oung men who belong to the Geographical and the
Alpine Club are hardly ever at home.'

'But though they may be sometimes lost to society, they are all the
more worthy of society's esteem when they do appear,' said Lady
Maulevrier. 'I think there must be an ennobling influence in Alpine
travel, or in the vast solitudes of the Dark Continent. A man finds
himself face to face with unsophisticated nature, and with the grandest
forces of the universe. Professor Tyndall writes delightfully of his
Alpine experiences; his mind seems to have ripened in the solitude and
untainted air of the Alps. And I believe Lord Hartfield is a young man
of very high character and of considerable cultivation, is he not?'

'He is a splendid young fellow. I never heard a word to his
disparagement, even from those people who pretend to know something bad
about everybody. What a husband he would make for one of your girls!'

'Admirable! But those perfect arrangements, which seem predestined by
heaven itself, are so rarely realised on earth,' answered the dowager,
lightly.

She was not going to show her cards, even to an old friend.

'Well, it would be very sweet if they were to meet next season and fall
in love with each other,' said Lady Kirkbank. 'He is enormously rich, and
I daresay your girls will not be portionless.'

'Lesbia may take a modest place among heiresses,' answered Lady
Maulevrier. 'I have lived so quietly during the last forty years that I
could hardly help saving money.'

'How nice!' sighed Georgie. 'I never saved sixpence in my life, and am
always in debt.'

'The little fortune I have saved is much too small for division. Lesbia
will therefore have all I can leave her. Mary has the usual provision as
a daughter of the Maulevrier house.'

'And I suppose Lesbia has that provision also?'

'Of course.'

'Lucky Lesbia. I only wish Hartfield were coming to us for the shooting.
I would engage he should fall in love with her. Kirkbank is a splendid
place for match-making. But the fact is I am not very intimate with him.
He is almost always travelling, and when he is at home he is not in our
set. And now, my dear Diana, tell me more about yourself, and your own
life in this delicious place.'

'There is so little to tell. The books I have read, the theories of
literature and art and science which I have adopted and dismissed,
learnt and forgotten--those are the history of my life. The ideas of the
outside world reach me here