as ever so much
grander than the old-world notion of a personal God, a Being of infinite
power and inexhaustible beneficence, mighty to devise and direct the
universe, with knowledge reaching to the farthest confines of space,
with ear to listen to the prayer of His lowest creatures. Her belief
stopped short even of the Deist's faith in an Almighty Will. She saw in
creation nothing but the inevitable development of material laws; and it
seemed to her that there was quite as much hope of a heavenly world
after death for the infusoria in the pool as for man in his pride and
power.

She read her Bible as diligently as she read her Shakespeare, and the
words of the Royal Preacher in some measure embodied her own dreary
creed. And now, in the darkening winter day, she watched the gloomy
shadows creep over the rugged breast of Nabb Scar, and she thought how
there was a time for all things, and that her day of hope and ambition
was past.

Of late years she had lived for Lesbia, looking forward to the day when
she was to introduce this beloved grandchild to the great world of
London; and now that hope was gone for ever.

What could a helpless cripple do for a fashionable beauty? What good
would it be for her to be conveyed to London, and to lie on a couch in
Mayfair, while Lesbia rode in the Row and went to three or four parties
every night with a more active chaperon?

She had hoped to go everywhere with her darling, to glory in all her
successes, to shield her from all possibility of failure. And now Lesbia
must stand or fall alone.

It was a hard thing; but perhaps the hardest part of it was that Lesbia
seemed so very well able to get on without her. The girl wrote in the
highest spirits; and although her letters were most affectionately
worded, they were all about self. That note was dominant in every
strain. Her triumphs, her admirers, her bonnets, her gowns. She had had
more money from her grandmother, and more gowns from Paris.

'You have no idea how the people dress in this place,' she wrote. 'I
should have been quite out in the cold without my three new frocks from
Worth. The little Princess bonnets I wear are the rage. Worth
recommended me to adopt special flowers and colours; so I have worn
nothing but primroses since I have been here, and my little primrose
bonnets are to be seen everywhere, sometimes on hideous old women. Lady
Kirkbank hopes you will be able to go to London directly after Easter.
She says I