But Bessy was not long in showing herself as good as gold, or
approving herself to some of Tom's best friends. Lady Donegal and her
sharp-tongued sister, Mary Godfrey, both took to her. "Give our
love, honest, downright love to Bessy," they write. Rogers called her
Psyche, had the pair to stay with him, stayed with them in his turn,
and gave Bessy handsome sums for the charities in which she abounded
all her life. Rogers knew simplicity when he saw it, and had no
vitriol on hand when she was in the way. I don't think Tom ever took
her to Ireland with him, or that, consequently, she ever met his
parents in the flesh; but no doubt that they accepted her, and
esteemed her.

Bit by bit she reveals herself in Tom's random diaries. As in the
printing of a photograph the lights and darks come sparsely out, and
unawares the delicate outline, so by a word here, a phrase elsewhere,
we realise the presence of a sweet-natured, sound-minded girl, and
more than that, of a girl with character. After a spell of Brompton
lodgings Tom took her to Kegworth in Leicestershire, where he was to
have the neighbourhood and countenance of his patron of the moment,
Moira, the Regent's jackal, a solemn, empty-headed lord. Donington
Hall and Bessy appear together in a letter to Mary Godfrey.

"... I took Bessy yesterday to Lord Moira's, and she was not
half so much struck with its grandeur as I expected. She said,
in coming out, 'I like Mr. Rogers's house ten times better.'"

Tom feels it necessary to explain such remarkable taste. "She loves
everything by association, and she was very happy in Rogers's
house." I don't know whether Tom's simplicity or Bessy's is the more
remarkable in all this. Tom's, I think.