Continuing up to the writer’s bedroom, was startled by at the sight of the magnificent carved, lacquered bed, swathed with Lyon silk, which had been a marriage gift from de Staël’s second husband. The rest of the house was full of exotic treasures brought back from the Far East by her father’s French India Company vessels. However, it was the portrait of the authoress as a child—a lone, stiff little figure—that engaged Georgiana, looking always for a resemblance to herself, returning to the portrait each time she would pass through the room.

Georgiana was reminded of Byron’s lines immortalizing both the authoress and the lake beside which she spent her last days, reciting the sonnet to herself before the portrait:

Rousseau—Voltaire—our Gibbons—and de Staël—
Léman! these names are worthy of thy shore,
Thy shore of names like these! wert thou no more, Their memory thy remembrance would recall: To them thy banks were lovely as to all,
But they have made them lovelier, for the lore
Of mighty minds doth hallow in the core Of human hearts the ruin of a wall
Where dwelt the wise and wondrous; but by thee How much more, Lake of Beauty! do we feel,
In sweetly gliding o’er thy crystal sea, The wild glow of that not ungentle zeal.
Which of the heirs of immortality Is proud, and makes the breath of glory real!

It was late by the time the family were returned to the boat and their rooms at Geneva. All were ready to retire after an hasty supper, but the two letters pressed into Georgiana’s hands by the concierge were to put sleep far out of reach. The first letter, dated the fourth of May, was from Colonel Fitzwilliam and addressed to the Darcys; Georgiana assumed all rights of possession-in-fact, and read it immediately upon reaching her apartment. Upon opening the packet, she found that there was another note folded within. In the letter sent to them generally, the Colonel wrote to inform the family that he would be again slightly delayed in his journey to meet them at Geneva, but thought he might see them in Milan, or, if not thence, Venice. Carefully she removed the wafer from the smaller paper and read the note addressed to herself:

4th May
Tunbridge Wells

DEAREST GEORGIANA,