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there had not been any sign of
discomfiture, either in this brief glimpse she had just had of
those black eyes, or at the time. Had he been chagrined? Abashed?
He had not. Instead he had had the temerity to laugh at
her.
    Arrived in Mr Sprange’s shop, it was with the words and
smiles of an automaton that she responded to the lad who served
her, requesting the playbill for Mrs Baker’s next theatrical
presentation with scarcely a thought to what she was about.
Fortunately there was little chance of the assistant mistaking her
needs, for there was only the one theatre in Tunbridge Wells and
Mrs Sarah Baker had a monopoly on the productions that were staged
there.
    She
dawdled over the various prints and bills of coming events, hoping
desperately that the young stranger would go away. There was no
sign of him when she eventually came out of the shop, but as she
made her way back to the Assembly Rooms she was conscious of a
slight feeling of disappointment.
    The
capacious building she entered was the central meeting place and
the venue for most of the season’s events. The rooms were large and
airy, with huge columns and marbled ornamentation after the fashion
of those in Bath. But they contrived, perhaps because of the many
knots of people seated in the alcoves made by settees and
well-placed screens, to appear remarkably cosy. Yet when the main
room was cleared for dancing, its size showed to
advantage.
    In
one of the corners near to the adjoining card-room, the lady’s
favourite haunt, Verity found Lady Crossens deep in conversation
with an elderly widow, Mrs Polegate, whom Verity had already come
to know well. For this crony of her patroness was an almost
constant companion, and it had been obvious to the young lady when
Mrs Polegate visited them on their first evening that her two
elders were ripe for a high old time.
    A greater contrast to
Lady Crossens could not have been found than this lifelong friend.
She was a dewy-eyed sentimental dame, with the mind of a butterfly,
who took the world as it presented itself to her eyes, never
troubling to look beneath the surface. She had none of the
shrewdness that characterised her friend, but equally none of her
acerbity. Inveterately though she gossiped, she had not a particle
of malice in her nature, and this trait endeared her to her friends
even while the more discerning among them dubbed her a
fool—including Lady Crossens, who did not scruple to call her so to
her face.
    ‘ Dear Emilia, I was quite overcome with happiness when you
wrote you was coming at last,’ she had fluttered that night, her
plump countenance wreathed in smiles that crumpled the remnants of
an erstwhile prettiness into a multitude of wrinkles. ‘I declare,
it has been a desert here without you. And last year in particular,
when we had such frolics and jaunterings about—so
delightful.’
    ‘ If
it was so delightful, my presence can have only been superfluous,’
said Lady Crossens drily, unimpressed by the worth of her friend’s
protestations.
    ‘ Oh,
yes, but your being there would have added so much to our
pleasure,’ uttered the other lady sincerely.
    Biting back a laugh,
Verity wondered if Mrs Polegate was merely impervious to irony or
quite incapable of recognising her own inconsistencies. Lady
Crossens had no such doubts.
    ‘ Your wit has not improved in my absence, at any rate,
Maria.’
    ‘ Oh,
but I am not at all clever, Emilia, you know I am not.’ She looked
across at Verity. ‘I never was, you know. Poor Emilia has had much
ado to put up with my silliness all these years.’
    ‘ Pish!’ scoffed her ladyship, adding gruffly, ‘You’re a
good-hearted girl, Maria. And that, believe me, counts for a deal
more than a sharp tongue.’
    To
hear her patroness address a lady quite her own age as a girl almost overset
Verity, but she contrived to keep her countenance, smiling kindly
at the visitor.
    ‘ Very true, ma’am. But I wish you will tell me, Mrs Polegate,
how you became