CHAPTER XIII.
'SINCE PAINTED OR NOT PAINTED ALL SHALL FADE.' Fraeulein Mueller and her charge returned from St.Bees after a sojourn of about three weeks upon that quiet shore: but Lady Lesbia did not appear to be improved in health or spirits by the revivifying breezes of the ocean.
'It is a dull, horrid place, and I was bored to death there!' she said, when Mary asked how she had enjoyed herself.

'There was no question of enjoyment.

Grandmother took it into her head that I was looking ill, and sent me to the sea; but I should have been just as well at Fellside.' This meant that between Lesbia and that distinctly inferior being, her younger sister, there was to be no confidence.

Mary had watched the life-drama acted under her eyes too closely not to know all about it, and was not inclined to be so put off.
That pale perturbed countenance of John Hammond's, those eager inquiring eyes looking to the door which opened not, had haunted Mary's waking thoughts, had even mingled with the tangled web of her dreams.

Oh, how could any woman scorn such love?
To be so loved, and by such a man, seemed to Mary the perfection of earthly bliss.