‘Lady Kirkbank and I have been discussing my court dress,’ she wrote, ’and we have decided upon a white cut-velvet train, with a border of ostrich feathers, over a satin petticoat embroidered with seed pearl.  It will be expensive, but we know you will not mind that.  Lady Kirkbank takes the idea from the costume Buckingham wore at the Louvre the first time he met Anne of Austria.  Isn’t that clever of her?  She is not a deep thinker like you; is horribly ignorant of science, metaphysics, poetry even.  She asked me one day who Plato was, and whether he took his name from the battle of Platoea; and she says she never could understand why people make a fuss about Shakespeare; but she has read all the secret histories and memoirs that ever were written, and knows all the ins and outs of court life and high life for the last three hundred years; and there is not a person in the peerage whose family history she has not at her fingers’ ends, except my grandfather.  When I asked her to tell me all about Lord Maulevrier and his achievements as Governor of Madras, she had not a word to say.  So, perhaps, she draws upon her invention a little in talking about other people, and felt herself restrained when she came to speak of my grandfather.’

This passage in Lesbia’s letter affected Lady Maulevrier as if a scorpion had wriggled from underneath the sheet of paper.  She folded the letter, and laid it in the satin-lined box on her table, with a deep sigh.

’Yes, she is in the world now, and she will ask questions.  I have never warned her against pronouncing her grandfather’s name.  There are some who will not be so kind as Georgie Kirkbank; some, perhaps, who will delight in humiliating her, and who will tell her the worst that can be told.  My only hope is that she will make a great marriage, and speedily.  Once the wife of a man with a high place in the world, worldlings will be too wise to wound her by telling her that her grandfather was an unconvicted felon.’

The die was cast.  Lady Maulevrier might dread the hazard of evil tongues, of slanderous memories; but she could not recall her consent to Lesbia’s debut.  The girl was already launched; she had been seen and admired.  The next stage in her career must be to be wooed and won by a worthy wooer.

CHAPTER XXI.

ON THE DARK BROW OF HELVELLYN.

While these plans were being settled, and while Lesbia’s future was the all-absorbing subject of Lady Maulevrier’s thoughts, Mary contrived to be happier than she had ever been in her life before.  It was happiness that grew and strengthened with every day; and yet there was no obvious reason for this deep joy.  Her life ran in the same familiar groove.  She walked and rode on the old pathways; she rowed on the lake she had known from babyhood; she visited her cottagers, and taught in the village school, just the same as of old.  The change was only that she