Lady Kirkbank carried off Lesbia early next day, the girl radiant at the idea of seeing life under new conditions. She had a few minutes' serious talk with her grandmother before she went.
'Lesbia, you are going into the world,' said Lady Maulevrier; 'yes, even a country house is the world in little. You will have many admirers instead of one; but I think, I believe, that you will be true to me and to yourself.'
'You need not fear, grandmother. I have been an idiot; but—but it was only a passing folly, and I shall never be so weak again.'
Lesbia's scornful lips and kindling eyes gave intensity to her speech. It was evident that she despised herself for that one touch of womanly softness which had made her as ready to fall in love with her first wooer as any peasant girl in Grasmere Vale.
'I am delighted to hear you speak thus, dearest,' said Lady Maulevrier. 'And if Mr. Hamilton—Hammond, I mean—should have the audacity to follow you to Kirkbank, and to intrude himself upon you there—perhaps to persecute you with clandestine addresses----'
'I do not believe he would do anything clandestine,' said Lesbia, drawing herself up. 'He is quite above that.'
'My dear child, we know absolutely nothing about him. He has his way to make in the world unaided by family or connections. He is clever—daring. Such a man cannot help being an adventurer; and an adventurer is capable of anything. I warn you to beware of him.'
'I don't suppose I shall ever see his face again,' retorted Lesbia, irritably.
She had made up her mind that her life was not to be spoiled, her brilliant future sacrificed, for the sake of John Hammond; but the wound which she had suffered in renouncing him was still fresh, her feelings were still sore. Any contemptuous mention of him stung her to the quick.
'I hope not. And you will beware of other adventurers, Lesbia, men of a worse stamp than Mr. Hammond, more experienced in ruse and iniquity, men steeped to the lips in worldly knowledge, men who look upon women as mere counters in the game of life. The world thinks that I am rich, and you will no doubt take rank as an heiress. You will therefore be a mark for every spendthrift, noble or otherwise, who wants to restore his broken fortunes by a wealthy marriage. And now, my dearest, good-bye. Half my heart goes with you. Nothing could induce me to part with you, even for a few weeks, except the conviction that it is for your good.'
'But we shall not be parted next year, I hope, grandmother,' said Lesbia, affectionately. 'You said something about presenting me, and then leaving me in Lady Kirkbank's care for the season. I should not like that at all. I want you to go everywhere with me, to teach me all the mysteries of the great world. You have always promised me that it should be so.'
'And I have always intended that it should be so. I hope that it will be so,' answered her grandmother, with a sigh; 'but I am an old woman, Lesbia, and I am rooted to this place.'
'But why should you be rooted here? What charm can keep you here, when you are so fitted to shine in society? You are old in nothing but years, and not even old in years in comparison with women whom we hear of, going everywhere and mixing in every fashionable amusement. You are full of fire and energy, and as active as a girl. Why should you not enjoy a London season, grandmother?' pleaded Lesbia, nestling her head lovingly against Lady Maulevrier's shoulder.
'I should enjoy it, dearest, with you. It would be a renewal of my youth to see you shine and conquer. I should be as proud as if the glory were all my own. Yes, dear, I hope that I shall be a spectator of your triumphs. But do not let us plan the future. Life is so full of changes. Remember what Horace says----'
'Horace is a bore,' said Lesbia. 'I hate a poet who is always harping upon change and death.'
The carriage, which was to take the travellers to Windermere Station, was announced at this moment, and Lesbia and her grandmother gave each other the farewell embrace.
'You like Lady Kirkbank, I hope?' said Lady Maulevrier, as they went towards the hall, where that lady was waiting for them, with Lady Mary and Fräulein Müller in attendance upon her.
'She seems very kind, but I should like her better if she did not paint—or if she painted better.'
'My dear child I'm afraid it is the fashion of the day, just as it was in Pope's time, and we ought to think nothing about it.'
'Well, I suppose I shall get hardened in time.'
'My dearest Lesbia,' shrieked Lady Kirkbank from below, 'remember we have to catch a train.'
Lesbia hurried downstairs, followed by Lady Maulevrier, who had to bid her friend adieu. The luggage had been sent on in a cart, Lesbia's trunks and dress baskets forming no small item. She was so well furnished with pretty gowns of all kinds that there had been no difficulty in getting her ready for this sudden visit. Her maid was on the box beside the coachman. Lady Kirkbank's attendant, a Frenchwoman of five-and-thirty, who looked as if she had graduated at Mabille, was to occupy the back seat of the landau.
Lady Mary looked after her sister longingly, as the carriage drove down the hill. She was going into a new world, to see all kinds of people—clever people—distinguished people—musical, artistic, political people—hunting and shooting people—while Mary was to stay at home all the winter among the old familiar faces. Dearly as she loved these hills and vales her heart sank a little at the thought of those long lonely months, days and evenings that would be all alike, and which must be spent without sympathetic companionship. And there would be dreary days on which the weather would keep her a prisoner in her luxurious gaol, when the mountains, and the rugged paths beside the mountain streams, would be inaccessible, when she would be restricted to Fräulein's phlegmatic society, that lady being stout and lazy, fond of her meals, and given to afternoon slumbers. Lesbia and Mary were not by any means sympathetic; yet, after all, blood is thicker than water; and Lesbia was intelligent, and could talk of the things Mary loved, which was better than total dumbness, even if she generally took an antagonistic view of them.
'I shall miss her dreadfully,' thought Mary, as she strolled listlessly in the gardens, where the leaves where falling and the flowers fading.
'I wonder if she will see Mr. Hammond at Lady Kirkbank's?' mused Mary. 'If he were anything like a lover he would find out all about her visit, and seize the opportunity of her being away from grandmother. But then if he had been much of a lover he would have followed her to St. Bees.'
Lady Maulevrier sorely missed her favourite grandchild. In a life spent in such profound seclusion, so remote from the busy interests of the world, this beloved companionship had become a necessity to her. She had concentrated her affections upon Lesbia, and the girl's absence made a fearful blank. But her ladyship's dignity was not compromised by any outward signs of trouble or loss.
She spent her mornings in her own room, reading and writing and musing at her leisure; she drove or walked every fine afternoon, sometimes alone, sometimes attended by Mary, who hated these stately drives and walks. She dinedtête-à-têtewith Mary, except on those rare occasions when there were visitors—the Vicar and his wife, or some wandering star from other worlds. Mary lived in profound awe of her grandmother, but was of far too frank a nature to be able to adapt her speech or her manners to her ladyship's idea of feminine perfection. She was silent and shy under those falcon eyes; but she was still the same Mary, the girl to whom pretence or simulation of any kind was impossible.
Letters came almost every day from Kirkbank Castle, letters from Lesbia describing the bright gay life she was living at that hospitable abode, the excursions, the rides, the picnic luncheons after the morning's sport, the dinner parties, the dances.
'It is the most delightful house you can imagine,' wrote Lesbia; 'and Lady Kirkbank is an admirable hostess. I have quite forgiven her for wearing false eyebrows; for after all, you know, one musthaveeyebrows; they are a necessity; but why does she not have the two arches alike? They arenevera pair, and I really think that French maid of hers does it on purpose.
'By-the-bye, Lady Kirkbank is going to write to you to beseech you to let me go to Cannes and Monte Carlo with her. Sir George insists upon it. He says they both like young society, and will be horribly vexed if I refuse to go with them. And Lady Kirkbank thinks my chest is just a little weak—I almost broke down the other night in that lovely little song of Jensen's—and that a winter in the south is just what I want. But, of course, dear grandmother, I won't ask you to let me be away so long if you think you will miss me.'
'If I think I shall miss her!' repeated Lady Maulevrier. 'Has the girl no heart, that she can ask such a question? But can I wonder at that? Of what account was I or my love to her father, although I sacrificed myself for his good name? Can I expect that she should be of a different clay?'
And then, meditating upon the events of the summer that was gone, Lady Maulevrier thought—
She renounced her first lover at my bidding; she renounces her love for me at the bidding of the world. Or was it not rather self-interest, the fear of making a bad marriage, which influenced her in her renunciation of Mr. Hammond. It was not obedience to me, it was not love for me which made her give him up. It was the selfishness engrained in her race. Well, I have heaped my love upon her, because she is fair and sweet, and reminds me of my own youth. I must let her go, and try to be happy in the knowledge that she is enjoying her life far away from me.'
Lady Maulevrier wrote her consent to the extension of Lesbia's visit, and by return of post came a letter from Lesbia which seemed brimming over with love, and which comforted the grandmother's wounded heart.
'Lady Kirkbank and I are both agreed, dearest, that you must join us at Cannes,' wrote Lesbia. 'At your age it is very wrong of you to spend a winter in our horrible climate. You can travel with Steadman and your maid. Lady Kirkbank will secure you a charming suite of rooms at the hotel, or she would like it still better if you would stay at her own villa. Do consent to this plan, dear grandmother, and then we shall not be parted for a long winter. Of course Mary would be quite happy at home running wild.'
Lady Maulevrier sighed as she read this letter, sighed again, and heavily, as she put it back into the envelope. Alas, how many and many a year had gone, long, monotonous, colourless years, since she had seen that bright southern world which she was now urged to revisit. In fancy she saw it again to-day, the tideless sea of deepest sapphire blue, the little wavelets breaking on a yellow beach, the white triangular sails, the woods full of asphodel and great purple and white lilies, the atmosphere steeped in warmth and light and perfume, the glare of white houses in the sun, the red and yellow blinds, the pots of green and orange and crimson clay, with oleanders abloom, the wonderful glow of colour everywhere and upon all things. And then as the eyes of the mind recalled these vivid images her bodily eyes looked out upon the rain-blotted scene, the mountains rising in a dark and dismal circle round that sombre pool below, walling her in from the outer world.
'I am at the bottom of a grave,' she said to herself. 'I am in a living tomb, from which there is no escape. Forty years! Forty years of patience and hope, for what? For dreams which may never be realised; for descendants who may never give me the price of my labours. Yes, I should like to go to my dear one. I should like to revisit the South of France, to go on to Italy. I should feel young again amidst that eternal, unchangeable loveliness. I should forget all I have suffered. But it cannot be. Not yet, not yet!'
Presently with a smile of concentrated bitterness she repeated the words 'Not yet!'
'Surely at my age it must be folly to dream of the future; and yet I feel as if there were half a century of life in me, as if I had lost nothing in either mental or bodily vigour since I came here forty years ago.'
She rose as she said these words, and began to pace the room, with quiet, firm step, erect, stately, beautiful in her advanced years as she had been in her bloom and freshness, only with another kind of beauty—an empress among women. The boast that she had made to herself was no idle boast. At sixty-seven years of age her physical powers showed no signs of decay, her mental qualities were at their best and brightest. Long years of thought and study had ripened and widened her mind. She was a woman fit to be the friend and counsellor of statesmen, the companion and confidant of her sovereign: and yet fate willed that she should be buried alive in a Westmoreland valley, seeing the same hills and streams, the same rustic faces, from year's end to year's end. Surely it was a hard fate, a heavy penance, albeit self-imposed.
Lesbia went straight from Scotland to Paris with Sir George and Lady Kirkbank. Here they stayed at the Bristol for just two days, during which her hostess went all over the fashionable quarter buying clothes for the Cannes campaign, and assisting Lesbia to spend the hundred pounds which her grandmother had sent her for the replenishment of her well-provided wardrobe. It is astonishing how little way a hundred pounds goes among the dressmakers, corset-makers, and shoemakers of Lutetia.
'I had no notion that clothes were so dear,' said Lesbia, when she saw how little she had got for her money.
'My dear, you have two gowns which are absolutelychien,' replied Lady Kirkbank, 'and you have a corset which gives you a figure, which you must forgive me for saying you never had before.'
Lady Kirkbank had to explain thatchienas applied to a gown or bonnet was the same thing aschic, only a little more so.
'I hope my gowns will always bechien,' said Lesbia meekly.
Next evening they were dining at Cannes, with the blue sea in front of their windows, dining at a table all abloom with orange flowers, tea roses, mignonette, waxen camellias, and pale Parma violets, while Lady Maulevrier and Mary dinedtête-à-têteat Fellside, with the feathery snow flakes falling outside, and the world whitening all around them.
Next day the world was all white, and Mary's beloved hills were inaccessible.
Who could tell how long they might be covered; the winding tracks hidden; the narrow forces looking like black water or molten iron against that glittering whiteness? Mary could only walk along the road by Loughrigg to the bench called 'Rest and be thankful,' from which she looked with longing eyes across towards the Langdale Pikes, and to the sharp cone-shaped peak, known as Coniston Old Man, just visible above the nearer hills. Fräulein Müller suggested that it was in just such weather as this that a well brought up young lady, a young lady withVernunftandAnstand, should devote herself to the improvement of her mind.
'Let us read German thisabscheulichafternoon,' said the Fräulein. 'Suppose we go on with the "Sorrows of Werther."'
'Werther was a fool,' cried Mary; 'any book but that.'
'Will you choose your own book?'
'Let me read Heine.'
Fräulein looked doubtful. There were things in Heine—an all-pervading tone—which rendered him hardly an appropriate poet for 'the young person.' But Fräulein compromised the matter by letting Mary read Atta Troll, the exact bearing of which neither of them understood.
'How beautifully Mr. Hammond read Heine that morning!' said Mary, breaking off suddenly from a perfectly automatic reading.
'You did not hear him, did you? You were not there,' said the Fräulein.
'I was notthere, but I heard him. I—I was sitting on the bank among the pine trees.'
'Why did you not come and sit with us? It would have been more ladylike than to hide yourself behind the trees.'
Mary blushed crimson.
'I had been in the kennels with Maulevrier; I was not fit to be seen,' she said.
'Hardly a ladylike admission,' replied the Fräulein, who felt that with Lady Mary her chief duty was to reprove.
It was afternoon. The white hills yonder and all the length of the valley were touched here and there with gleams of wintry sunlight, and Lady Maulevrier was taking her solitary walk on the terrace in front of her house, a stately figure wrapped in a furred mantle, tall, erect, moving with measured pace up and down the smooth gravel path. Now and then at the end of the walk the dowager stopped for a minute or so, and stood as if in deep thought, with her eyes dreamily contemplating the landscape. An intense melancholy shadowed her face, as she thus gazed with brooding eyes on the naked monotony of those wintry hills. So had she looked in many and many a winter, and it seemed to her that her life was of a piece with those bleak hills, where in the dismal winter time nothing living trod. She stood gazing at the sinking sun, a fiery ball shining at the end of a long gallery of crag and rock, like a lamp at the end of a corridor; and as she gazed the red round orb dropped suddenly behind the edge of a crag, as if she had been an enchantress and had dismissed it with a wave of her wand.
'O Lord, how long, how long?' she said. 'How many times have I seen that sun go down from this spot, in winter and summer, in spring and autumn! And now that the one being I loved and cared for is far away, I feel all the weariness and emptiness of my life.'
As she turned to resume her walk she heard the muffled sound of wheels in the road below, that road which was completely hidden by foliage in summer, but which was now visible here and there between the leafless trees. A carriage with a pair of horses was coming along the road from Ambleside.
Lady Maulevrier stood and watched until the carriage drew up at the lodge gate, and then, when the gate had been opened, slowly ascended the winding drive to the house.
She expected no visitor; indeed, there was no one likely to come to her from the direction of Ambleside. Her heart began to beat heavily, with the apprehension of coming evil. What kind of evil she knew not. Bad news about her granddaughter, perhaps, or about Maulevrier. And yet that could hardly be. Evil tidings of that kind would have reached her by telegram.
Perhaps it was Maulevrier himself. His movements were generally erratic.
Lady Maulevrier hurried back to the house. She went through the conservatory, where the warm whiteness of azalia, and spirea, and arum lilies contrasted curiously with the cold white snow out of doors, to the hall, where a stranger was standing talking to the butler.
He was a man of foreign appearance, wearing a cloak lined with sables, and a sable cap, which he removed as Lady Maulevrier approached. He was thin and small, with a clear olive complexion, olive inclining to pale bronze, sleek raven hair, and black almond-shaped eyes. At the first glance Lady Maulevrier knew that he was an Oriental. Her heart sank within her, and seemed to grow chill as death at sight of him. Anything associated with India was horrible to her.
The stranger came forward to meet her, bowing deferentially. He had those lithe, gliding movements which she remembered of old, when she had seen princes and dignitaries of the East creeping shoeless to her husband's feet.
'Will your ladyship do me the honour to grant me an interview?' he said in very good English. 'I have travelled from London expressly for that privilege.'
'Then I fear you have wasted your time, sir, whatever your mission may be,' the dowager answered, haughtily. 'However, I am willing to hear anything you may have to say, if you will be good enough to come this way.'
She moved towards the library, the butler preceding her to open the door, and the stranger followed her into the spacious room, where coals and logs were heaped high upon the wide dog stove, deeply recessed beneath the old English mantelpiece.
It was one of the handsomest rooms of the house, furnished with oak bookcases about seven feet high, above which vases of Oriental ware and varied colouring stood boldly out against the dark oak wall. Richly bound books in infinite variety testified to the wealth and taste of the owner; while one side of the room was absorbed by a wide Gothic window, beyond which appeared the panorama of lake and mountain, beautiful in every season. A tawny velvet curtain divided this room from the drawing-room; but there was also a strong oak door behind the curtain, which was generally closed in cold weather.
Lady Maulevrier went over to this door, and took the precaution to draw the bolt, before she seated herself in her arm-chair by the hearth. She had her own particular chair in all the rooms she occupied—a chair which was sacred as a throne.
She drew off her sealskin gloves, and motioned with a slender white hand to the stranger to be seated.
'To whom have I the honour of speaking?' she asked, looking; him through and through with an unflinching gaze, as she would have looked at Death himself, had the grim skeleton figure come to beckon her.
He handed her a visiting card on which was engraved—
'Louis Asoph, Rajah of Bisnagar.'
'If my memory does not deceive me as to the history of modern India, the territory from which you take your title has been absorbed into the English dominion?' said Lady Maulevrier.
'It was trafficked away forty-three years ago, stolen, filched from my father! but so long as I have power to think and to act I will maintain my claim to that land; yes, if only by the empty mockery of a name on a visiting card. It is a duty I owe to myself as a man, which I owe still more to my murdered father.'
'Have you come all the way from London, and in such weather, only to tell me this story?'
She had twisted his card between her fingers as she listened to him, and now, with an action at once careless and contemptuous, she flung it upon the burning logs. Slight as the action was it was eloquent of scorn for the man.
'No, Lady Maulevrier, my mention of this story, with which you are no doubt perfectly familiar, is only a preliminary. I have come to claim my own, and to appeal to you as a woman of honour to do me justice. Nay, I will say as a woman of common honesty; since there is no nice point of honour in question, only the plain laws of mine and thine, which I believe are the same among all nations and creeds. I come to you, Lady Maulevrier, to ask you to restore to me the wealth which your husband stole from my father.'
'You come to my house, to me, an old woman, helpless, defenceless, in the absence of my grandson, the present Earl, to insult me, and insult the dead,' said Lady Maulevrier, white as statuary marble, and as cold and calm. 'You come to rake up old lies, and to fling them in the face of a solitary woman, old enough to be your mother. Do you think that is a noble thing to do? Even in your barbarous Eastern code of morals and manners isthatthe act of a gentleman?'
'We are no barbarians in the East, Lady Maulevrier. I come from the cradle of civilisation, the original fount of learning. We were scholars and gentleman, priests and soldiers, two thousand years before your British ancestors ran wild in their woods, and sacrificed to their unknown gods or rocky altars reeking with human blood! I know the errand upon which I have come is not a pleasant one, either for you or for me; but I come to you strong in the right of a son to claim the heritage which was stolen from him by an infamous mother and her more infamous paramour----'
'I will not hear another word!' cried Lady Maulevrier, starting to her feet, livid with passion. 'Do not dare to pronounce that name in my hearing—the name of that abominable woman who brought disgrace and dishonour upon my husband and his race.'
'And who brought your husband the wealth of my murdered father,' answered the Indian, defiantly. 'Do not ignore that fact, Lady Maulevrier. What has become of that fortune—two hundred thousand pounds in money and jewels. It was known to have passed into Lord Maulevrier's possession after my father was put away by his paid instruments.
'How dare you bring that vile charge against the dead?'
'There are men living in India who know the truth of that charge: men who were at Bisnagar when my father, sick and heartbroken, was shut up in his deserted harem, hemmed in by spies and traitors, men with murder in their faces. There are those who know tint he was strangled by one of those wretches, that a grave was dug for him under the marble floor of his zenana, a grave in which his bones were found less than a year ago, in my presence, and fitly entombed at my bidding. He was said to have disappeared of his own free will—to have left his palace under cover of night, and sought refuge from possible treachery in another province; but there were those, and not a few, who knew the real history of his disappearance—who knew, and at the time were ready to testify in any court of justice, that he had been got rid of by the Ranee's agents, and at Lord Maulevrier's instigation, and that his possessions in money and jewels had been conveyed in the palankins that carried the Ranee and her women to his lordship's summer retreat near Madras. The Ranee died at that retreat six months after her husband's murder, not without suspicion of poison, and the wealth which she carried with her when she left Bisnagar passed into his lordship's possession. Had your husband lived, Lady Maulevrier, this story must have been brought to light. There were too many people in Madras interested in sifting the facts. There must have been a public inquiry. It was a happy thing for you and your race that Lord Maulevrier died before that inquiry had been instituted, and that many animosities died with him. Lucky too for you that I was a helpless infant at the time, and that the Mahratta adventurer to whom my father's territory had been transferred in the shuffling of cards at the end of the war was deeply concerned in hushing up the story.'
'And pray, why have you nursed your wrath in all these years? Why do you intrude on me after nearly half a century, with this legend of rapine and murder?'
'Because for nearly half a century I have been kept in profound ignorance of my father's fate—in ignorance of my race. Lord Maulevrier's jealousy banished me from my mother's arms shortly after my father's death. I was sent to the South of France under the care of an ayah. My first memories are of a monastery near Marseilles, where I was reared and educated by a Jesuit community, where I was baptised and brought up in the Roman Catholic faith. By the influence of the Jesuit Fathers I was placed in a house of commerce at Marseilles. Funds to provide for my education and establishment in life, under very modest conditions, were sent periodically by an agent at Madras. It was known that I was of East Indian birth, but little more was known about me. It was only when years had gone by and I was a merchant on my own account and could afford to go to India on a voyage of discovery—yes, as much a voyage of discovery as that of Vasco de Gama or of Drake—that I got from the Madras agent the clue which enabled me, at the cost of infinite patience and infinite labour, to unravel the mystery of my birth. There is no need to enter now upon the details of that story. I have overwhelming documentary evidence—a cloud of witnesses—to convince the most sceptical as to who and what I am. The documents are some of them in my valise, at your ladyship's service. Others are at my hotel in London, ready for the inspection of your ladyship's lawyers. I do not think you will desire to invite a public inquiry, or force me to recover my birthright in a court of justice. I believe that you will take a broader and nobler view of the case, and that you will restore to the wronged and abandoned son the fortune stolen from his murdered father.'
'How dare you come to me with this tissue of lies? How dare you look me in the face and charge my dead husband with treachery and dishonour? I believe neither in your story nor in you, and I defy you to the proof of this vile charge against the dead!'
'In other words you mean that you will keep the money and jewels which Lord Maulevrier stole from my father?'
'I deny the fact that any such jewels or money ever passed into his lordship's possession. That vile woman, your mother, whose infamy cast a dark cloud over Lord Maulevrier's honour, may have robbed her husband, may have emptied the public treasury. But not a rupee or a jewel belonging to her ever came into my possession. I will not bear the burden of her crimes. Her existence spoiled my life—banished me from India, a widow in all but the name, and more desolate than many widows.'
'Lord Maulevrier was known to leave India carrying with him two large chests—supposed to contain books—but actually containing treasure. A man who was in the Governor's confidence, and who had been the go-between in his intrigues, confessed on his death-bed that he had assisted in removing the treasure. Now, Lady Maulevrier, since your husband died immediately after his arrival in England, and before he could have had any opportunity of converting or making away with the valuables so appropriated, it stands to reason that those valuables must have passed into your possession, and it is from your honour and good feeling that I claim their restitution. If you deny the claim so advanced, there remains but one course open to me, and that is to make my wrongs public, and claim my right from the law of the land.'
'And do you suppose that any English judge or English jury would believe so wild a story—or countenance so vile an accusation against the defenceless?' demanded Lady Maulevrier, standing up before him, tall, stately, with flashing eye and scornful lip, the image of proud defiance. 'Bring forward your claim, produce your documents, your witnesses, your death-bed confessions. I defy you to injure my dead husband or me by your wild lies, your foul charges! Go to an English lawyer, and see what an English law court will do for you—and your claim. I will hear no more of either.'
She rang the bell once, twice, thrice, with passionate hand, and a servant flew to answer that impatient summons.
'Show this gentlemen to his carriage,' she said, imperiously.
The gentleman who called himself Louis Asoph bowed, and retired without another word.
As the door closed upon him, Lady Maulevrier stood, with clenched hands and frowning brow, staring into vacancy. Her right arm was outstretched, as if she would have waved the intruder away. Suddenly, a strange numbness crept over that uplifted arm, and it fell to her side. From her shoulder down to her foot, that proud form grew cold and feelingless and dead, and she, who had so long carried herself as a queen among women, sank in a senseless heap upon the floor.
Lady Mary and the Fräulein had been sitting in the drawing-room all this time waiting for Lady Maulevrier to come to tea. They heard her come in from the garden; and then the footman told them that she was in the library with a stranger. Not even the muffled sound of voices penetrated the heavy velvet curtain and the thick oak door. It was only by the loud ringing of the bell and the sound of footsteps in the hall that Lady Mary knew of the guest's departure. She went to the door between the two rooms, and was surprised to find it bolted.
'Grandmamma, won't you come to tea?' she asked timidly, knocking on the oaken panel, but there was no reply.
She knocked again, and louder. Still no reply.
'Perhaps her ladyship is going to take tea in her own room,' she said, afraid to be officious.
Attendance upon her grandmother at afternoon tea had been one of Lesbia's particular duties; but Mary felt that she was an unwelcome substitute for Lesbia. She wanted to get a little nearer her grandmother's heart if she could; but she knew that her attentions were endured rather than liked.
She went into the hall, where the footman on duty was staring at the light snowflakes dancing past the window, perhaps wishing he were a snowflake himself, and enjoying himself in that white whirligig.
'Is her ladyship having tea in the morning-room?' asked Mary.
The footman gave a little start, as if awakened out of a kind of trance. The sheer vacuity of his mind might naturally slide into mesmeric sleep.
He told Lady Mary that her ladyship had not left the library, and Mary went in timidly, wondering why her grandmother had not joined them in the drawing-room when the stranger was gone.
The sky was dark outside the wide windows, white hills and valleys shrouded in the shades of night. The library was only lighted by the glow of the logs on the hearth, and in that ruddy light the spacious room looked empty. Mary was turning to go away, thinking the footman had been mistaken, when her eye suddenly lighted upon a dark figure lying on the ground. And then she heard an awful stertorous breathing, and knew that her grandmother was lying there, stricken and helpless.
Mary shrieked aloud, with a cry that pierced curtains and doors, and brought Fräulein and half-a-dozen servants to her help. One of the men brought a lamp, and among them they lifted the smitten figure. Oh, God! how ghastly the face looked in the lamplight!--the features drawn to one side, the skin livid.
'Her ladyship has had a stroke,' said the butler.
'Is she dying?' faltered Mary, white as ashes. 'Oh, grandmother, dear grandmother, don't look at us like that!'
One of the servants rushed off to the stables to send for the doctor. Of course, being an indoor man, he no more thought of going out himself into the snowy night on such an errand than Noah thought of going out of the ark to explore the face of the waters in person.
They carried Lady Maulevrier to her bed and laid her there, like a figure carved out of stone. She was not unconscious. Her eyes were open, and she moaned every now and then as if in bodily or mental pain. Once she tried to speak, but had no power to shape a syllable aright, and ended with a shuddering sigh. Once she lifted her left arm and waved it in the air, as if waving some one off in fear or anger. The right arm, indeed the whole of the right side, was lifeless, motionless as a stone. It was a piteous sight to see the beautiful features drawn and distorted, the lips so accustomed to command mouthing the broken syllables of an unknown tongue. Lady Mary sat beside the bed with clasped hands, praying dumbly, with her eyes fixed on her grandmother's altered face.
Mr. Horton came, as soon as his stout mountain pony could bring him. He did not seem surprised at her ladyship's condition, and accepted the situation with professional calmness.
'A marked case of hemiplegia,' he said, when he had observed the symptoms.
'Will she die?' asked Mary.
'Oh, dear, no! She will want great care for a little while, but we shall bring her round easily. A splendid constitution, a noble frame; but I think she has overworked her brain a little, reading Huxley and Darwin, and the German physiologists upon whom Huxley and Darwin have built themselves. Metaphysics too. Schopenhauer, and the rest of them. A wonderful woman! Very few brains could hold what hers has had poured into it in the last thirty years. The conducting nerves between the brain and the spinal marrow have been overworked: too much activity, too constant a strain. Even the rails and sleepers on the railroad wear out, don't you know, if there's excessive traffic.'
Mr. Horton had known Mary from her childhood, had given her Gregory's powder, and seen her safely through measles and other infantine ailments, so he was quite at home with her, and at Fellside generally. Lady Maulevrier had given him a good deal of her confidence during those thirty years in which he had practised as his father's partner and successor at Grasmere. He used to tell people that he owed the best part of his education to her ladyship, who condescended to talk to him of the new books she read, and generally gave him a volume to put in his pocket when he was leaving her.
'Don't be downhearted, Lady Mary,' he said; 'I shall come in two or three times a day and see how things are going on, and if I see the slightest difficulty in the case I'll telegraph for Jenner.'
Mary and the Fräulein sat up with the invalid all that night. Lady Maulevrier's maid was also in attendance, and one of the menservants slept in his clothes on a couch in the corridor, ready for any emergency. But the night passed peacefully, the patient slept a good deal, and next day there was evident improvement. The stroke which had prostrated the body, which reduced the vigorous, active frame to an awful statue—like stillness—a quietude as of death of itself—had not overclouded the intellect. Lady Maulevrier lay on her bed in her luxurious room, with wide Tudor windows commanding half the circle of the hills, and was still the ruling spirit of the house, albeit powerless to move that slender hand, the lightest wave of which had been as potent to command in her little world as royal sign-manual or sceptre in the great world outside.
Now there remained only one thing unimpaired by that awful shock which had laid the stately frame low, and that was the will and sovereign force of the woman's nature. Voice was altered, speech was confused and difficult; but the strength of will, the supreme power of mind, seemed undiminished.
When Lady Maulevrier was asked if Lesbia should be telegraphed for, she replied no, not unless she was in danger of sudden death.
'I should like to see her before I go,' she said, labouring to pronounce the words.
'Dear grandmother,' said Mary, tenderly, 'Mr. Horton says there is no danger.'
'Then do not send for her; do not even tell her what has happened; not yet.'
'But she will miss your letters.'
'True. You must write twice a week at my dictation. You must tell her that I have hurt my hand, that I am well but cannot use a pen. I would not spoil her pleasure for the world.'
'Dear grandmother, how unselfish you are! And Maulevrier, shall he be sent for? He is not so far away,' said Mary, hoping her grandmother would say yes.
What a relief, what an unspeakable solace Maulevrier's presence would be in that dreary house, smitten to a sudden and awful stillness, as if by the Angel of Death!
'No, I do not want Maulevrier!' answered her ladyship impatiently.
'May I sit here and read to you, grandmother?' Mary asked, timidly. 'Mr. Horton said you were to be kept very quiet, and that we were not to let you talk, or talk much to you, but that we might read to you if you like.'
'I do not wish to be read to. I have my thoughts for company,' said Lady Maulevrier.
Mary felt that this implied a wish to be alone. She bent over the invalid's pillow and kissed the pale cheek, feeling as if she were taking a liberty in venturing so much. She would hardly have done it had Lesbia been at home; but she bad a feeling that in Lesbia's absence Lady Maulevrier must want somebody's love—even hers. And then she crept away, leaving Halcott the maid in attendance, sitting at her work at the window furthest from the bed.
'Alone with my thoughts,' mused Lady Maulevrier, looking out at the panorama of wintry hills, white, ghost-like against an iron sky. 'Pleasant thoughts, truly! Walled in by the hills—walled in and hemmed round for ever. This place has always felt like a grave: and now I know that itismy grave.'
Fräulein, and Lady Mary, and the maid Halcott, a sedate personage of forty summers, had all been instructed by the doctor that Lady Maulevrier was to be kept profoundly quiet. She must not talk much, since speech was likely to be a painful effort with her for some little time; she must not be talked to much by anyone, least of all must she be spoken to upon any agitating topic. Life must be made as smooth and easy for her as for a new-born infant. No rough breath from the outer world must come near her. She was to see no one but her maid and her granddaughter. Mr. Horton, a plain family man, took it for granted that the granddaughter was dear to her heart, and likely to exercise a soothing influence. Thus it happened that although Lady Maulevrier asked repeatedly that James Steadman should be brought to her, she was not allowed to see him. She whose will had been paramount in that house, whose word had been law, was now treated as a little child, while the will was still as strong, the mind as keen as ever.
'She would talk to him of business,' said Mr. Horton, when he was told of her ladyship's desire to see Steadman, 'and that cannot be allowed, not for some little time at least.'
'She is very angry with us for refusing to obey her,' said Lady Mary.
'Naturally, but it is for her own welfare she is disobeyed. She can have nothing to say to Steadman which will not keep till she is better. This establishment goes by clockwork.'
Mary wished it was a little less like clockwork. Since Lady Maulevrier had been lying upstairs—the voice which had once ruled over the house muffled almost to dumbness—the monotony of life at Fellside had seemed all the more oppressive. The servants crept about with stealthier tread. Mary dared not touch either piano or billiard balls, and was naturally seized with a longing to touch both. The house had a darkened look, as if the shadow of doom overhung it.
During this regimen of perfect quiet Lady Maulevrier was not allowed to see the newspapers; and Mary was warned that in reading to her grandmother she was to avoid all exciting topics. Thus it happened that the account of a terrible collision between the Scotch express and a luggage train, a little way beyond Preston, an accident in which seven people were killed and about thirty seriously hurt, was not made known to her ladyship; and yet that fact would have been of intense interest and significance to her, since one of those passengers whose injuries were fatal bore the name of Louis Asoph.
The wintry weeks glided smoothly by in a dull monotony, and now Lady Maulevrier, still helpless, still compelled to lie on her bed or her invalid couch, motionless as marble, had at least recovered her power of speech, was allowed to read and to talk, and to hear what was going on in that metropolitan world which she seemed unlikely ever to behold again.
Lady Lesbia was still at Cannes, whence she wrote of her pleasures and her triumphs, of flowers and sapphire sea, and azure sky, of all things which were not in the grey bleak mountain world that hemmed in Fellside. She was meeting many of the people whom she was to meet again next season in the London world. She had made an informaldébutin a very select circle, a circle in which everybody was more or lesschic, orchien, orzinc, and she was tasting all the sweets of success. But in none of her letters was there any mention of Lord Hartfield. He was not in the little great world by the blue tideless sea.
There was no talk of Lesbia's return. She was to stay till the carnival; she was to stay till the week before Easter. Lady Kirkbank insisted upon it; and both Lesbia and Lady Kirkbank upbraided Lady Maulevrier for her cruelty in not joining them at Cannes.
So Lady Maulevrier had to resign herself to that solitude which had become almost the habit of her life, and to the society of Mary and the Fräulein. Mary was eager to be of use, to sit with her grandmother, to read to her, to write for her. The warm young heart was deeply moved by the spectacle of this stately woman stricken into helplessness, chained to her couch, immured within four walls. To Mary, who so loved the hills and the streams, the sun and the wind, this imprisonment seemed unspeakable woe. In her pity for such a martyrdom she would have done anything to give pleasure or solace to her grandmother. Unhappily there was very little Mary could do to increase the invalid's sum of pleasure. Lady Maulevrier was a woman of strong feeling, not capable of loving many people. She had concentrated her affection upon Lesbia: and she could not open her heart to Mary all at once because Lesbia was out of the way.
'If I had a dog I loved, and he were to die, I would never have another in his place,' Lady Maulevrier said once; and that speech was the keynote of her character.
She was very courteous to Mary, and seemed grateful for her attentions; but she did not cultivate the girl's society. Mary wrote all her letters in a fine bold hand, and with a rapid pen; but when the letter-writing was over Lady Maulevrier always dismissed her.
'My dear, you want to be out in the air, riding your pony, or scampering about with your dogs,' she said, kindly. 'It would be a cruelty to keep you indoors.'
'No, indeed, dear grandmother, I should like to stay. May I stop and read to you?'
'No, thank you, Mary. I hate being read to. I like to devour a book. Reading aloud is such slow work.
'But I am afraid you must sometimes feel lonely,' faltered Mary.
'Lonely,' echoed the dowager, with a sigh. 'I have been lonely for the last forty years—I have been lonely all my life. Those I loved never gave me back love for love—never—not even your sister. See how lightly she cuts the link that bound her to me. How happy she is among strangers! Yes, there was one who loved me truly, and fate parted us. Does fate part all true lovers, I wonder?'
'You parted Lesbia and Mr. Hammond,' said Mary, impetuously. 'I am sure they loved each other truly.'
'The old and the worldly-wise are Fate, Mary,' answered the dowager, not angry at this daring reproach. 'I know your sister; and I know she is not the kind of woman to be happy in an ignoble life—to bear poverty and deprivation. If it had been you, now, whom Mr. Hammond had chosen, I might have taken the subject into my consideration.'
Mary flamed crimson.
'Mr. Hammond never gave me a thought,' she said, 'unless it was to think me contemptible. He is worlds too good for such a Tomboy. Maulevrier told him about the fox-hunt, and they both laughed at me—at least I have no doubt Mr. Hammond laughed, though I was too much ashamed to look at him.'
'Poor Mary, you are beginning to find out that a young lady ought to be ladylike,' said Lady Maulevrier; 'and now, my dear, you may go. I was only joking with you. Mr. Hammond would be no match for any granddaughter of mine. He is nobody, and has neither friends nor interest. If he had gone into the church Maulevrier could have helped him; but I daresay his ideas are too broad for the church; and he will have to starve at the bar, where nobody can help him. I hope you will bear this in mind, Mary, if Maulevrier should ever bring him here again.'
'He is never likely to come back again. He suffered too much; he was treated too badly in this house.'
'Lady Mary, be good enough to remember to whom you are speaking,' said her ladyship, with a frown. 'And now please go, and tell some one to send Steadman to me.'
Mary retired without a word, gave Lady Maulevrier's message to a footman in the corridor, slipped off to her room, put on her sealskin hat and jacket, took her staff and went out for a long ramble. The hills and valleys were still white. It had been a long, cold winter, and spring was still far off—February had only just begun.
Lady Maulevrier's couch had been wheeled into the morning-room—that luxurious room which was furnished with all things needful to her quiet life, her books, her favourite colours, her favourite flowers, every detail studiously arranged for her pleasure and comfort. She was wheeled into this room every day at noon. When the day was bright and sunny her couch was placed near the window: and when the day was dull and grey the couch was drawn close to the low hearth, which flashed and glittered with brightly coloured tiles and artistic brass.
To-day the sky was dull, and the velvet couch stood beside the hearth. Halcott sat at work in the adjoining bed-chamber, and came in every now and then to replenish the fire: a footman was always on duty in the corridor. A spring bell stood among the elegant trifles upon her ladyship's table; and the lightest touch of her left hand upon the bell brought her attendants to her side. She resolutely refused to have any one sitting with her all day long. Solitude was a necessity of her being, she told Mr. Horton, when he recommended that she should have some one always in attendance upon her.
As the weeks wore on her features had been restored to their proud, calm beauty, her articulation was almost as clear as of old: yet, now and then, there would be a sudden faltering, the tongue and lips would refuse their office, or she would forget a word, or use a wrong word unconsciously. But there was no recovery of power or movement on that side of the body which had been stricken. The paralysed limbs were still motionless, lifeless as marble; and it was clear that Mr. Horton had begun to lose heart about his patient. There was nothing obscure in the case, but the patient's importance made the treatment a serious matter, and the surgeon begged to be allowed to summon Sir William Jenner.
This, however, Lady Maulevrier refused.
'I don't want any fuss made about me,' she said. 'I am content to trust myself to your skill, and I beg that no other doctor may be summoned.'
Mr. Horton understood his patient's feelings on this point. She had a sense of humiliation in her helplessness, and, like some wounded animal that crawls to its covert to die, she would fain have hidden her misery from the eye of strangers. She had allowed no one, not even Maulevrier, to be informed of the nature of her illness.
'It will be time enough for him to know all about me when he comes here,' she said. 'I shall be obliged to see him whenever he does come.'
Maulevrier had spent Christmas and New Year in Paris, Mr. Hammond still his companion. Her ladyship commented upon this with a touch of scorn.
'Mr. Hammond is like the Umbra you were reading about the other day in Lord Lytton's "Last Days of Pompeii,"' she said to Mary. 'It must be very nice for him to go about the world with a friend who franks him everywhere.'
'But we don't know that Maulevrier franks him,' protested Mary, blushing. 'We have no right to suppose that Mr. Hammond does not pay his own expenses.'
'My dear child, is it possible for a young man who has no private means to go gadding about the world on equal terms with a spendthrift like Maulevrier—to pay for Moors in Scotland and apartments at the Bristol?'
'But they are not staying at the Bristol,' exclaimed Mary. 'They are staying at an old-established French hotel on the left side of the Seine. They are going about amongst the students and the workmen, dining at popular restaurants, hearing people talk. Maulevrier says it is delightfully amusing—ever so much better than the beaten track of life in Anglo-American Paris.'
'I daresay they are leading a Bohemian life, and will get into trouble before they have done,' said her ladyship, gloomily. 'Maulevrier is as wild as a hawk.'
'He is the dearest boy in the world,' exclaimed Mary.
She was deeply grateful for her brother's condescension in writing her a letter of two pages long, letting her into the secrets of his life. She felt as if Mr. Hammond were ever so much nearer to her now she knew where he was, and how he was amusing himself.
'Hammond is such a queer fellow,' wrote Maulevrier, 'the strangest things interest him. He sits and talks to the workmen for hours; he pokes his nose into all sorts of places—hospitals, workshops, poverty-stricken dens—and people are always civil to him. He is what Lesbia callssympatico. Ah! what a mistake Lesbia and my grandmother made when they rejected Hammond! What a pearl above price they threw away! But, you see, neither my lady nor Lesbia could appreciate a gem, unless it was richly set.'
And now Lady Maulevrier lay on her couch by the fire, waiting for James Steadman. She had seen him several times since the day of her seizure, but never alone. There was an idea that Steadman must necessarily talk to her of business matters, or cause her mind to trouble itself about business matters; so there had been a well-intentioned conspiracy in the house to keep him out of her way; but now she was much better, and her desire to see Steadman need no longer be thwarted.
He came at her bidding, and stood a little way within the door, tall, erect, square-shouldered, resolute-looking, with a quiet force of character expressed in every feature. He was very much the same man that he had been forty years ago, when he went with her ladyship to Southampton, and accompanied his master and mistress on that tedious journey which was destined to be Lord Maulevrier's last earthly pilgrimage. Time had done little to Steadman in those forty years, except to whiten his hair and beard, and imprint some thoughtful lines upon his sagacious forehead. Time had done something for him mentally, insomuch as he had read a great many books and cultivated his mind in the monotonous quiet of Fellside. Altogether he was a superior man for the passage of those forty years.
He had married within the time, choosing for himself the buxom daughter of a lodgekeeper, whose wife had long been laid at rest in Grasmere churchyard. The buxom girl had grown into a bulky matron, but she was a colourless personage, and her existence made hardly any difference in James Steadman's life. She had brought him no children, and their fireside was lonely; but Steadman seemed to be one of those self-contained personages to whom a solitary life is no affliction.
'I hope I see you in better health, my lady,' he said, standing straight and square, like a soldier on parade.
'I am better, thank you, Steadman; better, but a poor lifeless log chained to this sofa. I sent for you because the time has come when I must talk to you upon a matter of business. You heard, I suppose, that a stranger called upon me just before I had my attack?'
'Yes, my lady.'
'Did you hear who and what he was?'
'Only that he was a foreigner, my lady.'
'He is of Indian birth. He claims to be the son of the Ranee of Bisnagar.'
'He could do you no harm, my lady, if he were twenty times her son.'
'I hope not. Now, I want to ask you a question. Among those trunks and cases and packages of Lord Maulevrier's which were sent here by heavy coach, after they were landed at Southampton, do you remember two cases of books?'
'There are two large cases among the luggage, my lady; very heavy cases, iron clamped. I should not be surprised if they were full of books.'
'Have they never been opened?'
'Not to my knowledge.'
'Are they locked?'
'Yes, my lady. There are two padlocks on each chest.'
'And are the keys in your possession?'
'No, my lady.'
'Where are the cases?'
'In the Oak Room, with the rest of the Indian luggage.'
'Let them remain there. No doubt those cases contain the books of which I have been told. You have not heard that the person calling himself Rajah of Bisnagar has been here since my illness, have you?'
'No, my lady; I am sure he has not been here.'
Lady Maulevrier gave him a scrutinising look.
'He might have come, and my people might have kept the knowledge from me, out of consideration for my infirmity,' she said. 'I should be very angry if it were so. I should hate to be treated like a child.'
'You shall not be so treated, my lady, while I am in this house; but I know there is no member of the household who would presume so to treat you.'
'They might do it out of kindness; but I should loathe such kindness,' said Lady Maulevrier, impatiently. 'Though I have been smitten down, though I lie here like a log, I have a mind to think and to plan; and I am not afraid to meet danger, face to face. Are you telling me the truth, Steadman? Have there been no visits concealed from me, no letters kept from me since I have been ill?'
'I am telling you nothing but the truth, my lady. No letter has been kept from you; no visitor has been to this house whose coming you have not been told of.'
'Then I am content,' said her ladyship, with a sigh of relief.
After this there followed some conversation upon business matters. James Steadman was trusted with the entire management of the dowager's income, the investment of her savings. His honesty was above all suspicion. He was a man of simple habits, his wants few. He had saved money in every year of his service; and for a man of his station was rich enough to be unassailable by the tempter.
He had reconciled his mind to the monotonous course of life at Fellside in the beginning of things; and, as the years glided smoothly by, his character and wants and inclinations had, as it were, moulded themselves to fit that life. He had easy duties, a comfortable home, supreme authority in the household. He was looked up to and made much of in the village whenever he condescended to appear there; and by the rareness of his visits to the Inn or the Reading-room, and his unwillingness to accept hospitality from the tradesmen of Grasmere and Ambleside, he maintained his dignity and exaggerated his importance. He had his books and his newspapers, his evening leisure, which no one ever dared to disturb. He had the old wing of the house for his exclusive occupation; and no one ventured to intrude upon him in his privacy. There was a bell in the corridor which communicated with his rooms, and by this bell he was always summoned. There were servants who had been ten years at Fellside, and who had never crossed the threshold of the red cloth door which was the only communication between the new house and the old one. Steadman's wife performed all household duties of cooking and cleaning in the south wing, where she and her husband took all their meals, and lived entirely apart from the other servants, an exclusiveness which was secretly resented by the establishment.
'Mr. Steadman may be a very superior man,' said the butler 'and I know that in his own estimation the Premier isn't in it compared with him; but I never was fond of people who set themselves upon pinnacles, and I'm not fond of the Steadmans.'
'Mrs. Steadman's plain and homely enough,' replied the housekeeper, 'and I know she'd like to be more sociable, and drop into my room for a cup of tea now and then; but Steadman do so keep her under his thumb: and because he's a misanthrope she's obliged to sit and mope alone.'
If Steadman wanted to drive, there was a dogcart and horse at his disposal; but he did not often leave Fellside. He seemed in his humble way to model his life upon Lady Maulevrier's secluded habits. It was growing dusk when Steadman left his mistress, and she lay for some time looking at the landscape over which twilight shadows were stealing, and thinking of her own life. Over that life, too, the shadows of evening were creeping. She had begun to realise the fact that she was an old woman; that for her all personal interest in life was nearly over. She had never felt her age while her activity was unimpaired. She had been obliged to remind herself very often that the afternoon and evening of life had slipped away unawares in that tranquil retirement, and that the night was at hand.
For her the close of earthly life meant actual night. No new dawn, no mysterious after-life shone upon her with magical gleams of an unknown light upon the other side of the dark river. She had accepted the Materialist's bitter and barren creed, and had taught herself that this little life was all. She had learned to scorn the idea of a great Artificer outside the universe, a mighty spirit riding amidst the clouds, and ruling the course of nature and the fate of man. She had schooled herself to think that the idea of a blind, unconscious Nature, working automatically through infinite time and space, was ever so much grander than the old-world notion of a personal God, a Being of infinite power and inexhaustible beneficence, mighty to devise and direct the universe, with knowledge reaching to the farthest confines of space, with ear to listen to the prayer of His lowest creatures. Her belief stopped short even of the Deist's faith in an Almighty Will. She saw in creation nothing but the inevitable development of material laws; and it seemed to her that there was quite as much hope of a heavenly world after death for the infusoria in the pool as for man in his pride and power.
She read her Bible as diligently as she read her Shakespeare, and the words of the Royal Preacher in some measure embodied her own dreary creed. And now, in the darkening winter day, she watched the gloomy shadows creep over the rugged breast of Nabb Scar, and she thought how there was a time for all things, and that her day of hope and ambition was past.
Of late years she had lived for Lesbia, looking forward to the day when she was to introduce this beloved grandchild to the great world of London; and now that hope was gone for ever.
What could a helpless cripple do for a fashionable beauty? What good would it be for her to be conveyed to London, and to lie on a couch in Mayfair, while Lesbia rode in the Row and went to three or four parties every night with a more active chaperon?
She had hoped to go everywhere with her darling, to glory in all her successes, to shield her from all possibility of failure. And now Lesbia must stand or fall alone.
It was a hard thing; but perhaps the hardest part of it was that Lesbia seemed so very well able to get on without her. The girl wrote in the highest spirits; and although her letters were most affectionately worded, they were all about self. That note was dominant in every strain. Her triumphs, her admirers, her bonnets, her gowns. She had had more money from her grandmother, and more gowns from Paris.
'You have no idea how the people dress in this place,' she wrote. 'I should have been quite out in the cold without my three new frocks from Worth. The little Princess bonnets I wear are the rage. Worth recommended me to adopt special flowers and colours; so I have worn nothing but primroses since I have been here, and my little primrose bonnets are to be seen everywhere, sometimes on hideous old women. Lady Kirkbank hopes you will be able to go to London directly after Easter. She says I must be presented at the May drawing-room—that is imperative. People have begun to talk about me; and unless I make mydébutwhile their interest is fresh I shall be a failure. There is an American beauty here, and I believe she and I are considered rivals, and young men lay wagers about us, as to which will look best at a ball, or a regatta, what colours we shall wear, and so on. It is immense fun. I only wish you were here to enjoy it. The American girl is a most insolent person, but I have had the pleasure of crushing her on several occasions in the calmest way. In the description of the concert in last week's newspaper I was calledl'Anglais de marbre. I certainly had the decency to hold my tongue while Faure was singing. Miss Bolsover's voice was heard ever so many times above the music. According to our English ideas she has most revolting manners, and the money she spends on her clothes would make your hair stand on end. Now do, dearest grandmother, make all your arrangements for beginning the campaign directly after Easter. You must take a house in the very choicest quarter—Lady Kirkbank suggests Grosvenor-place—and itmustbe a large house, for of course you will give a ball. Lady K. says we might have Lord Porlock's house—poor Lady Porlock and her baby died a few weeks ago, and he has gone to Sweden quite broken-hearted. It is one of the new houses, exquisitely furnished, and Lady K. thinks you might have it for a song. Will you get Steadman to write to his lordship's steward, and see what can be done?
'I hope the dear hand is better. You have never told me how you hurt it. It is very sweet of Mary to write me such long letters, and quite a pleasant surprise to find she can spell; but I want to see your own dear hand once more.'