Her husband, wild, improvident and a heavy drinker, had been killed in a crazy midnight cross country steeplechase when most of the riders were too foxed to know where they were going or to keep astride their horses.
It was therefore as a dazzling, beautiful and extremely ambitious widow that Lady Elaine had startled the Beau Monde.
There were many people who disapproved of her.
The older most staid hostesses, who clustered around the Court at Buckingham House and were scandalised by the impropriety of the Prince of Wales, did their best to cold-shoulder Lady Elaine but without avail.
It was obvious that she would become an intimate of the Carlton House Set and also with such ancestry few of the aristocracy could actually close their doors to her if she demanded entry.
Lady Elaine swe
