’When we are in Italy I will have her modelled, just in that attitude, and that dress,’ said Mr. Smithson.  ’She will make a lovely companion for my Reading Girl:  one all repose and reverie, the other all life and action.  Dear Lady Kirkbank, you really must stay for another week at least.  Why go back to the smoke and sultriness of town?  Here we can almost live on the water; and I will send to London for some people to make music for us in the evenings, or if you miss your little game at “Nap,” we will play for an hour or so every night.  It shall not be my fault if my house is not pleasant for you.’

’Your house is charming, and I shall be here only too often in the days to come; you will have more than enough of me then, I promise you,’ replied Georgie, with her girlish laugh, ’but we must not stop a day longer now.  People would begin to talk.  Besides, we have engagements for every hour of the week that is coming, and for a fortnight after:  and then I suppose I ought to take Lesbia to the North to see her grandmother, and to discuss all the preparations and arrangements for this very serious event in which you and Lesbia are to be the chief performers.’

’I shall be very glad to go to Grasmere myself, and to make the acquaintance of my future grandmother-in-law,’ said Mr. Smithson.

’You will be charmed with her.  She belongs to the old school—­something of a fossil, perhaps, but a very dignified fossil.  She has grown old in a rustic seclusion, and knows less of our world than a mother abbess; but she has read immensely, and is wonderfully clever.  I am bound to tell you that she has very lofty ideas about her granddaughter; and I believe she will only be reconciled to Lesbia’s marriage with a commoner by the notion that you are sure of a peerage.  I ventured to hint as much in my letter to Lady Maulevrier yesterday.’

A shade of sullenness crept over Horace Smithson’s visage.

’I should hope that such settlements as I am in a position to make will convince Lady Maulevrier that I am a respectable suitor for her granddaughter, ex peerage,’ he said, somewhat haughtily.

’My dear Smithson, did I not tell you that poor Lady Maulevrier is a century behind the times,’ exclaimed Lady Kirkbank, with an aggrieved look.  ’If she were one of us, of course she would know that wealth is the paramount consideration, and that you are quite the best match of the season.  But she is dreadfully arrieree, poor dear thing; and she must have amused herself with the day-dream of seeing Lesbia a duchess, or something of that kind.  I shall tell her that Lesbia can be one of the queens of society without having strawberry leaves on her coach panels, and that my dear friend Horace Smithson is a much better match than a seedy duke.  So don’t look cross, my dear fellow; in me you have a friend who will never desert you.’

‘Thanks,’ said Smithson, inwardly resolving that, so soon as this little transaction of his marriage were over, he would see as little of Georgie Kirkbank and her cotton frocks and schoolgirl hats as bare civility would allow.