a
wife who can manage him, with a decent amount of money."

Without exactly saying so, Lady Sellingworth implied that she would see
what she could do for Rupert.

From that moment Lord Blyston pushed "the lad" perpetually towards 18A
Berkeley Square.

Rupert Louth was fair and very good-looking, reckless and full of go.
And wherever he went he carried with him an outdoor atmosphere. He cared
nothing for books, music, or intellectual pursuits. Nevertheless, he was
at home everywhere, and quite as much at ease in a woman's drawing-room
as rounding up cattle in Canada or lassooing wild horses in Texas. He
lived entirely and wholeheartedly for the day, and was a magnificent
specimen of dashing animal life; for certainly the animal predominated
in him.

Lady Sellingworth fell in love with him--it really was like falling in
love each time--and resolved to marry him. A wonderful breath of manhood
and youth exhaled from "the lad" and almost intoxicated her. It called
to her wildness. It brought back to her the days when she had been a
magnificent girl, had shot over the moors, and had more than held her
own in the hunting field. After she had married Lord Sellingworth she
had given up shooting and hunting, had devoted herself more keenly
to the arts, to mental and purely social pursuits, to the opera,
the forming of a salon, to politics and to entertaining, than to the
physical pleasures which had formerly played such a prominent part in
her life. Since his death she had put down her horses. But now she began
to change her mode of living. She went with Rupert to Tattersalls, and
they picked up some good horses together. She began riding again, and
lent him a mount. She was perpetually at Hurlingham and Ranelagh, and
developed a passion for polo, which he played remarkably well. She
played lawn tennis at King's Club in the morning, and renewed her energy
at golf.

Louth was really struck by her activity and competence, and said of her
that she was a damned good sport and as active as a cat. He also said
that there wasn't a country in the world that bred such wonderful old
women as England. This remark he made to his father, who rejoined that
Adela Sellingworth was not an old woman.

"Well, she must be near fifty!" said his son. "And if that isn't old for
a woman where are we to look for it?"

Lord Blyston replied that there were many women far older than Adela
Sellingworth, to which his son answered:

"Anyhow, she's a