She went up to her room in the clear early light, and stood like a statue, with fixed thoughtful eyes, while Kibble took off her finery, the pretty pale yellow gown which set off her dark brown hair, her violet eyes.  For the first time in her life she felt the keen pang of anxiety about money matters—­the necessity to think of ways and means.  She had no idea how much money she had received from her grandmother since she had begun her career in Scotland last autumn.  The cheques had been sent her as she asked for them; sometimes even before she asked for them; and she had kept no account.  She thought her grandmother was so rich that expenditure could not matter.  She supposed that she was drawing upon an inexhaustible supply.  And now Lady Kirkbank had told her that Lady Maulevrier was not rich, as the world reckons nowadays.  The savings of a dowager countess even in forty years of seclusion could be but a small fund to draw upon for the expenses of life at high pressure.

‘The sums people spend nowadays are positively appalling,’ said Lady Kirkbank.  ’A man with five or six thousand a year is an absolute pauper.  I’m sure our existence is only genteel beggary, and yet we spend over ten thousand.’

Enlightened thus by the lips of the worldly-wise, Lesbia thought ruefully of the bills which her grandmother would have to pay for her at the end of the season, bills of the amount whereof she could not even make an approximate guess.  Seraphine’s charges had never been discussed in her hearing—­but Lady Kirkbank had admitted that the creature was dear.

CHAPTER XXIX.

‘SWIFT SUBTLE POST, CARRIER OF GRISLY CARE.’

Maulevrier called in Arlington Street before twelve o’clock next day, and found Lesbia just returning from her early ride, looking as fresh and fair as if there had been no such thing as Nap or late hours in the story of her life.  She was reposing in a large easy chair by the open window, in habit and hat, just as she had come from the Row, where she had been laughing and chatting with Mr. Smithson, who jogged demurely by her side on his short-legged hunter, dropping out envenomed little jokes about the passers by.  People who saw him riding by her side upon this particular morning fancied there was something more than usual in the gentleman’s manner, and made up their minds that Lady Lesbia Haselden was to be mistress of the fine house in Park Lane.  Mr. Smithson had fluttered and fluttered for the last five seasons; but this time the flutterer was caught.

In her newly-awakened anxiety about money matters, Lesbia had forgotten Mary’s engagement:  but the sight of Maulevrier recalled the fact.

‘Come over here and sit down,’ she said, ’and tell me this nonsense about Mary.  I am expiring with curiosity.  The thing is too absurd.’

‘Why absurd?’ asked Maulevrier, sitting where she bade him, and studiously perusing the name in his hat, as if it were a revelation.