‘The idea of any one wanting to marry Mr. Smithson,’ said Lesbia.  ’It seems too dreadful.’

’A case of real destitution, you think.  Wait till you have seen Smithson’s house in Park Lane—­his team, his yacht, his orchid houses in Berkshire.’

Lesbia sighed.  Her knowledge of London society was only seven weeks old; and yet already the day of disenchantment had begun!  She was having her eyes opened to the stern realities of life.  A year ago when her appearance in the great world was still only a dream of the future, she had pictured to herself the crowd of suitors who would come to woo, and she had resolved to choose the worthiest.

What would he be like, that worthiest among the wooers, that King Arthur among her knights?

First and foremost, he would be of rank higher than her own—­duke, a marquis, or one of the first and oldest among earls.  Title and lofty lineage were indispensable.  It would be a fall, a failure, a disappointment, were she to marry a commoner, however distinguished.

The worthy one must be noble, therefore, and of the old nobility.  He must be young, handsome, intellectual.  He must stand out from among his peers by his gifts of mind and person.  He must have won distinction in the arena of politics or diplomacy, arms or letters.  He must be ‘somebody.’

She had been seven weeks in society, and this modern Arthur had not appeared.  So far as she had been able to discover, there was no such person.  The dukes and marquises were mostly men of advanced years.  The young unmarried nobility were given over to sport, play, and foolishness.  She had heard of only one man who at all corresponded with her ideal, and he was Lord Hartfield.  But Lord Hartfield had given himself up to politics, and was no doubt a prig.  Lady Kirkbank spoke of him with contempt, as an intolerable person.  But then Lord Hartfield was not in Lady Kirkbank’s set.  He belonged to that serious circle to which Lady Kirkbank’s house appeared about as reputable a place of gathering as a booth on a race-course.

And now Lady Kirkbank told Lesbia that this Mr. Smithson, a nobody with a great fortune, was a man whose addresses she, the sister of Lord Maulevrier, ought to welcome.  Mr. Smithson, who claimed to be a lineal descendant of that Sir Michael Carrington, standard-bearer to Coeur de Lion in the Holy Land, whose descendants changed their name to Smith during the Wars of the Roses.  Mr. Smithson bodily proclaimed himself a scion of this good old county family, and bore on his plate and his coach panels the elephant’s head and the three demi-griffins of the Hertfordshire Smiths, who only smiled and shrugged their shoulders when they were complimented upon the splendid surroundings of their cousin.  Who could tell?  Some lateral branch of the standard-bearer’s family tree might have borne this illustrious twig.