It was hot at Woodgreen; but it was hotter still in Mayfair, where the season was drawing to a close with all the signs of a long-spun-out and exhausting dissolution.  Women were waxing pale under the prolonged strain of entertainments which for the last week or two had been matters of duty rather than pleasure, and many a girl who had entered the lists of society a blushing and hopeful debutante with perhaps a ducal coronet in her mind’s eye, was beginning to think that she would have to be content with, say, the simpler one of a viscountess; or even to wed with no coronet at all.  Many of the men were down at Cowes or golfing at St. Andrews; and those unfortunates who were detained in attendance at the house which continued to sit, like a “broody hen,” as Howard said, longed and sighed for the coming of the magic 12th of August, before which date they assured themselves the House must rise and so bring about their long-delayed holiday.

But one man showed no sign of weariness or a desire for rest; Sir Stephen’s step was light and buoyant as ever on the hot pavement of Pall Mall, and on the still hotter one of the city; his face was as cheery, his manner as gay, and his voice as bright and free from care as those of a young man.

There is no elixir like success; and Sir Stephen was drinking deeply of the delicious draught.  He had been well known for years:  he was famous now.  You could not open a newspaper without coming upon his name in the city article, and in the fashionable intelligence.  Now it was a report of the meeting of some great company, at which Sir Stephen had presided, at another time it occurred in a graphic account of a big party at the house he had rented at Grosvenor Square.  It was a huge mansion, and the rent ran into many figures; but, as Howard remarked, it did not matter; Sir Stephen was rich enough to rent every house in the square.  Sir Stephen had taken over the army of servants and lived in a state which was little short of princely:  and lived alone; for Stafford, who was not fond of a big house and still less fond of a large retinue, begged permission to remain at his own by no means over-luxurious but rather modest rooms.

It is not improbable that he would have liked to have absented himself from the grand and lavish entertainments with which his father celebrated the success of his latest enterprise; but it was not possible, and Stafford was present at the dinners and luncheons, receptions and concerts which went on, apparently without a break, at Clarendon House.

Indeed, it was necessary that he should be present and in attendance on his fiancee who appeared at every function.  Maude was now almost as celebrated as Sir Stephen; for her beauty, her reputed wealth, and the fact that she was engaged to the son of Sir Stephen, had raised her to an exalted position in the fashionable world; and her name figured in the newspapers very nearly as often as that of the great financier.