“Both Lord and Lady Sefton’s good nature is too well-known to occasion remark. I believe it leads them to bestow their favours indiscriminately rather frequently. Valeria Sheringham assures me the girl is quite farouche, no ton, no accomplishments, her looks no more than passable, her fortune non-existent.”
“It will be time enough to deny her the right to come to Almack’s if we find that for once in her life Valeria Sheringham has been speaking the truth.”
“Valeria does not advise us to relax our rules in her favour.”
Lady Jersey’s eyes sparkled. “What, did she say so? Of all the spiteful creatures! No, that is the outside of enough, my dear, and makes me perfectly determined to give the girl a chance to prove herself!”
Mrs Burrell was silent for a moment. She said presently: “You are very right. We shall see how she conducts herself. It is plain, however, that Sheringham is ashamed to show her in town.”
“Nonsense!” replied Lady Jersey. “Prosper Verelst says they have gone upon their honeymoon.”
“Into Leicestershire?” said Mrs Burrell, raising her brows.
“So it seems. The truth is, of course, that Sherry has gone off because he doesn’t care to run the gauntlet of Valeria’s vapours. He would have done better to have stayed, but it is all of a piece! He is a charming young man, I grant, but the most selfish and careless imaginable. I am sorry for his poor little wife.”
Chapter Eight
HERO WOULD HAVE BEEN ASTONISHED, AND, INDEED, indignant, had she been aware that she was the object of Lady Jersey’s sympathy. For she had never been so happy in her life. Sherry had been quite right in thinking that his hunting-box at Melton Mowbray would be just the thing for her. She was delighted with it; and the happy-go-lucky way of life pursued by Sherry when sojourning there could not but appeal to a young lady who had been irked all her own short life by shibboleths and restrictions.