“What scenes,” writes Mr T. Raikes, “have we witnessed in these days at Almack’s!  What fear and trembling in the debutantes at the commencement of a waltz, what giddiness and confusion at the end!  It was, perhaps, owing to the latter circumstance that so violent an opposition soon arose to the new recreation on the score of morality.  The anti-waltzing party took the alarm, and cried it down; mothers forbade it, and every ballroom became a scene of feud and contention.”

But through it all Lady Jersey circled round and round the ballroom divinely, with Prince Paul Esterhazy, Baron Tripp, St Aldegonde, and many another graceful exponent of the new dance, for partners; and her victory was complete when the world of fashion saw the arm of the Emperor Alexander, his uniform ablaze with decorations, round her waist, twirling ecstatically, if ungracefully, round in the intoxication of the waltz.

For fifty years, Lord Jersey’s Countess reigned supreme in the social world, carrying her autocracy and her charms into old age.  As was inevitable to such a dominant personality she made enemies, who resented her airs and scoffed at her graces.  Lady Granville called her “a tiresome, quarrelsome woman”; the Duke of Wellington, one of her most abject slaves, once exclaimed, “What ——­ nonsense Lady Jersey talks!” and Granville declared that she had “neither wit, nor imagination, nor humour.”  But to the last day of her long life she retained the homage and admiration of hundreds, over whom she cast the spell of her beauty and personal charm.

The evening of her life was clouded by a succession of tragedies, each sufficient to break the spirit of a less indomitable woman.  One by one, her children, the pride of her life, were taken from her; but she hid her breaking heart from the world, and in the intervals between her bereavements she showed as brave and bright a face as in the days of her unclouded youth.  The death in 1858 of her daughter, Clementina, the darling of her old age, was a terrible blow; but still the hand of the slayer of her hopes was not stayed.  Her husband, whose devotion had so long sustained her, followed soon after; three weeks later her eldest son, the new Earl, died tragically in the zenith of his life; and the crowning blow fell when, in 1862, her last surviving child was taken from her.

For five more years she survived her triumphs and sorrows, until, one January day in 1867, she passed suddenly and painlessly away, and the world was the poorer by the loss of one of the noblest women who have ever worn the crown of beauty or held the sceptre of power.

CHAPTER IV

THE STAIN ON THE SHIRLEY ’SCUTCHEON

The Shirleys have been men of high honour and fair repute ever since the far-away days when the conqueror found their ancestor, Sewallis, firmly seated on his broad Warwickshire lands at Eatington; but their proud ’scutcheon, otherwise unsullied, bears one black, or rather red, stain, and it was Laurence Shirley, fourth earl of his line, who put it there.