Part 56 (1/2)

'Rich, yes; and nothing but rich; while Lord Hartfield is a man of the very highest standing, belongs to the flower of English n.o.bility. Rich, yes; Mr. Smithson is rich; but, as Lady Maulevrier says, He has made his money heaven knows how.'

'Mr. Smithson has not made his money heaven knows how,' answered Lady Kirkbank, indignantly. 'He has made it in cochineal, in iron, in gunpowder, in coal, in all kinds of commodities. Everybody in the City knows how he has made his money, and that he has a genius for turning everything into gold. If the gold changes back into one of the baser metals, it is only when Mr. Smithson has made all he wanted to make. And now he has quite done with the City. The House is the only business of his life; and he is becoming a power in the House. You have every reason to be proud of your choice, Lesbia.'

'I will try to be proud of it,' said Lesbia, resolutely. 'I will not be scorned and trampled upon by Mary.'

'She seemed a harmless kind of girl,' said Lady Kirkbank, as if she had been talking of a housemaid.

'She is a designing minx,' exclaimed Lesbia, 'and has set her cap at that man from the very beginning.'

'But she could not have known that he was Lord Hartfield.'

'No; but he was a man; and that was enough for her.'

From this time forward there was a change in Lady Lesbia's style and manner--a change very much for the worse, as old-fas.h.i.+oned people thought; but to the taste of some among Lady Kirkbank's set, the change was an improvement. She was gayer than of old, gay with a reckless vivacity, intensely eager for action and excitement, for cards and racing, and all the strongest stimulants of fas.h.i.+onable life. Most people ascribed this increased vivacity, this electric manner, to the fact of her engagement to Horace Smithson. She was giddy with her triumph, dazzled by a vision of the gold which was soon to be hers.

'Egad, if I saw myself in a fair way of being able to write cheques upon such an account as Smithson's I should be as wild as Lady Lesbia,' said one of the damsel's military admirers at the Rag. 'And I believe the young lady was slightly dipped.'

'Who told you that?' asked his friend.

'A mother of mine,' answered the youth, with an apologetic air, as if he hardly cared to own such a humdrum relations.h.i.+p. 'Seraphine, the dressmaker, was complaining--wanted to see the colour of Lady Lesbia Haselden's money--vulgar curiosity--asked my old mother if she thought the account was safe, and so on. That's how I came to know all about it.'

'Well, she'll be able to pay Seraphine next season.'

Lord Maulevrier came back to London directly after his sister's wedding.

The event, which came off so quietly, so happily, filled him with unqualified joy. He had hoped from the very first that his Molly would win the cup, even while Lesbia was making all the running, as he said afterwards. And Molly had won, and was the wife of one of the best young men in England. Maulevrier, albeit unused to the melting-mood, shed a tear or two for very joy as the sister he loved and the friend of his boyhood and youth stood side by side in the quiet room at Grasmere, and spoke the solemn words that made them one for ever.

The first news he heard after his return to town was of Lesbia's engagement, which was common talk at the clubs. The visitors at Rood Hall had come back to London full of the event, and were proud of giving a detailed account of the affair to outsiders.

They all talked patronisingly of Smithson, and seemed to think it rather a wonderful fact that he did not drop his aspirates or eat peas with a knife.

'A man of stirling metal,' said the gossips, 'who can hold his own with many a fellow born in the purple.'

Maulevrier called in Arlington Street, but Lady Kirkbank and her _protegee_ were out; and it was at a cricket match at the Orleans Club that the brother and sister met for the first time after Lord Hartfield's wedding, which by this time had been in all the papers; a very simple announcement:

'On the 29th inst., at Grasmere, by the Reverend Dougla.s.s Brooke, the Earl of Hartfield to Mary, younger daughter of the ninth Earl of Maulevrier.'

Lesbia was the centre of a rather noisy little court, in which Mr.

Smithson was conspicuous by his superior reserve.

He did not exert himself as a lover, paid no compliments, was not sentimental. The pearl was won, and he wore it very quietly; but wherever Lesbia went he went; she was hardly ever out of his sight.

Maulevrier received the coolest possible greeting. Lesbia turned pale with anger at sight of him, for his presence reminded her of the most humiliating pa.s.sage in her life; but the big red satin sunshade concealed that pale angry look, and nothing in Lesbia's manner betrayed emotion.

'Where have you been hiding yourself all this time, and why were you not at Henley?' she asked.

'I have been at Grasmere.'

'Oh, you were a witness of that most romantic marriage. The Lady of Lyons reversed, the gardener's son turning out to be an earl. Was it excruciatingly funny?'