ser. She was liberal and benevolent to all
who came within the circle of her life. Wealth for its own sake she
valued not a jot. But she lived in an age in which wealth is power, and
ambition was her ruling passion. As she had been ambitious for her
husband in the days that were gone, she was now ambitious for her
granddaughter. Time had intensified the keen eagerness of her mind. She
had been disappointed, cruelly, bitterly, in the ambition of her youth.
She had been made to drink the cup of shame and humiliation. But to this
ambition of her old age she held with even greater tenacity. God help
her if she should be disappointed here!

It is not to be supposed that so astute a schemer as Lady Maulevrier had
not surveyed the marriage market in order to discover that fortunate
youth who should be deemed worthy to become the winner of Lesbia's hand.
Years ago, when Lesbia was still in the nursery, the dowager had made
herself informed of the age, weight, and colours of every likely runner
in the matrimonial stakes; or, in plainer words, had kept herself, by
her correspondence with a few intimate friends, and her close study of
the fashionable newspapers, thoroughly acquainted with the characters
and exploits, the dispositions and antecedents, of those half-dozen
elder sons, among whom she hoped to find Lesbia's lord and master. She
knew her peerage by heart, and she knew the family history of every
house recorded therein; the sins and weaknesses, the follies and losses
of bygone years; the taints, mental and physical; the lateral branches
and intermarriages; the runaway wives and unfaithful husbands; idiot
sons or scrofulous daughters. She knew everything that was to be known
about that aristocratic world into which she had been born sixty-seven
years ago; and the sum-total of her knowledge was that there was one man
whom she desired for her granddaughter's husband--one man, and one only,
and into whose hands, when earth and sky should fade from her glazing
eyes, she could be content to resign the sceptre of power.

There were no doubt half-a-dozen, or more, in the list of elder sons,
who were fairly eligible. But this young man was the Achilles in the
rank and file of chivalry, and her soul yearned to have him and no other
for her darling.

Her soul yearned to him with a tenderness which was not all on Lesbia's
account. Forty-nine years ago she had fondly loved his father--loved him
and had been fain to renounce him; fo