‘About half an hour’

’I only wish I had known.  I should not have dawdled so long over my dressing.’

‘I am very glad you did not know,’ Lesbia answered coolly.

’Do you suppose I never want to be alone?  Life in London is perpetual turmoil; one’s eyes grow weary with ever-moving crowds, one’s ears ache with trying to distinguish one voice among the buzz of voices.’

’Then why go back to town?  Why go back to the turmoil and the treadmill?  It is only a kind of treadmill, after all, though we choose to call it pleasure.  Stay here, Lesbia, and let us live upon the river, and among the flowers,’ urged Smithson, with as romantic an air as if he had never heard of contango, or bulling and bearing; and yet only half an hour ago, while his valet was shaving him, he was debating within himself whether he should be bear or bull in his influence upon certain stock.

It was supposed that he never went near the city, that he had shaken the dust of Lombard Street and the House off his shoes, that his fortune was made, and he had no further need of speculation.  Yet the proverb holds good with the stock-jobber.  ‘He who has once drunk will drink again.’  Of that fountain there is no satiety.

‘Stay and hear the last of the nightingales,’ he murmured; ’we are famous for our nightingales.’

’I wonder you don’t order a fricassee of their tongues, like that loathsome person in Roman history.’

’I hope I shall never resemble any loathsome person.  Why can you not stay?’

‘Why, because it is not etiquette, Lady Kirkbank says.’

’Lady Kirkbank, eh? la belle farce, Lady Kirkbank standing out for etiquette.’

’Don’t laugh at my chaperon, sir.  Upon what rock can a poor girl lean if you undermine her faith in her chaperon, sir.’

’I hope you will have a better guardian before you are a month older.  I mean to be a very strong rock, Lesbia.  You do not know how firmly I shall stand between you and all the perils of society.  You have been but poorly guarded hitherto.’

‘You talk as if you mean to be an abominable tyrant,’ said Lesbia.  ’If you don’t take care I shall change my mind, and recall my promise.’

’Not on that account, Lesbia:  every woman likes a man who stands up for his own.  It is only your invertebrate husband whose wife drifts into the divorce court.  I mean to keep and hold the prize I have won.  When is it to be, dearest—­our wedding day?’

‘Not for ages, I hope—­some time next summer, at the earliest.’

‘You would not be so cruel as to keep me waiting a year?’

‘Why not?’

‘You would not ask that if you loved me.’

‘You are asking too much,’ said Lesbia, with a flash of defiance.  ’There has been nothing said about love yet.  You asked me to be your wife, and I said yes—­meaning that at some remote period such a thing might be.’