A Bankrupt Heart, Volume I by Florence Marryat

Meantime the golden hours were slipping away in a very agreeable manner for Lord Ilfracombe at Malta. He had been accustomed to spend several weeks of each summer yachting with a few chosen companions, and as soon as his little yacht, _Débutante_, had anchored in view of Valetta, a score of husbands, fathers and brothers had scrambled aboard, carrying a score of invitations for the newcomer from their womankind. A young, good-looking and unmarried earl was not so common a visitor to Malta as to be allowed to consider himself neglected, and before Lord Ilfracombe and his friends had been located a week in Valetta, they were the lions of the place, each family vying with the other to do them honour. Naturally, the earl was pretty well used to that sort of thing, especially as he had enjoyed his title for the last ten years. There is such an ingrained snobbishness in the English nature, that it is only necessary to have a handle to one's name to get off scot-free, whatever one may do. There was a divorce case, not so very long ago, which was as flagrant as such a case could well be; but where the titled wife came off triumphant, simply because the titled husband had been as immoral as herself. The lady had money and the lady had good looks -- how far they went to salve over the little errors of which she had been accused it is impossible to say, but the bulk of the public forgave her, and the parsons prayed over her, and she is to be met everywhere, and usually surrounded by a clique of adoring tuft hunters. Sometimes I have wondered, had she been plain Mrs Brown, instead of Lady Marcus Marengo, if the satellites would have continued to revolve so faithfully.

But in sweet, simple Christian England, a title, even a borrowed one, covers a multitude of sins. The Earl of Ilfracombe had naturally not been left to find out this truth for herself, but to give him his due, it had never affected him in the least. He despised servility, though, like most of his sex, he was open to flattery -- the flattery of deeds, not words. Amongst the many families who threw wide their doors to him in Malta was that of Admiral Sir Richard Abinger, who had been stationed there for many years. Sir Richard was a regular family man. He had married sons and daughters; a bevy of girls on their promotion; and a nursery of little ones. The Abinger girls, as they were called, were an institution in Valetta. On account of their father's professional duties, and their mother's constant occupation with her younger children, they were allowed to go about a great deal alone, and had become frank and fearless, and very well able to take care of themselves in consequence. They personally conducted Lord Ilfracombe and his friends to see everything worth seeing in Malta, and a considerable intimacy was the result. There were three sisters of the respective ages of eighteen, twenty and twenty-two, and it was the middle one of these three, Leonora, or Nora, as she was generally called, who attracted Lord Ilfracombe most. She was not exactly pretty, but graceful and piquant.