Belles and Ringers

At Todborough Grange, an Easter gathering gives Lady Mary Bloxam a chance to arrange her youngest daughter's future. She hopes to bring Blanche closer to Lionel Beauchamp, a young man with family property and a liking for country life. Confiding in the well-connected gossip Pansey Cottrell, she describes courtship as something parents can carefully direct. Hawley Smart builds his English social novel around this mixture of affection, ambition and calculation.

Riding parties and fashionable company supply the setting for sharp conversation and comic mishaps. In one episode, Sylla Chipchase takes a fence too quickly, falls from her mare and worries about her battered appearance and the teasing it might invite. Such scenes show how pride and social performance accompany the pursuit of a suitable match. Readers interested in country-house manners will find a romance attentive to the small pressures of family plans, gossip and public appearances.