he waited for her carriage--had looked at her piteously
with tenderest declarations trembling on their lips; but she had
contrived to keep them at bay, to strike them dumb by her coldness, or
confound them by her coquetry; for all these were ineligibles, whom Lady
Lesbia Haselden did not want to have the trouble of refusing.

Lady Kirkbank was in no haste to marry her _protegee_--nay, it was much
more to her interest that Lesbia should remain single for three or four
seasons, and that she, Lady Kirkbank, might have the advantage of close
association with the young beauty, and the privilege of spending Lady
Maulevrier's money. But she would have liked to be able to inform
Lesbia's grandmother of some tremendous conquest--the subjugation of a
worthy victim. This herd of nobodies--younger sons with courtesy titles
and empty pockets, ruined Guardsmen, briefless barristers--what was the
use of telling Lady Maulevrier about such barren victories? Lady
Kirkbank therefore contented herself with expatiating upon Lesbia's
triumphs in a general way: how graciously the Princess spoke to her and
about her; how she had been asked to sit on the dais at the ball at
Marlborough House, and had danced in the Royal quadrille.

'Has Lesbia happened to meet Lord Hartfield?' Lady Maulevrier asked,
incidentally, in one of her letters.

No. Lord Hartfield was in London, for he had made a great speech in the
Lords on a question of vital interest; but he was not going into
society, or at any rate into society of a frivolous kind. He had given
himself up to politics, as so many young men did nowadays, which was
altogether horrid of them. His name had appeared in the list of guests
at one or two cabinet dinners; but the world of polo matches and
afternoon teas, dances and drums, private theatricals, and Orleans House
suppers, knew him not. As a competitor on the fashionable race-course,
Lord Hartfield was, in common parlance, out of the running.

And now on this glorious June day, this Thursday of Thursdays, the Ascot
Cup day, for the first time since Lesbia's debut, Lady Kirkbank had
occasion to smile upon an admirer whose pretensions were worthy of the
highest consideration.

Mr. Smithson, of Park Lane, and Rood Hall, near Henley, and Formosa,
Cowes, and Le Bouge, Deauville, and a good many other places too
numerous to mention, was reputed to be one of the richest commoners in
England. He was a man of that uncertain period of life which enemi