I think it sounds dreadful.

But back to my mother. She did not mind that I had refused the season because this meant that she would not have to be apart from my father for several months. (Since, as we have determined, he would have to be left at home.) But at the same time, she was genuinely concerned for my future. To that end, she had launched into a bit of a crusade. If I would not go to the eligible gentlemen, she would bring them to me.

Hence Charles Brougham.

At two o’clock, he had still not arrived, and I must confess, I was growing irritable. It was a hot day, or at least as hot as it gets in Gloucestershire, and my dark green habit, which had felt so stylish and jaunty when I had donned it, was beginning to itch.

I was beginning to wilt.

Somehow my mother and Mrs. Brougham had forgotten to set a time for the nephew’s arrival, so I had been obligated to be dressed and ready at noon precisely.

“What time would you say marks the end of the afternoon?” I asked, fanning myself with a folded-up newspaper.

“Hmmm?” My mother was writing a letter-presumably to one of her many siblings-and wasn’t really listening. She looked quite lovely sitting there by the window. I have no idea what my original mother would have looked like as an older woman since she did not deign to live that long, but Eloise had not lost any of her beauty. Her hair was still a rich, chestnut color and her skin unlined. Her eyes are difficult to describe-rather changeable in color, actually.

She tells me that she was never considered a beauty when she was young. No one thought she was unattractive, and she was in fact quite popular, but she was never designated a diamond of the first water. She tells me that women of intelligence age better.