‘It is a dull, horrid place, and I was bored to death there!’ she said, when Mary asked how she had enjoyed herself.  ’There was no question of enjoyment.  Grandmother took it into her head that I was looking ill, and sent me to the sea; but I should have been just as well at Fellside.’

This meant that between Lesbia and that distinctly inferior being, her younger sister, there was to be no confidence.  Mary had watched the life-drama acted under her eyes too closely not to know all about it, and was not inclined to be so put off.

That pale perturbed countenance of John Hammond’s, those eager inquiring eyes looking to the door which opened not, had haunted Mary’s waking thoughts, had even mingled with the tangled web of her dreams.  Oh, how could any woman scorn such love?  To be so loved, and by such a man, seemed to Mary the perfection of earthly bliss.  She had never been educated up to those wider and loftier views of life, which teach a woman that houses and lands, place and power, are the supreme good.

‘I can’t understand how you could treat that noble-minded man so badly,’ she exclaimed one day, when she and Lesbia were alone in the library, and after she had sat for ever so long, staring out of the window, meditating upon her sister’s cruelty.

‘Of whom are you speaking, pray?’

‘As if you didn’t know!  Of Mr. Hammond.’

’And pray, how do you know that he is noble-minded, or that I treated him badly?’

’Well, as to his being noble-minded, that jumps to the eyes, as French books say.  As for your treatment of him, I was looking on all the time, and I know how unkind you were, and I heard him talking to you in the fir-copse that day.’

‘You Were listening’ cried Lesbia indignantly.

’I was not listening!  I was passing by.  And if people choose to carry on their love affairs out of doors they must expect to be overheard.  I heard him pleading to you, telling you how he would work for you, fight the battle of life for you, asking you to be trustful and brave for his sake.  But you have a heart of stone.  You and grandmother both have hearts of stone.  I think she must have taken out your heart when you were little, and put a stone in its place.’

‘Really,’ said Lesbia, trying to carry things with a high hand, albeit her very human heart was beating passionately all the time, ’I think you ought to be very grateful to me—­and grandmother—­for refusing Mr. Hammond.’

‘Why grateful?’

’Because it leaves you a chance of getting him for yourself; and everybody can see that you are over head and ears in love with him.  That jumps to the eyes, as you say.’

Mary turned crimson, trembled with rage, looked at her sister as if she would kill her, for a moment or so, and finally burst into tears.

‘That is not true, and it is shameful for you to say such a thing,’ she cried.