spend the
season in London,' wrote Lesbia. 'I shall expect to hear that you have
secured Lord Porlock's house. How dreadfully slow your poor dear hand is
to recover! I am afraid Horton is not treating the case cleverly. Why do
you not send for Mr. Erichsen? It is a shock to my nerves every time I
receive a letter in Mary's masculine hand, instead of in your lovely
Italian penmanship. Strange--isn't it?--how much better the women of
your time write than the girls of the present day! Lady Kirkbank
receives letters from stylish girls in a hand that would disgrace a
housemaid.'

Lady Maulevrier allowed a post to go by before she answered this letter,
while she deliberated upon the best and wisest manner of arranging her
granddaughter's future. It was an agony to her not to be able to write
with her own hand, to be obliged to so shape every sentence that Mary
might learn nothing which she ought not to know. It was impossible with
such an amanuensis to write confidentially to Lady Kirkbank. The letters
to Lesbia were of less consequence; for Lesbia, albeit so intensely
beloved, was not in her grandmother's confidence, least of all about
those schemes and dreams which concerned her own fate.

However, the letters had to be written, so Mary was told to open her
desk and begin.

The letter to Lesbia ran thus:--

'My dearest Child,

'This is a world in which our brightest day-dreams generally end in
mere dreaming. For years past I have cherished the hope of
presenting you to your sovereign, to whom I was presented six and
forty years ago, when she was so fair and girlish a creature that
she seemed to me more like a queen in a fairy tale than the actual
ruler of a great country. I have beguiled my monotonous days with
thoughts of the time when I should return to the great world, full
of pride and delight in showing old friends what a sweet flower I
had reared in my mountain home; but, alas, Lesbia, it may not be.

'Fate has willed otherwise. The maimed hand does not recover,
although Horton is very clever, and thoroughly understands my case.
I am not ill, I am not in danger; so you need feel no anxiety about
me; but I am a cripple; and I am likely to remain a cripple for
months; so the idea of a London season this year is hopeless.

'Now, as you have in a manner made your _debut_ at Cannes, it would
never do to bury you here for another year. You complaine