The young man had hardly ever been in a sick room before.  He half expected to see Lady Maulevrier in bed, with a crowd of medicine bottles and a cut orange on a table by her side, and a sick nurse of the ancient-crone species cowering over the fire.  It was an infinite relief to him to find his grandmother lying on a sofa by the fire in her pretty morning room.  A little tea-table was drawn close up to her sofa, and she was taking her afternoon tea.  It was rather painful to see her lifting her tea-cup slowly and carefully with her left hand, but that was all.  The dark eyes still flashed with the old eagle glance, the lines of the lips were as proud and firm as ever.  All sign of contraction or distortion had passed away.  In hours of calm her ladyship’s beauty was unimpaired; but with any strong emotion there came a convulsive working of the features, and the face was momentarily drawn and distorted, as it had been at the time of the seizure.

Maulevrier’s presence had not an unduly agitating effect on her ladyship.  She received him with tranquil graciousness, and thanked him for his coming.

‘I hope you have spent your winter profitably in Paris,’ she said.  ’There is a great deal to be learnt there if you go into the right circles.’

Maulevrier told her that he had found much to learn, and that he had gone into circles where almost everything was new to him.  Whereupon his grandmother questioned him about certain noble families in the Faubourg Saint Germain who had been known to her in her own day of power, and whose movements she had observed from a distance since that time; but here she found her grandson dark.  He had not happened to meet any of the people she spoke about:  the plain truth being that he had lived altogether as a Bohemian, and had not used one of the letters of introduction that had been given to him.

‘Your friend Mr. Hammond is with you, I am told,’ said Lady Maulevrier, not altogether with delight.

’Yes, I made him come; but he is quite safe.  He will bolt like a shot at the least hint of Lesbia’s return.  He doesn’t want to meet that young lady again, I can assure you.’

’Pray don’t talk in that injured tone.  Mr. Hammond is a gentlemanlike person, very well informed, very agreeable.  I have never denied that.  But you could not expect me to allow my granddaughter to throw herself away upon the first adventurer who made her an offer.’

‘Hammond is not an adventurer.’

’Very well, I will not call him so, if the term offends you.  But Mr. Hammond is—­Mr. Hammond, and I cannot allow Lesbia to marry Mr. Hammond or Mr. Anybody, and I am very sorry you have brought him here again.  There is Mary, a silly, romantic girl.  I am very much afraid he has made an impression upon her.  She colours absurdly when she talks of him, and flew into a passion with me the other day when I ventured to hint that he is not a Rothschild, and that his society must be expensive to you.’