act as Nancy's humble chaperon. Nancy's stay was for three weeks.
The friends saw a great deal of each other, and Miss. Lord had the
honour of being presented to Mrs. Tarrant, the old lady with whom
Jessica lived, Mr. Vawdrey's mother-in-law. At the age of three score
and ten, Mrs. Tarrant still led an active life, and talked with great
volubility, chiefly of herself; Nancy learnt from her that she had
been married at seventeen, and had had two children, a son and a
daughter, both deceased; of relatives there remained to her only Mr
Vawdrey and his family, and a grandson, Lionel Tarrant.

One evening, as Jessica returned from a ramble with the children,
they encountered a young man who was greeted, without much fervour,
as 'cousin Lionel.' Mr. Tarrant professed himself merely a passing
visitant; he had come to inquire after the health of his
grandmother, and in a day or two must keep an appointment with
friends elsewhere. Notwithstanding this announcement, he remained at
Teignmouth for a fortnight, exhibiting a pious assiduity in his
attendance upon the old lady. Naturally, he made acquaintance with
Miss. Lord, whom his cousins regarded as a great acquisition, so
vivacious was she, so ready to take part in any kind of lively
amusement. Mr. Tarrant had been at Oxford; his speech was marked with
the University accent; he talked little, and seemed to prefer his
own society. In conversation with Nancy, though scrupulously
courteous and perfectly good-natured, he never forgot that she was
the friend of his cousins' governess, that their intercourse must be
viewed as an irregular sort of thing, and that it behoved him to
support his dignity whilst condescending to a social inferior. So,
at all events, it struck Miss. Lord, very sensitive in such matters.
Fond of fitting people with nicknames, she called this young man
sometimes 'His Royal Highness,' sometimes 'His Majesty.'