CHAPTER XVII.
'AND THE SPRING COMES SLOWLY UP THIS WAY.' The wintry weeks glided smoothly by in a dull monotony, and now Lady Maulevrier, still helpless, still compelled to lie on her bed or her invalid couch, motionless as marble, had at least recovered her power of speech, was allowed to read and to talk, and to hear what was going on in that metropolitan world which she seemed unlikely ever to behold again.
Lady Lesbia was still at Cannes, whence she wrote of her pleasures and her triumphs, of flowers and sapphire sea, and azure sky, of all things which were not in the grey bleak mountain world that hemmed in Fellside.
She was meeting many of the people whom she was to meet again next season in the London world.

She had made an informal _debut_ in a very select circle, a circle in which everybody was more or less _chic_, or _chien_, or _zinc_, and she was tasting all the sweets of success.

But in none of her letters was there any mention of Lord Hartfield.

He was not in the little great world by the blue tideless sea.
There was no talk of Lesbia's return.

She was to stay till the carnival; she was to stay till the week before Easter.