Everything in that wonderful world of fashion and pleasure was new and surprising to the girl who had been reared in the seclusion of Fairmile Park. She gave herself up freely to the enchantments of the dazzling, dissipated, extravagant, artificial town. She saw only the glitter and sparkle of society's surface, and knew not that the light was the phosphorescence of putrefaction; that the whole fabric, this fairy palace gleaming with lights and breathing music, was rotten to the core, and might fall about the heads of these revellers at any moment, as that other fairy palace where Philip the Regent and his roués had so lately held their orgies was doomed to fall before the century should be ended.
But of all pleasures which that great city could offer to innocent youth the divinest was music, which at this period enjoyed an unbounded popularity and fashion. The one art which George I. loved was music, and to that art and its most famous professors he and his family gave the warmest encouragement. The Royal Academy for Music had only been founded six years, but the influence of such a school was already felt. Italian opera was in its glory, and the rivalry between Handel and Buononcini, and between Cuzzoni and La Faustina, was one of the most exciting topics in the whole round of society talk.
Rena revelled in that magic world of the opera. All the glamour of the stage was here intensified by the stronger magic of music. Handel's classic operas, with their wealth of melody and charm of mythologic story, opened a new world of enchantment to the girl's quick imagination. Lady Tredgold and her daughters loved the opera only because it was fashionable, and stifled many a yawn behind their Watteau fans; Rena and Mdlle. Latour delighted in music as an epicure delights at a feast. They hung entranced upon every note, and inwardly resented the chattering and giggling of Mrs. Amelia and Mrs. Sophia, who coquetted with their admirers at the back of the box, and encouraged visits from all the most frivolous foplings of the town. Rena had no suspicion that these young fribbles came for the most part in the hope of getting a word or two with the heiress. It had never occurred to her that she was a prize for which half the young men in London would have liked to race each other.
Lord Lavendale was a frequent visitor at the house in Arlington Street, and was cordially received by Lady Tredgold, who had been intimate with his mother in her girlhood and was disposed to favour his suit. He had spoken to Mr. Bosworth, who had answered bluntly, "Win her if you can, and then we will see about paying off the mortgages on Lavendale, and joining the two estates. But I am no tyrant to force my daughter into an uncongenial marriage. If you would have her and her fortune, you must first win her heart."
"I will try," Lavendale answered, honestly enough.
It was his resolute intention to try and gain Rena's love, and to lead a better life than he had ever led yet: to abjure the bottle and the dice-box, though both those amusements were deemed the fitting diversion for a fine gentleman's leisure. Even the graver and statelier men of the day were topers. The late Lord Oxford had been accused of coming drunk into the presence of his Queen; and Pulteney drank almost as deep as St. John. Three or four bottles of Burgundy were deemed a fair allowance for a gentleman; and now the Methuen treaty, giving free trade in Portuguese wines, was bringing a heavier liquor into fashion.
Lavendale and Irene met in all the aristocratic assemblies of the day, at operas and balls, auction-rooms, Park, and Mall. They met at the house of Henrietta Duchess of Marlborough, daughter of the great Duke and widow of Lord Godolphin the statesman, who gave musical evenings and swore by Buononcini. Here Rena beheld Mr. Congreve, l'ami de la maison, gouty, irritable, and nearly blind, but occasionally condescending to sparkle in brief flashes of wit. He was petted and obviously adored by the lady, who, after having had the greatest soldier and the grandest statesman of that age for father and husband, appeared to have reserved her warmest affections for a selfish old bachelor playwright.
Lavendale and Irene met each other in still higher society at St. James's, Leicester House, and Richmond Lodge, where Lady Tredgold had the entry. New and pretty faces are always welcome at Court, and it became speedily known that the charms of this particular face were fortified by a handsome fortune. The Princess of Wales was very gracious to Squire Bosworth's daughter, and Mrs. Howard smiled upon her with that sweet vague placidity which one sees in the faces of deaf people. Rena here beheld the famous Dean Swift, newly advanced to that title of Dean, and come to kiss his patroness's beautiful hand, and to sneer at all the little great world around him in nightly letters to Stella Johnson, far away in a Dublin lodging, with small means and an elderly companion. Fond and faithful Stella may have needed those lively letters of the Dean's, with their graphic account of his pleasures, to cheer the slow monotony of her days.
Irene enjoyed everything, and, being nearly as innocent as Una, saw no evil under that fair outward surface of high-born society. Life flowed so smoothly and pleasantly under that superficial elegance; everybody spoke sweetly, wit was current coin, and music of the highest quality seemed the very atmosphere in which these people lived. It was but for the King to set the fashion, and everybody adored music; just as in Charles I.'s time everybody had been more or less fanatical about painters and painting. Rena moved from scene to scene with a sublime unconsciousness of evil, and late at night, or over their chocolate in the morning, would describe all she had seen and heard to her devoted governess, who shared in none of her amusements except the opera and an occasional concert, but who was always sympathetic and interested in all she heard.
"You seem to meet Lord Lavendale wherever you go," Mdlle. Latour said on one occasion, when his lordship's name had been mentioned by her pupil with perfect frankness.