Friday 23 September 2022

Cotillion Part IV

 Kitty worries that Freddy may let something slip but she is enjoying herself so much with Meg, that she tries to make the best of the present moment.  Then Jack introduces her to a cousin of hers.  Kitty's mother was a French emigree who came to England during the Revolution and married her father.  She met her French relatives once or twice but they had returned to France and her mother had died when she was a baby. 

Camille D'evron has come to England recently for a visit and met with Jack at a gaming house.  He is handsome and charming and Kitty is very pleased to have him as a friend but Freddy, being more worldly wise, is uneasy.  Kitty also meets a very beautiful young woman, Olivia Broughty, who has just come to London with her mother, to mix with Society and find a husband. Olivia is very beautiful but her family are mainly middle class and have no entree into upper class society, as her late father had lost touch with his upper class relatives. Freddy is shocked at this friendship  because he knows that Olivia who has no strict upper class chaperone to guide her, has been associating with vulgar relatives who are dangerously flirtatious with rakes like Jack. 

He worries that Olivia while she seems to be respectable may prove a dangerous friend for Kitty.

However, he realises that Kitty is soft hearted and loves to help people and she soon finds another lame dog to help.  Lord Dolphinton confides in her that he did not want to marry her - as his domineering mother wishes - because he is in love with someone else.  Dolphinton seems slow witted but it is clear that he has formed a close attachment to another lady...  He introduces Kitty to her and she finds that she is a rather plain girl from a middle class family, Hannah Plymstock.  However she has no fortune and cannot see any way of marrying Dolph. 

Freddy worries that Kitty is seeing a lot of Dolph and then meets her going into a museum with her cousin. However she then explains to him that she's trying to help him meet Hannah and try and plan to marry her. 

Freddy is a bit taken aback by Hannah, who is plain, not very young and blunt in her manners.. but he can agree with Kitty that Dolph needs someone to look after him, and to protect him from his horrible mother.. and marrying a merchant's daughter isn't that big   a sin, socially....  Hannah wants to move to Ireland, where Dolphinton has an estate and she feels that life in the country would be much better for him than a social life in town that he cannot enjoy. 

Dolphinton's mother holds the purse strings and keeps him short of money and Hannah has no money of her own, so it seems difficult to work out how they can get married. 

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