Street for the May campaign.

'And then, dearest, I hope you will make up your mind to spend the
season in London,' wrote Lesbia. 'I shall expect to hear that you have
secured Lord Porlock's house. How dreadfully slow your poor dear hand is
to recover! I am afraid Horton is not treating the case cleverly. Why do
you not send for Mr. Erichsen? It is a shock to my nerves every time I
receive a letter in Mary's masculine hand, instead of in your lovely
Italian penmanship. Strange--isn't it?--how much better the women of
your time write than the girls of the present day! Lady Kirkbank
receives letters from stylish girls in a hand that would disgrace a
housemaid.'

Lady Maulevrier allowed a post to go by before she answered this letter,
while she deliberated upon the best and wisest manner of arranging her
granddaughter's future. It was an agony to her not to be able to write
with her own hand, to be obliged to so shape every sentence that Mary
might learn nothing which she ought not to know. It was impossible with
such an amanuensis to write confidentially to Lady Kirkbank. The letters
to Lesbia were of less consequence; for Lesbia, albeit so intensely
beloved, was not in her grandmother's confidence, least of all about
those schemes and dreams which concerned her own fate.

However, the letters had to be written, so Mary was told to open her
desk and begin.

The letter to Lesbia ran thus:--

'My dearest Child,