So the needy Colonel’s daughter became Lady Kirkbank, and in the following spring Diana Angersthorpe was married at the same St. George’s to the Earl of Maulevrier.  The friends were divided by distance and by circumstance as the years rolled on; but friendship was steadily maintained; and a regular correspondence with Lady Kirkbank, whose pen was as sharp as her tongue, was one of the means by which Lady Maulevrier had kept herself thoroughly posted in all those small events, unrecorded by newspapers, which make up the secret history of society.

It was of her old friend Georgie that her ladyship thought in her present anxiety.  Lady Kirkbank had more than once suggested that Lady Maulevrier’s granddaughters should vary the monotony of Fellside by a visit to her place near Doncaster, or her castle north of Aberdeen; but her ladyship had evaded these friendly suggestions, being very jealous of any strange influence upon Lesbia’s life.  Now, however, there had come a time when Lesbia must have a complete change of scenery and surroundings, lest she should pine and dwindle in sullen submission to fate, or else defy the world and elope with John Hammond.

Now, therefore, Lady Maulevrier decided to accept Lady Kirkbank’s hospitality.  She told her friend the whole story with perfect frankness, and her letter was immediately answered by a telegram.

’I start for Scotland to-morrow, will break my journey by staying a night at Fellside, and will take Lady Lesbia on to Kirkbank with me next day, if she can be ready to go.’

‘She shall be ready,’ said Lady Maulevrier.

She told Lesbia that she had accepted an invitation for her, and that she was to go to Kirkbank Castle the day after to-morrow.  She was prepared for unwillingness, resistance even; but Lesbia received the news with evident pleasure.

‘I shall be very glad to go,’ she said, ’this place is so dull.  Of course I shall be sorry to leave you, grandmother, and I wish you would go with me; but any change will be a relief.  I think if I had to stay here all the winter, counting the days and the hours, I should go out of my mind.’

The tears came into her eyes, but she wiped them away hurriedly, ashamed of her emotion.

‘My dearest child, I am so sorry for you,’ murmured Lady Maulevrier.  ’But believe me the day will come when you will be very glad that you conquered the first foolish inclination of your girlish heart.’

‘Yes, I daresay, when I am eighty,’ Lesbia answered, impatiently.  She had made up her mind to submit to the inevitable.  She had loved John Hammond—­had been as near breaking her heart for him as it was in her nature to break her heart for anybody; but she wanted to make a great marriage, to be renowned and admired.  She had been reared and trained for that; and she was not going to belie her training.