Thus happily began our stay at Epsom Wells.

After our morning walk we returned home, being both fatigued with the excitement and late hours, and one, at least, desirous to sit alone and think about the strange and perilous adventure of the evening. Strange, indeed; since when before did a man dance with his own wife and not recognise her? Perilous, truly, for should that man go away and give no more heed to his wife, then would poor Kitty be lost for ever. For already was her heart engaged in this adventure, and, like a gambler, she had staked her whole upon a single chance. Fortunately for her, the stake was consecrated with tears of repentance, bitterness of shame, and prayers for forgiveness.

Mrs. Esther gently dozed away the morning over “Pamela.” I was occupied with needlework. Cicely ran in and out of the room, looking as if she longed to speak, but dared not for fear of waking madam.

After a while she beckoned me to the door, and whispered me that outside was a higgler with ducklings and cherries, should we please to choose them for our dinner. I followed her, and after a bargain, in which the Surrey maiden showed herself as good as if she had been bred in Fleet Market (though without the dreadful language), she began upon the business which she was burning to tell me.

“Sure, Miss Kitty,” she said, “all the world is talking this morning about the beautiful Miss Pleydell. The book-shop is full of nothing else, the gentlemen in the coffee-house can talk of nothing but of Miss Pleydell, and up and down the Terrace it is nothing but, ‘Oh, madam, did you see the dancing of Miss Pleydell last night?’ ‘Dear madam, did you remark the dress of Miss Pleydell?’ And ‘Can you tell me whence she comes, this beautiful Miss Pleydell?’ And the men are all sighing as if their hearts would burst, poor fellows! And they say that Lord Chudleigh gave a supper after the ball to the gentlemen of his acquaintance, when he toasted the beautiful Miss Pleydell. Oh the happiness! He is a young nobleman with a great estate, and said to be of a most virtuous and religious disposition. The gentlemen are mounting ribbons in honour of the peerless Kitty, so I hear—and you will not be offended at their venturing so to take your name—and, with a little encouragement, they will all be fighting for a smile from the fair Kitty.”

“Silly girl, to repeat such stories!”

“Nay,” she replied, “it is all truth, every word. They say that never since the Wells began has there been such a beauty. The oldest dipper, old Mrs. Humphreys, who is past eighty, declares that Miss Pleydell is the loveliest lady that ever came to Epsom. When you go out this afternoon you will be finely beset.”

And so on, all the morning, as her occasion brought her into the room, whisking about, duster in hand, and always clatter, clatter, like the mill-wheel. After dinner we received a visit from no other than Lord Chudleigh himself.

He offered a thousand apologies for presenting himself without asking permission, kindly adding, that however he might find Miss Kitty, whether dressed or in dishabille, she could not be otherwise than charming. I know one person who thought Kitty in her morning frock, muslin pinner, and brown hair (which was covered with little curls), looped up loosely, or allowed to flow freely to her waist, prettier than Kitty dressed up in hoop, and patches, and powder. It was the mirror which told that person so, and she never dared to tell it to any other.

He had ventured, he said, still speaking to Mrs. Esther, to present an offering of flowers and fruit sent to him that morning from his country house in Kent; and then Cicely brought upstairs the most beautiful basket ever seen, filled with the finest flowers, peaches, plums, apricots, and cherries. I had seen none such since I said farewell to the old Vicarage garden, where all those things grew better, I believe, than anywhere else in England.

“My lord,” said my aunt, quite confused at such a gift, such condescension! “What can we say but that we accept the present most gratefully.”

“Indeed, madam,” he replied, “there is nothing to say. I am truly pleased that my poor house is able to provide a little pleasure to two ladies. It is the first time, I assure you, that I have experienced the joy of possessing my garden.”

Then he went on to congratulate Mrs. Esther on my appearance at the ball.

“I hear,” he said, “that on the Terrace and in the coffee-house one hears nothing but the praises of the fair Miss Pleydell.”

I blushed, not so much at hearing my name thus mentioned, because I was already (in a single day—fie, Kitty!) accustomed and, so to speak, hardened, but because he smiled as he spoke. My lord’s smile was not like some men’s, bestowed upon every trifle; but, like his speech, considered. I fear, indeed, that even then, so early in the day, my heart was already thoroughly possessed of his image.

“The child,” said Mrs. Esther, “must not have her head turned by flattery. Yet, I own, she looked and moved like one of the three Graces. Yet we who love her must not spoil her. It was her first ball, and she did her best, poor child, to acquit herself with credit.”

“Credit,” said my lord kindly, “is a poor, cold word to use for such a grace.”

“We thank your lordship.” Mrs. Esther bowed with dignity. This, surely, was a return to the Pimpernel Manner. “We have been living in seclusion, for reasons which need not be related, for some time. Therefore, Kitty has never been before to any public assembly. To be sure, I do not approve of bringing forward young girls too early; although, for my own part, I had already at her age been present at several entertainments of the most sumptuous and splendid character, not only at Bagnigge Wells and Cupid’s Garden, but also at many great city feasts and banquets for the reception of illustrious personages, particularly in the year of grace, 1718, when my lamented father was Lord Mayor of London.”

The dear lady could never avoid introducing the fact that she was thus honourably connected.

Lord Chudleigh, however, seemed interested. I learned, later, that some had been putting about, among other idle rumours, that I was the daughter of a tattered country curate.

“Indeed,” he said, “I knew not that the late Mr. Pleydell had been the Lord Mayor. It is a most distinguished position.”

“Not Mr. Pleydell, my lord. Sir Samuel Pimpernel, Knight, my father, was the Lord Mayor in question. His father was Lord Mayor before him. Kitty Pleydell is not my blood relation, but my niece and ward by adoption. Her father was a most distinguished Cambridge scholar and divine.”

“There are Pleydells,” said Lord Chudleigh, “in Warwickshire. Perhaps——”

“My father,” I said, “was rector of a country parish in Kent, where Sir Robert Levett hath a large estate. He was the younger son of the Warwickshire family of that name, and died in the spring of last year. My relations of that county I have never met. Now, my lord, you have my genealogy complete.”

“It is an important thing to know,” he said, laughing; “in a place like Epsom, where scandal is the staple of talk, as many freedoms are taken with a lady’s family as with her reputation. I am glad to be provided with an answer to those who would enact the part of town-crier or backbiter, a character here greatly aspired to. No doubt the agreeable ladies whose tongues in the next world will surely be converted into two-edged swords, have already furnished Miss Kitty with highwaymen, tallow-chandlers, or attorneys for ancestors, and Wapping, Houndsditch, or the Rules of the Fleet”—it was lucky that Mrs. Esther had a fan—“for their place of residence. In the same way, they have most undoubtedly proved to each other that she has not a feature worth looking at, that her eyes squint—pray pardon me, Miss Kitty—her hair is red, her figure they would have the audacity to call crooked, and her voice they would maliciously say was cracked. It is the joy of these people to detract from merit. You can afford to be charitable, Miss Kitty. The enumeration of impossible disgraces and the distortion of the rarest charms afford these ladies some consolation for their envy and disappointment.”

“I hope, my lord,” I said, “that it will not afford me a consolation or happiness to believe that my sex is so mean and envious thus to treat a harmless stranger.”

He laughed.

“When Miss Kitty grows older,” he said to Mrs Esther, “she will learn to place less confidence in her fellows.”

“Age,” said Mrs. Esther sadly, “brings the knowledge of evil. Let none of us wish to grow older. Not that your lordship hath yet gained the right to boast this knowledge.”

Then my lord proceeded to inform us that he purposed presenting some of the ladies of the Wells with an entertainment, such as it seems is expected from gentlemen of his rank.

“But I would not,” he said, “invite the rest of the company before I had made sure that the Queen of the Wells would honour me with her presence. I have engaged the music, and if the weather holds fine we will repair to Durdans Park, where we shall find dancing on the grass, with lamps in the trees, supper, and such amusements as ladies love and we can provide.”

This was indeed a delightful prospect; we accepted with great joy, and so, with protestations of service, his lordship departed.

“There is,” said Mrs. Esther, “about the manners of the great a charming freedom. Good breeding is to manners what Christianity is to religion. It is, if one may reverently say so, a law of perfect liberty. My dear, I think that we are singularly fortunate in having at the Wells so admirable a young nobleman, as well as our friends (also well-bred gentlefolks) Sir Robert and Lady Levett. I hear that the young Lord Eardesley is also at the Wells, and was at last night’s assembly; and no doubt there are other members of the aristocracy by whom we shall be shortly known. You observed, Kitty, the interest shown by his lordship, when I delicately alluded to the rank and exalted station of my late father. It is well for people to know, wherever we are, and especially when we are in the society of nobility, that we are not common folk. What ancestors did his lordship say that envious tongues would give us—tallow-chandlers? attorneys? A lying and censorious place, indeed!”

Later on, we put on our best and sallied forth, dressed for the evening in our hoops, patches and powder, but not so fine as for Monday’s ball. The Terrace and New Parade were crowded with people, and very soon we were surrounded by gentlemen anxious to establish a reputation for wit or position by exchanging a few words with the Reigning Beauty of the season—none other, if you please, than Kitty Pleydell.

But to think in how short a time—only a few hours, a single night—that girl was so changed that she accepted, almost without wondering, all the incense of flattery that was offered up to her! Yet she knew, being a girl of some sense, that it was unreal, and could not mean anything; else a woman so bepraised and flattered would lose her head. The very extravagance of gallantry preserves the sex from that calamity. A woman must be a fool indeed who can really believe that her person is that of a Grace, her smile the smile of Venus, her beauty surpassing that of Helen, and her wit and her understanding that of Sappho. She knows better: she knows that her wit is small and petty beside the wit of a man: her wisdom nothing but to learn a little of what men have said: her very beauty, of which so much is said, but a flower of a few years, whereas the beauty of manhood lasts all a life. Therefore, when all is said and done, the incense burned, the mock prayers said, the hymn of flattery sung, and the Idol bedecked with flowers and gems, she loves to step down from the altar, slip away from the worshippers, and run to a place in the meadows, where waits a swain who will say: “Sweet girl, I love thee—with all thy faults!”

On this day, therefore, began my brief reign as Queen of the Wells. Mr. Walsingham was one of the first to salute me. With courtly grace he bowed low, saying—

“We greet our Queen, and trust her Majesty is in health and spirits.”

Then all the gentlemen round formed a lane, down which we walked, my old courtier marching backwards.

The scene, Mrs. Esther said afterwards, reminded her of a certain day long ago, when they crowned a Queen of Beauty at Bagnigge Wells, in the presence of the Lord Mayor, her father.

To be sure, it was a very pretty sight to watch all these gallants making legs and handling their canes with such grace as each could command, some of them having studied in those noble schools of manners, the salons of Paris or the reception-rooms of great ladies in London. Yet it was certain to me that not one of them could compare with my lord—my own lord, I mean.

Presently we came upon Lady Levett and her party, when, after a few words of kind greeting from her ladyship, and an admonition not to believe more of what I was told than I knew to be true, we divided, Nancy coming with me and Mrs. Esther remaining with Lady Levett. The music was playing and the sun shining, but a fine air blew from the Downs, and we were beneath the shade of the trees. We sat upon one of the benches, and the gentlemen gathered round us.

“Gentlemen,” said Nancy, “I am the Queen’s maid of honour. You may all of you do your best to amuse her Majesty—and me. We give you permission to exhaust yourselves in making the court happy.”

What were they to do? What had they to offer? There was a bull-baiting in the market at which my maid of honour cried fie! There was a match with quarterstaves on the Downs for the afternoon, but that met with little favour.

“We need not leave home,” said Nancy, “to see two stout fellows bang each other about the head with sticks. That amusement may be witnessed any summer evening, with grinning through a horse-collar and fighting with gloves on the village green at home. Pray go on to the next amusement on the list. The cock-pit you can leave out.”

One young gentleman proposed that we might play with pantines, a ridiculous fashion of paper doll then in vogue as a toy for ladies with nothing to do: another that we should go hear the ingenious Mr. King lecture on Astronomy: another that we should raffle for chocolate creams: another that we should do nothing at all, “for,” said he, “why do we come to the Wells but for rest and quiet? and if Miss Pleydell and her maid of honour do but grant us the privilege of beholding their charms, what need we of anything but rest?

I, for one, should have enjoyed the witnessing of a little sport better than the homage of lovers.

“Here is Miss Peggy Baker,” cried Nancy, jumping up. “Oh! I must speak to my dear friend Miss Peggy.”

Miss Baker was walking slowly down the Terrace, accompanied by her little troop of admirers. At sight of us her face clouded for a moment, but she quickly recovered and smiled a languid greeting.

“Dear Miss Peggy,” cried Nancy—I knew she was going to say something mischievous—“you come in the nick of time.”

“Pray command me,” she replied graciously.

“It is a simple question”—Miss Baker looked suspicious. “Oh! a mere trifle”—Miss Baker looked uneasy. “It is only—pray, gentlemen, were any of you in the book-shop this morning?”

All protested that they were not—a denial which confirmed my opinion that impertinence was coming.

“Nay,” said Nancy, “we all know the truthfulness of gallants, which is as notorious as their constancy. Had you been there you would not have paid Miss Pleydell those pretty compliments which are as well deserved as they are sincere. But, Miss Peggy, a scandalous report hath got abroad. They say that you said, this morning, at the book-shop, that Kitty Pleydell’s eyes squinted.”

“Oh! oh!” cried Mr. Walsingham, holding up his hands, and all the rest cried “Oh! oh!” and held up theirs.

“I vow and protest,” cried Peggy Baker, blushing very much. “I vow and protest——”

“I said,” interrupted Nancy, “that it was the cruellest slander. You are all good-nature. Stand up, Kitty dear. Now tell us, Miss Peggy, before all these gentlemen, do those eyes squint?”

“Certainly not,” said poor Peggy, in great confusion.

“Look at them well,” continued Nancy. “Brown eyes, full and clear—eyes like an antelope. Saw any one eyes more straight!”

“Never,” said Peggy, fanning herself violently.

“Or more beautiful eyes?”

“Never,” replied Miss Peggy.

“There,” said Nancy, “I knew it. I said that from the lips of Miss Peggy Baker nothing but kind words can fall. You hear, gentlemen; women are sometimes found who can say good things of each other: and if we find the malicious person who dared report that Miss Peggy Baker said such a thing, I hope you will duck her in the horse-pond.”

Miss Peggy bowed to us with her most languishing air, and passed on. Nancy held up her hands, while the gentlemen looked at one another and laughed.

“Oh, calumny!” she cried. “To say that Kitty’s eyes were askew!”

For there had been a discussion at the book-shop that morning, in which the name of Miss Pleydell was frequently mentioned; and her person, bearing, and face were all particularly dwelt upon. Miss Baker, as usual in their parliaments, spoke oftenest, and with the most animation. She possessed, on such occasions, an insight into the defects of women that was truly remarkable, and a power of representing them to others which, while it was eloquent and persuasive, perhaps erred on the side of exaggeration. She summed up what she had to say in these kind words—

“After all, one could forgive fine clothes worn as if the girl had never had a dress on fit to be seen before, and manners like a hoyden trying to seem a nun, and the way of dancing taught to the cits who go to Sadler’s Wells, and a sunburnt complexion, and hands as big as my fan—all these things are rustic, and might be cured—or endured. But I cannot forgive her squint!”

And now she had to recant publicly, and confess that there was no squint at all.

This audacious trick of Nancy’s was, you may be sure, immediately spread abroad, so that for that day at least the unfortunate creature found the people looking after and laughing wherever she went. Naturally, she hated me, who really had done her no harm at all, more and more.

The gentlemen, or one among them, I knew not who, offered this evening a general tea-drinking with the music. It was served under the trees upon the open walk, and was very gay and merry. After the tea, when the day began to decline, we went to the rooms where, though there was no dancing, there was talking and laughing, in one room, and in the other games of cards of every kind—cribbage, whist, quadrille, hazard, and lansquenet. We wandered round the tables, watching the players intent upon the chances of the cards. I thought of poor Sir Miles Lackington, who might, had it not been for his love of gaming, have been now, as he began, a country gentleman with a fine estate. In this room we found Lord Chudleigh. He was not playing, but was looking on at a table where sat a young gentleman and an officer in the army. He did not see us, and, under pretence of watching the play of a party of four ladies playing quadrille, one of whom was Lady Levett, I sat down to watch him. Was he a gambler?

I presently discovered that he was not looking at the game, but the players. Presently he laid his hand upon the shoulder of the younger man, and said, in a quiet voice—

“Now, Eardesley, you have had enough. This gentleman knows the game better than you.”

“I hope, my lord,” cried the other player, springing to his feet, “that your lordship doth not insinuate——”

“I speak what I mean, sir. Lord Eardesley will, if he takes my advice, play no more with you.”

“Your lordship,” cried the gentleman in scarlet, “will perhaps remember that you are speaking to a gentleman——”

“Who left Bath, a fortnight ago, under such circumstances as makes it the more necessary for me to warn my friend. No, sir,”—his eye grew hard, and his face stern. “No, sir. Do not bluster or threaten. I will neither play with you, nor suffer my friends to play with you; nor, sir, will I fight with you, unless you happen to attack me upon the road. And, sir, if I see you here to-morrow, the master of the ceremonies will put you to the door by means of his lackeys. Come, Eardesley.”

The gamester, thus roundly accused, began to bluster. His honour was at stake; he had been grossly insulted; he would have the satisfaction of a gentleman; he would let his lordship know that his rank should not protect him. With these noble sentiments, he left the room, and the Wells saw him no more.

Then, seeing me alone, for I had escaped from my court, being weary of compliments and speeches, he came to my chair.

“I saw you, my lord,” I said, “rescue that young gentleman from the man who, I suppose, would have won his money. Is it prudent to engage in such quarrels?”

“The young gentleman,” he replied, “is, in a sense, my ward. The man is a notorious sharper, who hath been lately expelled from Bath, and will now, I think, find it prudent to leave the Wells. I hope, Miss Kitty, that you do not like gaming?”

“Indeed, my lord, I do not know if I should like what I have never tried. ’Tis the first time I have seen card-playing.”

“Then you must have been brought up in a nunnery.”

“Not quite that, but in a village, where, as I have already told you, my father was vicar. I do not know any games of cards.”

“How did you amuse yourself in your village?”

“I read, made puddings, worked samplers, cut out and sewed my dresses, and learned lessons with Nancy Levett.”

“The pretty little girl who is always laughing? She should always remain young—never grow old and grave. What else did you do?”

“We had a choir for the Sunday psalms—many people came every Sunday to hear us sing. That was another occupation. Then I used to ride with the boys, or sometimes we would go fishing, or nutting, or black-berrying—oh! there was plenty to do, and the days were never too long.”

“A better education than most ladies can show,” he replied, with his quiet air of authority.

“And you, my lord. Do you never play cards?”

“No,” he replied. “Pray do not question me further on my favourite vices, Miss Kitty. I would not confess all my sins even to so charming and so kind a confessor as yourself.”

“I forgive you, my lord,” I said, “beforehand. Especially if you promise to abandon them all.”

“There are sins,” he said slowly, “which sometimes leave behind them consequences which can never be forgotten or undone.”

Alas! I knew what he meant. His sin had left him burdened with a wife—a creature who had been so wicked as to take advantage of his wickedness; a woman whom he feared to hear of and already loathed. Poor wife! poor sinner! poor Kitty!