’We are you and I, for the nonce.  The invitations will be issued ostensibly by me, but they will really emanate from you.’

‘I am to be the shadow behind the throne,’ said Lesbia.  ’How delightful!’

‘I would rather you were the sovereign ruler, on the throne,’ answered Smithson, tenderly.  ‘That throne shall be empty till you fill it.’

‘Please go on with your list of people,’ said Lesbia, checking this gush of sentiment.

She began to feel somehow that she was drifting from all her moorings, that in accepting this invitation to Rood Hall she was allowing herself to be ensnared into an alliance about which she was still doubtful.  If anything better had appeared in the prospect of her life—­if any worthier suitor had come forward, she would have whistled Mr. Smithson down the wind; but no worthier suitor had offered himself.  It was Smithson or nothing.  If she did not accept Smithson, she would go back to Fellside heavily burdened with debt, and an obvious failure.  She would have run the gauntlet of a London season without definite result; and this, to a young woman so impressed with her own transcendent merits, was a most humiliating state of things.

Other people’s names were suggested by Mr. Smithson and approved by Lesbia, and a house party of about fourteen in all was made up.  Mr. Smithson’s steam launch would comfortably accommodate that number.  He had a couple of barges for chance visitors, and kept an open table on board them during the regatta.

The visit arranged, the next question was gowns.  Lesbia had gowns enough to have stocked a draper’s shop; but then, as she and Lady Kirkbank deplored, the difficulty was that she had worn them all, some as many as three or four times.  They were doubtless all marked and known.  Some of them had been described in the society papers.  At Henley she would be expected to wear something distinctly new, to introduce some new fashion of gown or hat or parasol.  No matter how ugly the new thing might be, so long as it was startling; no matter how eccentric, provided it was original.

‘What am I to do?’ asked Lesbia, despairingly.

’There is only one thing that can be done.  We must go instantly to Seraphine and insist upon her inventing something.  If she has no idea ready she must telegraph Worth and get him to send something over.  Your old things will do very well for Rood Hall.  You have no end of pretty gowns for morning and evening; but you must be original on the race days.  Your gowns will be in all the papers.’

‘But I shall be only getting deeper into debt,’ said Lesbia, with a sigh.

’That can’t be helped.  If you go into society you must be properly dressed.  We’ll go to Clanricarde Place directly after luncheon, and see what that old harpy has to show us.’

Lesbia had a rather uncomfortable feeling about facing the fair Seraphine, without being able to give her a cheque upon account of that dreadful bill.  She had quite accepted Lady Kirkbank’s idea that bills never need be discharged in full, and that the true system of finance was to give an occasional cheque on account, as a sop to Cerberus.  True, that while Cerberus fattened on the sops the bill seemed always growing; and the final crash, when Cerberus grew savage and sops could be no more accepted, was too awful to be thought about.