“Oh, that is only one instance of her consideration and the least important. She has done much more than that for you, she is like John the Baptist without the skins and locusts, she has ‘been preparing the way before’ you, and you have only to appear to be mobbed, Sir Humphrey. There’s not a matron nor a maid in London who doesn’t babble of you; your name is rippling off a hundred tongues at this very minute; you are the hero of a hundred teas. All this came on after a long round of calls Lady Mary and I paid last Monday,” she continued, scanning him. “I had only heard your name before, in the outward world, that is—the Baronetcy never affected Lady Mary’s prayers and anecdotes, they were always with us—in a queer aside way, as if one hinted at dark things that had better not be unearthed. Ah, but that is all changed! You have no notion though how exhausting the process has been to Lady Mary.” She stopped at last. “No,” he said, looking at his aunt, “I certainly hadn’t perceived any symptoms of a cave-in about her. Monday, did you say, Miss Waring? Would you mind letting me have your visiting list for that day, Aunt Moll? I suppose I know some of the people, and my soul’s one desire for years has been to pose as an afternoon-tea hero. I shall just have time to get a foretaste of the joys this afternoon. Good-bye, Aunt Moll, pray don’t look anxious on my account, my morals are tough enough to run the gauntlet of all the teas in London, and my digestion is unimpaired. Good-bye, Miss Waring,” he said, bowing gravely in her direction, “thank you for standing by my aunt on Monday’s warpath, I am gratified to see _you_ are in no sort of way exhausted by the process. Damnation!” he muttered as he got out into the street, “she smells of a hothouse with her overpowering beauty and her insolent airs, and that cool inexorable way of hers. Oh, Aunt Moll, you’ll rue the day you made me a by-word. To think I had to swallow all that, and let a girl bait me!” He laughed aloud. “And so I am the coming _parti_! Good Lord! I’ll be fine practice for the ‘sport,’ anyway they’ll find me shy game. I’ll go home, finish a chapter or two, dose Tolly, and then I’ll dine. “Hullo!” he exclaimed suddenly, “things are looking up for Charlie, he can go to Paris now when he likes. I wonder how I can reduce his high stomach to seeing it in that light!” CHAPTER XIX. STRANGE found the preliminaries of his induction into the _rôle_ of an English Squire even more unpleasant than he had expected.