Maulevrier called in Arlington Street before twelve o'clock next day, and found Lesbia just returning from her early ride, looking as fresh and fair as if there had been no such thing as Nap or late hours in the story of her life. She was reposing in a large easy chair by the open window, in habit and hat, just as she had come from the Row, where she had been laughing and chatting with Mr. Smithson, who jogged demurely by her side on his short-legged hunter, dropping out envenomed little jokes about the passers by. People who saw him riding by her side upon this particular morning fancied there was something more than usual in the gentleman's manner, and made up their minds that Lady Lesbia Haselden was to be mistress of the fine house in Park Lane. Mr. Smithson had fluttered and fluttered for the last five seasons; but this time the flutterer was caught. In her newly-awakened anxiety about money matters, Lesbia had forgotten Mary's engagement: but the sight of Maulevrier recalled the fact. 'Come over here and sit down,' she said, 'and tell me this nonsense about Mary. I am expiring with curiosity. The thing is too absurd.' 'Why absurd?' asked Maulevrier, sitting where she bade him, and studiously perusing the name in his hat, as if it were a revelation. 'Oh, for a thousand reasons,' answered Lesbia, switching the flowers in the balcony with her light little whip. 'First and foremost it is absurd to think of any one so buried alive as poor Mary is finding an admirer; and secondly--well--I don't want to be rude to my own sister--but Mary is not particularly attractive.' 'Mary is the dearest girl in the world.' 'Very likely. I only said that she is not particularly attractive.' 'And do you think there is no attraction in goodness, in freshness and innocence, candour, generosity--?' 'I don't know. But I think that if Mary's nose had been a thought longer, and if she had kept her skin free from freckles she would have been almost pretty.' 'Do you really? Luckily for Mary the man who is going to marry her thinks her lovely.' 'I suppose he likes freckles. I once heard a man say he did. He said they were so original--so much character about them. And, pray, who is the man?' 'Your old adorer, and my dear friend, John Hammond.' Lesbia turned as pale as death--pale with rage and mortification. It was not jealousy, this pang which rent her shallow soul. She had ceased to care for John Hammond. The whirlpool of society had spun that first fancy out of her giddy brain. But that a man who had loved the highest, who had worshipped her, the peerless, the beautiful, should calmly transfer his affections to her younger sister, was to the last degree exasperating. 'Your friend Mr. Hammond must be a fickle fool,' she exclaimed, 'who does not know his own mind from day to day.'