Mrs. Penfold sighed.  But Lydia, changed the subject, entered upon a discussion, so inventively artistic, of the new bonnet, and the new dress in which her mother was to appear on Whitsunday, that when bedtime came Mrs. Penfold had seldom passed a pleasanter evening.

After her mother had gone to bed, Lydia wandered into the moonlit garden, and strolled about its paths, lost in the beauty of its dim flowers and the sweetness of its scents.  The spring was in her veins, and she felt strangely shaken and restless.  She tried to think of her painting, and the prospect she had of getting into an artistic club, a club of young landscapists, which exhibited every May, and was beginning to make a mark.  But her thoughts strayed perpetually.

So her mother imagined that Lord Tatham had only danced once with her at the Hunt Ball?  As a matter of fact, he had danced with her once, and then, as dancing was by no means the youth’s strong point, they had sat out in a corner of the hotel garden, by the river, through four supper dances.  And if the fact had escaped the notice both of Mrs. Penfold and Susy, greatly to Lydia’s satisfaction, she was well aware that it had not altogether escaped the notice of the neighbourhood, which kept an eager watch on the doings of its local princeling in matters matrimonial.

And as to the various meetings at the rectory, Lydia could easily have made much of them, if she had wished.  She had come to see that they were deliberately sought by Lord Tatham, and encouraged by Mrs. Deacon.  And because she had come to see it, she meant to refuse another invitation from Mrs. Deacon, which was in her pocket—­without consulting her mother.  Besides—­said youthful pride—­if Lord Tatham really wished to know them, Lady Tatham must call.  And Lady Tatham had not called.

Her mother was quite right.  The marriage of young earls are, generally speaking, “arranged,” and there are hovering relations, and unwritten laws in the background, which only the foolish forget.  “And as I am not a candidate for the place,” thought Lydia, “I won’t be misunderstood!”

She did not intend indeed to be troubled—­for the present—­with such matters at all.

“Marrying is not in the bill!” She declaimed it to a lilac-bush, standing with her hands behind her, and face uplifted.  “I have no money, and no position—­therefore the vast majority of men won’t want to marry me.  And as to scheming to make them want it—­why!—­good heavens!—­when there are such amusing things to do in the world!”

She paced the garden paths, thinking passionately, defiantly of her art, yet indignant with herself for these vague yearnings and languors that had to be so often met and put down.

“Men!—­men!—­what do they matter to me, except for talk—­and fun!  Yet there one goes thinking about them—­like any fool.  It’s sex of course—­and youth.  I can no more escape them than anybody else.  But I Can be mistress of them.  I will.  That’s where this generation differs.  We needn’t drift—­we see clear.  Oh! those clouds—­that blue!—­those stars!  Dear world!  Isn’t beauty enough?”