Another season had commenced. The carriages in the Lady's Mile were gathering thicker every day, though as yet there was not a leaflet on the trees in Hyde Park, nor a ray of warm sunshine on the Serpentine. January the bitter had given place to February the uncertain, when Florence Crawford tore herself away from the blusterous delights of the Brighton Esplanade, in obedience to her father's summons. She had been staying with some stylish friends, who had taken a house on the East Cliff; while William Crawford made the best of the dark short days, working steadily at a picture which was to be one of the glories of the Academy in the coming season. Florence Crawford had not exaggerated her wealthy admirer's devotion. Mr. Lobyer had spent the winter in perpetual rushing to and fro between London and Brighton. Another man, as deeply smitten as Mr. Lobyer, would have been content to have taken up his abode at Piccadiily-super-Mare, and to have devoted himself entirely to the society of his enchantress. But Miss Crawford's admirer could not altogether tear himself away from the companions of his bachelor life. There were winter races, and mysterious pugilistic meetings, and secret cock-fightings, and divers other entertainments connected with the animal creation, from the delights of which beauty was powerless to beguile Mr. Lobyer. He wanted to marry Florence Crawford, and he meant to marry her. The more completely she held him at bay, and defied him by her coquetry and insolence, the more dogged he became in his determination to win her for his wife. He admired her beauty, her grace, her piquancy; and he thought it would be a fine thing to have such a woman seated at the head of his table, or sitting by his side in his mail-phaeton, with the most thoroughbred of bull-terriers on her lap, and a forty-guinea tiger-skin over her knees. He admired every thing that was gorgeous and expensive, and out of the reach of that large class of humanity whose members did not possess bankers' books, and whom he contemptuously generalised as "cads." He admired Florence Crawford because, in his own phraseology, she was the best thing he had seen in the way of girls. But he had carefully considered the prudence of the step before he committed himself by any deliberate avowal of his admiration. "I might marry a woman with plenty of money," he thought; "but then I shouldn't have much of a choice. I like to choose my horses and dogs, and I should like to choose my wife. Florence Crawford must have _some_ money, for she's an only child, and those painter-fellows make no end of money nowadays; and as Crawford has been a widower sixteen or seventeen years, I don't suppose there's much chance of his making an idiot of himself by marrying again."