ollen
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 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 Kirkb