And yet she could not make up her mind to break with him, to say honestly, ’I never liked you much, and now we are engaged I find myself liking you less and less every day.  Save me from the irrevocable wickedness of a loveless marriage.  Forgive me, and let me go.’  No, this she could not bring herself to say.  She did not like Mr. Smithson, but she valued the position he was able to give her.  She wanted to be mistress of that infinite wealth—­she could not renounce that right to which she fancied she had been born, her right to be one of the Queens of Society:  and the only man who had offered to crown her as queen, to find her a palace and a court, was Horace Smithson.  Without Mr. Smithson her first season would have resulted in dire failure.  She might perhaps have endured that failure, and been content to abide the chances of a second season, had it not been for Mary’s triumph.  But for Mary to be a Countess, and for Lesbia to remain Lesbia Haselden, a nobody, dependent upon the caprices of a grandmother whose means might after all be but limited—­no, such a concatenation as that was not to be endured.  Lesbia told herself that she could not go back to Fellside to remain there indefinitely, a spinster and a dependent.  She had learnt the true value of money; she had found out what the world was like; and it seemed to her that some such person as Mr. Smithson was essential to her existence, just as a butler is a necessity in a house.  One may not like the man, but the post must be filled.

Again, if she were to throw over Mr. Smithson, and speculate upon her chances of next year, what hope had she of doing better in her second season than in her first?  The horizon was blank.  There was no great parti likely to offer himself for competition.  She had seen all that the market could produce.  Wealthy bachelors, high-born lovers, could not drop from the moon.  Lesbia, schooled by Lady Kirkbank, knew her peerage by heart; and she knew that, having missed Lord Hartfield, there was really no one in the Blue Book worth waiting for.  Thus, caring only for those things which wealth can buy, she had made up her mind that she could not do without Horace Smithson’s money; and she must therefore needs resign herself to the disagreeable necessity of taking Smithson and his money together.  The great auctioneer Fate would not divide the lot.

She told herself that for her a loveless marriage was, after all, no prodigious sacrifice.  She had found out that heart made but a small figure in the sum of her life.  She could do without love.  A year ago she had fancied herself in love with John Hammond.  In her seclusion at St. Bees, in the long, dull August days, sauntering up and down by the edge of the sea, in the melancholy sunset hour, she thought that her heart was broken, that life was worthless without the man she loved.  She had thought and felt all this, but not strongly enough to urge her to any great effort, not keenly enough to make her