ept no account. She thought her grandmother was so
rich that expenditure could not matter. She supposed that she was
drawing upon an inexhaustible supply. And now Lady Kirkbank had told her
that Lady Maulevrier was not rich, as the world reckons nowadays. The
savings of a dowager countess even in forty years of seclusion could be
but a small fund to draw upon for the expenses of life at high pressure.

'The sums people spend nowadays are positively appalling,' said Lady
Kirkbank. 'A man with five or six thousand a year is an absolute pauper.
I'm sure our existence is only genteel beggary, and yet we spend over
ten thousand.'

Enlightened thus by the lips of the worldly-wise, Lesbia thought
ruefully of the bills which her grandmother would have to pay for her at
the end of the season, bills of the amount whereof she could not even
make an approximate guess. Seraphine's charges had never been discussed
in her hearing--but Lady Kirkbank had admitted that the creature was
dear.

CHAPTER XXIX.

'SWIFT SUBTLE POST, CARRIER OF GRISLY CARE.'

Maulevrier called in Arlington Street before twelve o'clock next day,
and found Lesbia just returning from her early ride, looking as fresh
and fair as if there had been no such thing as Nap or late hours in the
story of her life. She was reposing in a large easy chair by the open
window, in habit and hat, just as she had come from the Row, where she
had been laughing and chatting with Mr. Smithson, who jogged demurely by
her side on his short-legged hunter, dropping out envenomed little jokes
about the passers by. People who saw him riding by her side upon this
particular morning fancied there was something more than usual in the
gentleman's manner, and made up their minds that Lady Lesbia Haselden
was to be mistress of the fine house in Park Lane. Mr. Smithson had
fluttered and fluttered for the last five seasons; but this time the
flutterer was caught.

In her newly-awakened anxiety about money matters, Lesbia had forgotten
Mary's engagement: but the sight of Maulevrier recalled the fact.

'Come over here and sit down,' she said, 'and tell me this nonsense
about Mary. I am expiring with curiosity. The thing is too absurd.'

'Why absurd?' asked Maulevrier, sitting where she bade him, and
studiously perusing the name in his hat, as if it were a revelation.

'Oh, for a thousand reasons,' answered Lesbia, switching the flowers in
the balcony with her light little whip. 'Fi