Whilst living thus at the seaside, Jessica was delighted by the arrival of Nancy Lord, who came to Teignmouth for a summer holiday.  With her came Mary Woodruff.  The faithful servant had been ill; Mr Lord sent her down into Devon to make a complete recovery, and to act as Nancy’s humble chaperon.  Nancy’s stay was for three weeks.  The friends saw a great deal of each other, and Miss.  Lord had the honour of being presented to Mrs. Tarrant, the old lady with whom Jessica lived, Mr. Vawdrey’s mother-in-law.  At the age of three score and ten, Mrs. Tarrant still led an active life, and talked with great volubility, chiefly of herself; Nancy learnt from her that she had been married at seventeen, and had had two children, a son and a daughter, both deceased; of relatives there remained to her only Mr Vawdrey and his family, and a grandson, Lionel Tarrant.

One evening, as Jessica returned from a ramble with the children, they encountered a young man who was greeted, without much fervour, as ‘cousin Lionel.’  Mr. Tarrant professed himself merely a passing visitant; he had come to inquire after the health of his grandmother, and in a day or two must keep an appointment with friends elsewhere.  Notwithstanding this announcement, he remained at Teignmouth for a fortnight, exhibiting a pious assiduity in his attendance upon the old lady.  Naturally, he made acquaintance with Miss.  Lord, whom his cousins regarded as a great acquisition, so vivacious was she, so ready to take part in any kind of lively amusement.  Mr. Tarrant had been at Oxford; his speech was marked with the University accent; he talked little, and seemed to prefer his own society.  In conversation with Nancy, though scrupulously courteous and perfectly good-natured, he never forgot that she was the friend of his cousins’ governess, that their intercourse must be viewed as an irregular sort of thing, and that it behoved him to support his dignity whilst condescending to a social inferior.  So, at all events, it struck Miss.  Lord, very sensitive in such matters.  Fond of fitting people with nicknames, she called this young man sometimes ‘His Royal Highness,’ sometimes ‘His Majesty.’

Of Mr. Tarrant’s station in life nothing was discovered.  His grandmother, though seemingly in possession of ample means, betrayed an indifferent education, and in her flow of gossip never referred to ancestral dignities, never made mention of the calling her husband had pursued.  Mr. Vawdrey was known to be ’in business,’—­a business which must be tolerably lucrative.

On their return to London, the children passed from Miss.  Morgan’s care into that of Mrs. Baker, who kept house for the widower at Champion Hill; but Jessica did not wholly lose sight of them, and, at their request, she persuaded Nancy Lord to make an occasional call with her.  Mrs. Baker (relict, it was understood, of a military officer who had fallen in Eastern warfare) behaved to the young ladies with much friendliness.  They did not meet Mr. Vawdrey.