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 my debut while 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