But Lady Kirkbank was not one of these. The advance
of age made her only more keen in the pursuit of pleasure. She would
have abandoned herself to despair had the glass over the mantelpiece in
her boudoir ceased to be choked and littered with cards--had her book of
engagements shown a blank page. Happily there were plenty of people--if
not all of them the best people--who wanted Sir George and Lady Kirkbank
at their parties. The gentleman was sporting and harmless, the lady was
good-natured, and just sufficiently eccentric to be amusing without
degenerating into a bore. And this year she was asked almost everywhere,
for the sake of the beauty who went under her wing. Lesbia had been as a
pearl of price to her chaperon, from a social point of view; and now
that she was engaged to Horace Smithson she was likely to be even more
valuable.
Mr. Smithson had promised Lady Kirkbank, sportively as it were, and upon
the impulse of the moment, as he would have offered to wager a dozen of
gloves, that were he so happy as to win her _protegee's_ hand he would
find her an investment for, say, a thousand, which would bring her in
twenty per cent.
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