judge of propriety.

And as the letter supplied a direction in Pall Mall— White's Club, to be exact—and the very rout tickets formerly mentioned, I could not find it in me to refuse—if, indeed, at present I could refuse Lord Harold anything. It is not that I owe him some great debt of gratitude, or harbour for the gentleman a more tender sentiment; but rather that where Lord Harold goes, intrigue surely follows—and I confess I have been insupportably bared with Bath, and the littlenesses of a town, since my return from Lyme Regis but a few weeks ago. The Gentleman Rogue and his errant niece presented a most welcome diversion.

And so to Laura Place we were gone.

I DO NOT BELIEVE I EXAGGERATE WHEN I DECLARE THAT THE DOWAGER Duchess of Wilborough's establishment was ablaze last e'en with a thousand candles. Light spilled out of a multitude of casements (the original glazing of which must have exacted from the late Duke a fortune), and cast diamond-paned shadows upon the snowy street; light flowed from the open entry-way at every chair's arrival, like a bolt of silk unfurled upon the walk. A hubbub of conversation, too, and the clatter of cutlery; a voice raised hoarsely in song; a burst of laughter. The faintest strain of a violin drifted to the stoop.

Henry paid off the chairs and presented our cards to the footmen, but I found occasion to dally at the very door, almost deterred by the glittering hordes I glimpsed within— until an exclamation from Eliza thrust me forward. I had trod upon the foot of Marie Antoinette.

The foyer was a wealth of pale green paint picked out with pink and white, the colours of Robert Adam. Pink and green silk lined the windows, and a bust of the Tragic Muse loomed before a pier glass opposite—Mrs. Siddons, no doubt, and taken from the painting by Reynolds.³ I gazed, and beheld myself reflected as Shepherdess, a forlornly bucolic figure amidst so much splendour. Eliza pinched my arm.

“As near to Old Drury as may be, my dear,” she murmured.”⁴

“Indeed,” I replied. “The Dowager Duchess may be living in relative retirement, but she has not yet foresworn her passions.”

“Let us go up,” Henry interposed with impatience. “There is a fearful crush at my back!”

The rout was intended, so Lord Harold had informed us, as a tribute to the principal players of Bath's Theatre Royal⁵—and the present evening's performance being just then concluded, the tide of humanity spilling into Laura Place from the direction of Orchard Street was decidedly at its flood. The staircase, a grand curve of mahogany, was completely overpowered with costumed bodies struggling towards the drawing-room; I hooked one arm through my brother's, and the other through my sister's, and so we stormed the barricade.

Let us pass over in silence the travails of the next quarter-hour; how our gowns were torn, and our headdresses deranged; what injuries to slipper and glove. Better to employ the interval in relating the chief of what I know about the Dowager herself—the barest details of Her Grace's celebrated career.

I have it on so good an authority as my dear mother's dubious memory, that Eugenie de la Falaise began her ascent as a pert young chorus girl in the Paris comic opera; from thence, with a comely ankle and a smattering of English, she rose to Covent Garden; and it was there the Duke of Wilborough—the fiflh, rather than the present, Duke— fell headlong in love with the lady. Wilborough was already past his first youth; he had seen one Duchess into her grave, and her stillborn son with her; and thus it should not be remarkable that he might establish the beautiful Eugenie privately, or offer unlimited credit in the most fashionable shops, and a smart pair to drive her about Town, in return for the enjoyment of her favours, as Lord Derby once did with Miss Farren.⁶ But Eugenie had a greater object in view. She wished to play at tragedy.

That she was unsuited for Isabella, or Lady Macbeth, or even the role of Portia in The Merchant of Venice, need not be underlined. Twelfth Night, perhaps, or She Stoops to Conquer, may have shewn her talents to advantage; but at the Duke of Wilborough's intercession with the Drury Lane director, Lady Macbeth she played—and opposite no less a personage than the redoubtable Mr. Garrick.

The performance—there was, alas, only one—was declared to have been lamentable. The outraged patrons hissed and shouted, threw all manner of refuse from theatre pit to stage, and forced the curtain down in the very midst of Lady Macbeth's celebrated walk. Eugenie de la Falaise was mortified, and disappeared abrupdy from public view, never to return to the London theatre.

We cannot in justice fault the fifth Duke for having married her. He may be forgiven the indulgence of his folly. The pity, the generosity, the rashness her ruined career may have excited—we can have only the merest idea of how they worked upon his sensibilities. Eugenie was, it is said, a beautiful woman at twenty-four; and though she is now a grandmother these many years, and Wilborough long since gone to his reward, she is no less formidable a presence.

I say this, having found my eyes directed to the Dowager Duchess upon first gaining entrance to her drawing-room. Tho “possessed of fully seventy years, and requiring the support of a stout cane she clutches tighdy in one hand, Her Grace commands immediate attention. Her narrow features and shuttered aspect recall the face of her son, Lord Harold; but where the effect is often forbidding in the latter, it may be declared devastating in the former. A lesser man than the Duke of Wilborough—accustomed as he was to the power of doing as he liked—would have braved greater scandal in pursuit of such a woman.

And scandal there was. His Majesty George II is said to have interceded in the match, which condescension was stoically declined. The Duke's political fortunes may subse-quendy have suffered. Certain of his acquaintance may have cut him dead. But others, made more valuable through the passage of time, accepted his bride; and accepted no less the heirs she pragmatically produced.

Bertie, who succeeded his father, bears the greatest fidelity to the Wilborough line, in character as well as countenance; Lady Caroline Mulvern, nee Trowbridge, is the unfortunate picture of her Trowbridge aunts; but in the face of Lord Harold, the impertinent among society's loquacious have gone so far as to question paternity. Lord Harold is so clearly Eugenie's son, that the late Duke might have had nothing to do with his fashioning.

The Dowager stood in the midst of her fashionable rout last e'en arrayed in the form of Cleopatra—an Egyptian robe and a circlet on her brow, with a velvet mask held before— and beside her stood a girl so very much of Eugenie's stamp, albeit some fifty years younger, that I knew her immediately for the Lady Desdemona, Lord Harold's errant niece. She was robed to perfection as none other than herself, having ignored the general command of fancy dress; and her quite ordinary appearance amidst the general excess of baubles and plumage rendered her as exotic as a sparrow in Paradise. I could trace no hint of her mother, Honoria, or her apoplectic father, Bertie, in her narrow and elegant face, and wondered whether her character was as French as her countenance.

“Jane,” Eliza cried, her visage incongruously marred by the mask that covered fully half of it, “Henry witthave me to dance; and though I confess the heat and crush make the prospect an indifferent one, I cannot find that sitdng down should be so very agreeable either. Can you forgive us our desertion?”

“Go, my dear, and make as frivolous a figure as your murdered Queen may support. I shall do very well in idleness here. I find I have an excellent prospect of Lady Desdemona.”

“Where?”

“She stands beside the Duchess.”

“Ah,” Eliza said, with the driest satisfaction, “in die figure of an ingenue. She might readily be Cecilia herself, and prepared to thwart a cavalcade of admirers, whose costumed obscurity can only encourage impertinence. Let us call her Virtue, and have done.”

“Indeed? I had thought her merely to disdain all pretence or disguise. And burdened as I am with so hot and ungainly an outfit—” I surveyed my multitude of muslin underskirts with a shake of my bonneted head—“I cannot in justice criticise. I fairly long for an exchange.”

“Perhaps. But does her abhorrence—or wisdom—reveal a niceness of temperament and taste? Or may we judge her merely to spoil sport?”

“I cannot undertake to say, without a greater knowledge of the lady.”

“Then find her out, my dear Jane, and I shall be content to think as you do. It saves me a vast deal of trouble in thinking for myself.” And with a smile and a care for her overpowering headdress, Eliza left me to Lord Harold's business.

I began by surveying the company—a torrid blend of the comely and the grotesque, their colours garish and their accents brazen, relieved somewhat by the solitary interval of an elegant figure, composed against a doorframe or supporting a distant wall—engaged, it seemed, in an activity similar to my own. A Harlequin I espied, resplendent in a suit of black and red, in the closest conversation with a stately Queen Elizabeth; and a fearsome Moor, all flowing capes and harshly graven features—though not in attendance upon my particular Desdemona. More than one visage I detected, that when deprived of its domino might daily grace the pages of the Gentleman's Magazine, or one of Gillray's drawings for the Morning Gazette, The Prince of Wales's henchmen, Lord Moira, and the beede-browed Mr. Fox, I named in silence; and a forbidding personage well-launched upon her middle years, whom I suspected of being none other than the notorious I^dy Jersey. She wore no costume, and held court at the far end of the drawing-room from that commanded by Moira, being sadly out of favour now that Mrs. Fitzherbert was returned to the Prince's side.⁷

A full quarter-hour of observation, however, could not betray to my sight the predatory horde whose idea had so excited Lord Harold's anxiety. Two men only approached the Lady Desdemona—yet another Harlequin, suited this time in diamonds of alternating black and white; and a fellow who might well have been Henry VIII, tho’ of a corpulence supplied by tailor's padding. These two seemed as intent upon conversation with the Dowager Duchess, as with her lovely charge.

“And are you, too, of the Theatre Royal?” came a voice at my shoulder; and looking up, I beheld a Knight in the semblance of armour, complete with visored head, his identity secure in mystery.

“Of its occasional box alone,” I replied, “but I may confess to admiration for good, hardened, professional acting. Are some part of the company present, then?”

“The masquerade is in their honour.”

“So I had understood. But with so many figures in fancy dress, how is one to divine the true player from the false?”

My companion bowed. “You merely posit, madam, the oldest question of mankind.”

I studied the visored face, which revealed nothing of the gentleman within. Could it, in fact, be Lord Harold, making sport of circumstance? The voice betrayed an echo of the Gentleman Rogue's tone. But no. He should hardly engage my offices on the Lady Desdemona's behalf, had he intended to form one of the party.

“I wonder, sir,” I began again, “that you can think me a member of such exalted company.”

“I merely tossed at hazard. You might be exalted in any number of ways—as I might myself. We appear as utter strangers the one to the other; but indeed we might claim the deepest intimacy, and yet pass in ignorance, so impenetrable is our garb.”

“And the most accomplished actress herself must go unremarked.”

“There, madam, you betray a charming innocence of accomplished actresses. It is the first rule of the stage that to go unremarked, is to go presently into the wings. Observe the Medusa in scarlet.”

I looked about, though the compass of both bonnet and mask rendered all vision partial.

“By the fireplace, in converse with the bearded Pierrot,”

I observed then an extraordinary woman, all vibrance and fire, her flowing black hair and tattered raiment the very soul of madness. Her beauty was such as to astonish. Her costume, however, barely merited the word, in leaving more of her person exposed than it disguised. The effect must draw even the most jaded attention. She had flaunted custom, and wore no mask. Whether her conversation was as engaging as her person, I could not discern; but as I watched, the bearded Pierrot threw back his head in hearty laughter.

“That is Miss Conyngham,” my companion remarked.

“Maria Conyngham? I had not an idea of it.”

“Her brother is beside the Duchess.”

I turned to look for Her Grace.

“The Harlequin?”

“Henry the Eighth.”

“So that is the famous Hugh Conyngham! I wonder I did not observe it before! Who can see his present self, and fail to trace his tragic Hamlet? His murderous Macbeth? His pathetic Gamester? The nobility of suffering is writ in every line of his countenance!”

“With charcoal, if not by nature,” the gentleman observed.

“And are you then a player, sir? Claim you some acquaintance with the pair?” It was absurd in me, I own, to cry such admiration at Conyngham's discovery, but so much of my meagre purse has gone to furnish his, in supplying the coveted seat in a box for the actor's performance, that I may be excused my excesses of enthusiasm. I have invested as much in Conyngham as Henry in all his four percents.⁸

“I have not that distinction,” the Knight replied with an inclination of the head. “I may claim the accomplishment of dancing only, and that with indifferent skill. But I must beg for the indulgence of your hand, fair Shepherdess, or suffer the charge of impertinence, in having monopolised your attention too long.”

I hesitated, with thoughts of Lord Harold, and the necessities of duty; but a glance at the floor revealed the Lady Desdemona, all smiles and animation, going down the dance with her partner opposite. The White Harlequin, it seemed, had prevailed in his suit; his appearance of attention to the Dowager had been rewarded with the hand of her granddaughter. Lady Desdemona's eyes were bright, and her complexion brilliant; but how, I thought with vexation, was I to report her partner's name? For a masquerade is ill-suited to espionage; conjecture only might supply the place of the man; and I should be reduced to outright eavesdropping, if I were to learn anything to Lord Harold's purpose. To the dance floor, then, with the greatest despatch.

I bowed, my own mask held high, and took my suitor's proffered arm; and found to my relief that armour may be formed of cloth, however shot through with silver, and pose no impediment to a country dance, though it reveal nothing of the Knight within.

A FULL HALF-HOUR OF HEATED EXERCISE PROVED INSUFFICIENT TO THE fulfilment of my schemes, however; it was impossible to over-listen anything to Lord Harold's purpose in so great a throng; and so, with a civility on either side, I abandoned my partner for a comfortable seat in the supper-room near Henry and Eliza. I had divined only that the White Harlequin made a shapely leg and was a proficient in the dance, with a vigorous step and a palm decidedly moist, as he handed Lady Desdemona along the line of couples. She seemed happy in her choice of partner, and moved in a fine flow of spirits; he was a spare, neat figure possessed of a hearty laugh and a general conviviality, who comported himself as a gentleman; and what was visible of his hair was brown. There my researches ended.

The delights of cold fowl and buttered prawns, white soup and ratafia cakes, were all but consumed, and Henry had embarked upon the errand of refilling our cups of punch, when I began to consider of Madam Lefroy. Anne Lefroy has long been our neighbour in Steventon, being established in the rectory at Ashe these two decades at least; and though she is full five-and-twenty years my senior, she remains my dearest friend in the world. The claims of friendship had recently drawn her to Bath—her acquaintance with the Dowager being of several decades’ standing—and the previous fortnight spent in her company had been one of the most delightful I could recall. Our tastes are peculiarly suited the one to the other, and there is no one's society I should more eagerly claim in good times or in bad.

It was Madam who refined my taste in poetry, who improved my ear for music, who taught me that cleverness is far more than mere surface wit. From Madam, too, I learned that even ladies might converse about the nation's affairs— for as Madam feelingly says, when so great a figure as Mr. Sheridan confuses a parliamentary bench for Drury Lane, how can we be expected to respect the difference?⁹

Anne Lefroy was to leave us on the morrow—but we had intended a meeting in Laura Place. The crush of bodies and the bewildering array of fancy dress had quite disguised her from my sight. I craned about in search of her glorious hair—when a muffled ejaculation from the direction of the fire demanded my attention.

Two men—the White Harlequin and my unknown Knight—were arranged in an attitude of belligerence, although the effect was rendered somewhat ridiculous by the incongruity of their costumes. The Knight had removed his helmet, revealing a fair head and a sharp-featured face that must be vaguely familiar; and he now glared boldly at his masked opponent.

“You are a blackguard, sir, and a liar!” he cried.

The Harlequin swayed as he stood, as though influenced by unconquerable passion, or an excess of spirits. And at that moment, Lady Desdemona intervened.

“Kinny! You will apologise at once! Mr. Portal meant nothing by his words, I am certain of it. I will not have you come to blows!”

“I'd sooner fell upon my sword than beg pardon of such a rogue,” my Knight exclaimed; and as if in answer, the Harlequin thrust Lady Desdemona roughly aside. She cried out; it was enough. The Knight rushed swiftly at his opponent.

A scuffle, an outburst of oaths—and the two were parted by the actor Hugh Conyngham and the stern-looking Moor.

“Gentlemen! Gentlemen!” Mr. Conyngham exclaimed.

“You will look to your conduct, I beg! This is hardly what is due to the Duchess!”

My Knight, his countenance working, drew off a silver glove, and dashed it to the floor. The White Harlequin struggled in the Moor's arms, determined to pick it up.

But it was Hugh Conyngham who bent to retrieve the glove. He tucked it deftly into his Elizabethan doublet. “No challenge, my lord, 1beg,” he muttered, with a look for Lady Desdemona.

Eliza craned on tiptoe for a clearer view of the scene.

“But how droll!” she whispered. “An affair of honour! And can the lady be the cause?”

Lord Harold's niece turned and quitted the supper-room in considerable haste, her eyes overflowing with tears. As if released at a command, the scandalised guests sent up a buzz of conversation; and the Duchess moved to follow her.

“Stay, Grandmere,” called my Knight; “I shall go to Mona. Have Jenkins show this blackguard the door.” And with a look of contempt for the White Harlequin, who sat slumped in a chair, he sped swiftly in Lady Desdemona's train.

My knight, the Dowager Duchess's grandson? Then was he, in fact, Lady Desdemona's brother, and the heir to the Wilborough dukedom? There was a something of Eugenie's sharpness in his features, and I could imagine him as almost his uncle's twin in another twenty years.

The Duchess halted in her path, leaning heavily upon her cane, and glanced around the supper-room. “Jenkins!” she called, her voice low and clear. “Send round the wine, if you please. I shall attend to Mr. Portal.” And grasping her cane with one hand and the White Harlequin with the other, she led him unprotestingly away.

“I might almost think it a set-piece of the stage,” said a wry voice at my back, “did not my familiarity with a lady's tears argue its sincerity. What think you, Jane? A lovers’ quarrel? Or something deeper?”

“Madam Lefroy!” I turned in delight, and held out my hands. “Do my eyes misgive me? Or is the magnificent Elizabeth reborn in the form of Ashe?”

The masked figure of Queen Elizabeth, whom I had observed earlier in conversation with the Red Harlequin, seized my fingers and laughed.

“As you find me, my dear Miss Austen!—My dear Mrs. Henry! And how do you like the Duchess's party?”

“I may forgive her the disadvantage of a large acquaintance, however much it ensures I shall be crushed, now that there is a touch of scandal to the evening,” Eliza declared mischievously. “Of what else might I speak in the Pump Room tomorrow?”¹⁰

“Eugenie should never forgo a chance to set the town to talking—but I wonder if the Lady Desdemona is quite of her way of thinking? She seemed much distressed.”

All discussion of the interesting episode was forestalled, however, by my brother's return. Henry carried a chair with effort in one hand, and a glass of punch in the other; and the result of his exertions, in having raised a fine dew along his forehead, did little for his Richard.

“My poor Henry,” I exclaimed. “Your benevolence for naught. I have secured my dear Madam Lefroy, as you see, and will leave you to your lovely Antoinette, and the comforts of iced custard.”