‘Ah, but in those days she still had hopes of civilising you,’ answered Maulevrier.  ’Since then she has abandoned all endeavour in that direction, and has given you over to your own devices—­and me.  Since then you have become a chartered libertine.  You have letters of mark.’

‘I don’t care what you call me,’ said Mary.  ’I only know that I am very happy when you are at home, and very miserable when you are away.’

‘It is hardly kind of you to say that, Lady Mary,’ remonstrated Fraeulein Mueller, who, up to this point, had been busily engaged with muffins and gooseberry jam.

‘Oh, I don’t mean that any one is unkind to me or uses me badly,’ said Mary.  ’I only mean that my life is empty when Maulevrier is away, and that I am always longing for him to come back again.’

’I thought you adored the hills, and the lake, and the villagers, and your pony, and Maulevrier’s dogs,’ said, Lesbia faintly contemptuous.

‘Yes, but one wants something human to love,’ answered Mary, making it very obvious that there was no warmth of affection between herself and the feminine members of her family.

She had not thought of the significance of her speech.  She was very angry with Maulevrier for having held her up to ridicule before Mr. Hammond, who already despised her, as she believed, and whose contempt was more galling than it need have been, considering that he was a mere casual visitor who would go away and return no more.  Never till his coming had she felt her deficiencies; but in his presence she writhed under the sense of her unworthiness, and had an almost agonising consciousness of all those faults which her grandmother had told her about so often with not the slightest effect.  In those days she had not cared what Lady Maulevrier or any one else might say of her, or think of her.  She lived her life, and defied fortune.  She was worse than her reputation.  To-day she felt it a bitter thing that she had grown to the age of womanhood lacking all those graces and accomplishments which made her sister adorable, and which might make even a plain woman charming.

Never till John Hammond’s coming had she felt a pang of envy in the contemplation of Lesbia’s beauty or Lesbia’s grace; but now she had so keen a sense of the difference between herself and her sister that she began to fear that this cruel pain must indeed be that lowest of all vices.  Even the difference in their gowns was a source of humiliation to her how.  Lesbia was looking her loveliest this morning, in a gown that was all lace and soft Madras muslin, flowing, cloud-like; while Mary’s tailor gown, with its trim tight bodice, horn buttons, and kilted skirt, seemed to cry aloud that it had been made for a Tomboy.  And this tailor gown was a costume to which Mary had condemned herself by her own folly.  Only a year ago, moved by an artistic admiration for Lesbia’s delicate breakfast gowns, Mary had told her grandmother that she would like to have something of the same kind, whereupon the dowager, who did not take the faintest interest in Mary’s toilet, but who had a stern sense of justice, replied—­