The chord of sympathy was struck. They passed from one thing to another. She found one at last who knew and loved the poets of her childhood’s dreams—who could talk of Spenser and Sidney, of Watson, Greville, and Drayton, quoting their verses, and often lighting upon her favourite passages. Here was a man who knew Milton and Clarendon, Hobbes, Herbert, Lovelace and Suckling, Lord Herbert of Cherbury and Izaak Walton. He had read eagerly, like herself, poetry and prose, drama and epic, lyric and sonnet. He could speak of Poetry as one who had loved and courted her as a mistress. The girl longed to ask him if he had written himself, but maiden shyness withheld her. Yet her eyes brightened as she talked, and the peach-like colour rose and deepened in her cheeks; and Lord Sandford, turning back once again from the mother to look at the daughter, was struck dumb with admiration and delight. "There is a rose worth winning and wearing, though the stem may not be free from a sharp thorn," he said to himself; and Lady Romaine, who chanced to catch sight of Geraldine during a shifting of the admirers who surrounded her, gave something very like a start, and felt a curious thrill run through her in which pride and envy were blended. "Gracious! I did not know I had so handsome a daughter! I must wed her as fast as may be, else shall I find my beaux going from me to her," was her unspoken thought; and aloud she said, tapping Lord Sandford with her fan, "Pray tell my daughter that I am about to depart. We have had enough of the naiads and dryads, and I am tired and hungry. Who will come home with me to supper—to take pot-luck with us?" There was an eager clamour in response; but when the supper-party assembled round Lady Romaine’s chocolate tables in her favourite private parlour, she noted that Geraldine had disappeared to bed, and that Sir Grey Dumaresq had not availed himself of her open invitation. *CHAPTER VII.* *A FAIR FACE.* If Grey Dumaresq was a man who craved a variety of experiences, and wished to see life under different aspects, he was getting his wish now; for the gay world of fashion, into which he suddenly found himself plunged, differed _in toto_ from any of his former experiences; and so swift was the pace, and so shifting the throng amid which he moved, that he often felt as though his breath were fairly taken away, and as though he had suddenly stepped into a new existence.