“With a father past seventy, I should not call eight-and-forty elderly” I replied, turning again to face him.

“Oh! To be sure! I spoke but as a matter of form. I do not doubt, however; that my cousin the Viscount”—this, with a glance at Lord Payne, who stood opposite Fanny Delahoussaye in the next couple but one—”may feel such a mixture of emotions more acutely than I. Though Lord Fitzroy Payne appears to rank the Countess as chief among his acquaintance, even he must acknowledge the blow to his fortunes. If my uncle gets an heir, Lord Payne's prospects are decidedly the worse.”

“Your solicitude for your cousin's purse may disarm reproof,” I told him, “but your uncle's happiness must be said to outweigh more material concerns.” That I wondered at his imparting so much of a personal nature to a complete stranger I need not emphasise; but it hardly dissuaded me from pursuing the conversation further.

“Oh! Uncle's happiness,” said the Lieutenant, turning his gaze upon Lord Scargrave, who even then was engaged in a bout of laughter as he moved his elegant wife through the figures. “His happiness cannot be doubted. We should all be as fortunate at eight-and-forty. But as we are blessed with only half his years, Miss Austen, let us throw off sober talk and take up other things. Have you been much in Hertfordshire?”

Recovering his senses, as it seemed, the Lieutenant conversed with great charm until the music ended, and then he bowed low over my gloved hand. After earnestly entreating me to favour him with another dance, and hearing me plead the necessities of fatigue, he took himself off in search of wine punch.

I gazed after him for an instant, turning over his words in my mind, then shook my head and resolved to think of him no more. Tom Hearst is altogether a scapegrace, a rake, and possibly a dangerous fellow, with his likeable face, his vigourous dancing, and his easy manners; a man who might do with a woman as he liked, having once won her heart.

11 December 1802, cont.

THE MOST CURIOUS OF THE INCIDENTS I WITNESSED LAST night sprang from the arrival of a man — a gentleman and a stranger, but of so malevolent an aspect, that I shiver to find him still beneath our roof as the Earl lies dying. He is the chief of what I would understand about life at Scargrave Manor; and I must look to my friend Isobel for explanation, since it was in pursuit of her that he came.

I was engaged in observing Lieutenant Hearst's progress towards the wine punch, when Isobel appeared at my side. Her face was becomingly flushed, and her brown eyes alight.

“My dear Jane! Is not this an excellent ball? Is not it an elegant assembly? And yet I have bade my husband be off, that I may steal a few moments in your company,” she declared, taking my hand. “Come into this corner and tell me all that has happened, for since your arrival I have not had a moment to spare for your cares.”

She led me to a settee placed conveniently within the alcove of a window, the better to view the progress of her ball while conversing unmolested. I confessed to some little fatigue after the rigours of Lieutenant Hearst's conversation and enthusiasm, and sank into the seat with relief,

“I had hoped to be able to wish you joy, my dear Jane,” Isobel began, “but you are determined to deny me the pleasure. Now, do not run away,” she added, as I looked conscious, “in the fear that I am going to scold you — on the contrary, I admire you. Yes,” she insisted, when I would protest, “I admire your courage. It is rare to find a woman who places her personal happiness above her fears for the future. You refused Mr. Bigg-Wither, refused his offer of a home, a family, and the comfortable means they assured, to retain your independence, despite the counsel of all who wished you well and threw their weight behind the match. What strength!”

“Did you know Mr. Bigg-Wither, you would think me less noble,” I said. “There cannot be two men so likely to meet with refusal in the entire country. What is remarkable is that I accepted him at all, if only for an evening. The thought of an eternal fireside tête-à-tête with Mr. Bigg-Wither; the endless presiding over the Bigg-Wither teapot; the possibility of little Bigg-Withers, all equally as dull as their father — such nightmares were enough to chasten me by morning.”

“But at least your nightmares were of short duration, Jane.” Isobel smoothed the elegant folds of her green silk gown, her aspect turned sombre in an instant. “There are too many ladies, I fear, who must suffer them the length of an unhappy marriage. Better to reject a suitor, than to lie forever wakeful in contemplation of one's mistake.”

“Indeed. Had I joined my life to Mr. Bigg-Wither's, the alliance must be brief; for I would certainly have died of insomnia before the week's end.”

My design was to provoke laughter, but in truth, my decision to reject Mr. Harris Bigg-Wither of Manydown Park a mere four-and-twenty hours after accepting him — to the joy of my dear friends, his sisters — has caused me great pain and mortification. He is heir to extensive estates in Hampshire, and his position and fortune would be thought a conquest for any lady, particularly one such as myself, whose means are so unequal to his, and whose first bloom of youth is gone. Despite these claims against my person, Mr. Bigg-Wither had fixed upon me as the companion of his future life almost from the moment I entered Manydown House a few weeks ago. In short, his proposal was quite gratifying, coming as it did without even the pretence of courtship. In a fit of gratitude — nay, I must and shall be honest — in a fit of vanity, I accepted him.

But he is six years my junior, an awkward, gloomy fellow burdened with a pronounced stutter; and all his consequence could not make of him a different man. As I would assuredly attempt to reform what nature had disposed Harris Bigg-Wither to be, I could only do him harm by accepting him. My instinct for self-preservation, my belief that marriage without love is the worst form of hypocrisy, gave me strength after a sleepless night to inform him of my error in encouraging his attentions, and to assure him that I was the woman least likely to bring him felicity in the married state. I departed Manydown not an hour later, in great despondency, certain that I had lost not only a suitor, but some part of my dearest acquaintance.

“And now you are come to Scargrave to forget your cares in a whirlwind of frivolity,” Isobel said, casting off her pensive air and reaching again for my hand.” We shall make certain that you do. I shall find some young man to dance attendance upon you, to flatter you and turn your head, and send Harris Bigg-Wither and his stutter to the nether reaches of your conscience.”

“Nay, Isobel,” I protested, “do not cause yourself the trouble to search further. I believe Lieutenant Hearst will amply serve my purpose. He has good looks and charm without the slightest suggestion of better feeling, and he possesses not a penny he may call his own. He shall do very well for a portionless clergyman's daughter: We may expect him to ruin me and then depart for a noble death before Buonaparte's cannon, at which point I shall throw myself in the millpond and be renowned in wine and song. Has Scargrave a millpond, Isobel?”

“Take care, Jane,” my friend said, struggling to be serious; “Tom Hearst is a pleasant enough rogue, but capable of great harm for all that. I would wish him less thrown in the way of my cousin Fanny, for he has so far made her forget herself as to appear a perfect wanton, on occasion — and nothing, as you know, is further from her character.”

“Assuredly,” I said, with less than perfect confidence in Fanny's character; “but enough of my cares, Isobel.” I surveyed my friend, who looked every inch the countess, from the ropes of pearls entwined in her dark red hair to the fashionable slimness of her gown's bodice. I had seen just such a cut to a neckline only once before — in an illustration of Buonaparte's consort, Josephine, from a London journal. Isobel appeared born to wear it. But as I studied her countenance, I was grieved to see marks of strain about her lovely eyes — as though she, the least likely of all my acquaintance, had slept poorly of late. Perhaps the adoption of her husband's station in life had proved too great a burden.