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About this time that is shortly before the Hunt Ball rumours had got about the neighbourhood that I was going to marry Lord Painswick. He was certainly paying me a good deal of attention, and I fancy Dick would have liked the match, but I could not bring myself to care for Painswick, and indeed his courtship only added to my other worries.
Morriston and his companions were eagerly questioned as to what had come out at the inquest, but, except that the medical evidence was rather sceptical of the suicide theory, were unable to relieve the curiosity. "I think, my dear Dick," remarked Lord Painswick, who was there, "we can furnish more evidence in this room than you seem to have got hold of at the inquest."
Madame Restell, whose name was a scandal and her Fifth-avenue house an outrage upon New York for years, was a native of Painswick, Gloucestershire. She was the daughter of a humble laborer named Trow, and first saw the light in 1813. Her educational facilities as indeed were all those similarly or even better circumstanced in England seventy years ago were of the humblest kind.
And he looked round the company with a knowing smile. "What do you mean, Painswick?" Morriston asked eagerly. "Has anything more come to light?" "Only we have had a lady here, Miss Elyot, who says she danced with the poor fellow." "I only just took a turn with him, for the waltz was nearly over when he asked me," said the girl thus alluded to. "Did you wear a green dress?" Kelson asked eagerly.
"Oh, come, Edith," he protested, "we need not make too much of it. We don't know for certain that the man was a queer character." "One finds objectionable swaggerers everywhere," Painswick put in. "Anyhow," said Kelson, "if this Henshaw was a bad lot he had the decency to efface himself promptly enough. The puzzle is, what on earth has become of him?" "I don't know, Mr.
"I don't know," Kelson replied, as though the idea was quite novel to him. "Never got so far as to think of that. I like a girl with whom you can get on without going through the process of thawing her first. And with Edith Morriston I should say it would be a slow process. Anyhow, she is just the girl for Painswick, who is evidently after her."
Morriston exclaimed with sudden recollection. "I introduced him to a partner." "I noticed the fellow," observed Lord Painswick, who also was calling. "Theatrical sort of chap. What has he done?" Kelson laughed. "Simply disappeared, that's all." "Disappeared!" There was a chorus of interest. "How do you mean?" Morriston asked.
That in itself did not trouble me much since I had no intention of marrying Painswick; still the man's relentless persecution was getting more than I could bear. "I now come to the night of the Hunt Ball. For some days previously I had seen or heard nothing of Henshaw, and had even begun to hope that something might have happened to make the man abandon his line of conduct.
It has just been revived at Painswick, in the Cotswolds, where after being performed for many hundred years it was discontinued by the late vicar. It is the old Saxon custom of "ycleping," or naming the church on the anniversary of its original dedication. Simnels on Mothering Sunday still exist, reminding us of Herrick's lines:
"But Clement Henshaw heard the rumour and it had naturally the effect of rousing his wretched pursuit of me to greater activity. He vowed with brutal vehemence that I should not marry Painswick, and declared that when our engagement was announced he would tell him the story he had against me.
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