Lady Kirkbank was in no haste to marry her protegee—­nay, it was much more to her interest that Lesbia should remain single for three or four seasons, and that she, Lady Kirkbank, might have the advantage of close association with the young beauty, and the privilege of spending Lady Maulevrier’s money.  But she would have liked to be able to inform Lesbia’s grandmother of some tremendous conquest—­the subjugation of a worthy victim.  This herd of nobodies—­younger sons with courtesy titles and empty pockets, ruined Guardsmen, briefless barristers—­what was the use of telling Lady Maulevrier about such barren victories?  Lady Kirkbank therefore contented herself with expatiating upon Lesbia’s triumphs in a general way:  how graciously the Princess spoke to her and about her; how she had been asked to sit on the dais at the ball at Marlborough House, and had danced in the Royal quadrille.

‘Has Lesbia happened to meet Lord Hartfield?’ Lady Maulevrier asked, incidentally, in one of her letters.

No.  Lord Hartfield was in London, for he had made a great speech in the Lords on a question of vital interest; but he was not going into society, or at any rate into society of a frivolous kind.  He had given himself up to politics, as so many young men did nowadays, which was altogether horrid of them.  His name had appeared in the list of guests at one or two cabinet dinners; but the world of polo matches and afternoon teas, dances and drums, private theatricals, and Orleans House suppers, knew him not.  As a competitor on the fashionable race-course, Lord Hartfield was, in common parlance, out of the running.

And now on this glorious June day, this Thursday of Thursdays, the Ascot Cup day, for the first time since Lesbia’s debut, Lady Kirkbank had occasion to smile upon an admirer whose pretensions were worthy of the highest consideration.

Mr. Smithson, of Park Lane, and Rood Hall, near Henley, and Formosa, Cowes, and Le Bouge, Deauville, and a good many other places too numerous to mention, was reputed to be one of the richest commoners in England.  He was a man of that uncertain period of life which enemies call middle age, and friends call youth.  That he would never see a five-and-thirtieth birthday again was certain; but whether he had passed the Rubicon of forty was open to doubt.  It is possible that he was enjoying those few golden years between thirty-five and forty, which for the wealthy bachelor constitute verily the prime and summer-tide of life.  Wisdom has come, experience has been bought, taste has been cultivated, the man has educated himself to the uttermost in the great school of daily life.  He knows his world thoroughly, whatever that world is, and he knows how to enjoy every gift and every advantage which Providence has bestowed upon him.