It was a gay scene, and Lesbia gave herself up to the amusement of the hour, and talked and chaffed as she had learned to talk and chaff in one brief season, holding her own against all comers.

Rood Hall looked lovely when they went back to it in the gloaming, an Elizabethan pile crowned with towers.  The four wings with their conical roofs, the massive projecting windows, grey stone, ruddy brickwork, lattices reflecting the sunlight, Italian terrace and blue river in the foreground, cedars and yews at the back, all made a splendid picture of an English ancestral home.

‘Nice old place, isn’t it?’ asked Mr. Smithson, seeing Lesbia’s admiring gaze as the launch neared the terrace.  They two were standing in the bows, apart from all the rest.

‘Nice! it is simply perfect.’

‘Oh no, it isn’t.  There is one thing wanted yet.’

‘What is that?’

’A wife.  You are the only person who can make any house of mine perfect. 
Will you?’ He took her hand, which she did not withdraw from his grasp. 
He bent his head and kissed the little hand in its soft Swedish glove.

‘Will you, Lesbia?’ he repeated earnestly; and she answered softly, ‘Yes.’

That one brief syllable was more like a sigh than a spoken word, and it seemed to her as if in the utterance of that syllable the three thousand pounds had been paid.

CHAPTER XXXI.

‘KIND IS MY LOVE TO-DAY, TO-MORROW KIND.’

While Lady Lesbia was draining the cup of London folly and London care to the dregs, Lady Mary was leading her usual quiet life beside the glassy lake, where the green hill-sides and sheep walks were reflected in all their summer verdure under the cloudless azure of a summer sky.  A monotonous life—­passing dull as seen from the outside—­and yet Mary was very happy, happy even in her solitude, with the grave deep joy of a satisfied heart, a mind at rest.  All life had taken a new colour since her engagement to John Hammond.  A sense of new duties, an awakening earnestness had given a graver tone to her character.  Her spirits were less wild, yet not less joyous than of old.  The joy was holier, deeper.

Her lover’s letters were the chief delight of her lonely days.  To read them again and again, and ponder upon them, and then to pour out all her heart and mind in answering them.  These were pleasures enough for her young like.  Hammond’s letters were such as any woman might be proud to receive.  They were not love-letters only.  He wrote as friend to friend; not descending from the proud pinnacle of masculine intelligence to the lower level of feminine silliness; not writing down to a simple country girl’s capacity; but writing-fully and fervently, as if there were no subject too lofty or too grave for the understanding of his betrothed.  He wrote as one sure of being sympathised with, wrote as to his second self:  and Mary showed herself not unworthy of the honour thus rendered to her intellect.