“For goodness’ sake — !” she protested. “You’ll be heard!”

“Oh, no, no! Not in this hubbub! Queer thing, isn’t it?  All persons of the first consideration, making a din like lions at feeding-time. Come and be introduced to my mother: she wants to meet you.” He added, with his lazy smile: “Most amiable creature in the world! You’ll like her: I do myself.”

This, though it made her laugh, seemed a very odd thing to say of his mother, but he was perfectly right in thinking that she would like Lady Adversane, a stout and placid lady of unfashionable appearance and a warm heart. Jenny sat beside her on a sofa, and thought how easy her new life would be if all great ladies were as kind and as homely.

Had she but known it, she was meeting with far more kindness than might have been expected. Everyone knew under what circumstances Adam had succeeded to his father’s room, and everyone wished him well. Sally Jersey might exclaim to Lady Castlereagh: “Oh, goodness me! Don’t, I implore you, give her vouchers for Almack’s!” but even she, with a shrug and a pout, said: “Oh, well, not — I don’t mean to cut her! Poor, dear Bardy’s son — ! ‘Goodness me, what would Bardy have said to such a connection? My heart is positively wrung with compassion for that poor young man! She presents such a very off appearance, doesn’t she? But I’ll call in Grosvenor Street, and — yes, I’ll send her a card for my rout-party next month! Anything, short of vouchers for Almack’s! Oh, goodness me, one must draw the line somewhere! Tell me — you are so much better acquainted with Lady Oversley than I am! — is it true that young Lynton was previously betrothed to Miss Oversley? And that she swooned just now — actually swooned! — at the sight of him?”

“She did swoon,” acknowledged Lady Castlereagh, “but Lady Lynton, whose conduct, I must tell you, was such as to command my respect, informed us that she always does so in overheated rooms.”

“Oh, excellent address — if she knew the true cause! I dare say she doesn’t: she looks stupid! I’m persuaded she’s not awake upon any suit!”

She was mistaken: Jenny was quite awake upon that suit; and under a stolid demeanour she turned it over and over in her mind. Not by so much as the flicker of an eyelid did she betray to Adam how fully alive she was to the implications of Julia’s dramatic swoon; nor did she glance for more than an instant at his face, as it was bent over Julia, lying like a broken flower in his arms. In that one instant she had seen all that his chivalry would have wished to conceal from her; and her immediate intervention had sprung from no innate address but from a fierce resolve to protect him from the curiosity of those others who were witnesses of the episode. She had not looked at him again, and she did not mention the matter when, later, they drove back to Grosvenor Street. Neither of them had ever spoken of his previous attachment: it was a tacitly forbidden subject, which she dared not broach, though it lay heavily between them. There was only one thing to be done in such a situation, and that was to talk about something else. So she beguiled the short drive with commonplaces about Brough’s droll sayings, his mother’s kindness, the Prince Regent’s condescension, and her surprise at having a perfectly plainly dressed gentleman pointed out to her as the great Mr Brummell. It required no great effort to reply suitably to these trivialities; Adam even found them vaguely soothing. Emotional exhaustion had communicated itself to his body: he had never felt more fatigued in all the strenuous years of his service. He had steeled himself to meet his lost love, but not to encounter the heartrending look in her eyes when, for a moment before she fainted, they gazed into his. He had caught her, and had held her in his arms, and the sweet, nostalgic scent she always used agonizingly recalled the past, He hoped he had not uttered the words that had leapt to his tongue: Julia, my love, my darling! He thought he had not. Jenny’s flat voice had jerked him back to his senses, prosaically directing him to lay Julia on the sofa. He had obeyed, and, as he straightened himself, he had seen the rampant curiosity in a dozen faces, and had realized that he must at all costs command himself. Providence — in the shape of Jenny, desiring him to procure a glass of water — had come to his rescue, granting him a respite. By the time he had been obliged to return to the room he had regained command over himself: enough, at least, to enable him to play his prescribed rôle throughout an interminable evening.

It was not surprising that it should have exhausted him, for it was more complicated than he had foreseen, and he was obliged to play it while labouring under severe spiritual stress. It was his duty, as he saw it, to thrust his bride into the heart of the ton. It never occurred to him that his own charm and address might achieve his object with the expenditure of very little effort. He saw himself as the insignificant son of a man of immense popularity, and he went to Nassington House determined, however distasteful the task might be, to exploit this popularity, and to persuade his father’s friends, if he could, to accept Jenny because they liked him well enough not to wish to wound him. This in itself was sufficiently disagreeable to make him look forward to the evening’s entertainment with revulsion; when, at the very outset, to this obligation was added the more urgent need to exert himself to the utmost in an effort to shield his love from malicious tongues — and his wife, too, poor little soul! — what had been designed as a party of pleasure became a prolonged ordeal through which he had moved, exchanging lighthearted conversation with his fellow-guests as though nothing had happened to disturb him. Whether he had succeeded in convincing the suspicious he had no idea: he had done his best, and if that proved to be not good enough he was much too tired to consider what more could be done.

So he was grateful to Jenny for her comfortable commonplaces. They might argue a certain insensibility, but they were preferable to the comments and questions he had dreaded — and why, after all, should she show sensibility over an episode which (if she had realized its significance) could scarcely have wounded her, however much it might have mortified her?

Except that she did not mention the matter at all, which was a little surprising, he could have believed that she really did think the heat responsible for Julia’s collapse. She was her usual, matter-of-fact self, though rather sleepy; she demanded neither explanation nor reassurance: he could relax at last.

Some hours later, when he saw her over the teacups at the breakfast-table, he thought she looked as though she had not slept very much after all. She had not, but she merely said that she was unused to such late nights.

“You should have stayed in bed. I wish you may not have got up merely to make tea for me?”

It was what she had done, knowing that he was very unhandy with urns and teapots, but she said: “As though you couldn’t make it yourself! No, indeed!”

“I can’t,” he confessed ruefully. ‘“I can never get it as I like it, and if they make it for me downstairs it’s worse. Thank you: that is exactly as it should be!”

She smiled, but having supplied his wants turned to the perusal of an advertisement which had been sent her through the post, and which adjured her, in the strongest terms, to lose no time in procuring a new and infallible Nostrum for Gout. She had not the smallest use for this commodity, but if she sat with nothing to occupy her she knew that Adam would bestir himself to talk to her, and Adam did not like breakfast-table conversation.

He went away presently; and after sitting for some time, pondering the problem which had kept her awake during what had remained of the night, she got up from the table, and sent a message to the stables. An hour later, having executed a commission in the Strand, she was being driven back, not to Grosvenor Street, but to Lord Oversley’s house in Mount Street.

Mr Chawleigh, to Adam’s intense but rigorously suppressed annoyance, had visited the stables and the coachhouse attached to Lynton House while the bridal pair were in Hampshire, and had condemned out of hand the landaulette which had previously served the ladies of the house. He thought it a very dowdy turn-out, and he replaced it with a glossy barouche, on whose shallow doors he insisted on having the Lynton arms blazoned. The carriage was drawn by a pair of showy chestnuts. Mr Chawleigh had paid a large price for them, but he was not a judge of horseflesh, and when Adam first saw them he ejaculated involuntarily: “Oh, my God!”

However, Jenny was not a judge of horseflesh either, so she was quite satisfied with her peacocky pair. They might have been bishoped, as John Coachman told Adam he was willing to swear they had been, but they were quite capable of conveying her about the town in dashing style.

She found Lady Oversley at home, and was taken upstairs to the drawing-room, where her ladyship welcomed her with affection but rather nervously. She was looking harassed, and when Jenny disclosed that she had called to enquire how Julia did she answered in a flurry: “Oh — ! So very kind of you! My dear, I’m afraid I didn’t thank you — in the agitation of the moment, you know! But Emily Castlereagh told me how good you were, and indeed I am very much obliged to you! Poor Julia! The rooms were hot, weren’t they? I was conscious of it myself, and, of course, Julia’s constitution is not strong. She is not in very high health — in fact, quite out of sorts! — so I have kept her in bed today, and Dr Baillie has given me a composer for her.”