Miss Mercer Elphinstone was unable to satisfy curiosity on this point, but it was learnt within a few days that the Princess had been packed off to Cranborne Lodge, a small house in Windsor Park, where she was residing under much the same conditions as might have been thought suitable for a State prisoner.

“Well, I’m sorry it all happened before the Carlton House fete,” said Jenny, “for it means I shan’t see her, and I did hope I might.”

“Whatever for?” demanded Lydia.

“Well, she’s going to be Queen one day, isn’t she? Stands to reason anyone would want to see her!”

As she had expected, she was denied this treat, but so splendid was the fête that instead of regretting the Princess’s absence she forgot all about it.

The fête was held in honour of the Duke of Wellington, whose bust, executed in marble, was placed in a temple erected at the end of a covered walk leading from a huge, polygon room, especially built by Nash in the garden for the occasion. Jenny was a little disappointed at seeing no more of Carlton House than the Great Hall, with its coved ceiling and yellow porphyry pillars, but this disappointment too was forgotten when she had passed through this vestibule to the polygon room, which was hung with white muslin, with mirrors past counting flinging back the lights of hundreds of candles. She gave a gasp, and told Adam that she had never seen anything so beautiful in her life.

At half-past ten the Royal party entered the room, the Regent leading the procession with the aged Queen on his arm; and after a lavish supper the Princess Mary opened the ball with the Duke of Devonshire for her partner. Since she was nearing her fortieth year and he was no more than four-and-twenty they might have been considered an ill-assorted couple, but only the irreverent indulged this reflection. The Princess Mary was the Beauty of the Family, and the custom of describing her as a remarkably handsome girl was of too long-standing to be readily altered.

It was past four o’clock when the Queen took her departure. Adam bore Jenny away after this, saying, as their carriage moved forward under the colonnade: “My poor dear, you must be dead from fatigue!”

“I fancy you are more fatigued than I am. Is your leg paining you?”

“Lord, yes! It has been aching like the devil these two hours past. That’s nothing: standing for too long is always a penance to me. I was afraid you might faint at any moment. Insufferably hot, wasn’t it?”

“Lord Rockhill says the Regent is terrified of draughts. I thought at first that perhaps Ishould faint, but I soon grew accustomed. Oh, Adam, I can’t tell how many people spoke to me, and as for the number who bowed and smiled — well, there was never anything like it! I couldn’t believe it was me, Jenny Chawleigh, saying how-do-you-do to all those grand people!”

“I’m glad you enjoyed it,” was all he could think of to say. Her enjoyment, as might have been expected, was as nothing to Mr Chawleigh’s. He listened with rapt interest to her account of the festivity, drew deep breaths when she enumerated all the guests of high rank with whom she had exchanged civilities; and sat rubbing his knees, and ejaculating such phrases as: “Bang-up to the knocker!” and: “To think I should have lived to see this day!”

A very little of Mr Chawleigh in this mood was enough to drive Adam from the room. His more robust sister might derive affectionate amusement from this display of unabashed vulgarity; Brough, who was present, might regard Mr Chawleigh with a tolerant twinkle, but he could not. Yet less than a week later he suffered a revulsion of feeling when he walked into the drawing-room to find Mr Chawleigh displaying to Jenny a superb sang de boeuf bowl he had that very day acquired.

“Oh, how beautiful!” Adam exclaimed involuntarily.

Mr Chawleigh turned a beaming countenance towards him. “Ain’t it just? Ain’t it?”

“It’s K’ang-hsi, Adam,” Jenny informed him. “The T’sing Dynasty; you know, when the art of Chinese porcelain was at its height.”

“I don’t, but I can well believe it! I never saw anything more exquisite!”

“You like it, my lord?”

“I should rather think so, sir!”

Mr Chawleigh gazed lovingly at it for an instant, and then held it out to Adam. “Take it, then! It’s yours!”

“Good God, sir, no!”

“Nay, I mean it! You’ll be doing me a favour!”

“Doing you a favour to take such a treasure from you? My dear Mr Chawleigh, I could not!”

“Now don’t say that!” begged Mr Chawleigh.  “You take it, and I’ll know I’ve hit on something which you do like, and that’ll give me more pleasure than what putting it into one of my cabinets would, for it’s something I was thinking I never would do. You don’t drive the curricle I had built, for you, nor — ”

His cheeks burning, Adam interrupted: “I — I found my father’s curricle, almost new — ! It seemed a pity — and I had a fancy to — ”

“Ay, well, no need to colour up! Your taste don’t in general jump with mine. Lord, did you think I hadn’t twigged that? No, no, a Jack Pudding I may be, but no one’s ever called Jonathan Chawleigh a bleater!”

“Certainly I have not!” Adam said, trying to hide his discomfiture. “As for my not liking what you’ve given me, sir, ask Jenny if I wasn’t delighted with the shaving-stand you placed in my room!”

“That’s nothing! You take this bowl, my lord, and it will be something.”

“Thank you. I can’t resist — though I know I ought!” Adam said, receiving the bowl from him, and holding it between his hands. “You are a great deal too good to me, but you need never think I don’t value this treasure as I should. You have given my house an heirloom!”

“Well,” said Mr Chawleigh, much gratified, “I’m sure I didn’t look for you to say that, but I don’t deny it’s as good a piece as you’ll find anywhere — and not bought for a song either!”

Jenny said, in a practical tone that betrayed none of the relief she felt: “Now, where will you have it put, Adam? It ought to be under lock and key, but it won’t look well all amongst the Bow China, and I don’t care to turn that out of the cabinet, for it belongs to your family, besides being very pretty.”

“Don’t trouble your head over it, my dear! I know just where I mean to put it,” Adam said, turning the bowl carefully between his thin fingers. “What a lustre, sir! How can you bear to part with it? No, Jenny, it would not look well amongst the Bow China! It is going to stand alone in the library at Fontley, in the embrasure at present occupied by that very ugly bust of one of my forebears.” He set the bowl down on the table, saying as he did so: “When you come to visit us, sir, you shall tell me if you approve of my taste!”

“Nay, I wouldn’t want you to put it in your ancestor’s place!” said Mr Chawleigh. “It wouldn’t be seemly!”

“My ancestor can remove himself to the gallery. I don’t want to look at him, and this I do want to look at. There are wall-sconces on either side of the embrasure, sir, and — But you will see for yourself!”

“Now, don’t you run on so fast, my lord!” Mr Chawleigh admonished him. “It’s — not by any means a settled thing that I’ll be visiting you in the country.”

“You’re mistaken, sir. I know you don’t care for the country, but you must resign yourself.”

“Well,” said Mr Chawleigh, intensely pleased, “I don’t deny I’d like to see this Fontley of yours, but I told you at the outset you wouldn’t find me foisting myself on to you, and no more you will.”

“I hope you’ll think better of that decision, sir. I shall be obliged to kidnap you, if you don’t. That’s a fair warning!”

Mr Chawleigh’s formidable bulk was shaken by chuckles. “Eh, it would puzzle you to do that, lad — my lord, I should say!”

“You should not — as I have frequently told you! It wouldn’t puzzle me in the least: I should hire a gang of masked bravoes to do the thing. So let us have no more of your flummery, sir!”

Mr Chawleigh thought this an excellent joke, but it was not until he had been assured that he would not arrive at Fontley to find the house full of his son-in-law’s grand friends that he could be brought to consent to the scheme.

“A nice thing when I have to beg and pray my father to pay me a visit!” Jenny said severely. “And well do I know you wouldn’t have hesitated, not for a moment, if Lydia had been going with us!”

This sally made Mr Chawleigh laugh heartily. He denied the accusation, but admitted that it seemed to him a great pity Lydia was not to remain in her brother’s charge.

In this opinion he met with agreement, but neither Adam nor Jenny could feel that it would be proper to keep her away from the Dowager, whose letters were becoming ever more querulous, and who described herself as counting the moments until her youngest loved one should be restored to her.

So, when the fete in the parks was over, Lydia went regretfully back to Bath, bearing with her a store of rich memories, and renewed theatrical longings. One visit to Drury Lane had been enough to set her on fire. She had sat spellbound throughout a performance of Hamlet, her lips eagerly parted, and her wide gaze fixed on the new star that had appeared in the theatrical firmament. So entranced had she been that she had barely uttered a syllable from start to finish; and when she had emerged from this cataleptic state she had begged to be taken home before the farce, since she could not endure to listen to any other actors in the world after having been so ravished by Kean. Subsequent visits (two of which she had coaxed out of Mr Chawleigh) to see Kean play in Othello, and Riches, had confirmed her in her first opinion of his genius, and had provided her with her only disappointment: that she had come to London too late to see him as Shylock, in which rôle he had taken the town by storm, in this, his opening London season. In the first heat of her enthusiasm she could imagine no greater felicity than to play opposite to him, and startled Jenny by evolving various schemes for the attainment of this object. These quite scandalized Mr Chawleigh, who begged her not to talk so silly, and nearly promoted a quarrel by saying that he couldn’t see what there was in such a miserable little snirp as Kean to send the town mad.