I was in no fit state to pay a call upon anyone, least of all a woman who was no better than a stranger to me. I wore no cloak or shawl or gloves. My head was uncovered, and my coiffure was as slack and sodden with rain as a wet dog’s pelt. My hem and stockings had been turned black from the streets. That city was slickened by a sludge worse than any you have ever had cause to see, and in wading through that gelatinous pudding of excrement and rotten matter I managed to tear right through my finest red satin slippers. However, my ruined attire was but the half of it. There was also the matter of the throbbing welt upon my cheek.

I breathed and exhaled in long vaporous clouds until at last I roused enough courage to pull upon the bell. I waited as the gate rattled and a porter lifted a light to my face.

I straightened my head and without so much as an ounce of hesitation announced myself as Lady Allenham, which of course was not my name at all.

He paused and examined me with a cautious squint. Once satisfied that my bearing spoke more of my breeding than did my wretched appearance, he showed me into the house and up the stairs. A pair of doors were opened on to a lime-green antechamber lined with gilt mirrors. Here he bid me wait and abandoned me with six reflections of myself. Briefly, I caught the eye of one of them before shame forced me to turn my gaze. I lowered my head and crept my hand along my injured cheek so as to hide it from the view of my hostess.

Within a moment there came the sound of frantic footfall from the adjoining room. The doors flew wide and with great alarm Mrs Elliot came towards me.

‘Oh, dear, dear Lady Allenham!’ she cried, aghast.

She stood before me, just as I had imagined her, just as she had been described to me by my friends in London, like some majestic rare bird of vast height. Her head of dark curls rose in a tower of blue and white ostrich feathers while a shimmering length of pale silk streamed from behind her. It spilled forth from her waist to the floor in a cascade of rippling fabric. She studied me down the bridge of her Roman nose, her rouged lips parted in horror.

‘Heavens, my lady, have you suffered some accident?’

I could not think of an appropriate response, for the awkwardness of my humble circumstances had silenced me. I nodded and then slowly removed my hand from my cheek.