This was a cool-headed style of treatment to which Mr. Smithson was not accustomed, and which charmed him accordingly.  Young women usually threw themselves at his head, as it were; but here was a girl who talked to him as indifferently as if he were a tradesman offering his wares.

‘What a dreadfully practical person you are?’ he exclaimed.  ’What is the use of crossing Piccadilly?  Well, in the first place, you will make me ineffably happy.  But perhaps that doesn’t count.  In the second place, I shall be able to show you some rather good pictures of the French school—­’

‘I hate the French school!’ interjected Lesbia.  ’Tricky, flashy, chalky, shallow, smelling of the footlights and the studio.’

’Well, sink the pictures.  You will meet some very charming people, belonging to that artist world which is not to be met everywhere.’

’I will go to Park Lane to meet your people, if Lady Kirkbank likes to take me,’ said Lesbia; and with this answer Mr. Smithson was bound to be content.

’My pet, if you had made it the study of your life how to treat that man you could not do it better,’ said Lady Kirkbank, when they were driving along the dusty road between dusty hedges and dusty trees, past that last remnant of country which was daily being debased into London.  ‘Upon my word, Lesbia, I begin to think you must be a genius.’

‘Did you see any gowns you liked better than mine?’ asked Lesbia, reclining reposefully, with her little bronze shoes upon the opposite cushion.

‘Not one—­Seraphine has surpassed herself.’

’You are always saying that.  One would suppose you were a sleeping partner in the firm.  But I really think this brown and buttercups is rather nice.  I saw that odious American girl just now—­Miss—­Miss Milwaukee, that mop-stick girl people raved about at Cannes.  She was in pale blue and cream colour, a milk and water mixture, and looked positively plain.’

CHAPTER XXVII.

LESBIA CROSSES PICCADILLY.

Lady Kirkbank and Lady Lesbia drove across Piccadilly at eleven o’clock on Wednesday morning to breakfast with Mr. Smithson, and although Lesbia had questioned whether it was worth while crossing Piccadilly to eat one’s breakfast, she had subsequently considered it worth while ordering a new gown from Seraphine for the occasion; or, it may be, rather that the breakfast made a plausible excuse for a new gown, the pleasure of ordering which was one of those joys of a London life that had not yet lost their savour.

The gown, devised especially for the early morning, was simplicity itself—­rusticity, even.  It was a Dresden shepherdess gown, made of a soft flowered stuff, with roses and forget-me-nots on a creamy ground.  There was a great deal of creamy lace, and innumerable yards of palest azure and palest rose ribbon in the confection, and there was a coquettish little hat, the regular Dresden hat, with a wreath of rosebuds.