'I believe he is a very high flown young man,' said Lady Kirkbank, soothingly; 'he was never in my set, you know, dear. And I suppose he had some old Minerva-press idea that he would find a girl who would marry him for his own sake. And your sister, no doubt, eager to marry anybody, poor child, for the sake of getting away from that very lovely dungeon of Lady Maulevrier's, snapped at the chance; and by a mere fluke she becomes a countess.'

Lesbia ignored these consolatory remarks. She was pacing the room like a tigress, her delicate cambric handkerchief grasped between her two hands, and torn and rent by the convulsive action of her fingers. She could have thrown herself from the balcony on to the spikes of the area railings, she could have dashed herself against yonder big plate-glass window looking towards the Green Park, like a bird which shatters his little life against the glass barrier which he mistakes for the open sky. She could have flung herself down on the floor and grovelled, and torn her hair—she could have done anything mad, wicked, desperate, in the wild rage of this moment.

'Loved me!' she exclaimed; 'he never loved me. If he had he would have told me the truth. What, when I was in his arms, my head upon his breast, my whole being surrendered to him, adoring him, what more could he want? He must have known that this meant real love. And why should he put it upon me to fight so hard a fight—to brave my grandmother's anger—to be cursed by her—to face poverty for his sake? I never professed to be a heroine. He knew that I was a woman, with all a woman's weakness, a woman's fear of trial and difficulty in the future. It was a cowardly thing to use me so.'

'It was,' said Lady Kirkbank, in the same soothing tone; 'but if you liked this Hammond-Hartfield creature a little in those old days, I know you have outlived that liking long ago.'

'Of course; but it is a hard thing to know one has been fooled, cheated, weighed in the balance and found wanting,' said Lesbia, scornfully.

She was taming down a little by this time, ashamed of that outbreak of violent passion, feeling that she had revealed too much to Lady Kirkbank.

'It was a caddish thing to do,' said Georgie; 'and this Hartfield is just what I always thought him—an insufferable prig. However, my sweetest girl, there is really nothing to lament in the matter. Your sister has made a good alliance, which will score high in your favour by-and-by, and you are going to marry a man who is three times as rich as Lord Hartfield.'

'Rich, yes; and nothing but rich; while Lord Hartfield is a man of the very highest standing, belongs to the flower of English nobility. Rich, yes; Mr. Smithson is rich; but, as Lady Maulevrier says, he has made his money heaven knows how.'

'Mr. Smithson has not made his money heaven knows how,' answered Lady Kirkbank, indignantly. 'He has made it in cochineal, in iron, in gunpowder, in coal, in all kinds of commodities. Everybody in the City knows how he has made his money, and that he has a genius for turning everything into gold. If the gold changes back into one of the baser metals, it is only when Mr. Smithson has made all he wanted to make. And now he has quite done with the City. The House is the only business of his life; and he is becoming a power in the House. You have every reason to be proud of your choice, Lesbia.'

'I will try to be proud of it,' said Lesbia, resolutely. 'I will not be scorned and trampled upon by Mary.'