I say this, having found my eyes directed to the Dowager Duchess upon first gaining entrance to her drawing-room. Tho’ possessed of fully seventy years, and requiring the support of a stout cane she clutches tightly in one hand, Her Grace commands immediate attention. Her narrow features and shuttered aspect recall the face of her son, Lord Harold; but where the effect is often forbidding in the latter, it may be declared devastating in the former. A lesser man than the Duke of Wilborough — accustomed as he was to the power of doing as he liked — would have braved greater scandal in pursuit of such a woman.

And scandal there was. His Majesty George II is said to have interceded in the match, which condescension was stoically declined. The Duke’s political fortunes may subsequently have suffered. Certain of his acquaintance may have cut him dead. But others, made more valuable through the passage of time, accepted his bride; and accepted no less the heirs she pragmatically produced.

Bertie, who succeeded his father, bears the greatest fidelity to the Wilborough line, in character as well as countenance; Lady Caroline Mulvern, née Trowbridge, is the unfortunate picture of her Trowbridge aunts; but in the face of Lord Harold, the impertinent among society’s loquacious have gone so far as to question paternity. Lord Harold is so clearly Eugenie’s son, that the late Duke might have had nothing to do with his fashioning.

The Dowager stood in the midst of her fashionable rout last e’en arrayed in the form of Cleopatra — an Egyptian robe and a circlet on her brow, with a velvet mask held before — and beside her stood a girl so very much of Eugenie’s stamp, albeit some fifty years younger, that I knew her immediately for the Lady Desdemona, Lord Harold’s errant niece. She was robed to perfection as none other than herself having ignored the general command of fancy dress; and her quite ordinary appearance amidst the general excess of baubles and plumage rendered her as exotic as a sparrow in Paradise. I could trace no hint of her mother, Honoria, or her apoplectic father, Bertie, in her narrow and elegant face, and wondered whether her character was as French as her countenance.

“Jane,” Eliza cried, her visage incongruously marred by the mask that covered fully half of it, “Henry will have me to dance; and though I confess the heat and crush make the prospect an indifferent one, I cannot find that sitting down should be so very agreeable either. Can you forgive us our desertion?”

“Go, my dear, and make as frivolous a figure as your murdered Queen may support. I shall do very well in idleness here. I find I have an excellent prospect of Lady Desdemona.”

“Where?”

“She stands beside the Duchess.”

“Ah,” Eliza said, with the driest satisfaction, “in the figure of an ingénue. She might readily be Cecilia herself, and prepared to thwart a cavalcade of admirers, whose costumed obscurity can only encourage impertinence. Let us call her Virtue, and have done.”

“Indeed? I had thought her merely to disdain all pretence or disguise. And burdened as I am with so hot and ungainly an outfit” — I surveyed my multitude of muslin underskirts with a shake of my bonneted head — “I cannot in justice criticise. I fairly long for an exchange.”

“Perhaps. But does her abhorrence — or wisdom — reveal a niceness of temperament and taste? Or may we judge her merely to spoil sport?”

“I cannot undertake to say, without a greater knowledge of the lady.”

“Then find her out, my dear Jane, and I shall be content to think as you do. It saves me a vast deal of trouble in thinking for myself.” And with a smile and a care for her overpowering headdress, Eliza left me to Lord Harold’s business.

I began by surveying the company — a torrid blend of the comely and the grotesque, their colours garish and their accents brazen, relieved somewhat by the solitary interval of an elegant figure, composed against a doorframe or supporting a distant wall — engaged, it seemed, in an activity similar to my own. A Harlequin I espied, resplendent in a suit of black and red, in the closest conversation with a stately Queen Elizabeth; and a fearsome Moor, all flowing capes and harshly graven features — though not in attendance upon my particular Desdemona. More than one visage I detected, that when deprived of its domino might daily grace the pages of the Gentleman’s Magazine, or one of Gillray’s satiric drawings.[7]

A full quarter-hour of observation, however, could not betray to my sight the predatory horde whose idea had so excited Lord Harold’s anxiety. Two men only approached the Lady Desdemona — yet another Harlequin, suited this time in diamonds of alternating black and white; and a fellow who might well have been Henry VIII, tho’ of a corpulence supplied by tailor’s padding. These two seemed as intent upon conversation with the Dowager Duchess, as with her lovely charge.

“And are you, too, of the Theatre Royal?” came a voice at my shoulder; and looking up, I beheld a Knight in the semblance of armour, complete with visored head, his identity secure in mystery.

“Of its occasional box alone,” I replied, “but I may confess to admiration for good, hardened, professional acting. Are some part of the company present, then?”

“The masquerade is in their honour.”

“So I had understood. But with so many figures in fancy dress, how is one to divine the true player from the false?”

My companion bowed. “You merely posit, madam, the oldest question of mankind.”

I studied the visored face, which revealed nothing of the gentleman within. Could it, in fact, be Lord Harold, making sport of circumstance? The voice betrayed an echo of the Gentleman Rogue’s tone. But no. He should hardly engage my offices on the Lady Desdemona’s behalf, had he intended to form one of the party.

“I wonder, sir,” I began again, “that you can think me a member of such exalted company.”

“I merely tossed at hazard. You might be exalted in any number of ways — as I might myself. We appear as utter strangers the one to the other; but indeed we might claim the deepest intimacy, and yet pass in ignorance, so impenetrable is our garb.”

“And the most accomplished actress herself must go unremarked.”

“There, madam, you betray a charming innocence of accomplished actresses. It is the first rule of the stage that to go unremarked, is to go presently into the wings. Observe the Medusa in scarlet.”

I looked about, though the compass of both bonnet and mask rendered all vision partial.

“By the fireplace, in converse with the bearded Pierrot.”

I observed then an extraordinary woman, all vibrance and fire, her flowing black hair and tattered raiment the very soul of madness. Her beauty was such as to astonish. Her costume, however, barely merited the word, in leaving more of her person exposed than it disguised. The effect must draw even the most jaded attention. She had flaunted custom, and wore no mask. Whether her conversation was as engaging as her person, I could not discern; but as I watched, the bearded Pierrot threw back his head in hearty laughter.

“That is Miss Conyngham,” my companion remarked.

“Maria Conyngham? I had not an idea of it.”

“Her brother is beside the Duchess.”

I turned to look for Her Grace.

“The Harlequin?”

“Henry the Eighth.”

“So that is the famous Hugh Conyngham! I wonder I did not observe it before! Who can see his present self, and fail to trace his tragic Hamlet? His murderous Macbeth? His pathetic Gamester? The nobility of suffering is writ in every line of his countenance!”

“With charcoal, if not by nature,” the gentleman observed.

“And are you then a player, sir? Claim you some acquaintance with the pair?” It was absurd in me, I own, to cry such admiration at Conyngham’s discovery; but so much of my meagre purse has gone to furnish his, in supplying the coveted seat in a box for the actor’s performance, that I may be excused my excesses of enthusiasm. I have invested as much in Conyngham as Henry in all his four percents.[8]