The Shadow of Tyburn Tree

principles.'

Droopy waved a scented lace handkerchief airily beneath his long nose. 'Perhaps, Sir, you can tell us then what principle it was that governed His Highness of Wales when, before the India debate early this month, he filled Mr. Erskine so full of brandy that his language to the Prime Minister would have made a Billingsgate fishwife blush?'

Fox laughed again. 'If you would have us all set a limit on our potations before entering the House, my Lord, you should start with the Prime Minister. 'Twas but two nights later he was so in­disposed as to be unable to answer me; and that from having been drinking through the whole of the previous night at My Lord of Bucking­ham's with Harry Dundas and the Duchess of Gordon.'

'Yet, Sir,' interposed Roger. 'I'll wager that he never forgot his manners.'

'Nay. I'll give you that, young Sir. And I will admit that the language Erskine held in his personal attack passed all bounds of decency. But, as Lord Edward says, the Prince had primed him before he spoke, and we all know His Royal Highness's irresponsibility.'

Fox spoke with restraint; yet he had ample reason to have used a far stronger term. The unnatural hatred that the Heir Apparent bore to his father had caused him, from his first entry upon manhood, to become the most ardent supporter of the Opposition. Fox being the King's bete noire, the young Prince had deliberately cultivated his friendship, and in return, that generous- hearted statesman had obtained from Parliament grants totalling many score thousands of pounds to enable His Highness both to set up an establishment of his own at Carlton House and to indulge his wildly extravagant tastes.

More, when the Prince had fallen desperately in love with Mrs. Fitzherbert it was Fox and Mrs. Armistead who had, night after night, consoled him in his tearful fits of despair because the lady would have none of him. Apart from the undesirability of any official union of the Heir Apparent and a commoner, on account of it being morganatic, Parliament viewed such a prospect with particularly grave alarm in the case of Maria Fitzherbert because she was a Roman Catholic; but she made no secret of the fact that her price was marriage.

In consequence, on his publicly establishing her in a larger residence,' members demanded a plain answer, if he were married to her or no, and made a further grant of funds to pay his mountainous debts dependent on the answer. Faced with this impasse in the previous April, the despicable young man had allowed Fox to issue a categorical denial on his behalf. Thus he had secured the supplies he needed by causing his bosom friend to appear a most barefaced liar; for Mrs. Fitzherbert, refusing to remain longer in what she considered an in­tolerable position, had forced the Prince to admit two days later, to Earl Grey, that he had been married to her on 15th December, '85— over sixteen months earlier—and it seemed impossible to everyone that Fox should not have been a party to their secret.

On learning the truth of the matter from Sir James Harris, Fox had felt so ashamed that he had absented himself from the House for several days, and his resentment against the Prince was such that he had refused to speak to him for the best part of a year. But rumour had it that they had recently become reconciled; since should any misfortune befall the King, it was certain that the Prince would call upon the Whigs to form a Ministry, and Charles James Fox was far too ambitious a man to allow a personal treachery to deprive him indefinitely of the chance of becoming Prime Minister.

Among the men grouped round the table in the Orangery there was a momentary silence, as all of them were thinking of the unsavoury episode that Fox's words had recalled, but Colonel Thursby swiftly filled the breach, by remarking: y

'A more narrow-minded and pig-headed man than our present Monarch it would be hard to find; but for all his selfishness 'tis difficult to believe that he deserved two such sons.'

'You are right in that, Sir,' agreed Droopy Ned. 'And the Duke of York even outdoes the Prince in the besotted, boorish way he takes his pleasures. So plebeian are his tastes, and so little faith is to be

placed in his word, that the nobility of my own generation have now abjured his Grace entirely, and count his company mauvais ton.'

'In that, Charles, we have the advantage of you at White's,' smiled Selwyn. 'I must say that I pity you at Brook's, across the way, in having to support the frequent presence of these two uncouth young rakehells.'

' 'Tis so no longer, George,' Fox countered swiftly. 'Had you not heard that on H.R.H. proposing that fellow Tarleton, and Jack Payne, for membership we blackballed both of them, and that, in consequence, the two Royal sons have left us in a dudgeon? With some of their cronies they have started a new club of their own called Welzie's, at the Dover House, where General 'Hyder Ali' Smith and Admiral Pigot are said to be rooking them of from two to three thousand guineas nightly.'

The conversation was interrupted by the arrival of the Duke of Bridgewater and his sister, Lady Amelia Egerton. He was a man of just over fifty, ill-dressed and of a somewhat unprepossessing counten­ance. In his childhood he had been so shamefully neglected by his step­father, and so sickly, that his mind had almost entirely failed to develop; so that, at the age of twelve, when his elder brother died, his exclusion from the dukedom on the grounds of feeble intellect had been seriously contemplated. The grand tour had done little to improve either his perceptions or his graces, and after an unhappy love-affair with one of the 'beautiful Miss Gunnings' he had, at the age of twenty-three, abandoned society to settle on his estates at Worsley, near Manchester.

It was there that his latent genius for all matters to do with com­merce, and particularly coal-mining, had developed. At times the financing of his vast canal schemes had reduced him almost to beggary, but now he was regarded as the uncrowned King of Manchester, and his industrial ventures alone were bringing him in an income of eighty thousand a year.

His sister, a pale spinster, kept house for him at Ashridge in Hert­fordshire, his southern seat; and she was the only woman that he could endure for any length of time, for he was so confirmed a misogynist that he would not even allow a woman to wait on him.

Lady Amelia had been brought by him at the special request of Georgina, who felt deeply sorry for the poor woman on account of the exceptionally circumscribed life she was compelled to lead; while his Grace had come solely because he wished to talk about steam-engines with Colonel Thursby.

Georgina's father was about the same age as the Duke but a thin-faced, delicate-looking man, and of very different personality. He was widely travelled, extremely well-read and a distinguished connoisseur of the arts. It was due to his loving fashioning of his daughter's mind that she possessed, in addition to her beauty, the ability to hold her own with most men in conversation on a great variety of subjects. Yet the Colonel, although a dilettante by nature, had once been an officer in the Corps of Engineers, and a streak of shrewdness had enabled him to foresee the financial possibilities of many of those new inventions which were already in the process of ushering in a new age. It was this which had led to his association with the Duke, Josiah Wedgewood, Sir James Arkwright and others; by participating in whose ventures he had, while still comparatively young, converted a modest patrimony into a fine fortune, thereby making Georgina a great heiress in her own right.

When the company had been presented to his Grace and Lady Amelia, Georgina suggested that they should take a turn round the gardens. The majority of her guests agreed to the proposal with alacrity, but the Duke gave her a lowering glance and shook his head.

Taking a huge snuff box from his pocket he helped himself to a lavish pinch, the bulk of which scattered down the already snuff-stained lapels of his coat, and declared.

'Flowers! I hate 'em! Some fool planted some at Worsley once. I struck their heads off with my cane and ordered 'em to be dug up. Waste of time and money! I'll stay here and talk to your father.'

Colonel Thursby knew of old both the story and his friend's fanatical absorption in the useful to the complete exclusion of the beautiful. Himself a keen gardener, he had done much to add enchantment to the gardens at Stillwaters, and would have liked to go round them with the rest; but, concealing his disappointment with a politeness which was natural to him, he resigned himself to listen to a discourse by His Grace on experiments with steam-pumps in coal-mines, while the others followed Georgina out onto the terrace.

The sun had been shining all the morning in a serene, pale blue sky, and it was now the hottest hour of the afternoon; so that in this well-sheltered valley, although it was only the last day of March, it was as warm as if it had been early May. To the west of the house there was a Botticelli garden, which had been planted three years before by Colonel Thursby when Georgina came to live there. In it the young almond trees were already in blossom, and the cherries, crab-apples, mays and standard lilacs showing their buds. Beneath them small neat clusters of crocus and primroses starred the grass, and larger clumps of green spikes showed where narcissus, hyacinths and