It had occurred to Lady Caroline Mansergh, on several occasions of late, to wonder whether she was destined ever to experience the passion called love. She had not remained ignorant of the science of flirtation up to her present time of life, but she had not been beguiled, ever so briefly, into mistaking any of her flirtations for love. So she was accustomed to wonder wearily, when in an unusually desultory mood, whether she should ever feel that there existed in the world a human being for whom she should be willing to suffer, with whom life would be happy, without whom it would be intolerable, and whose welfare she could deliberately and practically prefer to her own. Of late she had begun to think that Fate was against her in this particular. The idea of the possibility of feeling love for one of the men whom she was in the habit of meeting was quite preposterous; she did not hold her favourite followers half so dear as Hassan, her black barb, or like them half so well as Gelert, her greyhound. Her life would doubtless continue to be the bright, fashionable, flimsy, careless, rather _ennuyé_ existence it had hitherto been, and she should never know anything of the power, the pain, the engrossing influence of love. So much the better, she would think, in her more hopeful moods; it must be a narrowing kind of influence, bounding all one's horizon within such small limits, shutting up one's mortal vista with one figure. When the Lady Caroline dismissed her maid, and resigned herself to reverie, on this night, it was not, after her accustomed fashion, to dwell in her thoughts on the dulness, staleness, flatness, and unprofitableness of the world in general, and the section of it in which she lived in particular. She had quite a distinct subject for thought, she had a figure and a face in her fancy, a voice in her memory which filled them wholly. What if she had been wrong, if not only love were coming to her, to fill her life with delight, and turn its weariness with purpose and meaning, but love at first sight? A ridiculous notion, entertained by school-girls, housemaids, novelists, and poets, but scouted by all reasonable people of the world, and in "society." She knew this, but she did not care; there was a strange delicious thrill about her heart; and in the swift flight of her thoughts she swept the beams of happy possibilities, and felt that she could, and would, and did despise society and its notions on this point.