To her he was an abstract ideal.
Later in the month her father returned to Lone—on business of more importance than that which had hurried him away.
He had only retired from one phase of public life to enter upon another.
There was to be a new Parliament. And at the solicitations of many interested parties, and perhaps also at the promptings of his own late ambition, Sir Lemuel Levison consented to stand for the borough of Lone. In the absence of the young Marquis of Arondelle there was no one to oppose him, and he was returned by an almost unanimous vote.
Early in February, Sir Lemuel Levison took his dreaming daughter and went up to London to take his seat in the House of Commons at the meeting of Parliament.
He engaged a sumptuously furnished house on Westbourne Terrace, and invited a distant relative, Lady Belgrave, the childless widow of a baronet, to come and pass the season with him and chaperone his daughter on her entrance into society.
Lady Belgrade was sixty years old, tall, stout, fair-complexioned, gray-haired, healthy, good-humored, and well-dressed—altogether as commonplace and harmless a fine lady as could be found in the fashionable world.
Salome had never seen her, scarcely ever heard of her before the day of her arrival at Westbourne Terrace.
Salome met Lady Belgrade with courtesy and kindness, but with much indifference.
Lady Belgrade, on her part, met her young kinswoman with critical curiosity.