Lesbia crouched by her grandmother's chair, her face hidden from Lady Maulevrier's falcon eye. Every word uttered by 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 so 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.