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but she did not know what to do with herself. She ought to have been one of those comely, buxom matrons who may be seen any Sunday in any country town all over the world, marshalling her little flock to church, arrayed in spotless clothing and shining rosy cheeks; or perhaps helping to keep shop on the boulevards, trim-aproned, tight-laced, with a bright eye for the main chance; or ordering her dairymaids about in some red-tiled, rose-curtained homestead in Devonshire.

Lizzie was wasted on a large establishment. Her servants never permitted her to practise those domestic arts in which she could so easily have surpassed them. She dare not so much as make her own dresses; even the “natural piety” of nursing the sick, or bringing up children, seemed denied by fate. Something was wanting in her life as in her beauty, and in her simple way she was a femme incomprise amidst all the surroundings of wealth and amusement. All the more wildly she rushed into the distractions of society and the brotherly companionship of admiring young men. She was not naturally inclined to be “fast”—far from it. Yet she got into the way of rumour and gossip out of very light-heartedness, as persistently as the old woman and the dog run