The fact that her sister, Mrs. Colville, said she was dangerously ill did not distress Harriet. Mary Colville was always ill with some imaginary illness or another. What did upset her was that her sister was begging her to bring her daughter, Susan, out at the forthcoming Season. To refuse, as the reclusive and intellectual Harriet longed to do, would mean that the whole Colville family would arrive at her town house in Berkeley Square and she would have them all for the Season instead of just one debutante. Mrs. Colville had six children, Susan being the eldest. Harriet frowned. She had not seen Susan for some years, for the girl had been secluded in an expensive seminary for young ladies in Bath, but she remembered her as a fat and rather pimply child. After some hard thought she decided the best course of action would be to travel to her sister, who lived in the village of Parton-in-the-Wold, and decide when she saw Susan what to do. Should the girl prove an absolute antidote, then she would plead the excuse of foreign travel, tell the Colville family that they might have the use of her house for the Season, and then go into hiding until it was all over. Harriet was rich, very rich.
