d this morning. Be assured I shall never
offend you by repeating it.'

'You are more than good,' murmured Lesbia, who had expected a wild
outbreak of despair or fury, rather than this friendly calm.

'I hope that you and Lady Kirkbank will go and hear Madame Metzikoff
this afternoon,' pursued Mr. Smithson, returning to the subject of the
_matinee_. 'The duchess's rooms are lovely; but no doubt you know them.'

Lesbia blushed, and confessed that the Duchess of Lostwithiel was one of
those select few who were not on Lady Kirkbank's visiting list.

'There are people Lady Kirkbank cannot get on with,' she said. 'Perhaps
she will hardly like to go to the duchess's, as she does not visit her.'

'Oh, but this affair counts for nothing. We go to hear Metzikoff, not to
bow down to the duchess. All the people in town who care for music will
be there, and you who play so divinely must enjoy fine professional
playing.'

'I worship a really great player,' said Lesbia, 'and if I can drag Lady
Kirkbank to the house of the enemy, we will be there.'

On this Mr. Smithson discreetly murmured '_au revoir_,' took up his hat
and cane, and departed, without, in Sir George's parlance, having turned
a hair.

'Refusal number one,' he said to himself, as he went downstairs, with
his leisurely catlike pace, that velvet step by which he had gradually
crept into society. 'We may have to go through refusal number two and
number three; but she means to have me. She is a very clever girl for a
countrybred one; and she knows that it is worth her while to be Lady
Lesbia Smithson.'

This soliloquy may be taken to prove that Horace Smithson knew Lesbia
Haselden better than she knew herself. She had refused him in all good
faith; but even to-day, after he had left her, she fell into a day-dream
in which Mr. Smithson's houses and yachts, drags and hunters, formed the
shifting pictures in a dissolving view of society; and Lesbia wondered
if there were any other young woman in London who would refuse such an
offer as that which she had quietly rejected half-an-hour ago.

Lady Kirkbank surprised her while she was still absorbed in this dreamy
review of the position. It is just possible that the fair Georgie may
have had notice of Mr. Smithson's morning visit, and may have kept out
of the way on purpose, for she was not a person of lazy habits, and was
generally ready for her nine o'clock breakfast and her morning stroll in
the park, however late she