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Braddon, M. E. (Mary Elizabeth), 1835-1915

"Phantom Fortune, a Novel"


Lady Kirkbank told her that she was turning everyone's head, and Lesbia
was quite willing to believe her. But was Lesbia's own head quite steady
in this whirlpool? That was a question which she did not take the
trouble to ask herself.
Her heart was tranquil enough, cold as marble. No shield and safeguard
so secure against the fire of new love as an old love hardly cold.
Lesbia told herself that her heart was a sepulchre, an urn which held a
handful of ashes, the ashes of her passion for John Hammond. It was a
fire quite burned out, she thought; but that extinguished flame had left
death-like coldness.
This was Lesbia's own diagnosis of her case: but the real truth was that
among the herd of men she had met, almost all of them ready to fall down
and worship her, there was not one who had caught her fancy. Her nature
was shallow enough to be passing fickle; the passion which she had taken
for love was little more than a girl's fancy; but the man who had power
to awaken that fancy as John Hammond had done had not yet appeared in
Lady Kirkbank's circle.


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