‘You must feel warmly interested in watching his career,’ said Mary, sympathetically.

’I am interested in everything that concerns him.  I will tell you another secret, Mary.  I think I am getting into my dotage, my dear, or I should hardly talk to you like this,’ said Lady Maulevrier, with a touch of bitterness.

Mary was sitting on a stool by the sofa, close to the invalid’s pillow.  She clasped her grandmother’s hand and kissed it fondly.

’Dear grandmother, I think you are talking to me like this to-day because you are beginning to care for me a little,’ she said, tenderly.

’Oh, my dear, you are very good, very sweet and forgiving to care for me at all, after my neglect of you,’ answered Lady Maulevrier, with a sigh.  ’I have kept you out in the cold so long, Mary.  Lesbia—­well, Lesbia has been a kind of infatuation for me, and like all infatuations mine has ended in disappointment and bitterness.  Ambition has been the bane of my life, Mary; and when I could no longer be ambitious for myself—­when my own existence had become a mere death in life, I began to dream and to scheme for the aggrandisement of my granddaughter.  Lesbia’s beauty, Lesbia’s elegance seemed to make success certain—­and so I dreamt my dream—­which may never be fulfilled.’

‘What was your dream, grandmother?  May I know all about it?’

’That was the secret I spoke of just now.  Yes, Mary, you may know, for I fear the dream will never be realised.  I wanted my Lesbia to become Lord Hartfield’s wife.  I would have brought them together myself, could I have but gone to London; but, failing that, I fancied Lady Kirkbank would have divined my wishes without being told them, and would have introduced Hartfield to Lesbia; and now the London season is drawing to a close, and Hartfield and Lesbia have never met.  He hardly goes anywhere, I am told.  He devotes himself exclusively to politics; and he is not in Lady Kirkbank’s set.  A terrible disappointment to me, Mary!’

‘It is a pity,’ said Mary.  ’Lesbia is so lovely.  If Lord Hartfield were fancy-free he ought to fall in love with her, could they but meet.  I thought that in London all fashionable people knew each other, and were continually meeting.’

’It used to be so in my day, Mary.  Almack’s was a common ground, even if there had been no other.  But now there are circles and circles, I believe, rings that touch occasionally, but never break and mingle.  I am afraid poor Georgie’s set is not quite so nice as I could have wished.  Yet Lesbia writes as if she were in raptures with her chaperon, and with all the people she meets.  And then Georgie tells me that this Mr. Smithson whom Lesbia has refused is a very important personage, a millionaire, and very likely to be made a peer.’

‘A new peer,’ said Mary, making a wry face.  ’One would rather have an old commoner.  I always fancy a newly-made peer must be like a newly-built house, glaring, and staring, and arid and uncongenial.’