Lady Elstead had not actually expressed the wish that there should by now be gentlemen posting into Shropshire to obtain Sir John’s permission to pay their addresses to his only daughter, but her questions about her niece’s reactions to various suitors were becoming a burden to the young lady. The raison d’être of the Season, to see girls find husbands, hung over Henrietta like a Sword of Damocles. She did like several of the gentlemen who danced with her night after night and paid court to her, but none of them touched her heart; for none of them could she imagine leaving Papa and The Court. What frightened her was that she was sure that if she told her aunt this, she would be told off for being foolish. Her aunt expected her to like a prospective husband, but did not believe that she should only accept an offer if head over heels in love.

It was an unhappy Henrietta who tossed and turned in her bed, and awoke unrefreshed, and to Sewell’s recommendation that she lie for an hour with slices of cucumber upon her eyelids to reduce the heaviness.

Lady Vernham slept well, and awoke at a suitably advanced time of the morning. She sat in bed, and pondered over her morning chocolate. Her decision the previous evening to take Lord Henfield ‘in hand’ had been made upon the spur of the moment. He was a decent and pleasant young man, who deserved to be happy, but was doing everything to prevent himself attaining that state. Lady Vernham had guided two daughters to successful marriages, which showed every sign of being ‘comfortable’. She had not, thus far, attempted to steer a gentleman along the path to matrimony, and had anyone suggested that she do so with her son, she would have laughed at them. Gorleston was not yet letting his thoughts dwell on setting up his nursery, and even the idea of guiding him was both embarrassing and, she thought, pointless. Henfield, however, showed all the signs of a man ‘needing’ to be married, and it was perfectly evident that Miss Gaydon was the sole object of his affections. Lady Vernham sighed. She had seen it before, when a man was blind to the obvious until it was too late. Well, if he applied himself, it might not yet be too late for Henfield.

‘I wonder if I am going to exert myself to no purpose,’ murmured her ladyship into her cup.

Her maid, correctly assuming this was a rhetorical question, did not answer.