A talent for penning the details of their own narrative, even amongst the most unobliging of circumstances, is, I am sure the reader will concur, a most becoming quality in a heroine. Rather conveniently, our own heroine was an accomplished penstress; Daisy kept a skilful narrative of all that happened to her. I say conveniently because it shall burden much of the storytelling in this tale.

If we are to be punctilious, it ought to be said that this perpetual narrative was not a diary — as the reader might have hitherto been encouraged to believe — but a series of letters to one of her two brothers, though he never now replied to her.

The name of this brother was Mr Dapper Lyons. Dapper he was, and Dapper really was his name. His father, when a young lieutenant whose lady was expecting to soon deliver him a child, having been left one evening without anything of value with which he could wager, had put forward the naming rights for his firstborn to secure a wager; a wager he, one half-hour later, lost. Much like the gamester who designed his name, Dapper had been something of a polymath whose often-expressionless face was well formed for disguising his genius in any matter.

At five years her senior, and distinguished by his father as the beneficiary of an education rarely bestowed on the sons of whores, Dapper had been Daisy’s first and favourite tutor in life. He had taught her to read and write and asked always for her letters, and, though he had ever been little inclined to reply, Daisy could never forget to write to him, not a single day that she had access to pen and paper. Below sits some pages of a letter from Daisy to her brother Dapper for the perusal of the reader:

‘Today, I received the sweetest letter from dear Freddy. He has, I fear, your mischievous character; I learn he creates much outlandish speculation amongst his peers as to who exactly pays for his education. He has half the school convinced his father had died famously at Waterloo and left the poor orphan with ten thousand a year, others that he is the lovechild of a Lord Something and a French actress, his schoolmasters that he is an MP’s natural son — or a stock broker’s hidden child — sometimes heir to a business empire in The North.’

‘I think there is a natural roguery in all clever young men; how boring must school be for those boys to whom learning comes so easily. You were much the same if I remember rightly. I have copied the lines of his short epistle; he mirrors you also in his lack of replies, but then I suppose you are long dead, my dear, so you have a much better excuse! To his credit, I will own to you that his handwriting is far neater than your big, loopy letters ever were. Here was the contents of his note:

“Capital bottles of wine Tom sent over. Send him my thanks and that sort of thing. Swell trick hiding them in that case of books, Yates didn’t suspect a thing — we all had a dammy good laugh about it. You know I hate to be a hound, Dais, but I was utterly cleared out when I went to stay with Harlow’s lot — 20£ doesn’t last long a week in Town, and McMillan has called me up on the five I owe him.”

There! I found the letter once we returned to our lodgings here in Camden Place. I read it over again and again — five times — before clutching the dear object to my heart — just where once I held him when he was an infant. Oh, what a perfect, tiny creature he was when he was born and now what a swaggering little gentleman he has become!’

‘Of course, I can do nothing without the eyes of Mrs Prudence upon me. “Marry forbid!” she ejaculated, quite breaking me from the charm of dear Freddy’s letter. “Why, sure that is your brother writing to plead the case for his empty pockets again?” I wish she would not be so severe upon him; he does not at all deserve such treatment. He is only seventeen and works very hard at school. He ought to have a small income at his disposal when he goes to London. You always did. And why should not he engage in the follies of every other clever young man? There is money aplenty to be had. If there is one habit of character I cannot attribute to my husband, it would be his being a miser.’

‘Indeed, yesterday, when we were out walking and the rain came on all of a sudden, Sir Charles paid some dishevelled-looking girl the entire contents of his coin purse to take her very shabby-looking umbrella. He had intentionally built my expectations upon the umbrella being for my sake but held it all the while quite away from me — my husband was monstrously diverted by his own trick. It was a fine trick, to be sure; I laughed a great deal and more so when we arrived amongst the crowds at the pump-room and he had me look at my awful appearance in a mirror. It was a fine trick, indeed, it must have been, for so many people seemed to find amusement in it — I had to laugh, my dear, I could not help it!’

‘Mrs Prudence really is a delightfully earnest creature and would not be distracted, disarmed or dissuaded by my diverting tale. “Oh, but does not her ladyship consider the dangers of giving a young man at a public school such ready access to money all the time? You give him all the latest fashions, a gold watch and chain, only ever new books, a haircut every six weeks in Town, and pockets full of money to spend on all manner of vices — Oh, should every young bastard have you as a sister we would be a nation of reprobates and depraved sensualists!” Though I truly esteem her moral niceties, I warned her not to reflect too severely upon young men at the public schools.’

‘It was at this moment, before Mrs Prudence could reply, that my dear Tom entered the room. “What ho, Pru! How do?” The dear woman — I really do adore her incessant mothering — could hardly keep a short lecture from her tongue.’

“Would to Heaven, Mr Finsbury, sir, you would not come barging into her ladyship’s apartment in such a way. Anybody might have been in here, your father even — then what should you have said for yourself, sir!’ Before my sweet giant could give a word of reply, she flung to an ever more fervent raving. “My detestation for vice and its lovers,” said she, throwing her hands and eyes to high Heaven, “would have me send you from this room immediately, Mr Finsbury. And if you knew what was good for you, sir, you would take yourself out. Tis’ a vile and unnatural bewitchment between the two of you. How quickly you wrap your winding, serpent arms about one another’s doomed necks, engaging in a thousand poisonous encounters. Each bitter one shovelling another heap of fuel upon the flames in which you shall hereafter burn! But, tis’ not the place of we servants to moralise our masters. God shall judge ye both well enough.”

‘Good woman! I am sure she shall save my soul yet. But not this afternoon. Tom, having quite ignored her expostulations, was sat with his shoes up on the bed. There was a sort of silent lull between us all, and so I asked Prudence if she had run me a bath. She answered to say that she had and went grumbling from the room, cursing us both to the wrath of the Devil as she went. A most amusing pun entered my head — though after I said it, I thought, “Perhaps it is not a pun.” I asked Tom, but he seemed not to know either. You, Brother, would know, I am sure.’

‘Anyway, I said to Tom, “How would you like to take a bath with me in Bath, Tom Finsbury?” I am not sure he quite appreciated my witty little wordplay, but he clapped his ginormous, soft hands together and exclaimed, “Hang me if I ever offer a negative to that question, Daisy!” I felt my heart quite double in size; I really cannot help but love a romantic man.’

‘Shortly, my moustached love leapt from his seat. “Oh, but hang it, Daisy, all that coffee I had downstairs has left me with a wretched bad stomach. And I am certain there was something a little putrid in the quail I had at breakfast. No… hang my weak stomach, but you should not share bathwater with me, not today.” I was, of course, very disappointed, but I am always of the maxim carpe secundum when presented with an opportunity of a private interview with my straw-lipped dandy.’

‘The ingenious little creature that I am, I quickly overcame the obstacle that bad fortune had so cruelly placed in my way. “Then I shall take that chair,” said I, “and set it down by the bath so that you might watch me.” A fit of passion hit my lover — I could see from his face — like a clap of thunder. “Gad, really?!” exclaimed he. “By God, Daisy, you drive me damn wild… damn wild like a… like a damned…” — Oh dear, it seems I am obliged to break off — It is not necessary to remind you how much I am,

Your most affectionate and loving sister,

Daisy.’

We are obliged to remove from Daisy’s letter here and return to our usual mode of narration. A very audible gargle of Tom’s stomach finished that above sentence for him, and so poor Daisy was left to take her bath alone.

Dear Tom, whose circumstances it is perhaps best if I avoid relating, was always utterly astounded that a woman like Daisy, incomprehensibly pretty and fine-figured as she was, could think to even look at a man such as himself, let alone gaze adoringly at him from her bathwater. As he underwent the bodily experience which has rightly been deemed indescribable, our charmer thought to himself what a lucky fool he was.

Daisy, rather less precariously disposed, was entertaining similar reflections of her own fortune; after many years of their steady attachment, her beau regarded her with the same pure wonder and amazement as he had done when he was a stammering, blundering, forever-blushing young chap.

While Mrs Prudence stood on the landing keeping guard for the prying eyes or ears of gossiping lower servants, our happy fellow, his trial being over, returned to darling Daisy’s apartment, where sat she already in the bath. How could not she smile to be sitting across from the sweetest and dearest yellow-moustached face in the world, saying little else but, ‘Gad, Daisy… hang it, you are just… you are just damned perfection… do you know that… of course you do… by God, Daisy…’