Produced by Brian Foley, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net Her Season in Bath _A STORY OF BYGONE DAYS_ BY EMMA MARSHALL AUTHOR OF "BRISTOL DIAMONDS," "THE TOWER ON THE CLIFF," ETC., ETC. "One loving hour Full many years of sorrow can dispense. A dram of sweet is worth a pound of sour." SPENSER LONDON SEELEY & CO., ESSEX STREET, STRAND 1889 [Illustration] CONTENTS. I. COIFFEUR II. THE TIDE OF FASHION III. ANOTHER SIDE OF THE PICTURE IV. MUSIC V. GRISELDA! GRISELDA! VI. GRAVE AND GAY VII. THE VASE OF PARNASSUS VIII. ON THE TRACK IX. WATCHED! X. A PROPOSAL XI. A LETTER XII. DISCOVERED XIII. THE PLOT THICKENS XIV. BRAWLS XV. CHALLENGED XVI. IN THE EARLY MORNING XVII. THE BITTER END XVIII. IN THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW XIX. TEN YEARS LATER--1790 Her Season in Bath CHAPTER I. COIFFEUR. It was the height of the Bath season in 1779, and there was scarcely any part of the city which did not feel the effect of the great tide of amusement and pleasure, which set in year by year with ever-increasing force, and made the streets, and parades, and terraces alive with gaily-dressed fashionable ladies and their attendant beaux. The chair-men had a fine trade, so had the mantua-makers and dressmakers, to say nothing of the hairdressers, who were skilled in the art of building up the powdered bastions, which rose on many a fair young head, and made the slender neck which supported them bend like a lily-stalk with their weight. Such head-gear was appropriate for the maze of the stately minuet and Saraband, but would be a serious inconvenience if worn now-a-days, when the whirl of the waltz seems to grow ever faster and faster, and the "last square" remaining in favour is often turned into a romp, which bears the name of "Polka Lancers." There was a certain grace and poetry in those old-world dances, and they belonged to an age when there was less hurry and bustle, and all locomotion was leisurely; when our great-grandmothers did not rush madly through the country, and through Europe, as if speed was the one thing to attain in travelling, and breathless haste the great charm of travel. And not of travel only. Three or four "at homes" got through in one afternoon, is a cause of mighty exultation; and a dinner followed by an evening reunion, for which music or recitations are the excuse, to wind up with a ball lasting till day-dawn, is spoken of as an achievement of which any gentlewoman, young or old, may feel proud.