’Then I’ll stay at home on purpose to see you.  News is always delightful.  Is it good news, by-the-bye?’

‘Very good; at least, I think so.’

‘What is it about?’

’Oh! that’s a long story, and the curtain is just going up.  The news is about Mary.’

‘About Mary!’ exclaimed Lesbia, elevating her eyebrows.  ’What news can there possibly be about Mary?’

’Such news as there generally is about every nice jolly girl, at least once in her life.’

‘You don’t mean that she is engaged—­to a curate?’

’No, not to a curate.  There goes the curtain.  “I’ll see you later,” as the Yankee President used to say when people bothered him, and he didn’t like to say no.’

Engaged:  Mary engaged!  The idea of such an altogether unexpected event distracted Lesbia’s mind all through the last act of the Demi-monde.  She hardly knew what the actors were talking about.  Mary, her younger sister!  Mary, a good looking girl enough, but by no means a beauty, and with manners utterly unformed.  That Mary should be engaged to be married, while she, Lesbia, was still free, seemed an obvious absurdity.

And yet the fact was, on reflection, easily to be accounted for.  These unattractive girls are generally the first to bind themselves with the vows of betrothal.  Lady Kirkbank had told her of many such cases.  The poor creatures know that their chances will be few, and therefore gratefully welcome the first wooer.

‘But who can the man be?’ thought Lesbia.  ’Mary has been kept as secluded as a cloistered nun.  There are so few families we have ever been allowed to mix with.  The man must be a curate, who has taken advantage of grandmother’s illness to force his way into the family circle at Fellside—­and who has made love to Mary in some of her lonely rambles over the hills, I daresay.  It is really very wrong to allow a girl to roam about in that way.’

Sir George and a couple of his horsey friends were waiting for supper when Lady Kirkbank and her party arrived in Arlington Street.  The dining-room looked a picture of comfort.  The oval table, the low lamps, the clusters of candles under coloured shades, the great Oriental bowl of wild flowers—­eglantine, honeysuckle, foxglove, all the sweet hedge flowers of midsummer, made a central mass of colour and brightness against the subdued and even sombre tones of walls and curtains.  The room was old, the furniture old.  Nothing had been altered since the time of Sir George’s great grandfather; and the whirligig of time had just now made the old things precious.  Yes, those chairs and tables and sideboards and bookcases and wine-coolers against which Georgie’s soul had revolted in the early years of her wedded life were now things of beauty, and Georgie’s friends envied her the possession of indisputable Chippendale furniture.