“She has a heart of gold!” she told him earnestly. “If you knew what care she takes of me, how patient she is with me, you would be astonished!”

“Indeed, I should not!” he said, smiling. “I cannot conceive of anyone’s being out of patience with you!”

“Oh, yes!” she assured him. “Mama and my sisters were often so, for I am quite the stupidest of my family, besides being shy of strange persons, and not liking excessively to go to parties, and a great many other nonsensical things. But Serena, who does everything so well, was never vexed with me! Major Kirkby, if it had not been for her I don’t know what I should have done!”

He could readily believe that to such a child as she must have been at the time of her marriage life in the great Spenborough household must have been bewildering and alarming. He said sympathetically: “Was it very bad?”

Her reply was involuntary. “Oh, if I had not had Serena I could not have borne it!” The colour rushed up into her face; she said quickly: “I mean—I mean—having to entertain so many people—talk to them—be the mistress of that huge house! The political parties, too! They were the worst, for I have not the least understanding of politics, and if Serena had not taken care to tell me what was likely to be talked about at dinner I must have been all at sea! The dreadful way, too, the people of the highest ton have of always being related to one another, so that one is for ever getting into a scrape!”

He could not help laughing, but he said: “I know exactly what you mean!”

“Yes, but you see, Serena used to explain everybody to me, and so I was able to go on quite prosperously. And it was she who managed everything. She had always done so.” She paused, and then said diffidently: “When—when perhaps you might sometimes think her wilful, or—or over-confident, you must remember that she has been the mistress of her papa’s houses, and his hostess, and that he relied on her to attend to all the things which, in general, an unmarried lady knows nothing about.”

“Yes,” he said heavily “He must have been a strange man!” He caught himself up. “I beg pardon! I should not say that to you!”

“Well, I don’t think he was just in the common way,” she agreed. “He was very goodnatured, and easy-going, and so kind that it was no wonder everyone liked him. He was quite as kind to me as Serena, you know.”

“Oh! Yes, of—I mean, I’m sure he must have been,” he stammered, considerably taken aback.

She went on with her stitchery, in sweet unconsciousness of having said anything to make him think her marriage deplorable. She would have been very much shocked could she have read his mind; quite horrified had she guessed the effect on him of what she had told him of Serena’s life and character. Her words bore out too clearly much that he had begun to realize; and with increasing anxiety he wondered whether Serena could ever be content with the life he had to offer her. But when he spoke of this to her, she looked surprised, and said: “Bored? Dear Hector, what absurdity is in your head now? Depend upon it, I shall find plenty to do in Kent!”

An item of news in the Courier made her ask him one day if he had ever had any thoughts of standing for election to Parliament. He assured her that he had not, but before he well knew where he was she was discussing the matter, making plans, sketching a possible career, and reckoning up the various interests at her command. In laughing dismay, he interrupted her, to say: “But I should dislike it of all things!”

He was relieved to find that she was not, apparently, disappointed, for he had had the sensation of being swept irresistibly down a path of her choosing. “Would you? Really? Then, of course, you won’t stand,” she said cheerfully.

When she talked of her life while he had been in the Peninsula, he was often reminded of Fanny’s words: Serena seemed to be related to so many people. “Some sort of a fifth cousin of mine,” she would say, until it seemed to him that England must be littered with her cousins. He quizzed her about it once, and she replied perfectly seriously: “Yes, and what a dead bore it is! One has to remember to write on anniversaries, and to ask them to dine, and some of them, I assure you, are the most shocking figures! Only wait until I introduce you to my cousin Speen! Fanny will tell you she sat, bouche béante, the first time she ever saw him, at one of our turtle-dinners! He arrived drunk, which, however, he was aware of, and begged her to pardon, informing her as a great secret that he was a jerry-sneak—which the world knows!—and might never be decently bosky when my lady was at home, so that he had determined while she was away never to be less than well to live!”

“An odious little man!” said Fanny, with a shudder. “For shame, Serena! As though you had not better relations than Speen!”

“True! If Hector should not be cast into transports by Speen, I shall take him to stay at Osmansthorpe!” Serena said mischievously. “Have you a taste for the ceremonious, my love? There, his lordship lives, en prince, and since his disposition is morose and his opinion of his own importance immense, the dinner-table is enlivened only by such conversations as he chooses to inaugurate. The groom of the chambers will warn you before you leave your room, however, what subject his lordship wishes to hear discussed.”

“Serena!” expostulated Fanny. “Don’t heed her, Major Kirkby! It is very formal and dull at Osmansthorpe, but not as bad as that!”

“If it is half as bad as that, I would infinitely prefer to make the acquaintance of Cousin Speen!” he retorted. “Must we really set out on a series of visits to all your relations, Serena?”

“By no means!” she answered promptly. “Order me to set them all at a distance, and you will be astonished to see with what a good grace I shall obey you! I should not care a button if I never saw most of them again.”

He laughed, but at the back of his mind lurked the fear that these people, deplorable or dull, formed an integral part of the only life she understood, or, perhaps, could be happy in. When he called in Laura Place one day, expecting to find her fretting at the rain, which had been falling steadily since dawn, and discovered her instead to be revelling in a scandalous novel, the conviction grew on him that the placid existence he had planned for them both would never satisfy her.

She gave him her hand, and one of her enchanting smiles, but said: “Don’t expect to hear a word from my lips, love! I have here the most diverting book that ever was written! Have you seen it? The chief characters in it are for the most part easily recognizable, and it is no great task to guess at the identities of the rest. I have not laughed so much for weeks!”

He picked up one of the small, gilt-edged volumes. “What is it? Glenarvon—and by an anonymous writer. Is it so excellent?”

“Good God, no! It is the most absurd farrago of nonsense! But I prophesy it will run through a dozen editions, because none of us will be able to resist searching either for ourselves or our acquaintance in it. Could you have believed it?—Lady Caroline Lamb is the author? The Lambs are all in it, and Lady Holland—very well hit off, I imagine, from all I have ever heard of her, but Papa disliked that set, so that I was never at Holland House—and Lady Oxford, and Lady Jersey, and poor Mr Rogers, whom she calls a yellow hyena! I must say, I think it unjust, don’t you? Glenarvon, of course, is Byron, and the whole thing is designed as a sort of vengeance on him for having cried off from his affaire with her.”

“Good God!” he exclaimed. “She must be mad to have done such a thing!”

“I think she is, poor soul! Never more so than when she tumbled head over ears in love with Byron! For my part, I was so unfashionable as to take him in instant aversion. How she could have borne with his insufferable conceit, and the airs he put on to be interesting, I know not—though I daresay if one could bear that dreadful Lamb laugh nothing would daunt one! Not but what I am extremely sorry for William Lamb, laugh as he may! If it is true that he stands by her, I do most sincerely honour him. I fancy she meant to portray him in a kindly way, but some of the things she writes of him may well make him writhe. She is so very obliging as to favour the world with what one can only take to be a description of her own honeymoon—so warm as to make poor Fanny blush to the ears! It can’t be pleasant for William Lamb, but it won’t harm him. For she portrays herself, in the character of Calantha, as an innocent child quite dazzled by the world, quite ignorant, wholly trusting in the virtue of every soul she met! Pretty well for a girl brought up in Devonshire House!”

“It sounds to be unedifying, to say the least of it,” the Major said. “Do you like such stuff?”

“It is the horridest book imaginable!” Fanny broke in. “And although I never did more than exchange bows with Lord Byron, I am persuaded he never murdered a poor little baby in his life! As for Clara St Everarde, who followed Glenarvon about, dressed as a page, if she is a real person too, and did anything so grossly improper, I think it a very good thing she rode over a cliff into the sea—though I am excessively sorry for the horse!”

“Observe!” said Serena, much entertained. “It is the horridest book imaginable—but she has read all three volumes!”

“Only because you would keep asking me if I did not think Lady Augusta must be meant for Lady Cahir (and I’m sure I don’t know!) and laughing so much that I was bound to continue, only to see what amused you so!”

The Major, who had been glancing through the volume he held, laid it down distastefully. “I think you have wasted your money, Serena.”