‘What did he read?’

’Heine’s ballads.  He reads German beautifully.

’Indeed!  I daresay he was at school in Germany.  There are cheap schools there to which middle-class people send their boys.’

This was like a thrust from a rusty knife.

‘Mr. Hammond was at Oxford,’ Lesbia said, reproachfully; and then, after a longish pause, she clasped her hands upon the arm of Lady Maulevrier’s chair, and said, in a pleading voice, ’Grandmother, Mr. Hammond has asked me to marry him.’

’Indeed!  Only that?  And pray, did he tell you what are his means of maintaining Lord Maulevrier’s sister in the position to which her birth entitles her?’ inquired the dowager, with crushing calmness.

’He is not rich; indeed, I believe, he is poor; but he is brave and clever, and he is full of confidence in his power to conquer fortune.’

’No doubt; that is your true adventurer’s style.  He confides implicitly in his own talents, and in somebody else’s banker.  Mr. Hammond would make a tremendous figure in the world, I daresay, and while he was making it your brother would have to keep him.  Well, my dear Lesbia, I hope you gave this gentleman the answer his insolence deserved; or that you did better, and referred him to me.  I should be glad to give him my opinion of his conduct—­a person admitted to this house as your brother’s hanger-on—­tolerated only on your brother’s account; such a person, nameless, penniless, friendless (except for Maulevrier’s too facile patronage), to dare to lift his eyes to my granddaughter!  It is ineffable insolence!’

Lesbia crouched by her grandmother’s chair, her face hidden from Lady Maulevrier’s falcon eye.  Every word uttered by her ladyship stung like the knotted cords of a knout.  She knew not whether to be most ashamed of her lover or of herself—­of her lover for his obscure position, his hopeless poverty; of herself for her folly in loving such a man.  And she did love him, and would fain have pleaded his cause, had she not been cowed by the authority that had ruled her all her life.

’Lesbia, if I thought you had been silly enough, degraded enough, to give this young man encouragement, to have justified his audacity of to-day by any act or word of yours, I should despise, I should detest you,’ said Lady Maulevrier, sternly.  ’What could be more contemptible, more hateful in a girl reared as you have been than to give encouragement to the first comer—­to listen greedily to the first adventurer who had the insolence to make love to you, to be eager to throw yourself into the arms of the first man who asked you.  That my granddaughter, a girl reared and taught and watched and guarded by me, should have no more dignity, no more modesty, or womanly feeling, than a barmaid at an inn!’

Lesbia began to cry.

’I don’t see why a barmaid, should not be a good woman, or why it should be a crime to fall in love,’ she said, in a voice broken by sobs.  ’You need not speak to me so unkindly.  I am not going to marry Mr. Hammond.’