She rose as she said these words, and began to pace the room, with quiet, firm step, erect, stately, beautiful in her advanced years as she had been in her bloom and freshness, only with another kind of beauty--an empress among women. The boast that she had made to herself was no idle boast. At sixty-seven years of age her physical powers showed no signs of decay, her mental qualities were at their best and brightest. Long years of thought and study had ripened and widened her mind. She was a woman fit to be the friend and counsellor of statesmen, the companion and confidant of her sovereign: and yet fate willed that she should be buried alive in a Westmoreland valley, seeing the same hills and streams, the same rustic faces, from year's end to year's end. Surely it was a hard fate, a heavy penance, albeit self-imposed.
Lesbia went straight from Scotland to Paris with Sir George and Lady Kirkbank. Here they stayed at the Bristol for just two days, during which her hostess went all over the fashionable quarter buying clothes for the Cannes campaign, and assisting Lesbia to spend the hundred pounds which her grandmother had sent her for the replenishment of her well-provided wardrobe. It is astonishing how little way a hundred pounds goes among the dressmakers, corset-makers, and shoemakers of Lutetia.
'I had no notion that clothes were so dear,' said Lesbia, when she saw how little she had got for her money.
'My dear, you have two gowns which are absolutely _chien_,' replied Lady Kirkbank, 'and you have a corset which gives you a figure, which you must forgive me for saying you never had before.'
Lady Kirkbank had to explain that _chien_ as applied to a gown or bonnet was the same thing as _chic_, only a little more so.
'I hope my gowns will always be _chien_,' said Lesbia meekly.
Next evening they were dining at Cannes, with the blue sea in front of their windows, dining at a table all abloom with orange flowers, tea roses, mignonette, waxen camellias, and pale Parma violets, while Lady Maulevrier and Mary dined _tête-à-tête_ at Fellside, with the feathery snow flakes falling outside, and the world whitening all around them.
Next day the world was all white, and Mary's beloved hills were inaccessible.