Gossip was busy with her name, asking, Who this strange wife of Mr.
Brudenell really was? Why he had abandoned her? And why Mrs. Brudenell
had left the house for good, taking her daughters with her? There were
some uneducated women among the wives and daughters of the wealthy
planters, and these wished to know, if the strange young woman was
really the wife of Herman Brudenell, why she was called Lady
Hurstmonceux? and they thought that looked very black indeed; until
they were laughed at and enlightened by their better informed friends,
who instructed them that a woman once a peeress is always by courtesy a
peeress, and retains her own title even though married to a commoner.

Upon the whole the planters' wives decided to call upon the countess,
once at least, to satisfy their curiosity. Afterwards they could visit
or drop her as might seem expedient.

Thus, as soon as the roads became passable, scarcely a day went by in
which a large, lumbering family coach, driven by a negro coachman and
attended by a negro groom on horseback, did not arrive at Brudenell.

To one and all of these callers the same answer was returned:

"The Countess of Hurstmonceux is engaged, and cannot receive visitors."

The tables were turned. The country ladies, who had been debating with
themselves whether to "take up" or "drop" this very questionable
stranger, received their congée from the countess herself from the
threshold of her own door. The planters' wives were stunned! Each was a
native queen, in her own little domain, over her own black subjects, and
to meet with a repulse from a foreign countess was an incomprehensible
thing!