‘Old Lady K—­has nobbled a real beauty, this time,’ said one of the Arlington Street set to his friend as they lolled on the railings in the park, ’a long way above any of those plain-headed ones she tried to palm off upon us last year:  the South American girl with the big eyes and a complexion like a toad, the Forfarshire girl with freckles and unsophisticated carrots.  “Those lovely Spanish eyes,” said Lady K——­, “that Titianesque auburn hair!” But it didn’t answer.  Both the girls were plain, and they have gone back to their native obscurity spinsters still.  But this is a real thorough-bred one—­blood, form, pace, all there.’

‘Who is she?’ drawled his friend.

’Lord Maulevrier’s sister, Lady Lesbia Haselden.  Has money, too, I believe; rich grandmother; old lady buried alive in Westmoreland; horrid old miser.’

‘I shouldn’t mind marrying a miser’s granddaughter,’ said the other.  ’So nice to know that some wretched old idiot has scraped and hoarded through a lifetime of deprivation and self-denial, in order that one may spend his money when he is under the sod.’

Lady Lesbia was accepted everywhere, or almost everywhere, as the beauty of the season.  There were six or seven other girls who aspired to the same proud position, who were asserted by their own particular friends to have won it; just as there are generally four or five horses which claim to be first favourites; but the betting was all in favour of Lady Lesbia.

Lady Kirkbank told her that she was turning everyone’s head, and Lesbia was quite willing to believe her.  But was Lesbia’s own head quite steady in this whirlpool?  That was a question which she did not take the trouble to ask herself.

Her heart was tranquil enough, cold as marble.  No shield and safeguard so secure against the fire of new love as an old love hardly cold.  Lesbia told herself that her heart was a sepulchre, an urn which held a handful of ashes, the ashes of her passion for John Hammond.  It was a fire quite burned out, she thought; but that extinguished flame had left death-like coldness.

This was Lesbia’s own diagnosis of her case:  but the real truth was that among the herd of men she had met, almost all of them ready to fall down and worship her, there was not one who had caught her fancy.  Her nature was shallow enough to be passing fickle; the passion which she had taken for love was little more than a girl’s fancy; but the man who had power to awaken that fancy as John Hammond had done had not yet appeared in Lady Kirkbank’s circle.

‘What a cold-hearted creature you must be,’ said Georgie.  ’You don’t seem to admire any of my favourite men.’

‘They are very nice,’ Lesbia answered languidly; ’but they are all alike.  They say the same things—­wear the same clothes—­sit in the same attitude.  One would think they were all drilled in a body every morning before they go out.  Mr. Nightshade, the actor, who came to supper the other night, is the only man I have seen who has a spark of originality.’