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since the Earl had shared this view, he had never been granted the opportunity to become familiar with all the details of a great estate. He came to it from a far more modest establishment, where he had been living in quiet content with his wife, and his youthful family, and for many weeks felt crushed by the appalling weight of fortune, lands, and title. In Serena’s presence, he had the uncomfortable sensation of being a nonentity, but he was really very grateful to her, and knew that he would have found himself in a worse case without her, since she could always explain the meaning of the mysteries uttered by such persons as agents and bailiffs. With these he had not learnt to be at ease. He knew himself to be under close observation; they assumed that he had knowledge which he lacked; he was afraid to appear contemptible by confessing ignorance; and relied on Serena to make all plain. She thought he would do better when he had his wife beside him, for it appeared, from the many references to Jane’s capabilities, that hers was the stronger character. But the new Countess was not coming to Milverley until their London house had been disposed of. She seemed to be very busy, and scarcely a day passed without her writing to know whether she should sell some piece of furniture, or send it to Milverley; what he wished her to do about the new barouche; whether she should employ Pickford’s to convey all their heavy cases to Milverley; and a dozen other problems of the same nature.
    Serena found that she was obliged to spend several days in London. The preparation of the house in Grosvenor Square for its new owner could not be wholly entrusted to servants. Fanny, whom travel always made unwell, shrank from the journey; so Serena, undertaking to execute all her commissions, set out with no other escort than her maid, and in a hired post-chaise. It was a novel experience, all her previous journeys having been made either in her father’s company, or under the direction of a courier, but she was in no way daunted, finding it rather amusing to be paying her own shot at the posting-house in which she spent the night, contracting for the hire of horses and postilions, and ordering her own dinner. But Lady Theresa, whose guest she was, was shocked beyond measure, dared not guess what her father would have said, ascribed it all to her having cried off from her engagement to Rotherham, and recalled with approval her own girlhood, when she had never done so much as walk in the park at Milverley without having her footman in attendance.
    It was painful to visit the house in Grosvenor Square under such altered circumstances, and disagreeable to discover that Lady Spenborough had already inspected it from cellars to attics. Serena was thunderstruck when this news was divulged to her by the housekeeper: she had not believed such conduct to be possible. There could be no denying that her ladyship had every right to go to the house, but there was a want of delicacy about the proceeding which gave a disagreeable impression, hard to shake off. It was excused by the Countess herself, who paid a morning-visit at Lady Theresa’s house in Park Street for the express purpose of explaining to Serena the peculiar exigency which had made it necessary for her to go to Grosvenor Square. All was glossed over, in a speech beginning with the words: ‘I daresay you must have wondered a little…’ but although Serena forgave she was unable to forget, and had never been in such sympathy with her aunt as when that lady later described the Countess’s behaviour as encroaching, and such as sank her below reproach. But Lady Theresa was not astonished, for she had never liked Jane. From the outset she had detected beneath the insipid formality of her manners a sort of shabby gentility which had quite given her a disgust of the young woman. She dressed badly, too, had no countenance, and grossly indulged her children.
    It was not until November that Fanny and