Lady Hunsdon, having in vain besought the poet to read aloud to a select audience, acted upon the hint he had unwittingly dropped to Anne Percy and organised a charity performance for the benefit of an island recently devastated by earthquake. Warner was visibly out of countenance when gaily reminded by Anne of his careless words, but he could do no less than comply, for the wretched victims were in want of bread. Lady Mary, Miss Bargarny, and several others offered their services. All aristocratic Nevis were invited to contribute their presence and the price of a ticket, and the performance would end with a dance that should outlast the night.
Nevis was in a great flutter of excitement, partly because of the promised ball, for which the military band of St. Kitts was engaged, partly because but a favoured few, and years ago, had heard Byam Warner read. Indeed, his low voice was never heard three yards away, in a drawing-room, although it had frequently made Charlestown ring. He was now on his old footing at the Great Houses. The nobler felt many a pang of conscience that they had permitted a stranger at Bath House to accomplish a work so manifestly their own, while others dared not be stigmatised as provincial, prejudiced, middle-class. If London could afford a superb indifference to the mere social offences of a great poet, well, so could Nevis. They forgot that London had arisen as one man and flung him out, neck and crop. Lady Hunsdon had eclipsed London; rather, for the nonce did she epitomise it. Her gowns came not even from Bond Street. They were confected in Paris. Hers was the most distinguished Tory salon in London. Her son was the golden fish for which all maidens fortunate enough to be within reach of the sacred pond angled. It was whispered that Warner would accompany Hunsdon to London, be a guest in his several stately homes, possibly be returned from one of his numerous boroughs. The poet approached his zenith for the second time.
Curricles, phaetons, gigs, britzskas, barouches, family chaises brought the elect of Nevis, and their guests, from St. Kitts to Bath House a little before nine o'clock; the lowly of Charlestown to the terrace before the ever open windows of the saloon where the performance was to be held. In the friendly bedrooms of the hotel there was a great shaking down of skirts, rearranging of tresses. Miss Medora Ogilvy went straight to Anne's room, by invitation, and finding it empty, proceeded to beautify herself. Byron had been much in vogue at the time of her birth--was yet, for that matter--and she had been named romantically. But there was little romance in the shrewd brain of Miss Ogilvy. She was well educated and accomplished--like many of her kind she had gone to school in England; she could cook and manage even West Indian servants--her mother was an invalid; and she wished for nothing under heaven but to marry a man of "elegant fortune" and turn her back upon Nevis for ever. She really liked Anne and thought her quite the most admirable girl she had ever met, but she was not of those that deceive themselves, and frankly admitted that the chief attraction of her new friend was her almost constant proximity to Lord Hunsdon.