Dorothy had been desirous of the dowager's help to consolidate a position in London society that now for the first time appeared tenable. Her meeting with Lady Stilton had given her a foothold on the really high cliffs, and if Tony did not spoil everything she saw no reason why she should not repeat on a larger scale in town her success in Devonshire. It was a pity that Bella and Connie were so ugly; if she could bring off brilliant matches for them, what a help that would be. Of course, it was not the season; most people were out of town notwithstanding that Parliament was sitting; but still surely somewhere in the crowded pages of Debrett could be found suitors for the hands of her sisters-in-law. The nearest approach to a match was when Lord Beccles, the lunatic heir of the Marquis of Norwich, became perfectly manageable if he was allowed to drive with Bella in Hyde Park, chaperoned by his nurse and watched by a footman who held a certificate from one of the largest private asylums in England. If Lord Beccles was a congenital idiot, there were three other sons of Lord Norwich who were sane enough, the eldest of whom, Lord Alistair Gay, agreed with Dorothy that, if Lady Arabella was willing, the marriage would be a kindness to his poor brother. Bella would not take the proposal seriously, and it was evident that she regarded her drives with the poor idiot in the light of a minor charity ranking with the care of a distempered dog or of a cottager's baby.
"You surely aren't serious, Dorothy," she laughed.
"Well, it would give you a splendid position. You would be a countess now and probably a marchioness very soon. Lady Norwich is dead. Lord Norwich is very old, and idiots often live a long time. I'm not suggesting that it would be anything more than a formal marriage, but you apparently don't mind his dribbling with excitement when he sees the Albert Memorial and.... However, I wouldn't persuade you into a match for anything. Only it doesn't seem to me that it would imply anything more than you do for him at present."
The dowager told Dorothy that she would rather dear Bella married somebody simpler than poor Lord Beccles, to which Dorothy retorted that it might be difficult to find even a commoner more simple. Moonbeam's victories as a two-year-old had restored that self-confidence which had been so shaken since her marriage; Dorothy, like most nations and most human beings, was more admirable in adversity than in triumph. The disposition she had shown to recognize her suburban family did not last; she knew that the integument with which she was so carefully wrapping up her reality could be stripped from it by her relations in a second. Only now, after she had been a countess for six years, had Dorothy discovered the narrow bridge that is swung over the center of the universe—the well-laid and lighted bridge so delicately adjusted to eternity that the least divergence from correctness by one of its frequenters might be enough to imperil its balance. That bridge Dorothy was now crossing with all her eyes for her feet, as it were, and she certainly could not afford to be distracted by a family. If Sylvia Scarlett had been in London to watch this new progress she would have made many unkind jokes about the countess; but Sylvia was away acting in America, and in any case she would have found the door of 129 Curzon Street closed against her.
The dowager worried over the way Dorothy was ignoring her mother, and, fortified with strong smelling-salts, she braved the Underground to pay a visit to West Kensington, an experience she so thoroughly enjoyed that she could not keep it a secret for long, but one day began to praise the beauty of Edna and Agnes.
"Frankly, my dear Dorothy," she told her daughter-in-law, "I must say I think that you would be likely to have much more success as a match-maker for your sisters than for dear Bella and dear Connie, who even in London seem unable to avoid that appearance of having just run up and down a very windy hill. Why not have Edna and Agnes to live with you until they're married? And when they are married invite the youngest two, who will also be very beautiful girls, I'm convinced. Really, I never saw such complexions as you and all your sisters have."
Dorothy thought the dowager's suggestion most impracticable.
"Yes, but my most impracticable suggestions nearly always turn out well."
Perhaps, so sure was she of the impression that Agnes and Edna would create in a London ballroom, the dowager would have had her way if she had remained in town for the spring, but in the month of February, anticipating St. Valentine's Day by a week, the Rev. Thomas Hemming wrote from Cherrington to say that Mrs. Paxton, his godmother, had just offered him the living of Newton Candover in Hampshire and would Lady Constantia Clare become Lady Constantia Hemming? Lady Constantia would. The trousseau was bought under the eyes of Dorothy, who, regardless of the fact that she was going to marry a parson, insisted that Connie should look beyond viyella for certain items. Soon after Easter Mr. Beadon had to find another curate and Connie's room at Clare Lodge was empty.
Tony was too much occupied with Moonbeam's chances of winning the two thousand guineas at the end of April to bother who married his sister; but he wrote her a generous check that compensated for the decline in value of the vicar's glebe at Newton Candover.