ws her own value. She behaved like a
queen here, where I need not tell you society is just a little
mixed; though, of course, we only cultivate our own set. Your heart
would swell with pride if you could see the way she puts down men
who are not quite good style; and the ease with which she crushes
those odious American girls, with their fine complexions and loud
manners.

'Be assured that I shall guard her as the apple of my eye, and that
the detrimental who circumvents me will be a very Satan of schemers.

'I can but smile at your mention of Carson, whose gowns used to fit
us so well in our girlish days, and whose bills seem moderate
compared with the exorbitant accounts I get now.

'Carson has long been forgotten, my dear soul, gone with the snows
of last year. A long procession of fashionable French dressmakers
has passed across the stage since her time, like the phantom kings
in Macbeth; and now the last rage is to have our gowns made by an
Englishman who works for the Princess, and who gives himself most
insufferable airs, or an Irishwoman who is employed by all the best
actresses. It is to the latter, Kate Kearney, I shall entrust our
sweet Lesbia's toilettes.'

The same post brought a loving letter from Lesbia, full of regret at not
being allowed to go down to Fellside, and yet full of delight at the
prospect of her first season.

'Lady Kirkbank and I have been discussing my court dress,' she wrote,
'and we have decided upon a white cut-velvet train, with a border of
ostrich feathers, over a satin petticoat embroidered with seed
pearl. It will be expensive, but we know you will not mind that.
Lady Kirkbank takes the idea from the costume Buckingham wore at the
Louvre the first time he met Anne of Austria. Isn't that clever of
her? She is not a deep thinker like you; is horribly ignorant of
science, metaphysics, poetry even. She asked me one day who Plato
was, and whether he took his name from the battle of Platoea; and
she says she never could understand why people make a fuss about
Shakespeare; but she has read all the secret histories and memoirs
that ever were written, and knows all the ins and outs of court life
and high life for the last three hundred years; and there is not a
person in the peerage whose family history she has not at her
fingers' ends, except my grandf