Edward Hughes Ball Hughes

Edward Hughes Ball Hughes (born Edward Hughes Ball; 1798-1863), called "Golden Ball", was a wealthy and eccentric dandy of the nineteenth century. He was the son of David Ball and his wife Sarah, who later remarried to a man named Thomas Johnson. From his grandmother Ruth's second husband Admiral Edward Hughes, Ball Hughes inherited a fortune worth forty thousand pounds a year upon coming of age in 1819.

He had four sisters: Catherine Ball, a writer who styled herself as the Baroness de Calabrella; Ruth Ball, who married Rev. Houlton Hartwell, a chaplain to the Prince Regent; Sydney Ball, who married Sir John Ignatius Burke, 10th Baronet of Glinsk; and Elizabeth Ball.

In 1823 he married the Spanish dancer Maria Mercandotti, but they were childless and divorced in 1839. After he fled to France in 1829, he had several romances that resulted in children, but he does not appear to have remarried.

More about him can be discovered on his Wikipedia page.

Arabella
Arabella Tallant and Robert Beaumaris see him when they are driving in his curricle. He waves to Beaumaris, and Arabella asks him why he has screwed up his mouth and why he is walking like he is on stilts. Beaumaris tells her that he does so to denote his consequence.