about among the company.  Here a hint of coming insolvency; there a whisper of a threatened divorce suit, staved off for awhile, compromises, family secrets, little difficulties everywhere; betrothed couples smilingly accepting congratulations, who should never have been affianced were truth and honour the rule of life; forsaken wives pretending to think their husbands models of fidelity; jovial creatures with ruin staring in their faces; households divided and shamming union; almost everybody living above his or her means; and the knowledge that nobody is any better or any happier than his neighbour society’s only fountain of consolation.

Lady Lesbia’s gowns and parasols had been admired, her engagement had furnished an infinity of gossip, and the fact of Montesma’s constant attendance upon her had given zest to the situation, just that flavour of peril and fatality which the soul of society loveth.

‘Is she going to marry them both?’ asked an ancient dowager of the ever-young type.

’No, dear Lady Sevenoaks, she can only marry one, don’t you know; but the other is nice to go about with; and I believe it is the other she really likes.’

‘It is always the other that a woman likes,’ answered the dowager; ’I am madly in love with this Peruvian—­no, I think you said Cuban—­myself.  I wish some good-natured creature would present him to me.  If you know anybody who knows him, tell them to bring him to my next afternoon—­Saturday.  But why does—­chose—­machin—­Smithson allow such a handsome hanger-on?  After marriage I could understand that he might not be able to help himself; but before marriage a man generally has some kind of authority.’

The world wondered a little, just as Lady Sevenoaks wondered, at Smithson’s complacency in allowing a man so attractive as Montesma to be so much in the society of his future wife, yet even the censorious could but admit that the Cuban’s manner offered no ground for offence.  He came to Goodwood ‘on his own hook,’ as society put it:  and every man who wears a decent coat and is not a welsher has a right to enjoy the prettiest race-course in England.  He spent a considerable part of the day in Lesbia’s company; but since she was the centre of a little crowd all the time, there could be no offence in this.  He was a stranger, knowing very few people, and having nothing to do but to amuse himself.  Smithson was an old and familiar friend, and was in a measure bound to give him hospitality.

Mr. Smithson had recognised that obligation, but in a somewhat sparing manner.  There were a dozen unoccupied bedchambers in the Park Lane Renaissance villa; but Smithson did not invite his Cuban acquaintance to shift his quarters from the Bristol to Park Lane.  He was civil to Don Gomez:  but anyone who had taken the trouble to watch and study the conduct and social relations of these two men would have seen that his civility was a forced civility, and that he endured the Spaniard’s society under constraint of some kind.