her throat,
gleaming among her sables. But she wore her jewels as carelessly as she
wore her high birth, her quaint irregular prettiness, or the one or two
brilliant gifts which made her sought after wherever she went. She loved
her opals as she loved all bright things; if it pleased her to wear them
in the morning, she wore them; and in five minutes she was capable of
making the sourest puritan forget to frown on her and them. To Robert
she always seemed the quintessence of breeding, of aristocracy at their
best. All her freaks, her sallies, her absurdities even, were graceful.
At her freest and gayest there were things in her--restraints,
reticences, perceptions--which implied behind her generations of rich,
happy, important people, with ample leisure to cultivate all the more
delicate niceties of social feeling and relation. Robert was often
struck by the curious differences between her and Rose. Rose was far the
handsomer; she was at least as clever; and she had a strong imperious
will where Lady Helen had only impulses and sympathies and
_engouements_. But Rose belonged to the class which struggles, where
each individual depends on himself and knows it. Lady Helen had never
struggled for anything--all the best things of the world were hers so
easily that she hardly gave them a thought; or rather, what she had
gathered without pain she held so lightly, she dispensed so lavishly,
that men's eyes followed her, fluttering through life, with much the
same feeling as was struck from Clough's radical hero by the peerless
Lady Maria--

'Live, be lovely, forget us, be beautiful, even to proudness,
Even for their poor sakes whose happiness is to behold you;
Live, be uncaring, be joyous, be sumptuous; only be lovely!'

'Uncaring,' however, little Lady Helen never was. If she was a fairy,
she was a fairy all heart, all frank foolish smiles and tears.

'No, Lady Helen--no,' Robert said again. 'This is no place for you, and
we are getting on capitally.'

She pouted a little.

'I believe you and Mrs. Elsmere are just killing yourselves all in a
corner, with no one to see,' she said indignantly. 'If you won't let me
see, I shall send Sir Harry. But who'--and her brown fawn's eyes ran
startled over the cottages before her--'who, Mr. Elsmere, does this
_dreadful_ place belong to?'

'Mr. Wendover,' said Robert shortly.

'Impossible!' she cried incredulously. 'Why, I wouldn't ask one of my
dogs to sleep there,'