At Love's Cost by Charles Garvice — Read

It was hot at Woodgreen; but it was hotter still in Mayfair, where the season was drawing to a close with all the signs of a long-spun-out and exhausting dissolution. Women were waxing pale under the prolonged strain of entertainments which for the last week or two had been matters of duty rather than pleasure, and many a girl who had entered the lists of society a blushing and hopeful _débutante_ with perhaps a ducal coronet in her mind's eye, was beginning to think that she would have to be content with, say, the simpler one of a viscountess; or even to wed with no coronet at all. Many of the men were down at Cowes or golfing at St. Andrews; and those unfortunates who were detained in attendance at the house which continued to sit, like a "broody hen," as Howard said, longed and sighed for the coming of the magic 12th of August, before which date they assured themselves the House _must_ rise and so bring about their long-delayed holiday.

But one man showed no sign of weariness or a desire for rest; Sir Stephen's step was light and buoyant as ever on the hot pavement of Pall Mall, and on the still hotter one of the city; his face was as cheery, his manner as gay, and his voice as bright and free from care as those of a young man.