that they would shortly
be, there was no question as to their having means enough and to spare.
Lady Alice began to dream of a dear little country house in Sussex, with
an occasional season in London, or a winter at Bagneres. She was
recalled from her dreams to the realities of life by a letter from her
husband. Caspar Brooke wrote to ask whether, under present
circumstances, she would not return to him.

CHAPTER XXIII.

CAPTAIN DUCHESNE.

Lesley's life seemed to her now much less lonely than it had been at
first. The consciousness of having made friends was pleasant to her,
although her affection for Ethel had been for a time overshadowed by the
recollection of Oliver's unfaithfulness. But when this impression passed
away, as it gradually did, after the scene that had been so painful to
her, she consoled herself with the belief that Oliver's words and
actions had proceeded from a temporary derangement of judgment, for
which he was not altogether responsible, and that he had returned to his
allegiance; therefore she might continue to be friendly with Ethel
without any sensation of treachery or shame. An older woman than Lesley
would not, perhaps, have argued in this way: she would have suspected
the permanence of Oliver's feelings more than Lesley did. But, being
only an inexperienced girl, Lesley comforted herself by the fact that
Oliver now avoided her; and said that it could not be possible for her
to have attracted him away from Ethel, who was so winning, so sweet, so
altogether delightful.

Then, apart from the Kenyons, she began to make pleasant acquaintances
amongst her father's friends. Caspar Brooke's house was a centre of
interest and entertainment for a large number of intellectual men and
women; and Lesley had as many opportunities for wearing her pretty
evening gowns as she could have desired. There were "at homes" to which
her charming presence and her beautiful voice attracted Caspar's friends
in greater numbers than ever: there were dinner-parties where her
interest in the new world around her made everything else interesting;
and there was a constant coming and going of people who had work to do
in the world, and who did it with more or less success, which made the
house in Woburn Place anything but a dull abode.

The death of her grandfather distressed her less from regret for himself
than from anxiety for her mother's future. Lady Alice's notes to her
were very short and somewhat vaguely