‘I am sure you would not like the effect without diamonds,’ said the jeweller.  ’Your amethysts are very fine, but they are dark and heavy in tone, and want a good deal of lighting-up, especially for the present fashion of half-lighted rooms.  If you will allow me to use my own discretion, and mix in a few brilliants, I shall be able to produce a really artistic parure; otherwise I would not recommend you to touch them.  The present setting is clumsy and inelegant; but I really do not know that I could improve upon it, without an admixture of brilliants.’

‘Will the diamonds add very much to the expense?’ Lesbia inquired, timidly.

’My dear child, you are perfectly safe in leaving the matter in Mr. Cabochon’s hands,’ interposed Lady Kirkbank, who had particular reasons for wishing to be on good terms with the head of the establishment.  ’Your dear grandmother gave you the amethysts to be reset; and of course she would wish it to be done in an artistic manner.  Otherwise, as Mr. Cabochon judiciously says, why have the stones reset at all?  Better wear them in all their present hideousness.’

Of course, after this Lesbia consented to the amethysts being dealt with according to Mr. Cabochon’s taste.

‘Which is simply perfect,’ interjected Lady Kirkbank.

And now Lesbia’s campaign began in real earnest—­a life of pleasure, a life of utter selfishness and self-indulgence, which would go far to pervert the strongest mind, tarnish the purest nature.  To dress and be admired—­that was what Lesbia’s life meant from morning till night.  She had no higher or nobler aim.  Even on Sunday mornings at the fashionable church, where the women sat on one side of the nave and the men on the other, where divinest music was as a pair of wings, on which the enraptured soul flew heavenward—­even here Lesbia thought more of her bonnet and gloves—­the chic or non-chic of her whole costume, than of the service.  She might kneel gracefully, with her bent head, just revealing the ivory whiteness of a lovely throat, between the edge of her lace frilling and the flowers in her bonnet.  She might look the fairest image of devotion; but how could a woman pray whose heart was a milliner’s shop, whose highest ambition was to be prettier and better dressed than other women?

The season was six weeks old.  It was Ascot week, the crowning glory of the year, and Lesbia and her chaperon had secured tickets for the Royal enclosure—­or it may be said rather that Lesbia had secured them—­for the Master of the Royal Buckhounds might have omitted poor old Lady Kirkbank’s familiar name from his list if it had not been for that lovely girl who went everywhere under the veteran’s wing.

Six weeks, and Lesbia’s appearance in society had been one perpetual triumph; but as yet nothing serious had happened.  She had had no offers.  Half a dozen men had tried their hardest to propose to her—­had sat out dances, had waylaid her in conservatories and in back drawing-rooms, in lobbies while she waited for her carriage—­had looked at her piteously with tenderest declarations trembling on their lips; but she had contrived to keep them at bay, to strike them dumb by her coldness, or confound them by her coquetry; for all these were ineligibles, whom Lady Lesbia Haselden did not want to have the trouble of refusing.