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Updated: June 12, 2025
"But she's trying to get hold of my fool of a son Max!" protested Mr. Wedmore. "But it isn't a question of your son Max, but of young Horne," said Doctor Haselden, with decision. "As for Max, he can take care of himself; and, at any rate, he's got all his family about to take care of him. You keep the girl. She's got a head on her shoulders. Most uncommon thing, that in a girl with such eyes!"
"You must trust me to know best, my dear. It is better for you both that we should come to some understanding. Haselden, you'll excuse me for half an hour, won't you? And you, Doreen," and he turned again to his daughter, "stay with the doctor here, and try to talk sense till I come back again." And Mr. Wedmore went quickly out of the room, without giving the girl a chance of saying anything more.
He resigned himself to this state of things, and tried to forget the cloud that hung over the house of Haselden; but the sense of a mystery, a fatal family secret, which must come to light sooner or later since all such secrets are known at last known, sifted, and bandied about from lip to lip, and published in a thousand different newspapers, and cried aloud in the streets the sense of such a secret, the dread of such a revelation weighed upon him heavily.
Rain such rain as makes out-of-door exercise impossible was always an affliction to Lady Mary Haselden.
Viscount Haselden, alias Lord Maulevrier, held a long consultation with Lord Hartfield on the night of his grandmother's death, as to what steps ought to be taken in relation to the real Earl of Maulevrier: and it was only at the end of a serious and earnest discussion that both young men came to the decision that Lady Maulevrier's secret ought to be kept faithfully to the end.
I will not promise her a grand career for my darling: but I will pledge myself that nothing of that kind which the world calls evil no penury, or shabbiness of surroundings shall ever touch Mary Haselden after she is Mary Hammond. I can promise at least so much as that. 'It is more than enough, said Mary. 'I have told you that I would gladly share poverty with you.
'Lady Lesbia Haselden is a very different person from a country parson's daughter, answered her chaperon; 'Smithson told me all about it afterwards. He was really taken with Belle's fine figure and good complexion; but one of her particular friends told him of her foolish talk about her sisters, and how well she meant to get them married when she was Mrs. Smithson. This disgusted him.
Half a dozen men had tried their hardest to propose to her had sat out dances, had waylaid her in conservatories and in back drawing-rooms, in lobbies while she waited for her carriage had looked at her piteously with tenderest declarations trembling on their lips; but she had contrived to keep them at bay, to strike them dumb by her coldness, or confound them by her coquetry; for all these were ineligibles, whom Lady Lesbia Haselden did not want to have the trouble of refusing.
Wedmore, who had been out shooting with Doctor Haselden, was furious, on returning home, to learn of Dudley's departure. "He has left a note for you, papa, in the study," said Doreen, who was, perhaps, a little paler than usual, but who gave no other outward sign of her feelings. Her father went into the study, after a glance at his daughter, and read the letter. It was not a very long one.
Smithson felt that the liege lady of his life, the woman he meant to marry willy nilly, would be the belle of the race-course. Nor was he disappointed. Everybody in London had heard of Lady Lesbia Haselden. Her photograph was in all the West-End windows, was enshrined in the albums of South Kensington and Clapham, Maida Vale and Haverstock Hill.
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