The Buccaneers

Two years after the previous events, Nan has married Ushant and is now the Duchess of Tintagel. She fulfills her duties, preparing invitations for the first major Longlands shooting party and writing formal notes with careful attention to the address formulas. After finishing, she questions her identity, asking, “Who is Annabel Tintagel?” (198). She reflects that Annabel St. George feels like a “ghost” whose motives she can no longer access. She concludes that while people change, their actions remain.

Society has adapted to American fashions introduced by figures like Lady Seadown and Lizzy Elmsworth, but Nan remains isolated, and Conchita remarks that Nan has become “unfashionable among the unfashionable” (201). Nan is divided between enjoyment over social amusements and a wish for solitude and purpose. Her husband shares neither her literary interests nor her reformist impulses. He had told his mother before the wedding that “the great thing is that [he] shall be able to form her” (201), but the Dowager (Ushant’s mother and the former Duchess) warned him that “women are not quite as simple as clocks” (202).

Nan spends time in the Correggio room. The Duke reiterates that the family’s valuable collections “are a trust” (203); he then criticizes Sir Helmsley Thwarte for selling his Titian.