Musing thus, wordly wisdom personified, the maiden looked up and saw her lover entering at the light little iron gate which gave entrance to this feminine Eden. She went to meet him, looking all simplicity and freshness in her white morning gown and neat little Dunstable hat. It seemed to him as he gazed at her almost as if this delicate, sylph-like beauty were some wild white flower of the woods personified. She gave him her hand graciously, but he drew her to his breast and kissed her, with the air of a man who was exercising an indisputable right. She supposed that it was his right, and she submitted, but released herself as quickly as possible. 'My dearest, how lovely you look in this morning light,' he exclaimed, 'while all the other women are upstairs making up their faces to meet the sun, and we shall see every shade of bismuth by-and-by, from pale mauve to purple.' 'It is very uncivil of you to say such a thing of your guests,' exclaimed Lesbia. 'But they all indulge in bismuth--you must be quite aware of that. They call the stuff by different names--Blanc Rosati, Crême de l'Imperatrice, Milk of Beauty, Perline, Opaline, Ivorine--but it means bismuth all the same. Expose your fashionable beauty to the fumes of sewer-gas, and that dazzling whiteness would turn to a dull brown hue, or even black. Thank heaven, my Lesbia wears real lilies and roses. Have you been here long?' 'About half an hour' 'I only wish I had known. I should not have dawdled so long over my dressing.' 'I am very glad you did not know,' Lesbia answered coolly. 'Do you suppose I never want to be alone? Life in London is perpetual turmoil; one's eyes grow weary with ever-moving crowds, one's ears ache with trying to distinguish one voice among the buzz of voices.' 'Then why go back to town? Why go back to the turmoil and the treadmill? It is only a kind of treadmill, after all, though we choose to call it pleasure. Stay here, Lesbia, and let us live upon the river, and among the flowers,' urged Smithson, with as romantic an air as if he had never heard of contango, or bulling and bearing; and yet only half an hour ago, while his valet was shaving him, he was debating within himself whether he should be bear or bull in his influence upon certain stock. It was supposed that he never went near the city, that he had shaken the dust of Lombard Street and the House off his shoes, that his fortune was made, and he had no further need of speculation. Yet the proverb holds good with the stock-jobber. 'He who has once drunk will drink again.' Of that fountain there is no satiety. 'Stay and hear the last of the nightingales,' he murmured; 'we are famous for our nightingales.' 'I wonder you don't order a _fricassée_ of their tongues, like that loathsome person in Roman history.' 'I hope I shall never resemble any loathsome person. Why can you not stay?' 'Why, because it is not etiquette, Lady Kirkbank says.'