and altogether fitted to be her husband. He would take her
by the hand and lead her to a higher seat on the dais, and place upon
her head, or at least upon her letter-paper and the panels of her
carriage, a coronet in which the strawberry leaves should stand out more
prominently than in her brother's emblazonment. Lesbia's mind could not
conceive an ignoble marriage, or the possibility of the most worthy
happening to be found in a lower circle than her own.

And now it was the end of July, and the season which should have been
glorified by Lady Lesbia's _debut_ was over and done with. She had read
in the society papers of all the balls, and birthdays, and race
meetings, and regattas, and cricket matches, and gowns, and parasols,
and bonnets--what this beauty wore on such an occasion, and how that
other beauty looked on another occasion--and she felt as she read like a
spell-bound princess in a fairy tale, mewed up in a battlemented tower,
and deprived of her legitimate share in all the pleasures of earth. She
had no patience with Mary--that wild, unkempt, ungraceful creature, who
could be as happy as summer days are long, racing about the hills with
her bamboo alpenstock, rioting with a pack of fox-terriers, practising
long losers, rowing on the lake, doing all things unbecoming Lady
Maulevrier's granddaughter.

That long rainy day dragged its slow length to a close; and then came fine
days, in which Molly and her fox-terriers went wandering over the sunlit
hills, skipping and dancing across the mountain streamlets--gills, as they
were called in this particular world--almost as gaily as the shadows of
fleecy cloudlets dancing up yonder in the windy sky. Molly spent half her
days among the hills, stealing off from governess and grandmother and the
stately beauty sister, and sometimes hardly being missed by them, so ill
did her young exuberance harmonise with their calmer life.

'One can tell when Mary is at home by a perpetual banging of doors,'
said Lesbia, which was a sisterly exaggeration founded upon fact, for
Molly was given to impetuous rushing in and out of rooms when that eager
spirit of hers impelled the light lithe body upon some new expedition.
Nor is the society of fox-terriers conducive to repose or stateliness of
movement; and Maulevrier's terriers, although strictly forbidden the
house, were for ever breaking bonds and leaping in upon Molly's
retirement at all unreasonable hours. She and they were enchant