Her ladyship was a woman of action, and no sooner did this fear shape itself in her mind than she took steps to prevent the evil her thoughts foreshadowed. Among those friends of her youth and allies of her house with whom she had always maintained an affectionate correspondence was Lady Kirkbank, the fashionable wife of a sporting baronet, owner of a castle in Scotland, a place in Yorkshire, a villa at Cannes, and a fine house in Arlington Street, with an income large enough for their enjoyment. When Lady Diana Angersthorpe shone forth in the West End world as the acknowledged belle of the season, the star of Georgina Lorimer was beginning to wane. She was the eldest daughter of Colonel Lorimer, a man of good old family, and a fine soldier, who had fought shoulder to shoulder with Gough and Lawrence, and who had contrived to make a figure in society with very small means. Georgina's sisters had all married well. It was a case of necessity, the Colonel told them; they must either marry or gravitate ultimately to the workhouse. So the Miss Lorimers made the best use of their youth and freshness, and 'no good offer refused' was the guiding rule of their young lives. Lucy married an East India merchant, and set up a fine house in Porchester Terrace. Maud married wealth personified in the person of a leading member of the Tallow Chandlers' Company, and had her town house and country house, and as fine a set of diamonds as a duchess. But Georgina, the eldest, trifled with her chances, and her twenty-seventh birthday beheld her pouring out her father's tea in a small furnished house in a street off Portland Place, which the Colonel had hired on his return from India, and which he declared himself unable to maintain another year. 'Directly the season is over I shall give up housekeeping and take a lodging at Bath,' said Colonel Lorimer. 'If you don't like Bath all the year round you can stay with your sisters.' 'That is the last thing I am likely to do,' answered Georgina; 'my sisters were barely endurable when they were single and poor. They are quite intolerable now they are married and rich. I would sooner live in the monkey-house at the Zoological than stay with either Lucy or Maud.' 'That's rank envy,' retorted her father 'You can't forgive them for having done so much better than you.' 'I can't forgive them for having married snobs. When I marry I shall marry a gentleman.' 'When!' echoed the parent, with a sneering laugh. 'Hadn't you better say "if"?'