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    Miss Tolerance met Sir Walter just outside the theatre.
    “I wish you would let me call for you,” he chided, after they had exchanged greetings. Sir Walter, slight and sandy-haired, and dressed in neat evening clothes, gave no impression of the formidable pillar of the law.
    “What, you would call at my aunt’s brothel and advertise your presence to the clientele and whores? Or perhaps rap upon the gate to my garden and hope that I should hear you?” Miss Tolerance shook her head. “My life is not set up to accommodate callers on anything other than business. This truly is the simplest way.”
    Sir Walter inclined his head. “Perhaps so. But it leaves me feeling distinctly un-gallant.”
    Miss Tolerance laughed and tucked her hand into his arm. “Alas, Sir Walter, if you insist upon consorting with Fallen Women your sensibilities will be constantly put to the test.”
    Sir Walter put his own hand on top of hers on his arm, as if to hold her there. “As there is only one Fallen Woman with whom I regularly consort, I think my sensibilities are elastic enough to see me through. And if it is a choice between my sensibilities and your company, the pleasure of the latter must always delight the former.”
    Miss Tolerance, always rendered uncomfortable by compliments, made light.
    “La, Sir Walter. You will have me blush.”
    His eyebrow rose, and Sir Walter’s foxy, intelligent face was lit by a smile. “I should like to see that,” he said, and led Miss Tolerance up the stairs to their seats. The actress Mrs. Jordan was in form that night: despite her years and girth her Viola was very fine, even if no one in the audience was deceived for a moment by her appearance in boy’s clothes. When the play was over there was the usual press to find a hackney carriage—like Miss Tolerance Sir Walter kept no carriage—and they hung back for a time, waiting until the crowd should lessen before they started back to Manchester Square. They spoke of the play and then, comfortably, of crime and criminals, and of politics. With the King long mad and the Queen Regent incapacitated by apoplectic stroke, there had been a long process of declaring her regency at an end and selecting a new regent. The Prince of Wales, widowed and the father of two in whose upbringing he was much involved, now seemed on the verge of attaining the Regency himself. However, each of the other Royal Dukes (and there were a good number, even despite the usual depletions of infant death, disease and warfare) had his adherents; the political jockeying was still fierce, and nearly as good as a play itself. They acquired a carriage, still talking. Sir Walter was in the process of delivering a blunt appraisal of his Highness the Duke of Cambridge’s chances, to Miss Tolerance’s appreciative laughter, when the carriage drew up in Spanish Place. Still laughing, they alit at the gate to her garden, and Sir Walter insisted that he would see her in.
    “Since I wound your chivalrous instincts by arriving at the theatre on my own, I suppose I cannot ask you to sustain another blow by leaving me here.”
    “Indeed, no. Who knows what might happen to you between the gate and your doorstep?”
    “In my aunt’s garden, with her staff ready to come the moment I call?”
    Sir Walter smiled. “I will take no chances with you.”
    Miss Tolerance unlocked the gate. The garden was silvered by the moon; on the right hand Mrs. Brereton’s house glowed with candlelight, and Miss Tolerance heard music: one of the girls playing upon the pianoforte. She paused for a moment just inside the walls; there was a dark green smell of new spring leaves and, less appealingly, the faint foul odor of Mrs. Brereton’s well-tended necessary house in the far corner of the garden. Sir Walter stopped, a shadow at her elbow. He was much of her height, and close enough that his breath stirred the hair above her ear. Miss Tolerance found herself suddenly self-conscious.
    “‘Tis very