"Will Lucy get him, do you think ?" Mrs.Sorrel fidgeted uneasily in her chair.

Other people were listening.
"Really," she mumbled nervously--"really, _dear_ Lady Larford!--you put things so _very_ plainly!--I--I cannot say!--you see--he is more like her father----" Lady Larford showed all her white teeth in an expansive grin.
"Oh, that's very safe!" she said.

"The 'father' business works very well when sufficient cash is put in with it.

I know several examples of perfect matrimonial bliss between old men and young girls--absolutely _perfect_! One is bound to be happy with heaps of money!" And keeping her teeth still well exposed, Lady Larford glided away, her skirts exhaling an odour of civet-cat as she moved.

Mrs.Sorrel gazed after her helplessly, in a state of worry and confusion, for she instinctively felt that her ladyship's pleasure would now be to tell everybody whom she knew, that Lucy Sorrel, "the new girl who was presented at Court last night," was having a "try" for the Helmsley millions; and that if the "try" was not successful, no one living would launch more merciless and bitter jests at the failure and defeat of the Sorrels than this same titled "leader" of a section of the aristocratic gambling set.