re adjusted to the regulation mark of absolute beauty, as
understood by Madame Seraphine. It was only when her complexion came
under discussion, and Seraphine ventured to suggest that she would be
all the better for a little accentuation of her eyebrows and darkening
of her lashes, that Lesbia made a stand.

'What would my grandmother think of me if she heard I painted?' she
asked, indignantly.

Lady Kirkbank laughed at her _naivete_.

'My dear child, your grandmother is just half a century behind the age,'
she said. 'I hope you are not going to allow your life in London to be
regulated by an oracle at Grasmere?'

'I am not going to paint my face,' replied Lesbia, firmly.

'Well, perhaps you are right. The eyebrows are a little weak and
undecided, Seraphine, as you say, and the lashes would be all the better
for your famous cosmetic; but after all there is a charm in what the
painters call "sincerity," and any little errors of detail will prove
the genuineness of Lady Lesbia's beauty. One _may_ be too artistic.'

And Lady Kirkbank gave a complacent glance at her own image in one of
the Marie Antoinette mirrors, pleased with the general effect of arched
brows, darkened eyelids, and a daisy bonnet. The fair Georgie generally
affected field-flowers and other simplicities, which would have been
becoming to a beauty of eighteen.

'One is obliged to smother one's self in satin and velvet for balls and
dinners,' said Lady Kirkbank, when she discussed the great question of
gowns; 'but I know I always look my best in my cotton frock and straw
hat.'

That first visit to Seraphine's den--den as terrible, did one but know
it, as that antediluvian hyena-cave at Torquay, where the threshold is
worn by the bodies of beasts dragged across it, and the ground paved
with their bones--that first visit was a serious business. Later
interviews might be mere frivolities, half-an-hour wasted in looking at
new fashions, an order given carelessly on the spur of the moment; but
upon this occasion Lady Kirkbank had to arm her young _protegee_ for the
coming campaign, and the question was to the last degree serious.

The chaperon and the dressmaker put their heads together, looked at
fashion plates, talked solemnly of Worth and his compeers, of the gowns
that were being worn by Bernhardt, and Pierson, and Croisette, and other
stars of the Parisian stage; and then Lady Kirkbank gave her orders,
Lesbia listening and assenting.

Nothing wa