The Convenient Marriage

in South Street, and his lordship had roused himself to take the young man aside and talk to him of his future. Mr Heron had no hesitation in declaring the Earl to be a very good sort of a man indeed, and no further remarks concerning his reputation or his advanced years were heard to pass his lips. Elizabeth, too, who had been forced to nerve herself to meet her erstwhile suitor, found the ordeal shorn of its terrors. My lord kissed her hand, and as he released it said with his slight, not unpleasing drawl: “May I hope, Miss Winwood, that I am no longer an ogre?”

Elizabeth blushed, and hung her head. “Oh—Horry!” she sighed, a smile trembling on her lips. “Indeed, my lord, you were never that.”

“But I owe you an apology, ma’am,” he said solemnly, “for I made you “dreadfully unhappy”.”

“If we are to talk of apologies, sir—! You, who have been all kindness!” She lifted her eyes to his face, and tried to thank him for what he would do for Mr Heron.

Apparently he did not choose to be thanked; he put it aside with his lazy laugh, and somehow she could not go on. He stayed by her for a few minutes, and she had leisure to observe him. Later she told Mr Heron seriously that she thought Horry might be very happy.

“Horry is happy,” replied Mr Heron, with a chuckle.

“Ah yes, but you see, dearest, Horry is only a child. I feel—I feel anxiety, I won’t conceal from you. Lord Rule is not a child.” She puckered her brow. “Horry does such things! If he will only be gentle with her, and patient!”

“Why, love,” said Mr Heron, humouring her, “I don’t think you need to put yourself about. His lordship is all gentleness, and I don’t doubt will have patience enough.”

“All gentleness,” she repeated. “Indeed he is, and yet—do you know, Edward, I think I might be afraid of him? Sometimes, if you do but notice, he has a trick of closing his lips that gives to the whole face an air of—I must say inflexibility, quite foreign to what one knows of him. But if he will only come to love Horry!”

No one but Miss Winwood was inclined to indulge in such questionings, least of all Lady Winwood, basking in the envy of her acquaintance. Everyone was anxious to felicitate her; everyone knew what a triumph was hers. Even Mr Walpole, who was staying in Arlington Street at the time, came to pay her a morning visit, and to glean a few details. Mr Walpole’s face wore an approving smile, though he regretted that his god-daughter should be marrying a Tory. But then Mr Walpole was so very earnest a Whig, and even he seemed to think that Lady Winwood was right to disregard Rule’s political opinions. He set the tips of his fingers together, crossing one dove-silk stockinged leg over the other, and listened with his well-bred air to all Lady Winwood had to say. She had a great value for Mr Walpole, whom she had known for many years, but she was careful in what she told him. No one had a kinder heart than this thin, percipient gentleman, but he had a sharp nose for a morsel of scandal, and a satiric pen. Let him but get wind of Horatia’s escapade, and my Lady Ossory and my Lady Aylesbury would have the story by the next post.

Fortunately, the rumour of Rule’s offer for Elizabeth had not reached Twickenham, and beyond wondering that Lady Winwood should care to see Horatia married before the divine Elizabeth (who was quite his favourite), he said nothing to put an anxious mother on her guard. So Lady Winwood told him confidentially that, although nothing was yet to be declared, Elizabeth too was to leave the nest. Mr Walpole was all interest, but pursed his lips a little when he heard about Mr Edward Heron. To be sure, of good family (trust Mr Walpole to know that!), but he could have wished for someone of greater consequence for his little Lizzie. Mr Walpole did so like to see his young friends make good matches. Indeed, his satisfaction at Horatia’s betrothal made him forget a certain disastrous day at Twickenham when Horatia had shown herself quite unworthy of having the glories of his little Gothic Castle exhibited to her, and he patted her hand, and said that she must come and drink a syllabub at Strawberry quite soon. Horatia, under oath not to be farouche (“for he may be rising sixty, my love, and live secluded, but there’s no one whose good opinion counts for more’), thanked him demurely, and hoped that she would not be expected to admire and fondle his horrid little dog, Rosette, who was odiously spoiled, and yapped at one’s heels.

Mr Walpole said that she was very young to contemplate matrimony, and Lady Winwood sighed that alas, it was true: she was losing her darling before she had even been to Court.

That was an unwise remark, because it gave Mr Walpole an opportunity for recounting, as he was very fond of doing, how his father had taken him to kiss George the First’s hand when he was a child. Horatia slipped out while he was in the middle of his anecdote, leaving her Mama to assume an expression of spurious interest.

In quite another quarter, though topographically hardly a stone’s throw from South Street, the news of Rule’s betrothal created different sensations. There was a slim house in Hertford Street where a handsome widow held her court, but it was not at all the sort of establishment that Lady Winwood visited. Caroline Massey, relict of a wealthy tradesman, had achieved her position in the Polite World by dint of burying the late Sir Thomas’s connexion with the City in decent oblivion, and relying upon her own respectable birth and very considerable good looks. Sir Thomas’s fortune, though so discreditably acquired, was also useful. It enabled his widow to live in a very pretty house in the best part of town, to entertain in a lavish and agreeable fashion, and to procure the sponsorship of a Patroness who was easy-going enough to introduce her into Society. The offices of this Patroness had long ceased to be necessary to Lady Massey. In some way, best known (said various indignant ladies) to herself, she had contrived to become a Personage. One was for ever meeting her, and if a few doors remained obstinately closed against her, she had a sufficient following for this not to signify. That the following consisted largely of men was not likely to trouble her; she was not a woman who craved female companionship, though a faded and resigned lady, who was believed to be her cousin, constantly resided with her. Miss Janet’s presence was a sop thrown to the conventions. Yet, to do them justice, it was not Lady Massey’s morals that stuck in the gullets of certain aristocratic dames. Everyone had their own affaires, and if gossip whispered of intimacies between the fair Massey and Lord Rule, as long as the lady conducted her amorous passages with discretion only such rigid moralists as Lady Winwood would throw up hands of horror. It was the fatal taint of the City that would always exclude Lady Massey from the innermost circle of Fashion. She was not bon ton. It was said without rancour, even with a pitying shrug of well-bred shoulders, but it was damning. Lady Massey, aware of it, never betrayed by word or look that she was conscious of that almost indefinable bar, and not even the resigned cousin knew that to become one of the Select was almost an obsession with her.

There was only one person who guessed, and he seemed to derive a certain sardonic amusement from it. Robert, Baron Lethbridge, could usually derive amusement from the frailty of his fellows.

Upon an evening two days after the Earl of Rule’s second visit to the Winwood establishment, Lady Massey held a card-party in Hertford Street. These parties were always well attended, for one might be sure of deep play, and a charming hostess, whose cellar (thanks to the ungenteel but knowledgeable Sir Thomas) was excellently stocked.

The saloon upon the first floor was a charming apartment, and set off its mistress to advantage. She had lately purchased some very pretty pieces of gilt furniture in Paris, and had had all her old hangings pulled down, and new ones of straw-coloured silk put in their place, so that the room, which had before been rose-pink, now glowed palely yellow. She herself wore a gown of silk brocade with great panniers, and an underskirt looped with embroidered garlands. Her hair was dressed high in a pouf au sentiment, with curled feathers for which she had paid fifty louis apiece at Bertin’s, and scented roses, placed artlessly here and there in the powdered erection. This coiffure had been the object of several aspiring ladies’ envy, and had put Mrs Montague-Damer quite out of countenance. She too had acquired a French fashion, and had expected to have it much admired. But the exquisite pouf au sentiment made her own chien couchant look rather ridiculous, and quite spoiled her evening’s enjoyment.

The gathering in the saloon was a modish one; dowdy persons had no place in Lady Massey’s house, though she could welcome such freaks as the Lady Amelia Pridham, that grossly fat and free-spoken dame in the blonde satin who was even now arranging her rouleaus in front of her. There were those who wondered that the Lady Amelia should care to visit in Hertford Street, but the Lady Amelia, besides being of an extreme good nature, would go to any house where she could be sure of deep basset.

Basset was the game of the evening, and some fifteen people were seated at the big round table. It was when Lord Lethbridge held the bank that he chose to make his startling announcement. As he paid on the couch he said with a faintly malicious note in his voice: “I don’t see Rule tonight. No doubt the bridegroom-elect dances attendance in South Street.”

Opposite him, Lady Massey quickly looked up from the cards in front of her, but she did not say