“I’ll take a night off, and drop in at Mrs Sadleir’s,” he thought, his resentment already beginning to give way under the soothing recollection of his revenge on the Whip. Mrs Sadleir’s was one of the few houses at which Usk was at all a constant guest, for he hated society with an almost anarchist hatred quite at variance with his political opinions generally. Very quickly, on his first introduction into the world of London, he had learnt by bitter experience to divide the women he met into two categories. There were those who were anxious to marry him, either personally, or vicariously to some relation, and those who were not. It was in vain that he tried by turns to gain the reputation of a student, a cynic, and a misogynist; the young ladies and their mothers still thought that a man in his present position, to say nothing of his prospect of succeeding to the Marquisate of Caerleon at no very distant date, ought not to be judged too harshly, even for such unamiable peculiarities as these. This led him to forswear almost entirely the company of the fair sex, for the young ladies who did not want to marry him made the fact so conspicuous, and were so anxious to force it upon his notice, that he resented their aggressive prudery as strongly as he did their sisters’ too evident wiles. Hence he was wont, now that his experience was gained, sternly to resist all attempts to allure him into general society, and he had become known to the party leaders as a young man who devoted himself to the study of sociological and political problems, and affected the company of his elders. But he was content to visit at Mrs Sadleir’s house, and under her wing to confront the hordes of society girls who thirsted for his prospective coronet, since he knew that she had neither daughter nor niece to recommend him as a wife, and that she had a most unfeminine aversion to match-making. Mrs Sadleir had been a dear friend of his mother’s, and on Lady Caerleon’s death had done much to supply her place to Usk and his brother Cyril. Ill-natured persons said that she was trying to achieve a social success by becoming the second Lady Caerleon, but better-informed people scouted the idea, knowing well that she had refused Lord Caerleon very decidedly two years after his wife’s death, although without any diminution of the friendship which had always existed between them.