Adam could not help laughing at this. “Why, yes, so am I! Very promptly, too! But I’m not a clerk in your office, any more than you are a soldier in my company, you know.”

Baffled, Mr Chawleigh strode forth to his carriage.

He drove home in a state of angry frustration, and later conducted himself so morosely at a convivial supper-party at the Piazza that it was generally supposed that one of his many trading enterprises must have failed. It was not until he was about to climb into his bed that he startled his valet by suddenly exclaiming: “Well, there’s not many as ’ud outface Jonathan Chawleigh, that I will say! Damme if I don’t like him the better for it!” He then recommended the dejected Badger to take himself off, and got into bed, resolved to pay another visit to Grosvenor Street in the morning, to see the party off, so that Adam should see that he bore him no malice.

He arrived to find two travelling chaises and my lord’s curricle drawn up outside Lynton House, and the second footman in the very act of placing two hot bricks in the foremost of the chaises. He brought with him a basket of pears, a bottle of his Fine Old Cognac (in case Jenny should feel faint), and a travelling-chessboard, to beguile the tedium of the journey for the ladies (neither of whom cared for the game), and he was very glad he had come, swallowing his pride, because Jenny’s face lit up when she saw him, and the hug she gave him did his heart good. He had thought that there might be a little awkwardness between himself and his son-in-law, but there was none at all. No sooner did Adam set eyes on the Fine Old Cognac than he exclaimed: “You don’t mean to shut that precious pair up in a chaise with a whole bottle of brandy, do you, sir? Good God, they’ll be as drank as wheelbarrows before ever we reach Royston!”

This was a joke that kept Mr Chawleigh chuckling for quite some time. He made a joke himself presently, when Adam said: “By the time you come to visit us, sir, I hope you’ll find Jenny much stouter than she is now.”

“Nay, she can’t help but be stouter!” retorted Mr Chawleigh.

At the last, when the two chaises bearing the ladies and their maids had moved off, he turned to Adam, and took his outstretched hand in an extremely painful grip. “Well — you’ll take good care of her, my lord!”

“You may be very sure I will, sir.”

“Ay, and you’ll let me know how she goes on?”

“That, too. And you will come down to spend Christmas with us, remember!”

“Oh, you’ll be having your grand friends to stay with you — though I take it very kind in you to invite me!”

“I shan’t even be having any of my far from grand friends to stay — more’s the pity! There’s a pretty strong rumour that my Regiment is going to be ordered to America.”

“Well, I’ll think about it,” said Mr Chawleigh. He transferred his grip to Adam’s shoulder, slightly shaking him. “It’s time you was off. No hard feeling betwixt us, my lord?”

“None on my side, sir.”

“Well, there ain’t any on mine. What’s more,” said Mr Chawleigh resolutely, “if I should have said anything uncivil when we had our turn-up, which maybe I might have done, I ask your pardon!”

Memories of the various offensive things which Mr Chawleigh had said on that occasion flitted through Adam’s mind, but he realized that this rough apology represented a heroic sacrifice of dignity, and he responded immediately: “Good God, sir,  what’s the world coming to, if you can’t give a bear-garden jaw to your son-in-law?”

“Well, well, you’re a good lad, lord or no lord!” said Mr Chawleigh. “Off with you, now!”

He gave Adam a push towards his curricle, waited until he had driven out of sight, and then climbed back into his own carriage, which conveyed him to the head office of the New River Company, where, at a meeting of the principal directors, he more than atoned for any weakness he might have shown in his dealings with his son-in-law.

For Jenny, her mind relieved of its last care, this homecoming was one of almost unalloyed happiness. She reached Fontley in the gloom of a winter dusk; rain was falling, and there was a disagreeably dank chill in the air, but these ills in no way abated her delight. It was the third time Adam had handed her across his threshold, but on neither of the previous occasions had she felt, as she felt now: This is my home! Tears sprang to her eyes, and rolled down her cheeks; she saw Dunster and Mrs Dawes through a mist, and could only stammer: “I’m so happy to be here again!” Then, ashamed of her emotion, she managed to smile, and say: “And I’ve brought Miss Lydia with me, which I know you’ll be glad of!”

Little though she knew it, she could have done nothing to establish herself more securely in the regard of her household. Charlotte had told Mrs Dawes how very kind her ladyship had been to Miss Lydia; but it was not until Mrs Dawes had seen with her own eyes on what terms her ladyship stood with Miss Lydia that she realized that dear Miss Charlotte had not been trying, in her sweet way, to reconcile her to my lord’s regrettable marriage: like true sisters they were, and who would have credited it that had seen Miss Lydia cry her eyes out when his lordship’s engagement had been made known?

At the first opportunity, Lydia visited Charlotte, but although the sisters held one another in mutual affection they were not much akin, and the visit was not wholly successful. Lydia said afterwards that she hoped she valued Charlotte’s virtues as she should, but that she had forgotten how dull was her conversation; and Charlotte, while firm in her admiration of her young sister’s liveliness, was disturbed to find that instead of having learnt a little more conduct Lydia seemed to have even less elegance of mind than when she had but just emerged from the schoolroom.

Unlike Jenny, Charlotte was in radiant health, and seldom had she been in better looks. She was happy in her marriage; she enjoyed being mistress of her own house; and she was looking serenely forward to the birth of the first of what she hoped would be many children. She suffered none of the ills which had attacked Jenny during the first months of her pregnancy; and contemplated without misgiving a long and tedious journey to Bath and back again. Jenny could only marvel at her, for although she was much improved in health by the time the Rydes departed on their visit to the Dowager the mere thought of being obliged to undertake such a journey made her shudder.

Parting from Lydia was a wrench, but it did not cast her into dejection. The lowness and oppression which had grown upon her in London had vanished within a week of her arrival at Fontley, and with the abandonment of her reducing diet her strength began to return, and, with it, her energy. She missed Lydia, but she had a thousand things to do, and took so keen an interest in everything that concerned the estate that her mind was too fully occupied to allow her to feel the want of that gay companionship. She was beginning to know the tenantry too. Knowing how shy she was, Adam had not urged her to perform all the duties which his mother and his grandmother had accepted as a matter of course, but Lydia, discovering her ignorance of her obligations, did not hesitate to instruct her, and so anxious was she to conform to the standard set by her predecessors that she overcame her shrinking, visited the sick, relieved the indigent, and tried her best to be affable. She had none of the Dowager’s graciousness; she could never bring her tongue to utter the easy expressions of sympathy which would have won for her an instant popularity; but it was not long before it began to be realized that her brusque tongue concealed a far greater interest in the affairs of her lord’s people than the Dowager had ever felt. The sturdy common sense which made it easy for her to distinguish between the shiftless and the unfortunate might not win universal popularity for her, but it did win respect; she gave freely, but with discrimination; her advice was always practical; and if her blunt strictures were frequently unpalatable they left no one in any doubt that her ladyship was as shrewd as she could hold together.

When Mr Chawleigh arrived, laden with gifts ranging from a tiepin blazing with diamonds set round a large emerald, which he bestowed upon his stunned son-in-law, to a pound of tea, he found Jenny immersed in preparations for the Christmas dinner it was the custom of the house to give to the farm workers and their families, and he was obliged to own (though grudgingly) that she seemed to be in tolerably good health. He was interested in this particular form of benevolence. He himself (in his own words) always did the handsome thing by his numerous dependants at Christmas, but the country habit of inviting all and sundry to a large party was unknown to him, his gifts taking a monetary form. He had never set eyes on the wives and children of the men he employed; but when he had accompanied Jenny on a visit to a sick woman in the village, he had good-naturedly entertained and astonished the invalid’s numerous progeny with conundrums and conjuring tricks, and conceived the notion of adding his mite to the festivities by providing all the children with presents suitable for their various ages and sexes. Armed with the necessary information, he went off to Peterborough, where he ransacked the toyshops to such purpose that Adam told him that his memory would remain green in the district for many years to come.

His visit passed off very well. He was quite unreconciled to country life; he thought the wintry landscape was enough to give one the hips, and could not understand how anyone should prefer to look out upon a vista of gray fields than upon cosy, lamp-lit streets. The night stillness kept him awake, and the sounds of cocks crowing at first light inspired him with nothing more than a desire to wring the birds’ necks. But when he drove out with Jenny he derived immense gratification from seeing the forelocks which were pulled, and the curtsies that were bobbed whenever they met anyone on the way. That was something that did not happen in London, and it seemed to him to provide one good reason at least for her wish to live in the country. He liked it, too, when she leaned out to ask some woman how little Tom, who had the whooping-cough, did, or whether any tidings had come from Betsy, serving an apprenticeship to a milliner in Lincoln. He could scarcely believe it was his Jenny behaving like a great lady; and he told her, with deep pride, that she did it to the manner born.