’One is obliged to smother one’s self in satin and velvet for balls and dinners,’ said Lady Kirkbank, when she discussed the great question of gowns; ’but I know I always look my best in my cotton frock and straw hat.’

That first visit to Seraphine’s den—­den as terrible, did one but know it, as that antediluvian hyena-cave at Torquay, where the threshold is worn by the bodies of beasts dragged across it, and the ground paved with their bones—­that first visit was a serious business.  Later interviews might be mere frivolities, half-an-hour wasted in looking at new fashions, an order given carelessly on the spur of the moment; but upon this occasion Lady Kirkbank had to arm her young protegee for the coming campaign, and the question was to the last degree serious.

The chaperon and the dressmaker put their heads together, looked at fashion plates, talked solemnly of Worth and his compeers, of the gowns that were being worn by Bernhardt, and Pierson, and Croisette, and other stars of the Parisian stage; and then Lady Kirkbank gave her orders, Lesbia listening and assenting.

Nothing was said about prices; but Lesbia had a vague idea that some of the things would be rather expensive, and she ventured to ask Lady Kirkbank if she were not ordering too many gowns.

‘My dear, Lady Maulevrier said you were to have carte blanche,’ replied Georgie, solemnly.  ’Your dear grandmother is as rich as Croesus, and she is generosity itself; and how should I ever forgive myself if I allowed you to appear in society in an inadequate style.  You have to take a high place, the very highest place, Lesbia; and you must be dressed in accordance with that position.’

Lesbia said no more.  After all it was Lady Kirkbank’s business and not hers.  See had been entrusted to Lady Kirkbank as to a person who thoroughly knew the great world, and she must submit to be governed by the wisdom and experience of her chaperon.  If the bills were heavy, that would be Lady Kirkbank’s affair; and no doubt dear grandmother was rich enough to afford anything Lesbia wanted.  She had been told that she was to take rank among heiresses.

Lady Maulevrier had given her granddaughter some old-fashioned ornaments, topaz, amethysts, turquoise—­jewels that had belonged to dead and gone Talmashes and Angersthorpes—­to be reset.  This entailed a visit to a Bond Street jeweller, and in the dazzling glass-cases on the counter of the Bond Street establishment Lesbia saw a good many things which she felt were real necessities to her new phase of existence, and these, with Lady Kirkbank’s approval, she ordered.  They were not important matters.  Half-a-dozen gold bangles of real oriental workmanship, three or four jewelled arrows, flies and beetles, and caterpillars, to pin on her laces and flowers, a diamond clasp for her pearl necklace, a dear little gold hunter to wear when she rode in the park, a diamond butterfly to light up that old-fashioned amethyst parure which the jeweller was to reset with an artistic admixture of brilliants.