She saw the longing in her mother’s eyes and added quickly,

“And that is what it will be, mark my words, by the end of the summer. Papa will be with us and we shall all be laughing at something absurd he has done.”

Her mother was smiling as Thalia went to her own room.

It was hardly larger than a cupboard on the other side of the landing.

They had been lucky to find such a cheap house and she knew that it was because the kind of artisan who lived with his family in Shepherd’s Market usually had a number of children, and so small a house could not have accommodated them.

Downstairs was the kitchen where Hannah reigned supreme and a very small sitting room facing onto the street.

It was here that Thalia kept her papers and, before she went into the kitchen where Hannah had prepared her mother’s supper that she would carry upstairs, she made a few notes.

As she put her quill pen back into its holder, she looked longingly at what she had written as if she would have liked to go on writing.

Then resolutely she went from the small room, closing the door behind her.

*

The Earl walked into White’s Club to cause a sensation by his sudden reappearance.

“Good God, Hellington!” someone exclaimed. “We thought that you had gone rustic and we had lost you! Do you realise you have been away for three weeks?”

“I am aware of it,” the Earl replied, seating himself amongst the Club’s select inner circle as a matter of right.

They were all close friends including the Duke of Argyll, Lord Alvanley, Lord Worcester, ‘Poodle’ Byng and Sir Lumley Skeffington.

They sat in the bow window that had been sacred to Beau Brummell. It was there he had reigned supreme and his pronouncements were listened to as if he had the wisdom of Solomon.

Not only the Earl but a great number of other members thought that White’s had never been the same since Brummell’s debts had caught up with him and he had been forced to make a quick escape across the English Channel where he was now living in a lodging house in Calais.

“What was the country like?” someone asked, as if it was a foreign land.

“Hot!” the Earl replied.

Because he had no desire to talk about himself he asked,

“What were you laughing about when I arrived? I heard you from the pavement.”

“Alvanley was reading from a new book that has just been published,” Poodle Byng replied.

“A book?” the Earl enquired.

It seemed an unlikely subject for his friends at White’s, but Lord Alvanley, who was noted as a wit, held up a small volume.

The Earl read what was written on the cover,

GENTLEMEN by a PERSON OF QUALITY

“You find it amusing?” he asked.

“Just listen,” Lord Alvanley replied.