’I shall go back to Germany directly I leave you, and I shall live and die there, unless I am wanted by one of my old pupils.  But should Lady Lesbia or Lady Mary need my services for their daughters, in days to come, they can command me.  For no one else will I abandon the Fatherland.’

The Fraeulein thus easily disposed of, Lady Mary felt that matrimony would verily mean independence.  And yet she was prepared to regard her husband as her master.  She meant to obey him in all meekness and reverence of spirit.

She spent the rest of the afternoon and the whole of the evening in her grandmother’s sitting-room, dining tete-a-tete with the invalid for the first time since her illness.  Lady Maulevrier talked much of Mary’s future, and of Lesbia’s; but it was evident that she was full of uneasiness upon the latter subject.

‘I don’t know what Lesbia is going to do with her life,’ she said, with a sigh.  ’Her letters tell me of nothing but gowns and parties; and Georgina Kirkbank can only expatiate upon Mr. Smithson’s wealth, and the grand position he is going to occupy by-and-by.  I should like to see both my granddaughters married before I die—­yes, I should like to see Lesbia’s fate secure, if she were to be only Lady Lesbia Smithson.’

‘She cannot fail to make a good match, grandmother,’ said Mary.

‘I am beginning to lose faith in her future,’ answered Lady Maulevrier.  ’There seems to be a fatality about the career of particularly attractive girls.  They are too confident of their power to succeed in life.  They trifle with fortune, fascinate the wrong people, and keep the right people at arm’s length.  I think if I had been Lesbia’s guide in society her first season would have counted for more than it is likely to count for under Lady Kirkbank’s management.  I should have awakened Lesbia from the dream of dress and dancing—­the mere butterfly life of a girl who never looks beyond the present moment.  But now go and give orders about your packing, Mary.  It is past ten, and Clara had better pack your trunks early to-morrow morning.’

Clara was a modest Easedale damsel, who had been promoted to be Lady Mary’s personal attendant, when the more mature Kibble had gone away with Lady Lesbia.  Mary required very little waiting upon, but she was not the less glad to have a neat little smiling maiden devoted to her service, ready to keep her rooms neat and trim, to go on errands to the cottagers, to arrange the flowers in the old china bowls, and to make herself generally useful.

It seemed a strange thing to have to furnish a trousseau from the wardrobe of everyday life—­a trousseau in which nothing, except half-a-dozen pairs of gloves, a pair of boots, and a few odds and ends of lace and ribbons would be actually new.  Mary thought very little of the matter, but the position of things struck her maid as altogether extraordinary and unnatural.