Her soul yearned to him with a tenderness which was not all on Lesbia’s account.  Forty-nine years ago she had fondly loved his father—­loved him and had been fain to renounce him; for Ronald Hollister, afterwards Earl of Hartfield, was then a younger son, and the two families had agreed that marriage between paupers was an impudent flying in the face of Providence, which must be put down with an iron hand.  Lord Hartfield sent his son to Turkey in the diplomatic service; and the old dowager Lady Carrisbrook whisked her niece off to London, and kept her there, under watch and ward, till Lord Maulevrier proposed and was accepted by her.  There should be no foolishness, no clandestine correspondence.  The iron hand crushed two young hearts, and secured a brilliant future for the bodies which survived.

Fifteen years later Ronald’s elder brother died unmarried.  Ha abandoned that career of vagrant diplomacy which had taken him all over Europe, and as far as Washington, and re-appeared in London, the most elegant man of his era, but thoroughly blase.  There were rumours of an unhappy attachment in the Faubourg Saint Germain; of a tragedy at Petersburg.  Society protested that Lord Hartfield would die a bachelor, as his brother died before him.  The Hollisters are not a marrying family, said society.  But six or seven years after his return to England Lord Hartfield married Lady Florence Ilmington, a beauty in her first season, and a very sweet but somewhat prudish young person.  The marriage resulted in the birth of an heir, whose appearance upon this mortal stage was followed within a year by his father’s exit.  Hence the Hartfield property, always a fine estate, had been nursed and fattened during a long minority, and the present Lord Hartfield was reputed one of the richest young men of his time.  He was also spoken of as a superior person, inheriting all his father’s intellectual gifts, and having the reputation of being singularly free from the vices of profligate youth.  He was neither prig nor pedant, and he was very popular in the best society; but he was not ashamed to let it be seen that his ambition soared higher than the fashionable world of turf and stable, cards and pigeon matches.

Though not of the gay world, nor in it, Lady Maulevrier had contrived to keep herself thoroughly en rapport with society.  Her few chosen friends, with whom she corresponded on terms of perfect confidence, were among the best people in London—­not the circulators of club-house canards, the pickers-up of second-hand gossip from the society papers, but actors in the comedy of high life, arbiters of fashion and taste, born and bred in the purple.