What a horrible way in which to speak of a
friend. I thought you adored Lady Kirkbank.'

'So I do. We all adore her, but not as a guide for youth. As a specimen
of the elderly female of the latter half of the nineteenth century, she
is perfect. Such gush, such juvenility, such broad views, such an utter
absence of starch; but as a lamp for the footsteps of girlhood--no
_there_ we must pause.'

'You are very ungrateful. Do you know that poor Lady Kirkbank has been
most strenuous in your behalf?'

'Oh, yes, I know that.'

'And you are not grateful?'

'I intend to be very grateful, so grateful as to entirely satisfy Lady
Kirkbank.'

'You are horribly cynical. That reminds me, there was a poor girl whom
Lady Kirkbank had under her wing one season--a Miss Trinder, to whom I
am told you behaved shamefully.'

'There was a parson's daughter who threw herself at my head in a most
audacious way, and who behaved so badly, egged on by Lady Kirkbank, that
I had to take refuge in flight. Do you suppose I am the kind of man to
marry the first adventurous damsel who takes a fancy to my town house,
and thinks it would be a happy hunting ground for a herd of brothers and
sisters? Miss Trinder was shocking bad style, and her designs were
transparent from the very beginning! I let her flirt as much as she
liked; and when she began to be seriously sentimental I took wing for
the East?'

'Was she pretty?' asked Lesbia, not displeased at this contemptuous
summing up of poor Belle Trinder's story.

'If you admire the Flemish type, as illustrated by Rubens, she was
lovely. A complexion of lilies and roses--cabbage roses, _bien entendu_,
which were apt to deepen into peonies after champagne and mayonaise at
Ascot or Sandown--a figure--oh--well--a tremendous figure--hair of an
auburn that touched perilously on the confines of red--large,
serviceable feet, and an appetite--the appetite of a ploughman's
daughter reared upon short commons.'

'You are very cruel to a girl who evidently admired you.'

'A fig for her admiration! She wanted to live in my house and spend my
money.'

'There goes the gong,' exclaimed Lesbia; 'pray let us go to breakfast.
You are hideously cynical, and I am wofully tired of you.'

And as they strolled back to the house, by lavender walk and rose
garden, and across the dewy lawn, Lesbia questioned herself as to
whether she was one whit better or more dignified than Isabella Trinder.
She wore her rue with a