Finding herself thus cold and lonely in the midst of the duchess’s splendour of peacock-blue velvet and peacock-feather decoration, Lesbia was almost glad when in the middle of Madame Metzikoff’s opening gondolied—­airy, fairy music, executed with surpassing delicacy—­Mr. Smithson crept gently into the fauteuil just behind hers, and leant over the back of the chair to whisper an inquiry as to her opinion of the pianist’s style.

‘She is exquisite,’ Lesbia murmured softly, but the whispered question and the murmured answer, low as they were, provoked indignant looks from a brace of damsels in Venetian red, who shook their Toby frills with an outraged air.

Lesbia felt that Mr. Smithson’s presence was hardly correct.  It would have been ‘better form’ if he had stayed away; and yet she was glad to have him here.  At the worst he was some one—­nay, according to Lady Kirkbank, he was the only one amongst all her admirers whose offer was worth having.  All Lesbia’s other conquests had counted as barren honour; but if she could have brought herself to accept Mr. Smithson she would have secured the very best match of the season.

To marry a plain Mr. Smithson—­a man who had made his money in iron—­in cochineal—­on the Stock Exchange—­had seemed to her absolute degradation, the surrender of all her lofty hopes, her golden dreams.  But Lady Kirkbank had put the question in a new light when she said that Smithson would be offered a peerage.  Smithson the peer would be altogether a different person from Smithson the commoner.

But was Lady Kirkbank sure of her facts, or truthful in her statement?  Lesbia’s experience of her chaperon’s somewhat loose notions of truth and exactitude made her doubtful upon this point.

Be this it might she was inclined to be civil to Smithson, albeit she was inwardly surprised and offended at his taking her refusal so calmly.

’You see that I am determined not to lose the privilege of your society, because I have been foolish!’ he said presently, in the pause after the first part of the recital.  ’I hope you will consider me as much your friend to-day as I was yesterday.’

‘Quite as much,’ she answered sweetly, and then they talked of Raff, and Rubenstein, and Henselt, and all the composers about whom it is the correct thing to discourse nowadays.

Before they left Belgrave Square Lady Kirkbank had offered Mr. Smithson Sir George’s place in her box at the Gaiety that evening, and had invited him to supper in Arlington Street afterwards.

It was Sarah Bernhardt’s first season in London—­the never-to-be-forgotten season of the Comedie Francaise.

‘I should love of all things to be there,’ said Mr. Smithson, meekly.  He had a couple of stalls in the third row for the whole of the season.  ’But how can I be sure that I shall not be turning Sir George out of doors?’

’Sir George can never sit out a serious play.  He only cares for Chaumont or Judie.  The Demi-monde is much too prosy for him.’