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 informal debut in a very select circle, a circle in which everybody was more or less chic, or chien, or zinc, 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 Fraeulein.  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?’