her ladyship stung like
the knotted cords of a knout. She knew not whether to be most ashamed of
her lover or of herself--of her lover for his obscure position, his
hopeless poverty; of herself for her folly in loving such a man. And she
did love him, and would fain have pleaded his cause, had she not been
cowed by the authority that had ruled her all her life.

'Lesbia, if I thought you had been silly enough, degraded enough, to
give this young man encouragement, to have justified his audacity of
to-day by any act or word of yours, I should despise, I should detest
you,' said Lady Maulevrier, sternly. 'What could be more contemptible,
more hateful in a girl reared as you have been than to give
encouragement to the first comer--to listen greedily to the first
adventurer who had the insolence to make love to you, to be eager to
throw yourself into the arms of the first man who asked you. That my
granddaughter, a girl reared and taught and watched and guarded by me,
should have no more dignity, no more modesty, or womanly feeling, than a
barmaid at an inn!'

Lesbia began to cry.

'I don't see why a barmaid, should not be a good woman, or why it
should be a crime to fall in love,' she said, in a voice broken by sobs.
'You need not speak to me so unkindly. I am not going to marry Mr.
Hammond.'

'Oh, you are not? that is very good of you. I am deeply grateful for
such an assurance.'

'But I like him better than anyone I ever saw in my life before.'

'You have seen to many people. You have had such a wide area for
choice.'

'No; I know I have been kept like a nun in a convent: but I don't think
when I go into the world I shall ever see anyone I should like better
than Mr. Hammond.'

'Wait till you have seen the world before you make up your mind about
that. And now, Lesbia, leave off talking and thinking like a child; look
me in the face and listen to me, for I am going to speak seriously; and
with me, when I am in earnest, what is said once is said for ever.'

Lady Maulevrier grasped her granddaughter's arm with long slender
fingers which held it as tightly as the grasp of a vice. She drew the
girl's slim figure round till they were face to face, looking into each
other's eyes, the dowager's eagle countenance lit up with impassioned
feeling, severe, awful as the face of one of the fatal sisters, the
avengers of blood, the harbingers of doom.

'Lesbia, I think I have been good to you, and kind to you,' she said.