Lady Lesbia was of a different temper. She loved ease and elegance, the
gracious luxuries of life. She loved art and music, but not to labour
hard at either. She played and sang a little--excellently within that
narrow compass which she had allotted to herself--played Mendelssohn's
'Lieder' with finished touch and faultless phrasing, sang Heine's
ballads with consummate expression. She painted not at all. Why should
anyone draw or paint indifferently, she asked, when Providence has
furnished the world with so many great painters in the past and present?
She could not understand Mary's ardent desire to do the thing
herself,--to be able with her own pencil and her own brush to reproduce
the lakes and valleys, the wild brown hills she loved so passionately.
Lesbia did not care two straws for the lovely lake district amidst which
she had been reared,--every pike and force, every beck and gill whereof
was distinctly dear to her younger sister. She thought it a very hard
thing to have spent so much of her life at Fellside, a trial that would
have hardly been endurable if it were not for grandmother.
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