ene, Lady Kirkbank had informed her young friend
with noble candour that Lady Maulevrier's fortune, however large it
might seem at Grasmere, would be a poor thing in London; and that Lady
Maulevrier's ideas about money were as old-fashioned as her notions
about morals.

'Life is about six times as expensive as it was in your grandmother's
time.' said Lady Kirkbank, as the carriage rolled softly along the
shabby road between Knightsbridge and Fulham. 'It is the pace that
kills. Society, which used to jog along comfortably, like the old
Brighton stage, at ten miles an hour, now goes as fast as the Brighton
express. In my mother's time poor Lord Byron was held up to the
execration of respectable people as the type of cynical profligacy; in
my own time people talked about Lord Waterford; but, my dear, the young
men now are all Byrons and Waterfords, without the genius of the one or
the generosity of the other. We are all going at steeplechase rate.
Social success without money is impossible. The rich Americans, the
successful Jews, will crowd us out unless we keep pace with them. Ah,
Lesbia, my dear girl, there would be a great future before you if you
could only make up your mind to accept Mr. Smithson.'

'How do you know that he means to propose to me?' asked Lesbia,
mockingly. 'Perhaps he is only going to behave as he did to Miss
Trinder.'

'Lady Lesbia Haselden is a very different person from a country parson's
daughter,' answered her chaperon; 'Smithson told me all about it
afterwards. He was really taken with Belle's fine figure and good
complexion; but one of her particular friends told him of her foolish
talk about her sisters, and how well she meant to get them married when
she was Mrs. Smithson. This disgusted him. He went down to Essex,
reconnoitered the parsonage, saw one of the sisters hanging out cuffs
and collars in the orchard--another feeding the fowls--both in shabby
gowns and country-made boots; one of them with red hair and freckles.
The mother was bargaining for fish with a hawker at the kitchen door.
And these were the people he was expected to import into Park Lane,
under ceilings painted by Leighton. These were the people he was to
exhibit on board his yacht, to cart about on his drag. "I had half made
up my mind to marry the girl, but I would sooner have hung myself than
marry her mother and sisters so I took the first train for Dover, en
route for Algiers," said Smithson, and upon my word I coul