These restrictions presently wore out Lord Blackwater's patience. He
left his wife, with a small allowance, to bring up her daughter in one
of his Irish houses, while he generously spent the rest of her large
income, and his own, and a great deal besides, in London and on the
Continent.
Lady Blackwater, however, was not long before she obliged him by dying.
Her girl, then twelve years old, lived for a time with one of her
mother's trustees. But when she had reached the age of seventeen her
father suddenly commanded her presence in Paris, that she might make
acquaintance with his second wife.
The new Lady Blackwater was an extremely beautiful woman, Irish, as the
first had been, but like her in no other respect. Margaret Fitzgerald
was the daughter of a cosmopolitan pair, who after many shifts for a
living, had settled in Paris, where the father acted as correspondent
for various English papers. Her beauty, her caprices, and her "affairs"
were all well known in Paris. As to what the relations between her and
Lord Blackwater might have been before the death of the wife, Lord
Grosville took a frankly uncharitable view.
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