d you have a corset which gives you a figure, which you
must forgive me for saying you never had before.'

Lady Kirkbank had to explain that _chien_ as applied to a gown or bonnet
was the same thing as _chic_, only a little more so.

'I hope my gowns will always be _chien_,' said Lesbia meekly.

Next evening they were dining at Cannes, with the blue sea in front of
their windows, dining at a table all abloom with orange flowers, tea
roses, mignonette, waxen camellias, and pale Parma violets, while Lady
Maulevrier and Mary dined _tete-a-tete_ at Fellside, with the feathery
snow flakes falling outside, and the world whitening all around them.

Next day the world was all white, and Mary's beloved hills were
inaccessible.

Who could tell how long they might be covered; the winding tracks
hidden; the narrow forces looking like black water or molten iron
against that glittering whiteness? Mary could only walk along the road
by Loughrigg to the bench called 'Rest and be thankful,' from which she
looked with longing eyes across towards the Langdale Pikes, and to the
sharp cone-shaped peak, known as Coniston Old Man, just visible above
the nearer hills. Fraeulein Mueller suggested that it was in just such
weather as this that a well brought up young lady, a young lady with
_Vernunft_ and _Anstand_, should devote herself to the improvement of
her mind.

'Let us read German this _abscheulich_ afternoon,' said the Fraeulein.
'Suppose we go on with the "Sorrows of Werther."'

'Werther was a fool,' cried Mary; 'any book but that.'

'Will you choose your own book?'

'Let me read Heine.'

Fraeulein looked doubtful. There were things in Heine--an all-pervading
tone--which rendered him hardly an appropriate poet for 'the young
person.' But Fraeulein compromised the matter by letting Mary read Atta
Troll, the exact bearing of which neither of them understood.

'How beautifully Mr. Hammond read Heine that morning!' said Mary,
breaking off suddenly from a perfectly automatic reading.

'You did not hear him, did you? You were not there,' said the Fraeulein.

'I was not _there_, but I heard him. I--I was sitting on the bank among
the pine trees.'

'Why did you not come and sit with us? It would have been more ladylike
than to hide yourself behind the trees.'

Mary blushed crimson.

'I had been in the kennels with Maulevrier; I was not fit to be seen,'
she said.

'Hardly a ladylike admission,' replied the Fraeulein, who fe