Lady Selina saw that nothing more could be obtained from her mother, no further intelligence as regarded the embryo party. The whole burden was to lie on her shoulders, and very heavy she felt it. As far as concerned herself, she had no particular wish for one kind of guest more than another: it was not for herself that she wanted young men; she knew that at any rate there were none within reach whom she could condescend to notice save as her father’s guests; there could be no one there whose presence could be to her of any interest: the gouty colonel, and the worthy bishop, would be as agreeable to her as any other men that would now be likely to visit Grey Abbey. But Lady Selina felt a real desire that others in the house might be happy while there. She was no flirt herself, nor had she ever been; it was not in her nature to be so. But though she herself might be contented to twaddle with old men, she knew that other girls would not. Yet it was not that she herself had no inward wish for that admiration which is desired by nearly every woman, or that she thought a married state was an unenviable one. No; she could have loved and loved truly, and could have devoted herself most scrupulously to the duties of a wife; but she had vainly and foolishly built up for herself a pedestal, and there she had placed herself; nor would she come down to stand on common earth, though Apollo had enticed her, unless he came with the coronet of a peer upon his brow. She left her mother’s boudoir, went down into the drawing-room, and there she wrote her notes of invitation, and her orders to the tradesmen; and then she went to her father, and consulted him on the difficult subject of young men. She suggested the Newbridge Barracks, where the dragoons were; and the Curragh, where perhaps some stray denizen of pleasure might be found, neither too bad for Grey Abbey, nor too good to be acceptable to Lord Kilcullen; and at last it was decided that a certain Captain Cokely, and Mat Tierney, should be asked. They were both acquaintances of Adolphus; and though Mat was not a young man, he was not very old, and was usually very gay. So that matter was settled, and the invitations were sent off. The countess overcame her difficulty by consenting that Murray the man cook should be hired for a given time, with the distinct understanding that he was to take himself off with the rest of the guests, and so great was her ladyship’s sense of the importance of the negotiation, that she absolutely despatched Griffiths to Dublin to arrange it, though thereby she was left two whole days in solitary misery at Grey Abbey; and had to go to bed, and get up, she really hardly knew how, with such assistance as Lady Selina’s maid could give her.