Willie's affairs were now settled, and I had to give up all hope of returning to my dearly loved country home and all my pets; but I had the consolation of my beautiful babe, and I forgot my sorrow in my greater possession. He was very healthy, so I had no trouble on that score.
A young solicitor who took Willie's affairs in hand, Mr. Charles Lane (of Lane and Monroe), very kindly took upon himself to call on my Uncle William, who was then Lord Chancellor of England, and ask him to assist us in our financial difficulties. Uncle William was much astonished at the application of this obviously nervous young solicitor, who with the courage born of despair went on to suggest that Lord Hatherley might give Willie a lucrative appointment.
Strangely enough it had never occurred to me to apply to Uncle William for anything, and when Mr. Lane called on us and solemnly presented me with a substantial cheque and a kind message from my uncle, Willie and I were as surprised as we were pleased, even though Mr. Lane explained that "the Lord Chancellor had no post suitable" for Willie's energies.
We then moved into a house on the Marine Parade, as the one we were in was very expensive, and though I was glad to be next door to my sister, I felt it was not fair to my aunt, Mrs. Wood, who was paying the rent for us.
My faithful French maid Caroline stuck to us all through our fallen fortunes, as also did our stud-groom, Selby, and though we could no longer pay them the high wages they had always had, they refused to leave us.
My aunt now took a cottage for me at Patcham, just put of Brighton, and I was able to have my pony there. The house at Patcham was a dear, little, old-fashioned place right against the Downs, and there I used to walk for miles in the early morning, the springy turf almost forcing one foot after the other, while the song of the larks and scent of the close-growing, many-tinted herbage in the clear bright air filled me with joyous exhilaration.
Willie went to town, and often was away for days, on various businesses, and I was very lonely at home—even though I daily drove the old pony into Brighton that I might see my sister.
I had a cousin of Willie's, Mrs. Vaughan, to stay with me for some time, but she was perpetually wondering what Willie was doing that kept him so much away, and this added irritation to loneliness. I had had such a busy life at Bennington that I suffered much from the want of companionship and the loss of the many interests of my life there. I felt that I must make some friends here, and, attracted by a dark, handsome woman whom I used to meet riding when I walked on to the Downs, I made her acquaintance, and found in her a very congenial companion. Quiet and rather tragic in expression, she thawed to me, and we were becoming warmly attached to one another when Willie, in one of his now flying visits, heard me speak of my new friend. On hearing her name—it was one that a few years before had brought shame and sudden death into one of the oldest of the "great" families of England—he professed to be absolutely scandalized, and, with an assumption of authority that at once angered me, forbade me to have any more to do with her. He met my protests with a maddening superiority, and would not tell me why she was "beyond the pale." I explained to him my own opinion of many of the women he liked me to know and almost all the men, for I had not then learnt the hard lesson of social life, and that the one commandment still rigorously observed by social hypocrisy was, "Thou shalt not be found out."
When I met Mrs. —— again she soothed my indignation on her behalf, and as we sat there, high on a spur of a hill, watching the distant sea, she smiled a little sadly as she said to me: "Little fool, I have gambled in love and have won, and those who win must pay as well as those who lose. Never gamble, you very young thing, if you can help it; but if you do be sure that the stake is the only thing in the world to you, for only that will make it worth the winning and the paying."