Mrs Penkridge

The Hon. Mrs Penkridge is an acquaintance of Lady Bridlington who she previously had little contact with. She is famed for her haughtiness and acid tongue, but she appears perfectly friendly when calling upon Lady Bridlington to invite her and her protegee Arabella Tallant to a musical soiree. This erases the suspicion that Lady Bridlington has about Lady Somercote's friendliness because the Penkridges are a childless couple. She is not well-acquainted enough with Mrs Penkridge to know that the only sign of human emotion she shows is around her spendthrift nephew Horace Epworth.

She takes Epworth as her escort for Arabella's party, and they are some of the earliest to arrive. Afterwards she recalls that she once quarreled with Lady Mary Beaumaris, and she thinks that she is the source of her son's flirtatious disposition.

Later she is unsurprised that Lord Bridlington has cut his tour of Europe short because she (and many others) suspect that Lady Bridlington schemes to have him marry the alleged heiress.

She tries to catch Arabella or Robert Beaumaris's eye at the Somerset House, where Arabella admits to disliking her and Beaumaris calls her odious and impossible to avoid. He quickly backs out of the conversation, to Arabella's displeasure, in order to find Lady Bridlington. Arabella soon makes her excuses to join them.

Since she is described as the Honourable Mrs Penkridge, then her husband must be the younger son of either a baron, a viscount, or an earl. Which is unknown.