'My dear Smithson, did I not tell you that poor Lady Maulevrier is a century behind the times,' exclaimed Lady Kirkbank, with an aggrieved look. 'If she were one of _us_, of course she would know that wealth is the paramount consideration, and that you are quite the best match of the season. But she is dreadfully _arriérée_, poor dear thing; and she must have amused herself with the day-dream of seeing Lesbia a duchess, or something of that kind. I shall tell her that Lesbia can be one of the queens of society without having strawberry leaves on her coach panels, and that my dear friend Horace Smithson is a much better match than a seedy duke. So don't look cross, my dear fellow; in me you have a friend who will never desert you.' 'Thanks,' said Smithson, inwardly resolving that, so soon as this little transaction of his marriage were over, he would see as little of Georgie Kirkbank and her cotton frocks and schoolgirl hats as bare civility would allow. He had promised her that she should be the richer by a neat little bundle of fat and flourishing railway stock when his happiness was secured, and he was not going to break his promise. But he did not mean to give George and Georgie free quarters at Rood Hall, or at Cowes, or Deauville; and he meant to withdraw his wife altogether from Lady Kirkbank's pinchbeck set. What were Lesbia's feelings in the early morning after the last day of the regatta, as she slowly paced the lavender walk in the Ladies' Garden, alone?--for happily Mr. Smithson was not so early a riser as the Grasmere-bred damsel, and she had this fresh morning hour to herself. Of what was she thinking as she paced slowly up and down the broad gravel walk, between two rows of tall old bushes, on which masses of purple blossom stood up from the pale grey foliage, silvery where the summer breeze touched it? Well, she was thinking first what a grand old place Rood Hall was, and that it was in a manner hers henceforward. She was to be mistress of this house, and of other houses, each after its fashion as perfect as Rood Hall. She was to have illimitable money at her command, to spend and give away as she liked. She, who yesterday had been tortured by the idea of owing a paltry three thousand pounds, was henceforward to count her thousands by the hundred. Her senses reeled before that dazzling vision of figures with rows of ciphers after them, one cipher more or less meaning the difference between thousands and millions. Everybody had agreed in assuring her that Mr. Smithson was inordinately rich. Everybody had considered it his or her business to give her information about the gentleman's income; clearly implying thereby that in the opinion of society Mr. Smithson's merits as a suitor were a question of so much bullion.