The Sundons, of Sundon Green, were people of good account in their own county. Sir Peter, invalided though he was, had considerable political influence in the heat of the strife raging between Tory and Whig. Lady Sundon was generally popular, even among more fastidious and exacting people. Her good-humoured blitheness, dashed with coarseness and worldly-mindedness, had the manifest advantage that it did not rank high enough among the virtues to form a reproach to the halting virtue of anybody. But Lady Bell possessed in herself, independent of her host and hostess, almost all the elements calculated to insure a season’s success. She was a complete novelty, appearing at her age, after years of rustication. She had the benefit of acknowledged birth and breeding, to which Lady Sundon led the way, in paying open, honest enough homage, as she frankly confessed herself Lady Bell’s social inferior, while she displayed as frankly her pride in taking Lady Bell about. Above all, Lady Bell was lovely, with a dainty, arch loveliness, which her youthful widowhood rendered peculiarly piquant. The presence of the Misses Sundon in Lady Bell’s company was simply the putting of two foils beside the little lady, while the foils were useful in dividing responsibility with her, and in rendering her security doubly secure. Lady Bell was not rich to bribe suitors, but she was so far well off as to make the pursuit of her, regarding her merely as an object of attraction and fashion, comparatively safe to the gallant fops, wits, and idle men of wealth and rank lounging or rioting through the hours, and ever ready to welcome a fresh interest. As it happened, just at that moment, a belle’s throne was vacant, after the conjoint reign of the three great belles of late seasons. Lady Mary Somerset was swiftly paying the penalty of a “wasp waist,” and sickening to death under the burden of the honours of the Marchioness of Granby. Lady Harriet Stanhope had become Lady Harriet Foley, and was on the way with her husband to Newmarket and ruin. Of Lady Betty Compton, whose style and title remained unchanged, it might be alleged, much as it was said with regard to Aristides the Just, that the fashionable world had waxed weary of the name and fame of Lady Betty Compton. Foolish Lady Betty! she ought to have inaugurated a change of some kind betimes, and married or died after the example of her sister queens, for there is nothing so mercurial as the wind of opinion which brings about the installation or deposition of such an airy sovereign. And now Lady Bell Trevor grew the rage until she was as universal a toast in town as she had been in humble provincial circles. There is no denying that Lady Bell enjoyed her success, and the writing of it to Mrs. Sundon, in the most off-hand, unsophisticated manner.