Perhaps she might have kept out of parson’s mousetrap had not Mr. Funk been so eminently suitable. He was a merchant, a widower, with a plump fatherly air about him. He had met Alice by chance on her last visit to the City to see Mr. Bower. Alice had sold her smart carriage in order to retrench a little and had been standing on the muddy pavement in the pouring rain, looking for a hack to convey her home. Mr. Funk, hearing the companion address her mistress as “my lady,” sprang into action, offering his own carriage, the escort of his person, and finally insinuating himself into the drawing room in Manchester Square.

He made no bones about the fact mat he was willing to exchange his great wealth for a wife’s aristocratic background and once the marriage bargain was struck, that had seemed enough. But half-forgotten lecherous thoughts were beginning to burgeon anew in Mr. Funk’s brain. His fiancée should at least allow him a squeeze or a kiss. But Alice was always polite and vague and formal—and always chaperoned.

She sat quietly opposite him, a fine diamond necklace blazing at her neck—some of the last of the late Duchess’s diamonds.

Mr. Funk wondered whether to pluck up courage and simply order Miss Fadden to leave them. But there was something about the quiet chaperone which rather frightened him. Furthermore, his Cumberland corsets which had felt comfortable before dinner, were making their presence felt. The starched points of his collar were cutting little grooves into his chubby cheeks and the ribbons on his stockings had been tied too tightly and were causing shooting pains in his fat calves.

Passion fled before the more seductive thought of getting home and letting his man prize him free of all this constriction and misery.

Accordingly he at last rose to his feet, kissed Alice’s hand with a rare burst of gallantry, heaved himself into his antiquated carriage and was borne off home to Bloomsbury. He was too sleepy to notice a smart little vis-à-vis following at a discreet distance.

When he entered his comfortable mansion in Russell Square and was just about to mount the stairs to his bedchamber, he heard someone rapping vigorously at the knocker.

He half turned, his hand on the banister, to watch his butler going to answer the summons. It was not necessary for him to issue orders that he was not at home. His well-trained staff anticipated his every wish.

He heard his butler’s muted apology and then a pompous voice raised in protest, “But I have just seen him go in. Tell him Lord Harold Webb wishes to have speech with him. Jump to it, fellow.”