The fortune of which his widow was left in command after her bereavement was ample for the part it was her genius to play; and though her means were not of that exaggerated sort to which modern speculation has accustomed us, yet her roomy house in St. James's Place, her Scotch forest, the two places in Cumberland, and the place she rented in the heart of the Quorn permitted her to entertain upon a generous scale; while large and historic but cosy Habberton on the borders of Exmoor afforded a secure retreat for the few weeks in August, which, if she were in England, she devoted to the society of her intimates. She was a woman of high culture, the intimate friend of the Prime Minister--not as a politician, but as a poet--and through her sister, Louise, the sister-in-law of the leader of the Opposition, whose extraordinary polo play in the early eighties had endeared him to the then lively girl much more than could family ties. Such other connections as she had with the political world were quite fortuitous. Her aunt, Lady Steyning, had seen, of course, the most brilliant period of the Viceroyalty in India, before the recent deplorable situation had destroyed at once the dignity and the leisure of that post; while a second aunt, the oldest of the three surviving Duchesses of Drayton, though living a very retired life at Molehurst, naturally brought her into touch with the Ebbworths and all the Rusper group of old Whig families, from young Lord Rusper, to whom she was almost an elder sister, to the rather disreputable, but extremely wealthy, Ockley couple, whom she chivalrously defended through the worst of the storm. It would be a great error to imagine that this charming and tactful woman found her interests in such a world alone--she was far too many sided for that. Her collection of Fragonards had many years ago laid at her feet the whole staff of the Persian Embassy, and opened an acquaintance with a world of Oriental experience; with it she discovered and cultivated the two chief Eastern travellers of our time, Lord Hemsbury and Mr. Teak; upon quite another side her modest but sincere and indefatigable interest in the lives of the poor had naturally led to a warm understanding between herself and Lord Lambeth--the indefatigable empire builder whom the world had known as Mr. Barnett of the M'Korio, and who now, as the aged Duke of Battersea, had earned by his unceasing good deeds, the half-playful, half-reverend nickname of "Peabody Yid" among the younger members of his set. It was not a little thing to have gained the devotion of such a man, and it was, in a sense, the summit of Mary Smith's achievement: but she was more than a sympathetic and universal friend; she was also--as such friends must always be--a power in both Political parties--and perhaps in three.