Her nature was so full of pity that an entirely new affection had grown up in her mind for Lady Maulevrier since that terrible evening of the paralytic stroke.

’Yes, and whose love, as exemplified by Lesbia, is shown in a hurried scrap of a letter scrawled once a week—­a bone thrown to a hungry dog,’ said her ladyship, bitterly.

’Lesbia is so lovely, and she is so surrounded by flatterers and admirers,’ murmured Mary, excusingly.

’Oh, my dear, if she had a heart she would not forget me, even in the midst of her flatterers.  Good-night again, Mary.  Don’t try to console me.  For some natures consolations and soothing suggestions are like flowers thrown upon a granite tomb.  They do just as much and just as little good to the heart that lies under the stone.  Good-night.’

Mary stooped to kiss her grandmother’s forehead, and found it cold as marble.  She murmured a loving good-night, and left the mistress of Fellside in her loneliness.

A footman would come in and light the lamps, and draw the velvet curtains, presently, and shut out the later glories of sunset.  And then the butler himself would come and arrange the little dinner table by her ladyship’s couch, and would himself preside over the invalid’s simple dinner, which would be served exquisitely, with all that is daintiest and most costly in Salviati glass and antique silver.  Yet better the dinner of herbs, and love and peace withal, than the choicest fare or the most perfect service.

Before the coming of the servants and the lamps there was a pause of silence and loneliness, an interval during which Lady Maulevrier lay gazing at the declining orb, the lower rim of which now rested on the edge of the hill.  It seemed to grow larger and more dazzling as she looked at it.

Suddenly she clasped her left hand across her eyes, and said aloud—­

’Oh, what a hateful life!  Almost half a century of lies and hypocricies and prevarications and meannesses!  For what?  For the glory of an empty name; and for a fortune that may slip from my dead hand to become the prey of rogues and adventurers.  Who can forecast the future?’

CHAPTER XXV.

CARTE BLANCHE.

Lady Kirkbank’s house in Arlington Street was known to half fashionable London as one of the pleasantest houses in town; and it was known by repute only, to the other half of fashionable London, as a house whose threshold was not to be crossed by persons with any regard for their own dignity and reputation.  It was not that Lady Kirkbank had ever actually forfeited her right to be considered an honest woman and a faithful wife.  People who talked of the lady and her set with a contemptuous shrug of the shoulders and a dubious elevation of the eyebrows were ready, when hard pushed in argument, to admit that they knew of no actual harm in Lady Kirkbank, no overt bad behaviour.