“Was she rude to you?” asked Adam. “You should hear the things she says to my uncle!”

“I’m bound to say she properly set my back up. And she a Countess! There’s a leveller for you! Are you going to change that neckcloth?”

“No. What’s she doing here? I thought we were to have gone to her.”

“I’ll tell you what she’s doing,” offered Mr Chawleigh rancorously. “Stripping the jewels off my Jenny, that’s what she’s doing, without so much as a by your leave! Came on purpose to do it, what’s more!”

He sat brooding over this until Adam, receiving his cloak and his chapeau bras from Kinver, announced that he was now ready. “So let us go downstairs before my aunt sends to discover what the devil I mean by keeping her waiting, sir!”

“I don’t know but what I won’t shab off home,” said Mr Chawleigh gloomily. “I wouldn’t have come if I’d known her la’ship would be here, and that’s a fact!”

He allowed himself to be persuaded, however, and accompanied Adam to the drawing-room, where they were presently joined by the ladies.

Lady Nassington had been unable to suppress the crimp in Jenny’s hair, but she had reduced the number of ostrich feathers she wore to five, exchanged her over-large earrings for a pair of diamond drops, and stripped from her arms all but two bracelets. She had not been able to transform Jenny into a beauty, but she had succeeded (as she informed Mr Chawleigh) in turning her out like a woman of quality. “She’ll do!” she said briskly. “A nice gal: I like her, and I’ll do what I can to bring her into fashion.”

Mr Chawleigh was flattered to know that his daughter was liked by a Countess, but he still regretted the rubies, and would have said so had not Lady Nassington brought his audience to an end by suddenly calling across the room to her nephew: “Lynton! Did your father ever take you to Court, or is this your first appearance?”

He was talking to Jenny, but he turned his head, saying: “No, ma’am: my father presented me at a levée when I was eighteen.”

“Papa! Lady Nassington!” Jenny blurted out. “See what Adam has given me!”

Pink with pleasure, she displayed a fan of painted chicken-skin, mounted on carved mother-of-pearl sticks. It was an elegant trifle, but hardly deserving the delight she evidently felt. An unwelcome suspicion flickered in Adam’s brain, as he watched her. She met his eyes, and her pink turned to crimson. She looked quickly away, saying hurriedly: “It is so exactly what I needed — precisely the right colours!”

“Very pretty,” said Lady Nassington, after a cursory glance.

“Ay, it’s well enough,” agreed Mr Chawleigh, subjecting it to a longer scrutiny, “but what have you done with the ivory one I gave you, painted Venus Martin? I should have thought it would have been just the thing for that dress of yours.”

Her colour still much heightened, she murmured some disjointed excuse. Lady Nassington brought any further discussion to an end by announcing that it was time they were setting forward. Mr Chawleigh accompanied the party downstairs, and was considerably surprised to be given two of Lady Nassington’s fingers to shake before she mounted into her stately town chariot. To this piece of condescension, she added a gracious, if vicarious, invitation to him to visit Grosvenor Street on the following day, to learn from Jenny how her presentation had gone off.

It went off very well. The Queen had spoken most kindly to Jenny — “Only fancy, Papa! after all these years she speaks with the strongest accent!” — and two of the Princesses had stood talking to her in the most amiable way imaginable, so that she had not felt in the least awkward or tongue-tied. Her only disappointment had been that the Princess Charlotte of Wales had not been present: an extraordinary circumstance, people had seemed to think, for she had been betrothed to the Prince of Orange since December, so surely she must be out? The Prince had not been present either, although he was certainly in London: that had been a pity, for Jenny had hoped to have seen him. Adam, of course, had seen him frequently, because he had been lately a member of Lord — no, the Duke of Wellington’s staff! One would suppose that a Prince chosen to wed the Heiress of England must be a Nonpareil, but when Jenny had said this to Adam he had burst out laughing, exclaiming: “Slender Billy? Good God, no!” She was sorry therefore not to have been able to judge for herself of the Prince’s quality.

But this was a small matter. What did Papa think of her having been presented to the Prince Regent, at his particular request? Someone must have pointed Adam out to him, for — would Papa believe it? — he had come up to them, and had shaken hands with Adam, saying how happy he was to welcome him to Court, and how deeply he regretted his old friend’s death. Then he had expressed his wish to meet Adam’s bride, and Adam had immediately drawn her forward, and Papa could have no idea how charmingly the Regent had spoken to her. His manners were beyond anything perfect! He had stayed for several minutes, chatting to Adam about the late war, and displaying (Adam said) an exact knowledge of military matters. And just as he was moving away he had said that he hoped to see them both at Carlton House one day!

Deeply gratified, Mr Chawleigh rubbed his hands together, and said that it beat the Dutch, by God it did! His one regret was that Jenny’s mother was not alive to rejoice in her triumph. “Still, there’s no saying but what she knows all about it,” he said cheerfully. “To think I was of two minds whether I’d make do with a Viscount, or stand out for an Earl! Well, my Lord Oversley pledged me his word I wouldn’t regret it, and I’m bound to own he was right. Why, a Duke couldn’t have done better by you! Tell me again what the Prince Regent said to you!”

Mr Chawleigh’s opinion of the Prince Regent had not previously been high. While he was not (as he frequently asserted) one to concern himself with, the nobs, the doings of this Royal Nob could scarcely have escaped the notice of the most disinterested person. Had he been asked, Mr Chawleigh would have said that he didn’t hold with such goings-on as marrying two wives, and behaving scaly to the pair of them, let alone mounting more mistresses than a plain man could remember, and wasting the ready till his debts had to be paid for him by the nation. It was an open secret, too, that he was seeking evidence on which to divorce the unfortunate Princess of Wales; and, without wishing to join the mob in hissing him, Mr Chawleigh considered that he had treated the poor lady downright scurvily. But in face of the Regent’s kindness to Jenny that was all forgotten.

Nor did Jenny recall that when she first saw him she suffered a considerable disappointment. At the age of two-and-fifty little trace remained of the handsome Prince Florizel over whose beauty elderly ladies still sighed. Jenny beheld a middle-aged gentleman of corpulent habit, on whose florid countenance dissipation was writ large. He was decidedly overdressed; his corsets creaked audibly; he drenched his person with scent; and, when in repose, his face wore a peevish expression. But whatever good fairy had attended his christening had bestowed upon him a gift which neither time nor excesses would ever cause to wither. He was an undutiful son, and a bad husband, an unkind father, an inconstant lover, and an uncertain friend, but he had a charm which won forgiveness from those whom he had injured, and endeared him to such chance-met persons as Jenny, or some young officer brought to him by Lord Bathurst with an important dispatch. He could disgust his intimates, but in his more public life his bearing was always right; he never said the wrong thing; and never permitted a private vexation to impair his affability. Unmistakably a Prince, he used very little ceremony, his manners, when he moved amongst the ton, being distinguished by a well-bred ease which did not wholly desert him even when, as sometimes happened, he arrived at some party in a sadly inebriated condition. His private manners were not so good; but no one who saw him, as Jenny did, at his mother’s Drawing-Room, could have believed him capable of lying to his greatest supporter, taking a crony to listen to his father’s ravings, treating his only child with boorish roughness, or floundering, like a lachrymose porpoise, at the feet of an embarrassed beauty. Jenny certainly would not have believed such stories; and when she met him again, two days later, at Lady Nassington’s assembly, and received a bow from him, and a smile of recognition, she was much inclined to think that extenuating circumstances must attach even to his two marriages and his mountainous debts.

Chapter X

Few invitations conferred so great a distinction on the social aspirant as one to Nassington House. Lady Nassington’s parties were extremely exclusive, for she disliked fashionable squeezes, and was contemptuous of hostesses who rated the success of their entertainments by the number of guests they could cram into their saloons. It spoke volumes for her forceful personality that she had long since convinced the ton that a card of invitation to one of her assemblies was an honour no more to be refused than a Royal Command.

Lady Oversley was amongst the fortunate recipients of these missives. She studied hers with mixed feelings, for Lady Nassington had included the Hon. Julia Oversley in her invitation, and Lady Oversley would have given much to know whether Lord and Lady Lynton had also been invited. On the one hand, it seemed unlikely; on the other, Adam was her ladyship’s nephew, and she had presented his bride at Court. With anyone else that would have settled the matter, but with Lady Nassington one never knew: having performed what she believed to be her duty she was quite capable of ignoring thereafter young Lady Lynton’s claims upon her notice.