It is true a point might have been strained in her favour; but the American ambassador of that day was as true a toad-eater to England’s aristocracy as could have been found in England itself, and equally fearful of becoming compromised by his introductions. We need not give his name. The reader skilful in diplomatic records can no doubt guess it.
Under these circumstances, the ambitious widow had to submit to a disappointment.
She found little difficulty in obtaining introductions to England’s commonalty. Her riches secured this. But the gentry! these were even less accessible than the exclusives of Newport—the J.’s, and the L.’s, and the B.’s. Titled or untitled, they were all the same. She discovered that a simple country squire was as unapproachable as a peer of the realm—earl, marquis, or duke!
“Never mind, my girls!” was her consolatory speech, to daughter and niece, when the scales first fell from her eyes. “His lordship will soon be here, and then it will be all right.”
His lordship meant Mr Swinton, who had promised to follow them in the “next steamaw.”
But the next steamer came with no such name as Swinton on its passenger list, nor any one bearing the title of “lord.”
And the next, and the next, and some half-dozen others, and still no Swinton, either reported by the papers, or calling at the Clarendon Hotel!
Could an accident have happened to the nobleman, travelling incognito? Or, what caused more chagrin to Mrs Girdwood to conjecture, had he forgotten his promise?
In either case he ought to have written. A gentleman would have done so—unless dead.
But no such death had been chronicled in the newspapers. It could not have escaped the notice of the retail storekeeper’s widow, who each day read the London Times, and with care its list of arrivals.