Lesbia turned away her head with an impatient sigh.  She remembered perfectly that it was Lady Kirkbank who had persuaded her to order the diamond setting; but there was no use in talking about it now.  The thing was done.  She was two thousand pounds in debt—­two thousand pounds to these two people only—­and there were ever so many shops at which she had accounts—­glovers, bootmakers, habit-makers, the tailor who made her Newmarket coats and cloth gowns, the stationer who supplied her with note-paper of every variety, monogrammed, floral; sporting, illuminated with this or that device, the follies of the passing hour, hatched by penniless Invention in a garret, pandering to the vanities of the idle.

‘I must write to my grandmother by this afternoon’s post,’ said Lesbia, with a heavy sigh.

’Impossible.  We have to be at the Ranelagh by four o’clock.  Smithson and some other men are to meet us there.  I have promised to drive Mrs. Mostyn down.  You had better begin to dress.’

’But I ought to write to-day.  I had better ask for this money at once, and have done with it.  Two thousand pounds!  I feel as if I were a thief.  You say my grandmother is not a rich woman?’

’Not rich as the world goes nowadays.  Nobody is rich now, except your commercial magnates, like Smithson.  Great peers, unless their money is in London ground-rents, are great paupers.  To own land is to be destitute.  I don’t suppose two thousand pounds will break your grandmother’s bank; but of course it is a large sum to ask for at the end of two months; especially as she sent you a good deal of money while we were at Cannes.  If you were engaged—­about to make a really good match—­you could ask for the money as a matter of course; but as it is, although you have been tremendously admired, from a practical point of view you are a failure.’

A failure.  It was a hard word, but Lesbia felt it was true.  She, the reigning beauty, the cynosure of every eye, had made no conquest worth talking about, except Mr. Smithson.

’Don’t tell your grandmother anything about the bills for a week or two,’ said Lady Kirkbank, soothingly.  ’The creatures can wait for their money.  Give yourself time to think.’

‘I will,’ answered Lesbia, dolefully.

’And now make haste, and get ready for the Ranelagh.  My love, your eyes are dreadfully heavy.  You must use a little belladonna.  I’ll send Rilboche to you.’

And for the first time in her life, Lesbia, too depressed to argue the point, consented to have her eyes doctored by Rilboche.

She was gay enough at the Ranelagh, and looked her loveliest at a dinner party that evening, and went to three parties after the dinner, and went home in the faint light of early morning, after sitting out a late waltz in a balcony with Mr. Smithson, a balcony banked round with hot-house flowers which were beginning to droop a little in the chilly morning air, just as beauty drooped under the searching eye of day.