The advertisement did not entirely escape notice. A good many Susan Lesleys presented themselves:--one a fat old woman of seventy, who kept a tobacconist’s shop in the neighbourhood of Seven Dials; another a bony and pugnacious-looking person, with fiery red hair, and a fine South-of-Ireland brogue, who threatened dire vengeance on the quiet lawyer when he refused to recognize her pretensions to hear of something to her advantage. All the Susan Lesleys were ready to swear anything in order to establish their claims to that unknown advantage--which might be anything from a five-pound note to a million of money, or a dormant peerage,--but they all broke down lamentably under Mr. Kursdale’s cross-questioning, and he did not even trouble Francis Tredethlyn to confront the false syrens. So, amid Newmarket meetings and Greenwich dinners, chicken-hazard, billiards, and unlimited loo, poor Susan’s rustic image melted quite away; and Francis forgot the solemn promise he had made, and the sacred duty he had set himself to do when his Uncle Oliver’s heritage first fell into his hands. And Francis Tredethlyn’s forgetfulness might have lasted very long, if an accident had not awakened him to a most vivid recollection of the past. It was the May-time saturnalia of the turf, the Epsom week, and Mr. Tredethlyn’s drag had been to and fro upon the dusty roads carrying a heavy load of Bohemianism under convoy of the indefatigable Harcourt Lowther. Francis had been rather unlucky, and a good deal of money had changed hands after the Derby, the larger part of it finding its way into the pockets of Mr. Tredethlyn’s obliging friend. The Oaks day was to have redeemed his fortunes, but the day was over, and Francis drove home amongst the noisy ruck of landaus and waggonettes, ponderous double dog-carts, and heavily-laden sociables, tax-carts and costermongers’ barrows, with the outer leaves of an attenuated cheque-book peeping from his breast-pocket, and the dim consciousness that he had distributed hastily-scribbled cheques to the amount of some thousands, floating confusedly in his brain. He drove to town through the spring twilight, with Dutch dolls in his hat, and a heavy pain in his heart. The _papier mâché_ noses of his companions were scarcely more false and hollow than their gaiety. Of course it would be impossible to conclude such a day without a dinner. The sort of people amongst whom Francis Tredethlyn lived are perpetually dining and giving dinners; only the dinner-givers are as one to twenty of the diners; so, at some time between nine and ten o’clock, Maude’s husband found himself in his usual place at the head of a glittering table, in an odorous atmosphere of asparagus soup and fried mullet, and with a racking headache, that was intensified by every jingle of glasses and rattle of knives and forks.