ociety said sharper or more
unpleasant things than Miss Lorimer, and by virtue of this gift she got
invited about a great deal more than she might have done had she been
distinguished for sweetness of speech and manner. Georgie Lorimer's
presence at a dinner table gave just that pungent flavour which is like
the faint suspicion of garlic in a fricassee or of tarragon in a salad.

Now in this very season, when Colonel Lorimer was inclined to speak of
his daughter, as Sainte Beuve wrote of Musset, as a young woman with a
very brilliant past, a lucky turn of events gave Georgina a fresh start
in life, which may be called a new departure. Lady Diana Angersthorpe,
the belle of the season, took a fancy to her, was charmed with her sharp
tongue and acute sense of the ridiculous. The two became fast friends,
and were seen everywhere together. The best men all flocked round the
beauty, and all talked to the beauty's companion: and before the season
was over, Sir George Kirkbank, who had had half made up his mind to
propose to Lady Diana, found himself engaged to that uncommonly jolly
girl, Lady Diana's friend. Georgina spent August and September with Lady
Di, at the Marchioness of Carisbroke's delightful villa in the Isle of
Wight, and Sir George kept his yacht at Cowes all the time, and was in
constant attendance upon his fiancee. It was George and Georgie
everywhere. In October Colonel Lorimer had the profound pleasure of
giving away his daughter, before the altar in St. George's, Hanover
Square, and it may be said of him that nothing in his relations with
that young lady became him better than his manner of parting with her.

So the needy Colonel's daughter became Lady Kirkbank, and in the
following spring Diana Angersthorpe was married at the same St. George's
to the Earl of Maulevrier. The friends were divided by distance and by
circumstance as the years rolled on; but friendship was steadily
maintained; and a regular correspondence with Lady Kirkbank, whose pen
was as sharp as her tongue, was one of the means by which Lady
Maulevrier had kept herself thoroughly posted in all those small events,
unrecorded by newspapers, which make up the secret history of society.

It was of her old friend Georgie that her ladyship thought in her
present anxiety. Lady Kirkbank had more than once suggested that Lady
Maulevrier's granddaughters should vary the monotony of Fellside by a
visit to her place near Doncaster, or her castle north