What was my further surprise to see none other than Miss Molly Bashe, in the company of a slim, haughty-faced young minx of perhaps twenty whom I had not seen before. Her sandy brown hair was most elegantly coiffed with a series of carefully artificed round curls which fell on either side of her lovely head and down to the shoulders, whilst a similar row decorated the top of her forehead and reminded me of the heroine Pamela of Richardson’s great novel of the same name.

I must confess I flushed with startled embarrassment at this second encounter with Miss Molly Bashe, and with good reason indeed! About the time I had conquered Alice, and prior to the conversion of Connie Blunt, I made the acquaintance of Lady Betty Bashe at the house of a mutual friend. This plump widow was just under forty and was busy introducing her offspring into what is called by some, with tongue in cheek, “high society,” and this worthy and consolable widow had taken it into her head that I would make a prize son-in-law. She had therefore proceeded to hunt me down persistently, and her daughter had aided and abetted her vigorously until they both had become a decided nuisance.

I had not been smitten with the charms of either mother or daughter at our first meeting. Lady Betty, as my readers who have perused the first volumes of my memoirs will recall, was a tall, robust and buxom woman who reminded one inescapably of the painter Rubens’ fleshy models. And Miss Molly was a small, dainty edition of her mother in her eighteenth year. But the two of them were affected, insincere and unscrupulous, and to find this portly widow playing the air of a juvenile and affecting the silly mannerisms and even the speech of her own daughter was enough to turn my stomach.

You will recall also that the two of them had insisted that they visit me and that they have lunch with me.