rn and bred in the purple.

Last season Lord Hartfield's absence had cast a cloud over the
matrimonial horizon. He had been a traveller for more than a
year--Patagonia, Peru, the Pyramids, Japan, the North Pole--society
cared not where--the fact that he was gone was all-sufficient. Bachelors
a shade less eligible came to the front in his absence and became first
favourites. Lady Maulevrier, well informed in advance, had deferred
Lesbia's presentation till next season, when she was told Lord Hartfield
would certainly re-appear. His plans had been made for return before
Christmas; and it would seem that his scheme of life was laid down with
as much precision as if he had been a prince of the blood royal. Thus it
happened, to Lesbia's intense disgust, that her _debut_ was deferred
till the verge of her twentieth birthday. It would never do, Lady
Maulevrier told herself, for the edge to be taken off the effect which
Lesbia's beauty was to make on society during Lord Hartfield's absence.
He must be there, on the spot, to see this star rise gently and slowly
above society's horizon, and to mark how everybody bowed down and
worshipped the new light.

'I shall be an old woman before I appear in society,' said Lesbia,
petulantly; 'and I shall be like a wild woman of the woods; for I have
seen nothing, and know nothing of the civilised world.'

'You will be ever so much more attractive than the young women I hear
of, who have seen and known a great deal too much,' answered the
dowager; and as her granddaughter knew that Lady Maulevrier's word was a
law that altered not, there was no more idle repinings.

Her ladyship gave no reason for the postponement of Lesbia's
presentation. She was far too diplomatic to breathe a word of her ideas
with regard to Lord Hartfield. Anything like a matrimonial scheme would
have been revolting to Lesbia, who had grand, but not sordid views about
matrimony. She thought it her mission to appear and to conquer. A crowd
of suitors would sigh around her, like the loves and graces round that
fair Belinda whose story she had read so often; and it would be her part
to choose the most worthy. The days are gone when a girl would so much
as look at such a fribble as Sir Plume. Her virgin fancy demands the
Tennysonian ideal, the grave and knightly Arthur.

But when Lesbia thought of the most worthy, it was always of the
worthiest in her own particular sphere; and he of course would be titled
and wealthy,