Sir John Gaydon received two letters upon the same day, and they left him out of patience with both parties. He sat with Henrietta’s letter upon his lap for some time, for there was much upon which to ponder. He had been distressed that his daughter found the pressure to marry a burden laid upon her, and part of him was delighted that she wanted to return to him at the Season’s end, but he understood that it was complicated. To want her at his side was to be selfish, for in the long term Maria Elstead was right: marriage was success, and spinsterhood was failure. He had not been able to address the problem to his own satisfaction in his last letter to his daughter and felt it still weighed heavily.

What he wondered at in this letter, however, was that at no point did it mention Charles Henfield’s name, other than to say that he had used a parasol to ward off a monkey from biting her cousin Caroline. This puzzled him and then made him think, not only as to where this monkey had been encountered in London. Henrietta had always been mindful of Charles, even when she railed against him. He featured large in her life, in her thoughts, and it seemed impossible that this should not be so even amidst the bustle of her first Season. Henrietta’s letter rambled in a manner most unlike her usual missives and was confused. She was clearly distressed by something, for at times the letter looked very much as if wept over, but she did not say exactly what this might be. There was mention of Mr Newbold and ‘unexpected attention’, although he was not certain whether this was unwanted or merely a surprise, and disjointed sentences about ‘thinking the impossible’ and ‘I must not let myself be swayed by the practical advantages’, followed by ‘I have behaved so foolishly as to ruin what chance there was, if it was right to be so’, which left her papa completely lost.

Charles Henfield’s letter had the advantage of not being smudged by tears and said much that was omitted from his daughter’s epistle. Taken on its own, it was a self-castigation blended with an apology and no small degree of desperation, for he had decided to hold nothing back about his failure to his godfather. However, it was lucid, and had a vague chronology. Having opened with the usual wishes for good health, etc., it swiftly got to the meat of the matter.