rcise impossible--was always an
affliction to Lady Mary Haselden. Her delight was in open air and
sunshine--fishing in the lake and rivers--sitting in some sheltered
hollow of the hills more fitting for an eagle's nest than for the
occupation of a young lady, trying to paint those ever-varying,
unpaintable mountain peaks, which change their hues with every change of
the sky--swimming, riding, roving far and wide over hill and
heather--pleasures all more or less masculine in their nature, and which
were a subject of regret with Lady Maulevrier.

Lady Lesbia was of a different temper. She loved ease and elegance, the
gracious luxuries of life. She loved art and music, but not to labour
hard at either. She played and sang a little--excellently within that
narrow compass which she had allotted to herself--played Mendelssohn's
'Lieder' with finished touch and faultless phrasing, sang Heine's
ballads with consummate expression. She painted not at all. Why should
anyone draw or paint indifferently, she asked, when Providence has
furnished the world with so many great painters in the past and present?
She could not understand Mary's ardent desire to do the thing
herself,--to be able with her own pencil and her own brush to reproduce
the lakes and valleys, the wild brown hills she loved so passionately.
Lesbia did not care two straws for the lovely lake district amidst which
she had been reared,--every pike and force, every beck and gill whereof
was distinctly dear to her younger sister. She thought it a very hard
thing to have spent so much of her life at Fellside, a trial that would
have hardly been endurable if it were not for grandmother. Grandmother
and Lesbia adored each other. Lesbia was the one person for whom Lady
Maulevrier's stateliness was subjugated by perfect love. To all the rest
of the world the Countess was marble, but to Lesbia she was wax. Lesbia
could mould her as she pleased; but happily Lesbia was not the kind of
young person to take advantage of this privilege; she was thoroughly
ductile or docile, and had no desire, at present, which ran counter to
her grandmother.

Lesbia was a beauty. In her nineteenth year she was a curious
reproduction in face and figure, expression and carriage, of that Lady
Diana Angersthorpe who five and forty years ago fluttered the dove-cots
of St. James's and Mayfair by her brilliant beauty and her keen
intelligence. There in the panelled drawing-room at Fellside hung
Harlow's