There had been, at one time, a real Lady Alice de la Valle-Chenevix, that Alice knew, for the Duke had gone to great lengths to furnish her with an authentic background. The family had been wiped out in the terrors of the French Revolution, with the exception of a baby girl who had gone unaccountably missing. He had coached Alice well in the history of her “family,” and she had been prepared for all questions.

But the members of society she had so far met had accepted her at face value and were totally uninterested in her background. At first, she had found it hard to maintain a French accent morning, noon and night, but soon it became her natural speech and her accent was pronounced “charming” by the forgiving ton who had every reason to hate the French—for weren’t they at war with the monsters?

On the day the Duke had left, the news of Wellington’s victory at Ciudad Rodrigo had resounded through the streets. While Napoleon had turned his attention to Russia, the great Duke of Wellington had won this major battle, thereby kicking open the door into Spain which was held by Napoleon’s vast armies. England had gone mad with joy at the news. The mail coaches outside the General Post Office in Lombard Street had been decked with laurels and flowers, oak leaves and ribbons and had gone thundering out through the trunk roads of England to bear the glad news to every corner.

At Vauxhall, rousing songs like “Hearts of Oak” and “Scots Wha’ Hae” sounded in the night air. Napoleon no longer seemed the omnipotent ogre he had appeared in the years before when it had seemed at one time that he would surely land in England, and nurses had terrified the children to sleep, singing:

“Baby, baby, naughty baby,
Hush you squalling thing, I say;
Hush your squalling, or it may be
Bonaparte may pass this way.

“Baby, baby, he’s a giant,
Tall and black as Rouen steeple;
And he dines and sups, rely on’t,
Every day on naughty people.”

But Alice was as uninterested in the war as she had been when she had toiled in the kitchens of the Hall. She read a great deal whenever she could and, then, in the evenings, dully allowed herself to be dressed like a doll by the energetic Miss Snapper and promenaded to breakfasts and fětes champětres and Venetian dinners and routs, each one seeming the same to Alice.

Her lack of interest in London society made her seem a very aloof little aristocrat. She was not besieged with admirers desirous of dancing with her as she sat meekly beside Miss Snapper and dreamed away the evenings thinking of her lost Duke.

Her skin had lost its translucence, and her step, its spring. She danced heavily, often treading on her partner’s toes and not even being aware she was doing so.