son. She was giddy with her
triumph, dazzled by a vision of the gold which was soon to be hers.

'Egad, if I saw myself in a fair way of being able to write cheques upon
such an account as Smithson's I should be as wild as Lady Lesbia,' said
one of the damsel's military admirers at the Rag. 'And I believe the
young lady was slightly dipped.'

'Who told you that?' asked his friend.

'A mother of mine,' answered the youth, with an apologetic air, as if he
hardly cared to own such a humdrum relationship. 'Seraphine, the
dressmaker, was complaining--wanted to see the colour of Lady Lesbia
Haselden's money--vulgar curiosity--asked my old mother if she thought
the account was safe, and so on. That's how I came to know all about
it.'

'Well, she'll be able to pay Seraphine next season.'

Lord Maulevrier came back to London directly after his sister's wedding.
The event, which came off so quietly, so happily, filled him with
unqualified joy. He had hoped from the very first that his Molly would
win the cup, even while Lesbia was making all the running, as he said
afterwards. And Molly had won, and was the wife of one of the best young
men in England. Maulevrier, albeit unused to the melting-mood, shed a
tear or two for very joy as the sister he loved and the friend of his
boyhood and youth stood side by side in the quiet room at Grasmere, and
spoke the solemn words that made them one for ever.

The first news he heard after his return to town was of Lesbia's
engagement, which was common talk at the clubs. The visitors at Rood
Hall had come back to London full of the event, and were proud of giving
a detailed account of the affair to outsiders.

They all talked patronisingly of Smithson, and seemed to think it
rather a wonderful fact that he did not drop his aspirates or eat peas
with a knife.

'A man of stirling metal,' said the gossips, 'who can hold his own with
many a fellow born in the purple.'

Maulevrier called in Arlington Street, but Lady Kirkbank and her
_protegee_ were out; and it was at a cricket match at the Orleans Club
that the brother and sister met for the first time after Lord
Hartfield's wedding, which by this time had been in all the papers; a
very simple announcement:

'On the 29th inst., at Grasmere, by the Reverend Douglass Brooke, the
Earl of Hartfield to Mary, younger daughter of the ninth Earl of
Maulevrier.'

Lesbia was the centre of a rather noisy little court, in which Mr.
Smithson was