‘Then I’ll go,’ said Lesbia, with a resigned air.  ’Not for worlds would I deprive you and Sir George of a pleasure.’

In her heart of hearts she rather wished to see Rood Hall.  She was curious to behold the extent and magnitude of Mr. Smithson’s possessions.  She had seen his Italian villa in Park Lane, the perfection of modern art, modern skill, modern taste, reviving the old eternally beautiful forms, recreating the Pitti Palace—­the homes of the Medici—­the halls of dead and gone Doges—­and now she was told that Rood Hall—­a genuine old English manor-house, in perfect preservation—­was even more interesting than the villa in Park Lane.  At Rood Hall there were ideal stables and farm, hot-houses without number, rose gardens, lawns, the river, and a deer park.

So the invitation was accepted, and Mr. Smithson immediately laid himself at Lesbia’s feet, as it were, with regard to all other invitations for the Henley festival.  Whom should he ask to meet her?—­whom would she have?

‘You are very good,’ she said, ’but I have really no wish to be consulted.  I am not a royal personage, remember.  I could not presume to dictate.’

’But I wish you to dictate.  I wish you to be imperious in the expression of your wishes.’

’Lady Kirkbank has a better right than I, if anybody is to be consulted,’ said Lesbia, modestly.

’Lady Kirkbank is an old dear, who gets on delightfully with everybody.  But you are more sensitive.  Your comfort might be marred by an obnoxious presence.  I will ask nobody whom you do not like—­who is not thoroughly simpatico.  Have you no particular friends of your own choosing whom you would like me to ask?’

Lesbia confessed that she had no such friends.  She liked everybody tolerably; but she had not a talent for friendship.  Perhaps it was because in the London season one was too busy to make friends.

’I can fancy two girls getting quite attached to each other, out of the season,’ she said, ’but in May and June life is all a rush and a scramble——­’

‘And one has no time to gather wayside flowers of friendship,’ interjected Mr. Smithson.  ’Still, if there are no people for whom you have an especial liking, there must be people whom you detest.’

Lesbia owned that it was so.  Detestation came of itself, naturally.

‘Then let me be sure I do not ask any of your pet aversions,’ said Mr. Smithson.  ’You met Mr. Plantagenet Parsons, the theatrical critic, at my house.  Shall we have him?’

‘I like all amusing people.’

’And Horace Meander, the poet.  Shall we have him?  He is brimful of conceits and affectations, but he’s a tremendous joke.’

‘Mr. Meander is charming.’

’Suppose we ask Mostyn and his wife?  Her scraps of science are rather good fun.’

‘I haven’t the faintest objection to the Mostyns,’ replied Lesbia.  ’But who are “we"?’