Eliza rose admirably to a London life with John, and a sexual life with him that kept her on the edge of lust very nearly every waking moment they were together. He had the measure of her. She was malleable, dizzily in love with her sexuality and with him. He could mould her any way he pleased and that excited him, kept him interested, even hungry to play with his young thing. It was flattering to him that she had no ambition but to please him, add something light and frivolous to his hectic life. And he did enjoy enormously that ability of hers to rise to the occasion, whether it be in bed or enjoying food she had never tasted, seeing a play she had never heard of, an opera, a ballet, even wearing with style a dress he had bought her. Eliza, for her part, was not so much dazzled by John’s lifestyle – elegant, cultivated, a crammed social calendar – as fascinated by it, and by how important all those things seemed to be to his happiness. In her heart she thought, as her parents did, that there was something just a little shallow and unnecessary about it all – but love can dictate to the heart.
