Phantom Fortune.

Otago Witness, Issue 1650, 7 July 1883, Page 24

Phantom Fortune.

BY MISS BRADDON.

Author of " Lady Audle.y's Secret," " Taken at the Flood," " A Strange World," " Dead Men's Shoes," " Weavers and Weft," " Just as I Am,"

Chapter VIII. " The Greater Cantle of the World is Lost."

HE sky was still cloudless when John Hammond strolled slowly up the leafy avenue at Fellside. He had been across the valley and up the hill to Basedale tain, and then, by rough untrodden ways, across a chaos of rock and heather into a second valley, long, narrow, and sterile, known as 1 ar Easedale, a desolate gorge, a rugged cleft in the heart of the mountains. The walk had been lotg and laborious, but only in such clambering and toiling, such expenditure of muscular force and latent heat, could the man's restless soul endure these long hours of suspense. 1 " How will she answer me ? Oh, my God ! how will she answer ?" he said within himself, as he walked up the romantic winding road, which made so picturesque an approach to Lady Maulevrier's lovely domain. "Is my idol gold or clay ? How will she come through the crucible ? Oh, dearest, sweetest, loveliest, only be true to the instinct of your womanhood, and my cup will be full of bliss, and all my days will flow as sweetly as the bdrden of a song. But if you prove heartless, if you love the world's wealth better than you love me — ah ! then all is over, and you and I are lost to each other for ever. I have made up my mind."

His face settled into an expression of indomitable determination, as of a man who would die rather than bo false to his own purpose. There was no glow of hope in his heart. He had no deep faith in the girl he loved ; indeed, in his heart of hearts he knew that this being to whom he had given his hopes of bliss was no heroine. She was a lovely, lovable girl, nothing more. How would she greet him when they met presently on the tennis lawn ? With tears and entreaties, and pretty little deprecating speeches, irresolution, timidity, vacillation, perhaps : hardly with heroic resolve to act and dare for his sake. There was no one on the tennis lawn when he went there, though the hour was close at hand at which Lesbia had promised to give him his answer. He sat down in one of the low chairs, glad to rest after his long ramble, having had no refreshment but a bottle of sodawater and a biscuit at the cottage by Easedale tarn. He waited, calmly as to outward seeming, but with a heavy heart. "If it were Mary now whom I loved, I should have little fear of the issue," he thought, weighing his sweetheart's character as he weighed his chances of success. "That young termagant would defy the world for her lovBr." He sat in the summer silence for nearly half an hour, and still there was no sign of Lady Lesbia. Her satin-lined workbasket, with the work thrown carelessly across it, was still on the rustic table, just as she had left it when they went tp the pine wood. Waiting was weary work ■tf'hen the bliss of a lifetime trembled in the balance ; and yet he did not want to be impatient. She might find it difficult to get away from her family, perhaps. She was closely watched and guarded, as the most precious thing at Fellside. At last the clock struck five, and Hammond could endure delay no longer. He went round by the flower garden to the terrace before the drawing-room windows, and through an open window to the drawing-room. Lady Maulevrier was in her accustomed seat, her own particular little table, her magazines, books, newspapers at her side. Lady Mary was pouring but the tea, a most unusual thing, and Maulevrier was sitting on a stool at her feet with his arms up to his chin, very warm and dusty, drinking tea. " Where the mischief have you been hiding yourself all day, Jack ?" he called out as Hammond appeared, looking round the room as he entered with eager, interrogating eyes for that one figure which was absent. " I've been for a walk." " You might have had the civility to announce your design, and Molly and I would have shared your peregrinations." " I am sorry that I lost the privilege of your company." "I suppose you lost your luncheon, which was of more importance," said Maulevrier. " Will you have some tea ?" asked Mary, who looked more womanly than usual in a cream-coloured surah gown, one of her Sunday gowns. She had a faint hope that by this essentially feminine apparel she might lesson the prejudicial effect of Maulevrier's cruel story about the foxhunt. Mr Hammond answered absently, hardly looking at Mary, and quite unconscious of her pretty gown. " Thanks, yes," he said, taking the cup and saucer, and looking at the door by which he momently expected Lady Lesbia'a entrance, and then, as the door did not open, he looked down at Mary, very busy at China teapots and a brass kettle which hissed and throbbed over a spirit lamp. "Won't you have some cake?" she asked, looking up at him gently, grieved at the distress and disappointment in his face. "I am sure you must be dreadfully hungry." "Not in the least, thanks. How came you to be entrusted with those sacred vessels, Lady Mary? What has become of Fraulein and your sister? "They have rushed off to fc>t. Bees. Grandmamma thought Lesbia looked pale and out of spirits, and packed her off to the seaside at a minute's notice." "What? She has left Fellside?" asked Hammond, paling suddenly, as if a man had struck him. "Lady Maulevrier, do I understand that Lady Lesbia has gone away ?" He asked the question in an authoritative tone, with the air of a man who had a right to be answered. The Dowager wondered at his surpassing insolence. " My granddaughter has gone to the seaside with her governess," she said, haughtily. " At a minute's notice ?" "At a minute's notice. lam not in the habit of hesitating about any step which I consider necessary." She looked him full in the face with those falcon eyes of hers ; and he gave her back a look as resolute, _ and every whit as full of courage and of pride. "Well," he said, after a very perceptible pause, "no doubt your ladyship has done wisely, and I must submit to your jurisdiction. But J had asked Lady Lesbia a question and I had been promised an answer," ' " Your question has been answered by Lady : Lesbia. She left ft note for you, " replied Lady Mattlevrier.

" Thanks," answered Mr Hammond, briefly, and he hurried from the room without another word. ' The letter wad on the table in his bedroom. He had little hope of any good waiting for him in a lettur so written. The Dowager vnd tho world had triumphed over a girl's dawniug love, no doubt. This was Lesbia's letter : "Dear Mr Hammond,— Lady Maulevrier desires me to say that the proposal which you honoured me by making this morning is one which I cannot possibly accept, and that any idea of an engagement between you and me could result only in misery and humiliation to both. She thinks it best, under these circumstances, that we should not again meet, and I shtll therefore have left Fellside before you receive this letter. " With all good wishes, very faithfully yours, "Lesbia Haseldinb." " Very faithfully mine— faithful to her false training, to the worldly nind that rules her ; faithful to the gods of this world — Belial and Mammon, and the Moloch Fashion. Poor cowardly soul ! She loves me, and owns as much, yet weakly flies from me, afraid to trust the strong arm and tke brave heart of the man who loves her, preferring the glitteiing shams of the world to the reality of true and honest love. Well, child, I have weighed you in the balance and fouud you wanting. Would to God it had been otherwise ! If you had been brave and bold for love's sake, wher.e is that Eure and perfect chrysolite for which I would aye bartered you ? ' He flung himself into a chair, and sat with his head bowed upon his folded arms, and his eyes not innocent of tears. What would he not have given to find truth and courage and scorn of the world's wealth in that heart which he had tried to win. Did he think her altof ether heartless because she so glibly renounced im? No, he was too just for that. He called her only half-hearted. She was like the cat i' the adage, "Letting I dare not wait upon I would." But he told himself with one deep sigh of resignation that she was lost to him for ever. " I have tried her and found her not worth the winning," he said. The house, even the lovely landscape smiling under his windows, the pastoral valley, smooth lake aud willowy island seemed hateful to him. He i : elt himself hemmed round by those green hills, by yonder brown and rugged wall of Nabb Scar, stifled for want of breathing space. The landscape was lovely enough, but it was like a beautiful grave. He longed to get away from it. "Another man would follow her to St Bees," he said. " I will not." He flung a few things into a Gladstone bag, sat down and wrote a brief note to Maulevrier asking him to make his excuses to her ladyship. He had made up his mind to go to Keswick that afternoon, and would rejoin his friend tomorrow, at Carlisle. This don© he rang for Maulevrier's valet and asked that person to look after his luggage and bring it on to Scotland with his master's things; and then, without a word of adieu to anyone, Mr Hammond went out of the house with his Gladstone bag in his hand, and shook the dust of Fellside off his feet. He ordered a fly at the Prince of Wales' Hotel, and drove to Keswick, wt ere he went on to the Lodore. The gloom and spaciousness of the Derwentwater, gray in the gathering dusk, suited his humour better than the emerald prettineas of Grasmere — the roar of waterfall made music in his ear. He dined in a private room, and spent the evening roaming on the shore of the lake, and at 11 o'clock went back to his hotel and sat late into the night reading Heine, and thinking of the girl he had wooed and failed to win. Mr Hammond's letter was delivered to Lord Maulevrier five minutes before dinner, as he sat in the drawing-room with her ladyship and Mary. Poor Mary had put oh another pretty gown for dinner, still bent upon effacing Mr Hammond's image of her as a tousled, frantic creature in torn and muddy raiment. She sat watching the door, just as Mr Hammond had watched it three hours age. "So," said Maulevrier, "your ladyship has succeeded in driving my friend away. Mr Hammond has left Fellside, and begs me to convey to you his compliments and his grateful acknowledgment of all your kindness." " I hope I have not been uncivil to him," answered Lady Maulevrier, coldly. "As you had both made up your minds to go to-morrow, it can matter very little that he should go today." Mary looked down at the ribbon and lace on her prettiest frock, and thought that it mattered a great deal to her. Yet, if he stayed, would he have seen her frock on her. With his bodily eyes perhaps, but not with the eyes of his mind. Those eyes saw only Lesbia. " No, perhaps it hardly matters," answered Manlevrier, with suppressed anger. " The man is not worth talking about or thinking about. What is he? Only the best, truest, bravest fellow I ever knew." " There are shepherds and guides in Grasmere of whom we could say almost as much," said Lady Maulevrier, "yet you would scarcely expect me to encourage one of them to pay his addresses to your sister? Pray spare us all nonsense, Maulevrier. This business is very well ended. You ought never to have brought Mr Hammond here." " I am sure of that now. lam very sorry I did bring him." "Oh, the man will not die for love. A disappointment of that kind is good for a young man in his position. It will preserve him from more vulgar entanglements, and perhaps from the folly of a too early marriage." "That is a mighty philosophical way of looking at the matter." "It is the only true way. I hope when you are my age you will have learnt to look at everything in a philosophical spirit." " Well, Lady Maulevrier, you have had it all your own way," said the young man walking up and down the room with ardent impatience. " I hope you will never be sorry for having come between two people who loved each other and might have made each other happy."

" I shall never be sorry for having saved my granddaughter from an imprudent marriage. Give me your arm, Maulevrier, and let me hear no more about Mr Hammond. We have all had quite enough of him," said her ladyship, as the butler announced dinner.

Chapter IX. "Since Painted or Not Painted All Shall Fade." Fraulein Kirsch and her charge returned from St. Bees after a sojourn of about three weeks upon that quiet shore, but Lady Lesbia did not appear to be improved in health or spirits by the revivifying breezes of the ocean. "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. Grandmamma took it into her head that I was looking ill, and sent me to the sea, but I should have been just as wellatFellaide." This meant that between Lesbia and that dibtinctly infeiior being, her younger Bister, there was to be no confidence. Mary had watched the life-drama acted under her eyes toe

closely not to know all about it, and was not inclined to be so put off. That pale perturbprj countenance of John Hammond'3, thoay eager enquii ing oyo« looking to the door which opened not, h.xd haunted | Mary's waking thoughts, lud evan mingled with the tangled web of her drervnu. Oh, how could any woni.ui -.com such love? To be so loved, and by such a man, beeniHci to itary the perfection of earthly bliss. She bad nevor been educated up to thoae widei -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 good, noble-minded man sobadly," 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, medit- ' ating upon her sister's cruelty. \ " Of whom are you speaking, pray ?" i "As if you didn't know ! Of Mr Hammond." "And pray, how do you know he is nobleminded, 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 1 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 exp ct 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 grandmamma both have hearts of stone. I think she must have taken out your heart when you were little, and put a ■tone 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 y»u ought to be very grateful to me — and grandmamma — for refusing Mr Hammond." " Why grateful ?" "Because it leaves you a chance of getting him for yourself ; and everybody can see that you are desperately 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. " Why, what a virago you are, Mary, Well, I'm very glad it is not true. Mr Hammond is — yes, I will be quite candid with you he is the only man I am ever likely to admire for his own sake ; he is good, brave, clever, all that you think him. But you and Ido not live in a world in which girls are allowed to follow their own inclinations. I should break Lady Maulevrier's heart if I were to make a foolish ; marriage, and I owe her too much to set her wishes at naught, or to make her declining years unhappy. I must obey her at any cost to my own feeling. Please never mention Mr Hammond's name. I'm sure I have had quite enough unhappiness about him." " I see," said Mary, bitterly. "It iB your own pain you think of, not his. He may suffer I so long as you are not worried." "You are an impertinent ohit," retorted j Lesbia, "and you know nothing about it." After this there was no more said about Mr Hammond, but Mary did not forget him. She wrote long letters to her brother, who was still in Scotland, shooting, deer- stalking, fishing, killing something or other daily, in the most approved fashion of an Englishman taking' his pleasure, Maulevrier occasionally repaid her ; with a telegram ; but he was not a good correspondent. He declared that life was too short for lettei'- writing. Summer was gone ; the lake was no longer a shining emerald floor, dotted with the reflection of the flock upon the verdant | slopes above it, but dull and grey of hue, and broken by white-edged wavelets. Patches of snow gleamed on the misty heights of Hel- ! vellyn, and the autumn winds howled and shrieked around Fellside in the evenings when | all the shutters were shut, and the outside world seemed little more than an' idea. I Thoae October evenings were 'Very long and ■ | weary for Lesbia and her sister. Lady Maule- \ vrier read and mused in her low chair beside j the fire, with her' books piled upon her own particular table, and lighted by her own particular lamp. She talked very little, but she was always gracious to her granddaughters and their governess, and she liked them to be with her in the evening. Lesbia played or sang, or sat at work at her basket table, which occupied the other side of the fireplace, and Fraulein and Mary had the rest of the room to themselves, as it were, those two places by the hearth being sacred, as if dedicated to household gods. Mary read immensely in those long evenings, devouring volume after volume, feeding her imagination with every kind of nutriment, good, bad, and indifferent. Fraulein Kirsch knitted a woollen shawl, which seemed to have neither beginning, middle, nor end, and was always ready for conversation ; but there were times when silence brooded over the scene for long- intervals, and when every sound of the light wood ashes dropping on the tiled hearth was distinctly audible. This state of things went on for about three weeks after Lesbia's return from St. Bees, Lady Maulevrier watchful of all the time, though saying nothing. She saw that Lesbia was not happy, not as she had been in the time before the^omingof John Hammond. She had never been particularly gay or light-hearted, never gifted with the wild spirits and buoyancy which makes girlhood ao 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 tke universe. She bad never been gay as young lambs and foals and fawns and kittens and puppy dogs are gay,' by reason of the wellspring of delight within them, needing no stimulus from the outside world. She had c been just a little inclined to murmur at the dullness 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 f retfulness and impatience which she could not conceal. She was captious and sullen in her manner to Mary and the Fraulein. 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 — an unconscious sigh — which she breathed unawares as she bent over her work. Lady Maulevrier saw, too, that her 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 even in that oval cheek. 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 » 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 thoso friends of her youth and allies of her homo with whom .she. had always mainrauiod an affectionate correspondence wai L.i'lv IvirJ-Jwnk, the fashionable wife of a k; ortiiv l'Ji<>n"t, oivny ol thtos country seats aud a tine houhe in Arlington street, with an income Im ge enough for their thorough enjoyment. When Lady Diana Angerathorpe 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 Misses Lorimera made the best 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. But Georgina, the eldest, trifled with her chances, and her twenty-seventh birthday beheld her pouring out her father's tea in a small furnished house in a street off Portland Place, which the Colonel had hired on hiß return from India, and which he declared himself unable to maintain another year. " Directly the season is over I shall give up housekeeping and take a lodging at Bath, said Colonel Lorimer. "If you don't like • Bath all the year round you can stay with your sisters." " That is the last thing I am likely to do," answered Georgina ; "my sisters were barely endurable when they were single and poor. They are quite intolerable now they are married and rich. I would sooner live in the monkey house at the Zoological than stay with either Lucy or Maud." " That's rank envy," retorted her father. " You can't forgive them for having done bo much better than you." ' ■ "I can't forgive them for I having married snobs. When I marry I shall marry a gentleman. " " When !" echoed the parent, with a'sneering laugh. "Hadn't you better say ' if ' ?" At this period when Georgina's waning good looks were in some measure counterbalanced by the cumulative effects of half a dozen seasons in good society, which had given style to her person, ease to her manners, and sharpness to her tongue, nobody in society' said sharper or more unpleasant things than Miss Lorimer, and by virtue of this gift she got invited about a great deal more than she might have done had she been renowned for sweetness of speech and manner, Georgia Lorimer 's presence at a dinner table gave just that pungent flavour which is like the suspicion of garlic in a fricassee or of shalot in a salad. Now in this very season, when Colonel Lorimer was inclined to speak of his daughter, as Sainte Beuve wrote of Musset, as a young woman with a very brilliant past, a lucky turn of events gave Georgina a fresh start' in life, which may be called a new departure. Lady Diana Angersthorpe, the belle of the season, took a fancy to her, was charmed ' with her sharp tongue and acute sense of the ridiculous. The two became fast friends and were' seen c very where together. The best men all flocked round the beauty, and all talked to the beauty's companion : and before the season was ,over Sir George Kirkbank, who had half made up his mind to propose to Lady Diana, found himself engaged to that uncommonly jolly girl, Lady Diana's friend. Georgina spent August and September with her' friend at the 'Marchioness of Carrisbroke's delightful villa in the Isle of Wight, and Sir George kept his yacht at Cowes all the time, ' and was in constant I attendance upon his fiancee. It was George ' and Georgie everywhere. In October Colonel i Lorimer had the profound pleasure : of 'giving away his daughter before the altar in St. George's, Hanover Square, and it may 'tie' said of him that nothing in his relations witpi that young lady became him better than his manner of parting with her. 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 granddaughter 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 stro,nge 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 Mr 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 telegram. ..: " I start for Scotland to-morrow, will .break my journey by staying a night at'FellsideTand will take Lady Lesbia on to Kirkbanfc-.with me next day, if she can be ready to go." 7 "She shall be ready," said Lady Mauleyrier. She told Lesbia that she had accepted an invitation for her, and that she was togo to Kirkbank 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 Bhall be sorry to leave yon, grandmamma, and I wish, you ™r f *?\i? lfc , h - me T ' M aQ y change w,m, 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." " UUUfB > x The tears came into her eyes, but she wtoed them away hurriedly ashamed of her emotiW My dearest child, I am »o sorry f orVou " murmured Lady Maulevrier, " but Llieve Se the day will come when you willbe vero glad s^sffsi* 8 first fooiish *&&■ .£%tf&ss£isr l ara eighty «" Leßbia had been as near breaking her heart fir him the w»» not goin* to belie he* frJSbff! !

A visitor from the great London world was so rare an event that there was naturally a little excitement in the idea of Lady Kirkbank's arrival. The handsomest and moat spacious of the spare bedrooms had been prepared for the occasion. The housekeeper had been told that the dinner must be perfect. There must be nothing old-fashioned or ponderous ; there must be mind as well as matter in everything. Barely did Lady Maulevrier look at a bill of fare, but on this particular morning she went carefully through the menu, and corrected it with her own hand. A pair of post-horses brought Lady Kirk> bank and her maid from Windermere station in time for afternoon tea, and the friends who bad only met twice within the last forty years, embraced each other on the threshold of Lady Maulevrier's morning-room. "My dearest Di, cried Lady Kirkbank, "what a delight to see you again after such ages ; and what a too lovely spot you have chosen for your retreat from the world, the flesh, and the devil. If I could be a recluse anywhere, it would be amongst just such delioious surroundings." Without, twilight shades were gathering; within, there was only the light of a tire and a shaded lamp upon the tea-table ; there was just light enough for the two women to see each other's faces, and the change which time had wrought there. Never did womanhood in advanced years offer a more striking contrast than that presented by the woman of fashion and the recluse. Lady Maulevrier was almost aB handsome in the winter of her days as she had been when life was in its spring. The tall, slim figure, erect as a dart, the delicately chiselled features and alabaster complexion, the soft silvery* hair, the perfect hand, whiter and more, transparent than the handof girlhood, the stately movements and bearing, all combined to make Lady Maulevrier a queen among women. Her brocade gown of a deep shade of red, with a border of dark sable on cuffs and collar, suggested a portrait by Velasquez. She wore no ornament except the fine old Brazilian diamonds which flashed and sparkled upon her slender fingers. If Lady Maulevrier looked like a picture in the Escurial, Lady Kirkbank resembled a caricature in the Vie Parisienne. Everything she wore was in the very latest fashion of the Parisian demi-monde, the exaggerated elegance of a fashion-plate, which only the most exquisite of women could redeem from vulgarityPlush, brocade, peacock's feathers, golden bangles, mousquetair gloves, a bonnet of purple plumage set off by ornaments of filigree gold, - an infantine little muff of lace and wild flowers, buttercups and daisies, and hai>', eyebrows, and complexion as artificial as the flowers on the muff.

All that art could do to obliterate the traces of age had been done for Georgina Kirkbank. But seventy years are not to be obliterated easily, and the crow's feet showed through the bloom de Ninon,, and the eyes under the painted arches were glassy and haggard, the carnation lips had a withered look. Age was made all the more palpable by the artifice which would have disguised it. Lady Maulevrier suffered an absolute ,shock at beholding the friend of her youth. She had not accustomed herself to the idea that woman in society could raddle their cheeks, stain their lips, and play tricks before high heaven with their eyebrows and eyelashes. In her own youth painted faces had been the ghastly privilege of a class of womanhood of which the women of society were supposed to know nothing. Persons who showed their ankles and rouged their cheeks were to be seen of an afternoon in Bond street ; but Lady Diana Angarsthorpe had been taught to pass them by as if she saw them not, to cehold without seeing these creatures outside the pale. And now she saw her own dearest friend, a person distinctly within the pale, plastered with bismuth and stained with carmine, and wearing hair of a colour so obviously false and inharmonious, that child-like faith could hardly accept it as reality. Forty years ago Lady Kirkbank's long ringlets had been darkest glossiest brown — to-day she wore a touzled fringe of bright yellow, piquantly contrasting with burnt sienna eyebrows. It took Lady Maulevrier some moments to get over the shock. She drew a chair to the fire and established her friend in it, and then, with a little gasp, she said : " I am charmed to see you again, Georgie ?" "You darling, I was sure you would be glad. But you must find me awfully changed — awfully." For worlds Lady Maulevrier could not have denied this truth. Happily Lady Kirkbank did not wait for an answer.

" Society is so wearing, and George and I never seem to get an interval of quiet. Kirkbank is to be full of men next week. Your granddaughter will have a good time." " There will be a few women, of course ?" " Oh, yes, there's no avoiding that ; only one doesn't reckon them. Sir George only counts his guns. We expect a splendid season. I tohaU send you some birds of my own shooting!" • •■•! x . •.. i •MYou shoot!" exclaimed Lady Maulevrier, amazed. ■ > ' ■ • ■!!,. > .

" Shoot ! I should think I do. What cisc is there to amuse one in Scotland, 'after the salmon fishing is over ? I have never missed a season for the last 30 years, unless we have been abroad." ' "Please don't innoculate Lesbia with your love? of sport." '""What! you wouldn't like her to shoot? .Well; perhaps"you are right. It is hardly the thing for 'a pretty girl -with her fortune to make. "It spoils the delicacy of 'the skin. But |>itf ! afraid I she'll find r Kirkbank dull, if she flaGßii'e'go out with the 1 - guns. I ' She can meet 'tis with I ' the' rest of the wttmen at luncheon. We* have tovtie capital picnic luncheotts on the moor, I can assure you." ' ' '""IKnoVfr she will enjoy herself with you. She has been accustomed to a very quiet life fiere. . 1 "It is a Jovely spot, but I own I cannot un derstand how you can" have lived here exclusively during ap. tpese years, you who used to |?e all life and fire, Joying" change, action, political and diplomatic society, to dance upon phe cresjb of the wave, as jt were. Your yhole nature must have suffered some curious Change.'' Their close jnfcimacy of the past warranted ■ome freedom of speech in the present. ■■ "My nature did undergo a change, and a severe one," answered Lady Maulevrier, gloomily. "It was that horrid— and I daresay unfounded—scandal about his lordship ; and then the sad shock of his death," murmured Lady Kirkbank, sympathetically. "Most women, with your youth and beauty, would have forgotten the scandal and the husband in a twelvemonth, and would have made a second marriage more brilliant than the first. But no Indian widow who ever performed suttee was more worthy of praise than you, or even that person of EpheßUS, whose story I have heard somewhere. Indeed, I have always spoken of your life as a long suttee. But you mean to ■le-appear in society next season, I hope, when your 'granddaughter." f kt *f shall certainly >go- up<"to London to present her, *fld ; 'boeiijjjy r <t ifaay spend the

season in town ; but I shall feel like Rip Van Winkle."

" No, no, you won't, my dear Di. You have kept yourself au courant, I know. Even my silly gossiping letters may have been of some use."

"They have been most valuable. Let me give you another cup of tea," said Lady Maulevrier, who had been officiating at her own exquisite tea table,' an arrangement of inlaid woods, antique silver, and modern china, which her friend pronounced a perfect poem. Indeed the whole room was poetic, Lady Kirkbank'declared, and there are many highlypraised scenes which less deserve the epithet. The dark red walls and cedar dado, the stamped velvet curtains, of an indescribable shade between silver grey and olive, the Sheration furniture, the parqueterie floor, and Persian prayer-rugs, the deep yet brilliant hues of crackle porcelain and Chinese cloisonne enamel, the artistic fireplace, with dogstove, low brass fender and fireirons, and ingle nook nestling under the high mantlepiece, all combined to form a luxurious and harmonious whole.

Lady Kirkbank admired the tout ensemble in the fitful light of the fire, the dim gray of deepening twilight. " There never was a more delicious cell," she exclaimed, " but still I should feel it a prison if I had to spend six weeks in the year in it. T never stay more than six weeks anywhere out of London ; and I always find six weeks more than ' enough. The first fortnight is rapture, the third and fourth weeks are calm content, the fifth is weariness, the sixth a fever to be gone. I once tried a seventh week at Pontresina, and I hated the place so intensely that 1 dared not go back there for the next three years. But now tell me, Diana, have you really performed suttee, have you buried yourself alive in this sweet spot deliberately, or has the love of retirement grown upon you, and have you become a kind of lotus eater ?" " I believe I have become a kind of lotus eater. My retirement here has been no sentimental sacrifice to Lord Maulevrier's memory."

" I am glad to hear that, for really I think the worst possible use a woman can make of her life is in wasting it on lamentation for a dead and gone husband. Life is odiously short at the best, and it is mere imbecility to fritter away any of our scanty portion upon the dead who can never be any the better for our tears."

"My motive for living at Fellside was not reverence for the dead. And now let us talk of the gay world, of which you know all the secrets. Have you heard anything more about Lord Hartfield ?"

"Ah, there is a subject in which you have reason to be interested. I have not forgotten the romance of your youth— that first season in which Ronald Hollister used to haunt every place at which you appeared. Do you remember that wet afternoon at the Chiswick flower show when you and he and I' took shelter in ths orange house, and you two made love to each other most audaciously in an atmosphere of orange blossoms that almost stifled me. Yes, those were glorious days." " A short summer of gladness, a brief dream," sighed Lady Maulevrier. "Is young Lord Haitfield like his father." " No, he takes after the Ilmington ; but still there is a look of your old sweetheart — yes, I think there is an expression. I have not seen him)for uearly a, year. He is still abroad, roaming somewhere after adventure. These young men who belong to the Geographical and the Alpine Club are hardly ever at home." 11 But though they may be sometimea lost to society, they are all the' more worthy of society's esteem when they do appear," said Lady Maulevrier. " I think' there must be an ennobling and purifying influence in Alpine travel, or in the vast solitudes of the dark continent. A man finds himself face to face with unsophisticated nature, and with the grandest forces of the universe. Professor \Tyndall writes delightfully of his Alpine experiences ; his noble mind seems to have ripened in the solitude and untainted air of the Alps. And I believe Lord.Hartfield is a young man of very high character and of considerable cultivation, is he not ?" "He is a splendid young fellow. I never heard a word to his disparagement, even from thoae people who pretend to know something bad about everybody. What a husband he would make for one of your girls." "Admirable, but those perfect arrangements, which seem predestined by heaven itself, are so rarely realised on earth," answered the Dowager, lightly. She was not going to show her cards, even to an old friend. " Well, it would be very sweet if they were to meet next season and fall in love with each other," said Lady Kirkbank. "He is enormously rich, and I daresay your girls will uot be portionless." "Lesbia may take a lowly place among heiresseß," answered Lady Maulevrier. " I have lived so quietly during the last forty years that I could hardly help saving money—" "How nice," sighed Georgie. "I never saved sixpence in my life, and am always in debt." "iThe little fortune I have saved is much too small for division. Lesbia will therefore have all I can leave her. Mary has the usual provision as a daughter of the Maulevrier house." " And I suppose Lesbia has that provision also ?" "-'"Of course." " Lucky Lesbia. I only wish Hartfield were coming to us for the shooting. I Would engage he should fall in love with her. Kirkbank is a Splendid place 1 for match-making. And now, my dear Diana, tell me more about ' yourself, and your own life, in this delicious place." " Th'dre is so littfe to" tell. The books I have read, the theories 'of 'literature and art and science which I have' adopted and dismissed, learnt and f orgottten — those are the history of my life." The idea's of the outiide world reach me here only in books ; but you who have been living in the world must have so much to say. Let me be the listener.'" "' " Lady Kirkbank desired nothing better. She rattled on for three-quarter's of an hour about her dojngs hi J;he great world, her spcial triumphs, the wonderful things sfje ljad done for Sir George, who, seemed to be as a puppet in her hands, the princes and pjrinpelings' she had entertained, t\\e songs a\\e had cqmpqsed, the comedy she had written, for private representation only, albeit the Haymarket manager was dying to pioduce it, the scathing witticisms witn which she had withered her social enemies. She would have gone on much longer, but for the gong which reminded her that it was time to dress for dinner. Half-an-hour later Lady Kirkbank was in the drawing-room, where Mary had retired to the most shadowy corner, anxious to escape the gaze of the fashionable visitor. But Lady Kirkbank was not inclined to take much notice of Mary. Lesbia's brilliant beauty, the exquisite Greek head, the faultless complexion, the deep, violet eyes, caught Georgina Kirkbank's eye the moment she entered the room, and she saw that this girl and no other must be the beauty, the beloved and chosen grandchild. "How do you do, my dear?" Bhe said>

taking Lesbia's hand, and then, as if with a gush of warm feeling, suddenly drawing the girl towards her and kissing her on both cheeks. "I am going to be desperately fond of you, and I hope you will soon contrive to like me — just a little."

" I feel sure that I shall like you very much," Lesbia auswered sweetly. "I am prepared to love you as grandmother's old friendi" " Oh, my dear, to think that I should ever be the old friend of anybody's grandmother," sighed Lady Kirkbank with unaffected regret. " When I was your age I used to think all old people odious. It never occurred to me that I should live to be one of them."

" Then you had no dear grandmother whom you loved," said Lesbia, "or you would have liked old people for her sake." " No, my love, I had no grandparents. I had a father, and he was all sufficient — anything beyond him in the ancestral line would have utterly crushed me."

Dinner was announced, and Mary came shyly out of her cornei-, blushing deeply. " And this is Lady Mary, I suppose," said Lady Kirkbank, in an offhand way. " How do you do, my dear, I am going to steal your sister." "I am very glad," faltered Mary. " I mean I am glad that Lesbia should enjoy herself." " And some fine day when Lesbia is married and a great lady I shall ask you to come to Scotland," said Lady Kirkbank, condescendingly, and then she murmured in her friend's ear, as they went to the dining-room, " quite an English girl. Very fresh, and frank, and nice," which was great praise for such a second rate young person as Lady Mary. " What do you think of Lesbia? " asked Lady Maulevrier, in the same undertone.

" She is simply perfect. Your letters prepared me to expect beauty, but not such beauty. My dear, I thought the progress of the human race was all in a downward line since our time, but your granddaughter is as handsome as you were in your first season, and that is going very far."

(To he continued. )