he handle of her
last new sunshade.

'Belle used to talk of what she would do for them all,' pursued Lady
Kirkbank. 'Father should go every year to the villa at Monte Carlo;
mother and the girls should have a month in Park Lane every season, and
their autumn holiday at one of Mr. Smithson's country houses. I knew the
world well enough to be sure that this kind of thing would never answer
with a man like Smithson. It is only one man in a thousand--the modern
Arthur, the modern Quixote--who will marry a whole family. I told Belle
as much, but she laughed. She felt so secure of her power over the man.
"He will do anything I ask him," she said.'

'Miss Trinder must be an extraordinary young person,' observed Lesbia,
scornfully. 'The man had not proposed, had he?'

'No; the actual proposal hung fire, but Belle thought it was a settled
thing all the same. Everybody talked to her as if she were engaged to
Smithson, and those poor, ignorant vicarage girls used to write her long
letters of congratulation, envying her good fortune, speculating, about
what she would do when she was married. The girl was too open and candid
for London society--talked too much, "gave the view before she was sure
of her fox," Sir George said. All this silly talk came to Smithson's
ears, and one morning we read in the Post that Mr. Smithson had started
the day before for Algiers, where he was to stay at the house of the
English Consul, and hunt lions. We waited all day, hoping for some
letter of explanation, some friendly farewell which would mean _a
revoir_. But there was nothing, and then poor Belle gave way altogether.
She shut herself up in her room, and went out of one hysterical fit into
another. I never heard a girl sob so terribly. She was not fit to be
seen for a week, and then she went home to her father's parsonage in the
flat swampy country on the borders of Suffolk, and eat her heart, as
Byron calls it. And the worst of it was that she had no actual
justification for considering herself jilted. She had talked, and other
people had talked, and among them they had settled the business. But
Smithson had said hardly anything. He had only flirted to his heart's
content, and had spent a few hundreds upon flowers, gloves, fans, and
opera tickets, which perhaps would not have been accepted by a girl with
a strong sense of her own dignity.'

'I should think not, indeed,' interjected Lesbia.

'But which poor Belle was only too delighted to get