And now, in the darkening winter day, she watched the gloomy shadows creep over the rugged breast of Nabb Scar, and she thought how there was a time for all things, and that her day of hope and ambition was past.
Of late years she had lived for Lesbia, looking forward to the day when she was to introduce this beloved grandchild to the great world of London; and now that hope was gone for ever.
What could a helpless cripple do for a fashionable beauty?
What good would it be for her to be conveyed to London, and to lie on a couch in Mayfair, while Lesbia rode in the Row and went to three or four parties every night with a more active chaperon?
She had hoped to go everywhere with her darling, to glory in all her successes, to shield her from all possibility of failure.

And now Lesbia must stand or fall alone.
It was a hard thing; but perhaps the hardest part of it was that Lesbia seemed so very well able to get on without her.

The girl wrote in the highest spirits; and although her letters were most affectionately worded, they were all about self.

That note was dominant in every strain.

Her triumphs, her admirers, her bonnets, her gowns.