If haply the young folks came in, the elders
modified their recollections, and Lady Kew brought honest old King George
and good old ugly Queen Charlotte to the rescue. Her ladyship was sister
of the Marquis of Steyne: and in some respects resembled that lamented
nobleman. Their family had relations in France (Lady Kew had always a
pied-a-terre at Paris, a bitter little scandal-shop, where les bien
pensants assembled and retailed the most awful stories against the
reigning dynasty). It was she who handed over le petit Kiou, when quite a
boy, to Monsieur and Madame d'Ivry, to be lanced into Parisian
society. He was treated as a son of the family by the Duke, one of whose
many Christian names, his lordship, Francis George Xavier, Earl of Kew
and Viscount Walham, bears. If Lady Kew hated any one (and she could hate
very considerably) she hated her daughter-in-law, Walham's widow, and the
Methodists who surrounded her. Kew remain among a pack of psalm-singing
old women and parsons with his mother! Fi donc! Frank was Lady Kew's boy;
she would form him, marry him, leave him her money if he married to her
liking, and show him life.
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