ests,'
exclaimed Lesbia.

'But they all indulge in bismuth--you must be quite aware of that. They
call the stuff by different names--Blanc Rosati, Creme de l'Imperatrice,
Milk of Beauty, Perline, Opaline, Ivorine--but it means bismuth all the
same. Expose your fashionable beauty to the fumes of sewer-gas, and that
dazzling whiteness would turn to a dull brown hue, or even black. Thank
heaven, my Lesbia wears real lilies and roses. Have you been here long?'

'About half an hour'

'I only wish I had known. I should not have dawdled so long over my
dressing.'

'I am very glad you did not know,' Lesbia answered coolly.

'Do you suppose I never want to be alone? Life in London is perpetual
turmoil; one's eyes grow weary with ever-moving crowds, one's ears ache
with trying to distinguish one voice among the buzz of voices.'

'Then why go back to town? Why go back to the turmoil and the treadmill?
It is only a kind of treadmill, after all, though we choose to call it
pleasure. Stay here, Lesbia, and let us live upon the river, and among
the flowers,' urged Smithson, with as romantic an air as if he had never
heard of contango, or bulling and bearing; and yet only half an hour
ago, while his valet was shaving him, he was debating within himself
whether he should be bear or bull in his influence upon certain stock.

It was supposed that he never went near the city, that he had shaken the
dust of Lombard Street and the House off his shoes, that his fortune was
made, and he had no further need of speculation. Yet the proverb holds
good with the stock-jobber. 'He who has once drunk will drink again.' Of
that fountain there is no satiety.

'Stay and hear the last of the nightingales,' he murmured; 'we are famous
for our nightingales.'

'I wonder you don't order a _fricassee_ of their tongues, like that
loathsome person in Roman history.'

'I hope I shall never resemble any loathsome person. Why can you not
stay?'

'Why, because it is not etiquette, Lady Kirkbank says.'

'Lady Kirkbank, eh? _la belle farce_, Lady Kirkbank standing out for
etiquette.'

'Don't laugh at my chaperon, sir. Upon what rock can a poor girl lean if
you undermine her faith in her chaperon, sir.'

'I hope you will have a better guardian before you are a month older. I
mean to be a very strong rock, Lesbia. You do not know how firmly I
shall stand between you and all the perils of society. You have been but
poorly guarded hitherto.'

'You tal