Lady Hester was surprised by his sudden arrival, for she had supposed him to be on the point of going to Brighton. He belonged to the Prince Regent’s set, and in general was to be found, during the summer months, residing in lodgings on the Steyne, or at the Pavilion itself, where it was his affable practice to share in all his royal friend’s more expensive pastimes, and to play whist, for extremely high stakes, with his royal friend’s brother of York. Such female companionship as he sought in Brighton had never included that of his wife, or of his daughter; so, at the end of the London Season, Lady Hester had removed, with her brother and her sister-in-law, to Cambridgeshire, whence, in due course, she would proceed on a round of yearly and very dull visits to various members of her family.

Her amiable parent, having informed her that it was a father’s concern for her welfare which had brought him, at great inconvenience, to his ancestral home, said, by way of preamble to the disclosure he was about to make, that he hoped she would furbish herself up a trifle, since it would not do for her to receive guests in an old gown, and a Paisley shawl.

“Oh, dear!” said Hester. “Are we to have visitors?” She focused her slightly myopic gaze upon the Earl, and said, with more resignation than anxiety in her voice: “I do hope no one whom I particularly dislike, Papa?”

“Nothing of the sort!” he replied testily. “Upon my soul, Hester, you are enough to try the patience of a saint! Let me tell you, my girl that it is Sir Gareth Ludlow whom we are to entertain here next week, and if you dislike him you must be out of your senses!”

She had been somewhat aimlessly disposing the despised shawl about her shoulders, as though, by rearranging its shabby folds, she could render it less objectionable to her father, but at these words she let her hands fall, and said incredulously: “Sir Gareth Ludlow,sir?”