"Not five years."
"And Lady Fanny's age?"
"Twenty."
I then asked if he married her for love or money?
"Money!" said Lee, indignantly. "It is now clear to me that you do not know Lord Ponsonby. I was just beginning to suspect from the multiplicity of your questions that you did."
"He was very much in love with her then?" I inquired, without attending to this observation.
"She was not fourteen," answered Lee, "when Ponsonby first met her at her mother's, Lady Jersey's. He was of course, like everybody else, speedily struck with her beauty. She was not deaf then, but shortly afterwards she had a violent attack of scarlet fever, during which her life was despaired of for several weeks: indeed, there was scarcely a hope of her recovery. I remember Ponsonby said to me one night, as we passed by Lady Jersey's house together—'The loveliest young creature I have ever beheld on earth lies in that room dying.' The first time Lady Fanny appeared in her mother's drawing-room she resembled a spirit so fair, so calm, so transparent. All her magnificent hair, which had before reached and now again descends much below her waist, had been shorn from her beautiful little head. She often took her lace cap off and exhibited herself thus to anybody, to raise a laugh; or perhaps she knew that she was, even without hair, as lovely as ever.
"Lord Ponsonby, as he has told me since, was present when her ladyship first left her room, and soon discovered that she was now afflicted with deafness. He felt the deepest interest, admiration and pity for her. He considered with horror the bare possibility of this sweet, fragile little being, becoming the wife of some man, who might hereafter treat her harshly. Added to this, I fancy," continued Lee, "Ponsonby had discovered that he was not indifferent to her little ladyship; so, to secure her from any of these evils, he resolved to propose for her himself. I need not add that he was joyfully accepted by both mother and daughter. He might have done better," added Lee, "and I fancy Ponsonby sometimes wishes that his wife could be his friend and companion: but that is quite out of the question. Her ladyship is good and will do as she is bid; but, besides her deafness, her understanding is neither bright nor lively. Lord Ponsonby shows her the sort of indulgence and tenderness which a child requires; but he must seek for a companion elsewhere."
Mr. Lee then took leave of me: and a very few days after this conversation had taken place, Lord Ponsonby's father breathed his last in the arms of his son, who immediately left town without seeing me; but he wrote to me most affectionately.