And could she doubt
that society would bow down to her as Lady Lesbia Smithson? She had
learned a great deal in her single season, and she knew how society was
influenced and governed, almost as well as Sir Robert Walpole knew how
human nature could be moulded and directed at the will of a shrewd
diplomatist. She knew that in the fashionable world every man and every
woman, every child even, has his or her price, and may be bought and
sold at pleasure. She had her price, she, Lesbia, the pearl of Grasmere;
and the price having been fairly bidden she had surrendered to the
bidder.
'I suppose I always meant to marry him,' she thought, pausing in her
promenade to gaze across the verdant landscape, a fertile vale, against
a background of low hills. All the landscape, to the edge of those
hills, belonged to Mr. Smithson. 'Yes, I must have meant to give way at
last, or I should hardly have tolerated his attentions. It would have
been a pity to refuse such a place as this; and, he is quite
gentlemanlike; and as I have done with all romantic ideas, I do not see
why I should not learn to like him very much.
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