description of the concert in last week’s newspaper I was called l’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 it must be 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.’

CHAPTER XVIII.

‘AND COME AGEN BE IT BY NIGHT OR DAY.’

Those winter months were unutterably dreary for Lady Mary Haselden.  She felt weighed down by a sense of death and woe near at hand.  The horror of that dreadful moment in which she found her grandmother lying senseless on the ground, the terror of that distorted countenance, those starting eyes, that stertorous breathing, was not easily banished from a vivid girlish imagination; seeing how few distractions there were to divert Mary’s thoughts, and how the sun sank and rose again upon the same inevitable surroundings, to the same monotonous routine.

Her grandmother was kinder than she had been in days gone by, less inclined to find fault; but Mary knew that her society gave Lady Maulevrier very little pleasure, that she could do hardly anything towards filling the gap made by Lesbia’s absence.  There was no one to scold her, no one to quarrel with her.  Fraeulein Mueller lectured her mildly from time to time; but that stout German was too lazy to put any force or fire into her lectures.  Her reproofs were like the fall of waterdrops on a stone, and infinite ages would have been needed to cause any positive impression.

February came to an end without sign or token from the outer world to disturb the even tenor of life at Fellside.  Mary read, and read, and read, till she felt she was made up of the contents of books, crammed with other people’s ideas.  She read history, or natural science, or travels, or German poetry in the morning, and novels or English poetry in the evening.  She had pledged herself to devote her morning indoor hours to instructive literature, and to accomplish some portion of study in every day.  She was carrying on her education on parole, as before stated; and she was too honourable to do less than was expected from her.