The new Lady Blackwater was an extremely beautiful woman, Irish, as the first had been, but like her in no other respect.  Margaret Fitzgerald was the daughter of a cosmopolitan pair, who after many shifts for a living, had settled in Paris, where the father acted as correspondent for various English papers.  Her beauty, her caprices, and her “affairs” were all well known in Paris.  As to what the relations between her and Lord Blackwater might have been before the death of the wife, Lord Grosville took a frankly uncharitable view.  But when that event occurred, Blackwater was beginning to get old, and Miss Fitzgerald had become necessary to him.  She pressed all her advantages, and it ended in his marrying her.  The new Lady Blackwater presented him with one child, a daughter; and about two years after its birth he sent for his elder daughter, Lady Alice, to join them in the sumptuous apartment in the Place Vendome which he had furnished for his new wife, in defiance both of his English and Irish creditors.

Lady Alice arrived—­a fair slip of a girl, possessed, it was plain to see, by a nervous terror both of her father and step-mother.  But Lady Blackwater received her with effusion, caressed her in public, dressed her to perfection, and made all possible use of the girl’s presence in the house for the advancement of her own social position.  Within a year the Belfast trustees, watching uneasily from a distance, received a letter from Lord Blackwater, announcing Lady Alice’s runaway marriage with a certain Colonel Wensleydale, formerly of the Grenadier Guards.  Lord Blackwater professed himself vastly annoyed and displeased.  The young people, furiously in love, had managed the affair, however, with a skill that baffled all vigilance.  Married they were, and without any settlements, Colonel Wensleydale having nothing to settle, and Lady Alice, like a little fool, being only anxious to pour all that she possessed into the lap of her beloved.  The father threw himself on the mercy of the trustees, reminding them that in little more than three years Lady Alice would become unfettered mistress of her own fortune, and begging them meanwhile to make proper provision for the rash but happy pair.  Harry Wensleydale, after all, was a rattling good fellow, with whom all the young women were in love.  The thing, though naughty, was natural; and the colonel would make an excellent husband.

One Presbyterian trustee left his business in Belfast and ventured himself among the abominations of Paris.  He was much befooled and befeasted.  He found a shy young wife tremulously in love; a handsome husband; an amiable step-mother.  He knew no one in Paris who could enlighten him, and was not clever enough to invent means of getting information for himself.  He was induced to promise a sufficient income for the moment on behalf of himself and his co-trustee; and for the rest was obliged to be content with vague assurances from Colonel Wensleydale that as soon as his wife came into her property fitting settlements should be made.