CHAPTER VII.
A Modern Bayard.
Perhaps Lady Carruthers never did a more unwise thing than when she left her son, with his peculiar temperament and notions, to go through a London season alone.

She honestly believed herself to be doing right.
She was ill and unable to bear the whirl of fashion and gaiety.

She could not withdraw him from town to spend the gayest month of the year in seclusion.
"Leave him to me, Hildegarde," said her cousin, Colonel Mostyn.

"I will pilot him safely through the rocks and deep waters; nothing makes a man as self-reliant as feeling that he is trusted entirely." And knowing that Colonel Mostyn was an elderly man, who knew about as much as there was to know of life in all its phases, Lady Hildegarde had no scruples.
The colonel and the young squire were most luxuriously established at Roche House, the Carruthers' family mansion in Belgravia.

Lady Hildegarde made every arrangement for keeping up the establishment in all bachelor's comforts.