This state of things went on for about three weeks after Lesbia’s return from St. Bees, Lady Maulevrier watchful of her granddaughter all the time, though saying nothing.  She saw that Lesbia was not happy, not as she had been in the time before the coming of John Hammond.  She had never been particularly gay or light-hearted, never gifted with the wild spirits and buoyancy which make girlhood so lovely a season to some natures, a time of dance and song and joyousness, a morning of life steeped in the beauty and gladness of the universe.  She had never been gay as young lambs and foals and fawns and kittens and puppy dogs are gay, by reason of the well-spring of delight within them, needing no stimulus from the outside world.  She had been just a little inclined to murmur at the dulness of her life at Fellside; yet she had borne herself with a placid sweetness which had been Lady Maulevrier’s delight.  But now there was a marked change in her manner.  She was not the less submissive and dutiful in her bearing to her grandmother, whom she both loved and feared; but there were moments of fretfulness and impatience which she could not conceal.  She was captious and sullen in her manner to Mary and the Fraeulein.  She would not walk or drive with them, or share in any of their amusements.  Sometimes of an evening that studious silence of the drawing-room was suddenly broken by Lesbia’s weary sigh, breathed unawares as she bent over her work.

Lady Maulevrier saw, too, that Lesbia’s cheek was paler than of old, her eyes less bright.  There was a heavy look that told of broken slumbers, there was a pinched look in that oval check.  Good heavens! if her beauty were to pale and wane, before society had bowed down and worshipped it; if this fair flower were to fade untimely; if this prize rose in the garden of beauty were to wither and decay before it won the prize.

Her ladyship was a woman of action, and no sooner did this fear shape itself in her mind than she took steps to prevent the evil her thoughts foreshadowed.

Among those friends of her youth and allies of her house with whom she had always maintained an affectionate correspondence was Lady Kirkbank, the fashionable wife of a sporting baronet, owner of a castle in Scotland, a place in Yorkshire, a villa at Cannes, and a fine house in Arlington Street, with an income large enough for their enjoyment.  When Lady Diana Angersthorpe shone forth in the West End world as the acknowledged belle of the season, the star of Georgina Lorimer was beginning to wane.  She was the eldest daughter of Colonel Lorimer, a man of good old family, and a fine soldier, who had fought shoulder to shoulder with Gough and Lawrence, and who had contrived to make a figure in society with very small means.  Georgina’s sisters had all married well.  It was a case of necessity, the Colonel told them; they must either marry or gravitate ultimately to the workhouse.  So the Miss Lorimers made the best use of their youth and freshness, and ’no good offer refused’ was the guiding rule of their young lives.  Lucy married an East India merchant, and set up a fine house in Porchester Terrace.  Maud married wealth personified in the person of a leading member of the Tallow Chandlers’ Company, and had her town house and country house, and as fine a set of diamonds as a duchess.