Last season Lord Hartfield’s absence had cast a cloud over the matrimonial horizon.  He had been a traveller for more than a year—­Patagonia, Peru, the Pyramids, Japan, the North Pole—­society cared not where—­the fact that he was gone was all-sufficient.  Bachelors a shade less eligible came to the front in his absence and became first favourites.  Lady Maulevrier, well informed in advance, had deferred Lesbia’s presentation till next season, when she was told Lord Hartfield would certainly re-appear.  His plans had been made for return before Christmas; and it would seem that his scheme of life was laid down with as much precision as if he had been a prince of the blood royal.  Thus it happened, to Lesbia’s intense disgust, that her debut was deferred till the verge of her twentieth birthday.  It would never do, Lady Maulevrier told herself, for the edge to be taken off the effect which Lesbia’s beauty was to make on society during Lord Hartfield’s absence.  He must be there, on the spot, to see this star rise gently and slowly above society’s horizon, and to mark how everybody bowed down and worshipped the new light.

‘I shall be an old woman before I appear in society,’ said Lesbia, petulantly; ’and I shall be like a wild woman of the woods; for I have seen nothing, and know nothing of the civilised world.’

’You will be ever so much more attractive than the young women I hear of, who have seen and known a great deal too much,’ answered the dowager; and as her granddaughter knew that Lady Maulevrier’s word was a law that altered not, there was no more idle repinings.

Her ladyship gave no reason for the postponement of Lesbia’s presentation.  She was far too diplomatic to breathe a word of her ideas with regard to Lord Hartfield.  Anything like a matrimonial scheme would have been revolting to Lesbia, who had grand, but not sordid views about matrimony.  She thought it her mission to appear and to conquer.  A crowd of suitors would sigh around her, like the loves and graces round that fair Belinda whose story she had read so often; and it would be her part to choose the most worthy.  The days are gone when a girl would so much as look at such a fribble as Sir Plume.  Her virgin fancy demands the Tennysonian ideal, the grave and knightly Arthur.

But when Lesbia thought of the most worthy, it was always of the worthiest in her own particular sphere; and he of course would be titled and wealthy, and altogether fitted to be her husband.  He would take her by the hand and lead her to a higher seat on the dais, and place upon her head, or at least upon her letter-paper and the panels of her carriage, a coronet in which the strawberry leaves should stand out more prominently than in her brother’s emblazonment.  Lesbia’s mind could not conceive an ignoble marriage, or the possibility of the most worthy happening to be found in a lower circle than her own.