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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Phantom Fortune, A Novel, by M. E. Braddon
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Phantom Fortune, A Novel
+
+Author: M. E. Braddon
+
+Release Date: February 1, 2004 [EBook #10905]
+[Last updated: August 4, 2013]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PHANTOM FORTUNE, A NOVEL ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jonathan Ingram and PG Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+PHANTOM FORTUNE
+
+
+A Novel
+
+
+BY THE AUTHOR OF "LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET," "VIXEN," ETC. ETC. ETC.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+I.       PENELOPE
+II.      ULYSSES
+III.     ON THE WRONG ROAD
+IV.      THE LAST STAGE
+V.       FORTY YEARS AFTER
+VI.      MAULEVRIER'S HUMBLE FRIEND
+VII.     IN THE SUMMER MORNING
+VIII.    THERE IS ALWAYS A SKELETON
+IX.      A CRY IN THE DARKNESS
+X.       'O BITTERNESS OF THINGS TOO SWEET'
+XI.      'IF I WERE TO DO AS ISEULT DID'
+XII.     'THE GREATER CANTLE OF THE WORLD IS LOST'
+XIII.    'SINCE PAINTED OR NOT PAINTED ALL SHALL FADE'
+XIV.     'NOT YET'
+XV.      'OF ALL MEN ELSE I HAVE AVOIDED THEE'
+XVI.     'HER FACE RESIGNED TO BLISS OR BALE'
+XVII.    'AND THE SPRING COMES SLOWLY UP THIS WAY'
+XVIII.   'AND COME AGEN, BE IT BY NIGHT OR DAY'
+XIX.     THE OLD MAN ON THE FELL
+XX.      LADY MAULEVRIER'S LETTER-BAG
+XXI.     ON THE DARK BROW OF HELVELLYN
+XXII.    WISER THAN LESBIA
+XXIII.   'A YOUNG LAMB'S HEART AMONG THE FULL-GROWN FLOCKS'
+XXIV.    'NOW NOTHING LEFT TO LOVE OR HATE'
+XXV.     CARTE BLANCHE
+XXVI.    'PROUD CAN I NEVER BE OF WHAT I HATE'
+XXVII.   LESBIA CROSSES PICCADILLY
+XXVIII.  'CLUBS, DIAMONDS, HEARTS, IN WILD DISORDER SEEN'
+XXIX.    'SWIFT, SUBTLE POST, CARRIER OF GRISLY CARE'
+XXX.     'ROSES CHOKED AMONG THORNS AND THISTLES'
+XXXI.    'KIND IS MY LOVE TO-DAY, TO-MORROW KIND'
+XXXII.   WAYS AND MEANS
+XXXIII.  BY SPECIAL LICENCE
+XXXIV.   'OUR LOVE WAS NEW, AND THEN BUT IN THE SPRING'
+XXXV.    'ALL FANCY, PRIDE, AND FICKLE MAIDENHOOD'
+XXXVI.   A RASTAQUOUÈRE
+XXXVII.  LORD HARTFIELD REFUSES A FORTUNE
+XXXVIII. ON BOARD THE 'CAYMAN'
+XXXIX.   IN STORM AND DARKNESS
+XL.      A NOTE OF ALARM
+XLI.     PRIVILEGED INFORMATION
+XLII.    'SHALL IT BE?'
+XLIII.   'ALAS, FOR SORROW IS ALL THE END OF THIS'
+XLIV.    'OH, SAD KISSED MOUTH, HOW SORROWFUL IT IS!'
+XLV.     'THAT FELL ARREST WITHOUT ALL BAIL'
+XLVI.    THE DAY OF RECKONING
+
+[Illustration: H. French, del.) (T. Symmons, sc. "The old man sat looking
+at Mary in silence for some moments."--Page 171.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+PENELOPE.
+
+
+People dined earlier forty years ago than they do now. Even that salt of
+the earth, the elect of society, represented by that little great world
+which lies between the narrow circle bounded by Bryanstone Square on the
+north and by Birdcage Walk on the south, did not consider seven o'clock
+too early an hour for a dinner party which was to be followed by routs,
+drums, concerts, conversazione, as the case might be. It was seven
+o'clock on a lovely June evening, and the Park was already deserted, and
+carriages were rolling swiftly along all the Westend squares, carrying
+rank, fashion, wealth, and beauty, political influence, and intellectual
+power, to the particular circle in which each was destined to illumine
+upon that particular evening.
+
+Stateliest among London squares, Grosvenor--in some wise a wonder to the
+universe as newly lighted with gas--grave Grosvenor, with its heavy old
+Georgian houses and pompous porticoes, sparkled and shone, not alone
+with the novel splendour of gas, but with the light of many wax candles,
+clustering flower-like in silver branches and girandoles, multiplying
+their flame in numerous mirrors; and of all the houses in that stately
+square none had a more imposing aspect than Lord Denyer's dark red brick
+mansion, with stone dressings, and the massive grandeur of an Egyptian
+mausoleum.
+
+Lord Denyer was an important personage in the political and diplomatic
+world. He had been ambassador at Constantinople and at Paris, and had
+now retired on his laurels, an influence still, but no longer an active
+power in the machine of government. At his house gathered all that was
+most brilliant in London society. To be seen at Lady Denyer's evening
+parties was the guinea stamp of social distinction; to dine with Lord
+Denyer was an opening in life, almost as valuable as University honours,
+and more difficult of attainment.
+
+It was during the quarter of an hour before dinner that a group of
+persons, mostly personages, congregated round Lord Denyer's
+chimney-piece, naturally trending towards the social hearth, albeit it
+was the season for roses and lilies rather than of fires, and the hum of
+the city was floating in upon the breath of the warm June evening
+through the five tall windows which opened upon Lord Denyer's balcony.
+
+The ten or twelve persons assembled seemed only a sprinkling in the large
+lofty room, furnished sparsely with amber satin sofas, a pair of Florentine
+marble tables, and half an acre or so of looking glass. Voluminous amber
+draperies shrouded the windows, and deadened the sound of rolling wheels,
+and the voices and footfalls of western London. The drawing rooms of those
+days were neither artistic nor picturesque--neither Early English nor Low
+Dutch, nor Renaissance, nor Anglo-Japanese. A stately commonplace
+distinguished the reception rooms of the great world. Upholstery stagnated
+at a dead level of fluted legs, gilding, plate glass, and amber satin.
+
+Lady Denyer stood a little way in advance of the group on the hearthrug,
+fanning herself, with her eye on the door, while she listened languidly
+to the remarks of a youthful diplomatist, a sprig of a lordly tree, upon
+the last _début_ at Her Majesty's Theatre.
+
+'My own idea was that she screamed,' said her ladyship. 'But the new
+Rosinas generally do scream. Why do we have a new Rosina every year,
+whom nobody ever hears of afterwards? What becomes of them? Do they die,
+or do they set up as singing mistresses in second-rate watering-places?'
+hazarded her ladyship, with her eye always on the door.
+
+She was a large woman in amethyst satin, and a gauze turban with a
+diamond aigrette, a splendid jewel, which would not have misbeseemed the
+head-gear of an Indian prince. Lady Denyer was one of the last women who
+wore a turban, and that Oriental head-dress became her bold and massive
+features.
+
+Infinitely bored by the whiskerless attaché, who had entered upon a
+disquisition on the genius of Rossini as compared with this new man
+Meyerbeer, her ladyship made believe to hear, while she listened
+intently to the confidential murmurs of the group on the hearthrug, the
+little knot of personages clustered round Lord Denyer.
+
+'Indian mail in this morning,' said one--'nothing else talked of at the
+club. Very flagrant case! A good deal worse than Warren Hastings.
+Quite clear there must be a public inquiry--House of Lords--criminal
+prosecution.'
+
+'I was told on very good authority, that he has been recalled, and is
+now on his passage home,' said another man.
+
+Lord Denyer shrugged his shoulders, pursed up his lips, and looked
+ineffably wise, a way he had when he knew very little about the subject
+under discussion.
+
+'How will _she_ take it, do you think?' inquired Colonel Madison, of the
+Life Guards, a man about town, and an inveterate gossip, who knew
+everybody, and everybody's family history, down to the peccadilloes of
+people's great grandmothers.
+
+'You will have an opportunity of judging,' replied his lordship, coolly.
+'She's to be here this evening.'
+
+'But do you think she'll show?' asked the Colonel. 'The mail must have
+brought the news to her, as well as to other people--supposing she knew
+nothing about it beforehand. She must know that the storm has burst. Do
+you think she'll----'
+
+'Come out in the thunder and lightning?' interrupted Lord Denver; 'I'm
+sure she will. She has the pride of Lucifer and the courage of a lion.
+Five to one in ponies that she is here before the clock strikes seven!'
+
+'I think you are right. I knew her mother, Constance Talmash. Pluck was
+a family characteristic of the Talmashes. Wicked as devils, and brave as
+lions. Old Talmash, the grandfather, shot his valet in a paroxysm of
+_delirium tremens_,' said Colonel Madison. 'She's a splendid woman, and
+she won't flinch. I'd rather back her than bet against her.'
+
+'Lady Maulevrier!' announced the groom of the chambers; and Lady Denyer
+moved at least three paces forward to meet her guest.
+
+The lady who entered, with slow and stately movements and proudly
+balanced head, might have served for a model as Juno or the Empress
+Livia. She was still in the bloom of youth, at most seven-and-twenty,
+but she had all the calm assurance of middle-age. No dowager, hardened
+by the varied experiences of a quarter of a century in the great world,
+could have faced society with more perfect coolness and self-possession.
+She was beautiful, and she let the world see that she was conscious of
+her beauty, and the power that went along with it. She was clever, and
+she used her cleverness with unfailing tact and unscrupulous audacity.
+She had won her place in the world as an acknowledged beauty, and one of
+the leaders of fashion. Two years ago she had been the glory and delight
+of Anglo-Indian society in the city of Madras, ruling that remote and
+limited kingdom with a despotic power. Then all of a sudden she was
+ordered, or she ordered her physician to order her, an immediate
+departure from that perilous climate, and she came back to England with
+her three-year-old son, two Ayahs, and four European servants, leaving
+her husband, Lord Maulevrier, Governor of the Madras Presidency, to
+finish the term of his service in an enforced widowhood.
+
+She returned to be the delight of London society. She threw open the
+family mansion in Curzon Street to the very best people, but to those
+only. She went out a great deal, but she was never seen at a second-rate
+party. She had not a single doubtful acquaintance upon her visiting
+list. She spent half of every year at the family seat in Scotland, was a
+miracle of goodness to the poor of her parish, and taught her boy his
+alphabet.
+
+Lord Denyer came forward while his wife and Lady Maulevrier were shaking
+hands, and greeted her with more than his usual cordiality. Colonel
+Madison watched for the privilege of a recognising nod from the
+divinity. Sir Jasper Paulet, a legal luminary of the first brilliancy,
+likely to be employed for the Crown if there should be an inquiry into
+Lord Maulevrier's conduct out yonder, came to press Lady Maulevrier's
+hand and murmur a tender welcome.
+
+She accepted their friendliness as a matter of course, and not by the
+faintest extra quiver of the tremulous stars which glittered in a
+circlet above her raven hair did she betray her consciousness of the
+cloud that darkened her husband's reputation. Never had she appeared
+gayer, or more completely satisfied with herself and the world in which
+she lived. She was ready to talk about anything and everything--the
+newly-wedded queen, and the fortunate Prince, whose existence among us
+had all the charm of novelty--of Lord Melbourne's declining health--and
+Sir Robert Peel's sliding scale--mesmerism--the Oxford Tracts--the
+latest balloon ascent--the opera--Macready's last production at Drury
+lane--Bulwer's new novel--that clever little comic paper, just
+struggling into popularity--what do you call the thing--_Punch?_--yes,
+_Punch, or the London Charivari_--a much more respectable paper than its
+Parisian prototype.
+
+Seated next Lord Denyer, who was an excellent listener, Lady
+Maulevrier's vivacity never flagged throughout the dinner, happily not
+so long as a modern banquet, albeit more ponderous and not less
+expensive. From the turtle to the pines and strawberries, Lady
+Maulevrier held her host or her right-hand neighbour in interested
+conversation. She always knew the particular subjects likely to interest
+particular people, and was a good listener as well as a good talker. Her
+right-hand neighbour was Sir Jasper Paulet, who had been allotted to the
+pompous wife of a court physician, a lady who had begun her married life
+in the outer darkness of Guildford Street, Bloomsbury, with a household
+consisting of a maid-of-all-work and a boy in buttons, with an
+occasional interregnum of charwoman; and for whom all the length and
+breadth of Harley Street was now much too small.
+
+Sir Jasper was only decently civil to this haughty matron, who on the
+strength of a card for a ball or a concert at the palace once in a
+season affected to be on the most intimate terms with Royalty, and knew
+everything that happened, and every fluctuation of opinion in that
+charmed circle. The great lawyer's left ear was listening greedily for
+any word of meaning that might fall from the lips of Lady Maulevrier;
+but no such word fell. She talked delightfully, with a touch-and-go
+vivacity which is the highest form of dinner-table talk, not dwelling
+with a heavy hand upon any one subject, but glancing from theme to theme
+with airy lightness. But not one word did she say about the governor of
+Madras; and at this juncture of affairs it would have been the worst
+possible taste to inquire too closely after his lordship's welfare.
+
+So the dinner wore on to its stately close, and just as the solemn
+procession of flunkeys, long as the shadowy line of the kings in
+'Macbeth,' filed off with the empty ice-dishes, Lady Maulevrier said
+something which was as if a shell had exploded in the middle of the
+table.
+
+'Perhaps you are surprised to see me in such good spirits,' she said,
+beaming upon her host, and speaking in those clear, perfectly finished
+syllables which are heard further than the louder accents of less
+polished speakers, 'but you will not wonder when I let you into the
+secret. Maulevrier is on his way home.'
+
+'Indeed!' said Lord Denyer, with the most benignant smile he could
+command at such short notice. He felt that the muscles round his eyes
+and the corners of his mouth were betraying too much of his real
+sentiments. 'You must be very glad.'
+
+'I am gladder than I can say,' answered Lady Maulevrier, gaily. 'That
+horried climate--a sky like molten copper--an atmosphere that tastes of
+red-hot sand--that flat barren coast never suited him. His term of
+office would expire in little more than a year, but I hardly think he
+could have lived out the year. However, I am happy to say the mail that
+came in to-day--I suppose you know the mail is in?' (Lord Denyer
+bowed)--'brought me a letter from his Lordship, telling me that he has
+sent in his resignation, and taken his passage by the next big ship that
+leaves Madras. I imagine he will be home in October.'
+
+'If he have a favourable passage,' said Lord Denyer. 'Favoured by your
+good wishes the winds and the waves ought to deal gently with him.'
+
+'Ah, we have done with the old days of Greek story, when Neptune was
+open to feminine influence,' sighed her ladyship. 'My poor Ulysses has
+no goddess of wisdom to look after him.'
+
+'Perhaps not, but he has the most charming of Penelopes waiting for him
+at home.'
+
+'A Penelope who goes to dinners, and takes life pleasantly in his
+absence. That is a new order of things, is it not?' said her ladyship,
+laughingly. 'I hope my poor Ulysses will not come home thoroughly broken
+in health, but that our Sutherlandshire breezes will set him up again.'
+
+'Rather an ordeal after India, I should think,' said Lord Denyer.
+
+'It is his native air. He will revel in it.'
+
+'Delicious country, no doubt,' assented his lordship, who was no
+sportsman, and who detested Scotland, grouse moors, deer forests, salmon
+rivers included.
+
+His only idea of a winter residence was Florence or Capri, and of the
+two he preferred Capri. The island was at that time little frequented by
+Englishmen. It had hardly been fashionable since the time of Tiberius,
+but Lord Denyer went there, accompanied by his French chef, and a dozen
+other servants, and roughed it in a native hotel; while Lady Denyer
+wintered at the family seat among the hills near Bath, and gave herself
+over to Low Church devotion, and works of benevolence. She made herself
+a terror to the neighbourhood by the strictness of her ideas all through
+the autumn and winter; and in the spring she went up to London, put on
+her turban and her diamonds, and plunged into the vortex of West-End
+society, where she revolved among other jewelled matrons for the season,
+telling herself and her intimates that this sacrifice of inclination was
+due to his lordship's position. Lady Denyer was not the less
+serious-minded because she was seen at every aristocratic resort, and
+wore low gowns with very short sleeves, and a great display of mottled
+arm and dimpled elbow.
+
+Now came her ladyship's smiling signal for the withdrawal of that fairer
+half of the assembly which was supposed to be indifferent to Lord
+Denyer's famous port and Madeira. She had been throwing out her gracious
+signals unperceived for at least five minutes before Lady Maulevrier
+responded, so entirely was that lady absorbed in her conversation with
+Lord Denyer; but she caught the look at last, and rose, as if moved by
+the same machinery which impelled her hostess, and then, graceful as a
+swan sailing with the current, she drifted down the room to the distant
+door, and headed the stately procession of matronly velvet and diamonds,
+herself at once the most regal and the most graceful figure in that bevy
+of fair woman.
+
+In the drawing-room nobody could be gayer than Lady Maulevrier, as she
+marked the time of Signor Paponizzi's saltarello, exquisitely performed
+on the Signor's famed Amati violin--or talked of the latest
+scandal--always excepting that latest scandal of all which involved her
+own husband--in subdued murmurs with one of her intimates. In the
+dining-room the men drew closer together over their wine, and tore Lord
+Maulevrier's character to rags. Yea, they rent him with their teeth and
+gnawed the flesh from his bones, until there was not so much left of him
+as the dogs left of Jezebel.
+
+He had been a scamp from his cradle, a spendthrift at Eton and Oxford, a
+blackleg in his manhood. False to men, false to women. Clever? Yes,
+undoubtedly, just as Satan is clever, and as unscrupulous as that very
+Satan. This was what his friends said of him over their wine. And now he
+was rumoured to have sold the British forces in the Carnatic provinces
+to one of the native Princes. Yes, to have taken gold, gold to an amount
+which Clive in his most rapacious moments never dreamt of, for his
+countrymen's blood. Tidings of dark transactions between the Governor
+and the native Princes had reached the ears of the Government, tidings
+so vague, so incredible, that the Government might naturally be slow to
+believe, still slower to act. There were whispers of a woman's
+influence, a beautiful Ranee, a creature as fascinating and as
+unscrupulous as Cleopatra. The scandal had been growing for months past,
+but it was only in the letters received to-day that the rumour had taken
+a tangible shape, and now it was currently reported that Lord Maulevrier
+had been recalled, and would have to answer at the bar of the House of
+Lords for his misdemeanours, which were of a much darker colour than
+those acts for which Warren Hastings had been called to account fifty
+years before.
+
+Yet in the face of all this, Lady Maulevrier bore herself as proudly as
+if her husband's name were spotless, and talked of his return with all
+the ardour of a fond and trusting wife.
+
+'One of the finest bits of acting I ever saw in my life,' said the court
+physician. 'Mademoiselle Mars never did anything better.'
+
+'Do you really think it was acting?' inquired Lord Denyer, affecting a
+youthful candour and trustfulness which at his age, and with his
+experience, he could hardly be supposed to possess.
+
+'I know it,' replied the doctor. 'I watched her while she was talking of
+Maulevrier, and I saw just one bead of perspiration break out on her
+upper lip--an unmistakable sign of the mental struggle.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+ULYSSES.
+
+
+October was ending drearily with north-east winds, dust, drifting dead
+leaves, and a steel-grey sky; and the Dolphin Hotel at Southampton was
+glorified by the presence of Lady Maulevrier and suite. Her ladyship's
+suite was on this occasion limited to three servants--her French maid, a
+footman, and a kind of factotum, a man of no distinct and arbitrary
+signification in her ladyship's household, neither butler nor steward,
+but that privileged being, an old and trusted servant, and a person who
+was supposed to enjoy more of Lady Maulevrier's confidence than any
+other member of her establishment.
+
+This James Steadman had been valet to her ladyship's father, Lord
+Peverill, during the declining years of that nobleman. The narrow limits
+of a sick room had brought the master and servant into a closer
+companionship than is common to that relation. Lady Diana Angersthorpe
+was a devoted daughter, and in her attendance upon the Earl during the
+last three years of his life--a life which closed more than a year
+before her own marriage--she saw a great deal of James Steadman, and
+learned to trust him as servants are not often trusted. He was not more
+than twenty years of age at the beginning of his service, but he was a
+man of extraordinary gravity, much in advance of his years; a man of
+shrewd common-sense and clear, sharp intellect. Not a reading man, or a
+man in any way superior to his station and belongings, but a man who
+could think quickly, and understand quickly, and who always seemed to
+think rightly. Prompt in action, yet steady as a rock, and to all
+appearance recognising no earthly interest, no human tie, beyond or
+above the interests of his master. As a nurse Steadman showed himself
+invaluable. Lord Peverill left him a hundred pounds in acknowledgment of
+his services, which was something for Lord Peverill, who had very little
+ready cash wherewith to endow his only daughter. After his death the
+title and the estates went to a distant cousin; Lady Diana Angersthorpe
+was taken in hand by her aunt, the Dowager Marchioness of Carrisbrook;
+and James Steadman would have had to find employment among strangers, if
+Lady Diana had not pleaded so urgently with her aunt as to secure him a
+somewhat insignificant post in her ladyship's establishment.
+
+'If ever I have a house of my own, you shall have a better place in it,
+Steadman,' said Lady Diana.
+
+She kept her word, and on her marriage with Lord Maulevrier, which
+happened about eighteen months afterwards, Steadman passed into that
+nobleman's service. He was a member of her ladyship's bodyguard, and his
+employment seemed to consist chiefly in poking fires, cutting the leaves
+of books and newspapers, superintending the footman's attendance upon
+her ladyship's household pets, and conveying her sentiments to the other
+servants. He was in a manner Lady Maulevrier's mouthpiece, and although
+treated with a respect that verged upon awe, he was not a favourite with
+the household.
+
+And now the house in Mayfair was given over to the charge of caretakers.
+All the other servants had been despatched by coach to her ladyship's
+favourite retreat in Westmoreland, within a few miles of the Laureate's
+home at Rydal Mount, and James Steadman was charged with the whole
+responsibility of her ladyship's travelling arrangements.
+
+Penelope had come to Southampton to wait for Ulysses, whose ship had
+been due for more than a week, and whose white sails might be expected
+above the horizon at any moment. James Steadman spent a good deal of his
+time waiting about at the docks for the earliest news of Greene's ship,
+the _Hypermnestra_; while Lady Maulevrier waited patiently in her
+sitting-room at the Dolphin, whose three long French windows commanded a
+full view of the High Street, with all those various distractions
+afforded by the chief thoroughfare of a provincial town. Her ladyship
+was provided with a large box of books, from Ebers' in Bond Street, a
+basket of fancy work, and her favourite Blenheim spaniel, Lalla Rookh;
+but even these sources of amusement did not prevent the involuntary
+expression of weariness in occasional yawns, and frequent pacings up and
+down the room, where the formal hotel furniture had a comfortless and
+chilly look.
+
+Fellside, her ladyship's place in Westmoreland, was the pleasure house
+which, among all her possessions, she most valued; but it had hitherto
+been reserved for summer occupation, or for perhaps two or three weeks
+at Easter, when the spring was exceptionally fine. The sudden
+determination to spend the coming winter in the house near Grasmere was
+considered a curious freak of Lady Maulevrier's, and she was constrained
+to explain her motives to her friends.
+
+'His lordship is out of health,' she said, 'and wants perfect rest and
+retirement. Now, Fellside is the only place we have in which he is
+likely to get perfect rest. Anywhere else we should have to entertain.
+Fellside is out of the world. There is no one to be entertained.'
+
+'Except your neighbour, Wordsworth. I suppose you see him sometimes?'
+
+'Dear simple-minded old soul, he gives nobody any trouble,' said her
+ladyship.
+
+'But is not Westmoreland very cold in winter?' asked her friend.
+
+Lady Maulevrier smiled benignly, as at an inoffensive ignorance.
+
+'So sheltered,' she murmured. 'We are at the base of the Fell. Loughrigg
+rises up like a cyclopean wall between us and the wind.'
+
+'But when the wind is in the other direction?'
+
+'We have Nabb Scar. You do not know how we are girdled and defended by
+hills.'
+
+'Very pleasant,' agreed the friend; 'but for my own part I would rather
+winter in the south.'
+
+Those terrible rumours which had first come upon the world of London
+last June, had been growing darker and more defined ever since, but
+still Lady Maulevrier made believe to ignore them; and she acted her
+part of unconsciousness with such consummate skill that nobody in her
+circle could be sure where the acting began and where the ignorance left
+off. The astute Lord Denyer declared that she was a wonderful woman, and
+knew more about the real state of the case than anybody else.
+
+Meanwhile it was said by those who were supposed to be well-informed
+that a mass of evidence was accumulating against Lord Maulevrier. The
+India House, it was rumoured, was busy with the secret investigation of
+his case, prior to that public inquiry which was to come on during the
+next session. His private fortune would be made answerable for his
+misdemeanours--his life, said the alarmists, might pay the penalty of
+his treason. On all sides it was agreed that the case against Lord
+Maulevrier was black as Erebus; and still Lady Maulevrier looked society
+in the face with an unshaken courage, and was ready with smiles and
+gracious words for all comers.
+
+But now came a harder trial, which was to receive the man who had
+disgraced her, lowered her pride to the dust, degraded the name she
+bore. She had married him, not loving him--nay, plucking another love
+out of her heart in order that she might give herself to him. She had
+married him for position and fortune; and now by his follies, by his
+extravagance, and by that greed of gold which is inevitable in the
+spendthrift and profligate, he had gone near to cheat her out of both
+name and fortune. Yet she so commanded herself as to receive him with a
+friendly air when he arrived at the Dolphin, on a dull grey autumn
+afternoon, after she had waited for him nearly a fortnight.
+
+James Steadman ushered in his lordship, a frail attenuated looking
+figure, of middle height, wrapped in a furred cloak, yet shivering, a
+pale sickly face, light auburn whiskers, light blue eyes, full and
+large, but with no intellectual power in them. Lady Maulevrier was
+sitting by the fire, in a melancholy attitude, with the Blenheim spaniel
+on her lap. Her son was at Hastings with his nurses. She had nothing
+nearer and dearer than the spaniel.
+
+She rose and went over to her husband, and let him kiss her. It would
+have been too much to say that she kissed him; but she submitted her
+lips unresistingly to his, and then they sat down on opposite sides of
+the hearth.
+
+'A wretched afternoon,' said his lordship, shivering, and drawing his
+chair closer to the fire. Steadman had taken away his fur-lined cloak.
+'I had really underrated the disagreeableness of the English climate. It
+is abominable!'
+
+'To-day is not a fair sample,' answered her ladyship, trying to be
+cheerful; 'we have had some pleasant autumn days.'
+
+'I detest autumn!' exclaimed Lord Maulevrier, 'a season of dead leaves,
+damp, and dreariness. I should like to get away to Montpellier or Nice
+as soon as we can.'
+
+Her ladyship gave him a scathing look, half-scornful, half-incredulous.
+
+'You surely would not dream of leaving the country,' she said, 'under
+present circumstances. So long as you are here to answer all charges no
+one will interfere with your liberty; but if you were to cross the
+Channel--'
+
+'My slanderers might insinuate that I was running away,' interrupted
+Maulevrier, 'although the very fact of my return ought to prove to every
+one that I am able to meet and face this cabal.'
+
+'Is it a cabal?' asked her ladyship, looking at him with a gaze that
+searched his soul. 'Can you meet their charges? Can you live down this
+hideous accusation, and hold up your head as a man of honour?'
+
+The sensualist's blue eyes nervously shunned that look of earnest
+interrogation. His lips answered the wife's spoken question with a lie,
+a lie made manifest by the expression of his countenance.
+
+'I am not afraid,' he said.
+
+His wife answered not a word. She was assured that the charges were
+true, and that the battered rake who shivered over the fire had neither
+courage nor ability to face his accusers. She saw the whole fabric of
+her life in ruins, her son the penniless successor to a tarnished name.
+There was silence for some minutes. Lady Maulevrier sat with lowered
+eyelids looking at the fire, deep in painful thought. Two perpendicular
+wrinkles upon her broad white forehead--so calm, so unclouded in
+society--told of gnawing cares. Then she stole a look at her husband,
+as he reclined in his arm-chair, his head lying back against the
+cushions in listless repose, his eyes looking vacantly at the window,
+whence he could see only the rain-blurred fronts of opposite houses,
+blank, dull windows, grey slated roofs, against a leaden sky.
+
+He had been a handsome man, and he was handsome still, albeit premature
+decay, the result of an evil life, was distinctly marked in his faded
+face. The dull, yellow tint of the complexion, the tarnished dimness of
+the large blue eyes, the discontented droop of the lips, the languor of
+the attitude, the pallid transparency of the wasted hands, all told of a
+life worn threadbare, energies exhausted, chances thrown away, a mind
+abandoned to despair.
+
+'You look very ill,' said his wife, after that long blank interval,
+which marked so unnatural an apathy between husband and wife meeting
+after so long a severance.
+
+'I am very ill. I have been worried to death--surrounded by rogues and
+liars--the victim of a most infernal conspiracy.' He spoke hurriedly,
+growing whiter and more tremulous as he went on.
+
+'Don't talk about it. You agitate yourself to no purpose,' said Lady
+Maulevrier, with a tranquillity which seemed heartless yet which might
+be the result of suppressed feeling. 'If you are to face this scandal
+firmly and boldly next January, you must try to recover physical
+strength in the meanwhile. Mental energy may come with better health.'
+
+'I shall never be any better,' said Lord Maulevrier, testily; 'that
+infernal climate has shattered my constitution.'
+
+'Two or three months of perfect rest and good nursing will make a new
+man of you. I have arranged that we shall go straight from here to
+Fellside. No one can plague you there with that disguised impertinence
+called sympathy. You can give all your thoughts to the ordeal before
+you, and be ready to meet your accusers. Fortunately, you have no Burke
+against you.'
+
+'Fellside? You think of going to Fellside?'
+
+'Yes. You know how fond I am of that place. I little thought when you
+settled it upon me--a cottage in Westmoreland with fifty acres of garden
+and meadow--so utterly insignificant--that I should ever like it better
+than any of your places.'
+
+'A charming retreat in summer; but we have never wintered there? What
+put it into your head to go there at such a season as this? Why, I
+daresay the snow is on the tops of the hills already.'
+
+'It is the only place I know where you will not be watched and talked
+about,' replied Lady Maulevrier. 'You will be out of the eye of the
+world. I should think that consideration would weigh more with you than
+two or three degrees of the thermometer.'
+
+'I detest cold,' said the Earl, 'and in my weak health----'
+
+'We will take care of you,' answered her ladyship; and in the discussion
+which followed she bore herself so firmly that her husband was fain to
+give way.
+
+How could a disgraced and ruined man, broken in health and spirits,
+contest the mere details of life with a high-spirited woman ten years
+his junior?
+
+The Earl wanted to go to London, and remain there at least a week, but
+this her ladyship strenuously opposed. He must see his lawyer, he urged;
+there were steps to be taken which could be taken only under legal
+advice--counsel to be retained. If this lying invention of Satan were
+really destined to take the form of a public trial, he must be prepared
+to fight his foes on their own ground.
+
+'You can make all your preparations at Fellside,' answered his wife,
+resolutely. 'I have seen Messrs. Rigby and Rider, and your own
+particular ally, Rigby, will go to you at Fellside whenever you want
+him.'
+
+'That is not like my being on the spot,' said his lordship, nervously,
+evidently much disconcerted by her ladyship's firmness, but too feeble
+in mind and body for a prolonged contest.
+
+'I ought to be on the spot. I am not without influence; I have friends,
+men in power.'
+
+'Surely you are not going to appeal to friendship in order to vindicate
+your honour. These charges are true or false. If they are false your own
+manhood, your own rectitude, can face them and trample upon them,
+unaided by back-stairs influence. If they are true, no one can help
+you.'
+
+'I think you, at least, ought to know that they are as false as hell,'
+retorted the Earl, with an attempt to maintain his dignity.
+
+'I have acted as if I so believed,' replied his wife. 'I have lived as
+if there were no such slanders in the air. I have steadily ignored every
+report, every insinuation--have held my head as high as if I knew you
+were immaculate.'
+
+'I expected as much from you,' answered the Earl, coolly. 'If I had not
+known you were a woman of sense I should not have married you.'
+
+This was his utmost expression of gratitude. His next remarks had
+reference solely to his own comfort. Where were his rooms? at what hour
+were they to dine? And hereupon he rang for his valet, a German Swiss,
+and a servant out of a thousand.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+ON THE WRONG ROAD.
+
+
+Lord and Lady Maulevrier left Southampton next morning, posting. They
+took two servants in the rumble, Steadman and the footman. Steadman was
+to valet his lordship, the footman to be useful in all emergencies of
+the journey. The maid and the valet were to travel by heavy coach, with
+the luggage--her ladyship dispensing with all personal attendance during
+the journey.
+
+The first day took them to Rugby, whither they travelled across country
+by Wallingford and Oxford. The second day took them to Lichfield. Lord
+Maulevrier was out of health and feeble, and grumbled a good deal about
+the fatigue of the journey, the badness of the weather, which was dull
+and cold, east winds all day, and a light frost morning and night. As
+they progressed northward the sky looked grayer, the air became more
+biting. His lordship insisted upon the stages being shortened. He lay in
+bed at his hotel till noon, and was seldom ready to start till two
+o'clock. He could see no reason for haste; the winter would be long
+enough in all conscience at Fellside. He complained of mysterious aches
+and pains, described himself in the presence of hotel-keepers and
+headwaiters as a mass of maladies. He was nervous, irritable, intensely
+disagreeable. Lady Maulevrier bore his humours with unwavering patience,
+and won golden opinions from all sorts of people by her devotion to a
+husband whose blighted name was the common talk of England. Everybody,
+even in distant provincial towns, had heard of the scandal against the
+Governor of Madras; and everybody looked at the sallow, faded
+Anglo-Indian with morbid curiosity. His lordship, sensitive on all
+points touching his own ease and comfort, was keenly conscious of this
+unflattering inquisitiveness.
+
+The journey, protracted by Lord Maulevrier's languor and ill-health,
+dragged its slow length along for nearly a fortnight; until it seemed to
+Lady Maulevrier as if they had been travelling upon those dismal, flat,
+unpicturesque roads for months. Each day was so horribly like yesterday.
+The same hedgerows and flat fields, and passing glimpse of river or
+canal. The same absence of all beauty in the landscape--the same formal
+hotel rooms, and smirking landladies--and so on till they came to
+Lancaster, after which the country became more interesting--hills arose
+in the background. Even the smoky manufacturing towns through which
+they passed without stopping, were less abominable than the level
+monotony of the Midland counties.
+
+But now as they drew nearer the hills the weather grew colder, snow was
+spoken of, and when they got into Westmoreland the mountain-peaks
+gleamed whitely against a lead-coloured sky.
+
+'You ought not to have brought me here in such weather,' complained the
+Earl, shivering in his sables, as he sat in his corner of the travelling
+chariot, looking discontentedly at the gloomy landscape. 'What is to
+become of us if we are caught in a snowstorm?'
+
+'We shall have no snow worth talking about before we are safely housed
+at Fellside, and then we can defy the elements,' said Lady Maulevrier,
+coolly.
+
+They slept that night at Oxenholme, and started next morning, under a
+clean, bright sky, intending to take luncheon at Windermere, and to be
+at home by nightfall.
+
+But by the time they got to Windermere the sky had changed to a dark
+grey, and the people at the hotel prophesied a heavy fall before night,
+and urged the Earl and Countess to go no further that day. The latter
+part of the road to Fellside was rough and hilly. If there should be a
+snowstorm the horses would never be able to drag the carriage up the
+steepest bit of the way. Here, however, Lord Maulevrier's obstinacy came
+into play. He would not endure another night at an hotel so near his own
+house. He was sick to death of travelling, and wanted to be at rest
+among comfortable surroundings.
+
+'It was murder to bring me here,' he said to his wife. 'If I had gone to
+Hastings I should have been a new man by this time. As it is I am a
+great deal worse than when I landed.'
+
+Everyone at the hotel noticed his lordship's white and haggard looks. He
+had been known there as a young man in the bloom of health and strength,
+and his decay was particularly obvious to these people.
+
+'I saw death in his face,' the landlord said, afterwards.
+
+Every one, even her ladyship's firmness and good sense, gave way before
+the invalid's impatience. At three in the afternoon they left the hotel,
+with four horses, to make the remaining nineteen miles of the way in one
+stage. They had not been on the road half an hour before the snow began
+to fall thickly, whitening everything around them, except the lake,
+which showed a dark leaden surface at the bottom of the slope along the
+edge of which they were travelling. Too sullen for speech, Lord
+Maulevrier sat back in his corner, with his sable cloak drawn up to his
+chin, his travelling cap covering head and ears, his eyes contemplating
+the whitening world with a weary anger. His wife watched the landscape
+as long as she could, but the snow soon began to darken all the air,
+and she could see nothing save that blank blinding fall.
+
+Half-way to Fellside there was a point where two roads met, one leading
+towards Grasmere, the other towards the village of Great Langdale, a
+cluster of humble habitations in the heart of the hills. When the horses
+had struggled as far as this point, the snow was six inches deep on the
+road, and made a thick curtain around them as it fell. By this time the
+Earl had dozed off to sleep.
+
+He woke an hour after, let down the window, which let in a snow-laden
+gust, and tried to pierce the gloom without.
+
+'As black as Erebus!' he exclaimed, 'but we ought to be close at home by
+this time. Yes, thank God, there are the lights.'
+
+The carriage drew up a minute afterwards, and Steadman came to the door.
+
+'Very sorry, my lord. The horses must have taken a wrong turn after we
+crossed the bridge. And now the men say they can't go back to Fellside
+unless we can get fresh horses; and I'm afraid there's no chance of that
+here.'
+
+'Here!' exclaimed the Earl, 'what do you mean by here? Where the devil
+are we?'
+
+'Great Langdale, my lord.'
+
+A door opened and let out a flood of light--the red light of a wood
+fire, the pale flame of a candle--upon the snowy darkness, revealing the
+panelled hall of a neat little rustic inn: an eight-day clock ticking in
+the corner, a black and white sheep-dog coming out at his master's heels
+to investigate the travellers. To the right of the door showed the light
+of a window, sheltered by a red curtain, behind which the chiefs of the
+village were enjoying their evening.
+
+'Have you any post-horses?' asked the Earl, discontentedly, as the
+landlord stood on the threshold, shading the candle with his hand. 'No,
+sir. We don't keep post-horses.'
+
+'Of course not. I knew as much before I asked,' said the Earl.
+
+'We are fixed in this dismal hole for the night, I suppose. How far are
+we from Fellside?'
+
+'Seven miles,' answered the landlord. 'I beg your pardon, my lord; I
+didn't know it was your lordship,' he added, hurriedly. 'We're in sore
+trouble, and it makes a man daft-like; but if there's anything we can
+do----'
+
+'Is there no hope of getting on, Steadman?' asked the Earl, cutting
+short these civilities.
+
+'Not with these horses, my lord.'
+
+'And you hear we can't get any others. Is there any farmer about here
+who could lend us a pair of carriage horses?'
+
+The landlord knew of no such person.
+
+'Then we must stop here till to-morrow morning. What infernal fools
+those post-boys must be,' protested Lord Maulevrier.
+
+James Steadman apologised for the postilions, explaining that when they
+came to the critical point of their journey, where the road branched off
+to the Langdales, the snow was falling so thickly, the whole country was
+so hidden in all-pervading whiteness, that even he, who knew the way so
+well, could give no help to the drivers. He could only trust to the
+instinct of local postilions and local horses; and instinct had proved
+wrong.
+
+The travellers alighted, and were ushered into a not
+uncomfortable-looking parlour; very low as to the ceiling, very
+old-fashioned as to the furniture, but spotlessly clean, and enlivened
+by a good fire, to which his lordship drew near, shivering and muttering
+discontentedly to himself.
+
+'We might be worse off,' said her ladyship, looking round the bright
+little room, which pleased her better than many a state apartment in the
+large hotels at which they had stopped.
+
+'Hardly, unless we were out on the moor,' grumbled her husband. 'I am
+sick to death of this ill-advised, unreasonable journey. I am at a loss
+to imagine your motive in bringing me here. You must have had a motive.'
+
+'I had,' answered Lady Maulevrier, with a freezing look. 'I wanted to
+get you out of the way. I told you that plainly enough at Southampton.'
+
+'I don't see why I should be hurried away and hidden,' said Lord
+Maulevrier. 'I must face my accusers, sooner or later.'
+
+'Of course. The day of reckoning must come. But in the meantime have you
+no delicacy? Do you want to be pointed at everywhere?'
+
+'All I know is that I am very ill,' answered her husband, 'and that this
+wretched journey has made me twenty years older.'
+
+'We shall be safe at home before noon to-morrow, and you can have Horton
+to set you right again. You know you always believed in his skill.'
+
+'Horton is a clever fellow enough, as country doctors go; but at
+Hastings I could have had the best physicians in London to see me,'
+grumbled his lordship.
+
+The rustic maid-servant came in to lay the table, assisted by her
+ladyship's footman, who looked a good deal too tall for the room.
+
+'I shan't dine,' said the Earl. 'I am a great deal too ill and cold.
+Light a fire in my room, girl, and send Steadman to me'--this to the
+footman, who hastened to obey. 'You can send me up a basin of soup
+presently. I shall go to bed at once.'
+
+He left the room without another word to his wife, who sat by the hearth
+staring thoughtfully at the cheery wood fire. Presently she looked up,
+and saw that the man and maid were going on with their preparations for
+dinner.
+
+'I do not care about dining alone,' said her ladyship. 'We lunched at
+Windermere, and I have no appetite. You can clear away those things, and
+bring me some tea.'
+
+When the table furniture had been cleared, and a neat little tea-tray
+set upon the white cloth, Lady Maulevrier drew her chair to the table,
+and took out her pocket-book, from which she produced a letter. This she
+read more than once, meditating profoundly upon its contents.
+
+'I am very sorry he has come home,' wrote her correspondent, 'and yet if
+he had stayed in India there must have been an investigation on the
+spot. A public inquiry is inevitable, and the knowledge of his arrival
+in the country will precipitate matters. From all I hear I much fear
+that there is no chance of the result being favourable to him. You have
+asked me to write the unvarnished truth, to be brutal even, remember.
+His delinquencies are painfully notorious, and I apprehend that the last
+sixpence he owns will be answerable. His landed estate I am told can
+also be confiscated, in the event of an impeachment at the bar of the
+House of Lords, as in the Warren Hastings case. But as yet nobody seems
+clear as to the form which the investigation will take. In reply to your
+inquiry as to what would have happened if his lordship had died on the
+passage home, I believe I am justified in saying the scandal would have
+been allowed to die with him. He has contrived to provoke powerful
+animosities both in the Cabinet and at the India House, and there is, I
+fear, an intention to pursue the inquiry to the bitter end.'
+
+Assurances of the writer's sympathy followed these harsh truths. But to
+this polite commonplace her ladyship paid no attention. Her mind was
+intent on hard facts, the dismal probabilities of the near future.
+
+'If he had died upon the passage home!' she repeated. 'Would to God that
+he had so died, and that my son's name and fortune could be saved.'
+
+The innocent child who had never given her an hour's care; the one
+creature she loved with all the strength of her proud nature--his future
+was to be blighted by his father's misdoings--overshadowed by shame and
+dishonour in the very dawn of life. It was a wicked wish--an unnatural
+wish to find room in a woman's breast; but the wish was there. Would to
+God he had died before the ship touched an English port.
+
+But he was living, and would have to face his accusers--and she, his
+wife, must give him all the help she could.
+
+She sat long by the waning fire. She took nothing but a cup of tea,
+although the landlady had sent in substantial accompaniments to the
+tea-tray in the shape of broiled ham, new-laid eggs, and hot cakes,
+arguing that a traveller on such a night must be hungry, albeit
+disinclined for a ceremonious dinner. She had been sitting for nearly
+an hour in almost the same attitude, when there came a knock at the
+door, and, on being bidden to enter, the landlady came in, with some
+logs in her apron, under pretence of replenishing the fire.
+
+'I was afraid your fire must be getting low, and that you'd be amost
+starved, my lady,' she said, as she put on the logs, and swept up the
+ashes on the hearth. 'Such a dreadful night. So early in the year, too.
+I'm thinking we shall have a gay hard winter.'
+
+'That does not always follow,' said Lady Maulevrier. 'Has Steadman come
+downstairs?'
+
+'Yes, my lady. He told me to tell your ladyship that his lordship is
+pretty comfortable, and hopes to pass a good night.'
+
+'I am glad to hear it. You can give me another room, I suppose. It would
+be better for his lordship not to be disturbed, as he is very much out
+of health.'
+
+'There is another room, my lady, but it's very small.'
+
+'I don't mind how small, if it is clean and airy.'
+
+'Yes, my lady. I am thankful to say you won't find dirt or stuffiness
+anywhere in this house. His lordship do look mortal badly,' added the
+landlady, shaking her head dolefully; 'and I remember him such a fine
+young gentleman, when he used to come down the Rothay with the otter
+hounds, running along the bank--joomping in and out of the beck--up to
+his knees in the water--and now to see him, so white and mashiated, and
+broken-down like, in the very prime of life, all along of living out in
+a hot country, among blackamoors, which is used to it--poor, ignorant
+creatures--and never knew no better. It must be a hard trial for you, my
+lady.'
+
+'It is a hard trial.'
+
+'Ah! we all have our trials, rich and poor,' sighed the woman, who
+desired nothing better than to be allowed to unbosom her woes to the
+grand looking lady in the fur-bordered cloth pelisse, with beautiful
+dark hair piled up in clustering masses above a broad white forehead,
+and slender white hands on which diamonds flashed and glittered in the
+firelight, an unaccustomed figure by that rustic hearth.
+
+'We all have our trials--high and low.'
+
+'That reminds me,' said Lady Maulevrier, looking up at her, 'your
+husband said you were in trouble. What did that mean?'
+
+'Sickness in the house, my lady. A brother of mine that went to America
+to make his fortune, and seemed to be doing so well for the first five
+or six years, and wrote home such beautiful letters, and then left off
+writing all at once, and we made sure as he was dead, and never got a
+word from him for ten years, and just three weeks ago he drops in upon
+us as we was sitting over our tea between the lights, looking as white
+as a ghost. I gave a shriek when I saw him, for I was regular scared
+out of my senses. "Robert's ghost!" I cried; but it was Robert himself,
+come home to us to die. And he's lying upstairs now, with so little life
+in him that I expect every breath to be his last.'
+
+'What is his complaint?'
+
+'Apathy, my lady. Dear, dear, that's not it. I never do remember the
+doctor's foreign names.'
+
+'Atrophy,' perhaps.
+
+'Yes, my lady, that was it. Happen such crack-jaw words come easy to a
+scholar like your ladyship.'
+
+'Does the doctor give no hope?'
+
+'Well, no, my lady. He don't go so far as to say there's no hope, though
+Robert has been badly so long. It all depends, he says, upon the
+rallying power of the constitution. The lungs are not gone, and the
+heart is not diseased. If there's rallying power, Robert will come
+round, and if there isn't he'll sink. But the doctor says nature will
+have to make an effort. But I have my own idea about the case,' added
+the landlady, with a sigh.
+
+'What is your idea?'
+
+'That our Robert was marked for death when he came into this house, and
+that he meant what he said when he spoke of coming home to die. Things
+had gone against him for the last ten years in America. He married and
+took his wife out to a farm in the Bush, and thought to make a good
+thing out of farming with the bit of brass he'd saved at heeam. But
+America isn't Gert Langdale, you see, my lady, and his knowledge stood
+him in no stead in the Bush; and first he lost his money, and he fashed
+himself terrible about that, and then he lost a child or two, and then
+he lost his wife, and he came back to us a broken-hearted man, with no
+wish to live. The doctor may call it atrophy, but I will call it what
+the Scripture calls it, a broken and a wounded spirit.'
+
+'Who is your doctor?'
+
+'Mr. Evans, of Ambleside.'
+
+'That little half-blind old man!' exclaimed her ladyship. 'Surely you
+have no confidence in him?'
+
+'Not much, my lady. But I don't believe all the doctors in London could
+do anything for Robert. Good nursing will bring him round if anything
+can; and he gets that, I can assure your ladyship. He's my only brother,
+the only kith and kin that's left to me, and he and I were gay fond of
+each other when he was young. You may be sure I don't spare any trouble,
+and my good man thinks the best of his larder or his celler hardly good
+enough for Robert.'
+
+'I am sure you are kind good people,' replied her ladyship gently; 'but
+I should have thought Mr. Horton, of Grasmere, could have done more than
+old Evans. However, you know best. I hope his lordship is not going to
+add to your cares by being laid up here, but he looked very ill this
+evening.'
+
+'He did, my lady, mortal bad.'
+
+'However, we must hope for the best. Steadman is a splendid servant in
+illness. He nursed my father for years. Will you tell him to come to me,
+if you please? I want to hear what he thinks of his lordship, and to
+discuss the chances of our getting home early to-morrow.'
+
+The landlady retired, and summoned Mr. Steadman, who was enjoying his
+modest glass of grog in front of the kitchen fire. He had taught himself
+to dispense with the consolations of tobacco, lest he should at any time
+make himself obnoxious to her ladyship.
+
+Steadman was closeted with Lady Maulevrier for the next half-hour,
+during which his lordship's condition was gravely discussed. When he
+left the sitting-room he told the landlord to be sure and feed the
+post-horses well, and make them comfortable for the night, so that they
+might be ready for the drive to Fellside early next morning.
+
+'Do you think his lordship will be well enough to travel?' asked the
+landlord.
+
+'He has made up his mind to get home--ill or well,' answered Steadman.
+'He has wasted about a week by his dawdling ways on the road; and now
+he's in a fever to get to Fellside.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE LAST STAGE.
+
+
+The post-horses--which had been well fed, but accommodated somewhat
+poorly in stable and barn--were quite ready to go on next morning; but
+Lord Maulevrier was not able to leave his room, where her ladyship
+remained in close attendance upon him. The hills and valleys were white
+with snow, but there was none falling, and Mr. Evans, the elderly
+surgeon from Ambleside, rode over to Great Langdale on his elderly cob
+to look at Robert Haswell, and was called in to see Lord Maulevrier. Her
+ladyship had spoken lightly of his skill on the previous evening, but
+any doctor is better than none, so this feeble little personage was
+allowed to feel his lordship's pulse, and look at his lordship's tongue.
+
+His opinion, never too decidedly given, was a little more hazy than
+usual on this occasion, perhaps because of a certain awfulness, to
+unaccustomed eyes, in Lady Maulevrier's proud bearing. He said that his
+lordship was low, very low, and that the pulse was more irregular than
+he liked, but he committed himself no further than this, and went away,
+promising to send such pills and potions as were appropriate to the
+patient's condition.
+
+A boy rode the same pony over to Langdale later in the afternoon with
+the promised medicines.
+
+Throughout the short winter day, which seemed terribly long in the
+stillness and solitude of Great Langdale, Lady Maulevrier kept watch in
+the sick-room, Steadman going in and out in constant attendance upon his
+master--save for one half-hour only, which her ladyship passed in the
+parlour below, in conversation with the landlady, a very serious
+conversation, as indicated by Mrs. Smithson's grave and somewhat
+troubled looks when she left her ladyship; but a good deal of her
+trouble may have been caused by her anxiety about her brother, who was
+pronounced by the doctor to be 'much the same.'
+
+At eleven o'clock that night a mounted messenger was sent off to
+Ambleside in hot haste to fetch Mr. Evans, who came to the inn to find
+Lady Maulevrier kneeling beside her husband's bed, while Steadman stood
+with a troubled countenance at a respectful distance.
+
+The room was dimly lighted by a pair of candles burning on a table near
+the window, and at some distance from the old four-post bedstead,
+shaded by dark moreen curtains. The surgeon looked round the room, and
+then fumbled in his pockets for his spectacles, without the aid of which
+the outside world presented itself to him under a blurred and uncertain
+aspect.
+
+He put on his spectacles, and moved towards the bed; but the first
+glance in that direction showed him what had happened. The outline of
+the rigid figure under the coverlet looked like a sculptured effigy upon
+a tomb. A sheet was drawn over the face of death.
+
+'You are too late to be of any use, Mr. Evans,' murmured Steadman,
+laying his hand upon the doctor's sleeve and drawing him away towards
+the door.
+
+They went softly on to the landing, off which opened the door of that
+other sick-room where the landlady's brother was lying.
+
+'When did this happen?'
+
+'A quarter of an hour after the messenger rode off to fetch you,'
+answered Steadman. 'His lordship lay all the afternoon in a heavy sleep,
+and we thought he was going on well; but after dark there was a
+difficulty in his breathing which alarmed her ladyship, and she insisted
+upon you being sent for. The messenger had hardly been gone a quarter of
+an hour when his lordship woke suddenly, muttered to himself in a
+curious way, gave just one long drawn sigh, and--and all was over. It
+was a terrible shock for her ladyship.'
+
+'Indeed it must have been,' murmured the village doctor. 'It is a great
+surprise to me. I knew Lord Maulevrier was low, very low, the pulse
+feeble and intermittent; but I had no fear of anything of this kind. It
+is very sudden.'
+
+'Yes, it is awfully sudden,' said Steadman, and then he murmured in the
+doctor's ear, 'You will give the necessary certificate, I hope, with as
+little trouble to her ladyship as possible. This is a dreadful blow, and
+she----'
+
+'She shall not be troubled. The body will be removed to-morrow, I
+suppose.'
+
+'Yes. He must be buried from his own house. I sent a second messenger to
+Ambleside for the undertaker. He will be here very soon, no doubt, and
+if the shell is ready by noon to-morrow, the body can be removed then. I
+have arranged to get her ladyship away to-night.'
+
+'So late? After midnight?'
+
+'Why not? She cannot stay in this small house--so near the dead. There
+is a moon, and there is no snow falling, and we are within seven miles
+of Fellside.'
+
+The doctor had nothing further to say against the arrangement, although
+such a drive seemed to him a somewhat wild and reckless proceeding. Mr.
+Steadman's grave, self-possessed manner answered all doubts. Mr. Evans
+filled in the certificate for the undertaker, drank a glass of hot
+brandy and water, and remounted his nag, in nowise relishing his
+midnight ride, but consoling himself with the reflection that he would
+be handsomely paid for his trouble.
+
+An hour later Lady Maulevrier's travelling carriage stood ready in the
+stable yard, in the deep shadow of wall and gables. It was at Steadman's
+order that the carriage waited for her ladyship at an obscure side door,
+rather than in front of the inn. An east wind was blowing keenly along
+the mountain road, and the careful Steadman was anxious his mistress
+should not be exposed to that chilly blast.
+
+There was some delay, and the four horses jingled their bits
+impatiently, and then the door of the inn opened, a feeble light gleamed
+in the narrow passage within, Steadman stood ready to assist her
+ladyship, there was a bustle, a confusion of dark figures on the
+threshold, a huddled mass of cloaks and fur wraps was lifted into the
+carriage, the door was clapped to, the horses went clattering out of the
+yard, turned sharply into the snowy road, and started at a swinging pace
+towards the dark sullen bulk of Loughrigg Fell.
+
+The moon was shining upon Elterwater in the valley yonder--the mountain
+ridges, the deep gorges below those sullen heights, looked back where
+the shadow of night enfolded them, but all along the snow-white road the
+silver light shone full and clear, and the mountain way looked like a
+path through fairyland.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+FORTY YEARS AFTER.
+
+
+'What a horrid day!' said Lady Mary, throwing down her book with a yawn,
+and looking out of the deep bay window into a world of mountain and lake
+which was clouded over by a dense veil of rain and dull grey mist; such
+rain as one sees only in a lake district, a curtain of gloom which shuts
+off sky and distance, and narrows the world to one solitary dwelling,
+suspended amidst cloud and water, like another ark in a new deluge.
+
+Rain--such rain as makes out-of-door exercise impossible--was always an
+affliction to Lady Mary Haselden. Her delight was in open air and
+sunshine--fishing in the lake and rivers--sitting in some sheltered
+hollow of the hills more fitting for an eagle's nest than for the
+occupation of a young lady, trying to paint those ever-varying,
+unpaintable mountain peaks, which change their hues with every change of
+the sky--swimming, riding, roving far and wide over hill and
+heather--pleasures all more or less masculine in their nature, and which
+were a subject of regret with Lady Maulevrier.
+
+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. Grandmother
+and Lesbia adored each other. Lesbia was the one person for whom Lady
+Maulevrier's stateliness was subjugated by perfect love. To all the rest
+of the world the Countess was marble, but to Lesbia she was wax. Lesbia
+could mould her as she pleased; but happily Lesbia was not the kind of
+young person to take advantage of this privilege; she was thoroughly
+ductile or docile, and had no desire, at present, which ran counter to
+her grandmother.
+
+Lesbia was a beauty. In her nineteenth year she was a curious
+reproduction in face and figure, expression and carriage, of that Lady
+Diana Angersthorpe who five and forty years ago fluttered the dove-cots
+of St. James's and Mayfair by her brilliant beauty and her keen
+intelligence. There in the panelled drawing-room at Fellside hung
+Harlow's portrait of Lady Diana in her zenith, in a short-waisted, white
+satin frock, with large puffed gauze sleeves, through which the perfect
+arm showed dimly. Standing under that picture Lady Lesbia looked as if
+she had stepped out of the canvas. She was to be painted by Millais next
+year. Lady Maulevrier said, when she had been introduced, and society
+was beginning to talk about her: for Lady Maulevrier made up her mind
+five or six years ago that Lesbia should be the reigning beauty of her
+season. To this end she had educated and trained her, furnishing her
+with all those graces best calculated to please and astonish society.
+She was too clever a woman not to discover Lesbia's shallowness and lack
+of all great gifts, save that one peerless dower of perfect beauty. She
+knew exactly what Lesbia could be trained to do; and to this end Lesbia
+had been educated; and to this end Lady Maulevrier brought down to
+Fellside the most accomplished of Hanoverian governesses, who had
+learned French in Paris, and had toiled in the educational mill with
+profit to herself and her pupils for a quarter of a century. To this
+lady the Countess entrusted the education of her granddaughters' minds,
+while for their physical training she provided another teacher in the
+person of a clever little Parisian dancing mistress, who had set up at
+the West-End of London as a teacher of dancing and calisthenics, and had
+utterly failed to find pupils enough to pay her rent and keep her modest
+_pot-au-feu_ going. Mademoiselle Thiebart was very glad to exchange the
+uncertainties of a first floor in North Audley Street for the comfort
+and security of Fellside Manor, with a salary of one hundred and fifty
+pounds a year.
+
+Both Fräulein and Mademoiselle had been quick to discover that Lady
+Lesbia was the apple of her grandmother's eye, while Lady Mary was
+comparatively an outsider.
+
+So it came about that Mary's education was in somewise a mere picking-up
+of the crumbs which fell from Lesbia's table, and that she was allowed
+in a general way to run wild. She was much quicker at any intellectual
+exercise than Lesbia. She learned the lessons that were given her at
+railroad speed, and rattled off her exercises with a slap-dash
+penmanship which horrified the neat and niggling Fräulein, and then
+rushed off to the lake or mountain, and by this means grew browner and
+browner, and more indelibly freckled day by day, thus widening the gulf
+between herself and her beauty sister.
+
+But it is not to be supposed that because Lesbia was beautiful, Mary was
+plain. This is very far from the truth. Mary had splendid hazel eyes,
+with a dancing light in them when she smiled, ruddy auburn hair, white
+teeth, a deeply-dimpled chin, and a vivacity and archness of expression,
+which served only in her present state of tutelage for the subjugation
+of old women and shepherd boys. Mary had been taught to believe that her
+chances of future promotion were of the smallest; that nobody would ever
+talk of her, or think of her by-and-by when she in her turn would make
+her appearance in London society, and that it would be a very happy
+thing for her if she were so fortunate as to attract the attention of a
+fashionable physician, a Canon of Westminster or St. Paul's, or a
+barrister in good practice.
+
+Mary turned up her pert little nose at this humdrum lot.
+
+'I would much rather spend all my life among these dear hills than marry
+a nobody in London,' she said, fearless of that grand old lady at whose
+frown so many people shivered. 'If you don't think people will like me
+and admire me--a little--you had better save yourself the trouble of
+taking me to London. I don't want to play second fiddle to my sister.'
+
+'You are a very impertinent person, and deserve to be taken at your
+word,' replied my lady, scowling at her; 'but I have no doubt before you
+are twenty you will tell another story.'
+
+'Oh!' said Mary, now just turned seventeen, 'then I am not to come out
+till I am twenty.'
+
+'That will be soon enough,' answered the Countess. 'It will take you as
+long to get rid of those odious freckles. And no doubt by that time
+Lesbia will have made a brilliant marriage.'
+
+And now on this rainy July morning these two girls, neither of whom had
+any serious employment for her life, or any serious purpose in living,
+wasted the hours, each in her own fashion.
+
+Lesbia reclined upon a cushioned seat in the deep embrasure of a Tudor
+window, her _pose_ perfection--it was one of many such attitudes which
+Mademoiselle had taught her, and which by assiduous training had become
+a second nature. Poor Mademoiselle, having finished her mission and
+taught Lesbia all she could teach, had now departed to a new and far
+less luxurious situation in a finishing school at Passy; but Fräulein
+Müller was still retained, as watch-dog and duenna.
+
+Lesbia's pale blue morning gown harmonised exquisitely with a complexion
+of lilies and roses, violet eyes, and golden-brown hair. Her features
+were distinguished by that perfect chiselling which gave such a haughty
+grace to her grandmother's countenance, even at sixty-seven years of
+age--a loveliness which, like the sculptured marble it resembles, is
+unalterable by time. Lesbia was reading Keats. It was her habit to read
+the poets, carefully and deliberately, taking up one at a time, and duly
+laying a volume aside when she found herself mistress of its contents.
+She had no passion for poetry, but it was an elegant leisurely kind of
+reading which suited her languid temperament. Moreover, her grandmother
+had told her that an easy familiarity with the great poets is of all
+knowledge that which best qualifies a woman to shine in conversation,
+without offending the superior sex by any assumption of scholarship.
+
+Mary was a very different class of reader; capricious, omniverous,
+tearing out the hearts of books, roaming from flower to flower in the
+fields of literature, loving old and new, romance and reality, novels,
+travels, plays, poetry, and never dwelling long on any one theme.
+Perhaps if Mary had lived in the bosom of a particularly sympathetic
+family she might have been reckoned almost a genius, so much of poetry
+and originality was there in her free unconventional character; but
+hitherto it had been Mary's mission in life to be snubbed, whereby she
+had acquired a very poor opinion of her own talents.
+
+'Oh,' she cried with a desperate yawn, while Lesbia smiled her languid
+smile over Endymion, 'how I wished something would happen--anything to
+stir us out of this statuesque, sleeping-beauty state of being. I verily
+believe the spiders are all asleep in the ivy, and the mice behind the
+wainscot, and the horses in the stable.'
+
+'What could happen?' asked Lesbia, with a gentle elevation of pencilled
+brows. 'Are not these lovely lines--
+
+    "And coverlids gold-tinted like the peach,
+    Or ripe October's faded marigolds,
+    Fell sleek about him in a thousand folds."
+
+Faded marigolds! Is not that intensely sweet?'
+
+'Very well for your sleepy Keats, but I don't suppose you would have
+noticed the passage if marigolds were not in fashion,' said Mary, with a
+touch of scorn. 'What could happen? Why a hundred things--an earthquake,
+flood, or fire. What could happen, do you say, Lesbia? Why Maulevrier
+might come home unexpectedly, and charm us out of this death-in-life.'
+
+'He would occasion a good deal of unpleasantness if he did,' answered
+Lesbia, coldly. 'You know how angry he has made grandmother.'
+
+'Because he keeps race-horses which have an unlucky knack of losing,'
+said Mary, dubiously. 'I suppose if his horses won, grandmother would
+rather approve?'
+
+'Not at all. That would make hardly any difference, except that he would
+not ruin himself quite so quickly. Grandmother says that a young man
+who goes on the turf is sure to be ruined sooner or later. And then
+Maulevrier's habits are altogether wild and foolish. It is very hard
+upon grandmother, who has such noble ambition for all of us.'
+
+'Not for me,' answered Mary smiling. 'Her views about me are very
+humble. She considers that I shall be most fortunate if a doctor or a
+lawyer condescend to like me well enough to make me an offer. He might
+make me the offer without liking me, for the sake of hearing himself and
+his wife announced as Mr. and Lady Mary Snooks at dinner parties. That
+would be too horrid! But I daresay such things have happened.'
+
+'Don't talk nonsense, Mary,' said Lesbia, loftily. 'There is no reason
+why you should not make a really good marriage, if you follow
+grandmother's advice and don't affect eccentricity.'
+
+'I don't affect eccentricity, but I'm afraid I really am eccentric,'
+murmured Mary, meekly, 'for I like so many things I ought not to like,
+and detest so many things which I ought to admire.'
+
+'I daresay you will have tamed down a little before you are presented,'
+said Lesbia, carelessly.
+
+She could not even affect a profound interest in anyone but herself. She
+had a narrowness of mental vision which prevented her looking beyond the
+limited circle of her own pleasures, her own desires, her own dreams and
+hopes. She was one of those strictly correct young women who was not
+likely to do much harm in the world but who was just as unlikely to do
+any good. Mary sighed, and went back to her book, a bulky volume of
+travels, and tried to lose herself in the sandy wastes of Africa, and to
+be deeply interested in the sources of the Congo, not, in her heart of
+hearts, caring a straw whether that far-away river comes from the
+mountains of the moon, or from the moon itself. To-day she could not pin
+her mind to pages which might have interested her at another time. Her
+thoughts were with Lord Maulevrier, that fondly-loved only brother, just
+seven years her senior, who had taken to race-horses and bad ways, and
+seemed to be trying his hardest to dissipate the splendid fortune which
+his grandmother, the dowager Countess, had nursed so judiciously during
+his long minority. Maulevrier and Mary had always been what the young
+man called 'no end of chums.'
+
+He called her his own brown-eyed Molly, much to the annoyance of Lady
+Maulevrier and Lesbia; and Mary's life was all gladness when Maulevrier
+was at Fellside. She devoted herself wholly to his amusements, rode and
+drove with him, followed on her pony when he went otter hunting, and
+very often abandoned the pony to the care of some stray mountain youth
+in order to join the hunters, and go leaping from stone to stone on the
+margin of the stream, and occasionally, in moments of wild excitement,
+when the hounds were in full cry, splashing in and out of the water,
+like a naiad in a neat little hunting-habit.
+
+Mary looked after Maulevrier's stable when he was away, and had supreme
+command of a kennel of fox-terriers which cost her brother more money
+than the Countess would have cared to know; for in the wide area of Lady
+Maulevrier's ambition there was no room for two hundred guinea
+fox-terriers, were they never so perfect.
+
+Altogether Mary's life was a different life when her brother was at
+home; and in his absence the best part of her days were spent in
+thinking about him and fulfilling the duties of her position as his
+representative in stable and kennel, and among certain rustics in the
+district, chiefly of the sporting type, who were Maulevrier's chosen
+allies or _protégés_.
+
+Never, perhaps, had two girls of patrician lineage lived a more secluded
+life than Lady Maulevrier's granddaughters. They had known no pleasures
+beyond the narrow sphere of home and home friends. They had never
+travelled--they had seen hardly anything of the outside world. They had
+never been to London or Paris, or to any city larger than York; and
+their visits to that centre of dissipation had been of the briefest, a
+mere flash of mild gaiety, a horticultural show or an oratorio, and back
+by express train, closely guarded by governess and footmen, to Fellside.
+In the autumn, when the leaves were falling in the wooded grounds of
+Fellside, the young ladies were sent, still under guardianship of
+governesses and footmen, to some quiet seaside resort between Alnwick
+and Edinburgh, where Mary lived the wild free life she loved, roaming
+about the beach, boating, shrimping, seaweed-gathering, making hard work
+for the governesses and footmen who had been sent in charge of her.
+
+Lady Maulevrier never accompanied her granddaughters on these occasions.
+She was a vigorous old woman, straight as a dart, slim as a girl, active
+in her degree as any young athlete among those hills, and she declared
+that she never felt the need of change of air. The sodden shrubberies,
+the falling leaves, did her no harm. Never within the memory of this
+generation had she left Fellside. Her love of this mountain retreat was
+a kind of _culte_. She had come here broken spirited, perhaps broken
+hearted, bringing her dead husband from the little inn at Great Langdale
+forty years ago, and she had hardly left the spot since that day.
+
+In those days Fellside House was a very different kind of dwelling from
+the gracious modern Tudor mansion which now crowned and beautified the
+hill-side above Grasmere Lake. It was then an old rambling stone house,
+with queer little rooms and inconvenient passages, low ceilings,
+thatched gables, and all manner of strange nooks and corners. Lady
+Maulevrier was of too strictly conservative a temper to think of
+pulling down an old house which had been in her husband's family for
+generations. She left the original cottage undisturbed, and built her
+new house at right angles with it, connecting the two with a wide
+passage below and a handsome corridor above, so that access should be
+perfect in the event of her requiring the accommodation of the old
+quaint, low ceiled rooms for her family or her guests. During forty
+years no such necessity had ever arisen; but the old house, known as the
+south wing, was still left intact, the original furniture undisturbed,
+although the only occupants of the building were her ladyship's faithful
+old house-steward, James Steadman, and his elderly wife.
+
+The house which Lady Maulevrier had built for herself and her
+grandchildren had not been created all at once, though the nucleus
+dating forty years back was a handsome building. She had added more
+rooms as necessity or fancy dictated, now a library with bedrooms over
+it, now a music room for Lady Lesbia and her grand piano--anon a
+billiard-room, as an agreeable surprise for Maulevrier when he came home
+after a tour in America. Thus the house had grown into a long low pile
+of Tudor masonry--steep gables, heavily mullioned casements, grey stone
+walls, curtained with the rich growth of passion-flower, magnolia,
+clematis, myrtle and roses--and all those flowers which thrive and
+flourish in that mild and sheltered spot.
+
+The views from those mullioned casements were perfect. Switzerland could
+give hardly any more exquisite picture than that lake shut in by hills,
+grand and bold in their varied outlines, so rich in their colouring that
+the eye, dazzled with beauty, forgot to calculate the actual height of
+those craggy peaks and headlands, the mind forgot to despise them
+because they were not so lofty as Mont Blanc or the Matterhorn. The
+velvet sward of the hill sloped steeply downward from Lady Maulevrier's
+drawing-room windows to the road beside the lake, and this road was so
+hidden by the wooded screen which bounded her ladyship's grounds that
+the lake seemed to lie in the green heart of her gardens, a lovely,
+placid lake on summer days, reflecting the emerald hue of the
+surrounding hills, and looking like a smooth green meadow, which invited
+the foot passenger to cross it.
+
+The house was approached by a winding carriage drive that led up and up
+and up from the road beside the lake, so screened and sheltered by
+shrubberies and pine woods, that the stranger knew not whither he was
+going, till he came upon an opening in the wood, and the stately Italian
+garden in front of a massive stone porch, through which he entered a
+spacious oak-panelled hall, and anon, descending a step or two, he found
+himself in Lady Maulevrier's drawing-room, and face to face with that
+divine view of the everlasting hills, the lake shining below him,
+bathed in sunlight.
+
+Or if it were the stranger's evil fate to come in wet weather, he saw
+only a rain-blotted landscape--the blurred outlines of grey mountain
+peaks, scowling at him from the other side of a grey pool. But if the
+picture without were depressing, the picture within was always good to
+look upon, for those oak-panelled or tapestried rooms, communicating by
+richly-curtained doorways from drawing room to library, from library to
+billiard room, were as perfect as wealth and taste could make them. Lady
+Maulevrier argued that as there was but one house among all the
+possessions of her race which she cared to inhabit, she had a right to
+make that house beautiful, and she had spared nothing upon the
+beautification of Fellside; and yet she had spent much less than would
+have been squandered by any pleasure-loving dowager, restlessly roving
+from Piccadilly to the Engadine, from Pontresina to Nice or Monaco,
+winding up with Easter in Paris, and then back to Piccadilly. Her
+ladyship's friends wondered that she could care to bury herself alive in
+Westmoreland, and expatiated on the eccentricity of such a life; nay,
+those who had never seen Fellside argued that Lady Maulevrier had taken
+in her old age to hoarding, and that she pigged at a cottage in the Lake
+district, in order to swell a fortune which young Maulevrier would set
+about squandering as soon as she was in her coffin. But here they were
+wrong. It was not in Lady Maulevrier's nature to lead a sordid life in
+order to save money. Yet in these quiet years that were gone--starting
+with that golden nucleus which her husband was supposed to have brought
+home from India, obtained no one knows how, the Countess had amassed one
+of the largest fortunes possessed by any dowager in the peerage. She had
+it, and she held it, with a grasp that nothing but death could loosen;
+nay, that all-foreseeing mind of hers might contrive to cheat grim death
+itself, and to scheme a way for protecting this wealth, even when she
+who had gathered and garnered it should be mouldering in her grave. The
+entailed estates belonged to Maulevrier, were he never such a fool or
+spendthrift; but this fortune of the dowager's was her own, to dispose
+of as she pleased, and not a penny of it was likely to go to the young
+Earl.
+
+Lady Maulevrier's pride and hopes were concentrated upon her
+granddaughter Lesbia. She should be the inheritress of this noble
+fortune--she should spread and widen the power of the Maulevrier race.
+Lesbia's son should link the family name with the name of his father;
+and if by any hazard of fate the present Earl should die young and
+childless, the old Countess's interest should be strained to the
+uttermost to obtain the title for Lesbia's offspring. Why should she not
+be Countess of Maulevrier in her own right? But in order to make this
+future possible the most important factor in the sum was yet to be
+found in the person of a husband for Lady Lesbia--a husband worthy of
+peerless beauty and exceptional wealth, a husband whose own fortune
+should be so important as to make him above suspicion. That was Lady
+Maulevrier's scheme--to wed wealth to wealth--to double or quadruple the
+fortune she had built up in the long slow years of her widowhood, and
+thus to make her granddaughter one of the greatest ladies in the land;
+for it need hardly be said that the man who was to wed Lady Lesbia must
+be her equal in wealth and lineage, if not her superior.
+
+Lady Maulevrier was not a miser. She was liberal and benevolent to all
+who came within the circle of her life. Wealth for its own sake she
+valued not a jot. But she lived in an age in which wealth is power, and
+ambition was her ruling passion. As she had been ambitious for her
+husband in the days that were gone, she was now ambitious for her
+granddaughter. Time had intensified the keen eagerness of her mind. She
+had been disappointed, cruelly, bitterly, in the ambition of her youth.
+She had been made to drink the cup of shame and humiliation. But to this
+ambition of her old age she held with even greater tenacity. God help
+her if she should be disappointed here!
+
+It is not to be supposed that so astute a schemer as Lady Maulevrier had
+not surveyed the marriage market in order to discover that fortunate
+youth who should be deemed worthy to become the winner of Lesbia's hand.
+Years ago, when Lesbia was still in the nursery, the dowager had made
+herself informed of the age, weight, and colours of every likely runner
+in the matrimonial stakes; or, in plainer words, had kept herself, by
+her correspondence with a few intimate friends, and her close study of
+the fashionable newspapers, thoroughly acquainted with the characters
+and exploits, the dispositions and antecedents, of those half-dozen
+elder sons, among whom she hoped to find Lesbia's lord and master. She
+knew her peerage by heart, and she knew the family history of every
+house recorded therein; the sins and weaknesses, the follies and losses
+of bygone years; the taints, mental and physical; the lateral branches
+and intermarriages; the runaway wives and unfaithful husbands; idiot
+sons or scrofulous daughters. She knew everything that was to be known
+about that aristocratic world into which she had been born sixty-seven
+years ago; and the sum-total of her knowledge was that there was one man
+whom she desired for her granddaughter's husband--one man, and one only,
+and into whose hands, when earth and sky should fade from her glazing
+eyes, she could be content to resign the sceptre of power.
+
+There were no doubt half-a-dozen, or more, in the list of elder sons,
+who were fairly eligible. But this young man was the Achilles in the
+rank and file of chivalry, and her soul yearned to have him and no other
+for her darling.
+
+Her soul yearned to him with a tenderness which was not all on Lesbia's
+account. Forty-nine years ago she had fondly loved his father--loved him
+and had been fain to renounce him; for Ronald Hollister, afterwards Earl
+of Hartfield, was then a younger son, and the two families had agreed
+that marriage between paupers was an impudent flying in the face of
+Providence, which must be put down with an iron hand. Lord Hartfield
+sent his son to Turkey in the diplomatic service; and the old dowager
+Lady Carrisbrook whisked her niece off to London, and kept her there,
+under watch and ward, till Lord Maulevrier proposed and was accepted by
+her. There should be no foolishness, no clandestine correspondence. The
+iron hand crushed two young hearts, and secured a brilliant future for
+the bodies which survived.
+
+Fifteen years later Ronald's elder brother died unmarried. He abandoned
+that career of vagrant diplomacy which had taken him all over Europe,
+and as far as Washington, and re-appeared in London, the most elegant
+man of his era, but thoroughly _blasé_. There were rumours of an unhappy
+attachment in the Faubourg Saint Germain; of a tragedy at Petersburg.
+Society protested that Lord Hartfield would die a bachelor, as his
+brother died before him. The Hollisters are not a marrying family, said
+society. But six or seven years after his return to England Lord
+Hartfield married Lady Florence Ilmington, a beauty in her first season,
+and a very sweet but somewhat prudish young person. The marriage
+resulted in the birth of an heir, whose appearance upon this mortal
+stage was followed within a year by his father's exit. Hence the
+Hartfield property, always a fine estate, had been nursed and fattened
+during a long minority, and the present Lord Hartfield was reputed one
+of the richest young men of his time. He was also spoken of as a
+superior person, inheriting all his father's intellectual gifts, and
+having the reputation of being singularly free from the vices of
+profligate youth. He was neither prig nor pedant, and he was very
+popular in the best society; but he was not ashamed to let it be seen
+that his ambition soared higher than the fashionable world of turf and
+stable, cards and pigeon matches.
+
+Though not of the gay world, nor in it, Lady Maulevrier had contrived to
+keep herself thoroughly _en rapport_ with society. Her few chosen
+friends, with whom she corresponded on terms of perfect confidence, were
+among the best people in London--not the circulators of club-house
+canards, the pickers-up of second-hand gossip from the society papers,
+but actors in the comedy of high life, arbiters of fashion and taste,
+born and bred in the purple.
+
+Last season Lord Hartfield's absence had cast a cloud over the
+matrimonial horizon. He had been a traveller for more than a
+year--Patagonia, Peru, the Pyramids, Japan, the North Pole--society
+cared not where--the fact that he was gone was all-sufficient. Bachelors
+a shade less eligible came to the front in his absence and became first
+favourites. Lady Maulevrier, well informed in advance, had deferred
+Lesbia's presentation till next season, when she was told Lord Hartfield
+would certainly re-appear. His plans had been made for return before
+Christmas; and it would seem that his scheme of life was laid down with
+as much precision as if he had been a prince of the blood royal. Thus it
+happened, to Lesbia's intense disgust, that her _début_ was deferred
+till the verge of her twentieth birthday. It would never do, Lady
+Maulevrier told herself, for the edge to be taken off the effect which
+Lesbia's beauty was to make on society during Lord Hartfield's absence.
+He must be there, on the spot, to see this star rise gently and slowly
+above society's horizon, and to mark how everybody bowed down and
+worshipped the new light.
+
+'I shall be an old woman before I appear in society,' said Lesbia,
+petulantly; 'and I shall be like a wild woman of the woods; for I have
+seen nothing, and know nothing of the civilised world.'
+
+'You will be ever so much more attractive than the young women I hear
+of, who have seen and known a great deal too much,' answered the
+dowager; and as her granddaughter knew that Lady Maulevrier's word was a
+law that altered not, there were no more idle repinings.
+
+Her ladyship gave no reason for the postponement of Lesbia's
+presentation. She was far too diplomatic to breathe a word of her ideas
+with regard to Lord Hartfield. Anything like a matrimonial scheme would
+have been revolting to Lesbia, who had grand, but not sordid views about
+matrimony. She thought it her mission to appear and to conquer. A crowd
+of suitors would sigh around her, like the loves and graces round that
+fair Belinda whose story she had read so often; and it would be her part
+to choose the most worthy. The days are gone when a girl would so much
+as look at such a fribble as Sir Plume. Her virgin fancy demands the
+Tennysonian ideal, the grave and knightly Arthur.
+
+But when Lesbia thought of the most worthy, it was always of the
+worthiest in her own particular sphere; and he of course would be titled
+and wealthy, and altogether fitted to be her husband. He would take her
+by the hand and lead her to a higher seat on the dais, and place upon
+her head, or at least upon her letter-paper and the panels of her
+carriage, a coronet in which the strawberry leaves should stand out more
+prominently than in her brother's emblazonment. Lesbia's mind could not
+conceive an ignoble marriage, or the possibility of the most worthy
+happening to be found in a lower circle than her own.
+
+And now it was the end of July, and the season which should have been
+glorified by Lady Lesbia's _début_ was over and done with. She had read
+in the society papers of all the balls, and birthdays, and race
+meetings, and regattas, and cricket matches, and gowns, and parasols,
+and bonnets--what this beauty wore on such an occasion, and how that
+other beauty looked on another occasion--and she felt as she read like a
+spell-bound princess in a fairy tale, mewed up in a battlemented tower,
+and deprived of her legitimate share in all the pleasures of earth. She
+had no patience with Mary--that wild, unkempt, ungraceful creature, who
+could be as happy as summer days are long, racing about the hills with
+her bamboo alpenstock, rioting with a pack of fox-terriers, practising
+long losers, rowing on the lake, doing all things unbecoming Lady
+Maulevrier's granddaughter.
+
+That long rainy day dragged its slow length to a close; and then came fine
+days, in which Molly and her fox-terriers went wandering over the sunlit
+hills, skipping and dancing across the mountain streamlets--gills, as they
+were called in this particular world--almost as gaily as the shadows of
+fleecy cloudlets dancing up yonder in the windy sky. Molly spent half her
+days among the hills, stealing off from governess and grandmother and the
+stately beauty sister, and sometimes hardly being missed by them, so ill
+did her young exuberance harmonise with their calmer life.
+
+'One can tell when Mary is at home by a perpetual banging of doors,'
+said Lesbia, which was a sisterly exaggeration founded upon fact, for
+Molly was given to impetuous rushing in and out of rooms when that eager
+spirit of hers impelled the light lithe body upon some new expedition.
+Nor is the society of fox-terriers conducive to repose or stateliness of
+movement; and Maulevrier's terriers, although strictly forbidden the
+house, were for ever breaking bonds and leaping in upon Molly's
+retirement at all unreasonable hours. She and they were enchanted to get
+away from the beautiful luxurious rooms, and to go roving by hill-side
+and force, away to Easedale Tarn, to bask for hours on the grassy margin
+of the deep still water, or to row round and round the mountain lake in
+a rotten boat. It was here, or in some kindred spot, that Molly got
+through most of her reading--here that she read Shakespeare, Byron, and
+Shelley, and Wordsworth--dwelling lingeringly and lovingly upon every
+line in which that good old man spoke of her native land. Sometimes she
+climbed to higher ground, and felt herself ever so much nearer heaven
+upon the crest of Silver Howe, or upon the rugged stony steep of Dolly
+Waggon pike, half way up the dark brow of Helvellyn; sometimes she
+disappeared for hours, and climbed to the summit of the hill, and
+wandered in perilous pathways on Striding Edge, or by the dark still
+water of the Red Tarn. This had been her life ever since she had been
+old enough to have an independent existence; and the hills and the
+lakes, and the books of her own choosing, had done a great deal more in
+ripening her mind than Fräulein Müller and that admirable series of
+educational works which has been provided for the tuition of modern
+youth. Grammars and geographies, primers and elementary works of all
+kinds, were Mary's detestation; but she loved books that touched her
+heart and filled her mind with thoughts wide and deep enough to reach
+into the infinite of time and space, the mystery of mind and matter,
+life and death.
+
+Nothing occurred to break the placid monotony of life at Fellside for
+three long days after that rainy morning; and then came an event which,
+although commonplace enough in itself, marked the beginning of a new era
+in the existence of Lady Maulevrier's granddaughters.
+
+It was evening, and the two girls were dawdling about on the sloping
+lawn before the drawing-room windows, where Lady Maulevrier read the
+newspapers in her own particular chair by one of those broad Tudor
+windows, according to her infallible custom. Remote as her life had been
+from the busy world, her ladyship had never allowed her knowledge of
+public life and the bent of modern thought to fall into arrear. She took
+a keen interest in politics, in progress of all kinds. She was a staunch
+Conservative, and looked upon every Liberal politician as her personal
+enemy; but she took care to keep herself informed of everything that was
+being said or done in the enemy's camp. She had an intense respect for
+Lord Bacon's maxim: Knowledge is power. It was a kind of power secondary
+to the power of wealth, perhaps; but wealth unprotected by wisdom would
+soon dwindle into poverty.
+
+Lady Lesbia sauntered about the lawn, looking very elegant in her
+cream-coloured Indian silk gown, very listless, very tired of her lovely
+surroundings. Neither lake nor mountain possessed any charm for her. She
+had had too much of them. Mary roamed about with a swifter footstep,
+looking at the roses, plucking off a dead leaf, or a cankered bud here
+and there. Presently she tore across the lawn to the shrubbery which
+screened the lawn and flower gardens from the winding carriage drive
+sunk many feet below, and disappeared in a thicket of arbutus and Irish
+yew.
+
+'What terribly hoydenish manners!' murmured Lesbia, with a languid shrug
+of her shoulders, as she strolled back to the drawing-room.
+
+She cared very little for the newspapers, for politics not at all; but
+anything was better than everlasting contemplation of the blue still
+water, and the rugged crest of Helm Crag.
+
+'What was the matter with Mary that she rushed off like a mad woman?'
+inquired Lady Maulevrier, looking up from the _Times_.
+
+'I haven't the least idea. Mary's movements are quite beyond the limits
+of my comprehension. Perhaps she has gone after a bird's-nest.'
+
+Mary was intent upon no bird's-nest. Her quick ear had caught the sound
+of manly voices in the winding drive under the pine wood; and surely,
+yes, surely one was a clear and familiar voice, which heralded the
+coming of happiness. In such a moment she seemed to have wings. She
+became unconscious that she touched the earth; she went skimming
+bird-like over the lawn, and in and out, with fluttering muslin frock,
+among arbutus and bay, yew and laurel, till she stood poised lightly on
+the top of the wooded bank which bordered the steep ascent to Lady
+Maulevrier's gate, looking down at two figures which were sauntering up
+the drive.
+
+They were both young men, both tall, broad-shouldered, manly, walking
+with the easy swinging movement of men accustomed to active exercise.
+One, the handsomer of the two in Mary's eyes, since she thought him
+simply perfection, was fair-haired, blue-eyed, the typical Saxon. This
+was Lord Maulevrier. The other was dark, bronzed by foreign travel,
+perhaps, with black hair, cut very close to an intelligent-looking head,
+bared to the evening breeze.
+
+'Hulloa!' cried Maulevrier. 'There's Molly. How d'ye do, old girl?'
+
+The two men looked up, and Molly looked down. Delight at her brother's
+return so filled her heart and mind that there was no room left for
+embarrassment at the appearance of a stranger.
+
+'O, Maulevrier, I am so glad! I have been pining for you. Why didn't you
+write to say you were coming? It would have been something to look
+forward to.'
+
+'Couldn't. Never knew from day to day what I was going to be up to;
+besides, I knew I should find you at home.'
+
+'Of course. We are always at home,' said Mary; 'go up to the house as
+fast as ever you can. I'll go and tell grandmother.'
+
+'And tell them to get us some dinner,' said Maulevrier.
+
+Mary's fluttering figure dipped and was gone, vanishing in the dark
+labyrinth of shrubs. The two young men sauntered up to the house.
+
+'We needn't hurry,' said Maulevrier to his companion, whom he had not
+taken the trouble to introduce to his sister. 'We shall have to wait for
+our dinner.'
+
+'And we shall have to change our dusty clothes,' added the other; 'I
+hope that man will bring our portmanteaux in time.'
+
+'Oh, we needn't dress. We can spend the evening in my den, if you
+like!'
+
+Mary flew across the lawn again, and bounded up the steps of the
+verandah--a picturesque Swiss verandah which made a covered promenade in
+front of the house.
+
+'Mary, may I ask the meaning of this excitement,' inquired her ladyship,
+as the breathless girl stood before her.
+
+'Maulevrier has come home.'
+
+'At last?'
+
+'And he has brought a friend.'
+
+'Indeed! He might have done me the honour to inquire if his friend's
+visit would be agreeable. What kind of person?'
+
+'I have no idea. I didn't look at him. Maulevrier is looking so well.
+They will be here in a minute. May I order dinner for them?'
+
+'Of course, they must have dinner,' said her ladyship, resignedly, as if
+the whole thing were an infliction; and Mary ran out and interviewed the
+butler, begging that all things might be made particularly comfortable
+for the travellers. It was nine o'clock, and the servants were enjoying
+their eventide repose.
+
+Having given her orders, Mary went back to the drawing-room, impatiently
+expectant of her brother's arrival, for which event Lesbia and her
+grandmother waited with perfect tranquillity, the dowager calmly
+continuing the perusal of her _Times_, while Lesbia sat at her piano in
+a shadowy corner, and played one of Mendelssohn's softest Lieder. To
+these dreamy strains Maulevrier and his friend presently entered.
+
+'How d'ye do, grandmother? how do, Lesbia? This is my very good friend
+and Canadian travelling companion, Jack Hammond--Lady Maulevrier, Lady
+Lesbia.'
+
+'Very glad to see you, Mr. Hammond,' said the dowager, in a tone so
+purely conventional that it might mean anything. 'Hammond? I ought to
+remember your family--the Hammonds of----'
+
+'Of nowhere,' answered the stranger in the easiest tone; 'I spring from
+a race of nobodies, of whose existence your ladyship is not likely to
+have heard.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+MAULEVRIER'S HUMBLE FRIEND.
+
+
+That faint interest which Lady Lesbia had felt in the advent of a
+stranger dwindled to nothing after Mr. Hammond's frank avowal of his
+insignificance. At the very beginning of her career, with the world
+waiting to be conquered by her, a high-born beauty could not be expected
+to feel any interest in nobodies. Lesbia shook hands with her brother,
+honoured the stranger with a stately bend of her beautiful throat, and
+then withdrew herself from their society altogether as it were, and
+began to explore her basket of crewels, at a distant table, by the soft
+light of a shaded lamp, while Maulevrier answered his grandmother's
+questions, and Mary stood watching him, hanging on his words, as if
+unconscious of any other presence.
+
+Mr. Hammond went over to the window and looked out at the view. The moon
+was rising above the amphitheatre of hills, and her rays were silvering
+the placid bosom of the lake. Lights were dotted here and there about
+the valley, telling of village life. The Prince of Wales's hotel yonder
+sparkled with its many lights, like a castle in a fairy tale. The
+stranger had looked upon many a grander scene, but on none more lovely.
+Here were lake and mountain in little, without the snow-peaks and awful
+inaccessible regions of solitude and peril; homely hills that one might
+climb, placid English vales in which English poets have lived and died.
+
+'Hammond and I mean to spend a month or six weeks with you, if you can
+make us comfortable,' said Maulevrier.
+
+'I am delighted to hear that you can contemplate staying a month
+anywhere,' replied her ladyship. 'Your usual habits are as restless as
+if your life were a disease. It shall not be my fault if you and Mr.
+Hammond are uncomfortable at Fellside.'
+
+There was courtesy, but no cordiality in the reply. If Mr. Hammond was a
+sensitive man, touchily conscious of his own obscurity, he must have
+felt that he was not wanted at Fellside--that he was an excrescence,
+matter in the wrong place.
+
+Nobody had presented the stranger to Lady Mary. It never entered into
+Maulevrier's mind to be ceremonious about his sister Molly. She was so
+much a part of himself that it seemed as if anyone who knew him must
+needs know her. Molly sat a little way from the window by which Mr.
+Hammond was standing, and looked at him doubtfully, wonderingly, with
+not altogether a friendly eye, as he stood with his profile turned to
+her, and his eyes upon the landscape. She was inclined to be jealous of
+her brother's friend, who would most likely deprive her of much of that
+beloved society. Hitherto she had been Maulevrier's chosen companion, at
+Fellside--indeed, his sole companion after the dismissal of his tutor.
+Now this brown, bearded stranger would usurp her privileges--those two
+young men would go roaming over the hills, fishing, otter-hunting, going
+to distant wrestling matches and leaving her at home. It was a hard
+thing, and she was prepared to detest the interloper. Even to-night she
+would be a loser by his presence. Under ordinary circumstances she would
+have gone to the dining-room with Maulevrier, and sat by him and waited
+upon him as he ate. But she dared not intrude herself upon a meal that
+was to be shared with a stranger.
+
+She looked at John Hammond critically, eager to find fault with his
+appearence; but unluckily for her present humour there was not much room
+for fault-finding.
+
+He was tall, broad-shouldered, well-built. His enemies would hardly deny
+that he was good-looking--nay, even handsome. The massive regular
+features were irreproachable. He was more sunburnt than a gentleman
+ought to be, Mary thought. She told herself that his good looks were of
+a vulgar quality, like those of Charles Ford, the champion wrestler,
+whom she saw at the sports the other day. Why did Maulevrier pick up a
+companion who was evidently not of his own sphere? Hoydenish,
+plain-spoken, frank and affectionate as Mary Haselden was, she knew that
+she belonged to a race apart, that there were circles beneath circles,
+below her own world, circles which hers could never touch, and she
+supposed Mr. Hammond to be some waif from one of those nethermost
+worlds--a village doctor's son, perhaps, or even a tradesman's--sent to
+the University by some benevolent busybody, and placed at a disadvantage
+ever afterwards, an unfortunate anomaly, suspended between two worlds
+like Mahomet's coffin.
+
+The butler announced that his lordship's dinner was served.
+
+'Come along, Molly,' said Maulevrier; 'come and tell me about the
+terriers, while I eat my dinner.'
+
+Mary hesitated, glanced doubtfully at her grandmother, who made no sign,
+and then slipped out of the room, hanging fondly on her brother's arm,
+and almost forgetting that there was any such person as Mr. Hammond in
+existence.
+
+When these three were gone Lady Lesbia expressed herself strongly upon
+Maulevrier's folly in bringing such a person as Mr. Hammond to Fellside.
+
+'What are we to do with him, grandmother?' she said, pettishly. 'Is he
+to live with us, and be one of us, a person of whose belongings we know
+positively nothing, who owns that his people are common?'
+
+'My dear, he is your brother's friend, and we have the right to suppose
+he is a gentleman.'
+
+'Not on that account,' said Lesbia, more sharply than her wont. 'Didn't
+he make a friend, or almost a friend of Jack Howell, the huntsman, and
+of Ford, the wrestler. I have no confidence in Maulevrier's ideas of
+fitness.'
+
+'We shall find out all about this Mr. Hamleigh--no Hammond--in a day or
+two,' replied her ladyship, placidly; 'and in the meantime we must
+tolerate him, and be grateful to him if he reconcile Maulevrier to
+remaining at Fellside for the next six weeks.'
+
+Lesbia was silent. She did not consider Maulevrier's presence at
+Fellside an unmitigated advantage, or, indeed, his presence anywhere.
+Those two were not sympathetic. Maulevrier made fun of his elder
+sister's perfections, chaffed her intolerably about the great man she
+was going to captivate, in her first season, the great houses in which
+she was going to reign. Lesbia despised him for that neglect of all his
+opportunities of culture which had left him, after the most orthodox and
+costly curriculum, almost as ignorant as a ploughboy. She despised a man
+whose only delight was in horse and hound, gun and fishing-tackle. Molly
+would have cared very little for the guns or the fishing-tackle perhaps
+in the abstract; but she cared for everything that interested
+Maulevrier, even to the bagful of rats which were let loose in the
+stable-yard sometimes, for the education of a particularly game
+fox-terrier.
+
+There was plenty of talk and laughter at the dinner-table, while the
+Countess and Lady Lesbia conversed gravely and languidly in the
+dimly-lighted drawing-room. The dinner was excellent, and both
+travellers were ravenous. They had eaten nothing since breakfast, and
+had driven from Windermere on the top of the coach in the keen evening
+air. When the sharp edge of the appetite was blunted, Maulevrier began
+to talk of his adventures since he and Molly had last met. He had not
+being dissipating in London all the time--or, indeed, any great part of
+the time of his absence from Fellside; but Molly had been left in
+Cimmerian, darkness as to his proceedings. He never wrote a letter if he
+could possibly avoid doing so. If it became a vital necessity to him to
+communicate with anyone he telegraphed, or, in his own language, 'wired'
+to that person; but to sit down at a desk and labour with pen and ink
+was not within his capacities or his views of his mission in life.
+
+'If a fellow is to write letters he might as well be a clerk in an
+office,' he said, 'and sit on a high stool.'
+
+Thus it happened that when Maulevrier was away from Fellside, no fair
+_châtelaine_ of the Middle Ages could be more ignorant of the movements
+or whereabouts of her crusader knight than Mary was of her brother's
+goings on. She could but pray for him with fond and faithful prayer, and
+wait and hope for his return. And now he told her that things had gone
+badly with him at Epsom, and worse at Ascot, that he had been, as he
+expressed it, 'up a tree,' and that he had gone off to the Black Forest
+directly the Ascot week was over, and at Rippoldsau he had met his old
+friend and fellow traveller, Hammond, and they had gone for a walking
+tour together among the homely villages, the watchmakers, the timber
+cutters, the pretty peasant girls. They had danced at fairs--and shot at
+village sports--and had altogether enjoyed the thing. Hammond, who was
+something of an artist, had sketched a good deal. Maulevrier had done
+nothing but smoke his German pipe and enjoy himself.
+
+'I was glad to find myself in a world where a horse was an exception and
+not the rule,' he said.
+
+'Oh, how I should love to see the Black Forest!' cried Mary, who knew
+the first part of Faust by heart, albeit she had never been given
+permission to read it, 'the gnomes and the witches--der Freischütz--all
+that is lovely. Of course, you went up the Brocken?'
+
+'Of course,' answered Mr. Hammond; 'Mephistopheles was our _valet de
+place_, and we went up among a company of witches riding on
+broomsticks.' And then quoted,
+
+    'Seh' die Bäume hinter Bäumen,
+    Wie sie schnell vorüberrücken,
+    Und die Klippen, die sich bücken,
+    Und die langen Felsennasen,
+    Wie sie schnarchen, wie sie blasen!'
+
+This was the first time he had addressed himself directly to Mary, who
+sat close to her brother's side, and never took her eyes from his face,
+ready to pour out his wine or to change his plate, for the serving-men
+had been dismissed at the beginning of this unceremonious meal.
+
+Mary looked at the stranger almost as superciliously as Lesbia might
+have done. She was not inclined to be friendly to her brother's friend.
+
+'Do you read German?' she inquired, with a touch of surprise.
+
+'You had better ask him what language he does not read or speak,' said
+her brother. 'Hammond is an admirable Crichton, my dear--by-the-by, who
+was admirable Crichton?--knows everything, can twist your little head
+the right way upon any subject.'
+
+'Oh,' thought Mary, 'highly cultivated, is he? Very proper in a man who
+was educated on charity to have worked his hardest at the University.'
+
+She was not prepared to think very kindly of young men who had been
+successful in their college career, since poor Maulevrier had made such
+a dismal failure of his, had been gated and sent down, and ploughed, and
+had everything ignominious done to him that could be done, which
+ignominy had involved an expenditure of money that Lady Maulevrier
+bemoaned and lamented until this day. Because her brother had not been
+virtuous, Mary grudged virtuous young men their triumphs and their
+honours. Great, raw-boned fellows, who have taken their degrees at
+Scotch Universities, come to Oxford and Cambridge and sweep the board,
+Maulevrier had told her, when his own failures demanded explanation.
+Perhaps this Mr. Hammond had graduated north of the Tweed, and had come
+southward to rob the native. Mary was not any more inclined to be civil
+to him because he was a linguist. He had a pleasant manner, frank and
+easy, a good voice, a cheery laugh. But she had not yet made up her mind
+that he was a gentleman.
+
+'If some benevolent old person were to take a fancy to Charles Ford, the
+wrestler, and send him to a Scotch University, I daresay he would turn
+out just as fine a fellow,' she thought, Ford being somewhat of a
+favourite as a local hero.
+
+The two young men went off to the billiard-room after they had dined. It
+was half-past ten by this time, and, of course, Mary did not go with
+them. She bade her brother good-night at the dining-room door.
+
+'Good-night, Molly; be sure you are up early to show me the dogs,' said
+Maulevrier, after an affectionate kiss.
+
+'Good-night, Lady Mary,' said Mr. Hammond, holding out his hand, albeit
+she had no idea of shaking hands with him.
+
+She allowed her hand to rest for an instant in that strong, friendly
+grasp. She had not risen to giving a couple of fingers to a person whom
+she considered her inferior; but she was inclined to snub Mr. Hammond as
+rather a presuming young man.
+
+'Well, Jack, what do you think of my beauty sister?' asked his lordship,
+as he chose his cue from the well-filled rack.
+
+The lamps were lighted, the table uncovered and ready, Carambole in his
+place, albeit it was months since any player had entered the room.
+Everything which concerned Maulevrier's comfort or pleasure was done as
+if by magic at Fellside; and Mary was the household fairy whose
+influence secured this happy state of things.
+
+'What can any man think except that she is as lovely as the finest of
+Reynold's portraits, as that Lady Diana Beauclerk of Colonel Aldridge's,
+or the Kitty Fisher, or any example you please to name of womanly
+loveliness?'
+
+'Glad to hear it,' answered Maulevrier, chalking his cue; 'can't say I
+admire her myself--not my style, don't you know. Too much of my lady
+Di--too little of poor Kitty. But still, of course, it always pleases a
+fellow to know that his people are admired; and I know that my
+grandmother has views, grand views,' smiling down at his cue. 'Shall I
+break?' and he began with the usual miss in baulk.
+
+'Thank you,' said Mr. Hammond, beginning to play. 'Matrimonial views, of
+course. Very natural that her ladyship should expect such a lovely
+creature to make a great match. Is there no one in view? Has there been
+no family conclave--no secret treaty? Is the young lady fancy free?'
+
+'Perfectly. She has been buried alive here; except parsons and a few
+decent people whom she is allowed to meet now and then at the houses
+about here, she has seen nothing of the world. My grandmother has kept
+Lesbia as close as a nun. She is not so fond of Molly, and that young
+person has wild ways of her own, and gives everybody the slip.
+By-the-by, how do you like my little Moll?'
+
+The adjective was hardly accurate about a young lady who measured five
+feet six, but Maulevrier had not yet grown out of the ideas belonging to
+that period when Mary was really his little sister, a girl of twelve,
+with long hair and short petticoats.
+
+Mr. Hammond was slow to reply. Mary had not made a very strong
+impression upon him. Dazzled by her sister's pure and classical beauty,
+he had no eyes for Mary's homelier charms. She seemed to him a frank,
+affectionate girl, not too well-mannered; and that was all he thought of
+her.
+
+'I'm afraid Lady Mary does not like me,' he said, after his shot, which
+gave him time for reflection.
+
+'Oh, Molly is rather _farouche_ in her manners; never would train fine,
+don't you know. Her ladyship lectured till she was tired, and now Mary
+runs wild, and I suppose will be left at grass till six months before
+her presentation, and then they'll put her on the pillar-reins a bit to
+give her a better mouth. Good shot, by Jove!'
+
+John Hammond was used to his lordship's style of conversation, and
+understood his friend at all times. Maulevrier was not an intellectual
+companion, and the distance was wide between the two men; but his
+lordship's gaiety, good-nature, and acuteness made amends for all
+shortcomings in culture. And then Mr. Hammond may have been one of those
+good Conservatives who do not expect very much intellectual power in an
+hereditary legislator.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+IN THE SUMMER MORNING.
+
+
+John Hammond loved the wild freshness of morning, and was always eager
+to explore a new locality; so he was up at five o'clock next morning,
+and out of doors before six. He left the sophisticated beauty of the
+Fellside gardens below him, and climbed higher and higher up the Fell,
+till he was able to command a bird's-eye view of the lake and village,
+and just under his feet, as it were, Lady Maulevrier's favourite abode.
+He was provided with a landscape glass which he always carried in his
+rambles, and with the aid of this he could see every stone of the
+building.
+
+The house, added to at her ladyship's pleasure, and without regard to
+cost, covered a considerable extent of ground. The new part consisted of
+a straight range of about a hundred and twenty feet, facing the lake,
+and commandingly placed on the crest of a steepish slope; the old
+buildings, at right angles with the new, made a quadrangle, the third
+and fourth sides of which were formed by the dead walls of servants'
+rooms and coach-houses, which had no windows upon this inner enclosed
+side. The old buildings were low and irregular, one portion of the roof
+thatched, another tiled. In the quadrangle there was an old-fashioned
+garden, with geometrical flower-beds, a yew tree hedge, and a stone
+sun-dial in the centre. A peacock stalked about in the morning light,
+and greeted the newly risen sun with a discordant scream. Presently a
+man came out of a half glass door under a verandah which shaded one side
+of the quadrangle, and strolled about the garden, stopping here and
+there to cut a dead rose, or trim a geranium, a stoutly-built broad
+shouldered man, with gray hair and beard, the image of well-fed
+respectability.
+
+Mr. Hammond wondered a little at the man's leisurely movements as he
+sauntered about, whistling to the peacock. It was not the manner of a
+servant who had duties to perform--rather that of a gentleman living at
+ease, and hardly knowing how to get rid of his time.
+
+"Some superior functionary, I suppose," thought Hammond, "the
+house-steward, perhaps."
+
+He rambled a long way over the hill, and came back to Fellside by a path
+of his own discovering, which brought him to a wooden gate leading into
+the stable-yard, just in time to meet Maulevrier and Lady Mary emerging
+from the kennel, where his lordship had been inspecting the terriers.
+
+'Angelina is bully about the muzzle,' said Maulevrier; 'we shall have to
+give her away.'
+
+'Oh, don't,' cried Mary. 'She is a most perfect darling, and laughs so
+deliciously whenever she sees me.'
+
+Angelina was in Lady Mary's arms at this moment; a beautifully marked
+little creature, all thew and sinew, palpitating with suppressed
+emotions, and grinning to her heart's content.
+
+Lady Mary looked very fresh and bright in her neat tailor gown, kilted
+kirtle, and tight-fitting bodice, with neat little brass buttons. It was
+a gown of Maulevrier's ordering, made at his own tailor's. Her splendid
+chestnut hair was uncovered, the short crisp curls about her forehead
+dancing in the morning air. Her large, bright, brown eyes were dancing,
+too, with delight at having her brother home again.
+
+She shook hands with Mr. Hammond more graciously than last night; but
+still with a carelessness which was not complimentary, looking at him
+absently, as if she hardly knew that he was there, and hugging Angelina
+all the time.
+
+Hammond told his friend about his ramble over the hills, yonder, up
+above that homely bench called 'Rest, and be Thankful,' on the crest of
+Loughrigg Fell. He was beginning to learn the names of the hills
+already. Yonder darkling brow, rugged, gloomy looking, was Nab Scar;
+yonder green slope of sunny pasture, stretching wide its two arms as if
+to enfold the valley, was Fairfield; and here, close on the left, as he
+faced the lake, were Silver Howe and Helm Crag, with that stony
+excrescence on the summit of the latter known as the 'Lion and the
+Lamb.' Lady Maulevrier's house stood within a circle of mountain peaks
+and long fells, which walled in the deep, placid, fertile valley.
+
+'If you are not too tired to see the gardens, we might show them to you
+before breakfast,' said Maulevrier. 'We have three-quarters of an hour
+to the good.'
+
+'Half an hour for a stroll, and a quarter to make myself presentable
+after my long walk,' said Hammond, who did not wish to face the dowager
+and Lady Lesbia in disordered apparel. Lady Mary was such an obvious
+Tomboy that he might be pardoned for leaving her out of the question.
+
+They set out upon an exploration of the gardens, Mary clinging to her
+brother's arm, as if she wanted to make sure of him, and still carrying
+Angelina.
+
+The gardens were as other gardens, but passing beautiful. The sloping
+lawns and richly-timbered banks, winding shrubberies, broad terraces cut
+on the side of the hill, gave infinite variety. All that wealth and
+taste and labour could do to make those grounds beautiful had been
+done--the rarest conifers, the loveliest flowering shrubs grew and
+flourished there, and the flowers bloomed as they bloom only in
+Lakeland, where every cottage garden can show a wealth of luxurious
+bloom, unknown in more exposed and arid districts. Mary was very proud
+of those gardens. She had loved them and worked in them from her
+babyhood, trotting about on chubby legs after some chosen old gardener,
+carrying a few weeds or withered leaves in her pinafore, and fancying
+herself useful.
+
+'I help 'oo, doesn't I, Teeven?' she used to say to the gray-headed old
+gardener, who first taught her to distinguish flowers from weeds.
+
+'I shall never learn as much out of these horrid books as poor old
+Stevens taught me,' she said afterwards, when the gray head was at rest
+under the sod, and governesses, botany manuals, and hard words from the
+Greek were the order of the day.
+
+Nine o'clock was the breakfast hour at Fellside. There were no family
+prayers. Lady Maulevrier did not pretend to be pious, and she put no
+restraints of piety upon other people. She went to Church on Sunday
+mornings for the sake of example; but she read all the newest scientific
+books, subscribed to the Anthropological Society, and thought as the
+newest scientific people think. She rarely communicated her opinions
+among her own sex; but now and then, in strictly masculine and superior
+society, she had been heard to express herself freely upon the nebular
+hypothesis and the doctrine of evolution.
+
+'After all, what does it matter?' she said, finally, with her grand air;
+'I have only to marry my granddaughters creditably, and prevent my
+grandson going to the dogs, and then my mission on this insignificant
+planet will be accomplished. What new form that particular modification
+of molecules which you call Lady Maulevrier may take afterwards is
+hidden in the great mystery of material life.'
+
+There was no family prayer, therefore, at Fellside. The sisters had been
+properly educated in their religious duties, had been taught the
+Anglican faith carefully and well by their governess, Fräulein Müller,
+who had become a staunch Anglican before entering the families of the
+English nobility, and by the kind Vicar of Grasmere, who took a warm
+interest in the orphan girls. Their grandmother had given them to
+understand that they might be as religious as they liked. She would be
+no let or hindrance to their piety; but they must ask her no awkward
+questions.
+
+'I have read a great deal and thought a great deal, and my ideas are
+still in a state of transition,' she told Lesbia; and Lesbia, who was
+somewhat automatic in her piety, had no desire to know more.
+
+Lady Maulevrier seldom appeared in the forenoon. She was an early riser,
+being too vivid and highly strung a creature, even at sixty-seven years
+of age, to give way to sloth. She rose at seven, summer and winter, but
+she spent the early part of the day in her own rooms, reading, writing,
+giving orders to her housekeeper, and occasionally interviewing
+Steadman, who, without any onerous duties, was certainly the most
+influential person in the house. People in the village talked of him,
+and envied him so good a berth. He had a gentleman's house to live in,
+and to all appearance lived as a gentleman. This tranquil retirement,
+free from care or labour, was a rich reward for the faithful service of
+his youth. And it was known by the better informed among the Grasmere
+people that Mr. Steadman was saving money, and had shares in the
+North-Western Railway. These facts had oozed out, of themselves, as it
+were. He was not a communicative man, and rarely wasted half an hour at
+the snug little inn near St. Oswald's Church, amidst the cluster of
+habitations that was once called Kirktown. He was an unsociable man,
+people said, and thought himself better than Grasmere folk, the
+lodging-house keepers, and guides, and wrestlers, and the honest
+friendly souls who were the outcome of that band of Norwegian exiles
+which found a home in these peaceful vales.
+
+Miss Müller, more commonly known as Fräulein, officiated at breakfast.
+She never appeared at the board when Lady Maulevrier was present, but in
+her ladyship's absence Miss Müller was guardian of the proprieties. She
+was a stout, kindly creature, and by no means a formidable dragon. When
+the gong sounded, John Hammond went into the dining-room, where he found
+Miss Müller seated alone in front of the urn.
+
+He bowed, quick to read 'governess' or 'companion' in the lady's
+appearance; and she bowed.
+
+'I hope you have had a nice walk,' she said. 'I saw you from my bedroom
+window.'
+
+'Did you? Then I suppose yours is one of the few windows which look into
+that curious old quadrangle?'
+
+'No, there are no windows looking into the quadrangle. Those that were
+in the original plan of the house were walled up at her ladyship's
+orders, to keep out the cold winds which sweep down from the hills in
+winter and early spring, when the edge of Loughrigg Fell is white with
+snow. My window looks into the gardens, and I saw you there with his
+lordship and Lady Mary.'
+
+Lady Lesbia came in at this moment, and saluted Mr. Hammond with a
+haughty inclination of her beautiful head. She looked lovelier in her
+simple morning gown of pale blue cambric than in her more elaborate
+toilette of last evening; such purity of complexion, such lustrous eyes;
+the untarnished beauty of youth, breathing the delicate freshness of a
+newly-opened flower. She might be as scornful as she pleased, yet John
+Hammond could not withhold his admiration. He was inclined to admire a
+woman who kept him at a distance; for the general bent of young women
+now-a-days is otherwise.
+
+Maulevrier and Mary came in, and everyone sat down to breakfast. Lady
+Lesbia unbent a little presently, and smiled upon the stranger. There
+was a relief in a stranger's presence. He talked of new things, places
+and people she had never seen. She brightened and became quite friendly,
+deigned to invite the expression of Mr. Hammond's opinions upon music
+and art, and after breakfast allowed him to follow her into the
+drawing-room, and to linger there fascinated for half an hour, looking
+over her newest books, and her last batch of music, but looking most of
+all at her, while Maulevrier and Mary were loafing on the lawn outside.
+
+'What are you going to do with yourself this morning?' asked Maulevrier,
+appearing suddenly at the window.
+
+'Anything you like,' answered Hammond. 'Stay, there is one pilgrimage I
+am eager to make. I must see Wordsworth's grave, and Wordsworth's
+house.'
+
+'You shall see them both, but they are in opposite directions--one at
+your elbow, the other a four mile walk. Which will you see first? We'll
+toss for it,' taking a shilling from a pocketful of loose cash, always
+ready for moments of hesitation. 'Heads, house; tails, grave. Tails it
+is. Come and have a smoke, and see the poet's grave. The splendour of
+the monument, the exquisite neatness with which it is kept, will astound
+you, considering that we live in a period of Wordsworth worship.'
+
+Hammond hesitated, and looked at Lady Lesbia.
+
+'Aren't you coming?' called Maulevrier from the lawn. 'It was a fair
+offer. I've got my cigarette case.'
+
+'Yes, I'm coming,' answered the other, with a disappointed air.
+
+He had hoped that Lesbia would offer to show him the poet's grave. He
+could not abandon that hope without a struggle.
+
+'Will you come with us, Lady Lesbia? We'll suppress the cigarettes!'
+
+'Thanks, no,' she said, becoming suddenly frigid. 'I am going to
+practice.'
+
+'Do you never walk in the morning--on such a lovely morning as this?'
+
+'Not very often.'
+
+She had re-entered those frozen regions from which his attentions had
+lured him for a little while. She had reminded herself of the inferior
+social position of this person, in whose conversation she had allowed
+herself to be interested.
+
+'_Filons_!' cried Maulevrier from below, and they went.
+
+Mary would have very much liked to go with them, but she did not want to
+be intrusive; so she went off to the kennels to see the terriers eat
+their morning and only meal of dog biscuit.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+THERE IS ALWAYS A SKELETON.
+
+
+The two young men strolled through the village, Maulevrier pausing to
+exchange greetings with almost everyone he met, and so to the rustic
+churchyard, above the beck.
+
+The beck was swollen with late rains, and was brawling merrily over its
+stony bed; the churchyard grass was deep and cool and shadowy under the
+clustering branches. The poet's tomb was disappointing in its unlovely
+simplicity, its stern, slatey hue. The plainest granite cross would have
+satisfied Mr. Hammond, or a cross in pure white marble, with a
+sculptured lamb at the base. Surely the lamb, emblem at once pastoral
+and sacred, ought to enter into any monument to Wordsworth; but that
+gray headstone, with its catalogue of dates, those stern iron
+railings--were these fit memorials of one whose soul so loved nature's
+loveliness?
+
+After Mr. Hammond had seen the little old, old church, and the medallion
+portrait inside, had seen all that Maulevrier could show him, in fact,
+the two young men went back to the place of graves, and sat on the low
+parapet above the beck, smoking their cigarettes, and talking with that
+perfect unreserve which can only obtain between men who are old and
+tried friends. They talked, as it was only natural they should talk, of
+that household at Fellside, where all things were new to John Hammond.
+
+'You like my sister Lesbia?' said Maulevrier.
+
+'Like her! well, yes. The difficulty with most men must be not to
+worship her.'
+
+'Ah, she's not my style. And she's beastly proud.'
+
+'A little _hauteur_ gives piquancy to her beauty; I admire a grand
+woman.'
+
+'So do I in a picture. Titian's Queen of Cyprus, or any party of that
+kind; but for flesh and blood I like humility--a woman who knows she is
+human, and not infallible, and only just a little better than you or me.
+When I choose a wife, she will be no such example of cultivated
+perfection as my sister Lesbia. I want no goddess, but a nice little
+womanly woman, to jog along the rough and tumble road of life with me.'
+
+'Lady Maulevrier's influence, no doubt, has in a great measure
+determined the bent of your sister's character: and from what you have
+told me about her ladyship, I should think a fixed idea of her own
+superiority would be inevitable in any girl trained by her.'
+
+'Yes, she is a proud woman--a proud, hard woman--and she has steeped
+Lesbia's mind in all her own pet ideas and prejudices. Yet, God knows,
+we have little reason to hold our heads high,' said Maulevrier, with a
+gloomy look.
+
+John Hammond did not reply to this remark: perhaps there was some
+difficulty for a man situated as he was in finding a fit reply. He
+smoked in silence, looking down at the pure swift waters of the Rotha
+tumbling over the crags and boulders below.
+
+'Doesn't somebody say there is always a skeleton in the cupboard, and
+the nobler and more ancient the race the bigger the skeleton?' said
+Maulevrier, with a philosophical air.
+
+'Yes, your family secret is an attribute of a fine old race. The
+Pelopidæ, for instance--in their case it was not a single skeleton, but
+a whole charnel house. I don't think your skeleton need trouble you,
+Maulevrier. It belongs to the remote past.'
+
+'Those things never belong to the past,' said the young man. 'If it were
+any other kind of taint--profligacy--madness, even--the story of a duel
+that went very near murder--a runaway wife--a rebellious son--a cruel
+husband. I have heard such stories hinted at in the records of families.
+But our story means disgrace. I seldom see strangers putting their heads
+together at the club without fancying they are telling each other about
+my grandfather, and pointing me out as the grandson and heir of a
+thief.'
+
+'Why use unduly hard words?'
+
+'Why should I stoop to sophistication with you, my friend. Dishonesty
+is dishonesty all the world over; and to plunder Rajahs on a large scale
+is no less vile than to pick a pocket on Ludgate Hill.'
+
+'Nothing was ever proved against your grandfather.'
+
+'No, he died in the nick of time, and the inquiry was squashed, thanks
+to the Angersthorpe interest, and my grandmother's cleverness. But if he
+had lived a few weeks longer England would have rung with the story of
+his profligacy and dishonour. Some people say he committed suicide in
+order to escape the inquiry; but I have heard my mother emphatically
+deny this. My father told her that he had often talked with the people
+who kept the little inn where his father died, and they were clear
+enough in their assertion that the death was a natural death--the sudden
+collapse of an exhausted constitution.'
+
+'Was it on account of this scandal that your father spent the best part
+of his life away from England?' Hammond asked, feeling that it was a
+relief to Maulevrier to talk about this secret burden of his.
+
+The young Earl was light-hearted and frivolous by nature, yet even he
+had his graver moments; and upon this subject of the old Maulevrier
+scandal he was peculiarly sensitive, perhaps all the more so because his
+grandmother had never allowed him to speak to her about it, had never
+satisfied his curiosity upon any details of that painful story.
+
+'I have very little doubt it was so--though I wasn't old enough when he
+died to hear as much from his own lips. My father went straight from the
+University to Vienna, where he began his career in the diplomatic
+service, and where he soon afterwards married a dowerless English girl
+of good family. He went to Rio as first secretary, and died of fever
+within seven years of his marriage, leaving a widow and three babies,
+the youngest in long clothes. Mother and babies all came over to
+England, and were at once established at Fellside. I can remember the
+voyage--and I can remember my poor mother who never recovered the blow
+of my father's death, and who died in yonder house, after five years of
+broken health and broken spirits. We had no one but the dowager to look
+to as children--hardly another friend in the world. She did what she
+liked with us; she kept the girls as close as nuns, so _they_ have never
+heard a hint of the old history; no breach of scandal has reached
+_their_ ears. But she could not shut me up in a country house for ever,
+though she did succeed in keeping me away from a public school. The time
+came when I had to go to the University, and there I heard all that had
+been said about Lord Maulevrier. The men who told me about the old
+scandal in a friendly way pretended not to believe it; but one night,
+when I had got into a row at a wine-party with a tailor's son, he told
+me that if his father was a snip my grandfather was a thief, and so he
+thought himself the better bred of the two. I smashed his nose for him,
+but as it was a decided pug before the row began, that hardly squared
+the matter.'
+
+'Did you ever hear the exact story?'
+
+'I have heard a dozen stories; and if only a quarter of them are true my
+grandfather was a scoundrel. It seems that he was immensely popular for
+the first year or so of his government, gave more splendid
+entertainments than had been given at Madras for half a century before
+his time, lavished his wealth upon his favourites. Then arose a rumour
+that the governor was insolvent and harassed by his creditors, and then
+a new source of wealth seemed to be at his command; he was more
+reckless, more princely than ever; and then, little by little, there
+arose the suspicion that he was trafficking in English interests,
+selling his influence to petty princes, winking at those mysterious
+crimes by which rightful heirs are pushed aside to make room for
+usurpers. Lastly it became notorious that he was the slave of a wicked
+woman, false wife, suspected murderess, whose husband, a native prince,
+disappeared from the scene just when his existence became perilous to
+the governor's reputation. According to one version of the story, the
+scandal of this Rajah's mysterious disappearance, followed not long
+after by the Ranee's equally mysterious death, was the immediate cause
+of my grandfather's recall. How much, or how little of this story--or
+other dark stories of the same kind--is true, whether my grandfather was
+a consummate scoundrel, or the victim of a baseless slander,--whether he
+left India a rich man or a poor man, is known to no mortal except Lady
+Maulevrier, and compared with her the Theban Sphinx was a communicative
+individual.'
+
+'Let the dead bury their dead,' said Hammond. 'Neither you nor your
+sisters can be the worse for this ancient slander. No doubt every part
+of the story has been distorted and exaggerated in the telling; and a
+great deal of it may be pure invention, evolved from the inner
+consciousness of the slanderer. God forbid that any whisper of scandal
+should ever reach Lady Lesbia's ears.'
+
+He ignored poor Mary. It was to him as if there were no such person. Her
+feeble light was extinguished by the radiance of her sister's beauty;
+her very individuality was annihilated.
+
+'As for you, dear old fellow,' he said, with warm affection, 'no one
+will ever think the worse of you on account of your grandfather's
+peccadilloes.'
+
+'Yes, they will. Hereditary genius is one of our modern crazes. When a
+man's grandfather was a rogue, there must be a taint in his blood.
+People don't believe in spontaneous generation, moral or physical,
+now-a-days. Typhoid breeds typhoid, and typhus breeds typhus, just as
+dog breeds dog; and who will believe that a cheat and a liar can be the
+father of honest men?'
+
+'In that case, knowing what kind of man the grandson is, I will never
+believe that the grandfather was a rogue,' said Hammond, heartily.
+
+Maulevrier put out his hand without a word, and it was warmly grasped by
+his friend.
+
+'As for her ladyship, I respect and honour her as a woman who has led a
+life of self-sacrifice, and has worn her pride as an armour,' continued
+Hammond.
+
+'Yes, I believe the dowager's character is rather fine,' said
+Maulevrier; 'but she and I have never hit our horses very well together.
+She would have liked such a fellow as you for a grandson, Jack--a man
+who took high honours at Oxford, and could hold his own against all
+comers. Such a grandson would have gratified her pride, and would have
+repaid her for the trouble she had taken in nursing the Maulevrier
+estate; for however poor a property it was when her husband went to
+India there is no doubt that it is a very fine estate now, and that the
+dowager has been the making of it.'
+
+The two young men strolled up to Easedale Tarn before they went back to
+Fellside, where Lady Maulevrier received them with a stately
+graciousness, and where Lady Lesbia unbent considerably at luncheon, and
+condescended to an animated conversation with her brother's friend. It
+was such a new thing to have a stranger at the family board, a man whose
+information was well abreast with the march of progress, who could talk
+eloquently upon every subject which people care to talk about. In this
+new and animated society Lesbia seemed like an enchanted princess
+suddenly awakened from a spell-bound slumber. Molly looked at her sister
+with absolute astonishment. Never had she seen her so bright, so
+beautiful--no longer a picture or a statue, but a woman warm with the
+glow of life.
+
+'No wonder Mr. Hammond admires her,' thought poor Molly, who was quite
+acute enough to see the stranger's keen appreciation of her sister's
+charms, and positive indifference towards herself.
+
+There are some things which women find out by instinct, just as the
+needle turns towards the magnet. Shut a girl up in a tower till she is
+eighteen years old, and on the day of her release introduce her to the
+first man her eyes have ever looked upon, and she will know at a glance
+whether he admires her.
+
+After luncheon the four young people started for Rydal Mount; with
+Fräulein as chaperon and watch-dog. The girls were both good walkers.
+Lady Lesbia even, though she looked like a hot-house flower, had been
+trained to active habits, could walk and ride, and play tennis, and
+climb a hill as became a mountain-bred damsel. Molly, feeling that her
+conversational powers were not appreciated by her brother's friend, took
+half a dozen dogs for company, and with three fox-terriers, a little
+Yorkshire dog, a colley and an otter-hound, was at no loss for society
+on the road, more especially as Maulevrier gave her most of his company,
+and entertained her with an account of his Black Forest adventures, and
+all the fine things he had said to the fair-haired, blue-eyed Baden
+girls, who had sold him photographs or wild strawberries, or had
+awakened the echoes of the hills with the music of their rustic flutes.
+
+Fräulein was perfectly aware that her mission upon this particular
+afternoon was not to let Lady Lesbia out of her sight for an instant, to
+hear every word the young lady said, and every word Mr. Hammond
+addressed to her. She had received no specific instructions from Lady
+Maulevrier. They were not necessary, for the Fräulein knew her
+ladyship's intentions with regard to her elder granddaughter,--knew
+them, at least, so far as that Lesbia was intended to make a brilliant
+marriage; and she knew, therefore, that the presence of this handsome
+and altogether attractive young man was to the last degree obnoxious to
+the dowager. She was obliged to be civil to him for her nephew's sake,
+and she was too wise to let Lesbia imagine him dangerous: but the fact
+that he was dangerous was obvious, and it was Fräulein's duty to protect
+her employer's interests.
+
+Everybody knew Lord Maulevrier, so there was no difficulty about getting
+admission to Wordsworth's garden and Wordsworth's house, and after Mr.
+Hammond and his companions had explored these, they went back to the
+shores of the little lake, and climbed that rocky eminence upon which
+the poet used to sit, above the placid waters of silvery Rydal. It is a
+lovely spot, and that narrow lake, so poor a thing were magnitude the
+gauge of beauty, had a soft and pensive loveliness in the clear
+afternoon light.
+
+'Poor Wordsworth' sighed Lesbia, as she stood on the grassy crag looking
+down on the shining water, broken in the foreground by fringes of
+rushes, and the rich luxuriance of water-lilies. 'Is it not pitiable to
+think of the years he spent in this monotonous place, without any
+society worth speaking of, with only the shabbiest collection of books,
+with hardly any interest in life except the sky, and the hills, and the
+peasantry?'
+
+'I think Wordsworth's was an essentially happy life, in spite of his
+narrow range,' answered Hammond. 'You, with your ardent youth and vivid
+desire for a life of action, cannot imagine the calm blisses of reverie
+and constant communion with nature. Wordsworth had a thousand companions
+you and I would never dream of; for him every flower that grows was an
+individual existence--almost a soul.'
+
+'It was a mild kind of lunacy, an everlasting opium dream without the
+opium; but I am grateful to him for living such a life, since it has
+bequeathed us some exquisite poetry,' said Lesbia, who had been too
+carefully cultured to fleer or flout at Wordsworth.
+
+'I do believe there's an otter just under that bank,' cried Molly, who
+had been watching the obvious excitement of her bandy-legged hound; and
+she rushed down to the brink of the water, leaping lightly from stone to
+stone, and inciting the hound to business.
+
+'Let him alone, can't you?' roared Maulevrier; 'leave him in peace till
+he's wanted. If you disturb him now he'll desert his holt, and we may
+have a blank day. The hounds are to be out to-morrow.'
+
+'I may go with you?' asked Mary, eagerly.
+
+'Well, yes, I suppose you'll want to be in it.' Molly and her brother
+went on an exploring ramble along the edge of the water towards
+Ambleside, leaving John Hammond in Lesbia's company, but closely guarded
+by Miss Müller. These three went to look at Nab Cottage, where poor
+Hartley Coleridge ended his brief and clouded days; and they had gone
+some way upon their homeward walk before they were rejoined by
+Maulevrier and Mary, the damsel's kilted skirt considerably the worse
+for mud and mire.
+
+'What would grandmother say if she were to see you!' exclaimed Lesbia,
+looking contemptuously at the muddy petticoat.
+
+'I am not going to let her see me, so she will say nothing,' cried Mary,
+and then she called to the dogs, 'Ammon, Agag, Angelina;' and the three
+fox terriers flew along the road, falling over themselves in the
+swiftness of their flight, darting, and leaping, and scrambling over
+each other, and offering the spectators the most intense example of
+joyous animal life.
+
+The colley was far up on the hill-side, and the otter-hound was still
+hunting the water, but the terriers never went out of Mary's sight. They
+looked to her to take the initiative in all their sports.
+
+They were back at Fellside in time for a very late tea. Lady Maulevrier
+was waiting for them in the drawing-room.
+
+'Oh, grandmother, why did you not take your tea!' exclaimed Lesbia,
+looking really distressed. 'It is six o'clock.'
+
+'I am used to have you at home to hand me my cup,' replied the dowager,
+with a touch of reproachfulness.
+
+'I am so sorry,' said Lesbia, sitting down before the tea-table, and
+beginning her accustomed duty. 'Indeed, dear grandmother, I had no idea
+it was so late; but it was such a lovely afternoon, and Mr. Hammond is
+so interested in everything connected with Wordsworth--'
+
+She was looking her loveliest at this moment, all that was softest in
+her nature called forth by her desire to please her grandmother, whom
+she really loved. She hung over Lady Maulevrier's chair, attending to
+her small wants, and seeming scarcely to remember the existence of
+anyone else. In this phase of her character she seemed to Mr. Hammond
+the perfection of womanly grace.
+
+Mary had rushed off to her room to change her muddy gown, and came in
+presently, dressed for dinner, looking the picture of innocence.
+
+John Hammond received his tea-cup from Lesbia's hand, and lingered in
+the drawing-room talking to the dowager and her granddaughters till it
+was time to dress. Lady Maulevrier found herself favourably impressed by
+him in spite of her prejudices. It was very provoking of Maulevrier to
+have brought such a man to Fellside. His very merits were objectionable.
+She tried with exquisite art to draw him into some revealment as to his
+family and antecedents: but he evaded every attempt of that kind. It was
+too evident that he was a self-made man, whose intellect and good looks
+were his only fortune. It was criminal in Maulevrier to have brought
+such a person to Fellside. Her ladyship began to think seriously of
+sending the two girls to St. Bees or Tynemouth for change of air, in
+charge of Fräulein. But any sudden proceeding of that kind would
+inevitably awaken Lesbia's suspicions; and there is nothing so fatal to
+a woman's peace as this idea of danger. No, the peril must be faced. She
+could only hope that Maulevrier would soon tire of Fellside. A week's
+Westmoreland weather--gray skies and long rainy days, would send these
+young men away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+A CRY IN THE DARKNESS.
+
+
+The peril had to be faced, for the weather did not favour Lady
+Maulevrier's hopes. Westmoreland skies forgot to shed their accustomed
+showers. Westmoreland hills seemed to have lost their power of drawing
+down the rain. That August was a lovely month, and the young people at
+Fellside revelled in ideal weather. Maulevrier took his friend
+everywhere--by hill and stream and force and gill--to all those chosen
+spots which make the glory of the Lake country--on Windermere and
+Thirlmere, away through the bleak pass of Kirkstone to Ullswater--on
+driving excursions, and on boating excursions, and pedestrian rambles,
+which latter the homely-minded Hammond seemed to like best of all, for
+he was a splendid walker, and loved the freedom of a mountain ramble,
+the liberty to pause and loiter and waste an hour at will, without being
+accountable to anybody's coachman, or responsible for the well-being of
+anybody's horses.
+
+On some occasions the two girls and Miss Müller were of the party, and
+then it seemed to John Hammond as if nothing were needed to complete the
+glory of earth and sky. There were other days--rougher journeys--when
+the men went alone, and there were days when Lady Mary stole away from
+her books and music, and all those studies which she was supposed still
+to be pursuing--no longer closely supervised by her governess, but on
+parole, as it were--and went with her brother and his friend across the
+hills and far away. Those were happy days for Mary, for it was always
+delight to her to be with Maulevrier; yet she had a profound conviction
+of John Hammond's indifference, kind and courteous as he was in all his
+dealings with her, and a sense of her own inferiority, of her own humble
+charms and little power to please, which was so acute as to be almost
+pain. One day this keen sense of humiliation broke from her unawares in
+her talk with her brother, as they two sat on a broad heathy slope face
+to face with one of the Langdale pikes, and with a deep valley at their
+feet, while John Hammond was climbing from rock to rock in the gorge on
+their right, exploring the beauties of Dungeon Ghyll.
+
+'I wonder whether he thinks me very ugly?' said Mary, with her hands
+clasped upon her knees, her eyes fixed on Wetherlam, upon whose steep
+brow a craggy mass of brown rock clothed with crimson heather stood out
+from the velvety green of the hill-side.
+
+'Who thinks you ugly?'
+
+'Mr. Hammond. I'm sure he does. I am so sunburnt and so horrid!'
+
+'But you are not ugly. Why, Molly, what are you dreaming about?'
+
+'Oh, yes, I am ugly. I may not seem so to you, perhaps, because you are
+used to me, but I know he must think me very plain compared with Lesbia,
+whom he admires so much.'
+
+'Yes, he admires Lesbia. There is no doubt of that.'
+
+'And I know he thinks me plain,' said Molly, contemplating Wetherlam
+with sorrowful eyes, as if the sequence were inevitable.
+
+'My dearest girl, what nonsense! Plain, forsooth? Ugly, quotha? Why,
+there are not a finer pair of eyes in Westmoreland than my Molly's, or a
+prettier smile, or whiter teeth.'
+
+'But all the rest is horrid,' said Mary, intensely in earnest. 'I am
+sunburnt, freckled, and altogether odious--like a haymaker or a market
+woman. Grandmother has said so often enough, and I know it is the truth.
+I can see it in Mr. Hammond's manner.'
+
+'What! freckles and sunburn, and the haymaker, and all that?' cried
+Maulevrier, laughing. 'What an expressive manner Jack's must be, if it
+can convey all that--like Lord Burleigh's nod, by Jove. Why, what a
+goose you are, Mary. Jack thinks you a very nice girl, and a very pretty
+girl, I'll be bound; but aren't you clever enough to understand that
+when a man is over head and ears in love with one woman, he is apt to
+seem just a little indifferent to all the other women in the world? and
+there is no doubt Jack is desperately in love with Lesbia.'
+
+'You ought not to let him be in love with her,' protested Mary. 'You
+know it can only lead to his unhappiness. You must know what grandmother
+is, and how she has made up her mind that Lesbia is to marry some great
+person. You ought not to have brought Mr. Hammond here. It is like
+letting him into a trap.'
+
+'Do you think it was wrong?' asked her brother, smiling at her
+earnestness. 'I should be very sorry if poor Jack should come to grief.
+But still, if Lesbia likes him--which I think she does--we ought to be
+able to talk over the dowager.'
+
+'Never,' cried Mary. 'Grandmother would never give way. You have no idea
+how ambitious she is. Why, once when Lesbia was in a poetical mood, and
+said she would marry the man she liked best in the world, if he were a
+pauper, her ladyship flew into a terrible passion, and told her she
+would renounce her, that she would curse her, if she were to marry
+beneath her, or marry without her grandmother's consent.'
+
+'Hard lines for Hammond,' said Maulevrier, rather lightly. 'Then I
+suppose we must give up the idea of a match between him and Lesbia.'
+
+'You ought not to have brought him here,' retorted Mary. 'You had better
+invent some plan for sending him away. If he stay it will be only to
+break his heart.'
+
+'Dear child, men's hearts do not break so easily. I have fancied that
+mine was broken more than once in my life, yet it is sound enough, I
+assure you.'
+
+'Oh!' sighed Mary, 'but you are not like him; wounds do not go so deep
+with you.'
+
+The subject of their conversation came out of the rocky cleft in the
+hills as Mary spoke. She saw his hat appearing out of the gorge, and
+then the man himself emerged, a tall well-built figure, clad in brown
+tweed, coming towards them, with sketch-book and colour-box in his
+pocket. He had been making what he called memoranda of the waterfall, a
+stone or two here, a cluster of ferns there, or a tree torn up by the
+roots, and yet green and living, hanging across the torrent, a rude
+natural bridge.
+
+This round by the Langdale Pikes and Dungeon Ghyll was one of their best
+days; or, at least, Molly and her brother thought so; for to those two
+the presence of Lesbia and her chaperon was always a restraint.
+
+Mary could walk twice as far as her elder sister, and revelled in
+hill-side paths and all manner of rough places. They ordered their
+luncheon at the inn below the waterfall, and had it carried up on to the
+furzy slope in front of Wetherlam, where they could eat and drink and be
+merry to the music of the force as it came down from the hills behind
+them, while the lights and shadows came and went upon yonder rugged
+brow, now gray in the shadow, now ruddy in the sunshine.
+
+Mary was as gay as a bird during that rough and ready luncheon. No one
+would have suspected her uneasiness about John Hammond's peril or her
+own plainness. She might let her real self appear to her brother, who
+had been her trusted friend and father confessor from her babyhood; but
+she was too thorough a woman to let Mr. Hammond discover the depth of
+her sympathy, the tenderness of her compassion for his woes. Later, as
+they were walking home across the hills, by Great Langdale and Little
+Langdale, and Fox Howe and Loughrigg Fell, she fell behind a few paces
+with Maulevrier, and said to him very earnestly--
+
+'You won't tell, will you, dear?'
+
+'Tell what?' he asked, staring at her.
+
+'Don't tell Mr. Hammond what I said about his thinking me ugly. He might
+want to apologise to me, and that would be too humiliating. I was very
+childish to say such a silly thing.'
+
+'Undoubtedly you were.'
+
+'And you won't tell him?'
+
+'Tell him anything that would degrade my Mary? Assail her dignity by so
+much as a breath? Sooner would I have this tongue torn out with red-hot
+pincers.'
+
+On the next day, and the next, sunshine and summer skies still
+prevailed; but Mr. Hammond did not seem to care for rambling far afield.
+He preferred loitering about in the village, rowing on the lake, reading
+in the garden, and playing lawn tennis. He had only inclination for
+those amusements which kept him within a stone's throw of Fellside: and
+Mary knew that this disposition had arisen in his mind since Lesbia had
+withdrawn herself from all share in their excursions. Lesbia had not
+been rude to her brother or her brother's friend; she had declined their
+invitations with smiles and sweetness; but there was always some
+reason--a new song to be practised, a new book to be read, a letter to
+be written--why she should not go for drives or walks or steamboat trips
+with Maulevrier and his friend.
+
+So Mr. Hammond suddenly found out that he had seen all that was worth
+seeing in the Lake country, and that there was nothing so enjoyable as
+the placid idleness of Fellside; and at Fellside Lady Lesbia could not
+always avoid him without a too-marked intention, so he tasted the
+sweetness of her society to a much greater extent than was good for his
+peace, if the case were indeed as hopeless as Lady Mary declared. He
+strolled about the grounds with her; he drank the sweet melody of her
+voice in Heine's tenderest ballads; he read to her on the sunlit lawn in
+the lazy afternoon hours; he played billiards with her; he was her
+faithful attendant at afternoon tea; he gave himself up to the study of
+her character, which, to his charmed eyes, seemed the perfection of pure
+and placid womanhood. There might, perhaps, be some lack of passion and
+of force in this nature, a marked absence of that impulsive feeling
+which is a charm in some women: but this want was atoned for by
+sweetness of character, and Mr. Hammond argued that in these calm
+natures there is often an unsuspected depth, a latent force, a grandeur
+of soul, which only reveals itself in the great ordeals of life.
+
+So John Hammond hung about the luxurious drawing-room at Fellside in a
+manner which his friend Maulevrier ridiculed as unmanly.
+
+'I had no idea you were such a tame cat,' he said: 'if when we were
+salmon fishing in Canada anybody had told me you could loll about a
+drawing-room all day listening to a girl squalling and reading novels, I
+shouldn't have believed a word of it.'
+
+'We had plenty of roughing on the shores of the St. Lawrence,' answered
+Hammond. 'Summer idleness in a drawing-room is an agreeable variety.'
+
+It is not to be supposed that John Hammond's state of mind could long
+remain unperceived by the keen eyes of the dowager. She saw the gradual
+dawning of his love, she saw the glow of its meridian. She was pleased
+to behold this proof of Lesbia's power over the heart of man. So would
+she conquer the man foredoomed to be her husband when the coming time
+should bring them together. But agreeable as the fact of this first
+conquest might be, as an evidence of Lesbia's supremacy among women, the
+situation was not without its peril; and Lady Maulevrier felt that she
+could no longer defer the duty of warning her granddaughter. She had
+wished, if possible, to treat the thing lightly to the very last, so
+that Lesbia should never know there had been danger. She had told her, a
+few days ago, that those drives, and walks with the two young men were
+undignified, even although guarded by the Fräulein's substantial
+presence.
+
+'You are making yourself too much a companion to Maulevrier and his
+friend,' said the dowager. 'If you do not take care you will grow like
+Mary.'
+
+'I would do anything in the world to avoid _that_,' replied Lesbia. 'Our
+walks and drives have been very pleasant. Mr. Hammond is extremely
+clever, and can talk about everything.'
+
+Her colour heightened ever so little as she spoke of him, an indication
+duly observed by Lady Maulevrier.
+
+'No doubt the man is clever; all adventurers are clever; and you have
+sense enough to see that this man is an adventurer--a mere sponge and
+toady of Maulevrier's.'
+
+'There is nothing of the sponge or the toady in his manner,' protested
+Lady Lesbia, with a still deeper blush, the warm glow of angry feeling.
+
+'My dear child, what do you know of such people--or of the atmosphere in
+which they are generated? The sponge and toady of to-day is not the
+clumsy fawning wretch you have read about in old-fashioned novels. He
+can flatter adroitly, and feed upon his friends, and yet maintain a show
+of manhood and independence. I'll wager Mr. Hammond's trip to Canada did
+not cost him sixpence, and that he hardly opened his purse all the time
+he was in Germany.'
+
+'If my brother wants the company of a friend who is much poorer than
+himself, he must pay for it,' argued Lesbia. 'I think Maulevrier is
+lucky to have such a companion as Mr. Hammond.'
+
+Yet, even while she so argued, Lady Lesbia felt in some manner
+humiliated by the idea that this man who so palpably worshipped her was
+too poor to pay his own travelling expenses.
+
+Poets and philosophers may say what they will about the grandeur of
+plain living and high thinking; but a young woman thinks better of the
+plain liver who is not compelled to plainness by want of cash. The idea
+of narrow means, of dependence upon the capricious generosity of a
+wealthy friend is not without its humiliating influence. Lesbia was
+barely civil to Mr. Hammond that evening when he praised her singing;
+and she refused to join in a four game proposed by Maulevrier, albeit
+she and Mr. Hammond had beaten Mary and Maulevrier the evening before,
+with much exultant hilarity.
+
+Hammond had been at Fellside nearly a month, and Maulevrier was
+beginning to talk about a move further northward. There was a grouse
+moor in Argyleshire which the two young men talked about as belonging to
+some unnamed friend of the Earl's, which they had thought of shooting
+over before the grouse season was ended.
+
+'Lord Hartfield has property in Argyleshire,' said the dowager, when
+they talked of these shootings. 'Do you know his estate, Mr. Hammond?'
+
+'Hammond knows that there is such a place, I daresay,' replied
+Maulevrier, replying for his friend.
+
+'But you do not know Lord Hartfield, perhaps,' said her ladyship, not
+arrogantly, but still in a tone which implied her conviction that John
+Hammond would not be hand-in-glove with earls, in Scotland or elsewhere.
+
+'Oh, yes! I know him by sight--every one in Argyleshire knows him by
+sight.'
+
+'Naturally. A young man in his position must be widely known. Is he
+popular?'
+
+'Fairly so.'
+
+'His father and I were friends many years ago,' said Lady Maulevrier,
+with a faint sigh. 'Have you ever heard if he resembles his father?'
+
+'I believe not. I am told he is like his mother's family.'
+
+'Then he ought to be handsome. Lady Florence Ilmington was a famous
+beauty.'
+
+They were sitting in the drawing-room after dinner, the room dimly
+lighted by darkly-shaded lamps, the windows wide open to the summer sky
+and moonlit lake. In that subdued light Lady Maulevrier looked a woman
+in the prime of life. The classical modelling of her features and the
+delicacy of her complexion were unimpaired by time, while those traces
+of thought and care which gave age to her face in the broad light of day
+were invisible at night. John Hammond contemplated that refined and
+placid countenance with profound admiration. He remembered how her
+ladyship's grandson had compared her with the Sphinx; and it seemed to
+him to-night, as he studied her proud and tranquil beauty, that there
+was indeed something of the mysterious, the unreadable in that
+countenance, and that beneath its heroic calm there might be the ashes
+of tragic passion, the traces of a life-long struggle with fate. That
+such a woman, so beautiful, so gifted, so well fitted to shine and
+govern in the great world, should have been content to live a long life
+of absolute seclusion in this remote valley was in itself a social
+mystery which must needs set an observant young man wondering. It was
+all very well to say that Lady Maulevrier loved a country life, that she
+had made Fellside her earthly Paradise, and had no desire beyond it. The
+fact remained that it was not in Lady Maulevrier's temperament to be
+satisfied with such an existence; that falcon eye was never meant to
+gaze for ever upon one narrow range of mountain and lake; that lip was
+made to speak among the great ones of the world.
+
+Lady Maulevrier was particularly gracious to her grandson's friend this
+evening. Maulevrier spoke so decisively about a speedy migration
+northward, seemed so inclined to regret the time wasted since the
+twelfth of the month, that she thought the danger was past, and she
+could afford to be civil. She really liked the young man, had no doubt
+in her own mind that he was a gentleman in the highest and broadest
+sense of the word, but not in the sense which made him an eligible
+husband for either of her granddaughters.
+
+Lesbia was in a pensive mood this evening. She sat in the verandah,
+looking dreamily at the lake, and at Fairfield yonder, a broad green
+slope, silvered with moonlight, and seeming to stretch far away into
+unfathomable distance.
+
+If one could but take one's lover by the hand and go wandering over
+those mystic moonlit slopes into some new unreal world where it would
+not matter whether a man were rich or poor, high-born or low-born, where
+there should be no such things as rank and state to be won or lost!
+Lesbia felt to-night as if she would like to live out her life in
+dreamland. Reality was too hard, too much set round by difficulties and
+sacrifices.
+
+While Lesbia was losing herself in that dream-world, Lady Maulevrier
+unbent considerably to John Hammond, and talked to him with more
+appearance of interest in his actual self, and in his own affairs, than
+she had manifested, hitherto although she had been uniformly courteous.
+
+She asked him his plans for the future--had he chosen a profession?
+
+He told her that he had not. He meant to devote himself to literature
+and politics.
+
+'Is not that rather vague?' inquired her ladyship.
+
+'Everything is vague at first.'
+
+'But literature now--as an amusement, no doubt, it is delightful--but as
+a profession--does literature ever pay?'
+
+'There have been such cases.'
+
+'Yes, I suppose so. Walter Scott, Gibbon, Macaulay, Froude, those made
+money no doubt. But there is a suspicion of hopelessness in the idea of
+a young man starting in life intending to earn his bread by literature.
+One remembers Chatterton. I should have thought that in your case the
+law or the church would have been better. In the latter Maulevrier might
+have been useful to you. He is patron of three or four livings.'
+
+'You are too good even to think of such a thing,' said Hammond; 'but I
+have set my heart upon a political career. I must swim or sink in that
+sea.'
+
+Lady Maulevrier looked at him with a compassionate smile Poor young man!
+No doubt he thought himself a genius, and that doors which had remained
+shut to everybody else would turn on their hinges directly he knocked at
+them. She was sincerely sorry for him. Young, clever, enthusiastic, and
+doomed to bitterest disappointment.
+
+'You have parents, perhaps, who are ambitious for you--a mother who
+thinks her son a heaven-born statesman!' said her ladyship, kindly.
+
+'Alas, no! that incentive to ambition is wanting in my case. I have
+neither father nor mother living.'
+
+'That is very sad. No doubt that fact has been a bond of sympathy
+between you and Maulevrier?'
+
+'I believe it has.'
+
+'Well, I hope Providence will smile upon your path.'
+
+'Come what may, I shall never forget the happy weeks I have spent at
+Fellside,' said Hammond, 'or your ladyship's gracious hospitality.'
+
+He took up the beautiful hand, white to transparency, showing the
+delicate tracing of blue veins, and pressed his lips upon it in
+chivalrous worship of age and womanly dignity.
+
+Lady Maulevrier smiled upon him with her calm, grave smile. She would
+have liked to say, 'You shall be welcome again at Fellside,' but she
+felt that the man was dangerous. Not while Lesbia remained single could
+she court his company. If Maulevrier brought him she must tolerate his
+presence, but she would do nothing to invite that danger.
+
+There was no music that evening. Maulevrier and Mary were playing
+billiards; Fräulein Müller was sitting in her corner working at a
+high-art counterpane. Lesbia came in from the verandah presently, and
+sat on a low stool by her grandmother's arm-chair, and talked to her in
+soft, cooing accents, inaudible to John Hammond, who sat a little way
+off turning the leaves of the _Contemporary Review_: and this went on
+till eleven o'clock, the regular hour for retiring, when Mary came in
+from the billiard-room, and told Mr. Hammond that Maulevrier was waiting
+for a smoke and a talk. Then candles were lighted, and the ladies all
+departed, leaving John Hammond and his friend with the house to
+themselves.
+
+They played a fifty game, and smoked and talked till the stroke of
+midnight, by which time it seemed as if there were not another creature
+awake in the house. Maulevrier put out the lamps in the billiard-room,
+and then they went softly up the shadowy staircase, and parted in the
+gallery, the Earl going one way, and his friend the other.
+
+The house was large and roomy, spread over a good deal of ground, Lady
+Maulevrier having insisted upon there being only two stories. The
+servants' rooms were all in a side wing, corresponding with those older
+buildings which had been given over to Steadman and his wife, and among
+the villagers of Grasmere enjoyed the reputation of being haunted. A
+wide panelled corridor extended from one end of the house to the other.
+It was lighted from the roof, and served as a gallery for the display of
+a small and choice collection of modern art, which her ladyship had
+acquired during her long residence at Fellside. Here, too, in Sheraton
+cabinets, were those treasures of old English china which Lady
+Maulevrier had inherited from past generations.
+
+Her ladyship's rooms were situated at the southern end of this corridor,
+her bed-chamber being at the extreme end of the house, with windows
+commanding two magnificent views, one across the lake and the village of
+Grasmere to the green slopes of Fairfield, the other along the valley
+towards Rydal Water. This and the adjoining boudoir were the prettiest
+rooms in the house, and no one wondered that her ladyship should spend
+so much of her life in the luxurious seclusion of her own apartments.
+
+John Hammond went to his room, which was on the same side of the house
+as her ladyship's; but he was in no disposition for sleep. He opened the
+casement, and stood looking out upon the moonlit lake and the quiet
+village, where one solitary light shone like a faint star in a cottage
+window, amidst that little cluster of houses by the old church, once
+known as Kirktown. Beyond the village rose gentle slopes, crowned with
+foliage, and above those wooded crests appeared the grand outline of the
+hills, surrounding and guarding Easedale's lovely valley, as the hills
+surrounded Jerusalem of old.
+
+He looked at that delicious landscape with eyes that hardly saw its
+beauty. The image of a lovely face came between him and all the glory of
+earth and sky.
+
+'I think she likes me,' he was saying to himself. 'There was a look in
+her eyes to-night that told me the time was come when----'
+
+The thought died unfinished in his brain. Through the silent house,
+across the placid lake, there rang a wild, shrill cry that froze the
+blood in his veins, or seemed so to freeze it--a shriek of agony, and in
+a woman's voice. It rang out from an open window near his own. The sound
+seemed close to his ear.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+'O BITTERNESS OF THINGS TOO SWEET.'
+
+
+Only for an instant did John Hammond stand motionless after hearing that
+unearthly shriek. In the next moment he rushed into the corridor,
+expecting to hear the sound repeated, to find himself face to face with
+some midnight robber, whose presence had caused that wild cry of alarm.
+But in the corridor all was silent as the grave. No open door suggested
+the entrance of an intruder. The dimly-burning lamps showed only the
+long empty gallery. He stood still for a few moments listening for
+voices, footsteps, the rustle of garments: but there was nothing.
+
+Nothing? Yes, a groan, a long-drawn moaning sound, as of infinite pain.
+This time there was no doubt as to the direction from which the sound
+came. It came from Lady Maulevrier's room. The door was ajar, and he
+could see the faint light of the night-lamp within. That fearful cry had
+come from her ladyship's room. She was in peril or pain of some kind.
+
+Convinced of this one fact, Mr. Hammond had not an instant's hesitation.
+He pushed open the door without compunction, and entered the room,
+prepared to behold some terrible scene.
+
+But all was quiet as death itself. No midnight burglar had violated the
+sanctity of Lady Maulevrier's apartment. The soft, steady light of the
+night-lamp shone on the face of the sleeper. Yes, all was quiet in the
+room, but not in that sleeper's soul. The broad white brow was painfully
+contracted, the lips drawn down and distorted, the delicate hand, half
+hidden by the deep Valenciennes ruffle, clutched the coverlet with
+convulsive force. Sigh after sigh burst from the agitated breast. John
+Hammond gazed upon the sleeper in an agony of apprehension, uncertain
+what to do. Was this dreaming only; or was it some kind of seizure which
+called for medical aid? At her ladyship's age the idea of paralysis was
+not too improbable for belief. If this was a dream, then indeed the
+visions of Lady Maulevrier's head upon her bed were more terrible than
+the dreams of common mortals.
+
+In any case Mr. Hammond felt that it was his duty to send some attendant
+to Lady Maulevrier, some member of the household who was familiar with
+her ladyship's habits, her own maid if that person could be unearthed
+easily. He knew that the servants slept in a separate wing; but he
+thought it more than likely that her ladyship's personal attendant
+occupied a room near her mistress.
+
+He went back to the corridor and looked round him in doubt, for a moment
+or two.
+
+Close against her ladyship's door there was a swing door, covered with
+red cloth, which seemed to communicate with the old part of the house.
+John Hammond pushed this door, and it yielded to his hand, revealing a
+lamp-lit passage, narrow, old-fashioned, and low. He thought it likely
+that Lady Maulevrier's maid might occupy a room in this half-deserted
+wing. As he pushed open the door he saw an elderly man coming towards
+him, with a candle in his hand, and with the appearance of having
+huddled on his clothes hastily.
+
+'You heard that scream?' said Hammond.
+
+'Yes. It was her ladyship, I suppose. Nightmare. She is subject to
+nightmare.'
+
+'It is very dreadful. Her whole countenance was convulsed just now, when
+I went into her room to see what was wrong. I was almost afraid of a fit
+of some kind. Ought not her maid to go to her?'
+
+'She wants no assistance,' the man answered, coolly. 'It was only a
+dream. It is not the first time I have been awakened by a shriek like
+that. It is a kind of nightmare, no doubt; and it passes off in a few
+minutes, and leaves her sleeping calmly.'
+
+He went to her ladyship's door, pushed it open a little way, and looked
+in. 'Yes, she is sleeping as quietly as an infant,' he said, shutting
+the door softly as he spoke.
+
+'I am very glad; but surely she ought to have her maid near her at
+night, if she is subject to those attacks.'
+
+'It is no attack, I tell you. It is nothing but a dream,' answered
+Steadman impatiently.
+
+'Yet you were frightened, just as I was, or you would not have got up
+and dressed,' said Hammond, looking at the man suspiciously.
+
+He had heard of this old servant Steadman, who was supposed to enjoy
+more of her ladyship's confidence than any one else in the household;
+but he had never spoken to the man before that night.
+
+'Yes, I came. It was my duty to come, knowing her ladyship's habits. I
+am a light sleeper, and that scream woke me instantly. If her ladyship's
+maid were wanted I should call her. I am a kind of watch-dog, you see,
+sir.'
+
+'You seem to be a very faithful dog.'
+
+'I have been in her ladyship's service more than forty years. I have
+reason to be faithful. I know her ladyship's habits better than any one
+in the house. I know that she had a great deal of trouble in her early
+life, and I believe the memory of it comes back upon her sometimes in
+her dreams, and gets the better of her.'
+
+'If it was memory that wrung that agonised shriek from her just now, her
+recollections of the past must be very terrible.'
+
+'Ah, sir, there is a skeleton in every house,' answered James Steadman,
+gravely.
+
+This was exactly what Maulevrier had said under the yew trees which
+Wordsworth planted.
+
+'Good-night, sir,' said Steadman.
+
+'Good-night. You are sure that Lady Maulevrier may be left safely--that
+there is no fear of illness of any kind?'
+
+'No, sir. It was only a bad dream. Good-night, sir.'
+
+Steadman went back to his own quarters. Mr. Hammond heard him draw the
+bolts of the swing door, thus cutting off all communication with the
+corridor.
+
+The eight-day clock on the staircase struck two as Mr. Hammond returned
+to his room, even less inclined for sleep than when he left it. Strange,
+that nocturnal disturbance of a mind which seemed so tranquil in the
+day. Or was that tranquillity only a mask which her ladyship wore before
+the world: and was the bitter memory of events which happened forty
+years ago still a source of anguish to that highly strung nature?
+
+'There are some minds which cannot forget,' John Hammond said to
+himself, as he meditated upon her ladyship's character and history. 'The
+story of her husband's crime may still be fresh in her memory, though it
+is only a tradition for the outside world. His crime may have involved
+some deep wrong done to herself, some outrage against her love and faith
+as a wife. One of the stories Maulevrier spoke of the other day was of a
+wicked woman's influence upon the governor--a much more likely story
+than that of any traffic in British interests or British honour, which
+would have been almost impossible for a man in Lord Maulevrier's
+position. If the scandal was of a darker kind--a guilty wife--the
+mysterious disappearance of a husband--the horror of the thing may have
+made a deeper impression on Lady Maulevrier than even her nearest and
+dearest dream of: and that superb calm which she wears like a royal
+mantle may be maintained at the cost of struggles which tear her
+heart-strings. And then at night, when the will is dormant, when the
+nervous system is no longer ruled by the power of waking intelligence,
+the old familiar agony returns, the hated images flash back upon the
+brain, and in proportion to the fineness of the temperament is the
+intensity of the dreamer's pain.'
+
+And then he went on to reflect upon the long monotonous years spent in
+that lonely house, shut in from the world by those everlasting hills.
+Albeit the house was an ideal house, set in a landscape of infinite
+beauty, the monotony must be none the less oppressive for a mind
+burdened with dark memories, weighed down by sorrows which could seek no
+relief from sympathy, which could never become familiarised by
+discussion.
+
+'I wonder that a woman of Lady Maulevrier's intellect should not have
+better known how to treat her own malady,' thought Hammond.
+
+Mr. Hammond inquired after her ladyship's health next morning, and was
+told she was perfectly well.
+
+'Grandmother is in capital spirits,' said Lady Lesbia. 'She is pleased
+with the contents of yesterday's _Globe_. Lord Denyer, the son of one of
+her oldest friends, has been making a great speech at Liverpool in the
+Conservative interest, and her ladyship thinks we shall have a change of
+parties before long.'
+
+'A general shuffle of the cards,' said Maulevrier, looking up from his
+breakfast. 'I'm sure I hope so. I'm no politician, but I like a row.'
+
+'I hope you are a Conservative, Mr. Hammond,' said Lesbia.
+
+'I had hoped you would have known that ever so long ago, Lady Lesbia.'
+
+Lesbia blushed at his tone, which was almost a reproach.
+
+'I suppose I ought to have understood from the general tenor of your
+conversation,' she said; 'but I am terribly stupid about politics. I
+take so little interest in them. I am always hearing that we are being
+badly governed--that the men who legislate for us are stupid or wicked;
+yet the world seems to go on somehow, and we are no worse.'
+
+'It is just the same with sport,' said Maulevrier. 'Every rainy spring
+we are told that all the young birds have been drowned, or that the
+grouse-disease has decimated the fathers and mothers, and that we shall
+have nothing to shoot; but when August comes the birds are there all the
+same.'
+
+'It is the nature of mankind to complain,' said Hammond. 'Cain and Abel
+were the first farmers, and you see one of them grumbled.'
+
+They were rather lively at breakfast that morning--Maulevrier's last
+breakfast but one--for he had announced his determination of going to
+Scotland next day. Other fellows would shoot all the birds if he dawdled
+any longer. Mary was in deep despondency at the idea of his departure,
+yet she laughed and talked with the rest. And perhaps Lesbia felt a
+little moved at the thought of losing Mr. Hammond. Maulevrier would come
+back to Mary, but John Hammond was hardly likely to return. Their
+parting would be for ever.
+
+'You needn't sit quite in my pocket, Molly,' said Maulevrier to his
+younger sister.
+
+'I like to make the most of you, now you are going away,' sighed Mary.
+'Oh, dear, how dull we shall all be when you are gone.'
+
+'Not a bit of it! You will have some fox-hunting, perhaps, before the
+snow is on the hills.'
+
+At the very mention of fox-hounds Lady Mary's bright young face
+crimsoned, and Maulevrier began to laugh in a provoking way, with
+side-long glances at his younger sister.
+
+'Did you ever hear of Molly's fox-hunting, by-the-by, Hammond?' he
+asked.
+
+Mary tried to put her hand before his lips, but it was useless.
+
+'Why shouldn't I tell?' he exclaimed. 'It was quite a heroic adventure.
+You must know our fox-hunting here is rather a peculiar
+institution,--very good in its way, but strictly local. No horse could
+live among our hills, so we hunt on foot, and as the pace is good, and
+the work hard, nobody who starts with the hounds is likely to be in at
+the death, except the huntsmen. We are all mad for the sport, and off we
+go, over the hills and far away, picking up a fresh field as we go. The
+ploughman leaves his plough, and the shepherd leaves his flock, and the
+farmer leaves his thrashing, to follow us; in every field we cross we
+get fresh blood, while those who join us at the start fall off by
+degrees. Well, it happened one day late in October, when there were long
+ridges of snow on Helvellyn, and patches of white on Fairfield, Mistress
+Mary here must needs take her bamboo staff and start for the Striding
+Edge. It was just the day upon which she might have met her death easily
+on that perilous point, but happily something occurred to divert her
+juvenile fancy, for scarcely had she got to the bottom of Dolly Waggon
+Pike--you know Dolly----'
+
+'Intimately,' said Hammond, with a nod.
+
+'Scarcely had she neared the base of Dolly Waggon when she heard the
+huntsman's horn and the hounds at full cry, streaming along towards
+Dunmail Raise. Off flew Molly, all among the butcher boys, and farmers'
+men, and rosy-cheeked squireens of the district--racing over the rugged
+fields--clambering over the low stone walls--up hill, down
+hill--shouting when the others shouted--never losing sight of the waving
+sterns--winding and doubling, and still going upward and upward, till
+she stood, panting and puffing like a young grampus, on the top of Seat
+Sandal, still all among the butcher boys and the farmer's men, and the
+guides and the red-cheeked squireens, her frock torn to ribbons, her hat
+lost in a ditch, her hair streaming down her back, and every inch of
+her, from her nose downwards, splashed and spattered with mire and clay.
+What a spectacle for gods and men, guides and butcher boys. And there
+she stood with the sun going down beyond Coniston Old Man, and a
+seven-mile walk between her and Fellside.
+
+'Poor Lady Mary!' said Hammond, looking at her very kindly: but Mary did
+not see that friendly glance, which betokened sympathy rather than
+scorn. She sat silent and very red, with drooping eyelids, thinking her
+brother horribly cruel for thus publishing her foolishness.
+
+'Poor, indeed!' exclaimed Maulevrier. 'She came crawling home after
+dark, footsore and draggled, looking like a beggar girl, and as evil
+fate would have it, her ladyship, who so seldom goes out, must needs
+have been taking afternoon tea at the Vicarage upon that particular
+occasion, and was driving up the avenue as Mary crawled to the gate. The
+storm that followed may be more easily imagined than described.'
+
+'It was years and years ago,' expostulated Mary, looking very angry.
+'Grandmother needn't have made such a fuss about it.'
+
+'Ah, but in those days she still had hopes of civilising you,' answered
+Maulevrier. 'Since then she has abandoned all endeavour in that
+direction, and has given you over to your own devices--and me. Since
+then you have become a chartered libertine. You have letters of mark.'
+
+'I don't care what you call me,' said Mary. 'I only know that I am very
+happy when you are at home, and very miserable when you are away.'
+
+'It is hardly kind of you to say that, Lady Mary,' remonstrated Fräulein
+Müller, who, up to this point, had been busily engaged with muffins and
+gooseberry jam.
+
+'Oh, I don't mean that any one is unkind to me or uses me badly,' said
+Mary. 'I only mean that my life is empty when Maulevrier is away, and
+that I am always longing for him to come back again.'
+
+'I thought you adored the hills, and the lake, and the villagers, and
+your pony, and Maulevrier's dogs,' said, Lesbia faintly contemptuous.
+
+'Yes, but one wants something human to love,' answered Mary, making it
+very obvious that there was no warmth of affection between herself and
+the feminine members of her family.
+
+She had not thought of the significance of her speech. She was very
+angry with Maulevrier for having held her up to ridicule before Mr.
+Hammond, who already despised her, as she believed, and whose contempt
+was more galling than it need have been, considering that he was a mere
+casual visitor who would go away and return no more. Never till his
+coming had she felt her deficiencies; but in his presence she writhed
+under the sense of her unworthiness, and had an almost agonising
+consciousness of all those faults which her grandmother had told her
+about so often with not the slightest effect. In those days she had not
+cared what Lady Maulevrier or any one else might say of her, or think of
+her. She lived her life, and defied fortune. She was worse than her
+reputation. To-day she felt it a bitter thing that she had grown to the
+age of womanhood lacking all those graces and accomplishments which made
+her sister adorable, and which might make even a plain woman charming.
+
+Never till John Hammond's coming had she felt a pang of envy in the
+contemplation of Lesbia's beauty or Lesbia's grace; but now she had so
+keen a sense of the difference between herself and her sister that she
+began to fear that this cruel pain must indeed be that lowest of all
+vices. Even the difference in their gowns was a source of humiliation to
+her how. Lesbia was looking her loveliest this morning, in a gown that
+was all lace and soft Madras muslin, flowing, cloud-like; while Mary's
+tailor gown, with its trim tight bodice, horn buttons, and kilted skirt,
+seemed to cry aloud that it had been made for a Tomboy. And this tailor
+gown was a costume to which Mary had condemned herself by her own folly.
+Only a year ago, moved by an artistic admiration for Lesbia's delicate
+breakfast gowns, Mary had told her grandmother that she would like to
+have something of the same kind, whereupon the dowager, who did not take
+the faintest interest in Mary's toilet, but who had a stern sense of
+justice, replied--
+
+'I do not think Lesbia's frocks and your habits will agree, but you can
+have some pretty morning gowns if you like;' and the order had been
+given for a confection in muslin and lace for Lady Mary.
+
+Mary came down to breakfast one bright June morning, in the new frock,
+feeling very proud of herself, and looking very pretty.
+
+'Fine feathers make fine birds,' said Fräulein Müller. 'I should hardly
+have known you.'
+
+'I wish you would always dress like that,' said Lesbia; 'you really look
+like a young lady;' and Mary danced about on the lawn, feeling
+sylph-like, and quite in love with her own elegance, when a sudden
+uplifting of canine voices in the distance had sent her flying to see
+what was the matter with the terrier pack.
+
+In the kennel there was riot and confusion. Ahab was demolishing
+Angelina, Absalom had Agamemnon in a deadly grip. Dog-whip in hand, Mary
+rushed to the rescue, and laid about her, like the knights of old,
+utterly forgetful of her frock. She soon succeeded in restoring order,
+but the Madras muslin, the Breton lace had perished in the conflict. She
+left the kennel panting, and in rags and tatters, some of the muslin and
+lace hanging about her in strips a yard long, but the greater part
+remaining in the possession of the terriers, who had mauled and munched
+her finery to their hearts' content, while she was reading the Riot Act.
+
+She went back to the house, bowed down by shame and confusion, and
+marched straight to the dowager's morning-room.
+
+'Look what the terriers have done to me, grandmother,' she said, with a
+sob. 'It is all my own fault, of course. I ought not to have gone near
+them in that stupid muslin. Please forgive me for being so foolish. I am
+not fit to have pretty frocks.'
+
+'I think, my dear, you can now have no doubt that the tailor gowns are
+fittest for you,' answered Lady Maulevrier, with crushing placidity. 'We
+have tried the experiment of dressing you like Lesbia, and you see it
+does not answer. Tell Kibble to throw your new gown in the rag-bag, and
+please let me hear no more about it.'
+
+After this dismal failure Mary could not feel herself ill-used in
+having to wear tailor gowns all the year round. She was allowed cotton
+frocks for very warm weather, and she had pretty gowns for evening wear;
+but her usual attire was cloth or linsey woolsey, made by the local
+tailor. Sometimes Maulevrier ordered her a gown or a coat from his own
+man in Conduit Street, and then she felt herself smart and fashionable.
+And even the local tailor contrived to make her gowns prettily, having a
+great appreciation of her straight willowy figure, and deeming it a
+privilege to work for her, so that hitherto Mary had felt very well
+content with her cloth and linsey. But now that John Hammond so
+obviously admired Lesbia's delicate raiment, poor Mary began to think
+her woollen gowns odious.
+
+After breakfast Mary and Maulevrier went straight off to the kennels.
+His lordship had numerous instructions to give on this last day, and his
+lieutenant had to receive and register his orders. Lesbia went to the
+garden with her book and with Fräulein--the inevitable Fräulein as
+Hammond thought her--in close attendance.
+
+It was a lovely morning, sultry, summer-like, albeit September had just
+begun. The tennis lawn, which had been levelled on one side of the
+house, was surrounded on three sides by shrubberies planted forty years
+ago, in the beginning of Lady Maulevrier's widowhood. All loveliest
+trees grew there in perfection, sheltered by the mighty wall of the
+mountain, fed by the mists from the lake. Larch and mountain ash, and
+Lawsonian cyprus,--deodara and magnolia, arbutus, and silver broom,
+acacia and lilac, flourished here in that rich beauty which made every
+cottage garden in the happy district a little paradise; and here in a
+semi-circular recess at one end of the lawn were rustic chairs and
+tables and an umbrella tent. This was Lady Lesbia's chosen retreat on
+summer mornings, and a favourite place for afternoon tea.
+
+Mr. Hammond followed the two ladies to their bower.
+
+'This is to be my last morning,' he said, looking at Lesbia. 'Will you
+think me a great bore if I spend it with you?'
+
+'We shall think it very nice of you,' answered Lesbia, without a vestige
+of emotion; 'especially if you will read to us.'
+
+'I will do any thing to make myself useful. What shall I read?'
+
+'Anything you like. What do you say to Tennyson?'
+
+'That he is a noble poet, a teacher of all good; but too philosophical
+for my present mood. May I read you some of Heine's ballads, those songs
+which you sing so exquisitely, or rather some you do not sing, and which
+will be fresher to you. My German is far from perfect, but I am told it
+is passable, and Fräulein Müller can throw her scissors at me when my
+accent is too dreadful.'
+
+'You speak German beautifully,' said Fräulein. 'I wonder where you
+learned it?'
+
+'I have been a good deal in Germany, and I had a Hanoverian valet who
+was quite a gentleman, and spoke admirably. I think I learned more from
+him than from grammars or dictionaries. I'll go and fetch Heine.'
+
+'What a very agreeable person Mr. Hammond is,' said Fräulein, when he
+was gone. 'We shall quite miss him.'
+
+'Yes, I have no doubt we shall miss him,' said Lesbia, again without the
+faintest emotion.
+
+The governess began to think that the ordeal of an agreeable young man's
+presence at Fellside had been passed in safety, and that her pupil was
+unscathed. She had kept a close watch on the two, as in duty bound. She
+knew that Hammond was in love with Lesbia; but she thought Lesbia was
+heart-whole.
+
+Mr. Hammond came back with a shabby little book in his hand and
+established himself comfortably in one of the two Beaconsfield chairs.
+
+He opened his book at that group of short poems called Heimkehr, and
+read here and there, as fancy led him. Sometimes the strain was a
+love-song, brief, passionate as the cry of a soul in pain; sometimes the
+verses were bitter and cynical; sometimes full of tenderest simplicity,
+telling of childhood, and youth and purity; sometimes dark with hidden
+meanings, grim, awful, cold with the chilling breath of the
+charnel-house. Sometimes Lesbia's heart beat a little faster as Mr.
+Hammond read, for it seemed as if it was he who was speaking to her, and
+not the dead poet.
+
+An hour or more passed in this way. Fräulein Müller was charmed at
+hearing some of her favourite poems, asking now for this little bit, and
+anon for another, and expatiating upon the merits of German poets in
+general, and Heine in particular, in the pauses of the lecture. She was
+quite carried away by her delight in the poet, and was so entirely
+uplifted to the ideal world that, when a footman came with a message
+from Lady Maulevrier requesting her presence, she tripped gaily off at
+once, without a thought of danger in leaving those two together on the
+lawn. She had been a faithful watch-dog up to this point; but she was
+now lulled into a false sense of security by the idea that the time of
+peril was all but ended.
+
+So she left them; but could she have looked back two minutes afterwards
+she would have perceived the unwisdom of that act.
+
+No sooner had the Fräulein turned the corner of the shrubbery than
+Hammond laid aside his book and drew nearer Lesbia, who sat looking
+downward, with her eyes upon the delicate piece of fancy work which had
+occupied her fingers all the morning.
+
+'Lesbia, this is my last day at Fellside, and you and I may never have a
+minute alone together again while I am here. Will you come for a little
+walk with me on the Fell? There is something I must say to you before I
+go.'
+
+Lesbia's delicate cheek grew a shade more pale. Instinct told her what
+was coming, though never mortal man had spoken to her of love. Nor until
+now had Mr. Hammond ever addressed her by her Christian name without
+the ceremonious prefix. There was a deeper tone in his voice, a graver
+look in his eyes, than she had ever noticed before.
+
+She rose, and took up her sunshade, and went with him meekly through the
+cultivated shrubbery of ornamental timber to the rougher pathway that
+wound through a copse of Scotch fir, which formed the outer boundary of
+Lady Maulevrier's domain. Beyond the fir trees rose the grassy slope of
+the hill, on the brow of which sheep were feeding. Deep down in the
+hollow below the lawns and shrubberries of Fellside the placid bosom of
+the lake shone like an emerald floor in the sunlight, reflecting the
+verdure of the hill, and the white sheep dotted about here and there.
+
+There was not a breath in the air around them as those two sauntered
+slowly side by side in the pine wood, not a cloud in the dazzling blue
+sky above; and for a little time they too were silent, as if bound by a
+spell which neither dared to break. Then at last Hammond spoke.
+
+'Lesbia, you know that I love you,' he began, in his low, grave voice,
+tremulous with feeling. 'No words I can say to-day can tell you of my
+love more plainly than my heart has been telling you in every hour of
+this happy, happy time that you and I have spent together. I love you as
+I never hoped to love, fervently, completely, believing that the
+perfection of earthly bliss will be mine if I can but win you. Dearest,
+is there such a sweet hope for me; are you indeed my own, as I am yours,
+heart and soul, and mind and being, till the last throb of life in this
+poor clay?'
+
+He tried to take her hand, but she drew herself away from him with a
+frightened look. She was very pale, and there was infinite distress in
+the dark violet eyes, which looked entreatingly, deprecatingly at her
+lover.
+
+'I dare not answer as you would like me to answer,' she faltered, after
+a painful pause. 'I am not my own mistress. My grandmother has brought
+me up, devoted herself to me almost, and she has her own views, her own
+plans. I dare not frustrate them!'
+
+'She would like to marry you to a man of rank and fortune--a man who
+will choose you, perhaps, because other people admire you, rather than
+because he himself loves you as you ought to be loved; who will choose
+you because you are altogether the best and most perfect thing of your
+year; just as he would buy a yearling at Newmarket or Doncaster. Her
+ladyship means you to make a great alliance--coronets, not hearts, are
+the counters for her game; but, Lesbia, would you, in the bloom and
+freshness of youth--you with the pulses of youth throbbing at your
+heart--lend yourself to the calculations of age which has lived its life
+and forgotten the very meaning of love? Would you submit to be played as
+a card in the game of a dowager's ambition? Trust me, dearest, in the
+crisis of a woman's life there is one only counsellor she should listen
+to, and that counsellor is her own heart. If you love me--as I dare to
+hope you do--trust in me, hold by me, and leave the rest to Heaven. I
+know that I can make your life happy.'
+
+'You frighten me by your impetuosity,' said Lesbia. 'Surely you forget
+how short a time we have known each other.'
+
+'An age. All my life before the day I saw you is a dead, dull blank as
+compared with the magical hours I have spent with you.'
+
+'I do not even know who and what you are.'
+
+'First, I am a gentleman, or I should not be your brother's friend. A
+poor gentleman, if you like, with only my own right arm to hew my
+pathway through the wood of life to the temple of fortune; but trust me,
+only trust me, Lesbia, and I will so hew my path as to reach that
+temple. Look at me, love. Do I look like a man born to fail?'
+
+She looked up at him shyly, with eyes that were dim with tears. He
+looked like a demi-god, tall, straight as the pine trunks amongst which
+he was standing, a frame formed for strength and activity, a face
+instinct with mental power, dark eyes that glowed with the fire of
+intellect and passion. The sunlight gave an almost unearthly radiance to
+the clear dark of his complexion, the curly brown hair cut close to the
+finely shaped head, the broad brow and boldly modelled features.
+
+Lesbia felt in her heart that such a man must be destined for success,
+born to be a conqueror in all strifes, a victor upon every field.
+
+'Have I the thews and sinews of a man doomed to be beaten in the
+battle?' he asked her. 'No, dearest; Heaven meant me to succeed; and
+with you to fight for I shall not be beaten by adverse fortune. Can you
+not trust Providence and me?'
+
+'I cannot disobey my grandmother. If she will consent----'
+
+'She will not consent. You must defy Lady Maulevrier, Lesbia, if you
+mean to reward my love. But I will promise you this much, darling, that
+if you will be my wife--with your brother's consent--which I am sure of
+before I ask for it, within one year of our marriage I will find means
+of reconciling her ladyship to the match, and winning her entire
+forgiveness for you and me.'
+
+'You are talking of impossibilities,' said Lesbia, frowning. 'Why do you
+talk to me as if I were a child? I know hardly anything of the world,
+but I do know the woman who has reared and educated me. My grandmother
+would never forgive me if I married a poor man. I should be an outcast.'
+
+'We would be outcasts together--happy outcasts. Besides, we should not
+always be poor. I tell you I am predestined to conquer fate.'
+
+'But we should have to begin from the beginning.'
+
+'Yes, we should have to begin from the beginning, as Adam and Eve did
+when they left Paradise.'
+
+'We are not told in the Bible that they had any happiness after that. It
+seems to have been all trouble and weariness, and toil and death, after
+the angel with the flaming sword drove them out of Eden.'
+
+'They were together, and they must have been happy. Oh, Lesbia, if you
+do not feel that you can face poverty and the world's contempt by my
+side, and for my sake, you do not love me. Love never calculates so
+nicely; love never fears the future; and yet you do love me, Lesbia,' he
+said, trying to fold her in his arms; but again she drew herself away
+from him--this time with a look almost of horror--and stood facing him,
+clinging to one of the pine trunks, like a scared wood-nymph.
+
+'You have no right to say that,' she said.
+
+'I have the divine right of my own deep love--of heart which cries out
+to heart. Do you think there is no magnetic power in true love which can
+divine the answering love in another? Lesbia, call me an insolent
+coxcomb if you like, but I know you love me, and that you and I may be
+utterly happy together. Oh, why--why do you shrink from me, my beloved;
+why withhold yourself from my arms! Oh, love, let me hold you to my
+heart--let me seal our betrothal with a kiss!'
+
+'Betrothal--no, no; not for the world,' cried Lesbia. 'Lady Maulevrier
+would cast me off for ever; she would curse me.'
+
+'What would the curse of an ambitious woman weigh against my love? And I
+tell you that her anger would be only a passing tempest. She would
+forgive you.'
+
+'Never--you don't know her.'
+
+'I tell you she would forgive you, and all would be well with us before
+we had been married a year. Why cannot you believe me, Lesbia?'
+
+'Because I cannot believe impossibilities, even from your lips,' she
+answered sullenly.
+
+She stood before him with downcast eyes, the tears streaming down her
+pale cheeks, exquisitively lovely in her agitation and sorrow. Yes, she
+did love him; her heart was beating passionately; she was longing to
+throw herself on his breast, to be folded upon that manly heart, in
+trust in that brave, bright look which seemed to defy fortune. Yes, he
+was a man born to conquer; he was handsome, intellectual, powerful in
+all mental and physical gifts. A man of men. But he was, by his own
+admission, a very obscure and insignificant person, and he had no money.
+Life with him meant a long fight with adverse circumstances; life for
+his wife must mean patience, submission, long waiting upon destiny, and
+perhaps with old age and grey hairs the tardy turning of Fortune's
+wheel. And was she for this to resign the kingdom that had been
+promised to her, the giddy heights which she was born to scale, the
+triumphs and delights and victories of the great world? Yes, Lesbia
+loved this fortuneless knight; but she loved herself and her prospects
+of promotion still better.
+
+'Oh, Lesbia, can you not be brave for my sake--trustful for my sake? God
+will be good to us if we are true to each other.'
+
+'God will not be good to me if I disobey my grandmother. I owe her too
+much; ingratitude in me would be doubly base. I will speak to her. I
+will tell her all you have said, and if she gives me the faintest
+encouragement----'
+
+'She will not; that is a foregone conclusion. Tell her all, if you like;
+but let us be prepared for the answer. When she denies the right of your
+heart to choose its own mate, then rise up in the might of your
+womanhood and defy her. Tell her, "I love him, and be he rich or poor, I
+will share his fate;" tell her boldly, bravely, nobly, as a true woman
+should; and if she be adamant still, proclaim your right to disobey her
+worldly wisdom rather than the voice of your own heart. And then come to
+me, darling, and be my own, and the world which you and I will face
+together shall not be a bad world. I will answer for that. No trouble
+shall come near you. No humiliation shall ever touch you. Only believe
+in me.'
+
+'I can believe in you, but not in the impossible,' answered Lesbia, with
+measured accents.
+
+The voice was silver-sweet, but passing cold. Just then there was a
+rustling among the pine branches, and Lesbia looked round with a
+startled air.
+
+'Is there any one listening?' she exclaimed. 'What was that?'
+
+'Only the breath of heaven. Oh, Lesbia, if you were but a little less
+wise, a little more trustful. Do not be a dumb idol. Say that you love
+me, or do not love me. If you can look me in the face and say the last,
+I will leave you without another word. I will take my sentence and go.'
+
+But this was just what Lesbia could not do. She could not deny her love;
+and yet she could not sacrifice all things for her love. She lifted the
+heavy lids which veiled those lovely eyes, and looked up at him
+imploringly.
+
+'Give me time to breathe, time to think,' she said.
+
+'And then will you answer me plainly, truthfully, without a shadow of
+reserve, remembering that the fate of two lives hangs on your words.'
+
+'I will.'
+
+'Let it be so, then. I'll go for a ramble over the hills, and return in
+time for afternoon tea. I shall look for you on the tennis lawn at
+half-past four.'
+
+He took her in his arms, and this time she yielded herself to him, and
+the beautiful head rested for a few moments upon his breast, and the
+soft eyes looked up at him in confiding fondness. He bent and kissed her
+once only, but a kiss that meant for life and death. In the next moment
+he was gone, leaving her alone among the pine trees.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+'IF I WERE TO DO AS ISEULT DID.'
+
+
+Lady Maulevrier rarely appeared at luncheon. She took some slight
+refection in her morning-room, among her books and papers, and in the
+society of her canine favourites, whose company suited her better at
+certain hours than the noisier companionship of her grandchildren. She
+was a studious woman, loving the silent life of books better than the
+inane chatter of everyday humanity. She was a woman who thought much and
+read much, and who lived more in the past than the present. She lived
+also in the future, counting much upon the splendid career of her
+beautiful granddaughter, which should be in a manner a lengthening out,
+a renewal of her own life. She looked forward to the day when Lesbia
+should reign supreme in the great world, a famous beauty and leader of
+fashion, her every act and word inspired and directed by her
+grandmother, who would be the shadow behind the throne. It was
+possible--nay, probable--that in those days Lady Maulevrier would
+herself re-appear in society, establish her salon, and draw around her
+closing years all that is wittiest, best, and wisest in the great world.
+
+Her ladyship was reposing in her low reading-chair, with a volume of
+Tyndall on the book-stand before her, when the door was opened softly
+and Lesbia came gliding in, and seated herself without a word on the
+hassock at her grandmother's feet. Lady Maulevrier passed her hand
+caressingly over the girl's soft brown hair, without looking up from her
+book.
+
+'You are a late visitor,' she said; 'why did you not come to me after
+breakfast?'
+
+'It was such a lovely morning, we went straight from the breakfast table
+to the garden; I did not think you wanted me.'
+
+'I did not want you; but I am always glad to see my pet. What were you
+doing in the garden all the morning? I did not hear you playing tennis.'
+
+Lady Maulevrier had already interrogated the German governess upon this
+very subject, but she had her own reasons for wishing to hear Lesbia's
+account.
+
+'No, it was too warm for tennis. Fräulein and I sat and worked, and Mr.
+Hammond read to us.'
+
+'What did he read?'
+
+'Heine's ballads. He reads German beautifully.
+
+'Indeed! I daresay he was at school in Germany. There are cheap schools
+there to which middle-class people send their boys.'
+
+This was like a thrust from a rusty knife.
+
+'Mr. Hammond was at Oxford,' Lesbia said, reproachfully; and then, after
+a longish pause, she clasped her hands upon the arm of Lady Maulevrier's
+chair, and said, in a pleading voice, 'Grandmother, Mr. Hammond has
+asked me to marry him.'
+
+'Indeed! Only that? And pray, did he tell you what are his means of
+maintaining Lord Maulevrier's sister in the position to which her birth
+entitles her?' inquired the dowager, with crushing calmness.
+
+'He is not rich; indeed, I believe, he is poor; but he is brave and
+clever, and he is full of confidence in his power to conquer fortune.'
+
+'No doubt; that is your true adventurer's style. He confides implicitly
+in his own talents, and in somebody else's banker. Mr. Hammond would
+make a tremendous figure in the world, I daresay, and while he was
+making it your brother would have to keep him. Well, my dear Lesbia, I
+hope you gave this gentleman the answer his insolence deserved; or that
+you did better, and referred him to me. I should be glad to give him my
+opinion of his conduct--a person admitted to this house as your
+brother's hanger-on--tolerated only on your brother's account; such a
+person, nameless, penniless, friendless (except for Maulevrier's too
+facile patronage), to dare to lift his eyes to my granddaughter! It is
+ineffable insolence!'
+
+Lesbia crouched by her grandmother's chair, her face hidden from Lady
+Maulevrier's falcon eye. Every word uttered by her ladyship stung like
+the knotted cords of a knout. She knew not whether to be most ashamed of
+her lover or of herself--of her lover for his obscure position, his
+hopeless poverty; of herself for her folly in loving such a man. And she
+did love him, and would fain have pleaded his cause, had she not been
+cowed by the authority that had ruled her all her life.
+
+'Lesbia, if I thought you had been silly enough, degraded enough, to
+give this young man encouragement, to have justified his audacity of
+to-day by any act or word of yours, I should despise, I should detest
+you,' said Lady Maulevrier, sternly. 'What could be more contemptible,
+more hateful in a girl reared as you have been than to give
+encouragement to the first comer--to listen greedily to the first
+adventurer who had the insolence to make love to you, to be eager to
+throw yourself into the arms of the first man who asked you. That my
+granddaughter, a girl reared and taught and watched and guarded by me,
+should have no more dignity, no more modesty, or womanly feeling, than a
+barmaid at an inn!'
+
+Lesbia began to cry.
+
+'I don't see why a barmaid should not be a good woman, or why it
+should be a crime to fall in love,' she said, in a voice broken by sobs.
+'You need not speak to me so unkindly. I am not going to marry Mr.
+Hammond.'
+
+'Oh, you are not? that is very good of you. I am deeply grateful for
+such an assurance.'
+
+'But I like him better than anyone I ever saw in my life before.'
+
+'You have seen so many people. You have had such a wide area for
+choice.'
+
+'No; I know I have been kept like a nun in a convent: but I don't think
+when I go into the world I shall ever see anyone I should like better
+than Mr. Hammond.'
+
+'Wait till you have seen the world before you make up your mind about
+that. And now, Lesbia, leave off talking and thinking like a child; look
+me in the face and listen to me, for I am going to speak seriously; and
+with me, when I am in earnest, what is said once is said for ever.'
+
+Lady Maulevrier grasped her granddaughter's arm with long slender
+fingers which held it as tightly as the grasp of a vice. She drew the
+girl's slim figure round till they were face to face, looking into each
+other's eyes, the dowager's eagle countenance lit up with impassioned
+feeling, severe, awful as the face of one of the fatal sisters, the
+avengers of blood, the harbingers of doom.
+
+'Lesbia, I think I have been good to you, and kind to you,' she said.
+
+'You have been all that is kind and dear,' faltered Lesbia.
+
+'Then give me measure for measure. My life has been a hard one, child;
+hard and lonely, and loveless and joyless. My son, to whom I devoted
+myself in the vigour of youth and in the prime of life, never loved me,
+never repaid me for my love. He spent his days far away from me, when
+his presence would have gladdened my difficult life. He died in a
+strange land. Of his three children, you are the one I took into my
+heart. I did my duty to the others; I lavished my love upon you. Do not
+give me cursing instead of blessing. Do not give me a stone instead of
+bread. I have built every hope of happiness or pleasure in this world
+upon you and your obedience. Obey me, be true to me, and I will make you
+a queen, and I will sit in the shadow of your throne. I will toil for
+you, and be wise for you. You shall have only to shine, and dazzle, and
+enjoy the glory of life. My beautiful darling, for pity's sake do not
+give yourself over to folly.'
+
+'Did not you marry for love, grandmother?'
+
+'No, Lesbia. Lord Maulevrier and I got on very well together, but ours
+was no love-match.'
+
+'Does nobody in our rank ever marry for love? are all marriages a mere
+exchange and barter?'
+
+'No, there are love-matches now and then, which often turn out badly.
+But, my darling, I am not asking you to marry for rank or for money. I
+am only asking you to wait till you find your mate among the noblest in
+the land. He may be the handsomest and most accomplished of men, a man
+born to win women's hearts; and you may love him as fervently as ever a
+village girl loved her first lover. I am not going to sacrifice you, or
+to barter you, dearest. I mean to marry you to the best and noblest
+young man of his day. You shall never be asked to stoop to the unworthy,
+not even if worthlessness wore strawberry leaves in his cap, and owned
+the greatest estate in the land.'
+
+'And if--instead of waiting for this King Arthur of yours--I were to do
+as Iseult did--as Guinevere did--choose for myself----'
+
+'Iseult and Guinevere were wantons. I wonder that you can name them in
+comparison with yourself.'
+
+'If I were to marry a good and honourable man who has his place to make
+in the world, would you never forgive me?'
+
+'You mean Mr. Hammond? You may just as well speak plainly,' said Lady
+Maulevrier, freezingly. 'If you were capable of such idiocy as that,
+Lesbia, I would pluck you out of my heart like a foul weed. I would
+never look upon you, or hear your name spoken, or think of you again as
+long as I lived. My life would not last very long after that blow. Old
+age cannot bear such shocks. Oh, Lesbia, I have been father and mother
+to you; do not bring my grey hairs in sorrow to the grave.'
+
+Lesbia gave a deep sigh, and brushed the tears from her cheeks. Yes, the
+very idea of such a marriage was foolishness. Just now, in the pine
+wood, carried away by the force of her lover's passion, by her own
+softer feelings, it had seemed to her as if she could count the world
+well lost for his sake; but now, at Lady Maulevrier's feet, she became
+again true to her training, and the world was too much to lose.
+
+'What can I do, grandmother?' she asked, submissively, despairingly. 'He
+loves me, and I love him. How can I tell him that he and I can never be
+anything to each other in this world?'
+
+'Refer him to me. I will give him his answer.'
+
+'No, no; that will not do. I have promised to answer him myself. He has
+gone for a walk on the hills, and will come back at four o'clock for my
+answer.'
+
+'Sit down at that table, and write as I dictate.'
+
+'But a letter will be so formal.'
+
+'It is the only way in which you can answer him. When he comes back from
+his walk you will have left Fellside. I shall send you off to St. Bees
+with Fräulein. You must never look upon that man's face again.'
+
+Lesbia brushed away a few more tears, and obeyed. She had been too well
+trained to attempt resistance. Defiance was out of the question.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+'THE GREATER CANTLE OF THE WORLD IS LOST.'
+
+
+The sky was still cloudless when John Hammond strolled slowly up the
+leafy avenue at Fellside. He had been across the valley and up the hill
+to Easedale Tarn, and then by rough untrodden ways, across a chaos of
+rock and heather, into a second valley, long, narrow, and sterile, known
+as Far Easedale, a desolate gorge, a rugged cleft in the heart of the
+mountains. The walk had been long and laborious; but only in such
+clambering and toiling, such expenditure of muscular force and latent
+heat, could the man's restless soul endure those long hours of suspense.
+
+'How will she answer me? Oh, my God! how will she answer?' he said
+within himself, as he walked up the romantic winding road, which made so
+picturesque an approach to Lady Maulevrier's domain, 'Is my idol gold or
+clay? How will she come through the crucible? Oh, dearest, sweetest,
+loveliest, only be true to the instinct of your womanhood, and my cup
+will be full of bliss, and all my days will flow as sweetly as the
+burden of a song. But if you prove heartless, if you love the world's
+wealth better than you love me--ah! then all is over, and you and I are
+lost to each other for ever. I have made up my mind.'
+
+His face settled into an expression of indomitable determination, as of
+a man who would die rather than be false to his own purpose. There was
+no glow of hope in his heart. He had no deep faith in the girl he loved;
+indeed in his heart of hearts he knew that this being to whom he had
+trusted his hopes of bliss was no heroine. She was a lovely, loveable
+girl, nothing more. How would she greet him when they met presently on
+the tennis lawn? With tears and entreaties, and pretty little
+deprecating speeches, irresolution, timidity, vacillation, perhaps;
+hardly with heroic resolve to act and dare for his sake.
+
+There was no one on the tennis lawn when he went there, though the hour
+was close at hand at which Lesbia had promised to give him his answer.
+He sat down in one of the low chairs, glad to rest after his long ramble
+having had no refreshment but a bottle of soda-water and a biscuit at
+the cottage by Easedale Tarn. He waited, calmly as to outward seeming,
+but with a heavy heart.
+
+'If it were Mary now whom I loved, I should have little fear of the
+issue,' he thought, weighing his sweetheart's character, as he weighed
+his chances of success. 'That young termagant would defy the world for
+her lover.'
+
+He sat in the summer silence for nearly half-an-hour, and still there
+was no sign of Lady Lesbia. Her satin-lined workbasket, with the work
+thrown carelessly across it, was still on the rustic table, just as she
+had left it when they went to the pine wood. Waiting was weary work when
+the bliss of a lifetime trembled in the balance; and yet he did not want
+to be impatient. She might find it difficult to get away from her
+family, perhaps. She was closely watched and guarded, as the most
+precious thing at Fellside.
+
+At last the clock struck five, and Hammond could endure delay no longer.
+He went round by the flower garden to the terrace before the
+drawing-room windows, and through an open window to the drawing-room.
+
+Lady Maulevrier was in her accustomed seat, with her own particular
+little table, magazines, books, newspapers at her side. Lady Mary was
+pouring out the tea, a most unusual thing; and Maulevrier was sitting on
+a stool at her feet, with his knees up to his chin, very warm and dusty,
+eating pound cake.
+
+'Where the mischief have you been hiding yourself all day, Jack?' he
+called out as Hammond appeared, looking round the room as he entered,
+with eager, interrogating eyes, for that one figure which was absent.
+
+'I have been for a walk.'
+
+'You might have had the civility to announce your design, and Molly and
+I would have shared your peregrinations.'
+
+'I am sorry that I lost the privilege of your company.'
+
+'I suppose you lost your luncheon, which was of more importance,' said
+Maulevrier.
+
+'Will you have some tea?' asked Mary, who looked more womanly than usual
+in a cream-coloured surah gown--one of her Sunday gowns.
+
+She had a faint hope that by this essentially feminine apparel she might
+lessen the prejudicial effect of Maulevrier's cruel story about the
+fox-hunt.
+
+Mr. Hammond answered absently, hardly looking at Mary, and quite
+unconscious of her pretty gown.
+
+'Thanks, yes,' he said, taking the cup and saucer, and looking at the
+door by which he momently expected Lady Lesbia's entrance, and then, as
+the door did not open, he looked down at Mary, very busy with china
+teapots and a brass kettle which hissed and throbbed over a spirit lamp.
+
+'Won't you have some cake,' she asked, looking up at him gently, grieved
+at the distress and disappointment in his face. 'I am sure you must be
+dreadfully hungry.'
+
+'Not in the least, thanks. How came you to be entrusted with those
+sacred vessels, Lady Mary? What has become of Fräulein and your sister?'
+
+'They have rushed off to St. Bees. Grandmother thought Lesbia looking
+pale and out of spirits, and packed her off to the seaside at a minute's
+notice.'
+
+'What! She has left Fellside?' asked Hammond, paling suddenly, as if a
+man had struck him. 'Lady Maulevrier, do I understand that Lady Lesbia
+has gone away?'
+
+He asked the question in an authoritative tone, with the air of a man
+who had a right to be answered. The dowager wondered at his surpassing
+insolence.
+
+'My granddaughter has gone to the seaside with her governess,' she said,
+haughtily.
+
+'At a minute's notice?'
+
+'At a minute's notice. I am not in the habit of hesitating about any
+step which I consider necessary for my grandchildren's welfare.'
+
+She looked him full in the face, with those falcon eyes of hers; and he
+gave her back a look as resolute, and every whit as full of courage and
+of pride.
+
+'Well,' he said, after a very perceptible pause, 'no doubt your ladyship
+has done wisely, and I must submit to your jurisdiction. But I had asked
+Lady Lesbia a question, and I had been promised an answer.'
+
+'Your question has been answered by Lady Lesbia. She left a note for
+you,' replied Lady Maulevrier.
+
+'Thanks,' answered Mr. Hammond, briefly, and he hurried from the room
+without another word.
+
+The letter was on the table in his bedroom. He had little hope of any
+good waiting for him in a letter so written. The dowager and the world
+had triumphed over a girl's dawning love, no doubt.
+
+This was Lesbia's letter:
+
+    'Dear Mr. Hammond,--Lady Maulevrier desires me to say that the
+    proposal which you honoured me by making this morning is one which I
+    cannot possibly accept, and that any idea of an engagement between
+    you and me could result only in misery and humiliation to both. She
+    thinks it best, under these circumstances, that we should not again
+    meet, and I shall therefore have left Fellside before you receive
+    this letter.
+
+    'With all good wishes, very faithfully yours,
+
+    'LESBIA HASELDEN.'
+
+'Very faithfully mine--faithful to her false training, to the worldly
+mind that rules her; faithful to the gods of this world--Belial and
+Mammon, and the Moloch Fashion. Poor cowardly soul! She loves me, and
+owns as much, yet weakly flies from me, afraid to trust the strong arm
+and the brave heart of the man who loves her, preferring the glittering
+shams of the world to the reality of true and honest love. Well, child,
+I have weighed you in the balance and found you wanting. Would to God it
+had been otherwise! If you had been brave and bold for love's sake,
+where is that pure and perfect chrysolite for which I would have
+bartered you?'
+
+He flung himself into a chair, and sat with his head bowed upon his
+folded arms, and his eyes not innocent of tears. What would he not have
+given to find truth and courage and scorn of the world's wealth in that
+heart which he had tried to win. Did he think her altogether heartless
+because she so glibly renounced him? No, he was too just for that. He
+called her only half-hearted. She was like the cat in the adage,
+'Letting I dare not, wait upon I would.' But he told himself with one
+deep sigh of resignation that she was lost to him for ever.
+
+'I have tried her, and found her not worth the winning,' he said.
+
+The house, even the lovely landscape smiling under his windows, the
+pastoral valley, smooth lake and willowy island, seemed hateful to him.
+He felt himself hemmed round by those green hills, by yonder brown and
+rugged wall of Nabb Scar, stifled for want of breathing space. The
+landscape was lovely enough, but it was like a beautiful grave. He
+longed to get away from it.
+
+'Another man would follow her to St. Bees,' he said. 'I will not.'
+
+He flung a few things into a Gladstone bag, sat down, and wrote a brief
+note to Maulevrier, asking him to make his excuses to her ladyship. He
+had made up his mind to go to Keswick that afternoon, and would rejoin
+his friend to-morrow, at Carlisle. This done, he rang for Maulevrier's
+valet, and asked that person to look after his luggage and bring it on
+to Scotland with his master's things; and then, without a word of adieu
+to anyone, John Hammond went out of the house, with the Gladstone bag in
+his hand, and shook the dust of Fellside off his feet.
+
+He ordered a fly at the Prince of Wales's Hotel, and drove to Keswick,
+whence he went on to the Lodore. The gloom and spaciousness of
+Derwentwater, grey in the gathering dusk, suited his humour better than
+the emerald prettiness of Grasmere--the roar of the waterfall made music
+in his ear. He dined in a private room, and spent the evening roaming on
+the shores of the lake, and at eleven o'clock went back to his hotel and
+sat late into the night reading Heine, and thinking of the girl who had
+refused him.
+
+Mr. Hammond's letter was delivered to Lord Maulevrier five minutes
+before dinner, as he sat in the drawing-room with her ladyship and Mary.
+Poor Mary had put on another pretty gown for dinner, still bent upon
+effacing Mr. Hammond's image of her as a tousled, frantic creature in
+torn and muddy raiment. She sat watching the door, just as Hammond had
+watched it three hours ago.
+
+'So,' said Maulevrier, 'your ladyship has succeeded in driving my friend
+away. Hammond has left Fellside, and begs me to convey to you his
+compliments and his grateful acknowledgment of all your kindness.'
+
+'I hope I have not been uncivil to him,' answered Lady Maulevrier
+coldly. 'As you had both made up your minds to go to-morrow, it can
+matter very little that he should go to-day.'
+
+Mary looked down at the ribbon and lace on her prettiest frock, and
+thought that it mattered a great deal to her. Yet, if he had stayed,
+would he have seen her frock or her? With his bodily eyes, perhaps, but
+not with the eyes of his mind. Those eyes saw only Lesbia.
+
+'No, perhaps it hardly matters,' answered Maulevrier, with suppressed
+anger. 'The man is not worth talking about or thinking about. What is
+he? Only the best, truest, bravest fellow I ever knew.'
+
+'There are shepherds and guides in Grasmere of whom we could say almost
+as much,' said Lady Maulevrier, 'yet you would scarcely expect me to
+encourage one of them to pay his addresses to your sister? Pray spare us
+all nonsense-talk, Maulevrier. This business is very well ended. You
+ought never to have brought Mr. Hammond here.'
+
+'I am sure of that now. I am very sorry I did bring him.'
+
+'Oh, the man will not die for love. A disappointment of that kind is
+good for a young man in his position. It will preserve him from more
+vulgar entanglements, and perhaps from the folly of a too early
+marriage.'
+
+'That is a mighty philosophical way of looking at the matter.'
+
+'It is the only true way. I hope when you are my age you will have
+learnt to look at everything in a philosophical spirit.'
+
+'Well, Lady Maulevrier, you have had it all your own way,' said the
+young man, walking up and down the room in an angry mood. 'I hope you
+will never be sorry for having come between two people who loved each
+other, and might have made each other happy.'
+
+'I shall never be sorry for having saved my granddaughter from an
+imprudent marriage. Give me your arm, Maulevrier, and let me hear no
+more about Mr. Hammond. We have all had quite enough of him,' said her
+ladyship, as the butler announced dinner.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+'SINCE PAINTED OR NOT PAINTED ALL SHALL FADE.'
+
+
+Fräulein Müller and her charge returned from St. Bees after a sojourn of
+about three weeks upon that quiet shore: but Lady Lesbia did not appear
+to be improved in health or spirits by the revivifying breezes of the
+ocean.
+
+'It is a dull, horrid place, and I was bored to death there!' she said,
+when Mary asked how she had enjoyed herself. 'There was no question of
+enjoyment. Grandmother took it into her head that I was looking ill, and
+sent me to the sea; but I should have been just as well at Fellside.'
+
+This meant that between Lesbia and that distinctly inferior being, her
+younger sister, there was to be no confidence. Mary had watched the
+life-drama acted under her eyes too closely not to know all about it,
+and was not inclined to be so put off.
+
+That pale perturbed countenance of John Hammond's, those eager inquiring
+eyes looking to the door which opened not, had haunted Mary's waking
+thoughts, had even mingled with the tangled web of her dreams. Oh, how
+could any woman scorn such love? To be so loved, and by such a man,
+seemed to Mary the perfection of earthly bliss. She had never been
+educated up to those wider and loftier views of life, which teach a
+woman that houses and lands, place and power, are the supreme good.
+
+'I can't understand how you could treat that noble-minded man so badly,'
+she exclaimed one day, when she and Lesbia were alone in the library,
+and after she had sat for ever so long, staring out of the window,
+meditating upon her sister's cruelty.
+
+'Of whom are you speaking, pray?'
+
+'As if you didn't know! Of Mr. Hammond.'
+
+'And pray, how do you know that he is noble-minded, or that I treated
+him badly?'
+
+'Well, as to his being noble-minded, that jumps to the eyes, as French
+books say. As for your treatment of him, I was looking on all the time,
+and I know how unkind you were, and I heard him talking to you in the
+fir-copse that day.'
+
+'You were listening' cried Lesbia indignantly.
+
+'I was not listening! I was passing by. And if people choose to carry on
+their love affairs out of doors they must expect to be overheard. I
+heard him pleading to you, telling you how he would work for you, fight
+the battle of life for you, asking you to be trustful and brave for his
+sake. But you have a heart of stone. You and grandmother both have
+hearts of stone. I think she must have taken out your heart when you
+were little, and put a stone in its place.'
+
+'Really,' said Lesbia, trying to carry things with a high hand, albeit
+her very human heart was beating passionately all the time, 'I think you
+ought to be very grateful to me--and grandmother--for refusing Mr.
+Hammond.'
+
+'Why grateful?'
+
+'Because it leaves you a chance of getting him for yourself; and
+everybody can see that you are over head and ears in love with him. That
+jumps to the eyes, as you say.'
+
+Mary turned crimson, trembled with rage, looked at her sister as if she
+would kill her, for a moment or so, and finally burst into tears.
+
+'That is not true, and it is shameful for you to say such a thing,' she
+cried.
+
+'Why, what a virago you are, Mary. Well, I'm very glad it is not true.
+Mr. Hammond is--yes, I will be quite candid with you--he is the only man
+I am ever likely to admire for his own sake. He is good, brave, clever,
+all that you think him. But you and I do not live in a world in which
+girls are free to follow their own inclinations. I should break Lady
+Maulevrier's heart if I were to make a foolish marriage; and I owe her
+too much to set her wishes at naught, or to make her declining years
+unhappy. I must obey her, at any cost to my own feelings. Please never
+mention Mr. Hammond's name. I'm sure I've had quite enough unhappiness
+about him.'
+
+'I see,' said Mary, bitterly. 'It is your own pain you think of, not
+his. He may suffer, so long as you are not worried.'
+
+'You are an impertinent chit,' retorted Lesbia, 'and you know nothing
+about it.'
+
+After this there was no more said about Mr. Hammond; but Mary did not
+forget him. She wrote long letters to her brother, who was still in
+Scotland, shooting, deer-stalking, fishing, killing something or other
+daily, in the most approved fashion of an Englishman taking his
+pleasure. Maulevrier occasionally repaid her with a telegram; but he was
+not a good correspondent. He declared that life was too short for
+letter-writing.
+
+Summer was gone; the lake was no longer a shining emerald floor, dotted
+with the reflection of the flock upon the verdant slopes above it, but
+dull and grey of hue, and broken by white-edged wavelets. Patches of
+snow gleamed on the misty heights of Helvellyn, and the autumn winds
+howled and shrieked around Fellside in the evenings, when all the
+shutters were shut, and the outside world seemed little more than an
+idea: that mystic hour when the sheep are slumbering under the starry
+sky, and when, as the Westmoreland peasant believes, the fairies help
+the housewife at her spinning-wheel.
+
+Those October evenings were very long and weary for Lesbia and her
+sister. Lady Maulevrier read and mused in her low chair beside the fire,
+with her books piled upon her own particular table, and lighted by her
+own particular lamp. She talked very little, but she was always gracious
+to her granddaughters and their governess, and she liked them to be with
+her in the evening. Lesbia played or sang, or sat at work at her
+basket-table, which occupied the other side of the fireplace; and
+Fräulein and Mary had the rest of the room to themselves, as it were,
+those two places by the hearth being sacred, as if dedicated to
+household gods. Mary read immensely in those long evenings, devouring
+volume after volume, feeding her imagination with every kind of
+nutriment, good, bad, and indifferent. Fräulein Müller knitted a woollen
+shawl, which seemed to have neither beginning, middle, nor end, and was
+always ready for conversation, but there were times when silence brooded
+over the scene for long intervals, and when every sound of the light
+wood-ashes dropping on the tiled hearth was distinctly audible.
+
+This state of things went on for about three weeks after Lesbia's return
+from St. Bees, Lady Maulevrier watchful of her granddaughter all the
+time, though saying nothing. She saw that Lesbia was not happy, not as
+she had been in the time before the coming of John Hammond. She had
+never been particularly gay or light-hearted, never gifted with the wild
+spirits and buoyancy which make girlhood so lovely a season to some
+natures, a time of dance and song and joyousness, a morning of life
+steeped in the beauty and gladness of the universe. She had never been
+gay as young lambs and foals and fawns and kittens and puppy dogs are
+gay, by reason of the well-spring of delight within them, needing no
+stimulus from the outside world. She had been just a little inclined to
+murmur at the dulness of her life at Fellside; yet she had borne herself
+with a placid sweetness which had been Lady Maulevrier's delight. But
+now there was a marked change in her manner. She was not the less
+submissive and dutiful in her bearing to her grandmother, whom she both
+loved and feared; but there were moments of fretfulness and impatience
+which she could not conceal. She was captious and sullen in her manner
+to Mary and the Fräulein. She would not walk or drive with them, or
+share in any of their amusements. Sometimes of an evening that studious
+silence of the drawing-room was suddenly broken by Lesbia's weary sigh,
+breathed unawares as she bent over her work.
+
+Lady Maulevrier saw, too, that Lesbia's cheek was paler than of old, her
+eyes less bright. There was a heavy look that told of broken slumbers,
+there was a pinched look in that oval check. Good heavens! if her beauty
+were to pale and wane, before society had bowed down and worshipped it;
+if this fair flower were to fade untimely; if this prize rose in the
+garden of beauty were to wither and decay before it won the prize.
+
+Her ladyship was a woman of action, and no sooner did this fear shape
+itself in her mind than she took steps to prevent the evil her thoughts
+foreshadowed.
+
+Among those friends of her youth and allies of her house with whom she
+had always maintained an affectionate correspondence was Lady Kirkbank,
+the fashionable wife of a sporting baronet, owner of a castle in
+Scotland, a place in Yorkshire, a villa at Cannes, and a fine house in
+Arlington Street, with an income large enough for their enjoyment. When
+Lady Diana Angersthorpe shone forth in the West End world as the
+acknowledged belle of the season, the star of Georgina Lorimer was
+beginning to wane. She was the eldest daughter of Colonel Lorimer, a man
+of good old family, and a fine soldier, who had fought shoulder to
+shoulder with Gough and Lawrence, and who had contrived to make a figure
+in society with very small means. Georgina's sisters had all married
+well. It was a case of necessity, the Colonel told them; they must
+either marry or gravitate ultimately to the workhouse. So the Miss
+Lorimers made the best use of their youth and freshness, and 'no good
+offer refused' was the guiding rule of their young lives. Lucy married
+an East India merchant, and set up a fine house in Porchester Terrace.
+Maud married wealth personified in the person of a leading member of the
+Tallow Chandlers' Company, and had her town house and country house, and
+as fine a set of diamonds as a duchess.
+
+But Georgina, the eldest, trifled with her chances, and her
+twenty-seventh birthday beheld her pouring out her father's tea in a
+small furnished house in a street off Portland Place, which the Colonel
+had hired on his return from India, and which he declared himself unable
+to maintain another year.
+
+'Directly the season is over I shall give up housekeeping and take a
+lodging at Bath,' said Colonel Lorimer. 'If you don't like Bath all the
+year round you can stay with your sisters.'
+
+'That is the last thing I am likely to do,' answered Georgina; 'my
+sisters were barely endurable when they were single and poor. They are
+quite intolerable now they are married and rich. I would sooner live in
+the monkey-house at the Zoological than stay with either Lucy or Maud.'
+
+'That's rank envy,' retorted her father 'You can't forgive them for
+having done so much better than you.'
+
+'I can't forgive them for having married snobs. When I marry I shall
+marry a gentleman.'
+
+'When!' echoed the parent, with a sneering laugh. 'Hadn't you better say
+"if"?'
+
+At this period Georgina's waning good looks were in some measure
+counterbalanced by the cumulative effects of half a dozen seasons in
+good society, which had given style to her person, ease to her manners,
+and sharpness to her tongue. Nobody in society said sharper or more
+unpleasant things than Miss Lorimer, and by virtue of this gift she got
+invited about a great deal more than she might have done had she been
+distinguished for sweetness of speech and manner. Georgie Lorimer's
+presence at a dinner table gave just that pungent flavour which is like
+the faint suspicion of garlic in a fricassee or of tarragon in a salad.
+
+Now in this very season, when Colonel Lorimer was inclined to speak of
+his daughter, as Sainte Beuve wrote of Musset, as a young woman with a
+very brilliant past, a lucky turn of events gave Georgina a fresh start
+in life, which may be called a new departure. Lady Diana Angersthorpe,
+the belle of the season, took a fancy to her, was charmed with her sharp
+tongue and acute sense of the ridiculous. The two became fast friends,
+and were seen everywhere together. The best men all flocked round the
+beauty, and all talked to the beauty's companion: and before the season
+was over, Sir George Kirkbank, who had half made up his mind to
+propose to Lady Diana, found himself engaged to that uncommonly jolly
+girl, Lady Diana's friend. Georgina spent August and September with Lady
+Di, at the Marchioness of Carisbroke's delightful villa in the Isle of
+Wight, and Sir George kept his yacht at Cowes all the time, and was in
+constant attendance upon his fiancée. It was George and Georgie
+everywhere. In October Colonel Lorimer had the profound pleasure of
+giving away his daughter, before the altar in St. George's, Hanover
+Square, and it may be said of him that nothing in his relations with
+that young lady became him better than his manner of parting with her.
+
+So the needy Colonel's daughter became Lady Kirkbank, and in the
+following spring Diana Angersthorpe was married at the same St. George's
+to the Earl of Maulevrier. The friends were divided by distance and by
+circumstance as the years rolled on; but friendship was steadily
+maintained; and a regular correspondence with Lady Kirkbank, whose pen
+was as sharp as her tongue, was one of the means by which Lady
+Maulevrier had kept herself thoroughly posted in all those small events,
+unrecorded by newspapers, which make up the secret history of society.
+
+It was of her old friend Georgie that her ladyship thought in her
+present anxiety. Lady Kirkbank had more than once suggested that Lady
+Maulevrier's granddaughters should vary the monotony of Fellside by a
+visit to her place near Doncaster, or her castle north of Aberdeen; but
+her ladyship had evaded these friendly suggestions, being very jealous
+of any strange influence upon Lesbia's life. Now, however, there had
+come a time when Lesbia must have a complete change of scenery and
+surroundings, lest she should pine and dwindle in sullen submission to
+fate, or else defy the world and elope with John Hammond.
+
+Now, therefore, Lady Maulevrier decided to accept Lady Kirkbank's
+hospitality. She told her friend the whole story with perfect frankness,
+and her letter was immediately answered by a telegram.
+
+'I start for Scotland to-morrow, will break my journey by staying a
+night at Fellside, and will take Lady Lesbia on to Kirkbank with me next
+day, if she can be ready to go.'
+
+'She shall be ready,' said Lady Maulevrier.
+
+She told Lesbia that she had accepted an invitation for her, and that
+she was to go to Kirkbank Castle the day after to-morrow. She was
+prepared for unwillingness, resistance even; but Lesbia received the
+news with evident pleasure.
+
+'I shall be very glad to go,' she said, 'this place is so dull. Of
+course I shall be sorry to leave you, grandmother, and I wish you would
+go with me; but any change will be a relief. I think if I had to stay
+here all the winter, counting the days and the hours, I should go out of
+my mind.'
+
+The tears came into her eyes, but she wiped them away hurriedly, ashamed
+of her emotion.
+
+'My dearest child, I am so sorry for you,' murmured Lady Maulevrier.
+'But believe me the day will come when you will be very glad that you
+conquered the first foolish inclination of your girlish heart.'
+
+'Yes, I daresay, when I am eighty,' Lesbia answered, impatiently. She
+had made up her mind to submit to the inevitable. She had loved John
+Hammond--had been as near breaking her heart for him as it was in her
+nature to break her heart for anybody; but she wanted to make a great
+marriage, to be renowned and admired. She had been reared and trained
+for that; and she was not going to belie her training.
+
+A visitor from the great London world was so rare an event that there
+was naturally a little excitement in the idea of Lady Kirkbank's
+arrival. The handsomest and most spacious of the spare bedrooms was
+prepared for the occasion. The housekeeper was told that the dinner must
+be perfect. There must be nothing old-fashioned or ponderous; there must
+be mind as well as matter in everything. Rarely did Lady Maulevrier look
+at a bill of fare; but on this particular morning she went carefully
+through the menu, and corrected it with her own hand.
+
+A pair of post-horses brought Lady Kirkbank and her maid from Windermere
+station, in time for afternoon tea, and the friends who had only met
+twice within the last forty years, embraced each other on the threshold
+of Lady Maulevrier's morning-room.
+
+'My dearest Di,' cried Lady Kirkbank, 'what a delight to see you again
+after such ages; and what a too lovely spot you have chosen for your
+retreat from the world, the flesh, and the devil. If I could be a
+recluse anywhere, it would be amongst just such delicious surroundings.'
+
+Without, twilight shades were gathering; within, there was only the
+light of a fire and a shaded lamp upon the tea table; there was just
+light enough for the two women to see each other's faces, and the change
+which time had wrought there.
+
+Never did womanhood in advanced years offer a more striking contrast
+than that presented by the woman of fashion and the recluse. Lady
+Maulevrier was almost as handsome in the winter of her days as she had
+been when life was in its spring. The tall, slim figure, erect as a
+dart, the delicately chiselled features and alabaster complexion, the
+soft silvery hair, the perfect hand, whiter and more transparent than
+the hand of girlhood, the stately movements and bearing, all combined to
+make Lady Maulevrier a queen among women. Her brocade gown of a deep
+shade of red, with a border of dark sable on cuffs and collar, suggested
+a portrait by Velasquez. She wore no ornaments except the fine old
+Brazilian diamonds which flashed and sparkled upon her slender fingers.
+
+If Lady Maulevrier looked like a picture in the Escurial, Lady Kirkbank
+resembled a caricature in _La Vie Parisienne_. Everything she wore was
+in the very latest fashion of the Parisian _demi-monde_, that
+exaggerated elegance of a fashion plate which only the most exquisite of
+women could redeem from vulgarity. Plush, brocade, peacock's feathers,
+golden bangles, mousquetaire gloves, a bonnet of purple plumage set off
+by ornaments of filagree gold, an infantine little muff of lace and wild
+flowers, buttercups and daisies; and hair, eyebrows and complexion as
+artificial as the flowers on the muff.
+
+All that art could do to obliterate the traces of age had been done for
+Georgina Kirkbank. But seventy years are not to be obliterated easily,
+and the crow's feet showed through the bloom de Ninon, and the eyes
+under the painted arches were glassy and haggard, the carnation lips had
+a withered look. Age was made all the more palpable by the artifice
+which would have disguised it.
+
+Lady Maulevrier suffered an absolute shock at beholding the friend of
+her youth. She had not accustomed herself to the idea that women in
+society could raddle their cheeks, stain their lips, and play tricks
+before high heaven with their eyebrows and eyelashes. In her own youth
+painted faces had been the ghastly privilege of a class of womankind of
+which the women of society were supposed to know nothing. Persons who
+showed their ankles and rouged their cheeks were to be seen of an
+afternoon in Bond Street; but Lady Diana Angersthorpe had been taught to
+pass them by as if she saw them not, to behold without seeing these
+creatures outside the pale. And now she saw her own dearest friend, a
+person distinctly within the pale, plastered with bismuth and stained
+with carmine, and wearing hair of a colour so obviously false and
+inharmonious, that child-like faith could hardly accept it as reality.
+Forty years ago Lady Kirkbank's long ringlets had been darkest glossiest
+brown, to-day she wore a tousled fringe of bright yellow, piquantly
+contrasting with Vandyke brown eyebrows.
+
+It took Lady Maulevrier some moments to get over the shock. She drew a
+chair to the fire and established her friend in it, and then, with a
+little gasp, she said:
+
+'I am charmed to see you again, Georgie!'
+
+'You darling, I was sure you would be glad. But you must find me awfully
+changed--awfully.'
+
+For worlds Lady Maulevrier could not have denied this truth. Happily
+Lady Kirkbank did not wait for an answer.
+
+'Society is so wearing, and George and I never seem to get an interval
+of quiet. Kirkbank is to be full of men next week. Your granddaughter
+will have a good time.'
+
+'There will be a few women, of course?'
+
+'Oh, yes, there's no avoiding that; only one doesn't reckon them. Sir
+George only counts his guns. We expect a splendid season. I shall send
+you some birds of my own shooting.'
+
+'You shoot!' exclaimed Lady Maulevrier, amazed.
+
+'Shoot! I should think I do. What else is there to amuse one in
+Scotland, after the salmon fishing is over? I have never missed a season
+for the last thirty years, unless we have been abroad.'
+
+'Please, don't innoculate Lesbia with your love of sport.'
+
+'What! you wouldn't like her to shoot? Well, perhaps you are right. It
+is hardly the thing for a pretty girl with her fortune to make. It
+spoils the delicacy of the skin. But I'm afraid she'll find Kirkbank
+dull if she doesn't go out with the guns. She can meet us with the rest
+of the women at luncheon. We have some capital picnic luncheons on the
+moor, I can assure you.'
+
+'I know she will enjoy herself with you. She has been accustomed to a
+very quiet life here.'
+
+'It is a lovely spot; but I own I cannot understand how you can have
+lived here exclusively during all these years--you who used to be all
+life and fire, loving change, action, political and diplomatic society,
+to dance upon the crest of the wave, as it were. Your whole nature must
+have suffered some curious change.'
+
+Their close intimacy of the past warranted freedom of speech in the
+present.
+
+'My nature did undergo a change, and a severe one,' answered Lady
+Maulevrier, gloomily.
+
+'It was that horrid--and I daresay unfortunate scandal about his
+lordship; and then the sad shock of his death,' murmured Lady Kirkbank,
+sympathetically. 'Most women, with your youth and beauty, would have
+forgotten the scandal and the husband in a twelvemonth, and would have
+made a second marriage more brilliant than the first. But no Indian
+widow who ever performed suttee was more worthy of praise than you, or
+even that person of Ephesus, whose story I have heard somewhere. Indeed,
+I have always spoken of your life as a long suttee. But you mean to
+re-appear in society next season, I hope, when you present your
+granddaughter?'
+
+'I shall certainly go up to London to present her, and possibly I may
+spend the season in town; but I shall feel like Rip Van Winkle.'
+
+'No, no, you won't, my dear Di. You have kept yourself _au courant_, I
+know. Even my silly gossiping letters may have been of _some_ use.'
+
+'They have been most valuable. Let me give you another cup of tea,' said
+Lady Maulevrier, who had been officiating at her own exquisite
+tea-table, an arrangement of inlaid woods, antique silver, and modern
+china, which her friend pronounced a perfect poem.
+
+Indeed, the whole room was poetic, Lady Kirkbank declared, and there are
+many highly praised scenes which less deserve the epithet. The dark red
+walls and cedar dado, the stamped velvet curtains, of an indescribable
+shade between silver-grey and olive, the Sheraton furniture, the
+parqueterie floor and Persian prayer-rugs, the deep yet brilliant hues
+of crackle porcelain and Chinese cloisonné enamel, the artistic
+fireplace, with dog-stove, low brass fender, and ingle-nook recessed
+under the high mantelpiece, all combined to form a luxurious and
+harmonious whole.
+
+Lady Kirkbank admired the _tout ensemble_ in the fitful light of the
+fire, the dim grey of deepening twilight.
+
+'There never was a more delicious cell!' she exclaimed, 'but still I
+should feel it a prison, if I had to spend six weeks in the year in it.
+I never stay more than six weeks anywhere out of London; and I always
+find six weeks more than enough. The first fortnight is rapture, the
+third and fourth weeks are calm content, the fifth is weariness, the
+sixth a fever to be gone. I once tried a seventh week at Pontresina, and
+I hated the place so intensely that I dared not go back there for the
+next three years. But now tell me. Diana, have you really performed
+suttee, have you buried yourself alive in this sweet spot deliberately,
+or has the love of retirement grown upon you, and have you become a kind
+of lotus-eater?'
+
+'I believe I have become a kind of lotus-eater. My retirement here has
+been no sentimental sacrifice to Lord Maulevrier's memory.'
+
+'I am glad to hear that; for I really think the worst possible use a
+woman can make of her life is in wasting it on lamentation for a dead
+and gone husband. Life is odiously short at the best, and it is mere
+imbecility to fritter away any of our scanty portion upon the dead, who
+can never be any the better for our tears.'
+
+'My motive in living at Fellside was not reverence for the dead. And now
+let us talk of the gay world, of which you know all the secrets. Have
+you heard anything more about Lord Hartfield?'
+
+'Ah, there is a subject in which you have reason to be interested. I
+have not forgotten the romance of your youth--that first season in which
+Ronald Hollister used to haunt every place at which you appeared. Do you
+remember that wet afternoon at the Chiswick flower-show, when you and he
+and I took shelter in the orange house, and you two made love to each
+other most audaciously in an atmosphere of orange-blossoms that almost
+stifled me? Yes, those were glorious days!'
+
+'A short summer of gladness, a brief dream,' sighed Lady Maulevrier. 'Is
+young Lord Hartfield like his father?'
+
+'No, he takes after the Ilmingtons; but still there is a look of your
+old sweetheart--yes, I think there is an expression. I have not seen him
+for nearly a year. He is still abroad, roaming about somewhere in search
+of adventures. These young men who belong to the Geographical and the
+Alpine Club are hardly ever at home.'
+
+'But though they may be sometimes lost to society, they are all the
+more worthy of society's esteem when they do appear,' said Lady
+Maulevrier. 'I think there must be an ennobling influence in Alpine
+travel, or in the vast solitudes of the Dark Continent. A man finds
+himself face to face with unsophisticated nature, and with the grandest
+forces of the universe. Professor Tyndall writes delightfully of his
+Alpine experiences; his mind seems to have ripened in the solitude and
+untainted air of the Alps. And I believe Lord Hartfield is a young man
+of very high character and of considerable cultivation, is he not?'
+
+'He is a splendid young fellow. I never heard a word to his
+disparagement, even from those people who pretend to know something bad
+about everybody. What a husband he would make for one of your girls!'
+
+'Admirable! But those perfect arrangements, which seem predestined by
+heaven itself, are so rarely realised on earth,' answered the dowager,
+lightly.
+
+She was not going to show her cards, even to an old friend.
+
+'Well, it would be very sweet if they were to meet next season and fall
+in love with each other,' said Lady Kirkbank. 'He is enormously rich, and
+I daresay your girls will not be portionless.'
+
+'Lesbia may take a modest place among heiresses,' answered Lady
+Maulevrier. 'I have lived so quietly during the last forty years that I
+could hardly help saving money.'
+
+'How nice!' sighed Georgie. 'I never saved sixpence in my life, and am
+always in debt.'
+
+'The little fortune I have saved is much too small for division. Lesbia
+will therefore have all I can leave her. Mary has the usual provision as
+a daughter of the Maulevrier house.'
+
+'And I suppose Lesbia has that provision also?'
+
+'Of course.'
+
+'Lucky Lesbia. I only wish Hartfield were coming to us for the shooting.
+I would engage he should fall in love with her. Kirkbank is a splendid
+place for match-making. But the fact is I am not very intimate with him.
+He is almost always travelling, and when he is at home he is not in our
+set. And now, my dear Diana, tell me more about yourself, and your own
+life in this delicious place.'
+
+'There is so little to tell. The books I have read, the theories of
+literature and art and science which I have adopted and dismissed,
+learnt and forgotten--those are the history of my life. The ideas of the
+outside world reach me here only in books and newspapers; but you who
+have been living in the world must have so much to say. Let me be the
+listener.'
+
+Lady Kirkbank desired nothing better. She rattled on for three-quarters
+of an hour about her doings in the great world, her social triumphs, the
+wonderful things she had done for Sir George, who seemed to be as a
+puppet in her hands, the princes and princelings she had entertained,
+the songs she had composed, the comedy she had written, for private
+representation only, albeit the Haymarket manager was dying to produce
+it, the scathing witticisms with which she had withered her social
+enemies. She would have gone on much longer, but for the gong, which
+reminded her that it was time to dress for dinner.
+
+Half-an-hour later Lady Kirkbank was in the drawing-room, where Mary had
+retired to the most shadowy corner, anxious to escape the gaze of the
+fashionable visitor.
+
+But Lady Kirkbank was not inclined to take much notice of Mary. Lesbia's
+brilliant beauty, the exquisite Greek head, the faultless complexion,
+the deep, violet eyes, caught Georgina Kirkbank's eye the moment she had
+entered the room, and she saw that this girl and no other must be the
+beauty, the beloved and chosen grandchild.
+
+'How do you do, my dear?' she said, taking Lesbia's hand, and then, as
+if with a gush of warm feeling, suddenly drawing the girl towards her
+and kissing her on both cheeks. 'I am going to be desperately fond of
+you, and I hope you will soon contrive to like me--just a little.'
+
+'I feel sure that I shall like you very much,' Lesbia answered sweetly.
+'I am prepared to love you as grandmother's old friend.'
+
+'Oh, my dear, to think that I should ever be the old friend of anybody's
+grandmother!' sighed Lady Kirkbank, with unaffected regret. 'When I was
+your age I used to think all old people odious. It never occurred to me
+that I should live to be one of them.'
+
+'Then you had no dear grandmother whom you loved,' said Lesbia, 'or you
+would have liked old people for her sake.'
+
+'No, my love, I had no grandparents. I had a father, and he was
+all-sufficient--anything beyond him in the ancestral line would have
+been a burden laid upon me greater than I could bear, as the poet says.'
+
+Dinner was announced, and Mary came shyly out of her corner, blushing
+deeply.
+
+'And this is Lady Mary, I suppose?' said Lady Kirkbank, in an off-hand
+way, 'How do you do, my dear? I am going to steal your sister.'
+
+'I am very glad,' faltered Mary. 'I mean I am glad that Lesbia should
+enjoy herself.'
+
+'And some fine day, when Lesbia is married and a great lady, I shall ask
+you to come to Scotland,' said Lady Kirkbank, condescendingly, and then
+she murmured in her friend's ear, as they went to the dining-room,
+'Quite an English girl. Very fresh and frank and nice,' which was great
+praise for such a second-rate young person as Lady Mary.
+
+'What do you think of Lesbia?' asked Lady Maulevrier, in the same
+undertone.
+
+'She is simply adorable. Your letters prepared me to expect beauty, but
+not such beauty. My dear, I thought the progress of the human race was
+all in a downward line since our time; but your granddaughter is as
+handsome as you were in your first season, and that is going very far.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+'NOT YET.'
+
+
+Lady Kirkbank carried off Lesbia early next day, the girl radiant at the
+idea of seeing life under new conditions. She had a few minutes' serious
+talk with her grandmother before she went.
+
+'Lesbia, you are going into the world,' said Lady Maulevrier; 'yes, even
+a country house is the world in little. You will have many admirers
+instead of one; but I think, I believe, that you will be true to me and
+to yourself.'
+
+'You need not fear, grandmother. I have been an idiot; but--but it was
+only a passing folly, and I shall never be so weak again.'
+
+Lesbia's scornful lips and kindling eyes gave intensity to her speech.
+It was evident that she despised herself for that one touch of womanly
+softness which had made her as ready to fall in love with her first
+wooer as any peasant girl in Grasmere Vale.
+
+'I am delighted to hear you speak thus, dearest,' said Lady Maulevrier.
+'And if Mr. Hamilton--Hammond, I mean--should have the audacity to
+follow you to Kirkbank, and to intrude himself upon you there--perhaps
+to persecute you with clandestine addresses----'
+
+'I do not believe he would do anything clandestine,' said Lesbia,
+drawing herself up. 'He is quite above that.'
+
+'My dear child, we know absolutely nothing about him. He has his way to
+make in the world unaided by family or connections. He is
+clever--daring. Such a man cannot help being an adventurer; and an
+adventurer is capable of anything. I warn you to beware of him.'
+
+'I don't suppose I shall ever see his face again,' retorted Lesbia,
+irritably.
+
+She had made up her mind that her life was not to be spoiled, her
+brilliant future sacrificed, for the sake of John Hammond; but the wound
+which she had suffered in renouncing him was still fresh, her feelings
+were still sore. Any contemptuous mention of him stung her to the quick.
+
+'I hope not. And you will beware of other adventurers, Lesbia, men of a
+worse stamp than Mr. Hammond, more experienced in ruse and iniquity, men
+steeped to the lips in worldly knowledge, men who look upon women as
+mere counters in the game of life. The world thinks that I am rich, and
+you will no doubt take rank as an heiress. You will therefore be a mark
+for every spendthrift, noble or otherwise, who wants to restore his
+broken fortunes by a wealthy marriage. And now, my dearest, good-bye.
+Half my heart goes with you. Nothing could induce me to part with you,
+even for a few weeks, except the conviction that it is for your good.'
+
+'But we shall not be parted next year, I hope, grandmother,' said
+Lesbia, affectionately. 'You said something about presenting me, and
+then leaving me in Lady Kirkbank's care for the season. I should not
+like that at all. I want you to go everywhere with me, to teach me all
+the mysteries of the great world. You have always promised me that it
+should be so.'
+
+'And I have always intended that it should be so. I hope that it will be
+so,' answered her grandmother, with a sigh; 'but I am an old woman,
+Lesbia, and I am rooted to this place.'
+
+'But why should you be rooted here? What charm can keep you here, when
+you are so fitted to shine in society? You are old in nothing but years,
+and not even old in years in comparison with women whom we hear of,
+going everywhere and mixing in every fashionable amusement. You are full
+of fire and energy, and as active as a girl. Why should you not enjoy a
+London season, grandmother?' pleaded Lesbia, nestling her head lovingly
+against Lady Maulevrier's shoulder.
+
+'I should enjoy it, dearest, with you. It would be a renewal of my youth
+to see you shine and conquer. I should be as proud as if the glory were
+all my own. Yes, dear, I hope that I shall be a spectator of your
+triumphs. But do not let us plan the future. Life is so full of changes.
+Remember what Horace says----'
+
+'Horace is a bore,' said Lesbia. 'I hate a poet who is always harping
+upon change and death.'
+
+The carriage, which was to take the travellers to Windermere Station,
+was announced at this moment, and Lesbia and her grandmother gave each
+other the farewell embrace.
+
+'You like Lady Kirkbank, I hope?' said Lady Maulevrier, as they went
+towards the hall, where that lady was waiting for them, with Lady Mary
+and Fräulein Müller in attendance upon her.
+
+'She seems very kind, but I should like her better if she did not
+paint--or if she painted better.'
+
+'My dear child I'm afraid it is the fashion of the day, just as it was
+in Pope's time, and we ought to think nothing about it.'
+
+'Well, I suppose I shall get hardened in time.'
+
+'My dearest Lesbia,' shrieked Lady Kirkbank from below, 'remember we
+have to catch a train.'
+
+Lesbia hurried downstairs, followed by Lady Maulevrier, who had to bid
+her friend adieu. The luggage had been sent on in a cart, Lesbia's
+trunks and dress baskets forming no small item. She was so well
+furnished with pretty gowns of all kinds that there had been no
+difficulty in getting her ready for this sudden visit. Her maid was on
+the box beside the coachman. Lady Kirkbank's attendant, a Frenchwoman of
+five-and-thirty, who looked as if she had graduated at Mabille, was to
+occupy the back seat of the landau.
+
+Lady Mary looked after her sister longingly, as the carriage drove down
+the hill. She was going into a new world, to see all kinds of
+people--clever people--distinguished people--musical, artistic,
+political people--hunting and shooting people--while Mary was to stay at
+home all the winter among the old familiar faces. Dearly as she loved
+these hills and vales her heart sank a little at the thought of those
+long lonely months, days and evenings that would be all alike, and which
+must be spent without sympathetic companionship. And there would be
+dreary days on which the weather would keep her a prisoner in her
+luxurious gaol, when the mountains, and the rugged paths beside the
+mountain streams, would be inaccessible, when she would be restricted to
+Fräulein's phlegmatic society, that lady being stout and lazy, fond of
+her meals, and given to afternoon slumbers. Lesbia and Mary were not by
+any means sympathetic; yet, after all, blood is thicker than water; and
+Lesbia was intelligent, and could talk of the things Mary loved, which
+was better than total dumbness, even if she generally took an
+antagonistic view of them.
+
+'I shall miss her dreadfully,' thought Mary, as she strolled listlessly
+in the gardens, where the leaves where falling and the flowers fading.
+
+'I wonder if she will see Mr. Hammond at Lady Kirkbank's?' mused Mary.
+'If he were anything like a lover he would find out all about her visit,
+and seize the opportunity of her being away from grandmother. But then
+if he had been much of a lover he would have followed her to St. Bees.'
+
+Lady Maulevrier sorely missed her favourite grandchild. In a life spent
+in such profound seclusion, so remote from the busy interests of the
+world, this beloved companionship had become a necessity to her. She had
+concentrated her affections upon Lesbia, and the girl's absence made a
+fearful blank. But her ladyship's dignity was not compromised by any
+outward signs of trouble or loss.
+
+She spent her mornings in her own room, reading and writing and musing
+at her leisure; she drove or walked every fine afternoon, sometimes
+alone, sometimes attended by Mary, who hated these stately drives and
+walks. She dined _tête-à-tête_ with Mary, except on those rare occasions
+when there were visitors--the Vicar and his wife, or some wandering star
+from other worlds. Mary lived in profound awe of her grandmother, but
+was of far too frank a nature to be able to adapt her speech or her
+manners to her ladyship's idea of feminine perfection. She was silent
+and shy under those falcon eyes; but she was still the same Mary, the
+girl to whom pretence or simulation of any kind was impossible.
+
+Letters came almost every day from Kirkbank Castle, letters from Lesbia
+describing the bright gay life she was living at that hospitable abode,
+the excursions, the rides, the picnic luncheons after the morning's
+sport, the dinner parties, the dances.
+
+'It is the most delightful house you can imagine,' wrote Lesbia; 'and
+Lady Kirkbank is an admirable hostess. I have quite forgiven her for
+wearing false eyebrows; for after all, you know, one must _have_
+eyebrows; they are a necessity; but why does she not have the two arches
+alike? They are _never_ a pair, and I really think that French maid of
+hers does it on purpose.
+
+'By-the-bye, Lady Kirkbank is going to write to you to beseech you to
+let me go to Cannes and Monte Carlo with her. Sir George insists upon
+it. He says they both like young society, and will be horribly vexed if
+I refuse to go with them. And Lady Kirkbank thinks my chest is just a
+little weak--I almost broke down the other night in that lovely little
+song of Jensen's--and that a winter in the south is just what I want.
+But, of course, dear grandmother, I won't ask you to let me be away so
+long if you think you will miss me.'
+
+'If I think I shall miss her!' repeated Lady Maulevrier. 'Has the girl
+no heart, that she can ask such a question? But can I wonder at that? Of
+what account was I or my love to her father, although I sacrificed
+myself for his good name? Can I expect that she should be of a different
+clay?'
+
+And then, meditating upon the events of the summer that was gone, Lady
+Maulevrier thought--
+
+She renounced her first lover at my bidding; she renounces her love for
+me at the bidding of the world. Or was it not rather self-interest, the
+fear of making a bad marriage, which influenced her in her renunciation
+of Mr. Hammond. It was not obedience to me, it was not love for me which
+made her give him up. It was the selfishness engrained in her race.
+Well, I have heaped my love upon her, because she is fair and sweet, and
+reminds me of my own youth. I must let her go, and try to be happy in
+the knowledge that she is enjoying her life far away from me.'
+
+Lady Maulevrier wrote her consent to the extension of Lesbia's visit,
+and by return of post came a letter from Lesbia which seemed brimming
+over with love, and which comforted the grandmother's wounded heart.
+
+'Lady Kirkbank and I are both agreed, dearest, that you must join us at
+Cannes,' wrote Lesbia. 'At your age it is very wrong of you to spend a
+winter in our horrible climate. You can travel with Steadman and your
+maid. Lady Kirkbank will secure you a charming suite of rooms at the
+hotel, or she would like it still better if you would stay at her own
+villa. Do consent to this plan, dear grandmother, and then we shall not
+be parted for a long winter. Of course Mary would be quite happy at home
+running wild.'
+
+Lady Maulevrier sighed as she read this letter, sighed again, and
+heavily, as she put it back into the envelope. Alas, how many and many a
+year had gone, long, monotonous, colourless years, since she had seen
+that bright southern world which she was now urged to revisit. In fancy
+she saw it again to-day, the tideless sea of deepest sapphire blue, the
+little wavelets breaking on a yellow beach, the white triangular sails,
+the woods full of asphodel and great purple and white lilies, the
+atmosphere steeped in warmth and light and perfume, the glare of white
+houses in the sun, the red and yellow blinds, the pots of green and
+orange and crimson clay, with oleanders abloom, the wonderful glow of
+colour everywhere and upon all things. And then as the eyes of the mind
+recalled these vivid images her bodily eyes looked out upon the
+rain-blotted scene, the mountains rising in a dark and dismal circle
+round that sombre pool below, walling her in from the outer world.
+
+'I am at the bottom of a grave,' she said to herself. 'I am in a living
+tomb, from which there is no escape. Forty years! Forty years of
+patience and hope, for what? For dreams which may never be realised; for
+descendants who may never give me the price of my labours. Yes, I should
+like to go to my dear one. I should like to revisit the South of France,
+to go on to Italy. I should feel young again amidst that eternal,
+unchangeable loveliness. I should forget all I have suffered. But it
+cannot be. Not yet, not yet!'
+
+Presently with a smile of concentrated bitterness she repeated the words
+'Not yet!'
+
+'Surely at my age it must be folly to dream of the future; and yet I
+feel as if there were half a century of life in me, as if I had lost
+nothing in either mental or bodily vigour since I came here forty years
+ago.'
+
+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.
+
+Who could tell how long they might be covered; the winding tracks
+hidden; the narrow forces looking like black water or molten iron
+against that glittering whiteness? Mary could only walk along the road
+by Loughrigg to the bench called 'Rest and be thankful,' from which she
+looked with longing eyes across towards the Langdale Pikes, and to the
+sharp cone-shaped peak, known as Coniston Old Man, just visible above
+the nearer hills. Fräulein Müller suggested that it was in just such
+weather as this that a well brought up young lady, a young lady with
+_Vernunft_ and _Anstand_, should devote herself to the improvement of
+her mind.
+
+'Let us read German this _abscheulich_ afternoon,' said the Fräulein.
+'Suppose we go on with the "Sorrows of Werther."'
+
+'Werther was a fool,' cried Mary; 'any book but that.'
+
+'Will you choose your own book?'
+
+'Let me read Heine.'
+
+Fräulein looked doubtful. There were things in Heine--an all-pervading
+tone--which rendered him hardly an appropriate poet for 'the young
+person.' But Fräulein compromised the matter by letting Mary read Atta
+Troll, the exact bearing of which neither of them understood.
+
+'How beautifully Mr. Hammond read Heine that morning!' said Mary,
+breaking off suddenly from a perfectly automatic reading.
+
+'You did not hear him, did you? You were not there,' said the Fräulein.
+
+'I was not _there_, but I heard him. I--I was sitting on the bank among
+the pine trees.'
+
+'Why did you not come and sit with us? It would have been more ladylike
+than to hide yourself behind the trees.'
+
+Mary blushed crimson.
+
+'I had been in the kennels with Maulevrier; I was not fit to be seen,'
+she said.
+
+'Hardly a ladylike admission,' replied the Fräulein, who felt that with
+Lady Mary her chief duty was to reprove.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+'OF ALL MEN ELSE I HAVE AVOIDED THEE.'
+
+
+It was afternoon. The white hills yonder and all the length of the
+valley were touched here and there with gleams of wintry sunlight, and
+Lady Maulevrier was taking her solitary walk on the terrace in front of
+her house, a stately figure wrapped in a furred mantle, tall, erect,
+moving with measured pace up and down the smooth gravel path. Now and
+then at the end of the walk the dowager stopped for a minute or so, and
+stood as if in deep thought, with her eyes dreamily contemplating the
+landscape. An intense melancholy shadowed her face, as she thus gazed
+with brooding eyes on the naked monotony of those wintry hills. So had
+she looked in many and many a winter, and it seemed to her that her life
+was of a piece with those bleak hills, where in the dismal winter time
+nothing living trod. She stood gazing at the sinking sun, a fiery ball
+shining at the end of a long gallery of crag and rock, like a lamp at
+the end of a corridor; and as she gazed the red round orb dropped
+suddenly behind the edge of a crag, as if she had been an enchantress
+and had dismissed it with a wave of her wand.
+
+'O Lord, how long, how long?' she said. 'How many times have I seen that
+sun go down from this spot, in winter and summer, in spring and autumn!
+And now that the one being I loved and cared for is far away, I feel all
+the weariness and emptiness of my life.'
+
+As she turned to resume her walk she heard the muffled sound of wheels
+in the road below, that road which was completely hidden by foliage in
+summer, but which was now visible here and there between the leafless
+trees. A carriage with a pair of horses was coming along the road from
+Ambleside.
+
+Lady Maulevrier stood and watched until the carriage drew up at the
+lodge gate, and then, when the gate had been opened, slowly ascended the
+winding drive to the house.
+
+She expected no visitor; indeed, there was no one likely to come to her
+from the direction of Ambleside. Her heart began to beat heavily, with
+the apprehension of coming evil. What kind of evil she knew not. Bad
+news about her granddaughter, perhaps, or about Maulevrier. And yet that
+could hardly be. Evil tidings of that kind would have reached her by
+telegram.
+
+Perhaps it was Maulevrier himself. His movements were generally erratic.
+
+Lady Maulevrier hurried back to the house. She went through the
+conservatory, where the warm whiteness of azalia, and spirea, and arum
+lilies contrasted curiously with the cold white snow out of doors, to
+the hall, where a stranger was standing talking to the butler.
+
+He was a man of foreign appearance, wearing a cloak lined with sables,
+and a sable cap, which he removed as Lady Maulevrier approached. He was
+thin and small, with a clear olive complexion, olive inclining to pale
+bronze, sleek raven hair, and black almond-shaped eyes. At the first
+glance Lady Maulevrier knew that he was an Oriental. Her heart sank
+within her, and seemed to grow chill as death at sight of him. Anything
+associated with India was horrible to her.
+
+The stranger came forward to meet her, bowing deferentially. He had
+those lithe, gliding movements which she remembered of old, when she had
+seen princes and dignitaries of the East creeping shoeless to her
+husband's feet.
+
+'Will your ladyship do me the honour to grant me an interview?' he said
+in very good English. 'I have travelled from London expressly for that
+privilege.'
+
+'Then I fear you have wasted your time, sir, whatever your mission may
+be,' the dowager answered, haughtily. 'However, I am willing to hear
+anything you may have to say, if you will be good enough to come this
+way.'
+
+She moved towards the library, the butler preceding her to open the
+door, and the stranger followed her into the spacious room, where coals
+and logs were heaped high upon the wide dog stove, deeply recessed
+beneath the old English mantelpiece.
+
+It was one of the handsomest rooms of the house, furnished with oak
+bookcases about seven feet high, above which vases of Oriental ware and
+varied colouring stood boldly out against the dark oak wall. Richly
+bound books in infinite variety testified to the wealth and taste of the
+owner; while one side of the room was absorbed by a wide Gothic window,
+beyond which appeared the panorama of lake and mountain, beautiful in
+every season. A tawny velvet curtain divided this room from the
+drawing-room; but there was also a strong oak door behind the curtain,
+which was generally closed in cold weather.
+
+Lady Maulevrier went over to this door, and took the precaution to draw
+the bolt, before she seated herself in her arm-chair by the hearth. She
+had her own particular chair in all the rooms she occupied--a chair
+which was sacred as a throne.
+
+She drew off her sealskin gloves, and motioned with a slender white hand
+to the stranger to be seated.
+
+'To whom have I the honour of speaking?' she asked, looking; him through
+and through with an unflinching gaze, as she would have looked at Death
+himself, had the grim skeleton figure come to beckon her.
+
+He handed her a visiting card on which was engraved--
+
+'Louis Asoph, Rajah of Bisnagar.'
+
+'If my memory does not deceive me as to the history of modern India, the
+territory from which you take your title has been absorbed into the
+English dominion?' said Lady Maulevrier.
+
+'It was trafficked away forty-three years ago, stolen, filched from my
+father! but so long as I have power to think and to act I will maintain
+my claim to that land; yes, if only by the empty mockery of a name on a
+visiting card. It is a duty I owe to myself as a man, which I owe still
+more to my murdered father.'
+
+'Have you come all the way from London, and in such weather, only to
+tell me this story?'
+
+She had twisted his card between her fingers as she listened to him, and
+now, with an action at once careless and contemptuous, she flung it upon
+the burning logs. Slight as the action was it was eloquent of scorn for
+the man.
+
+'No, Lady Maulevrier, my mention of this story, with which you are no
+doubt perfectly familiar, is only a preliminary. I have come to claim my
+own, and to appeal to you as a woman of honour to do me justice. Nay, I
+will say as a woman of common honesty; since there is no nice point of
+honour in question, only the plain laws of mine and thine, which I
+believe are the same among all nations and creeds. I come to you, Lady
+Maulevrier, to ask you to restore to me the wealth which your husband
+stole from my father.'
+
+'You come to my house, to me, an old woman, helpless, defenceless, in
+the absence of my grandson, the present Earl, to insult me, and insult
+the dead,' said Lady Maulevrier, white as statuary marble, and as cold
+and calm. 'You come to rake up old lies, and to fling them in the face
+of a solitary woman, old enough to be your mother. Do you think that is
+a noble thing to do? Even in your barbarous Eastern code of morals and
+manners is _that_ the act of a gentleman?'
+
+'We are no barbarians in the East, Lady Maulevrier. I come from the
+cradle of civilisation, the original fount of learning. We were
+scholars and gentleman, priests and soldiers, two thousand years before
+your British ancestors ran wild in their woods, and sacrificed to their
+unknown gods or rocky altars reeking with human blood! I know the errand
+upon which I have come is not a pleasant one, either for you or for me;
+but I come to you strong in the right of a son to claim the heritage
+which was stolen from him by an infamous mother and her more infamous
+paramour----'
+
+'I will not hear another word!' cried Lady Maulevrier, starting to her
+feet, livid with passion. 'Do not dare to pronounce that name in my
+hearing--the name of that abominable woman who brought disgrace and
+dishonour upon my husband and his race.'
+
+'And who brought your husband the wealth of my murdered father,'
+answered the Indian, defiantly. 'Do not ignore that fact, Lady
+Maulevrier. What has become of that fortune--two hundred thousand pounds
+in money and jewels. It was known to have passed into Lord Maulevrier's
+possession after my father was put away by his paid instruments.
+
+'How dare you bring that vile charge against the dead?'
+
+'There are men living in India who know the truth of that charge: men
+who were at Bisnagar when my father, sick and heartbroken, was shut up
+in his deserted harem, hemmed in by spies and traitors, men with murder
+in their faces. There are those who know tint he was strangled by one of
+those wretches, that a grave was dug for him under the marble floor of
+his zenana, a grave in which his bones were found less than a year ago,
+in my presence, and fitly entombed at my bidding. He was said to have
+disappeared of his own free will--to have left his palace under cover of
+night, and sought refuge from possible treachery in another province;
+but there were those, and not a few, who knew the real history of his
+disappearance--who knew, and at the time were ready to testify in any
+court of justice, that he had been got rid of by the Ranee's agents, and
+at Lord Maulevrier's instigation, and that his possessions in money and
+jewels had been conveyed in the palankins that carried the Ranee and her
+women to his lordship's summer retreat near Madras. The Ranee died at
+that retreat six months after her husband's murder, not without
+suspicion of poison, and the wealth which she carried with her when she
+left Bisnagar passed into his lordship's possession. Had your husband
+lived, Lady Maulevrier, this story must have been brought to light.
+There were too many people in Madras interested in sifting the facts.
+There must have been a public inquiry. It was a happy thing for you and
+your race that Lord Maulevrier died before that inquiry had been
+instituted, and that many animosities died with him. Lucky too for you
+that I was a helpless infant at the time, and that the Mahratta
+adventurer to whom my father's territory had been transferred in the
+shuffling of cards at the end of the war was deeply concerned in hushing
+up the story.'
+
+'And pray, why have you nursed your wrath in all these years? Why do
+you intrude on me after nearly half a century, with this legend of
+rapine and murder?'
+
+'Because for nearly half a century I have been kept in profound
+ignorance of my father's fate--in ignorance of my race. Lord
+Maulevrier's jealousy banished me from my mother's arms shortly after my
+father's death. I was sent to the South of France under the care of an
+ayah. My first memories are of a monastery near Marseilles, where I was
+reared and educated by a Jesuit community, where I was baptised and
+brought up in the Roman Catholic faith. By the influence of the Jesuit
+Fathers I was placed in a house of commerce at Marseilles. Funds to
+provide for my education and establishment in life, under very modest
+conditions, were sent periodically by an agent at Madras. It was known
+that I was of East Indian birth, but little more was known about me. It
+was only when years had gone by and I was a merchant on my own account
+and could afford to go to India on a voyage of discovery--yes, as much a
+voyage of discovery as that of Vasco de Gama or of Drake--that I got
+from the Madras agent the clue which enabled me, at the cost of infinite
+patience and infinite labour, to unravel the mystery of my birth. There
+is no need to enter now upon the details of that story. I have
+overwhelming documentary evidence--a cloud of witnesses--to convince the
+most sceptical as to who and what I am. The documents are some of them
+in my valise, at your ladyship's service. Others are at my hotel in
+London, ready for the inspection of your ladyship's lawyers. I do not
+think you will desire to invite a public inquiry, or force me to recover
+my birthright in a court of justice. I believe that you will take a
+broader and nobler view of the case, and that you will restore to the
+wronged and abandoned son the fortune stolen from his murdered father.'
+
+'How dare you come to me with this tissue of lies? How dare you look me
+in the face and charge my dead husband with treachery and dishonour? I
+believe neither in your story nor in you, and I defy you to the proof of
+this vile charge against the dead!'
+
+'In other words you mean that you will keep the money and jewels which
+Lord Maulevrier stole from my father?'
+
+'I deny the fact that any such jewels or money ever passed into his
+lordship's possession. That vile woman, your mother, whose infamy cast a
+dark cloud over Lord Maulevrier's honour, may have robbed her husband,
+may have emptied the public treasury. But not a rupee or a jewel
+belonging to her ever came into my possession. I will not bear the
+burden of her crimes. Her existence spoiled my life--banished me from
+India, a widow in all but the name, and more desolate than many widows.'
+
+'Lord Maulevrier was known to leave India carrying with him two large
+chests--supposed to contain books--but actually containing treasure. A
+man who was in the Governor's confidence, and who had been the
+go-between in his intrigues, confessed on his death-bed that he had
+assisted in removing the treasure. Now, Lady Maulevrier, since your
+husband died immediately after his arrival in England, and before he
+could have had any opportunity of converting or making away with the
+valuables so appropriated, it stands to reason that those valuables must
+have passed into your possession, and it is from your honour and good
+feeling that I claim their restitution. If you deny the claim so
+advanced, there remains but one course open to me, and that is to make
+my wrongs public, and claim my right from the law of the land.'
+
+'And do you suppose that any English judge or English jury would believe
+so wild a story--or countenance so vile an accusation against the
+defenceless?' demanded Lady Maulevrier, standing up before him, tall,
+stately, with flashing eye and scornful lip, the image of proud
+defiance. 'Bring forward your claim, produce your documents, your
+witnesses, your death-bed confessions. I defy you to injure my dead
+husband or me by your wild lies, your foul charges! Go to an English
+lawyer, and see what an English law court will do for you--and your
+claim. I will hear no more of either.'
+
+She rang the bell once, twice, thrice, with passionate hand, and a
+servant flew to answer that impatient summons.
+
+'Show this gentlemen to his carriage,' she said, imperiously.
+
+The gentleman who called himself Louis Asoph bowed, and retired without
+another word.
+
+As the door closed upon him, Lady Maulevrier stood, with clenched hands
+and frowning brow, staring into vacancy. Her right arm was outstretched,
+as if she would have waved the intruder away. Suddenly, a strange
+numbness crept over that uplifted arm, and it fell to her side. From her
+shoulder down to her foot, that proud form grew cold and feelingless and
+dead, and she, who had so long carried herself as a queen among women,
+sank in a senseless heap upon the floor.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+'HER FACE RESIGNED TO BLISS OR BALE.'
+
+
+Lady Mary and the Fräulein had been sitting in the drawing-room all this
+time waiting for Lady Maulevrier to come to tea. They heard her come in
+from the garden; and then the footman told them that she was in the
+library with a stranger. Not even the muffled sound of voices penetrated
+the heavy velvet curtain and the thick oak door. It was only by the loud
+ringing of the bell and the sound of footsteps in the hall that Lady
+Mary knew of the guest's departure. She went to the door between the
+two rooms, and was surprised to find it bolted.
+
+'Grandmamma, won't you come to tea?' she asked timidly, knocking on the
+oaken panel, but there was no reply.
+
+She knocked again, and louder. Still no reply.
+
+'Perhaps her ladyship is going to take tea in her own room,' she said,
+afraid to be officious.
+
+Attendance upon her grandmother at afternoon tea had been one of
+Lesbia's particular duties; but Mary felt that she was an unwelcome
+substitute for Lesbia. She wanted to get a little nearer her
+grandmother's heart if she could; but she knew that her attentions were
+endured rather than liked.
+
+She went into the hall, where the footman on duty was staring at the
+light snowflakes dancing past the window, perhaps wishing he were a
+snowflake himself, and enjoying himself in that white whirligig.
+
+'Is her ladyship having tea in the morning-room?' asked Mary.
+
+The footman gave a little start, as if awakened out of a kind of trance.
+The sheer vacuity of his mind might naturally slide into mesmeric sleep.
+
+He told Lady Mary that her ladyship had not left the library, and Mary
+went in timidly, wondering why her grandmother had not joined them in
+the drawing-room when the stranger was gone.
+
+The sky was dark outside the wide windows, white hills and valleys
+shrouded in the shades of night. The library was only lighted by the
+glow of the logs on the hearth, and in that ruddy light the spacious
+room looked empty. Mary was turning to go away, thinking the footman had
+been mistaken, when her eye suddenly lighted upon a dark figure lying on
+the ground. And then she heard an awful stertorous breathing, and knew
+that her grandmother was lying there, stricken and helpless.
+
+Mary shrieked aloud, with a cry that pierced curtains and doors, and
+brought Fräulein and half-a-dozen servants to her help. One of the men
+brought a lamp, and among them they lifted the smitten figure. Oh, God!
+how ghastly the face looked in the lamplight!--the features drawn to one
+side, the skin livid.
+
+'Her ladyship has had a stroke,' said the butler.
+
+'Is she dying?' faltered Mary, white as ashes. 'Oh, grandmother, dear
+grandmother, don't look at us like that!'
+
+One of the servants rushed off to the stables to send for the doctor. Of
+course, being an indoor man, he no more thought of going out himself
+into the snowy night on such an errand than Noah thought of going out of
+the ark to explore the face of the waters in person.
+
+They carried Lady Maulevrier to her bed and laid her there, like a
+figure carved out of stone. She was not unconscious. Her eyes were
+open, and she moaned every now and then as if in bodily or mental pain.
+Once she tried to speak, but had no power to shape a syllable aright,
+and ended with a shuddering sigh. Once she lifted her left arm and waved
+it in the air, as if waving some one off in fear or anger. The right
+arm, indeed the whole of the right side, was lifeless, motionless as a
+stone. It was a piteous sight to see the beautiful features drawn and
+distorted, the lips so accustomed to command mouthing the broken
+syllables of an unknown tongue. Lady Mary sat beside the bed with
+clasped hands, praying dumbly, with her eyes fixed on her grandmother's
+altered face.
+
+Mr. Horton came, as soon as his stout mountain pony could bring him. He
+did not seem surprised at her ladyship's condition, and accepted the
+situation with professional calmness.
+
+'A marked case of hemiplegia,' he said, when he had observed the
+symptoms.
+
+'Will she die?' asked Mary.
+
+'Oh, dear, no! She will want great care for a little while, but we shall
+bring her round easily. A splendid constitution, a noble frame; but I
+think she has overworked her brain a little, reading Huxley and Darwin,
+and the German physiologists upon whom Huxley and Darwin have built
+themselves. Metaphysics too. Schopenhauer, and the rest of them. A
+wonderful woman! Very few brains could hold what hers has had poured
+into it in the last thirty years. The conducting nerves between the
+brain and the spinal marrow have been overworked: too much activity, too
+constant a strain. Even the rails and sleepers on the railroad wear out,
+don't you know, if there's excessive traffic.'
+
+Mr. Horton had known Mary from her childhood, had given her Gregory's
+powder, and seen her safely through measles and other infantine
+ailments, so he was quite at home with her, and at Fellside generally.
+Lady Maulevrier had given him a good deal of her confidence during those
+thirty years in which he had practised as his father's partner and
+successor at Grasmere. He used to tell people that he owed the best part
+of his education to her ladyship, who condescended to talk to him of the
+new books she read, and generally gave him a volume to put in his pocket
+when he was leaving her.
+
+'Don't be downhearted, Lady Mary,' he said; 'I shall come in two or
+three times a day and see how things are going on, and if I see the
+slightest difficulty in the case I'll telegraph for Jenner.'
+
+Mary and the Fräulein sat up with the invalid all that night. Lady
+Maulevrier's maid was also in attendance, and one of the menservants
+slept in his clothes on a couch in the corridor, ready for any
+emergency. But the night passed peacefully, the patient slept a good
+deal, and next day there was evident improvement. The stroke which had
+prostrated the body, which reduced the vigorous, active frame to an
+awful statue--like stillness--a quietude as of death of itself--had not
+overclouded the intellect. Lady Maulevrier lay on her bed in her
+luxurious room, with wide Tudor windows commanding half the circle of
+the hills, and was still the ruling spirit of the house, albeit
+powerless to move that slender hand, the lightest wave of which had been
+as potent to command in her little world as royal sign-manual or sceptre
+in the great world outside.
+
+Now there remained only one thing unimpaired by that awful shock which
+had laid the stately frame low, and that was the will and sovereign
+force of the woman's nature. Voice was altered, speech was confused and
+difficult; but the strength of will, the supreme power of mind, seemed
+undiminished.
+
+When Lady Maulevrier was asked if Lesbia should be telegraphed for, she
+replied no, not unless she was in danger of sudden death.
+
+'I should like to see her before I go,' she said, labouring to pronounce
+the words.
+
+'Dear grandmother,' said Mary, tenderly, 'Mr. Horton says there is no
+danger.'
+
+'Then do not send for her; do not even tell her what has happened; not
+yet.'
+
+'But she will miss your letters.'
+
+'True. You must write twice a week at my dictation. You must tell her
+that I have hurt my hand, that I am well but cannot use a pen. I would
+not spoil her pleasure for the world.'
+
+'Dear grandmother, how unselfish you are! And Maulevrier, shall he be
+sent for? He is not so far away,' said Mary, hoping her grandmother
+would say yes.
+
+What a relief, what an unspeakable solace Maulevrier's presence would be
+in that dreary house, smitten to a sudden and awful stillness, as if by
+the Angel of Death!
+
+'No, I do not want Maulevrier!' answered her ladyship impatiently.
+
+'May I sit here and read to you, grandmother?' Mary asked, timidly. 'Mr.
+Horton said you were to be kept very quiet, and that we were not to let
+you talk, or talk much to you, but that we might read to you if you
+like.'
+
+'I do not wish to be read to. I have my thoughts for company,' said Lady
+Maulevrier.
+
+Mary felt that this implied a wish to be alone. She bent over the
+invalid's pillow and kissed the pale cheek, feeling as if she were
+taking a liberty in venturing so much. She would hardly have done it had
+Lesbia been at home; but she had a feeling that in Lesbia's absence Lady
+Maulevrier must want somebody's love--even hers. And then she crept
+away, leaving Halcott the maid in attendance, sitting at her work at the
+window furthest from the bed.
+
+'Alone with my thoughts,' mused Lady Maulevrier, looking out at the
+panorama of wintry hills, white, ghost-like against an iron sky.
+'Pleasant thoughts, truly! Walled in by the hills--walled in and hemmed
+round for ever. This place has always felt like a grave: and now I know
+that it _is_ my grave.'
+
+Fräulein, and Lady Mary, and the maid Halcott, a sedate personage of
+forty summers, had all been instructed by the doctor that Lady
+Maulevrier was to be kept profoundly quiet. She must not talk much,
+since speech was likely to be a painful effort with her for some little
+time; she must not be talked to much by anyone, least of all must she be
+spoken to upon any agitating topic. Life must be made as smooth and easy
+for her as for a new-born infant. No rough breath from the outer world
+must come near her. She was to see no one but her maid and her
+granddaughter. Mr. Horton, a plain family man, took it for granted that
+the granddaughter was dear to her heart, and likely to exercise a
+soothing influence. Thus it happened that although Lady Maulevrier asked
+repeatedly that James Steadman should be brought to her, she was not
+allowed to see him. She whose will had been paramount in that house,
+whose word had been law, was now treated as a little child, while the
+will was still as strong, the mind as keen as ever.
+
+'She would talk to him of business,' said Mr. Horton, when he was told
+of her ladyship's desire to see Steadman, 'and that cannot be allowed,
+not for some little time at least.'
+
+'She is very angry with us for refusing to obey her,' said Lady Mary.
+
+'Naturally, but it is for her own welfare she is disobeyed. She can have
+nothing to say to Steadman which will not keep till she is better. This
+establishment goes by clockwork.'
+
+Mary wished it was a little less like clockwork. Since Lady Maulevrier
+had been lying upstairs--the voice which had once ruled over the house
+muffled almost to dumbness--the monotony of life at Fellside had seemed
+all the more oppressive. The servants crept about with stealthier tread.
+Mary dared not touch either piano or billiard balls, and was naturally
+seized with a longing to touch both. The house had a darkened look, as
+if the shadow of doom overhung it.
+
+During this regimen of perfect quiet Lady Maulevrier was not allowed to
+see the newspapers; and Mary was warned that in reading to her
+grandmother she was to avoid all exciting topics. Thus it happened that
+the account of a terrible collision between the Scotch express and a
+luggage train, a little way beyond Preston, an accident in which seven
+people were killed and about thirty seriously hurt, was not made known
+to her ladyship; and yet that fact would have been of intense interest
+and significance to her, since one of those passengers whose injuries
+were fatal bore the name of Louis Asoph.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+'AND THE SPRING COMES SLOWLY UP THIS WAY.'
+
+
+The wintry weeks glided smoothly by in a dull monotony, and now Lady
+Maulevrier, still helpless, still compelled to lie on her bed or her
+invalid couch, motionless as marble, had at least recovered her power of
+speech, was allowed to read and to talk, and to hear what was going on
+in that metropolitan world which she seemed unlikely ever to behold
+again.
+
+Lady Lesbia was still at Cannes, whence she wrote of her pleasures and
+her triumphs, of flowers and sapphire sea, and azure sky, of all things
+which were not in the grey bleak mountain world that hemmed in Fellside.
+She was meeting many of the people whom she was to meet again next
+season in the London world. She had made an informal _début_ in a very
+select circle, a circle in which everybody was more or less _chic_, or
+_chien_, or _zinc_, and she was tasting all the sweets of success. But
+in none of her letters was there any mention of Lord Hartfield. He was
+not in the little great world by the blue tideless sea.
+
+There was no talk of Lesbia's return. She was to stay till the carnival;
+she was to stay till the week before Easter. Lady Kirkbank insisted upon
+it; and both Lesbia and Lady Kirkbank upbraided Lady Maulevrier for her
+cruelty in not joining them at Cannes.
+
+So Lady Maulevrier had to resign herself to that solitude which had
+become almost the habit of her life, and to the society of Mary and the
+Fräulein. Mary was eager to be of use, to sit with her grandmother, to
+read to her, to write for her. The warm young heart was deeply moved by
+the spectacle of this stately woman stricken into helplessness, chained
+to her couch, immured within four walls. To Mary, who so loved the hills
+and the streams, the sun and the wind, this imprisonment seemed
+unspeakable woe. In her pity for such a martyrdom she would have done
+anything to give pleasure or solace to her grandmother. Unhappily there
+was very little Mary could do to increase the invalid's sum of pleasure.
+Lady Maulevrier was a woman of strong feeling, not capable of loving
+many people. She had concentrated her affection upon Lesbia: and she
+could not open her heart to Mary all at once because Lesbia was out of
+the way.
+
+'If I had a dog I loved, and he were to die, I would never have another
+in his place,' Lady Maulevrier said once; and that speech was the
+keynote of her character.
+
+She was very courteous to Mary, and seemed grateful for her attentions;
+but she did not cultivate the girl's society. Mary wrote all her letters
+in a fine bold hand, and with a rapid pen; but when the letter-writing
+was over Lady Maulevrier always dismissed her.
+
+'My dear, you want to be out in the air, riding your pony, or
+scampering about with your dogs,' she said, kindly. 'It would be a
+cruelty to keep you indoors.'
+
+'No, indeed, dear grandmother, I should like to stay. May I stop and
+read to you?'
+
+'No, thank you, Mary. I hate being read to. I like to devour a book.
+Reading aloud is such slow work.
+
+'But I am afraid you must sometimes feel lonely,' faltered Mary.
+
+'Lonely,' echoed the dowager, with a sigh. 'I have been lonely for the
+last forty years--I have been lonely all my life. Those I loved never
+gave me back love for love--never--not even your sister. See how lightly
+she cuts the link that bound her to me. How happy she is among
+strangers! Yes, there was one who loved me truly, and fate parted us.
+Does fate part all true lovers, I wonder?'
+
+'You parted Lesbia and Mr. Hammond,' said Mary, impetuously. 'I am sure
+they loved each other truly.'
+
+'The old and the worldly-wise are Fate, Mary,' answered the dowager, not
+angry at this daring reproach. 'I know your sister; and I know she is
+not the kind of woman to be happy in an ignoble life--to bear poverty
+and deprivation. If it had been you, now, whom Mr. Hammond had chosen, I
+might have taken the subject into my consideration.'
+
+Mary flamed crimson.
+
+'Mr. Hammond never gave me a thought,' she said, 'unless it was to think
+me contemptible. He is worlds too good for such a Tomboy. Maulevrier
+told him about the fox-hunt, and they both laughed at me--at least I
+have no doubt Mr. Hammond laughed, though I was too much ashamed to look
+at him.'
+
+'Poor Mary, you are beginning to find out that a young lady ought to be
+ladylike,' said Lady Maulevrier; 'and now, my dear, you may go. I was
+only joking with you. Mr. Hammond would be no match for any
+granddaughter of mine. He is nobody, and has neither friends nor
+interest. If he had gone into the church Maulevrier could have helped
+him; but I daresay his ideas are too broad for the church; and he will
+have to starve at the bar, where nobody can help him. I hope you will
+bear this in mind, Mary, if Maulevrier should ever bring him here
+again.'
+
+'He is never likely to come back again. He suffered too much; he was
+treated too badly in this house.'
+
+'Lady Mary, be good enough to remember to whom you are speaking,' said
+her ladyship, with a frown. 'And now please go, and tell some one to
+send Steadman to me.'
+
+Mary retired without a word, gave Lady Maulevrier's message to a footman
+in the corridor, slipped off to her room, put on her sealskin hat and
+jacket, took her staff and went out for a long ramble. The hills and
+valleys were still white. It had been a long, cold winter, and spring
+was still far off--February had only just begun.
+
+Lady Maulevrier's couch had been wheeled into the morning-room--that
+luxurious room which was furnished with all things needful to her quiet
+life, her books, her favourite colours, her favourite flowers, every
+detail studiously arranged for her pleasure and comfort. She was wheeled
+into this room every day at noon. When the day was bright and sunny her
+couch was placed near the window: and when the day was dull and grey the
+couch was drawn close to the low hearth, which flashed and glittered
+with brightly coloured tiles and artistic brass.
+
+To-day the sky was dull, and the velvet couch stood beside the hearth.
+Halcott sat at work in the adjoining bed-chamber, and came in every now
+and then to replenish the fire: a footman was always on duty in the
+corridor. A spring bell stood among the elegant trifles upon her
+ladyship's table; and the lightest touch of her left hand upon the bell
+brought her attendants to her side. She resolutely refused to have any
+one sitting with her all day long. Solitude was a necessity of her
+being, she told Mr. Horton, when he recommended that she should have
+some one always in attendance upon her.
+
+As the weeks wore on her features had been restored to their proud, calm
+beauty, her articulation was almost as clear as of old: yet, now and
+then, there would be a sudden faltering, the tongue and lips would
+refuse their office, or she would forget a word, or use a wrong word
+unconsciously. But there was no recovery of power or movement on that
+side of the body which had been stricken. The paralysed limbs were still
+motionless, lifeless as marble; and it was clear that Mr. Horton had
+begun to lose heart about his patient. There was nothing obscure in the
+case, but the patient's importance made the treatment a serious matter,
+and the surgeon begged to be allowed to summon Sir William Jenner.
+
+This, however, Lady Maulevrier refused.
+
+'I don't want any fuss made about me,' she said. 'I am content to trust
+myself to your skill, and I beg that no other doctor may be summoned.'
+
+Mr. Horton understood his patient's feelings on this point. She had a
+sense of humiliation in her helplessness, and, like some wounded animal
+that crawls to its covert to die, she would fain have hidden her misery
+from the eye of strangers. She had allowed no one, not even Maulevrier,
+to be informed of the nature of her illness.
+
+'It will be time enough for him to know all about me when he comes
+here,' she said. 'I shall be obliged to see him whenever he does come.'
+
+Maulevrier had spent Christmas and New Year in Paris, Mr. Hammond still
+his companion. Her ladyship commented upon this with a touch of scorn.
+
+'Mr. Hammond is like the Umbra you were reading about the other day in
+Lord Lytton's "Last Days of Pompeii,"' she said to Mary. 'It must be
+very nice for him to go about the world with a friend who franks him
+everywhere.'
+
+'But we don't know that Maulevrier franks him,' protested Mary,
+blushing. 'We have no right to suppose that Mr. Hammond does not pay his
+own expenses.'
+
+'My dear child, is it possible for a young man who has no private means
+to go gadding about the world on equal terms with a spendthrift like
+Maulevrier--to pay for Moors in Scotland and apartments at the Bristol?'
+
+'But they are not staying at the Bristol,' exclaimed Mary. 'They are
+staying at an old-established French hotel on the left side of
+the Seine. They are going about amongst the students and the workmen,
+dining at popular restaurants, hearing people talk. Maulevrier says it
+is delightfully amusing--ever so much better than the beaten track of
+life in Anglo-American Paris.'
+
+'I daresay they are leading a Bohemian life, and will get into trouble
+before they have done,' said her ladyship, gloomily. 'Maulevrier is
+as wild as a hawk.'
+
+'He is the dearest boy in the world,' exclaimed Mary.
+
+She was deeply grateful for her brother's condescension in writing her a
+letter of two pages long, letting her into the secrets of his life. She
+felt as if Mr. Hammond were ever so much nearer to her now she knew
+where he was, and how he was amusing himself.
+
+'Hammond is such a queer fellow,' wrote Maulevrier, 'the strangest
+things interest him. He sits and talks to the workmen for hours; he
+pokes his nose into all sorts of places--hospitals, workshops,
+poverty-stricken dens--and people are always civil to him. He is what
+Lesbia calls _sympatico_. Ah! what a mistake Lesbia and my grandmother
+made when they rejected Hammond! What a pearl above price they threw
+away! But, you see, neither my lady nor Lesbia could appreciate a gem,
+unless it was richly set.'
+
+And now Lady Maulevrier lay on her couch by the fire, waiting for James
+Steadman. She had seen him several times since the day of her seizure,
+but never alone. There was an idea that Steadman must necessarily talk
+to her of business matters, or cause her mind to trouble itself about
+business matters; so there had been a well-intentioned conspiracy in the
+house to keep him out of her way; but now she was much better, and her
+desire to see Steadman need no longer be thwarted.
+
+He came at her bidding, and stood a little way within the door, tall,
+erect, square-shouldered, resolute-looking, with a quiet force of
+character expressed in every feature. He was very much the same man that
+he had been forty years ago, when he went with her ladyship to
+Southampton, and accompanied his master and mistress on that tedious
+journey which was destined to be Lord Maulevrier's last earthly
+pilgrimage. Time had done little to Steadman in those forty years,
+except to whiten his hair and beard, and imprint some thoughtful lines
+upon his sagacious forehead. Time had done something for him mentally,
+insomuch as he had read a great many books and cultivated his mind in
+the monotonous quiet of Fellside. Altogether he was a superior man for
+the passage of those forty years.
+
+He had married within the time, choosing for himself the buxom daughter
+of a lodgekeeper, whose wife had long been laid at rest in Grasmere
+churchyard. The buxom girl had grown into a bulky matron, but she was a
+colourless personage, and her existence made hardly any difference in
+James Steadman's life. She had brought him no children, and their
+fireside was lonely; but Steadman seemed to be one of those
+self-contained personages to whom a solitary life is no affliction.
+
+'I hope I see you in better health, my lady,' he said, standing straight
+and square, like a soldier on parade.
+
+'I am better, thank you, Steadman; better, but a poor lifeless log
+chained to this sofa. I sent for you because the time has come when I
+must talk to you upon a matter of business. You heard, I suppose, that a
+stranger called upon me just before I had my attack?'
+
+'Yes, my lady.'
+
+'Did you hear who and what he was?'
+
+'Only that he was a foreigner, my lady.'
+
+'He is of Indian birth. He claims to be the son of the Ranee of
+Bisnagar.'
+
+'He could do you no harm, my lady, if he were twenty times her son.'
+
+'I hope not. Now, I want to ask you a question. Among those trunks and
+cases and packages of Lord Maulevrier's which were sent here by heavy
+coach, after they were landed at Southampton, do you remember two cases
+of books?'
+
+'There are two large cases among the luggage, my lady; very heavy cases,
+iron clamped. I should not be surprised if they were full of books.'
+
+'Have they never been opened?'
+
+'Not to my knowledge.'
+
+'Are they locked?'
+
+'Yes, my lady. There are two padlocks on each chest.'
+
+'And are the keys in your possession?'
+
+'No, my lady.'
+
+'Where are the cases?'
+
+'In the Oak Room, with the rest of the Indian luggage.'
+
+'Let them remain there. No doubt those cases contain the books of which
+I have been told. You have not heard that the person calling himself
+Rajah of Bisnagar has been here since my illness, have you?'
+
+'No, my lady; I am sure he has not been here.'
+
+Lady Maulevrier gave him a scrutinising look.
+
+'He might have come, and my people might have kept the knowledge from
+me, out of consideration for my infirmity,' she said. 'I should be very
+angry if it were so. I should hate to be treated like a child.'
+
+'You shall not be so treated, my lady, while I am in this house; but I
+know there is no member of the household who would presume so to treat
+you.'
+
+'They might do it out of kindness; but I should loathe such kindness,'
+said Lady Maulevrier, impatiently. 'Though I have been smitten down,
+though I lie here like a log, I have a mind to think and to plan; and I
+am not afraid to meet danger, face to face. Are you telling me the
+truth, Steadman? Have there been no visits concealed from me, no letters
+kept from me since I have been ill?'
+
+'I am telling you nothing but the truth, my lady. No letter has been
+kept from you; no visitor has been to this house whose coming you have
+not been told of.'
+
+'Then I am content,' said her ladyship, with a sigh of relief.
+
+After this there followed some conversation upon business matters. James
+Steadman was trusted with the entire management of the dowager's income,
+the investment of her savings. His honesty was above all suspicion. He
+was a man of simple habits, his wants few. He had saved money in every
+year of his service; and for a man of his station was rich enough to be
+unassailable by the tempter.
+
+He had reconciled his mind to the monotonous course of life at Fellside
+in the beginning of things; and, as the years glided smoothly by, his
+character and wants and inclinations had, as it were, moulded themselves
+to fit that life. He had easy duties, a comfortable home, supreme
+authority in the household. He was looked up to and made much of in the
+village whenever he condescended to appear there; and by the rareness of
+his visits to the Inn or the Reading-room, and his unwillingness to
+accept hospitality from the tradesmen of Grasmere and Ambleside, he
+maintained his dignity and exaggerated his importance. He had his books
+and his newspapers, his evening leisure, which no one ever dared to
+disturb. He had the old wing of the house for his exclusive occupation;
+and no one ventured to intrude upon him in his privacy. There was a bell
+in the corridor which communicated with his rooms, and by this bell he
+was always summoned. There were servants who had been ten years at
+Fellside, and who had never crossed the threshold of the red cloth door
+which was the only communication between the new house and the old one.
+Steadman's wife performed all household duties of cooking and cleaning
+in the south wing, where she and her husband took all their meals, and
+lived entirely apart from the other servants, an exclusiveness which was
+secretly resented by the establishment.
+
+'Mr. Steadman may be a very superior man,' said the butler 'and I know
+that in his own estimation the Premier isn't in it compared with him;
+but I never was fond of people who set themselves upon pinnacles, and
+I'm not fond of the Steadmans.'
+
+'Mrs. Steadman's plain and homely enough,' replied the housekeeper, 'and
+I know she'd like to be more sociable, and drop into my room for a cup
+of tea now and then; but Steadman do so keep her under his thumb: and
+because he's a misanthrope she's obliged to sit and mope alone.'
+
+If Steadman wanted to drive, there was a dogcart and horse at his
+disposal; but he did not often leave Fellside. He seemed in his humble
+way to model his life upon Lady Maulevrier's secluded habits. It was
+growing dusk when Steadman left his mistress, and she lay for some time
+looking at the landscape over which twilight shadows were stealing, and
+thinking of her own life. Over that life, too, the shadows of evening
+were creeping. She had begun to realise the fact that she was an old
+woman; that for her all personal interest in life was nearly over. She
+had never felt her age while her activity was unimpaired. She had been
+obliged to remind herself very often that the afternoon and evening of
+life had slipped away unawares in that tranquil retirement, and that the
+night was at hand.
+
+For her the close of earthly life meant actual night. No new dawn, no
+mysterious after-life shone upon her with magical gleams of an unknown
+light upon the other side of the dark river. She had accepted the
+Materialist's bitter and barren creed, and had taught herself that this
+little life was all. She had learned to scorn the idea of a great
+Artificer outside the universe, a mighty spirit riding amidst the
+clouds, and ruling the course of nature and the fate of man. She had
+schooled herself to think that the idea of a blind, unconscious Nature,
+working automatically through infinite time and space, was ever so much
+grander than the old-world notion of a personal God, a Being of infinite
+power and inexhaustible beneficence, mighty to devise and direct the
+universe, with knowledge reaching to the farthest confines of space,
+with ear to listen to the prayer of His lowest creatures. Her belief
+stopped short even of the Deist's faith in an Almighty Will. She saw in
+creation nothing but the inevitable development of material laws; and it
+seemed to her that there was quite as much hope of a heavenly world
+after death for the infusoria in the pool as for man in his pride and
+power.
+
+She read her Bible as diligently as she read her Shakespeare, and the
+words of the Royal Preacher in some measure embodied her own dreary
+creed. And now, in the darkening winter day, she watched the gloomy
+shadows creep over the rugged breast of Nabb Scar, and she thought how
+there was a time for all things, and that her day of hope and ambition
+was past.
+
+Of late years she had lived for Lesbia, looking forward to the day when
+she was to introduce this beloved grandchild to the great world of
+London; and now that hope was gone for ever.
+
+What could a helpless cripple do for a fashionable beauty? What good
+would it be for her to be conveyed to London, and to lie on a couch in
+Mayfair, while Lesbia rode in the Row and went to three or four parties
+every night with a more active chaperon?
+
+She had hoped to go everywhere with her darling, to glory in all her
+successes, to shield her from all possibility of failure. And now Lesbia
+must stand or fall alone.
+
+It was a hard thing; but perhaps the hardest part of it was that Lesbia
+seemed so very well able to get on without her. The girl wrote in the
+highest spirits; and although her letters were most affectionately
+worded, they were all about self. That note was dominant in every
+strain. Her triumphs, her admirers, her bonnets, her gowns. She had had
+more money from her grandmother, and more gowns from Paris.
+
+'You have no idea how the people dress in this place,' she wrote. 'I
+should have been quite out in the cold without my three new frocks from
+Worth. The little Princess bonnets I wear are the rage. Worth
+recommended me to adopt special flowers and colours; so I have worn
+nothing but primroses since I have been here, and my little primrose
+bonnets are to be seen everywhere, sometimes on hideous old women. Lady
+Kirkbank hopes you will be able to go to London directly after Easter.
+She says I must be presented at the May drawing-room--that is
+imperative. People have begun to talk about me; and unless I make my
+_début_ while their interest is fresh I shall be a failure. There is an
+American beauty here, and I believe she and I are considered rivals, and
+young men lay wagers about us, as to which will look best at a ball, or
+a regatta, what colours we shall wear, and so on. It is immense fun. I
+only wish you were here to enjoy it. The American girl is a most
+insolent person, but I have had the pleasure of crushing her on several
+occasions in the calmest way. In the description of the concert in last
+week's newspaper I was called _l'Anglais de marbre_. I certainly had the
+decency to hold my tongue while Faure was singing. Miss Bolsover's voice
+was heard ever so many times above the music. According to our English
+ideas she has most revolting manners, and the money she spends on her
+clothes would make your hair stand on end. Now do, dearest grandmother,
+make all your arrangements for beginning the campaign directly after
+Easter. You must take a house in the very choicest quarter--Lady
+Kirkbank suggests Grosvenor-place--and it _must_ be a large house, for
+of course you will give a ball. Lady K. says we might have Lord
+Porlock's house--poor Lady Porlock and her baby died a few weeks ago,
+and he has gone to Sweden quite broken-hearted. It is one of the new
+houses, exquisitely furnished, and Lady K. thinks you might have it for
+a song. Will you get Steadman to write to his lordship's steward, and
+see what can be done?
+
+'I hope the dear hand is better. You have never told me how you hurt
+it. It is very sweet of Mary to write me such long letters, and quite a
+pleasant surprise to find she can spell; but I want to see your own dear
+hand once more.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+'AND COME AGEN BE IT BY NIGHT OR DAY.'
+
+
+Those winter months were unutterably dreary for Lady Mary Haselden. She
+felt weighed down by a sense of death and woe near at hand. The horror
+of that dreadful moment in which she found her grandmother lying
+senseless on the ground, the terror of that distorted countenance, those
+starting eyes, that stertorous breathing, was not easily banished from a
+vivid girlish imagination; seeing how few distractions there were to
+divert Mary's thoughts, and how the sun sank and rose again upon the
+same inevitable surroundings, to the same monotonous routine.
+
+Her grandmother was kinder than she had been in days gone by, less
+inclined to find fault; but Mary knew that her society gave Lady
+Maulevrier very little pleasure, that she could do hardly anything
+towards filling the gap made by Lesbia's absence. There was no one to
+scold her, no one to quarrel with her. Fräulein Müller lectured her
+mildly from time to time; but that stout German was too lazy to put any
+force or fire into her lectures. Her reproofs were like the fall of
+waterdrops on a stone, and infinite ages would have been needed to cause
+any positive impression.
+
+February came to an end without sign or token from the outer world to
+disturb the even tenor of life at Fellside. Mary read, and read, and
+read, till she felt she was made up of the contents of books, crammed
+with other people's ideas. She read history, or natural science, or
+travels, or German poetry in the morning, and novels or English poetry
+in the evening. She had pledged herself to devote her morning indoor
+hours to instructive literature, and to accomplish some portion of study
+in every day. She was carrying on her education on parole, as before
+stated; and she was too honourable to do less than was expected from
+her.
+
+March came in with its most leonine aspect, howling and blustering;
+north-east winds shrieking along the gorges and wailing from height to
+height.
+
+'I wonder the lion and the lamb are not blown into the lake,' said Mary,
+looking at Helm Crag from the library window.
+
+She scampered about the gardens in the very teeth of those bitter
+blasts, and took her shivering terriers for runs on the green slopes of
+the Fell. The snow had gradually melted from the tides of the lowermost
+range of hills, but the mountain peaks were still white and ghostly,
+the ground was still hard and slippery in the early mornings. Mary had
+to take her walks alone in this bleak weather. Fräulein had a convenient
+bronchial affection which forbade her to venture so much as the point of
+her nose outside the house in an east wind, and which justified her in
+occasionally taking her breakfast in bed. She spent her days for the
+most part in her arm-chair, drawn close to the fireplace, which she
+still insisted upon calling the oven, knitting diligently, or reading
+the _Rundschau_. Even music, which had once been her strong point, was
+neglected in this trying weather. It was such a cold journey from the
+oven to the piano.
+
+Mary played a good deal in her desultory manner, now that she had the
+drawing-room all to herself, and no fear of Lady Maulevrier's critical
+ear or Lesbia's superior smile. The Fräulein was pleased to hear her
+pupil ramble on with her favourite bits from Raff, and Hensel, and
+Schubert, and Mendelssohn, and Mozart, and was very well content to let
+her play just what she liked, and to escape the trouble of training her
+to that exquisite perfection into which Lady Lesbia had been drilled.
+Lesbia was not a genius, and the training process had been quite as hard
+for the governess as for the pupil.
+
+Thus the slow days wore on till the first week in March, and on one
+bleak bitter afternoon, when Fräulein Müller stuck to the oven even a
+little closer than usual, Mary felt she must go out, in the face of the
+east wind, which was tossing the leafless branches in the valley below
+until the trees looked like an angry crowd, hurling its arms in the air,
+fighting, struggling, writhing. She must leave that dreary house for a
+little while, were it even to be lashed and bruised and broken by that
+fierce wind. So she told Fräulein that she really must have her
+constitutional; and after a feeble remonstrance Fräulein let her go, and
+subsided luxuriously into the pillowed depth of her arm-chair.
+
+There had been a hard frost, and all the mountain ways were perilous, so
+Mary set out upon a steady tramp along the road leading towards the
+Langdales. The wind seemed to assail her from every side, but she had
+accustomed herself to defy the elements, and she only hugged her
+sealskin jacket closer to her, and quickened her pace, chirruping and
+whistling to Ahab and Ariadne, the two fox-terriers which she had
+selected for the privilege of a walk.
+
+The terriers raced along the road, and Mary, seeing that she had the
+road all to herself, raced after them. A light snow-shower, large
+feathery flakes flying wide apart, fell from the steel-grey sky; but
+Mary minded the snow no more than she minded the wind. She raced on, the
+terriers scampering, rushing, flying before her, until, just where the
+road took a curve, she almost ran into a horse, which was stepping along
+at a tremendous pace, with a light, high dogcart behind him.
+
+'Hi!' cried the driver, 'where are you coming, young woman? Have you
+never seen a horse till to-day?'
+
+Some one beside the driver leapt out, and ran to see if Mary was hurt.
+The horse had swerved to one side, reared a little, and then spun on for
+a few yards, leaving her standing in the middle of the road.
+
+'Why, it's Molly!' cried the driver, who was no less distinguished a
+whip than Lord Maulevrier, and who had recognised the terriers.
+
+'I hope you are not hurt,' said the gentleman who had alighted,
+Maulevrier's friend and shadow, John Hammond.
+
+Mary was covered with confusion by her exploit, and could hardly answer
+Mr. Hammond's very simple question.
+
+She looked up at him piteously, trying to speak, and he took alarm at
+her scared expression.
+
+'I am sure you are hurt,' he said earnestly, 'the horse must have struck
+you, or the shaft perhaps, which was worse. Is it your shoulder that is
+hurt, or your chest? Lean on me, if you feel faint or giddy. Maulevrier,
+you had better drive your sister home, and get her looked after.'
+
+'Indeed, I am not hurt; not the least little bit,' gasped Mary, who had
+recovered her senses by this time. 'I was only frightened, and it was
+such a surprise to see you and Maulevrier.'
+
+A surprise--yes--a surprise which had set her heart throbbing so
+violently as to render her speechless. Had horse or shaft-point struck
+her ever so, she would have hardly been more tremulous than she felt at
+this moment. Never had she hoped to see him again. He had set his all
+upon one cast--loved, wooed, and lost her sister. Why should he ever
+come again? What was there at Fellside worth coming for? And then she
+remembered what her grandmother thought of him. He was a hanger-on, a
+sponge, a led captain. He was Maulevrier's Umbra, and must go where his
+patron went. It was a hard thing so to think of him, and Mary's heart
+sank at the thought that Lady Maulevrier's worldly wisdom might have
+reckoned aright.
+
+'It was very foolish of me to run into the horse,' said Mary, while Mr.
+Hammond stood waiting for her to recover herself.
+
+'It was very foolish of Maulevrier to run into you. If he didn't drive
+at such a break-neck pace it wouldn't have happened.'
+
+Umbra was very plain-spoken, at any rate.
+
+'There's rank ingratitude,' cried Maulevrier, who had turned back, and
+was looking down at them from his elevated perch. 'After my coming all
+the way round by Langdale to oblige you with a view of Elterwater.
+Molly's all safe and sound. She wouldn't have minded if I'd run over
+her. Come along, child, get up beside me, Hammond will take the back
+seat.'
+
+This was easier said than done, for the back of the dogcart was piled
+with Gladstone bags, fishing rods, and hat-boxes; but Umbra was ready
+to oblige. He handed Mary up to the seat by the driver, and clambered up
+at the back, when he hooked himself on somehow among the luggage.
+
+'Dear Maulevrier, how delicious of you to come!' said Mary, when they
+were rattling on towards Fellside; 'I hope you are going to stay for
+ages.'
+
+'Well, I dare say, if you make yourself very agreeable, I may stay till
+after Easter.'
+
+Mary's countenance fell.
+
+'Easter is in three weeks,' she said, despondingly.
+
+'And isn't three weeks an age, at such a place as Fellside? I don't know
+that I should have come at all on this side of the August sports, only
+as the grandmother was ill, I thought it a duty to come and see her. A
+fellow mayn't care much for ancestors when they're well, you know; but
+when a poor old lady is down on her luck, her people ought to look after
+her. So, here I am; and as I knew I should be moped to death here----'
+
+'Thank you for the compliment,' said Mary.
+
+'I brought Hammond along with me. Of course, I knew Lesbia was safe out
+of the way,' added Maulevrier in an undertone.
+
+'It is very obliging of Mr. Hammond always to go where you wish,'
+returned Mary, who could not help a bitter feeling when she remembered
+her grandmother's cruel suggestion. 'Has he no tastes or inclinations of
+his own?'
+
+'Yes, he has, plenty of them, and much loftier tastes than mine, I can
+tell you. But he's kind enough to let me hang on to him, and to put up
+with my frivolity. There never were two men more different than he and I
+are; and I suppose that's why we get on so well together. When we were
+in Paris he was always up to his eyes in serious work--lectures, public
+libraries, workmen's syndicates, Mary Anne, the International--heaven
+knows what, making himself master of the political situation in France;
+while I was _rigolant_ and _chaloupant_ at the Bal Bullier.'
+
+It was generous of Maulevrier to speak of his hanger-on thus; and no
+doubt the society of a well-informed earnest young man was a great good
+for Maulevrier, a good far above the price of those pounds, shillings,
+and pence which the Earl might spend for his dependent's benefit; but
+when a girl of Mary's ardent temper has made a hero of a man, it galls
+her to think that her hero's dignity should be sacrificed, his honour
+impeached, were it by the merest tittle.
+
+Maulevrier made a good many inquiries about his grandmother, and seemed
+really full of kindness and sympathy; but it was with a feeling of
+profound awe, nay, of involuntary reluctance and shrinking, that he
+presently entered her ladyship's sitting-room, ushered in by Mary, who
+had been to her grandmother beforehand to announce the grandson's
+arrival.
+
+The young man had hardly ever been in a sick room before. He half
+expected to see Lady Maulevrier in bed, with a crowd of medicine bottles
+and a cut orange on a table by her side, and a sick nurse of the
+ancient-crone species cowering over the fire. It was an infinite relief
+to him to find his grandmother lying on a sofa by the fire in her pretty
+morning room. A little tea-table was drawn close up to her sofa, and she
+was taking her afternoon tea. It was rather painful to see her lifting
+her tea-cup slowly and carefully with her left hand, but that was all.
+The dark eyes still flashed with the old eagle glance, the lines of the
+lips were as proud and firm as ever. All sign of contraction or
+distortion had passed away. In hours of calm her ladyship's beauty was
+unimpaired; but with any strong emotion there came a convulsive working
+of the features, and the face was momentarily drawn and distorted, as it
+had been at the time of the seizure.
+
+Maulevrier's presence had not an unduly agitating effect on her
+ladyship. She received him with tranquil graciousness, and thanked him
+for his coming.
+
+'I hope you have spent your winter profitably in Paris,' she said.
+'There is a great deal to be learnt there if you go into the right
+circles.'
+
+Maulevrier told her that he had found much to learn, and that he had
+gone into circles where almost everything was new to him. Whereupon his
+grandmother questioned him about certain noble families in the Faubourg
+Saint Germain who had been known to her in her own day of power, and
+whose movements she had observed from a distance since that time; but
+here she found her grandson dark. He had not happened to meet any of the
+people she spoke about: the plain truth being that he had lived
+altogether as a Bohemian, and had not used one of the letters of
+introduction that had been given to him.
+
+'Your friend Mr. Hammond is with you, I am told,' said Lady Maulevrier,
+not altogether with delight.
+
+'Yes, I made him come; but he is quite safe. He will bolt like a shot at
+the least hint of Lesbia's return. He doesn't want to meet that young
+lady again, I can assure you.'
+
+'Pray don't talk in that injured tone. Mr. Hammond is a gentlemanlike
+person, very well informed, very agreeable. I have never denied that.
+But you could not expect me to allow my granddaughter to throw herself
+away upon the first adventurer who made her an offer.'
+
+'Hammond is not an adventurer.'
+
+'Very well, I will not call him so, if the term offends you. But Mr.
+Hammond is--Mr. Hammond, and I cannot allow Lesbia to marry Mr. Hammond
+or Mr. Anybody, and I am very sorry you have brought him here again.
+There is Mary, a silly, romantic girl. I am very much afraid he has made
+an impression upon her. She colours absurdly when she talks of him, and
+flew into a passion with me the other day when I ventured to hint that
+he is not a Rothschild, and that his society must be expensive to you.'
+
+'His society does not cost me anything. Hammond is the soul of
+independence. He worked as a blacksmith in Canada for three months, just
+to see what life was like in a wild district. There never was such a
+fellow to rough it. And as for Molly, well, now, really, if he happened
+to take a fancy to her, and if she happened to like him, I wouldn't bosh
+the business, if I were you, grandmother. Take my word for it, Molly
+might do worse.'
+
+'Of course. She might marry a chimney sweep. There is no answering for a
+girl of her erratic nature. She is silly enough and romantic enough for
+anything; but I shall not countenance her if she wants to throw herself
+away on a person without prospects or connections; and I look to you,
+Maulevrier, to take care of her, now that I am a wretched log chained to
+this room.'
+
+'You may rely upon me, grandmother, Molly shall come to no harm, if I
+can help it.'
+
+'Thank you,' said her ladyship, touching her bell twice.
+
+The two clear silvery strokes were a summons for Halcott, the maid, who
+appeared immediately.
+
+'Tell Mrs. Power to get his lordship's room ready immediately, and to
+give Mr. Hammond the room he had last summer,' said Lady Maulevrier,
+with a sigh of resignation.
+
+While Maulevrier was with his grandmother John Hammond was smoking a
+solitary cigar on the terrace, contemplating the mountain landscape in
+its cold March greyness, and wondering very much to find himself again
+at Fellside. He had gone forth from that house full of passionate
+indignation, shaking off the dust from his feet, sternly resolved never
+again to cross the threshold of that fateful cave, where he had met his
+cold-hearted Circe. And now, because Circe was safe out of the way, he
+had come back to the cavern; and he was feeling all the pain that a man
+feels who beholds again the scene of a great past sorrow.
+
+Was this the old love and the old pain again, he wondered, or was it
+only the sharp thrust of a bitter memory? He had believed himself cured
+of his useless love--a great and noble love, wasted on a smaller nature
+than his own. He had thought that because his eyes were opened, and he
+understood the character of the girl he loved, his cure must needs be
+complete. Yet now, face to face with the well-remembered landscape,
+looking down upon that dull grey lake which he had seen smiling in the
+sunshine, he began to doubt the completeness of his cure. He recalled
+the lovely face, the graceful form, the sweet, low voice--the perfection
+of gracious womanhood, manner, dress, movements, tones, smiles, all
+faultless; and in the absence of that one figure, it seemed to him as if
+he had come back to a tenantless, dismantled house, where there was
+nothing that made life worth living.
+
+The red sun went down--a fierce and lurid face that seemed to scowl
+through the grey--and Mr. Hammond felt that it was time to arouse
+himself from gloomy meditation and go in and dress for dinner.
+Maulevrier's valet was to arrive by the coach with the heavier part of
+the luggage, and Maulevrier's valet did that very small portion of
+valeting which was ever required by Mr. Hammond. A man who has worked at
+a forge in the backwoods is not likely to be finicking in his ways, or
+dependent upon servants for looking after his raiment.
+
+Despite Mr. Hammond's gloomy memories of past joys and disillusions, he
+contrived to make himself very agreeable, by-and-by, at dinner, and in
+the drawing-room after dinner, and the evening was altogether gay and
+sprightly. Maulevrier was in high spirits, full of his Parisian
+experiences, and talking slang as glibly as a student of the Quartier
+Latin. He would talk nothing but French, protesting that he had almost
+forgotten his native tongue, and his French was the language of
+Larchey's Dictionary of Argot, in which nothing is called by its right
+name. Mary was enchanted with this new vocabulary, and wanted to have
+every word explained to her; but Maulevrier confessed that there was a
+good deal that was unexplainable.
+
+The evening was much livelier than those summer evenings when the
+dowager and Lady Lesbia were present. There was something less of
+refinement, perhaps, and Fräulein remonstrated now and then about some
+small violation of the unwritten laws of 'Anstand,' but there was more
+mirth. Maulevrier felt for the first time as if he were master at
+Fellside. They all went to the billiard room soon after dinner, and
+Fräulein and Mary sat by the fire looking on, while the two young men
+played. In such an evening there was no time for bitter memories: and
+John Hammond was surprised to find how little he had missed that
+enchantress whose absence had made the house seem desolate to him when
+he re-entered it.
+
+He was tired with his journey and the varying emotions of the day, for
+it was not without strong emotion that he had consented to return to
+Fellside--and he slept soundly for the earlier part of the night. But he
+had trained himself long ago to do with a very moderate portion of
+sleep, and he was up and dressed while the dawn was still slowly
+creeping along the edges of the hills. He went quietly down to the hall,
+took one of the bamboos from a collection of canes and mountain sticks,
+and set out upon a morning ramble over the snowy slopes. The snow
+showers of yesterday had only sprinkled the greensward upon the lower
+ground, but in the upper regions the winter snows still lingered, giving
+an Alpine character to the landscape.
+
+John Hammond was too experienced a mountaineer to be deterred by a
+little snow. He went up Silver Howe, and from the rugged breast of the
+mountain saw the sun leap up from amidst a chaos of hill and crag, in
+all his majesty, while the grey mists of night slowly floated up from
+the valley that had lain hidden below them, and Grasmere Lake sparkled
+and flashed in the light of the newly-risen sun.
+
+The church clock was striking eight as Hammond came at a brisk pace down
+to the valley. There was still an hour before breakfast, so he took a
+circuitous path to Fellside, and descended upon the house from the Fell,
+as he had done that summer morning when he saw James Steadman sauntering
+about in his garden.
+
+Within about a quarter of a mile of Lady Maulevrier's shrubberies Mr.
+Hammond encountered a pedestrian, who, like himself, was evidently
+taking a constitutional ramble in the morning air, but on a much less
+extended scale, for this person did not look capable of going far
+afield.
+
+He was an old man, something under middle height, but looking as if he
+had once been taller; for his shoulders were much bent, and his head was
+sunk on his chest. His whole form looked wasted and shrunken, and John
+Hammond thought he had never seen so old a man--or at any rate any man
+who was so deeply marked with all the signs of extreme age; and yet in
+the backwoods of America he had met ancient settlers who remembered
+Franklin, and who had been boys when the battle of Bunker's Hill was
+fresh in the memory of their fathers and mothers.
+
+The little old man was clad in a thick grey overcoat of some shaggy kind
+of cloth which looked like homespun. He wore a felt hat, and carried a
+thick oak stick, and there was nothing in his appearance to indicate
+that he belonged to any higher grade than that of the shepherds and
+guides with whom Hammond had made himself familiar during his previous
+visit. And yet there was something distinctive about the man, Hammond
+thought, something wild and uncanny, which made him unlike any of those
+hale and hearty-looking dalesmen on whom old age sate so lightly. No,
+John Hammond could not fancy this man, with his pallid countenance and
+pale crafty eyes, to be of the same race as those rugged and
+honest-looking descendants of the Norsemen.
+
+Perhaps it was the man's exceeding age, for John Hammond made up his
+mind that he must be a centenarian, which gave him so strange and unholy
+an air. He had the aspect of a man who had been buried and brought back
+to life again.
+
+So might look one of those Indian Fakirs who have the power to suspend life
+by some mysterious process, and to lie in the darkness of the grave for a
+given period, and then at their own will to resume the functions of the
+living. His long white hair fell upon the collar of his grey coat, and
+would have given him a patriarchal appearance had the face possessed the
+dignity of age: but it was a countenance without dignity, a face deeply
+scored with the lines of evil passions and guilty memories--the face of
+the vulture, with a touch of the ferret--altogether a most unpleasant
+face, Mr. Hammond thought.
+
+And yet there was a kind of fascination about that bent and shrunken
+figure, those feeble movements, and shuffling gait. John Hammond turned
+to look after the old man when he had passed him, and stood to watch him
+as he went slowly up the Fell, plant his crutch stick upon the ground
+before every footstep, as if it were a third leg, and more serviceable
+than either of the other two.
+
+Mr. Hammond watched him for two or three minutes, but, as the old man's
+movements had an automatic regularity, the occupation soon palled, and
+he turned and walked toward Fellside. A few yards nearer the grounds he
+met James Steadman, walking briskly, and smoking his morning pipe.
+
+'You are out early this morning,' said Hammond, by way of civility.
+
+'I am always pretty early, sir. I like a mouthful of morning air.'
+
+'So do I. By-the-bye, can you tell me anything about a queer-looking old
+man I passed just now a little higher up the Fell? Such an old, old man,
+with long white hair.'
+
+'Yes, sir. I believe I know him.'
+
+'Who is he? Does he live in Grasmere?'
+
+Steadman looked puzzled.
+
+'Well, you see, sir, your description might apply to a good many; but if
+it's the man I think you mean he lives in one of the cottages behind the
+church. Old Barlow, they call him.'
+
+'There can't be two such men--he must be at least a century old. If any
+one told me he were a hundred and twenty I shouldn't be inclined to
+doubt the fact. I never saw such a shrivelled, wrinkled visage,
+bloodless, too, as if the poor old wretch never felt your fresh mountain
+air upon his hollow cheeks. A dreadful face. It will haunt me for a
+month.'
+
+'It must be old Barlow,' replied Steadman. 'Good day, sir.'
+
+He walked on with his swinging step, and at such a pace that he was up
+the side of the Fell and close upon old Barlow's heels when Hammond
+turned to look after him five minutes later.
+
+'There's a man who shows few traces of age, at any rate,' thought
+Hammond. 'Yet her ladyship told me that he is over seventy.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+THE OLD MAN ON THE FELL.
+
+
+Having made up his mind to stay at Fellside until after Easter,
+Maulevrier settled down very quietly--for him. He rode a good deal,
+fished a little, looked after his dogs, played billiards, made a devout
+appearance in the big square pew at St. Oswald's on Sunday mornings, and
+behaved altogether as a reformed character. Even his grandmother was
+fain to admit that Maulevrier was improved, and that Mr. Hammond's
+influence upon him must be exercised for good and not for evil.
+
+'I plunged awfully last year, and the year before that,' said
+Maulevrier, sitting at tea in her ladyship's morning room one afternoon
+about a week after his return, when she had expressed her gracious
+desire that the two young men should take tea with her.
+
+Mary was in charge of the tea-pot and brass kettle, and looked as
+radiant and as fresh as a summer morning. A regular Gainsborough girl,
+Hammond called her, when he praised her to her brother; a true English
+beauty, unsophisticated, a little rustic, but full of youthful
+sweetness.
+
+'You see, I didn't know what a racing stable meant,' continued
+Maulevrier, mildly apologetic--'in fact, I thought it was an easy way
+for a nobleman to make as good a living as your City swells, with their
+soft goods or their Brummagem ware, a respectable trade for a gentleman
+to engage in. And it was only when I was half ruined that I began to
+understand the business; and as soon as I did understand it I made up my
+mind to get out of it; and I am happy to say that I sold the very last
+of my stud in February, and Tony Lumpkin is his own man again. So you
+may welcome the prodigal grandson, and order the fatted calf to be
+slain, grandmother!'
+
+Lady Maulevrier stretched out her left hand to him, and the young man
+bent over it and kissed it affectionately. He felt really touched by her
+misfortunes, and was fonder of her than he had ever been before. She had
+been somewhat hard with him in his boyhood, but she had always cared for
+his dignity and protected his interests: and, after all, she was a noble
+old woman, a grandmother of whom a man might be justly proud. He thought
+of the painted harridans, the bare-shouldered skeletons, whom some of
+his young friends were obliged to own in the same capacity, and he was
+thankful that he could reverence his father's mother.
+
+'That is the best news I have heard for a long time, Maulevrier,' said
+her ladyship graciously; 'better medicine for my nerves than any of Mr.
+Horton's preparations. If Mr. Hammond's advice has influenced you to get
+rid of your stable I am deeply grateful to Mr. Hammond.'
+
+Hammond smiled as he sipped his tea, sitting close to Mary's tray, ready
+to fly to her assistance on the instant should the brazen kettle become
+troublesome. It had a threatening way of hissing and bubbling over its
+spirit lamp.
+
+'Oh, you have no idea what a fellow Hammond is to lecture,' answered
+Maulevrier. 'He is a tremendous Radical, and he thinks that every young
+man in my position ought to be a reformer, and devote the greater part
+of his time and trouble to turning out the dirty corners of the world,
+upsetting those poor dear families who like to pig together in one room,
+ordering all the children off to school, marrying the fathers and
+mothers, thrusting himself between free labour and free beer, and
+interfering with the liberty of the subject in every direction.'
+
+'All that may sound like Radicalism, but I think it is the true
+Conservatism, and that every young man ought to do as much, if he wants
+this timeworn old country to maintain its power and prosperity,'
+answered Lady Maulevrier, with an approving glance at John Hammond's
+thoughtful face.
+
+'Right you are, grandmother,' returned Maulevrier, 'and I believe
+Hammond calls himself a Conservative, and means to vote with the
+Conservatives.'
+
+Means to vote! An idle phrase, surely, thought her ladyship, where the
+young man's chance of getting into Parliament was so remote.
+
+That afternoon tea in Lady Maulevrier's room was almost as cheerful as
+the tea-drinkings in the drawing-room, unrestrained by her ladyship's
+presence. She was pleased with her grandson's conduct, and was therefore
+inclined to be friendly to his friend. She could see an improvement in
+Mary, too. The girl was more feminine, more subdued, graver, sweeter;
+more like that ideal woman of Wordsworth's, whose image embodies all
+that is purest and fairest in womanhood.
+
+Mary had not forgotten that unlucky story about the fox-hunt, and ever
+since Hammond's return she had been as it were on her best behaviour,
+refraining from her races with the terriers, and holding herself aloof
+from Maulevrier's masculine pursuits. She sheltered herself a good deal
+under the Fräulein's substantial wing, and took care never to intrude
+herself upon the amusements of her brother and his friend. She was not
+one of those young women who think a brother's presence an excuse for a
+perpetual _tête-à-tête_ with a young man. Yet when Maulevrier came in
+quest of her, and entreated her to join them in a ramble, she was not
+too prudish to refuse the pleasure she so thoroughly enjoyed. But
+afternoon tea was her privileged hour--the time at which she wore her
+prettiest frock, and forgot to regret her inferiority to Lesbia in all
+the graces of womanhood.
+
+One afternoon, when they had all three walked to Easedale Tarn, and were
+coming back by the side of the force, picking their way among the grey
+stones and the narrow threads of silvery water, it suddenly occurred to
+Hammond to ask Mary about that queer old man he had seen on the Fell
+nearly a fortnight before. He had often thought of making the inquiry
+when he was away from Mary, but had always forgotten the thing when he
+was with her. Indeed, Mary had a wonderful knack of making him forget
+everything but herself.
+
+'You seem to know every creature in Grasmere, down to the two-year-old
+babies,' said Hammond, Mary having just stopped to converse with an
+infantine group, straggling and struggling over the boulders. 'Pray, do
+you happen to know a man called Barlow, a very old man?'
+
+'Old Sam Barlow,' exclaimed Mary; 'why, of course I know him.'
+
+She said it as if he were a near relative, and the question palpably
+absurd.
+
+'He is an old man, a hundred, at least, I should think,' said Hammond.
+
+'Poor old Sam, not much on the wrong side of eighty. I go to see him
+every week, and take him his week's tobacco, poor old dear. It is his
+only comfort.'
+
+'Is it?' asked Hammond. 'I should have doubted his having so humanising
+a taste as tobacco. He looks too evil a creature ever to have yielded to
+the softening influence of a pipe.'
+
+'An evil creature! What, old Sam? Why he is the most genial old thing,
+and as cheery--loves to hear the newspaper read to him--the murders and
+railway accidents. He doesn't care for politics. Everybody likes old Sam
+Barlow.'
+
+'I fancy the Grasmere idea of reverend and amiable age must be strictly
+local. I can only say that I never saw a more unholy countenance.'
+
+'You must have been dreaming when you saw him,' said Mary. 'Where did
+you meet him?'
+
+'On the Fell, about a quarter of a mile from the shrubbery gate.'
+
+'_Did_ you? I shouldn't have thought he could have got so far. I've a
+good mind to take you to see him, this very afternoon, before we go
+home.'
+
+'Do,' exclaimed Hammond, 'I should like it immensely. I thought him a
+hateful-looking old person; but there was something so thoroughly
+uncanny about him that he exercised an absolute fascination upon me: he
+magnetised me, I think, as the green-eyed cat magnetises the bird. I
+have been positively longing to see him again. He is a kind of human
+monster, and I hope some one will have a big bottle made ready for him
+and preserve him in spirits when he dies.'
+
+'What a horrid idea! No, sir, dear old Barlow shall lie beside the
+Rotha, under the trees Wordsworth planted. He is such a man as
+Wordsworth would have loved.'
+
+Mr. Hammond shrugged his shoulders, and said no more. Mary's little
+vehement ways, her enthusiasm, her love of that valley, which might be
+called her native place, albeit her eyes had opened upon heaven's light
+far away, her humility, were all very delightful in their way. She was
+not a perfect beauty, like Lesbia; but she was a fresh, pure-minded
+English girl, frank as the day, and if he had had a brother he would
+have recommended that brother to choose just such a girl for his wife.
+
+Mr. Samuel Barlow occupied a little old cottage, which seemed to consist
+chiefly of a gable end and a chimney stack, in that cluster of dwellings
+behind St. Oswald's church, which was once known as the Kirk Town.
+Visitors went downstairs to get to Mr. Barlow's ground-floor, for the
+influence of time and advancing civilisation had raised the pathway in
+front of Mr. Barlow's cottage until his parlour had become of a
+cellar-like aspect. Yet it was a very nice little parlour when one got
+down to it, and it enjoyed winter and summer a perpetual twilight, since
+the light that crept through the leaded casement was tempered by a
+screen of flowerpots, which were old Barlow's particular care. There
+were no finer geraniums in all Grasmere than Barlow's, no bigger
+carnations or picotees, asters or arums.
+
+It was about five o'clock in the March afternoon, when Mary ushered John
+Hammond into Mr. Barlow's dwelling, and, in the dim glow of a cheery
+little fire and the faint light that filtered through the screen of
+geranium leaves, the visitor looked for a moment or so doubtfully at the
+owner of the cottage. But only for a moment. Those bright blue eyes and
+apple cheeks, that benevolent expression, bore no likeness to the
+strange old man he had seen on the Fell. Mr. Barlow was toothless and
+nut-cracker like of outline; he was thin and shrunken, and bent with the
+burden of long years, but his healthy visage had none of those deep
+lines, those cross markings and hollows which made the pallid
+countenance of that other old man as ghastly as would be the abstract
+idea of life's last stage embodied by the bitter pencil of a Hogarth.
+
+'I have brought a gentleman from London to see you, Sam,' said Mary. 'He
+fancied he met you on the Fell the other morning.'
+
+Barlow rose and quavered a cheery welcome, but protested against the
+idea of his having got so far as the Fell.
+
+'With my blessed rheumatics, you know it isn't in me, Lady Mary. I shall
+never get no further than the churchyard; but I likes to sit on the wall
+hard by Wordsworth's tomb in a warm afternoon, and to see the folks pass
+over the bridge; and I can potter about looking after my flowers, I can.
+But it would be a dull life, now the poor old missus is gone and the
+bairns all out at service, if it wasn't for some one dropping in to have
+a chat, or read me a bit of the news sometimes. And there isn't anybody
+in Grasmere, gentle or simple, that's kinder to me than you, Lady Mary.
+Lord bless you, I do look forward to my newspaper. Any more of them
+dreadful smashes?'
+
+'No, Sam, thank Heaven, there have been no railway accidents.'
+
+'Ah, we shall have 'em in August and September,' said the old man,
+cheerily. 'They're bound to come then. There's a time for all things,
+as Solomon says. When the season comes t'smashes all coom. And no more
+of these mysterious murders, I suppose, which baffle t'police and keep
+me awake o' nights thinking of 'em.'
+
+'Surely you do not take delight in murder, Mr. Barlow?' said Hammond.
+
+'No, sir, I do not wish my fellow-creatures to mak' awa' wi' each other;
+but if there is a murder going in the papers I like to get the benefit
+of it. I like to sit in front of my fire of an evening and wonder about
+it while I smoke my pipe, and fancy I can see the murderer hiding in a
+garret in an out-of-the-way alley, or as a stowaway on board a gert
+ship, or as a miner deep down in a coalpit, and never thinking that even
+there t'police can track him. Did you ever hear tell o' Mr. de Quincey,
+sir?'
+
+'I believe I have read every line he ever wrote.'
+
+'Ah, you should have heard him talk about murders. It would have made
+you dream queer dreams, just as he did. He lived for years in the white
+cottage that Wordsworth once lived in, just behind the street yonder--a
+nice, neat, lile gentleman, in a houseful of books. I've had many a talk
+with him when I was a young man.'
+
+'And how old may you be now, Mr. Barlow?'
+
+'Getting on for eighty four, sir.'
+
+'But you are not the oldest man in Grasmere, I should say, by twenty
+years?'
+
+'I don't think there's many much older than me, sir.'
+
+'The man I saw on the Fell looked at least a hundred. I wish you could
+tell me who he is; I feel a morbid curiosity about him.'
+
+He went on to describe the old man in the grey coat, as minutely as he
+could, dwelling on every characteristic of that singular-looking old
+person; but Samuel Barlow could not identify the description with any
+one in Grasmere. Yet a man of that age, seen walking on the hill-side at
+eight in the morning, could hardly have come from far afield.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+LADY MAULEVRIER'S LETTER-BAG.
+
+
+Although Maulevrier had assured his grandmother that John Hammond would
+take flight at the first warning of Lesbia's return, Lady Maulevrier's
+dread of any meeting between her granddaughter and that ineligible lover
+determined her in making such arrangements as should banish Lesbia from
+Fellside, so long as there seemed the slightest danger of such a
+meeting. She knew that Lesbia had loved her fortuneless suitor; and she
+did not know that the wound was cured, even by a season in the
+little-great world of Cannes. Now that she, the ruler of that
+household, was a helpless captive in her own apartments, she felt that
+Lesbia at Fellside would be her own mistress, and hemmed round with the
+dangers that beset richly-dowered beauty and inexperienced youth.
+
+John Hammond might be playing a very deep game, perhaps assisted by
+Maulevrier. He might ostensibly leave Fellside before Lesbia's return,
+yet lurk in the neighbourhood, and contrive to meet her every day. If
+Maulevrier encouraged this folly, they might be married and over the
+border, before her ladyship--fettered, impotent as she was--could
+interfere.
+
+Lady Maulevrier felt that Georgie Kirkbank was her strong rock. So long
+as Lesbia was under that astute veteran's wing there could be no danger.
+In that embodied essence of worldliness and diplomacy, there was an
+ever-present defence from all temptations that spring from romance and
+youthful impulses. It was a bitter thing, perhaps, to steep a young and
+pure soul in such an atmosphere, to harden a fresh young nature in the
+fiery crucible of fashionable life; but Lady Maulevrier believed that
+the end would sanctify the means. Lesbia, once married to a worthy man,
+such a man as Lord Hartfield, for instance, would soon rise to a higher
+level than that Belgravian swamp over which the malarian vapours of
+falsehood, and slander, and self-seeking, and prurient imaginings hang
+dense and thick. She would rise to the loftier table-land of that really
+great world which governs and admonishes the ruck of mankind by examples
+of noble deeds and noble thoughts; the world of statesmen, and soldiers,
+and thinkers, and reformers; the salt wherewithal society is salted.
+
+But while Lesbia was treading the tortuous mazes of fashion, it was well
+for her to be guided and guarded by such an old campaigner as Lady
+Kirkbank, a woman who, in the language of her friends, 'knew the ropes.'
+
+Lesbia's last letter had been to the effect that she was to go back to
+London with the Kirkbanks directly after Easter, and that directly they
+arrived she would set off with her maid for Fellside, to spend a week or
+a fortnight with her dearest grandmother, before going back to Arlington
+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,
+
+    'This is a world in which our brightest day-dreams generally end in
+    mere dreaming. For years past I have cherished the hope of
+    presenting you to your sovereign, to whom I was presented six and
+    forty years ago, when she was so fair and girlish a creature that
+    she seemed to me more like a queen in a fairy tale than the actual
+    ruler of a great country. I have beguiled my monotonous days with
+    thoughts of the time when I should return to the great world, full
+    of pride and delight in showing old friends what a sweet flower I
+    had reared in my mountain home; but, alas, Lesbia, it may not be.
+
+    'Fate has willed otherwise. The maimed hand does not recover,
+    although Horton is very clever, and thoroughly understands my case.
+    I am not ill, I am not in danger; so you need feel no anxiety about
+    me; but I am a cripple; and I am likely to remain a cripple for
+    months; so the idea of a London season this year is hopeless.
+
+    'Now, as you have in a manner made your _début_ at Cannes, it would
+    never do to bury you here for another year. You complained of the
+    dullness last summer; but you would find Fellside much duller now
+    that you have tasted the elixir of life. No, my dear love, it will
+    be well for you to be presented, as Lady Kirkbank proposes, at the
+    first drawing-room after Easter; and Lady Kirkbank will have to
+    present you. She will be pleased to do this, I know, for her letters
+    are full of enthusiasm about you. And, after all, I do not think you
+    will lose by the exchange. Clever as I think myself, I fear I should
+    find myself sorely at fault in the society of to-day. All things are
+    changed: opinions, manners, creeds, morals even. Acts that were
+    crimes in my day are now venial errors--opinions that were
+    scandalous are now the mark of "advanced thought." I should be too
+    formal for this easy-going age, should be ridiculed as old-fashioned
+    and narrow-minded, should put you to the blush a dozen times a day
+    by my prejudices and opinions.
+
+    'It is very good of you to think of travelling so long a distance to
+    see me; and I should love to look at your sweet face, and hear you
+    describe your new experiences; but I could not allow you to travel
+    with only the protection of a maid; and there are many reasons why I
+    think it better to defer the meeting till the end of the season,
+    when Lady Kirkbank will bring my treasure back to me, eager to tell
+    me the history of all the hearts she has broken.'
+
+The dowager's letter to Lady Kirkbank was brief and business-like. She
+could only hope that her old friend Georgie, whose acuteness she knew of
+old, would divine her feelings and her wishes, without being explicitly
+told what they were.
+
+    'My dear Georgie,
+
+    'I am too ill to leave this house; indeed I doubt if I shall ever
+    leave it till I am taken away in my coffin; but please say nothing
+    to alarm Lesbia. Indeed, there is no ground for fear, as I am not
+    dangerously ill, and may drag out an imprisonment of long years
+    before the coffin comes to fetch me. There are reasons, which you
+    will understand, why Lesbia should not come here till after the
+    season; so please keep her in Arlington Street, and occupy her mind
+    as much as you can with the preparations for her first campaign. I
+    give you _carte blanche_. If Carson is still in business I should
+    like her to make my girl's gowns; but you must please yourself in
+    this matter, as it is quite possible that Carson is a little behind
+    the times.
+
+    'I must ask you to present my darling, and to deal with her exactly
+    as if she were a daughter of your own. I think you know all my views
+    and hopes about her; and I feel that I can trust to your friendship
+    in this my day of need. The dream of my life has been to launch her
+    myself, and direct her every step in the mazes of town life; but
+    that dream is over. I have kept age and infirmity at a distance,
+    have even forgotten that the years were going by; and now I find
+    myself an old woman all at once, and my golden dream has vanished.'
+
+Lady Kirkbank's reply came by return of post, and happily this gushing
+epistle had not to be submitted to Mary's eye.
+
+    'My dearest Di,
+
+    'My heart positively bleeds for you. What is the matter with your
+    hand, that you talk of being a life-long prisoner to your room? Pray
+    send for Paget or Erichsen, and have yourself put right at once. No
+    doubt that local simpleton is making a mess of your case. Perhaps
+    while he is dabbing with lint and lotions the real remedy is the
+    knife. I am sure amputation would be less melancholy than the
+    despondent state of feeling which you are now suffering. If any limb
+    of mine went wrong, I should say to the surgeon, "Cut it off, and
+    patch up the stump in your best style; I give you a fortnight, and
+    at the end of that time I expect to be going to parties again." Life
+    is not long enough for dawdling surgery.
+
+    'As regards Lesbia, I can only say that I adore her, and I am
+    enchanted at the idea that I am to run her myself. I intend her to
+    be _the_ beauty of the season--not _one of the loveliest
+    debutantes_, or any rot of that kind--but just the girl whom
+    everybody will be crazy about. There shall be a mob wherever she
+    appears, Di, I promise you that. There is no one in London who can
+    work a thing of that kind better than your humble servant. And when
+    once the girl is the talk of the town, all the rest is easy. She can
+    choose for herself among the very best men in society. Offers will
+    pour in as thickly as circulars from undertakers and mourning
+    warehouses after a death.
+
+    'Lesbia is so cool-headed and sensible that I have not the least
+    doubt of her success. With an impulsive or romantic girl there is
+    always the fear of a _fiasco_. But this sweet child of yours has
+    been well brought up, and knows her own value. She behaved like a
+    queen here, where I need not tell you society is just a little
+    mixed; though, of course, we only cultivate our own set. Your heart
+    would swell with pride if you could see the way she puts down men
+    who are not quite good style; and the ease with which she crushes
+    those odious American girls, with their fine complexions and loud
+    manners.
+
+    'Be assured that I shall guard her as the apple of my eye, and that
+    the detrimental who circumvents me will be a very Satan of schemers.
+
+    'I can but smile at your mention of Carson, whose gowns used to fit
+    us so well in our girlish days, and whose bills seem moderate
+    compared with the exorbitant accounts I get now.
+
+    'Carson has long been forgotten, my dear soul, gone with the snows
+    of last year. A long procession of fashionable French dressmakers
+    has passed across the stage since her time, like the phantom kings
+    in Macbeth; and now the last rage is to have our gowns made by an
+    Englishman who works for the Princess, and who gives himself most
+    insufferable airs, or an Irishwoman who is employed by all the best
+    actresses. It is to the latter, Kate Kearney, I shall entrust our
+    sweet Lesbia's toilettes.'
+
+The same post brought a loving letter from Lesbia, full of regret at not
+being allowed to go down to Fellside, and yet full of delight at the
+prospect of her first season.
+
+    'Lady Kirkbank and I have been discussing my court dress,' she wrote,
+    'and we have decided upon a white cut-velvet train, with a border of
+    ostrich feathers, over a satin petticoat embroidered with seed
+    pearl. It will be expensive, but we know you will not mind that.
+    Lady Kirkbank takes the idea from the costume Buckingham wore at the
+    Louvre the first time he met Anne of Austria. Isn't that clever of
+    her? She is not a deep thinker like you; is horribly ignorant of
+    science, metaphysics, poetry even. She asked me one day who Plato
+    was, and whether he took his name from the battle of Platoea; and
+    she says she never could understand why people make a fuss about
+    Shakespeare; but she has read all the secret histories and memoirs
+    that ever were written, and knows all the ins and outs of court life
+    and high life for the last three hundred years; and there is not a
+    person in the peerage whose family history she has not at her
+    fingers' ends, except my grandfather. When I asked her to tell me
+    all about Lord Maulevrier and his achievements as Governor of
+    Madras, she had not a word to say. So, perhaps, she draws upon her
+    invention a little in talking about other people, and felt herself
+    restrained when she came to speak of my grandfather.'
+
+This passage in Lesbia's letter affected Lady Maulevrier as if a
+scorpion had wriggled from underneath the sheet of paper. She folded the
+letter, and laid it in the satin-lined box on her table, with a deep
+sigh.
+
+'Yes, she is in the world now, and she will ask questions. I have never
+warned her against pronouncing her grandfather's name. There are some
+who will not be so kind as Georgie Kirkbank; some, perhaps, who will
+delight in humiliating her, and who will tell her the worst that can be
+told. My only hope is that she will make a great marriage, and speedily.
+Once the wife of a man with a high place in the world, worldlings will
+be too wise to wound her by telling her that her grandfather was an
+unconvicted felon.'
+
+The die was cast. Lady Maulevrier might dread the hazard of evil
+tongues, of slanderous memories; but she could not recall her consent to
+Lesbia's _début_. The girl was already launched; she had been seen and
+admired. The next stage in her career must be to be wooed and won by a
+worthy wooer.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+ON THE DARK BROW OF HELVELLYN.
+
+
+While these plans were being settled, and while Lesbia's future was the
+all-absorbing subject of Lady Maulevrier's thoughts, Mary contrived to
+be happier than she had ever been in her life before. It was happiness
+that grew and strengthened with every day; and yet there was no obvious
+reason for this deep joy. Her life ran in the same familiar groove. She
+walked and rode on the old pathways; she rowed on the lake she had known
+from babyhood; she visited her cottagers, and taught in the village
+school, just the same as of old. The change was only that she was no
+longer alone; and of late the solitude of her life, the ever-present
+consciousness that nobody shared her pleasures or sympathised with her
+upon any point, had weighed upon her like an actual burden. Now she had
+Maulevrier, who was always kind, who understood and shared almost all
+her tastes, and Maulevrier's friend, who, although not given to saying
+smooth things, seemed warmly interested in her pursuits and opinions. He
+encouraged her to talk, although he generally took the opposite side in
+every argument; and she no longer felt oppressed or irritated by the
+idea that he despised her.
+
+Indeed, although he never flattered or even praised her, Mr. Hammond let
+her see that he liked her society. She had gone out of her way to avoid
+him, very fearful lest he should think her bold or masculine; but he had
+taken pains to frustrate all her efforts in that direction; he had
+refused to go upon excursions which she could not share. 'Lady Mary must
+come with us,' he said, when they were planning a morning's ramble. Thus
+it happened that Mary was his guide and companion in all his walks, and
+roamed with him bamboo in hand, over every one of those mountainous
+paths she knew and loved so well. Distance was as nothing to
+them--sometimes a boat helped them, and they went over wintry Windermere
+to climb the picturesque heights above Bowness. Sometimes they took
+ponies, and a groom, and left their steeds to perform the wilder part of
+the way on foot. In this wise John Hammond saw all that was to be seen
+within a day's journey of Grasmere, except the top of Helvellyn.
+Maulevrier had shirked the expedition, had always put off Mary and Mr.
+Hammond when they proposed it. The season was not advanced enough--the
+rugged pathway by the Tongue Ghyll would be as slippery as glass--no
+pony could get up there in such weather.
+
+'We have not had any frost to speak of for the last fortnight,' pleaded
+Mary, who was particularly anxious to do the honours of Helvellyn, as
+the real lion of the neighbourhood.
+
+'What a simpleton you are, Molly!' cried Maulevrier. 'Do you suppose
+because there is no frost in your grandmother's garden--and if you were
+to ask Staples about his peaches he would tell you a very different
+story--that there's a tropical atmosphere on Dolly Waggon Pike? Why, I'd
+wager the ice on Grisdale Tarn is thick enough for skating. Helvellyn
+won't run away, child. You and Hammond can dance the Highland
+Schottische on Striding Edge in June, if you like.'
+
+'Mr. Hammond won't be here in June,' said Mary.
+
+'Who knows?--the train service is pretty fair between London and
+Windermere. Hammond and I would think nothing of putting ourselves in
+the mail on a Friday night, and coming down to spend Saturday and Sunday
+with you--if you are good.'
+
+There came a sunny morning soon after Easter which seemed mild enough
+for June; and when Hammond suggested that this was the very day for
+Helvellyn, Maulevrier had not a word to say against the truth of that
+proposition. The weather had been exceptionally warm for the last week,
+and they had played tennis and sat in the garden just as if it had been
+actually summer. Patches of snow might still linger on the crests of the
+hills--but the approach to those bleak heights could hardly be glacial.
+
+Mary clasped her hands delightedly.
+
+'Dear old Maulevrier!' she exclaimed, 'you are always good to me. And
+now I shall be able to show you the Red Tarn, the highest pool of water
+in England,' she said, turning to Hammond. 'And you will see Windermere
+winding like a silvery serpent between the hills, and Grasmere shining
+like a jewel in the depth of the valley, and the sea glittering like a
+line of white light between the edges of earth and heaven, and the dark
+Scotch hills like couchant lions far away to the north.'
+
+'That is to say these things are all supposed to be on view from the top
+of the mountain; but as a peculiar and altogether exceptional state of
+the atmosphere is essential to their being seen, I need not tell you
+that they are rarely visible,' said Maulevrier. 'You are talking to old
+mountaineers, Molly. Hammond has done Cotapaxi and had his little
+clamber on the equatorial Andes, and I--well, child, I have done my
+Righi, and I have always found the boasted panorama enveloped in dense
+fog.'
+
+'It won't be foggy to-day,' said Mary. 'Shall we do the whole thing on
+foot, or shall I order the ponies?'
+
+Mr. Hammond inquired the distance up and down, and being told that it
+involved only a matter of eight miles, decided upon walking.
+
+'I'll walk, and lead your pony,' he said to Mary, but Mary declared
+herself quite capable of going on foot, so the ponies were dispensed
+with as a possible encumbrance.
+
+This was planned and discussed in the garden before breakfast. Fräulein
+was told that Mary was going for a long walk with her brother and Mr.
+Hammond; a walk which might last over the usual luncheon hour; so
+Fräulein was not to wait luncheon. Mary went to her grandmother's room
+to pay her duty visit. There were no letters for her to write that
+morning, so she was perfectly free.
+
+The three pedestrians started an hour after breakfast, in light marching
+order. The two young men wore their Argyleshire shooting
+clothes--homespun knickerbockers and jackets, thick-ribbed hose knitted
+by Highland lasses in Inverness. They carried a couple of hunting flasks
+filled with claret, and a couple of sandwich boxes, and that was all.
+Mary wore her substantial tailor-gown of olive tweed, and a little toque
+to match, with a silver mounted grouse-claw for her only ornament.
+
+It was a delicious morning, the air fresh and sweet, the sun comfortably
+warm, a little too warm, perhaps, presently, when they had trodden the
+narrow path by the Tongue Ghyll, and were beginning to wind slowly
+upwards over rough boulders and last year's bracken, tough and brown and
+tangled, towards that rugged wall of earth and stone tufted with rank
+grasses, which calls itself Dolly Waggon Pike. Here they all came to a
+stand-still, and wiped the dews of honest labour from their foreheads;
+and here Maulevrier flung himself down upon a big boulder, with the
+soles of his stout shooting boots in running water, and took out his
+cigar case.
+
+'How do you like it?' he asked his friend, when he had lighted his
+cigarette. 'I hope you are enjoying yourself.'
+
+'I never was happier in my life,' answered Hammond.
+
+He was standing on higher ground, with Mary at his elbow, pointing out
+and expatiating upon the details of the prospect. There were the
+lakes--Grasmere, a disk of shining blue; Rydal, a patch of silver; and
+Windermere winding amidst a labyrinth of wooded hills.
+
+'Aren't you tired?' asked Maulevrier.
+
+'Not a whit.'
+
+'Oh, I forgot you had done Cotapaxi, or as much of Cotapaxi as living
+mortal ever has done. That makes a difference. I am going home.'
+
+'Oh, Maulevrier!' exclaimed Mary, piteously.
+
+'I am going home. You two can go to the top. You are both hardened
+mountaineers, and I am not in it with either of you. When I rashly
+consented to a pedestrian ascent of Helvellyn I had forgotten what the
+gentleman was like; and as to Dolly Waggon I had actually forgotten her
+existence. But now I see the lady--as steep as the side of a house, and
+as stony--no, naught but herself can be her parallel in stoniness. No,
+Molly, I will go no further.'
+
+'But we shall go down on the other side,' urged Mary. 'It is a little
+steeper on the Cumberland side, but not nearly so far.'
+
+'A little steeper! I Can anything be steeper than Dolly Waggon? Yes, you
+are right. It is steeper on the Cumberland side. I remember coming down
+a sheer descent, like an exaggerated sugar-loaf; but I was on a pony,
+and it was the brute's look-out. I will not go down the Cumberland side
+on my own legs. No, Molly, not even for you. But if you and Hammond want
+to go to the top, there is nothing to prevent you. He is a skilled
+mountaineer. I'll trust you with him.'
+
+Mary blushed, and made no reply. Of all things in the world she least
+wanted to abandon the expedition. Yet to climb Helvellyn alone with her
+brother's friend would no doubt be a terrible violation of those laws of
+maidenly propriety which Fräulein was always expounding. If Mary were to
+do this thing, which she longed to do, she must hazard a lecture from
+her governess, and probably a biting reproof from her grandmother.
+
+'Will you trust yourself with me, Lady Mary?' asked Hammond, looking at
+her with a gaze so earnest--so much more earnest than the occasion
+required--that her blushes deepened and her eyelids fell. 'I have done a
+good deal of climbing in my day, and I am not afraid of anything
+Helvellyn can do to me. I promise to take great care of you if you will
+come.'
+
+How could she refuse? How could she for one moment pretend that she did
+not trust him, that her heart did not yearn to go with him. She would
+have climbed the shingly steep of Cotapaxi with him--or crossed the
+great Sahara with him--and feared nothing. Her trust in him was
+infinite--as infinite as her reverence and love.
+
+'I am afraid Fräulein would make a fuss,' she faltered, after a pause.
+
+'Hang Fräulein,' cried Maulevrier, puffing at his cigarette, and kicking
+about the stones in the clear running water. 'I'll square it with
+Fräulein. I'll give her a pint of fiz with her lunch, and make her see
+everything in a rosy hue. The good soul is fond of her Heidseck. You
+will be back by afternoon tea. Why should there be any fuss about the
+matter? Hammond wants to see the Red Tarn, and you are dying to show him
+the way. Go, and joy go with you both. Climbing a stony hill is a form
+of pleasure to which I have not yet risen. I shall stroll home at my
+leisure, and spend the afternoon on the billiard-room sofa reading
+Mudie's last contribution to the comforts of home.'
+
+'What a Sybarite,' said Hammond. 'Come, Lady Mary, we mustn't loiter, if
+we are to be back at Fellside by five o'clock.'
+
+Mary looked at her brother doubtfully, and he gave her a little nod
+which seemed to say, 'Go, by all means;' so she dug the end of her staff
+into Dolly's rugged breast, and mounted cheerily, stepping lightly from
+boulder to boulder.
+
+The sun was not so warm as it had been ten minutes ago, when Maulevrier
+flung himself down to rest. The sky had clouded over a little, and a
+cooler wind was blowing across the breast of the hill. Fairfield yonder,
+that long smooth slope of verdure which a little while ago looked
+emerald green in the sunlight, now wore a soft and shadowy hue. All the
+world was greyer and dimmer in a moment, as it were, and Coniston Lake
+in its distant valley disappeared beneath a veil of mist, while the
+shimmering sea-line upon the verge of the horizon melted and vanished
+among the clouds that overhung it. The weather changes very quickly in
+this part of the world. Sharp drops of rain came spitting at Hammond and
+Mary as they climbed the crest of the Pike, and stopped, somewhat
+breathless, to look back at Maulevrier. He was trudging blithely down
+the winding way, and seemed to have done wonders while they had been
+doing very little.
+
+'How fast he is going!' said Mary.
+
+'Easy is the descent of Avernus. He is going down-hill, and we are going
+upwards. That makes all the difference in life, you see,' answered
+Hammond.
+
+Mary looked at him with divine compassion. She thought that for him the
+hill of life would be harder than Helvellyn. He was brave, honest,
+clever; but her grandmother had impressed upon her that modern
+civilisation hardly has room for a young man who wants to get on in the
+world, without either fortune or powerful connexions. He had better go
+to Australia and keep sheep, than attempt the impossible at home.
+
+The rain was a passing shower, hardly worth speaking of, but the glory
+of the day was over. The sky was grey, and there were dark clouds
+creeping up from the sea-line. Silvery Windermere had taken a leaden
+hue; and now they turned their last fond look upon the Westmoreland
+valley, and set their faces steadily towards Cumberland, and the fine
+grassy plateau on the top of the hill.
+
+All this was not done in a flash. It took them some time to scale
+Dolly's stubborn breast, and it took them another hour to reach Seat
+Sandal; and by the time they came to the iron gate in the fence, which
+at this point divides the two counties, the atmosphere had thickened
+ominously, and dark wreaths of fog were floating about and around them,
+whirled here and there by a boisterous wind which shrieked and roared at
+them with savage fury, as if it were the voice of some Titan monarch of
+the mountain protesting against this intrusion upon his domain.
+
+'I'm afraid you won't see the Scottish hills,' shouted Mary, holding on
+her little cloth hat.
+
+She was obliged to shout at the top of her voice, though she was close
+to Mr. Hammond's elbow, for that shrill screaming wind would have
+drowned the voice of a stentor.
+
+'Never mind the view,' replied Hammond in the same fortissimo, 'but I
+really wish I hadn't brought you up here. If this fog should get any
+worse, it may be dangerous.'
+
+'The fog is sure to get worse,' said Mary, in a brief lull of the
+hurly-burly, 'but there is no danger. I know every inch of the hill, and
+I am not a bit afraid. I can guide you, if you will trust me.'
+
+'My bravest of girls,' he exclaimed, looking down at her. 'Trust you!
+Yes, I would trust my life to you--my soul--my honour--secure in your
+purity and good faith.'
+
+Never had eyes of living man or woman looked down upon her with such
+tenderness, such fervent love. She looked up at him; looked with eyes
+which, at first bewildered, then grew bold, and lost themselves, as it
+were, in the dark grey depths of the eyes they met. The savage wind,
+hustling and howling, blew her nearer to him, as a reed is blown against
+a rock. Dark grey mists were rising round them like a sea; but had that
+ever-thickening, ever-darkening vapour been the sea itself, and death
+inevitable, Mary Haselden would have hardly cared. For in this moment
+the one precious gift for which her soul had long been yearning had been
+freely given to her. She knew all at once, that she was fondly loved by
+that one man whom she had chosen for her idol and her hero.
+
+What matter that he was fortuneless, a nobody, with but the poorest
+chances of success in the world? What if he must needs, only to win the
+bare means of existence, go to Australia and keep sheep, or to the Bed
+River valley and grow corn? What if he must labour, as the peasants
+laboured on the sides of this rude hill? Gladly would she go with him to
+a strange country, and keep his log cabin, and work for him, and share
+his toilsome life, rough or smooth. No loss of social rank could lessen
+her pride in him, her belief in him.
+
+They were standing side by side a little way from the edge of the sheer
+descent, below which the Bed Tarn showed black in a basin scooped out of
+the naked hill, like water held in the hollow of a giant's hand.
+
+'Look,' cried Mary, pointing downward, 'you must see the Red Tarn, the
+highest water in England?'
+
+But just at this moment there came a blast which shook even Hammond's
+strong frame, and with a cry of fear he snatched Mary in his arms and
+carried her away from the edge of the hill. He folded her in his arms
+and held her there, thirty yards away from the precipice, safely
+sheltered against his breast, while the wind raved round them, blowing
+her hair from the broad, white brow, and showing him that noble forehead
+in all its power and beauty; while the darkness deepened round them so
+that they could see hardly anything except each other's eyes.
+
+'My love, my own dear love,' he murmured fondly; 'I will trust you with
+my life. Will you accept the trust? I am hardly worthy; for less than a
+year ago I offered myself to your sister, and I thought she was the only
+woman in this wide world who could make me happy. And when she refused
+me I was in despair, Mary; and I left Fellside in the full belief that I
+had done with life and happiness. And then I came back, only to oblige
+Maulevrier, and determined to be utterly miserable at Fellside. I was
+miserable for the first two hours. Memories of dead and gone joys and
+disappointed hopes were very bitter. And I tried honestly to keep up my
+feeling of wretchedness for the first few days. But it was no use,
+Molly. There was a genial spirit in the place, a laughing fairy who
+would not let me be sad; and I found myself becoming most unromantically
+happy, eating my breakfast with a hearty appetite, thinking my cup of
+afternoon tea nectar for love of the dear hand that gave it. And so, and
+so, till the new love, the purer and better love, grew and grew into a
+mighty tree, which was as an oak to an orchid, compared with that
+passion flower of earlier growth. Mary, will you trust your life to me,
+as I trust mine to you. I say to you almost in the words I spoke last
+year to Lesbia,' and here his tone grew grave almost to solemnity,
+'trust me, and I will make your life free from the shadow of care--trust
+me, for I have a brave spirit and a strong arm to fight the battle of
+life--trust me, and I will win for you the position you have a right to
+occupy--trust me, and you shall never repent your trust.'
+
+She looked up at him with eyes which told of infinite faith, child-like,
+unquestioning faith.
+
+'I will trust you in all things, and for ever,' she said. 'I am not
+afraid to face evil fortune. I do not care how poor you are--how hard
+our lives may be--if--if you are sure you love me.'
+
+'Sure! There is not a beat of my heart or a thought of my mind that does
+not belong to you. I am yours to the very depths of my soul. My innocent
+love, my clear-eyed, clear-souled angel! I have studied you and watched
+you and thought of you, and sounded the depths of your lovely nature,
+and the result is that you are for me earth's one woman. I will have no
+other, Mary, no other love, no other wife.'
+
+'Lady Maulevrier will be dreadfully angry,' faltered Mary.
+
+'Are you afraid of her anger?'
+
+'No; I am afraid of nothing, for your sake.'
+
+He lifted her hand to his lips, and kissed it reverently, and there was
+a touch of chivalry in that reverential kiss. His eyes clouded with
+tears as he looked down into the trustful face. The fog had darkened to
+a denser blackness, and it was almost as if they were engulfed in sudden
+night.
+
+'If we are never to find our way down the hill; if this were to be the
+last hour of our lives, Mary, would you be content?'
+
+'Quite content,' she answered, simply. 'I think I have lived long
+enough, if you really love me--if you are not making fun.'
+
+'What, Molly, do you still doubt? Is it strange that I love you?'
+
+'Very strange. I am so different from Lesbia.'
+
+'Yes, very different, and the difference is your highest charm. And now,
+love, we had better go down whichever side of the hill is easiest, for
+this fog is rather appalling. I forgive the wind, because it blew you
+against my heart just now, and that is where I want you to dwell for
+ever!'
+
+'Don't be frightened,' said Mary. 'I know every step of the way.'
+
+So, leaning on her lover, and yet guiding him, slowly, step by step,
+groping their way through the darkness, Lady Mary led Mr. Hammond down
+the winding track along which the ponies and the guides travel so often
+in the summer season. And soon they began to descend out of that canopy
+of fog which enveloped the brow of Helvellyn, and to see the whole world
+smiling beneath them, a world of green pastures and sheepfolds, with a
+white homestead here and there amidst the fields, looking so human and
+so comfortable after that gloomy mountain top, round which the tempest
+howled so outrageously. Beyond those pastures stretched the dark waters
+of Thirlmere, looking like a broad river.
+
+The descent was passing steep, but Hammond's strong arm and steady
+steps made Mary's progress very easy, while she had in no wise
+exaggerated her familiarity with the windings and twistings of the
+track. Yet as they had need to travel very slowly so long as the fog
+still surrounded them, the journey downward lasted a considerable time,
+and it was past five when they arrived at the little roadside inn at the
+foot of the hill.
+
+Here Mr. Hammond insisted that Mary should rest at least long enough to
+take a cup of tea. She was very white and tired. She had been profoundly
+agitated, and looked on the point of fainting, although she protested
+that she was quite ready to walk on.
+
+'You are not going to walk another step,' said Hammond. 'While you are
+taking your tea I will get you a carriage.'
+
+'Indeed, I had rather hurry on at once,' urged Mary. 'We are so late
+already.'
+
+'You will get home all the sooner if you obey me. It is your duty to
+obey me now,' said Hammond, in a lowered voice.
+
+She smiled at him, but it was a weak, wan little smile, for that descent
+in the wind and the fog had quite exhausted her. Mr. Hammond took her
+into a snug little parlour where there was a cheerful fire, and saw her
+comfortably seated in an arm chair by the hearth, before he went to look
+after a carriage.
+
+There was no such thing as a conveyance to be had, but the Windermere
+coach would pass in about half an hour, and for this they must wait. It
+would take them back to Grasmere sooner than they could get there on
+foot, in Mary's exhausted condition.
+
+The tea-tray was brought in presently, and Hammond poured out the tea
+and waited upon Lady Mary. It was a reversal of the usual formula but it
+was very pleasant to Mary to sit with her feet on the low brass fender
+and be waited upon by her lover. That fog on the brow of Helvellyn--that
+piercing wind--had chilled her to the bone, and there was unspeakable
+comfort in the glow and warmth of the fire, in the refreshment of a good
+cup of tea.
+
+'Mary, you are my own property now, remember,' said Hammond, watching
+her tenderly as she sipped her tea.
+
+She glanced up at him shyly, now and then, with eyes full of innocent
+wonder. It was so strange to her, as strange as sweet, to know that he
+loved her; such a marvellous thing that she had pledged herself to be
+his wife.
+
+'You are my very own--mine to guard and cherish, mine to think and work
+for,' he went on, 'and you will have to trust me, sweet one, even if the
+beginning of things is not altogether free from trouble.'
+
+'I am not afraid of trouble.'
+
+'Bravely spoken! First and foremost, then, you will have to announce
+your engagement to Lady Maulevrier. She will take it ill, no doubt; will
+do her utmost to persuade you to give me up. Have you courage and
+resolution, do you think, to stand against her arguments? Can you hold
+to your purpose bravely, and cry, no surrender?'
+
+'There shall be no surrender,' answered Mary, 'I promise you that. No
+doubt grandmother will be very angry. But she has never cared for me
+very much. It will not hurt her for me to make a bad match, as it would
+have done in Lesbia's case. She has had no day-dreams--no grand ambition
+about me!'
+
+'So much the better, my wayside flower! When you have said all that is
+sweet and dutiful to her, and have let her know at the same time that
+you mean to be my wife, come weal come woe, I will see her, and will
+have my say. I will not promise her a grand career for my darling: but I
+will pledge myself that nothing of that kind which the world calls
+evil--no penury, or shabbiness of surroundings--shall ever touch Mary
+Haselden after she is Mary Hammond. I can promise at least so much as
+that.'
+
+'It is more than enough,' said Mary. 'I have told you that I would
+gladly share poverty with you.'
+
+'Sweet! it is good of you to say as much, but I would not take you at
+your word. You don't know what poverty is.'
+
+'Do you think I am a coward, or self-indulgent? You are wrong, Jack. May
+I call you Jack, as Maulevrier does?'
+
+'May you?'
+
+The question evoked such a gush of tenderness that he was fain to kneel
+beside her chair and kiss the little hand holding the cup, before he
+considered he had answered properly.
+
+'You are wrong, Jack. I do know what poverty means. I have studied the
+ways of the poor, tried to console them, and help them a little in their
+troubles; and I know there is no pain that want of money can bring which
+I would not share willingly with you. Do you suppose my happiness is
+dependent on a fine house and powdered footmen? I should like to go to
+the Red River with you, and wear cotton gowns, and tuck up my sleeves
+and clean our cottage.'
+
+'Very pretty sport, dear, for a summer day; but my Mary shall have a
+sweeter life, and shall occasionally walk in silk attire.'
+
+That tea-drinking by the fireside in the inn parlour was the most
+delicious thing within John Hammond's experience. Mary was a bewitching
+compound of earnestness and simplicity, so humble, so confiding, so
+perplexed and astounded at her own bliss.
+
+'Confess, now, in the summer, when you were in love with Lesbia, you
+thought me a horrid kind of girl,' she said, presently, when they were
+standing side by side at the window, waiting for the coach.
+
+'Never, Mary. My crime is to have thought very little about you in those
+days. I was so dazzled by Lesbia's beauty, so charmed by her
+accomplishments and girlish graces, that I forgot to take notice of
+anything else in the world. If I thought of you at all it was as
+another Maulevrier--a younger Maulevrier in petticoats, very gay, and
+good-humoured, and nice.'
+
+'But when you saw me rushing about with the terriers--I must have seemed
+utterly horrid.'
+
+'Why, dearest? There is nothing essentially horrible in terriers, or in a
+bright lively girl running races with them. You made a very pretty
+picture in the sunlight, with your hat hanging on your shoulder, and
+your curly brown hair and dancing hazel eyes. If I had not been deep in
+love with Lesbia's peerless complexion and Grecian features, I should
+have looked below the surface of that Gainsborough picture, and
+discovered what treasures of goodness, and courage, and truth and purity
+those frank brown eyes and that wide forehead betokened. I was sowing my
+wild oats last summer, Mary, and they brought me a crop of sorrow. But I
+am wiser now--wiser and happier.
+
+'But if you were to see Lesbia again would not the old love revive?'
+
+'The old love is dead, Mary. There is nothing left of it but a handful
+of ashes, which I scatter thus to the four winds,' with a wave of his
+hand towards the open casement. 'The new love absorbs and masters my
+being. If Lesbia were to re-appear at Fellside this evening, I could
+offer her my hand in all brotherly frankness, and ask her to accept me
+as a brother. Here comes the coach. We shall be at Fellside just in time
+for dinner.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+WISER THAN LESBIA.
+
+
+Lady Mary and Mr. Hammond were back at Fellside at a quarter before
+eight, by which time the stars were shining on pine woods and Fell. They
+managed to be in the drawing-room when dinner was announced, after the
+hastiest of toilets; yet her lover thought Mary had never looked
+prettier than she looked that night, in her limp white cashmere gown,
+and with her brown hair brushed into a large loose knot on the top of
+her head. There had been great uneasiness about them at Fellside when
+evening began to draw in, and the expected hour of their return had gone
+by. Scouts had been sent in quest of them, but in the wrong direction.
+
+'I did not think you would be such idiots as to come down the north side
+of the hill in a tempest,' said Maulevrier; 'we could see the clouds
+racing over the crest of Seat Sandal, and knew it was blowing pretty
+hard up there, though it was calm enough down here.'
+
+'Blowing pretty hard;' echoed Hammond, 'I don't think I was ever out in
+a worse gale; and yet I have been across the Bay of Biscay when the
+waves struck the side of the steamer like battering rams, and when the
+whole surface of the sea was white with seething foam.'
+
+'It was a most imprudent thing to go up Helvellyn in such weather,' said
+Fräulein Müller, shaking her head gloomily as she ate her fish.
+
+Mary felt that the Fräulein's manner boded ill. There was a storm
+brewing. A scolding was inevitable. Mary felt quite capable of doing
+battle with the Fräulein; but her feelings were altogether different
+when she thought of facing that stern old lady upstairs, and of the
+confession she had to make. It was not that her courage faltered. So far
+as resolutions went she was as firm as a rock. But she felt that there
+was a terrible ordeal to be gone through; and it seemed a mockery to be
+sitting there and pretending to eat her dinner and take things lightly,
+with that ordeal before her.
+
+'We did not go up the hill in bad weather, Miss Müller,' said Mr.
+Hammond. 'The sun was shining and the sky was blue when we started. We
+could not foresee darkness and storm at the top of the hill. That was
+the fortune of war.'
+
+'I am very sorry Lady Mary had not more good sense,' replied Fräulein
+with unabated gloom; but on this Maulevrier took up the cudgels.
+
+'If there was any want of sense in the business, that's my look-out,
+Fräulein,' he said, glaring angrily at the governess. 'It was I who
+advised Hammond and Lady Mary to climb the hill. And here they are, safe
+and sound after their journey. I see no reason why there should be any
+fuss about it.'
+
+'People have different ways of looking at things, replied Fräulein,
+plodding steadily on with her dinner. Mary rose directly the dessert had
+been handed round, and marched out of the room: like a warrior going to
+a battle in which the chances of defeat were strong. Fräulein Müller
+shuffled after her.
+
+'Will you be kind enough to go to her ladyship's room at once, Lady
+Mary,' she said. 'She wants to speak to you.'
+
+'And I want to speak to her,' said Mary.
+
+She ran quickly upstairs and arrived in the morning room, a little out
+of breath. The room was lighted by one low moderator lamp, under a dark
+red velvet shade, and there was the glow of the wood fire, which gave a
+more cheerful light than the lamp. Lady Maulevrier was lying on her
+couch in a loose brocade tea-gown, with old Brussels collar and ruffles.
+She was as well dressed in her day of affliction and helplessness as she
+had been in her day of strength; for she knew the value of surroundings,
+and that her stateliness and power were in some manner dependent on
+details of this kind. The one hand which she could use glittered with
+diamonds, as she waved it with a little imperious gesture towards the
+chair on which she desired Lady Mary to seat herself; and Mary sat down
+meekly, knowing that this chair represented the felon's dock.
+
+'Mary,' began her grandmother, with freezing gravity, 'I have been
+surprised and shocked by your conduct to-day. Yes, surprised at such
+conduct even in you.'
+
+'I do not think I have done anything very wrong, grandmother.'
+
+'Not wrong! You have done nothing wrong? You have done something
+absolutely outrageous. You, my granddaughter, well born, well bred,
+reared under my roof, to go up Helvellyn and lose yourself in a fog
+alone with a young man. You could hardly have done worse if you were a
+Cockney tourist,' concluded her ladyship, with ineffable disgust.
+
+'I could not help the fog,' said Mary, quietly. The battle had to be
+fought, and she was not going to flinch. 'I had no intention of going up
+Helvellyn alone with Mr. Hammond. Maulevrier was to have gone with us;
+but when we got to Dolly Waggon he was tired, and would not go any
+further. He told me to go on with Mr. Hammond.'
+
+'_He_ told you! Maulevrier!--a young man who has spent some of the best
+hours of his youth in the company of jockeys and trainers--who hasn't
+the faintest idea of the fitness of things. You allow Maulevrier to be
+your guide in a matter in which your own instinct should have guided
+you--your womanly instinct! But you have always been an unwomanly girl.
+You have put me to shame many a time by your hoydenish tricks; but I
+bore with you, believing that your madcap follies were at least
+harmless. To-day you have gone a step too far, and have been guilty of
+absolute impropriety, which I shall be very slow to pardon.'
+
+'Perhaps you will be still more angry when you know all, grandmother,'
+said Mary.
+
+Lady Maulevrier flashed her dark eyes at the girl with a look which
+would have almost killed a nervous subject; but Mary faced her
+steadfastly, very pale, but as resolute as her ladyship.
+
+'When I know all! What more is there for me to know?'
+
+'Only that while we were on the top of Helvellyn, in the fog and the
+wind, Mr. Hammond asked me to be his wife.'
+
+'I am not surprised to hear it,' retorted her ladyship, with a harsh
+laugh. 'A girl who could act so boldly and flirtingly was a natural mark
+for an adventurer. Mr. Hammond no doubt has been told that you will have
+a little money by-and-by, and thinks he might do worse than marry you.
+And seeing how you have flung yourself at his head, he naturally
+concludes that you will not be too proud to accept your sister's
+leavings.'
+
+'There is nothing gained by making cruel speeches, grandmother,' said
+Mary, firmly. 'I have promised to be John Hammond's wife, and there is
+nothing you nor anyone else can say which will make me alter my mind. I
+wish to act dutifully to you, if I can, and I hope you will be good to
+me and consent to this marriage. But if you will not consent, I shall
+marry him all the same. I shall be full of sorrow at having to disobey
+you, but I have promised, and I will keep my promise.'
+
+'You will act in open rebellion against me--against the kinswoman who
+has reared you, and educated you, and cared for you in all these years!'
+
+'But you have never loved me,' answered Mary, sadly. 'Perhaps if you had
+given me some portion of that affection which you lavished on my sister
+I might be willing to sacrifice this new deep love for your sake--to lay
+down my broken heart as a sacrifice on the altar of gratitude. But you
+never loved me. You have tolerated me, endured my presence as a
+disagreeable necessity of your life, because I am my father's daughter.
+You and Lesbia have been all the world to each other; and I have stood
+aloof, outside your charmed circle, almost a stranger to you. Can you
+wonder, grandmother, recalling this, that I am unwilling to surrender
+the love that has been given me to-day--the true heart of a brave and
+good man!'
+
+Lady Maulevrier looked at her for some moments in scornful wonderment;
+looked at her with a slow, deliberate smile.
+
+'Poor child!' she said; 'poor ignorant, inexperienced baby! For what a
+Will-o-the-wisp are you ready to sacrifice my regard, and all the
+privileges of your position as my granddaughter! No doubt this Mr.
+Hammond has said all manner of fine things to you; but can you be weak
+enough to believe that he who half a year ago was sighing and dying at
+the feet of your sister can have one spark of genuine regard for you?
+The thing is not in nature; it is an obvious absurdity. But it is easy
+enough to understand that Mr. Hammond without a penny in his pocket, and
+with his way to make in the world, would be very glad to secure Lady
+Mary Haselden and her five hundred a year, and to have Lord Maulevrier
+for his brother in-law?'
+
+'Have I really five hundred a year? Shall I have five hundred a year
+when I marry?' asked Mary, suddenly radiant.
+
+'Yes; if you marry with your brother's consent.'
+
+'I am so glad--for his sake. He could hardly starve if I had five
+hundred a year. He need not be obliged to emigrate.'
+
+'Has he been offering you the prospect of emigration as an additional
+inducement?'
+
+'Oh, no, he does not say that he is very poor, but since you say he is
+penniless I thought we might be obliged to emigrate. But as I have five
+hundred a year--'
+
+'You will stay at home, and set up a lodging-house, I suppose,' sneered
+Lady Maulevrier.
+
+'I will do anything my husband pleases. We can live in a humble way in
+some quiet part of London, while Mr. Hammond works at literature or
+politics. I am not afraid of poverty or trouble, I am willing to endure
+both for his sake.'
+
+'You are a fool!' said her grandmother sternly. 'And I have nothing more
+to say to you. Go away, and send Maulevrier to me.'
+
+Mary did not obey immediately. She went over to her grandmother's couch
+and knelt by her side, and kissed the poor maimed hand which lay on the
+velvet cushion.
+
+'Dear grandmother,' she said gently. 'I am very sorry to rebel against
+you. But this is a question of life or death with me. I am not like
+Lesbia. I cannot barter love and truth for worldly advantage--for pride
+of race. Do not think me so weak or so vain as to be won by a few fine
+speeches from an adventurer. Mr. Hammond is no adventurer, he has made
+no fine speeches--but, I will tell you a secret, grandmother. I have
+liked and admired him from the first time he came here. I have looked up
+to him and reverenced him; and I must be a very foolish girl if my
+judgment is so poor that I can respect a worthless man.'
+
+'You _are_ a very foolish girl,' answered Lady Maulevrier, more kindly
+than she had spoken before, 'but you have been very good and dutiful to
+me since I have been ill, and I don't wish to forget that. I never said
+that Mr. Hammond was worthless; but I say that he is no fit husband for
+you. If you were as yielding and obedient as Lesbia it would be all the
+better for you; for then I should provide for your establishment in life
+in a becoming manner. But as you are wilful, and bent upon taking your
+own way--well--my dear, you must take the consequence; and when you are
+a struggling wife and mother, old before your time, weighed down with
+the weary burden of petty cares, do not say, "My grandmother might have
+saved me from this martyrdom."'
+
+'I will run the risk, grandmother. I will be answerable for my own
+fate.'
+
+'So be it, Mary. And now send Maulevrier to me.'
+
+Mary went down to the billiard room, where she found her brother and her
+lover engaged in a hundred game.
+
+'Take my cue and beat him if you can, Molly,' said Maulevrier, when he
+had heard Mary's message. 'I'm fifteen ahead of him, for he has been
+falling asleep over his shots. I suppose I am going to get a lecture.'
+
+'I don't think so,' said Mary.
+
+'Well, my dearest, how did you fare in the encounter?' asked Hammond,
+directly Maulevrier was gone.
+
+'Oh, it was dreadful! I made the most rebellious speeches to poor
+grandmother, and then I remembered her affliction, and I asked her to
+forgive me, and just at the last she was ever so much kinder, and I
+think that she will let me marry you, now she knows I have made up my
+mind to be your wife--in spite of Fate.'
+
+'My bravest and best.'
+
+'And do you know, Jack'--she blushed tremendously as she uttered this
+familiar name--'I have made a discovery!'
+
+'Indeed!'
+
+'I find that I am to have five hundred a year when I am married. It is
+not much. But I suppose it will help, won't it? We can't exactly starve
+if we have five hundred a year. Let me see. It is more than a pound a
+day. A sovereign ought to go a long way in a small house; and, of
+course, we shall begin in a very wee house, like De Quincey's cottage
+over there, only in London.'
+
+'Yes, dear, there are plenty of such cottages in London. In Mayfair, for
+instance, or Belgravia.'
+
+'Now, you are laughing at my rustic ignorance. But the five hundred
+pounds will be a help, won't it?'
+
+'Yes, dear, a great help.'
+
+'I'm so glad.'
+
+She had chalked her cue while she was talking, but after taking her aim,
+she dropped her arm irresolutely.
+
+'Do you know I'm afraid I can't play to-night,' she said. 'Helvellyn
+and the fog and the wind have quite spoilt my nerve. Shall we
+go to the drawing-room, and see if Fräulein has recovered from her
+gloomy fit?'
+
+'I would rather stay here, where we are free to talk; but I'll do
+whatever you like best.'
+
+Mary preferred the drawing-room. It was very sweet to be alone with her
+lover, but she was weighed down with confusion in his presence. The
+novelty, the wonderment of her position overpowered her. She yearned for
+the shelter of Fräulein Müller's wing, albeit the company of that most
+prosaic person was certain death to romance.
+
+Miss Müller was in her accustomed seat by the fire, knitting her
+customary muffler. She had appropriated Lady Maulevrier's place, much to
+Mary's disgust. It irked the girl to see that stout, clumsy figure in
+the chair which had been filled by her grandmother's imperial form. The
+very room seemed vulgarised by the change.
+
+Fräulein looked up with a surprised air when Mary and Hammond entered
+together, the girl smiling and happy. She had expected that Mary would
+have left her ladyship's room in tears, and would have retired to her
+own apartment to hide her swollen eyelids and humiliated aspect. But
+here she was, after the fiery ordeal of an interview with her offended
+grandmother, not in the least crestfallen.
+
+'Are we not to have any tea to-night?' asked Mary, looking round the
+room.
+
+'I think you are unconscious of the progress of time, Lady Mary,'
+answered Fräulein, stiffly. 'The tea has been brought in and taken out
+again.'
+
+'Then it must be brought again, if Lady Mary wants some,' said Hammond,
+ringing the bell in the coolest manner.
+
+Fräulein felt that things were coming to a pretty pass, if Maulevrier's
+humble friend was going to give orders in the house. Quiet and
+commonplace as the Hanoverian was, she had her ambition, and that was to
+grasp the household sceptre which Lady Maulevrier must needs in some
+wise resign, now that she was a prisoner to her rooms. But so far
+Fräulein had met with but small success in this endeavour. Her
+ladyship's authority still ruled the house. Her ladyship's keen
+intellect took cognisance even of trifles: and it was only in the most
+insignificant details that Fräulein felt herself a power.
+
+'Well, your ladyship, what's the row?' said Maulevrier marching into his
+grandmother's room with a free and easy air. He was prepared for a
+skirmish, and he meant to take the bull by the horns.
+
+'I suppose you know what has happened to-day?' said her ladyship.
+
+'Molly and Hammond's expedition, yes, of course. I went part of the way
+with them, but I was out of training, got pumped out after a couple of
+miles, and wasn't such a fool as to go to the top.'
+
+'Do you know that Mr. Hammond made Mary an offer, while they were on the
+hill, and that she accepted him?'
+
+'A queer place for a proposal, wasn't it? The wind blowing great guns
+all the time. I should have chosen a more tranquil spot.'
+
+'Maulevrier, cannot you be serious? Do you forget that this business of
+to-day must affect your sister's welfare for the rest of her life?'
+
+'No, I do not. I will be as serious as a judge after he has put on the
+black cap,' said Maulevrier, seating himself near his grandmother's
+couch, and altering his tone altogether. 'Seriously I am very glad that
+Hammond has asked Mary to be his wife, and still more glad that she is
+tremendously in love with him. I told you some time ago not to put your
+spoke in that wheel. There could not be a happier or a better marriage
+for Mary.'
+
+'You must have rather a poor opinion, of your sister's attractions,
+personal or otherwise, if you consider a penniless young man--of no
+family--good enough for her.'
+
+'I do not consider my sister a piece of merchandise to be sold to the
+highest bidder. Granted that Hammond is poor and a nobody. He is an
+honourable man, highly gifted, brave as a lion, and he is my dearest
+friend. Can you wonder that I rejoice at my sister's having won him for
+her adoring lover?'
+
+'Can he really care for her, after having loved Lesbia?'
+
+'That was the desire of the eye, this is the love of the heart. I know
+that he loves Mary ever so much better than he loved Lesbia. I can
+assure your ladyship that I am not such a fool as I look. I am very fond
+of my sister Mary, and I have not been blind to her interests. I tell
+you on my honour that she ought to be very happy as John Hammond's
+wife.'
+
+'I am obliged to believe what you say about his character,' said Lady
+Maulevrier. 'And I am willing to admit that the husband's character has
+a great deal to do with the wife's happiness, from a moral point of
+view; but still there are material questions to be considered. Has your
+friend any means of supporting a wife?'
+
+'Yes, he has means; quite sufficient means for Mary's views, which are
+very simple.'
+
+'You mean to say he would keep her in decent poverty? Cannot you be
+explicit, Maulevrier, and say what means the man has, whether an income
+or none? If you cannot tell me I must question Mr. Hammond himself.'
+
+'Pray do not do that,' exclaimed her grandson urgently. 'Do not take all
+the flavour of romance out of Molly's love story, by going into pounds,
+shillings, and pence. She is very young. You would hardly wish her to
+marry immediately?'
+
+'Not for the next year, at the very least.'
+
+'Then why enter upon this sordid question of ways and means. Make
+Hammond and Mary happy by consenting to their engagement, and trust the
+rest to Providence, and to me. Take my word for it, Hammond is not a
+beggar, and he is a man likely to make his mark in the world. If a year
+hence his income is not enough to allow of his marrying, I will double
+Mary's allowance out of my own purse. Hammond's friendship has steadied
+me, and saved me a good deal more than five hundred a year.'
+
+'I can quite believe that. I believe Mr. Hammond is a worthy man, and
+that his influence has been very good for you; but that does not make
+him a good match for Mary. However, you seem to have settled the
+business among you, and I suppose I must submit. You had better all
+drink tea with me to morrow afternoon; and I will receive your friend as
+Mary's future husband.'
+
+'That is the best and kindest of grandmothers.'
+
+'But I should like to know more of his antecedents and his relations.'
+
+'His antecedents are altogether creditable. He took honours at the
+University; he has been liked and respected everywhere. He is an orphan,
+and it is better not to talk to him of his family. He is sensitive on
+that point, like most men who stand alone in the world.'
+
+'Well, I will hold my peace. You have taken this business into your
+hands, Maulevrier; and you must be responsible for the result.'
+
+Maulevrier left his grandmother soon after this, and went downstairs,
+whistling for very joyousness. Finding the billiard-room deserted he
+repaired to the drawing-room, where he found Mary playing scraps of
+melody to her lover at the shadowy end of the room, while Fräulein sat
+by the fire weaving her web as steadily as one of the Fatal Sisters, and
+with a brow prophetic of evil.
+
+Maulevrier crept up to the piano, and came stealthily behind the lovers.
+
+'Bless you, my children,' he said, hovering over them with outspread
+hands. 'I am the dove coming back to the ark. I am the bearer of happy
+tidings. Lady Maulevrier consents to your acquiring the legal right to
+make each other miserable for the rest of your lives.'
+
+'God bless you, Maulevrier,' said Hammond, clasping him by the hand.
+
+'Only as this sister of mine is hardly out of the nursery you will have
+to wait for her at least a year. So says the dowager, whose word is like
+the law of the Medes and Persians, and altereth not.'
+
+'I would wait for her twice seven years, as Jacob waited, and toil for
+her, as Jacob toiled,' answered Hammond, 'but I should like to call her
+my own to-morrow, if it were possible.'
+
+Nothing could be happier or gayer than the tea-drinking in Lady
+Maulevrier's room on the following afternoon. Her ladyship having once
+given way upon a point knew how to make her concession gracefully. She
+extended her hand to Mr. Hammond as frankly as if he had been her own
+particular choice.
+
+'I cannot refuse my granddaughter to her brother's dearest friend,' she
+said, 'but I think you are two most imprudent young people.'
+
+'Providence takes care of imprudent lovers, just as it does of the birds
+in their nests,' answered Hammond, smiling.
+
+'Just as much and no more, I fear. Providence does not keep off the cat
+or the tax-gatherer.'
+
+'Birds must take care of their nests, and husbands must work for their
+homes,' argued Hammond. 'Heaven gives sweet air and sunlight, and a
+beautiful world to live in.'
+
+'I think,' said Lady Maulevrier, looking at him critically, 'you are
+just the kind of person who ought to emigrate. You have ideas that would
+do for the Bush or the Yosemite Valley, but which are too primitive for
+an over-crowded country.'
+
+'No, Lady Maulevrier, I am not going to steal your granddaughter. When
+she is my wife she shall live within call. I know she loves her native
+land, and I don't think either of us would care to put an ocean between
+us and rugged old Helvellyn.'
+
+'Of course having made idiots of yourselves up there in the fog and the
+storm you are going to worship the mountain for ever afterwards,' said
+her ladyship laughing.
+
+Never had she seemed gayer or brighter. Perhaps in her heart of hearts
+she rejoiced at getting Mary engaged, even to so humble a suitor as
+fortuneless John Hammond. Ever since the visit of the so-called Rajah
+she had lived as Damocles lived, with the sword of destiny--the avenging
+sword--hanging over her by the finest hair. Every time she heard
+carriage wheels in the drive--every time the hall-door bell rang a
+little louder than usual, her heart seemed to stop beating and her whole
+being to hang suspended on a thread. If the thread were to snap, there
+would come darkness and death. The blow that had paralysed one side of
+her body must needs, if repeated, bring total extinction. She who
+believed in no after life saw in her maimed and wasting arm the
+beginning of death. She who recognised only the life of the body felt
+that one half of her was already dead. But months had gone by, and Louis
+Asoph had made no sign. She began to hope that his boasted documents and
+witnesses were altogether mythical. And yet the engines of the law are
+slow to put in motion. He might be working up his case, line upon line,
+with some hard-headed London lawyer; arranging and marshalling his
+facts; preparing his witnesses; waiting for affidavits from India;
+working slowly but surely, underground like the mole; and all at once,
+in an hour, his case might be before the law courts. His story and the
+story of Lord Maulevrier's infamy might be town talk again; as it had
+been forty years ago, when the true story of that crime had been happily
+unknown.
+
+Yes, with the present fear of this Louis Asoph's revelations, of a new
+scandal, if not a calamity, Lady Maulevrier felt that it was a good
+thing to have her younger granddaughter's future in some measure
+secured. John Hammond had said of himself to Lesbia that he was not the
+kind of man to fail, and looking at him critically to-day Lady
+Maulevrier saw the stamp of power and dauntless courage in his
+countenance and bearing. It is the inner mind of a man which moulds the
+lines of his face and figure; and a man's character may be read in the
+way he walks and holds himself, the action of his hand, his smile, his
+frown, his general outlook, as clearly as in any phrenological
+development. John Hammond had a noble outlook: bold, without impudence
+or self-assertion; self-possessed, without vanity. Yes, assuredly a man
+to wrestle with difficulty, and to conquer fate.
+
+When that little tea-drinking was over and Maulevrier and his friend
+were going away to dress for dinner, Lady Maulevrier detained Mary for a
+minute or two by her couch. She took her by the hand with unaccustomed
+tenderness.
+
+'My child, I congratulate you,' she said. 'Last night I thought you a
+fool, but I begin to think that you are wiser than Lesbia. You have won
+the heart of a noble young man.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+'A YOUNG LAMB'S HEART AMONG THE FULL-GROWN FLOCKS.'
+
+
+For three most happy days Mary rejoiced in her lover's society,
+Maulevrier was with them everywhere, by brookside and fell, on the lake,
+in the gardens, in the billiard-room, playing propriety with admirable
+patience. But this could not last for ever. A man who has to win name
+and fortune and a home for his young wife cannot spend all his days in
+the primrose path. Fortunes and reputations are not made in dawdling
+beside a mountain stream, or watching the play of sunlight and shadow on
+a green hill-side; unless, indeed, one were a new Wordsworth, and even
+then fortune and renown are not quickly made.
+
+And again, Maulevrier, who had been a marvel of good-nature and
+contentment for the last eight weeks, was beginning to be tired of this
+lovely Lakeland. Just when Lakeland was daily developing into new
+beauty, Maulevrier began to feel an itching for London, where he had a
+comfortable nest in the Albany, and which was to his mind a metropolis
+expressly created as a centre or starting point for Newmarket, Epsom,
+Ascot and Goodwood.
+
+So there came a morning upon which Mary had to say good-bye to those two
+companions who had so blest and gladdened her life. It was a bright
+sunshiny morning, and all the world looked gay; which seemed very unkind
+of Nature, Mary thought. And yet, even in the sadness of this parting,
+she had much reason to be glad. As she stood with her lover in the
+library, in the three minutes of _tête-à-tête_ stolen from the
+argus-eyed Fräulein, folded in his arms, looking up at his manly face,
+it seemed to her that the mere knowledge that she belonged to him and
+was beloved by him ought to sustain and console her even in long years
+of severance. Yes, even if he were one of the knights of old, going to
+the Holy Land on a crusade full of peril and uncertainty. Even then a
+woman ought to be brave, having such a lover.
+
+But her parting was to be only for a few months. Maulevrier promised to
+come back to Fellside for the August sports, and Hammond was to come
+with him. Three months--or a little more--and they were to meet again.
+
+Yet in spite of these arguments for courage, Mary's face blanched and
+her eyes grew unutterably sad as she looked up at her lover.
+
+'You will take care of yourself, Jack, for my sake, won't you, dear?'
+she murmured. 'If you should be ill while you are in London! If you
+should die--'
+
+'Life is very uncertain, love, but I don't feel like sickness or death
+just at present,' answered Hammond cheerily. 'Indeed, I feel that the
+present is full of sweetness, and the future full of hope. Don't
+suppose, dear, that I am not grieved at this good-bye; but before we
+are a year older I hope the time will have come when there will be no
+more farewells for you and me. I shall be a very exacting husband,
+Molly. I shall want to spend all the days and hours of my life with you;
+to have not a fancy or a pursuit in which you cannot share, or with
+which you cannot sympathise. I hope you will not grow tired of me!'
+
+'Tired!'
+
+Then came silence, and a long farewell kiss, and then the voice of
+Maulevrier shouting in the hall, just in time to warn the lovers, before
+Miss Müller opened the door and exclaimed,
+
+'Oh, Mr. Hammond, we have been looking for you _everywhere_. The luggage
+is all in the carriage, and Maulevrier says there is only just time to
+get to Windermere!'
+
+In another minute or so the carriage was driving down the hill; and Mary
+stood in the porch looking after the travellers.
+
+'It seems as if it is my fate to stand here and see everybody drive
+away,' she said to herself.
+
+And then she looked round at the lovely gardens, bright with spring
+flowers, the trees glorious with their young, fresh foliage, and the
+vast panorama of hill and dale, and felt that it was a wicked thing to
+murmur in the midst of such a world. And she remembered the great
+unhoped-for bliss that had come to her within the last four days, and
+the cloud upon her brow vanished, as she clasped her hands in child-like
+joyousness.
+
+'God bless you, dear old Helvellyn,' she exclaimed, looking up at the
+sombre crest of the mountain. 'Perhaps if it had not been for you he
+would have never proposed.'
+
+But she was obliged to dismiss this idea instantly; for to suppose John
+Hammond's avowal of his love an accident, the mere impulse of a weak
+moment, would be despair. Had he not told her how she had grown nearer
+and nearer to his heart, day by day, and hour by hour, until she had
+become part of his life? He had told her this--he, in whom she believed
+as in the very spirit of truth.
+
+She wandered about the gardens for an hour after the carriage had
+started for Windermere, revisiting every spot where she and her lover
+had walked together within the last three days, living over again the
+rapture of those hours, repeating to herself his words, recalling his
+looks, with the fatuity of a first girlish love. And yet amidst the
+silliness inseparable from love's young dream, there was a depth of true
+womanly feeling, thoughtful, unselfish, forecasting a future which was
+not to travel always along the primrose path of dalliance--a future in
+which the roses were not always to be thornless.
+
+John Hammond was going to London to work for a position in the world, to
+strive and labour among the seething mass of strugglers, all pressing
+onward for the same goal--independence, wealth, renown. Little as Mary
+know of the world by experience, she had at least heard the wiseacres
+talk; and that which she had heard was calculated to depress rather than
+to inspire industrious youth. She had heard how the professions were all
+over-crowded: how a mighty army of young men were walking the hospitals,
+all intent on feeling the pulses and picking the pockets of the rising
+generation: how at the Bar men were growing old and grey before they saw
+their first brief: how competitors were elbowing and hustling each other
+upon every road, thronging at every gate. And while masculine youth
+strove and wrestled for places in the race, aunts and sisters and
+cousins were pressing into the same arena, doing their best to crowd out
+the uncles and the brothers and the nephews.
+
+'Poor Jack,' sighed Mary, 'at the worst we can go to the Red River
+country and grow corn.'
+
+This was her favourite fancy, that she and her lover should find their
+first dwelling in the new world, live as humbly as the peasants lived
+round Grasmere, and patiently wait upon fortune. And yet that would not
+be happiness, unless Maulevrier were to come and stay with them every
+autumn. Nothing could reconcile Mary to being separated from Maulevrier
+for any lengthened period.
+
+There were hours in which she was more hopeful, and defied the
+wiseacres. Clever young men had succeeded in the past--clever men whose
+hair was not yet grey had come to the front in the present. Granted that
+these were the exceptional men, the fine flower of humanity. Did she not
+know that John Hammond was as far above average youth as Helvellyn was
+above yonder mound in her grandmother's shrubbery?
+
+Yes, he would succeed in literature, in politics, in whatever career he
+had chosen for himself. He was a man to do the thing he set himself to
+do, were it ever so difficult. To doubt his success would be to doubt
+his truth and his honesty; for he had sworn to her he would make her
+life bright and happy, and that evil days should never come to her; and
+he was not the man to promise that which he was not able to perform.
+
+The house seemed terribly dull now that the two young men were gone.
+There was an oppressive silence in the rooms which had lately resounded
+with Maulevrier's frank, boyish laughter, and with his friend's deep,
+manly tones--a silence broken only by the click of Fräulein Müller's
+needles.
+
+The Fräulein was not disposed to be sympathetic or agreeable about Lady
+Mary's engagement. Firstly, she had not been consulted about it. The
+thing had been done, she considered, in an underhand manner; and Lady
+Maulevrier, who had begun by strenuously opposing the match, had been
+talked over in a way that proved the latent weakness of that great
+lady's character. Secondly, Miss Müller, having herself for some reason
+missed such joys as are involved in being wooed and won, was disposed to
+look sourly upon all love affairs, and to take a despondent view of all
+matrimonial engagements.
+
+She did not say anything openly uncivil to Mary Haselden; but she let
+the damsel see that she pitied her and despised her infatuated
+condition; and this was so unpleasant that Mary was fain to fall back
+upon the society of ponies and terriers, and to take up her pilgrim's
+staff and go wandering over the hills, carrying her happy thoughts into
+solitary places, and sitting for hours in a heathery hollow, steeped in
+a sea of summer light, and trying to paint the mountain side and the
+rush of the waterfall. Her sketch-book was an excuse for hours of
+solitude, for the indulgence of an endless day-dream.
+
+Sometimes she went among her humble friends in the Grasmere cottages, or
+in the villages of Great and Little Langdale; and she had now a new
+interest in these visits, for she had made up her mind that it was her
+solemn duty to learn housekeeping--not such housekeeping as might have
+been learnt at Fellside, supposing she had mustered the courage to ask
+the dignified upper-servants in that establishment to instruct her; but
+such domestic arts as are needed in the dwellings of the poor. The art
+of making a very little money go a great way; the art of giving grace,
+neatness, prettiness to the smallest rooms and the shabbiest furniture;
+the art of packing all the ugly appliances and baser necessities of
+daily life, the pots and kettles and brooms and pails, into the
+narrowest compass, and hiding them from the æsthetic eye. Mary thought
+that if she began by learning the homely devices of the villagers--the
+very A B C of cookery and housewifery--she might gradually enlarge upon
+this simple basis to suit an income of from five to seven hundred a
+year. The house-mothers from whom she sought information were puzzled at
+this sudden curiosity about domestic matters. They looked upon the thing
+as a freak of girlhood which drifted into eccentricity, from sheer
+idleness; yet they were not the less ready to teach Mary anything she
+desired to learn. They told her those secret arts by which coppers and
+brasses are made things of beauty, and meet adornment for an old oak
+mantelshelf. They allowed her to look on at the milking of the cow, and
+at the churning of the butter; and at bread making, and cake making, and
+pie and pudding making; and some pleasant hours were spent in the
+acquirement of this useful knowledge. Mary did not neglect the invalid
+during this new phase of her existence. Lady Maulevrier was a lover of
+routine, and she liked her granddaughter to go to her at the same hour
+every day. From eleven to twelve was the time for Mary's duty as
+amanuensis. Sometimes there were no letters to be written. Sometimes
+there were several; but her ladyship rarely allowed the task to go
+beyond the stroke of noon. At noon Mary was free, and free till five
+o'clock, when she was generally in attendance, ready to give Lady
+Maulevrier her afternoon tea, and sit and talk with her, and tell her
+any scraps of local news which she had gathered in the day.
+
+There were days on which her ladyship preferred to take her tea alone,
+and Mary was left free to follow her own devices till dinner-time.
+
+'I do not feel equal even to your society to-day, my dear,' her ladyship
+would say; 'go and enjoy yourself with your dogs and your tennis;'
+forgetting that there was very seldom anybody on the premises with whom
+Lady Mary could play tennis.
+
+But in these lonely days of Mary Haselden's life there was one crowning
+bliss which was almost enough to sweeten solitude, and take away the
+sting of separation; and that was the delight of expecting and receiving
+her lover's letters. Busily as Mr. Hammond must be engaged in fighting
+the battle of life, he was in no way wanting in his duty as a lover. He
+wrote to Mary every other day; but though his letters were long, they
+told her hardly anything of himself or his occupation. He wrote about
+pictures, books, music, such things as he knew must be interesting to
+her; but of his own struggles not a word.
+
+'Poor fellow,' thought Mary. 'He is afraid to sadden me by telling me
+how hard the struggle is.'
+
+Her own letters to her betrothed were simple outpourings of girlish
+love, breathing that too flattering-sweet idolatry which an innocent
+girl gives to her first lover. Mary wrote as if she herself were of the
+least possible value among created things.
+
+With one of Mr. Hammond's earlier letters came the engagement ring; no
+half-hoop of brilliants or sapphires, rubies or emeralds, no gorgeous
+triple circlet of red, white, and green; but only a massive band of dead
+gold, on the inside of which was engraved this posy--'For ever.'
+
+Mary thought it the loveliest ring she had ever seen in her life.
+
+May was half over and the last patch of snow had vanished from the crest
+of Helvellyn, from Eagle's Crag and Raven's Crag, and Coniston Old Man.
+Spring--slow to come along these shadowy gorges--had come in real
+earnest now, spring that was almost summer; and Lady Maulevrier's
+gardens were as lovely as dreamland. But it was an unpeopled paradise.
+Mary had the grounds all to herself, except at those stated times when
+the Fräulein, who was growing lazier and larger day by day in her
+leisurely and placid existence, took her morning and afternoon
+constitutional on the terrace in front of the drawing-room, or solemnly
+perambulated the shrubberies.
+
+On fine days Mary lived in the garden, save when she was far afield
+learning the domestic arts from the cottagers. She read French and
+German, and worked conscientiously at her intellectual education, as
+well as at domestic economy. For she told herself that accomplishments
+and culture might be useful to her in her married life. She might be
+able to increase her husband's means by giving lessons abroad, or taking
+pupils at home. She was ready to do anything. She would teach the
+stupidest children, or scrub floors, or bake bread. There was no service
+she would deem degrading for his sake. She meant when she married to
+drop her courtesy title. She would not be Lady Mary Hammond, a poor
+sprig of nobility, but plain Mrs. Hammond, a working man's wife.
+
+Lesbia's presentation was over, and had realised all Lady Kirkbank's
+expectations. The Society papers were unanimous in pronouncing Lord
+Maulevrier's sister the prettiest _débutante_ of the season. They
+praised her classical features, the admirable poise of her head, her
+peerless complexion. They described her dress at the drawing-room; they
+described her 'frocks' in the Park and at Sandown. They expatiated on
+the impression she had made at great assemblies. They hinted at even
+Royal admiration. All this, frivolous fribble though it might be, Lady
+Maulevrier read with delight, and she was still more gratified by
+Lesbia's own account of her successes. But as the season advanced
+Lesbia's letters to her grandmother grew briefer--mere hurried scrawls
+dashed off while the carriage was at the door, or while her maid was
+brushing her hair. Lady Maulevrier divined, with the keen instinct of
+love, that she counted for very little in Lesbia's life, now that the
+whirligig of society, the fret and fever of fashion, had begun.
+
+One afternoon in May, at that hour when Hyde Park is fullest, and the
+carriages move slowly in triple rank along the Lady's Mile, and the
+mounted constables jog up and down with a business-like air which sets
+every one on the alert for the advent of the Princess of Wales, just at
+that hour when Lesbia sat in Lady Kirkbank's barouche, and distributed
+gracious bows and enthralling smiles to her numerous acquaintance, Mary
+rode slowly down the Fell, after a rambling ride on the safest and most
+venerable of mountain ponies. The pony was grey, and Mary was grey, for
+she wore a neat little homespun habit made by the local tailor, and a
+neat little felt hat with a ptarmigan's feather.
+
+All was very quiet at Fellside as she went in at the stable gate. There
+was not an underling stirring in the large old stable-yard which had
+remained almost unaltered for a century and a half; for Lady Maulevrier,
+whilst spending thousands on the new part of the house, had deemed the
+existing stables good enough for her stud. They were spacious old
+stables, built as solidly as a Norman castle, and with all the virtues
+and all the vices of their age.
+
+Mary looked round her with a sigh. The stillness of the place was
+oppressive, and within doors she knew there would be the same stillness,
+made still more oppressive by the society of the Fräulein, who grew
+duller and duller every day, as it seemed to Mary.
+
+She took her pony into the dusky old stable, where four other ponies
+began rattling their halters in the gloom, by way of greeting. A bundle
+of purple tares lay ready in a corner for Mary to feed her favourites;
+and for the next ten minutes or so she was happily employed going from
+stall to stall, and gratifying that inordinate appetite for green meat
+which seems natural to all horses.
+
+Not a groom or stable-boy appeared while she was in the stable; and she
+was just going away, when her attention was caught by a flood of
+sunshine streaming into an old disused harness-room at the end of the
+stable--a room with one small window facing the Fell.
+
+Whence could that glow of western light come? Assuredly not from the
+low-latticed window which faced eastward, and was generally obscured by
+a screen of cobwebs. The room was only used as a storehouse for lumber,
+and it was nobody's business to clean the window.
+
+Mary looked in, curious to solve the riddle. A door which she had often
+noticed, but never seen opened, now stood wide open, and the old
+quadrangular garden, which was James Steadman's particular care, smiled
+at her in the golden evening light. Seen thus, this little old Dutch
+garden seemed to Mary the prettiest thing she had ever looked upon.
+There were beds of tulips and hyacinths, ranunculus, narcissus,
+tuberose, making a blaze of colour against the old box borders, a foot
+high. The crumbling old brick walls of the outbuildings, and that
+dungeon-like wall which formed the back of the new house, were clothed
+with clematis and wistaria, woodbine and magnolia. All that loving
+labour could do had been done day by day for the last forty years to
+make this confined space a thing of beauty. Mary went out of the dark
+stable into the sunny garden, and looked round her, full of admiration
+for James Steadman's work.
+
+'If ever Jack and I can afford to have a garden, I hope we shall be able
+to make it like this,' she thought. 'It is such a comfort to know that
+so small a garden can be pretty: for of course any garden we could
+afford must be small.'
+
+Lady Mary had no idea that this quadrangle was spacious as compared with
+the narrow strip allotted to many a suburban villa calling itself 'an
+eligible residence.'
+
+In the centre of the garden there was an old sundial, with a stone bench
+at the base, and, as she came upon an opening in the circular yew tree
+hedge which environed this sundial, and from which the flower beds
+radiated in a geometrical pattern, Lady Mary was surprised to see an old
+man--a very old man--sitting on this bench, and basking in the low light
+of the westering sun.
+
+His figure was shrunken and bent, and he sat with his chin resting on
+the handle of a crutched stick, and his head leaning forward. His long
+white hair fell in thin straggling locks over the collar of his coat. He
+had an old-fashioned, mummyfied aspect, and Mary thought he must be
+very, very old.
+
+Very, very old! In a flash there came back upon her the memory of John
+Hammond's curiosity about a hoary and withered old man whom he had met
+on the Fell in the early morning. She remembered how she had taken him
+to see old Sam Barlow, and how he had protested that Sam in no wise
+resembled the strange-looking old man of the Fell. And now here, close
+to the Fell, was a face and figure which in every detail resembled that
+ancient stranger whom Hammond had described so graphically.
+
+It was very strange. Could this person be the same her lover had seen
+two months ago? And, if so, had he been living at Fellside all the time;
+or was he only an occasional visitor of Steadman's?
+
+While she stood for a few moments meditating thus, the old man raised
+his head and looked up at her, with eyes that burned like red-hot coals
+under his shaggy white brows. The look scared her. There was something
+awful in it, like the gaze of an evil spirit, a soul in torment, and she
+began to move away, with side-long steps, her eyes riveted on that
+uncanny countenance.
+
+'Don't go,' said the man, with an authoritative air, rattling his bony
+fingers upon the bench. 'Sit down here by my side, and talk to me. Don't
+be frightened, child. You wouldn't, if you knew what they say of me
+indoors.' He made a motion of his head towards the windows of the old
+wing--'"Harmless," they say, "quite harmless. Let him alone, he's
+harmless." A tiger with his claws cut and his teeth drawn--an old,
+grey-bearded tiger, ghastly and grim, but harmless--a cobra with the
+poison-bag plucked out of his jaw! The venom grows again, child--the
+snake's venom--but youth never comes back. Old, and helpless, and
+harmless!'
+
+Again Mary tried to move away, but those evil eyes held her as if she
+were a bird riveted by the gaze of a serpent.
+
+'Why do you shrink away?' asked the old man, frowning at her. 'Sit down
+here, and let me talk to you. I am accustomed to be obeyed.'
+
+Old and feeble and shrunken as he was, there was a power in his tone of
+command which Mary was unable to resist. She felt very sure that he was
+imbecile or mad. She knew that madmen are apt to imagine themselves
+great personages, and to take upon themselves, with a wonderful power of
+impersonation, the dignity and authority of their imaginary rank; and
+she supposed that it must be thus with this strange old man. She
+struggled against her sense of terror. After all there could be no real
+danger, in the broad daylight, within the precincts of her own home,
+within call of the household.
+
+She seated herself on the bench by the unknown, willing to humour him a
+little; and he turned himself about slowly, as if every bone in his body
+were stiff with age, and looked at her with a deliberate scrutiny.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+'NOW NOTHING LEFT TO LOVE OR HATE.'
+
+
+The old man sat looking at Mary in silence for some moments; not a great
+space of time, perhaps, as marked by the shadow on the dial behind them,
+but to Mary that gaze was unpleasantly prolonged. He looked at her as if
+he could read every pulsation in every fibre of her brain, and knew
+exactly what it meant.
+
+'Who are you?' he asked, at last.
+
+'My name is Mary Haselden.'
+
+'Haselden,' he repeated musingly, 'I have heard that name before.'
+
+And then he resumed his former attitude, his chin resting on the handle
+of his crutch-stick, his eyes bent upon the gravel path, their unholy
+brightness hidden under the penthouse brows.
+
+'Haselden,' he murmured, and repeated the name over and over again,
+slowly, dreamily, with a troubled tone, like some one trying to work out
+a difficult problem. 'Haselden--when? where?'
+
+And then with a profound sigh he muttered, 'Harmless, quite harmless.
+You may trust him anywhere. Memory a blank, a blank, a blank, my lord!'
+
+His head sank lower upon his breast, and again he sighed, the sigh of a
+spirit in torment, Mary thought. Her vivid imagination was already
+interested, her quick sympathies were awakened.
+
+She looked at him wonderingly, compassionately. So old, so infirm, and
+with a mind astray; and yet there were indications in his speech and
+manner that told of reason struggling against madness, like the light
+behind storm-clouds. He had tones that spoke of a keen sensitiveness to
+pain, not the lunatic's imbecile placidity. She observed him intently,
+trying to make out what manner of man he was.
+
+He did not belong to the peasant class: of that she felt assured. The
+shrunken, tapering hand had never worked at peasant's work. The profile
+turned towards her was delicate to effeminacy. The man's clothes were
+shabby and old-fashioned, but they were a gentleman's garments, the
+cloth of a finer texture than she had ever seen worn by her brother. The
+coat, with its velvet collar, was of an old-world fashion. She
+remembered having seen just such a coat in an engraved portrait of Count
+d'Orsay, a print nearly fifty years old. No Dalesman born and bred ever
+wore such a coat; no tailor in the Dales could have made it.
+
+The old man looked up after a long pause, during which Mary felt afraid
+to move. He looked at her again with inquiring eyes, as if her presence
+there had only just become known to him.
+
+'Who are you?' he asked again.
+
+'I told you my name just now. I am Mary Haselden.'
+
+'Haselden--that is a name I knew--once. Mary? I think my mother's name
+was Mary. Yes, yes, I remember that. You have a sweet face, Mary--like
+my mother's. She had brown eyes, like yours, and auburn hair. You don't
+recollect her, perhaps?'
+
+'Alas! poor maniac,' thought Mary, 'you have lost all count of time.
+Fifty years to you in the confusion of your distraught brain, are but as
+yesterday.'
+
+'No, of course not, of course not,' he muttered; 'how should she
+recollect my mother, who died while I was a boy? Impossible. That must
+be half a century ago.'
+
+'Good evening to you,' said Mary, rising with a great effort, so strong
+was her feeling of being spellbound by the uncanny old man, 'I must go
+indoors now.'
+
+He stretched out his withered old hand, small, semi-transparent, with
+the blue veins showing darkly under the parchment-coloured skin, and
+grasped Mary's arm.
+
+'Don't go,' he pleaded. 'I like your face, child; I like your voice--I
+like to have you here. What do you mean by going indoors? Where do you
+live?'
+
+'There,' said Mary, pointing to the dead wall which faced them. 'In the
+new part of Fellside House. I suppose you are staying in the old part
+with James Steadman.'
+
+She had made up her mind that this crazy old man must be a relation of
+Steadman's to whom he gave hospitality either with or without her
+ladyship's consent. All powerful as Lady Maulevrier had ever been in her
+own house, it was just possible that now, when she was a prisoner in her
+own rooms, certain small liberties might be taken, even by so faithful a
+servant as Steadman.
+
+'Staying with James Steadman,' repeated the old man in a meditative
+tone. 'Yes, I stay with Steadman. A good servant, a worthy person. It is
+only for a little while. I shall be leaving Westmoreland next week. And
+you live in that house, do you?' pointing to the dead wall. 'Whose
+house?'
+
+'Lady Maulevrier's. I am Lady Maulevrier's granddaughter.'
+
+'Lady Mau-lev-rier.' He repeated the name in syllables. 'A good name--an
+old title--as old as the conquest. A Norman race those Maulevriers. And
+you are Lady Maulevrier's granddaughter! You should be proud. The
+Maulevriers were always a proud race.'
+
+'Then I am no true Maulevrier,' answered Mary gaily.
+
+She was beginning to feel more at her ease with the old man. He was
+evidently mad, as mad as a March hare; but his madness seemed only the
+harmless lunacy of extreme old age. He had flashes of reason, too. Mary
+began to feel a friendly interest in him. To youth in its flush of life
+and vigour there seems something so unspeakably sad and pitiable in
+feebleness and age--the brief weak remnant of life, the wreck of body
+and mind, sunning itself in the declining rays of a sun that is so soon
+to shine upon its grave.
+
+'What, are you not proud?' asked the old man.
+
+'Not at all. I have been taught to consider myself a very insignificant
+person; and I am going to marry a poor man. It would not become me to be
+proud.'
+
+'But you ought not to do that,' said the old man. 'You ought not to
+marry a poor man. Poverty is a bad thing, my dear. You are a pretty
+girl, and ought to marry a man with a handsome fortune. Poor men have no
+pleasure in this world--they might just as well be dead. I am poor, as
+you see. You can tell by this threadbare coat'--he looked down at the
+sleeve from which the nap was worn in places--'I am as poor as a church
+mouse.'
+
+'But you have kind friends, I dare say,' Mary said, soothingly. 'You are
+well taken care of, I am sure.'
+
+'Yes, I am well taken care of--very well taken care of. How long is it,
+I wonder--how many weeks, or months, or years, since they have taken
+care of me? It seems a long, long time; but it is all like a dream--a
+long dream. Once I used to try and wake myself. I used to try and
+struggle out of that weary dream. But that was ages ago. I am satisfied
+now--I am quite content now--so long as the weather is warm, and I can
+sit out here in the sun.'
+
+'It is growing chilly now,' said Mary, 'and I think you ought to go
+indoors. I know that I must go.'
+
+'Yes, I must go in now--I am getting shivery,' answered the old man,
+meekly. 'But I want to see you again, Mary--I like your face--and I like
+your voice. It strikes a chord here,' touching his breast, 'which has
+long been silent. Let me see you again, child. When can I see you
+again?'
+
+'Do you sit here every afternoon when it is fine?'
+
+'Yes, every day--all day long sometimes when the sun is warm.'
+
+'Then I will come here to see you.'
+
+'You must keep it a secret, then,' said the old man, with a crafty look.
+'If you don't they will shut me up in the house, perhaps. They don't
+like me to see people, for fear I should talk. I have heard Steadman say
+so. Yet what should I talk about, heaven help me? Steadman says my
+memory is quite gone, and that I am childish and harmless--childish and
+harmless. I have heard him say that. You'll come again, won't you, and
+you'll keep it a secret?'
+
+Mary deliberated for a few minutes.
+
+'I don't like secrets,' she said, 'there is generally something
+dishonourable in them. But this would be an innocent secret, wouldn't
+it? Well, I'll come to see you somehow, poor old man; and if Steadman
+sees me here I will make everything right with him.'
+
+'He mustn't see you here,' said the old man. 'If he does he will shut me
+up in my own rooms again, as he did once, years and years ago.'
+
+'But you have not been here long, have you?' Mary asked, wonderingly.
+
+'A hundred years, at least. That's what it seems to me sometimes. And
+yet there are times when it seems only a dream. Be sure you come again
+to-morrow.'
+
+'Yes, I promise you to come; good-night.'
+
+'Good-night.'
+
+Mary went back to the stable. The door was still open, but how could she
+be sure that it would be open to-morrow? There was no other access that
+she knew of to the quadrangle, except through the old part of the house,
+and that was at times inaccessible to her.
+
+She found a key--a big old rusty key--in the inside of the door, so she
+shut and locked it, and put the key in her pocket. The door she supposed
+had been left open by accident; at any rate this key made her mistress
+of the situation. If any question should arise as to her conduct she
+could have an explanation with Steadman; but she had pledged her word to
+the poor mad old man, and she meant to keep her promise, if possible.
+
+As she left the stable she saw Steadman riding towards the gate on his
+grey cob. She passed him as she went back to the house.
+
+Next day, and the day after that, and for many days, Mary used her key,
+and went into the quadrangle at sundown to sit for half an hour or so
+with the strange old man, who seemed to take an intense pleasure in her
+company. The weather was growing warmer as May wore on towards June, and
+this evening hour, between six and seven, was deliciously bright and
+balmy. The seat by the sundial was screened on every side by the clipped
+yew hedge, dense and tall, surrounding the circular, gravelled space, in
+the centre of which stood the old granite dial, with its octagonal
+pedestal and moss-grown steps. There, as in a closely-shaded arbour,
+Lady Mary and her old friend were alone and unobserved. The yew-tree
+boundary was at least eight feet high, and Mary and her companion could
+hardly have been seen even from the upper windows of the low, old house.
+
+Mary had fallen into the habit of going for her walk or her ride at five
+o'clock every day, when she was not in attendance on Lady Maulevrier,
+and after her walk or ride she slipped through the stable, and joined
+her ancient friend. Stables and courtyard were generally empty at this
+hour, the men only appearing at the sound of a big bell, which summoned
+them from their snuggery when they were wanted. Most of Lady
+Maulevrier's servants had arrived at that respectable stage of long
+service in which fidelity is counted as a substitute for hard work.
+
+The old man was not particularly conversational, and was apt to repeat
+the same things over and over again, with a sublime unconsciousness of
+being prosy; but he liked to hear Mary talk, and he listened with
+seeming intelligence. He questioned her about the world outside his
+cloistered life--the wars and rumours of wars--and, although the names
+of the questions and the men of the day seemed utterly strange to him,
+and he had to have them repeated to him again and again, he seemed to
+take an intelligent interest in the stirring facts of the time, and
+listened intently when Mary gave him a synopsis of her last newspaper
+reading.
+
+When the news was exhausted, Mary hit upon a more childish form of
+amusement, and that was to tell the story of any novel or poem she had
+been lately reading. This was so successful that in this manner Mary
+related the stories of most of Shakespeare's plays; of Byron's Bride of
+Abydos, and Corsair; of Keats's Lamia; of Tennyson's Idylls; and of a
+heterogenous collection of poetry and romance, in all of which stories
+the old man took a vivid interest.
+
+'You are better to me than the sunshine,' he told Mary one day when she
+was leaving him. 'The world grows darker when you leave me.'
+
+Once at this parting moment he took both her hands, and drew her nearer
+to him, peering into her face in the clear evening light.
+
+'You are like my mother,' he said. 'Yes, you are very like her. And who
+else is it that you are like? There is some one else, I know. Yes, some
+one else! I remember! It is a face in a picture--a picture at Maulevrier
+Castle.'
+
+'What do you know of Maulevrier Castle?' asked Mary, wonderingly.
+
+Maulevrier was the family seat in Herefordshire, which had not been
+occupied by the elder branch for the last forty years. Lady Maulevrier
+had let it during her son's minority to a younger branch of the family,
+a branch which had intermarried with the world of successful commerce,
+and was richer than the heads of the house. This occupation of
+Maulevrier Castle had continued to the present time, and was likely
+still to continue, Maulevrier having no desire to set up housekeeping in
+a feudal castle in the marches.
+
+'How came you to know Maulevrier Castle?' repeated Mary.
+
+'I was there once. There is a picture by Lely, a portrait of a Lady
+Maulevrier in Charles the Second's time. The face is yours, my love. I
+have heard of such hereditary faces. My mother was proud of resembling
+that portrait.'
+
+'What did your mother know of Maulevrier Castle?'
+
+The old man did not answer. He had lapsed into that dream-like
+condition into which he often sank, when his brain was not stimulated to
+attention and coherency by his interest in Mary's narrations.
+
+Mary concluded that this man had once been a servant in the Maulevrier
+household, perhaps at the place in Herefordshire, and that all his old
+memories ran in one groove--the house of Maulevrier.
+
+The freedom of her intercourse with him was undisturbed for about three
+weeks; and at the end of that time she came face to face with James
+Steadman as she emerged from the circle of greenery.
+
+'You here, Lady Mary?' he exclaimed with an angry look.
+
+'Yes, I have been sitting talking to that poor old man,' Mary answered,
+cheerily, concluding that Steadman's look of vexation arose from his
+being detected in the act of harbouring a contraband relation. 'He is a
+very interesting character. A relation of yours, I suppose?'
+
+'Yes, he is a relation,' replied Steadman. 'He is very old, and his mind
+has long been gone. Her ladyship is kind enough to allow me to give him
+a home in her house. He is quite harmless, and he is in nobody's way.'
+
+'Of course not, poor soul. He is only a burden to himself. He talks as
+if his life had been very weary. Has he been long in that sad state?'
+
+'Yes, a long time.'
+
+Steadman's manner to Lady Mary was curt at the best of times. She had
+always stood somewhat in awe of him, as a person delegated with
+authority by her grandmother, a servant who was much more than a
+servant. But to-day his manner was more abrupt than usual.
+
+'He spoke of Maulevrier Castle just now,' said Mary, determined not to
+be put down too easily. 'Was he once in service there?'
+
+'He was. Pray how did you find your way into this garden, Lady Mary?'
+
+'I came through the stable. As it is my grandmother's garden I suppose I
+did not take an unwarrantable liberty in coming,' said Mary, drawing
+herself up, and ready for battle.
+
+'It is Lady Maulevrier's wish that this garden should be reserved for my
+use,' answered Steadman. 'Her ladyship knows that my uncle walks here of
+an afternoon, and that, owing to his age and infirmities, he can go
+nowhere else; and if only on that account, it is well that the garden
+should be kept private. Lunatics are rather dangerous company, Lady
+Mary, and I advise you to give them a wide berth wherever you may meet
+them.'
+
+'I am not afraid of your uncle,' said Mary, resolutely. 'You said
+yourself just now that he is quite harmless: and I am really interested
+in him, poor old creature. He likes me to sit with him a little of an
+afternoon and to talk to him; and if you have no objection I should like
+to do so, whenever the weather is fine enough for the poor old man to be
+out in the garden at this hour.'
+
+'I have a very great objection, Lady Mary, and that objection is chiefly
+in your interest,' answered Steadman, firmly. 'No one who is not
+experienced in the ways of lunatics can imagine the danger of any
+association with them--their consummate craftiness, their capacity for
+crime. Every madman is harmless up to a certain point--mild,
+inoffensive, perhaps, up to the very moment in which he commits some
+appalling crime. And then people cry out upon the want of prudence, the
+want of common-sense which allowed such an act to be possible. No, Lady
+Mary, I understand the benevolence of your motive, but I cannot permit
+you to run such a risk.'
+
+'I am convinced that the poor old creature is perfectly harmless,' said
+Mary, with suppressed indignation. 'I shall certainly ask Lady
+Maulevrier to speak to you on the subject. Perhaps her influence may
+induce you to be a little more considerate to your unhappy relation.'
+
+'Lady Mary, I beg you not to say a word to Lady Maulevrier on this
+subject. You will do me the greatest injury if you speak of that man. I
+entreat you--'
+
+But Mary was gone. She passed Steadman with her head held high and her
+eyes sparkling with anger. All that was generous, compassionate, womanly
+in her nature was up in arms against her grandmother's steward. Of all
+other things, Mary Haselden most detested cruelty; and she could see in
+Steadman's opposition to her wish nothing but the most cold-hearted
+cruelty to a poor dependent on his charity.
+
+She went in at the stable door, shut and locked it, and put the key in
+her pocket as usual. But she had little hope that this mode of access
+would be left open to her. She knew enough of James Steadman's
+character, from hearsay rather than from experience, to feel sure that
+he would not easily give way. She was not surprised, therefore, on
+returning from her ride on the following afternoon, to find the disused
+harness-room half filled with trusses of straw, and the door of
+communication completely blocked. It would be impossible for her to
+remove that barricade without assistance; and then, how could she be
+sure that the door itself was not nailed up, or secured in some way?
+
+It was a delicious sunny afternoon, and she could picture the lonely old
+man sitting in his circle of greenery beside the dial, which for him had
+registered so many dreary and solitary hours, waiting for the little ray
+of social sunlight which her presence shed over his monotonous life. He
+had told her that she was like the sunshine to him--better than
+sunshine--and she had promised not to forsake him. She pictured him
+waiting, with his hand clasped upon his crutch-stick, his chin resting
+upon his hands, his eyes poring on the ground, as she had seen him for
+the first time. And as the stable clock chimed the quarters he would
+begin to think himself abandoned, forgotten; if, indeed, he took any
+count of the passage of time, of which she was not sure. His mind seemed
+to have sunk into a condition which was between dreaming and waking, a
+state to which the outside world seemed only half real--a phase of being
+in which there was neither past nor future, only the insufferable
+monotony of an everlasting _now_.
+
+Pity is so near akin to love that Mary, in her deep compassion for this
+lonely, joyless, loveless existence, felt a regard which was almost
+affection for this strange old man, whose very name was unknown to her.
+True that there was much in his countenance and manner which was
+sinister and repellant. He was a being calculated to inspire fear rather
+than love; but the fact that he had courted her presence and looked to
+her for consolation had touched Mary's heart, and she had become
+reconciled to all that was forbidding and disagreeable in the lunatic
+physiognomy. Was he not the victim of a visitation which entitled him to
+respect as well as to pity?
+
+For some days Mary held her peace, remembering Steadman's vehement
+entreaty that she should not speak of this subject to her grandmother.
+She was silent, but the image of the old man haunted her at all times
+and seasons. She saw him even in her dreams--those happy dreams of the
+girl who loves and is beloved, and before whom the pathway of the future
+smiles like a vision of Paradise. She heard him calling to her with a
+piteous cry of distress, and on waking from this troubled dream she
+fancied that he must be dying, and that this sound in her dreams was one
+of those ghostly warnings which give notice of death. She was so unhappy
+about him, altogether so distressed at being compelled to break her
+word, that she could not prevent her thoughts from dwelling upon him,
+not even after she had poured out all her trouble to John Hammond in a
+long letter, in which her garden adventures and her little skirmish with
+Steadman were graphically described.
+
+To her intense discomfiture Hammond replied that he thoroughly approved
+of Steadman's conduct in the matter. However agreeable Mary's society
+might be to the lunatic, Mary's life was far too precious to be put
+within the possibility of peril by any such _tête-à-têtes_. If the
+person was the same old man whom Hammond had seen on the Fell, he was a
+most sinister-looking creature, of whom any evil act might be fairly
+anticipated. In a word Mr. Hammond took Steadman's view of the matter,
+and entreated his dearest Mary to be careful, and not to allow her warm
+heart to place her in circumstances of peril.
+
+This was most disappointing to Mary, who expected her lover to agree
+with her upon every point; and if he had been at Fellside the
+difference of opinion might have given rise to their first quarrel. But
+as she had a few hours' leisure for reflection before the post went out,
+she had time to get over her anger, and to remember that promise of
+obedience given, half in jest, half in earnest, at the little inn beyond
+Dunmail Raise. So she wrote submissively enough, only with just a touch
+of reproach at Jack's want of compassion for a poor old man who had such
+strong claims upon everybody's pity.
+
+The image of the poor old man was not to be banished from her thoughts,
+and on that very afternoon, when her letter was dispatched, Mary went on
+a visit of exploration to the stables, to see if by any chance Mr.
+Steadman's plans for isolating his unhappy relative might be
+circumvented.
+
+She went all over the stables--into loose boxes, harness and saddle
+rooms, sheds for wood, and sheds for roots, but she found no door
+opening into the quadrangle, save that door by which she had entered,
+and which was securely defended by a barricade of straw that had been
+doubled by a fresh delivery of trusses since she first saw it. But while
+she was prowling about the sweet-scented stable, much disappointed at
+the result of her investigations, she stumbled against a ladder which
+led to an open trap-door. Mary mounted the ladder, and found herself
+amidst the dusty atmosphere of a large hayloft, half in shadow, half in
+the hot bright sunlight. A large shutter was open in the sloping roof,
+the roof that sloped towards the quadrangle, an open patch admitting
+light and air. Mary, light and active as a squirrel, sprang upon a truss
+of hay, and in another moment had swung herself in the opening of the
+shutter, and was standing with her feet on the wooden ledge at the
+bottom of the massive frame, and her figure supported against the slope
+of thick thatched roof. Perched, or half suspended, thus, she was just
+high enough to look over the top of the yew-tree hedge into the circle
+round the sundial.
+
+Yes, there was the unhappy victim of fate, and man's inhumanity to man.
+There sat the shrunken figure, with drooping head, and melancholy
+attitude--the bent shoulders of feeble old age, the patriarchal locks so
+appealing to pity. There he sat with eyes poring upon the ground just as
+she had seen him the first time. And while she had sat with him and
+talked with him he had seemed to awaken out of that dull despondency,
+gleams of pleasure had lighted up his wrinkled face--he had grown
+animated, a sentient living instead of a corpse alive. It was very hard
+that this little interval of life, these stray gleams of gladness should
+be denied to the poor old creature, at the behest of James Steadman.
+
+Mary would have felt less angrily upon the subject had she believed in
+Steadman's supreme carefulness of her own safety; but in this she did
+not believe. She looked upon the house-steward's prudence as a
+hypocritical pretence, an affectation of fidelity and wisdom, by which
+he contrived to gratify the evil tendencies of his own hard and cruel
+nature. For some reasons of his own, perhaps constrained thereto by
+necessity, he had given the old man an asylum for his age and infirmity:
+but while thus giving him shelter he considered him a burden, and from
+mere perversity of mind refused him all such consolations as were
+possible to his afflicted state, mewed him up as a prisoner, cut him off
+from the companionship of his fellow-men.
+
+Two years ago, before Mary emerged from her Tomboyhood, she would have
+thought very little of letting herself out of the loft window and
+clambering down the side of the stable, which was well furnished with
+those projections in the way of gutters, drain-pipes, and century-old
+ivy, which make such a descent easy. Two years ago Mary's light figure
+would have swung itself down among the ivy leaves, and she would have
+gloried in the thought of circumventing James Steadman so easily. But
+now Mary was a young lady--a young lady engaged to be married, and
+impressed with the responsibilities of her position, deeply sensible of
+a new dignity, for the preservation of which she was in a manner
+answerable to her lover.
+
+'What would _he_ think of me if I went scrambling down the ivy?' she
+asked herself; 'and after he has approved of Steadman's heartless
+restrictions, it would be rank rebellion against him if I were to do it.
+Poor old man, "Thou art so near and yet so far," as Lesbia's song says.'
+
+She blew a kiss on the tips of her fingers towards that sad solitary
+figure, and then dropped back into the dusty duskiness of the loft. But
+although her new ideas upon the subject of 'Anstand'--or good
+behaviour--prevented her getting the better of Steadman by foul means,
+she was all the more intent upon having her own way by fair means, now
+that the impression of the old man's sadness and solitude had been
+renewed by the sight of the drooping figure by the sundial.
+
+She went back to the house, and walked straight to her grandmother's
+room. Lady Maulevrier's couch had been placed in front of the open
+window, from which she was watching the westward-sloping sun above the
+long line of hills, dark Helvellyn, rugged Nabb Scarr, and verdant
+Fairfield, with its two giant arms stretched out to enfold and shelter
+the smiling valley.
+
+'Heavens! child, what an object you are;' exclaimed her ladyship, as
+Mary drew near. 'Why, your gown is all over dust, and your hair is--why
+your hair is sprinkled with hay and clover. I thought you had learnt to
+be tidy, since your engagement. What have you been doing with yourself?'
+
+'I have been up in the hayloft,' answered Mary, frankly; and, intent on
+one idea, she said impetuously, 'Dear grandmother, I want you to do me a
+favour--a very great favour. There is a poor old man, a relation of
+Steadman's, who lives with him, out of his mind, but quite harmless, and
+he is so sad and lonely, so dreadfully sad, and he likes me to sit with
+him in the garden, and tell him stories, and recite verses to him, poor
+soul, just as if he were a child, don't you know, and it is such a
+pleasure to me to be a little comfort to him in his lonely wretched
+life, and James Steadman says I mustn't go near him, because he may
+change at any moment into a dangerous lunatic, and do me some kind of
+harm, and I am not a bit afraid, and I'm sure he won't do anything of
+the kind, and, please grandmother, tell Steadman, that I am to be
+allowed to go and sit with his poor old prisoner half an hour every
+afternoon.'
+
+Carried along the current of her own impetuous thoughts, Mary had talked
+very fast, and had not once looked at her grandmother while she was
+speaking. But now at the end of her speech her eyes sought Lady
+Maulevrier's face in gentle entreaty, and she recoiled involuntarily at
+the sight she saw there.
+
+The classic features were distorted almost as they had been in the worst
+period of the paralytic seizure. Lady Maulevrier was ghastly pale, and
+her eyes glared with an awful fire as they gazed at Mary. Her whole
+frame was convulsed, and she, the cripple, whose right limbs lay numbed
+and motionless upon the couch, made a struggling motion as she raised
+herself a little with the left arm, as if, by very force of angry will,
+she would have lifted herself up erect before the girl who had offended
+her.
+
+For a few moments her lips moved dumbly; and there was something
+unspeakably awful in those convulsed features, that livid countenance,
+and those voiceless syllables trembling upon the white dry lips.
+
+At last speech came.
+
+'Girl, you were created to torment me;' she exclaimed.
+
+'Dear grandmother, what harm have I done?' faltered Mary.
+
+'What harm? You are a spy. Your very existence is a torment and a
+danger. Would to God that you were married. Yes, married to a
+chimney-sweep, even--and out of my way.'
+
+'If that is your only difficulty,' said Mary, haughtily, 'I dare say Mr.
+Hammond would be kind enough to marry me to-morrow, and take me out of
+your ladyship's way.'
+
+Lady Maulevrier's head sank back upon her pillows, those velvet and
+satin pillows, rich with delicate point lace and crewel-work adornment,
+the labour of Mary and Fräulein, pillows which could not bring peace to
+the weary head, or deaden the tortures of memory. The pale face
+recovered its wonted calm, the heavy lips drooped over the weary eyes,
+and for a few moments there was silence in the room.
+
+Then Lady Maulevrier raised her eyelids, and looked at her granddaughter
+imploringly, pathetically.
+
+'Forgive me, Mary,' she said. 'I don't know what I was saying just now;
+but whatever it was, forgive and forget it. I am a wretched old woman,
+heart sick, heart sore, worn out by pain and weariness. There are times
+when I am beside myself; moments when I am not much saner than
+Steadman's lunatic uncle. This is one of my worst days, and you came
+bouncing in upon me, and tortured my nerves by your breathless torrent
+of words. Pray forgive me, if I said anything rude.'
+
+'If,' thought Mary: but she tried to be charitable, and to believe that
+Lady Maulevrier's attack upon her was a new phase of hysteria, so she
+murmured meekly, 'There is nothing for me to forgive, grandmother, and I
+am very sorry I disturbed you.'
+
+She was going to leave the room, thinking that her absence would be a
+relief to the invalid, when Lady Maulevrier called her back.
+
+'You were asking me something--something about that old man of
+Steadman's,' she said with a weary air, half indifference, half the
+lassitude natural to an invalid who sinks under the burden of monotonous
+days. 'What was it all about? I forget.'
+
+Mary repeated her request, but this time in measured tones.
+
+'My dear, I am sure that Steadman was only properly prudent.' answered
+Lady Maulevrier, 'and that it would never do for me to interfere in this
+matter. It stands to reason that he must know his old kinsman's
+temperament much better than you can, after your half-hour interviews
+with him in the garden. Pray how long have these garden scenes been
+going on, by-the-by?' asked her ladyship, with a searching look at
+Mary's downcast face.
+
+The girl had not altogether recovered from the rude shock of her
+grandmother's late attack.
+
+'About three weeks,' faltered Mary. 'But it is more than a week now
+since I was in the garden. It was quite by accident that I first went
+there. Perhaps I ought to explain.'
+
+And Mary, not being gainsayed, went on to describe that first afternoon
+when she had seen the old man brooding in the sun. She drew quite a
+pathetic picture of his joyless solitude, whilst all nature around and
+about him was looking so glad in the spring sunshine. There was a long
+silence, a silence of some minutes, when she had done; and Lady
+Maulevrier lay with lowered eyelids, deep in thought. Mary began to hope
+that she had touched her grandmother's heart, and that her request would
+be granted: but she was soon undeceived.
+
+'I am sorry to be obliged to refuse you a favour, Mary, but I must stand
+by Steadman,' said her ladyship. 'When I gave Steadman permission to
+shelter his aged kinsman in my house, I made it a condition that the old
+man should be kept in the strictest care by himself and his wife, and
+that nobody in this establishment should be troubled by him. This
+condition has been so scrupulously adhered to that the old man's
+existence is known to no one in this house except you and me; and you
+have discovered the fact only by accident. I must beg you to keep this
+secret to yourself. Steadman has particular reasons for wishing to
+conceal the fact of his uncle's residence here. The old man is not
+actually a lunatic. If he were we should be violating the law by keeping
+him here. He is only imbecile from extreme old age; the body has
+outlived the mind, that is all. But should any officious functionary
+come down upon Fellside, this imbecility might be called madness, and
+the poor old creature whom you regard so compassionately, and whose case
+you think so pitiable here, would be carried off to a pauper lunatic
+asylum, which I can assure you would be a much worse imprisonment than
+Fellside Manor.'
+
+'Yes, indeed, grandmother,' exclaimed Mary, whose vivid imagination
+conjured up a vision of padded cells, strait-waist-coats,
+murderously-inclined keepers, chains, handcuffs, and bread and water
+diet, 'now I understand why the poor old soul has been kept so
+close--why nobody knows of his existence. I beg Steadman's pardon with
+all my heart. He is a much better fellow than I thought him.'
+
+'Steadman is a thoroughly good fellow, and as true as steel,' said her
+ladyship. 'No one can know that so well as the mistress he has served
+faithfully for nearly half a century. I hope, Mary, you have not been
+chattering to Fräulein or any one else about your discovery.'
+
+'No, grandmother, I have not said a word to a mortal, but----'
+
+'Oh, there is a "but," is there? I understand. You have not been so
+reticent in your letters to Mr. Hammond.'
+
+'I tell him all that happens to me. There is very little to write about
+at Fellside; yet I contrive to send him volumes. I often wonder what
+poor girls did in the days of Miss Austen's novels, when letters cost a
+shilling or eighteen pence for postage, and had to be paid for by the
+recipient. It must have been such a terrible check upon affection.'
+
+'And upon twaddle,' said Lady Maulevrier. 'Well you told Mr. Hammond
+about Steadman's old uncle. What did he say?'
+
+'He thoroughly approved Steadman's conduct in forbidding me to go and
+see him,' answered Mary. 'I couldn't help thinking it rather unkind of
+him; but, of course, I feel that he must be right,' concluded Mary, as
+much as to say that her lover was necessarily infallible.
+
+'I always thought Mr. Hammond a sensible young man, and I am glad to
+find that his conduct does not belie my good opinion,' said Lady
+Maulevrier. 'And now, my dear, you had better go and make yourself
+decent before dinner. I am very weary this afternoon, and even our
+little talk has exhausted me.'
+
+'Yes, dear grandmother, I am going this instant. But let me ask one
+question: What is the poor old man's name?'
+
+'His name!' said her ladyship, looking at Mary with a puzzled air, like
+a person whose thoughts are far away. 'His name--oh, Steadman, I
+suppose, like his nephew's; but if I ever heard the name I have
+forgotten it, and I don't know whether the kinship is on the father's or
+the mother's side. Steadman asked my permission to give shelter to a
+helpless old relative, and I gave it. That is really all I remember.'
+
+'Only one other question,' pleaded Mary, who was brimful of curiosity
+upon this particular subject. 'Has he been at Fellside very long?'
+
+'Oh, I really don't know; a year, or two, or three, perhaps. Life in
+this house is all of a piece. I hardly keep count of time.'
+
+'There is one thing that puzzles me very much,' said Mary, still
+lingering near her grandmother's couch, the balmy evening air caressing
+her as she leaned against the embrasure of the wide Tudor window, the
+sun drawing nearer to the edge of the hills, an orb of yellow flame,
+soon to change to a gigantic disk of lurid fire. 'I thought from the old
+man's talk that he, too, must be an old servant in our family. He talked
+of Maulevrier Castle, and said that I reminded him of a picture by Lely,
+a portrait of a Lady Maulevrier.
+
+'It is quite possible that he may have been in service there, though I
+do not remember to have heard anything about it,' answered her ladyship,
+carelessly. 'The Steadmans come from that part of the country, and
+theirs is a hereditary service. Good-night, Mary, I am utterly weary.
+Look at that glorious light yonder, that mighty world of fire and flame,
+without which our little world would be dark and dreary. I often think
+of that speech of Macbeth's, "I 'gin to be aweary of the sun." There
+comes a time, Mary, when even the sun is a burden.'
+
+'Only for such a man as Macbeth,' said Mary, 'a man steeped in crime.
+Who can wonder that he wanted to hide himself from the sun? But, dear
+grandmother, there ought to be plenty of happiness left for you, even if
+your recovery is slow to come. You are so clever, you have such
+resources in your own mind and memory, and you have your grandchildren,
+who love you dearly,' added Mary, tenderly.
+
+Her nature was so full of pity that an entirely new affection had grown
+up in her mind for Lady Maulevrier since that terrible evening of the
+paralytic stroke.
+
+'Yes, and whose love, as exemplified by Lesbia, is shown in a hurried
+scrap of a letter scrawled once a week--a bone thrown to a hungry dog,'
+said her ladyship, bitterly.
+
+'Lesbia is so lovely, and she is so surrounded by flatterers and
+admirers,' murmured Mary, excusingly.
+
+'Oh, my dear, if she had a heart she would not forget me, even in the
+midst of her flatterers. Good-night again, Mary. Don't try to console
+me. For some natures consolations and soothing suggestions are like
+flowers thrown upon a granite tomb. They do just as much and just as
+little good to the heart that lies under the stone. Good-night.'
+
+Mary stooped to kiss her grandmother's forehead, and found it cold as
+marble. She murmured a loving good-night, and left the mistress of
+Fellside in her loneliness.
+
+A footman would come in and light the lamps, and draw the velvet
+curtains, presently, and shut out the later glories of sunset. And then
+the butler himself would come and arrange the little dinner table by her
+ladyship's couch, and would himself preside over the invalid's simple
+dinner, which would be served exquisitely, with all that is daintiest
+and most costly in Salviati glass and antique silver. Yet better the
+dinner of herbs, and love and peace withal, than the choicest fare or
+the most perfect service.
+
+Before the coming of the servants and the lamps there was a pause of
+silence and loneliness, an interval during which Lady Maulevrier lay
+gazing at the declining orb, the lower rim of which now rested on the
+edge of the hill. It seemed to grow larger and more dazzling as she
+looked at it.
+
+Suddenly she clasped her left hand across her eyes, and said aloud--
+
+'Oh, what a hateful life! Almost half a century of lies and hypocricies
+and prevarications and meannesses! For what? For the glory of an empty
+name; and for a fortune that may slip from my dead hand to become the
+prey of rogues and adventurers. Who can forecast the future?'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+CARTE BLANCHE.
+
+
+Lady Kirkbank's house in Arlington Street was known to half fashionable
+London as one of the pleasantest houses in town; and it was known by
+repute only, to the other half of fashionable London, as a house whose
+threshold was not to be crossed by persons with any regard for their own
+dignity and reputation. It was not that Lady Kirkbank had ever actually
+forfeited her right to be considered an honest woman and a faithful
+wife. People who talked of the lady and her set with a contemptuous
+shrug of the shoulders and a dubious elevation of the eyebrows were
+ready, when hard pushed in argument, to admit that they knew of no
+actual harm in Lady Kirkbank, no overt bad behaviour.
+
+'But--well,' said the punctilious half of society, the Pejinks and
+Pernickitys, the Picksomes and Unco-Goods, 'Lady Kirkbank is--Lady
+Kirkbank; and I would not allow my girls to visit her, don't you know.'
+'Lady Kirkbank is received, certainly,' said a severe dowager. 'She
+goes to very good houses. She gets tickets for the Royal enclosure. She
+is always at private views, and privileged shows of all kinds; and she
+contrives to squeeze herself in at a State ball or a concert about once
+in two years; but any one who can consider Lady Kirkbank good style must
+have a very curious idea of what a lady ought to be.' 'Lady Kirkbank is
+a warm-hearted, nice creature,' said a diplomatist of high rank, and one
+of her particular friends, 'but her manners are decidedly--continental!'
+
+About Sir George, society, adverse or friendly, was without strong
+opinions. His friends, the men who shot over his Scotch moor, and filled
+the spare rooms in his villa at Cannes, and loaded his drag for Sandown
+or Epsom, and sponged upon him all the year round, talked of him as 'an
+inoffensive old party,' 'a cheery soul,' 'a genial old boy,' and in like
+terms of approval. That half of society which did not visit in Arlington
+Street, in whose nostrils the semi-aristocratic, semi-artistic,
+altogether Bohemian little dinners, the suppers after the play, the
+small hours devoted to Nap or Poker, had an odour as of sulphur, the
+reek of Tophet--even this half of the great world was fain to admit that
+Sir George was harmless. He had never had an idea beyond the realms of
+sport; he had never had a will of his own outside his stable. To shoot
+pigeons at Hurlington or Monaco, to keep half a dozen leather-platers,
+and attend every race from the Craven to the Leger, to hunt four days a
+week, when he was allowed to spend a winter in England, and to saunter
+and sleep away all the hours which could not be given to sport,
+comprised Sir George's idea of existence. He had never troubled himself
+to consider whether there might not possibly be a better way of getting
+rid of one's life. He was as God had made him, and was perfectly
+satisfied with himself and the universe; save at such times as when a
+favourite horse went lame, or his banker wrote to tell him that his
+account was overdrawn.
+
+Sir George had no children; he had never had a serious care in his life.
+He never thought, he never read. Lady Kirkbank declared that she had
+never seen him with a book in his hands since their marriage.
+
+'I don't believe he would know at which end to begin,' she said.
+
+What was the specific charge which the very particular people brought
+against Lady Kirkbank? Such charges rarely _are_ specific. The idea that
+the lady belonged to the fast and furious section of society, the
+Bohemia of the upper ten, was an idea in the air. Everybody knew it. No
+one could quite adequately explain it.
+
+From thirty to fifty Lady Kirkbank had been known as a flirty matron.
+Wherever she went, a train of men went with her; men young and
+middle-aged and elderly; handsome youths from the public offices; War,
+Admiralty, Foreign Office, Somerset House young men; attractive men of
+mature years, with grey moustachios, military, diplomatic, horsey, what
+you will, but always agreeable. At home, abroad, Lady Kirkbank was never
+without her court; but the court was entirely masculine. In those days
+the fair Georgie did not scruple to say that she hated women, and that
+girls were her particular abomination. But as the years rolled on Lady
+Kirkbank began to find it very difficult to muster her little court, to
+keep her train in attendance upon her. 'The birds were wild,' Sir George
+said. Her young adorers found their official duties more oppressive than
+hitherto; her elderly swains had threatenings of gout or rheumatism
+which prevented their flocking round her as of old at race meeting or
+polo match. They were loyal enough in keeping their engagements at the
+dinner table, for Lady Kirkbank's cook was one of the best in London;
+and the invited guests were rarely missing at the little suppers after
+opera or play: but Georgia's box was no longer crowded with men who
+dropped in between the acts to see what she thought of the singer or the
+piece, and her swains were no longer contented to sit behind her chair
+all the evening, seeing an empty corner of the stage across Georgia's
+ivory shoulder, and hearing the voices of invisible actors in the brief
+pauses of Georgie's subdued babble.
+
+At fifty-five, Georgina Kirkbank told herself sadly enough that her day,
+as a bright particular star, all-sufficient in her own radiance, was
+gone. She could not live without her masculine circle, men who could
+bring her all the news, the gossip of the clubs; where everything seemed
+to become known as quickly as if each club had its own Asmodeus,
+unroofing all the housetops of the West End for inspection every night.
+She could not live without her courtiers; and to keep them about her she
+knew that she must make her house pleasant. It was not enough to give
+good dinners, elegant little suppers washed down by choicest wines; she
+must also provide fair faces to smile upon the feast, and bright eyes to
+sparkle in the subdued light of low shaded lamps, and many candles
+twinkling under coloured shades.
+
+'I am an old woman now,' Lady Kirkbank said to herself with a sigh, 'and
+my own attractions won't keep my friends about me. _C'est trop connu
+ça_.'
+
+And now the house in Arlington Street in which feminine guests had been
+as one in ten, opened its doors to the young and the fair. Pretty
+widows, lively girls, young wives who were not too absurdly devoted to
+their husbands, actresses of high standing and good looks, these began
+to be welcomed effusively in Arlington Street. Lady Kirkbank began to
+hunt for beauties to adorn her rooms, as she had hitherto hunted lions
+to roar at her parties. She prided herself on being the first to
+discover this or that new beauty. That lovely girl from Scotland with
+the large eyes--that sweet young creature from Ireland with the long
+eyelashes. She was always inventing new divinities. But even this
+change of plan, this more feminine line of politics failed to reconcile
+the strict and the stern, the Queen Charlotte-ish elderly ladies, and
+the impeccable matrons, to Lady Kirkbank and her set. The girls who were
+launched by Lady Kirkbank never took high rank in society. When they
+made good marriages it was generally to be observed that they dropped
+Lady Kirkbank soon afterwards. It was not their fault, these ingrates
+pleaded piteously; but Edward, or Henry, or Theodore, as the case might
+be, had a most cruel prejudice against dear Lady Kirkbank, and the young
+wives were obliged to obey.
+
+Others there were, however, the loyal few, who having won the prize
+matrimonial in Lady Kirkbank's happy hunting grounds, remained true to
+their friend ever afterwards, and defended her character against every
+onslaught.
+
+When Lady Maulevrier told her grandson that she had entrusted Lady
+Kirkbank with the duty of introducing Lesbia to society, Maulevrier
+shrugged his shoulders and held his peace. He knew no actual harm in the
+matter. Lady Kirkbank's was rather a fast set; and had he been allowed
+to choose it was not to Lady Kirkbank that he would have delegated his
+grandmother's duty. In Maulevrier's own phrase it was 'not good enough'
+for Lesbia. But it was not in his power to interfere. He was not told of
+the plan until everything had been settled. The thing was accomplished;
+and against accomplished facts Maulevrier was the last to protest.
+
+His friend John Hammond had not been silent. He knew nothing of Lady
+Kirkbank personally; but he knew the position which she held in London
+society, and he urged his friend strongly to enlighten Lady Maulevrier
+as to the kind of circle into which she was about to entrust her young
+granddaughter, a girl brought up in the Arcadia of England.
+
+'Not for worlds would I undertake such a task,' said Maulevrier. 'Her
+ladyship never had any opinion of my wisdom, and this Lady Kirkbank is a
+friend of her own youth. She would cut up rough if I were to say a word
+against an old friend. Besides what's the odds, if you come to think of
+it? all society is fast nowadays, or at any rate all society worth
+living in. And then again, Lesbia is just one of those cool-headed girls
+who would keep herself head uppermost in a maelstrom. She knows on which
+side her bread is buttered. Look how easily she chucked you up because
+she did not think you good enough. She'll make use of this Lady
+Kirkbank, who is a good soul, I am told, and will make the best match of
+the season.'
+
+And now the season had begun, and Lady Lesbia Haselden was circulating
+with other aristocratic atoms in the social vortex, with her head
+apparently uppermost.
+
+'Old Lady K--has nobbled a real beauty, this time,' said one of the
+Arlington Street set to his friend as they lolled on the railings in the
+park, 'a long way above any of those plain-headed ones she tried to palm
+off upon us last year: the South American girl with the big eyes and a
+complexion like a toad, the Forfarshire girl with freckles and
+unsophisticated carrots. "Those lovely Spanish eyes," said Lady K----,
+"that Titianesque auburn hair!" But it didn't answer. Both the girls
+were plain, and they have gone back to their native obscurity spinsters
+still. But this is a real thorough-bred one--blood, form, pace, all
+there.'
+
+'Who is she?' drawled his friend.
+
+'Lord Maulevrier's sister, Lady Lesbia Haselden. Has money, too, I
+believe; rich grandmother; old lady buried alive in Westmoreland; horrid
+old miser.'
+
+'I shouldn't mind marrying a miser's granddaughter,' said the other. 'So
+nice to know that some wretched old idiot has scraped and hoarded
+through a lifetime of deprivation and self-denial, in order that one may
+spend his money when he is under the sod.'
+
+Lady Lesbia was accepted everywhere, or almost everywhere, as the beauty
+of the season. There were six or seven other girls who aspired to the
+same proud position, who were asserted by their own particular friends
+to have won it; just as there are generally four or five horses which
+claim to be first favourites; but the betting was all in favour of Lady
+Lesbia.
+
+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.
+
+'What a cold-hearted creature you must be,' said Georgie. 'You don't
+seem to admire any of my favourite men.'
+
+'They are very nice,' Lesbia answered languidly; 'but they are all
+alike. They say the same things--wear the same clothes--sit in the same
+attitude. One would think they were all drilled in a body every morning
+before they go out. Mr. Nightshade, the actor, who came to supper the
+other night, is the only man I have seen who has a spark of
+originality.'
+
+'You are right,' answered Lady Kirkbank, 'there is an appalling sameness
+in men: only it is odd you should find it out so soon. I never
+discovered it till I was an old woman. How I envy Cleopatra her Cæsar
+and her Antony. No mistaking one of those for the other. Mary Stuart
+too, what marked varieties of character she had an opportunity of
+studying in Rizzio and Chastelard, Darnley and Bothwell. Ah, child, that
+is what it is to _live_.'
+
+'Mary is very interesting,' sighed Lesbia; 'but I fear she was not a
+correct person.'
+
+'My love, what correct person ever is interesting? History draws a misty
+halo round a sinner of that kind, till one almost believes her a saint.
+I think Mary Stuart, Froude's Mary, simply perfect.'
+
+Lesbia had begun by blushing at Lady Kirkbank's opinions; but she was
+now used to the audacity of the lady's sentiments, and the almost
+infantile candour with which she gave utterance to them. Lady Kirkbank
+liked to make her friends laugh. It was all she could do now in order to
+be admired. And there is nothing like audacity for making people laugh
+nowadays. Lady Kirkbank was a close student of all those delightful
+books of French memoirs which bring the tittle-tattle of the Regency and
+the scandals of Louis the Fifteenth's reign so vividly before us: and
+she had unconsciously founded her manners and her ways of thinking and
+talking upon that easy-going but elegant age. She did not want to seem
+better than women who had been so altogether charming. She fortified the
+frivolity of historical Parisian manners by a dash of the British
+sporting character. She drove, shot, jumped over five-barred gates,
+contrived on the verge of seventy to be as active us a young woman; and
+she flattered herself that the mixture of wit, audacity, sport, and
+good-nature was full of fascination.
+
+However this might be, it is certain that a good many people liked her,
+chiefly perhaps because she was good-natured, and a little on account of
+that admirable cook.
+
+To Lesbia, who had been weary to loathing of her old life amidst the
+hills and waterfalls of Westmoreland, this new life was one perpetual
+round of pleasure. She flung herself with all her heart and mind into
+the amusement of the moment; she knew neither weariness nor satiety. To
+ride in the park in the morning, to go to a luncheon party, a garden
+party, to drive in the park for half an hour after the garden party, to
+rush home and dress for the fourth or fifth time, and then off to a
+dinner, and from dinner to drum, and from drum to big ball, at which
+rumour said the Prince and Princess were to be present; and so, from
+eleven o'clock in the morning till four or five o'clock next morning,
+the giddy whirl went on; and every hour was so occupied by pleasure
+engagements that it was difficult to squeeze in an occasional morning
+for shopping--necessary to go to the shops sometimes, or one would not
+know how many things one really wants--or for an indispensable interview
+with the dressmaker. Those mornings at the shops were hardly the least
+agreeable of Lesbia's hours. To a girl brought up in one perpetual
+_tête-à-tête_ with green hill-sides and silvery watercourses, the West
+End shops were as gardens of Eden, as Aladdin Caves, as anything,
+everything that is rapturous and intoxicating. Lesbia, the clear-headed,
+the cold-hearted, fairly lost her senses when she went into one of those
+exquisite shops, where a confusion of brocades and satins lay about in
+dazzling masses of richest colour, with here and there a bunch of
+lilies, a cluster of roses, a tortoise-shell fan, an ostrich feather, or
+a flounce of peerless Point d'Alençon flung carelessly athwart the sheen
+of a wine-dark velvet or golden-hued satin.
+
+Lady Maulevrier had said Lesbia was to have _carte blanche_; so Lesbia
+bought everything she wanted, or fancied she wanted, or that the
+shop-people thought she must want, or that Lady Kirkbank happened to
+admire. The shop-people were so obliging, and so deeply obliged by
+Lesbia's patronage. She was exactly the kind of customer they liked to
+serve. She flitted about their showrooms like a beautiful butterfly
+hovering over a flower-bed--her eye caught by every novelty. She never
+asked the price of anything; and Lady Kirkbank informed them, in
+confidence, that she was a great heiress, with a millionaire grandmother
+who indulged her every whim. Other high born young ladies, shopping upon
+fixed allowances, and sorely perplexed to make both ends meet, looked
+with eyes of envy upon this girl.
+
+And then came the visit to the dressmaker. It happened after all that
+Kate Kearney was not intrusted with Lady Lesbia's frocks. Miss Kearney
+was the fashion, and could pick and choose her customers; and as she was
+a young lady of good business aptitudes, she had a liking for ready
+money, or at least half-yearly settlements; and, finding that Lady
+Kirkbank was much more willing to give new orders than to pay old
+accounts, she had respectfully informed her ladyship that a pressure of
+business would prevent her executing any further demands from Arlington
+Street, while the necessity of posting her ledger obliged her to request
+the favour of an immediate cheque.
+
+The little skirmish--per letter--occurred while Lady Kirkbank was at
+Cannes, and Miss Kearney's conduct was stigmatised as insolent and
+ungrateful, since had not she, Lady Kirkbank by the mere fact of her
+patronage, given this young person her chief claim to fashion?
+
+'I shall drop her,' said Georgie, 'and go back to poor old Seraphine,
+who is worth a cartload of such Irish adventuresses.'
+
+So to Madame Seraphine, of Clanricarde Place, Lady Lesbia was taken as
+a lamb to the slaughter-house.
+
+Seraphine had made Lady Kirkbank's clothes, off and on for the last
+thirty years. Seraphine and Georgia had grown old together. Lady
+Kirkbank was always dropping Seraphine and taking her up again,
+quarrelling and making friends with her. They wrote each other little
+notes, in which Lady Kirkbank called the dressmaker her _cher ange_--her
+_bonne chatte_, her _chère vielle sotte_--and all manner of affectionate
+names--and in which Seraphine occasionally threatened the lady with the
+dire engines of the law, if money were not forthcoming before Saturday
+evening.
+
+Lady Kirkbank within those thirty years had paid Seraphine many
+thousands; but she had never once got herself out of the dear creature's
+debt. All her payments were payments on account. A hundred pounds; or
+fifty--or an occasional cheque for two hundred and fifty, when Sir
+George had been lucky at Newmarket and Doncaster. But the rolling
+nucleus of debt went rolling on, growing bigger every year until the
+payments on account needed to be larger or more numerous than of old to
+keep Seraphine in good humour.
+
+Seraphine was a woman of genius and versatility and had more than one
+art at her fingers' ends--those skinny and claw-shaped fingers, the
+nails whereof were not always clean. She took charge of her customer's
+figures, and made their corsets, and lectured them if they allowed
+nature to get the upper hand.
+
+'If Madame's waist gets one quarter of an inch thicker it must be that I
+renounce to make her gowns,' she would tell a ponderous matron, with
+cool insolence, and the matron would stand abashed before the little
+sallow, hooked-nosed, keen eyed Jewess, like a child before a severe
+mother.
+
+'Oh, Seraphine, do you really think that I am stouter?' the customer
+would ask feebly, panting in her tightened corset.
+
+'Is it that I think so? Why that jumps to the eyes. Madame had always
+that little air of Rubens, even in the flower of her youth--but now--it
+is a Rubens of the Faubourg du Temple.'
+
+And horrified at the idea of her vulgarised charms the meek matron would
+consent to encase herself in one of Seraphine's severest corsets, called
+in bitterest mockery _à la santé_--at five guineas--in order that the
+dressmaker might measure her for a forty-guinea gown.
+
+'A plain satin gown, my dear, with an eighteenpenny frilling round the
+neck and sleeves, and not so much trimming as would go round my little
+finger. It is positive robbery,' the matron told her friends afterwards,
+not the less proud of her skin-tight high shouldered sleeves and the
+peerless flow of her train.
+
+Seraphine was an artist in complexions, and it was she who provided her
+middle-aged and elderly customers with the lilies and roses of youth.
+Lady Kirkbank's town complexion was superintended by Seraphine,
+sometimes even manipulated by those harpy-like claws. The eyebrows of
+which Lesbia complained were only eyebrows _de province_--eyebrows _de
+voyage_. In London Georgie was much more particular; and Seraphine was
+often in Arlington Street with her little morocco bag of washes and
+creams, and brushes and sponges, to prepare Lady Kirkbank for some great
+party, and to instruct Lady Kirkbank's maid. At such times Georgie was
+all affection for the little dressmaker.
+
+'_Ma chatte_, you have made me positively adorable,' she would say,
+peering at her reflection in the ivory hand-mirror, a dazzling image of
+rouge and bismuth, carmined lips, diamonds, and frizzy yellow hair; 'I
+verily believe I look under thirty--but do not you think this gown is a
+thought too _décolletée--un peu trop de peau, hein?_'
+
+'Not for you, Lady Kirkbank, with your fine shoulders. Shoulders are of
+no age--_les épaules sont la vraie fontaine de jouvence pour les jolies
+femmes._'
+
+'You are such a witty creature, Seraphine, Fifine. You ought to be a
+descendant of that wicked old Madame du Deffand. Rilboche, give Madame
+some more chartreuse.'
+
+And Lady Kirkbank and the dressmaker would chink their liqueur glasses
+in amity before the lady gathered up her satin train and allowed her
+peerless shoulders to be muffled in a plush mantle to go down to her
+carriage, fortified by that last glass of green chartreuse.
+
+There were always the finest chartreuse and curaçoa in a liqueur cabinet
+on Lady Kirkbank's dressing-table. The cabinet formed a companion to the
+dressing-case, which contained all those creamy and rose-hued cosmetics,
+powders, brushes, and medicaments, which were necessary for the
+manufacture of Georgie's complexion. The third bottle in the liqueur
+case held cognac, and this, as Rilboche the maid knew, was oftenest
+replenished. Yet nobody could accuse Lady Kirkbank of intemperate
+habits. The liqueur box only supplied the peg that was occasionally
+wanted to screw the superior mind to concert pitch.
+
+'One must always be at concert pitch in society, don't you know, my
+dear,' said Georgie to her young protégée.
+
+Thus it happened that, Miss Kearney having behaved badly, Lesbia was
+carried off to dear old Seraphine, and delivered over to that modern
+witch, as a sacrifice tied to the horns of the altar.
+
+Clanricarde Place is a little nook of Queen Anne houses--genuine Queen
+Anne, be it understood--between Piccadilly and St. James's Palace, and
+hardly five minutes' walk from Arlington Street. It is a quiet little
+_cul de sac_ in the very heart of the fashionable world; and here of an
+afternoon might be seen the carriages of Madame Seraphine's customers,
+blocking the whole of the carriage way, and choking up the narrow
+entrance to the street, which widened considerably at the inner end.
+
+Madame Seraphine's house was at the end, a narrow house, with tall
+old-fashioned windows curtained with amber satin. It was a small, dark
+house, and exhaled occasional odours of garlic and main sewer; but the
+staircase was a gem in old oak, and the furniture in the triple
+telescopic drawing rooms, dwindling to a closet at the end, was genuine
+Louis Seize.
+
+Seraphine herself was the only shabby thing in the house--a wizened
+little woman, with a wicked old Jewish face, and one shoulder higher
+than the other, dressed in a shiny black moire gown, years after moires
+had been exploded, and with a rag of old lace upon her sleek black
+hair--raven black hair, and the only good thing about her appearance.
+
+One ornament, and one only, had Seraphine ever been guilty of wearing,
+and that was an old-fashioned half-hoop ring of Brazilian diamonds,
+brilliants of the first water. This ring she called her yard measure;
+and she was in the habit of using it as her Standard of purity, and
+comparing it with any diamonds which her customers submitted to her
+inspection. For the clever little dressmaker had a feeling heart for a
+lady in difficulties, and was in the habit of lending money on good
+security, and on terms that were almost reasonable as compared with the
+usurious rates one reads of in the newspapers.
+
+Lesbia's first sensation upon having this accomplished person presented
+to her was one of shrinking and disgust. There was something sinister in
+the sallow face, the small shrewd eyes, and long hooked nose, the
+crooked figure, and claw-shaped hands. But when Madame Seraphine began
+to talk about gowns, and bade her acolytes--smartly-dressed young women
+with pleasing countenances--bring forth marvels of brocade and satin,
+embroideries, stamped velvets, bullion fringes, and ostrich feather
+flouncings, Lesbia became interested, and forgot the unholy aspect of
+the high priestess.
+
+Lady Kirkbank and the dressmaker discussed Lesbia's charms as calmly as
+if she had been out of the room.
+
+'What do you think of her figure?' asked Lady Kirkbank.
+
+'One cannot criticise what does not exist,' replied the dressmaker, in
+French. 'The young lady has no figure. She has evidently been brought up
+in the country.'
+
+And then with rapid bird-like movements, and with her head on one side,
+Seraphine measured Lesbia's waist and bust, muttering little argotic
+expressions _sotto voce_ as she did so.
+
+'Waist three inches too large, shoulders six inches too narrow,' she
+said decisively, and she dictated some figures to one of the damsels,
+who wrote them down in an order-book.
+
+'What does that mean?' asked Lesbia, not at all approving of such
+cavalier treatment.
+
+'Only that Seraphine will make your corsets the right size,' answered
+Lady Kirkbank.
+
+'What? Three inches too small for my waist, and six too wide for my
+shoulders?'
+
+'My love, you must have a figure,' replied Lady Kirkbank, conclusively.
+'It is not what you are, but what you ought to be that has to be
+considered.'
+
+So Lesbia, the cool-headed, who was also the weak-minded, consented to
+have her figure adjusted to the regulation mark of absolute beauty, as
+understood by Madame Seraphine. It was only when her complexion came
+under discussion, and Seraphine ventured to suggest that she would be
+all the better for a little accentuation of her eyebrows and darkening
+of her lashes, that Lesbia made a stand.
+
+'What would my grandmother think of me if she heard I painted?' she
+asked, indignantly.
+
+Lady Kirkbank laughed at her _naïveté_.
+
+'My dear child, your grandmother is just half a century behind the age,'
+she said. 'I hope you are not going to allow your life in London to be
+regulated by an oracle at Grasmere?'
+
+'I am not going to paint my face,' replied Lesbia, firmly.
+
+'Well, perhaps you are right. The eyebrows are a little weak and
+undecided, Seraphine, as you say, and the lashes would be all the better
+for your famous cosmetic; but after all there is a charm in what the
+painters call "sincerity," and any little errors of detail will prove
+the genuineness of Lady Lesbia's beauty. One _may_ be too artistic.'
+
+And Lady Kirkbank gave a complacent glance at her own image in one of
+the Marie Antoinette mirrors, pleased with the general effect of arched
+brows, darkened eyelids, and a daisy bonnet. The fair Georgie generally
+affected field-flowers and other simplicities, which would have been
+becoming to a beauty of eighteen.
+
+'One is obliged to smother one's self in satin and velvet for balls and
+dinners,' said Lady Kirkbank, when she discussed the great question of
+gowns; 'but I know I always look my best in my cotton frock and straw
+hat.'
+
+That first visit to Seraphine's den--den as terrible, did one but know
+it, as that antediluvian hyena-cave at Torquay, where the threshold is
+worn by the bodies of beasts dragged across it, and the ground paved
+with their bones--that first visit was a serious business. Later
+interviews might be mere frivolities, half-an-hour wasted in looking at
+new fashions, an order given carelessly on the spur of the moment; but
+upon this occasion Lady Kirkbank had to arm her young _protégée_ for the
+coming campaign, and the question was to the last degree serious.
+
+The chaperon and the dressmaker put their heads together, looked at
+fashion plates, talked solemnly of Worth and his compeers, of the gowns
+that were being worn by Bernhardt, and Pierson, and Croisette, and other
+stars of the Parisian stage; and then Lady Kirkbank gave her orders,
+Lesbia listening and assenting.
+
+Nothing was said about prices; but Lesbia had a vague idea that some of
+the things would be rather expensive, and she ventured to ask Lady
+Kirkbank if she were not ordering too many gowns.
+
+'My dear, Lady Maulevrier said you were to have _carte blanche_,'
+replied Georgie, solemnly. 'Your dear grandmother is as rich as Croesus,
+and she is generosity itself; and how should I ever forgive myself if I
+allowed you to appear in society in an inadequate style. You have to
+take a high place, the very highest place, Lesbia; and you must be
+dressed in accordance with that position.'
+
+Lesbia said no more. After all it was Lady Kirkbank's business and not
+hers. See had been entrusted to Lady Kirkbank as to a person who
+thoroughly knew the great world, and she must submit to be governed by
+the wisdom and experience of her chaperon. If the bills were heavy, that
+would be Lady Kirkbank's affair; and no doubt dear grandmother was rich
+enough to afford anything Lesbia wanted. She had been told that she was
+to take rank among heiresses.
+
+Lady Maulevrier had given her granddaughter some old-fashioned
+ornaments, topaz, amethysts, turquoise--jewels that had belonged to dead
+and gone Talmashes and Angersthorpes--to be reset. This entailed a visit
+to a Bond Street jeweller, and in the dazzling glass-cases on the
+counter of the Bond Street establishment Lesbia saw a good many things
+which she felt were real necessities to her new phase of existence, and
+these, with Lady Kirkbank's approval, she ordered. They were not
+important matters. Half-a-dozen gold bangles of real oriental
+workmanship, three or four jewelled arrows, flies and beetles, and
+caterpillars, to pin on her laces and flowers, a diamond clasp for her
+pearl necklace, a dear little gold hunter to wear when she rode in the
+park, a diamond butterfly to light up that old-fashioned amethyst
+_parure_ which the jeweller was to reset with an artistic admixture of
+brilliants.
+
+'I am sure you would not like the effect without diamonds,' said the
+jeweller. 'Your amethysts are very fine, but they are dark and heavy in
+tone, and want a good deal of lighting-up, especially for the present
+fashion of half-lighted rooms. If you will allow me to use my own
+discretion, and mix in a few brilliants, I shall be able to produce a
+really artistic _parure_; otherwise I would not recommend you to touch
+them. The present setting is clumsy and inelegant; but I really do not
+know that I could improve upon it, without an admixture of brilliants.'
+
+'Will the diamonds add very much to the expense?' Lesbia inquired,
+timidly.
+
+'My dear child, you are perfectly safe in leaving the matter in Mr.
+Cabochon's hands,' interposed Lady Kirkbank, who had particular reasons
+for wishing to be on good terms with the head of the establishment. 'Your
+dear grandmother gave you the amethysts to be reset; and of course she
+would wish it to be done in an artistic manner. Otherwise, as Mr.
+Cabochon judiciously says, why have the stones reset at all? Better wear
+them in all their present hideousness.'
+
+Of course, after this Lesbia consented to the amethysts being dealt with
+according to Mr. Cabochon's taste.
+
+'Which is simply perfect,' interjected Lady Kirkbank.
+
+And now Lesbia's campaign began in real earnest--a life of pleasure, a
+life of utter selfishness and self-indulgence, which would go far to
+pervert the strongest mind, tarnish the purest nature. To dress and be
+admired--that was what Lesbia's life meant from morning till night. She
+had no higher or nobler aim. Even on Sunday mornings at the fashionable
+church, where the women sat on one side of the nave and the men on the
+other, where divinest music was as a pair of wings, on which the
+enraptured soul flew heavenward--even here Lesbia thought more of her
+bonnet and gloves--the _chic_ or non-_chic_ of her whole costume, than
+of the service. She might kneel gracefully, with her bent head, just
+revealing the ivory whiteness of a lovely throat, between the edge of
+her lace frilling and the flowers in her bonnet. She might look the
+fairest image of devotion; but how could a woman pray whose heart was a
+milliner's shop, whose highest ambition was to be prettier and better
+dressed than other women?
+
+The season was six weeks old. It was Ascot week, the crowning glory of
+the year, and Lesbia and her chaperon had secured tickets for the Royal
+enclosure--or it may be said rather that Lesbia had secured them--for
+the Master of the Royal Buckhounds might have omitted poor old Lady
+Kirkbank's familiar name from his list if it had not been for that
+lovely girl who went everywhere under the veteran's wing.
+
+Six weeks, and Lesbia's appearance in society had been one perpetual
+triumph; but as yet nothing serious had happened. She had had no offers.
+Half a dozen men had tried their hardest to propose to her--had sat out
+dances, had waylaid her in conservatories and in back drawing-rooms, in
+lobbies while she waited for her carriage--had looked at her piteously
+with tenderest declarations trembling on their lips; but she had
+contrived to keep them at bay, to strike them dumb by her coldness, or
+confound them by her coquetry; for all these were ineligibles, whom Lady
+Lesbia Haselden did not want to have the trouble of refusing.
+
+Lady Kirkbank was in no haste to marry her _protégée_--nay, it was much
+more to her interest that Lesbia should remain single for three or four
+seasons, and that she, Lady Kirkbank, might have the advantage of close
+association with the young beauty, and the privilege of spending Lady
+Maulevrier's money. But she would have liked to be able to inform
+Lesbia's grandmother of some tremendous conquest--the subjugation of a
+worthy victim. This herd of nobodies--younger sons with courtesy titles
+and empty pockets, ruined Guardsmen, briefless barristers--what was the
+use of telling Lady Maulevrier about such barren victories? Lady
+Kirkbank therefore contented herself with expatiating upon Lesbia's
+triumphs in a general way: how graciously the Princess spoke to her and
+about her; how she had been asked to sit on the dais at the ball at
+Marlborough House, and had danced in the Royal quadrille.
+
+'Has Lesbia happened to meet Lord Hartfield?' Lady Maulevrier asked,
+incidentally, in one of her letters.
+
+No. Lord Hartfield was in London, for he had made a great speech in the
+Lords on a question of vital interest; but he was not going into
+society, or at any rate into society of a frivolous kind. He had given
+himself up to politics, as so many young men did nowadays, which was
+altogether horrid of them. His name had appeared in the list of guests
+at one or two cabinet dinners; but the world of polo matches and
+afternoon teas, dances and drums, private theatricals, and Orleans House
+suppers, knew him not. As a competitor on the fashionable race-course,
+Lord Hartfield was, in common parlance, out of the running.
+
+And now on this glorious June day, this Thursday of Thursdays, the Ascot
+Cup day, for the first time since Lesbia's début, Lady Kirkbank had
+occasion to smile upon an admirer whose pretensions were worthy of the
+highest consideration.
+
+Mr. Smithson, of Park Lane, and Rood Hall, near Henley, and Formosa,
+Cowes, and Le Bouge, Deauville, and a good many other places too
+numerous to mention, was reputed to be one of the richest commoners in
+England. He was a man of that uncertain period of life which enemies
+call middle age, and friends call youth. That he would never see a
+five-and-thirtieth birthday again was certain; but whether he had passed
+the Rubicon of forty was open to doubt. It is possible that he was
+enjoying those few golden years between thirty-five and forty, which for
+the wealthy bachelor constitute verily the prime and summer-tide of
+life. Wisdom has come, experience has been bought, taste has been
+cultivated, the man has educated himself to the uttermost in the great
+school of daily life. He knows his world thoroughly, whatever that world
+is, and he knows how to enjoy every gift and every advantage which
+Providence has bestowed upon him.
+
+Mr. Smithson was a great authority on the Stock Exchange, though he had
+ceased for the last three or four years to frequent the 'House,' or to
+be seen in the purlieus of Throgmorton Street. Indeed he had an air of
+hardly knowing his way to the City, of being acquainted with that part
+of London only by hearsay. He complained that his horses shied at
+passing Temple Bar. And yet a few years ago Mr. Smithson's city
+operations had been on a very extensive scale: It was in the rise and
+fall of commodities rather than of stocks and shares that Horace
+Smithson had made his money. He had exercised occult influences upon the
+trade of the great city, of the world itself, whereof that city is in a
+manner the keystone. Iron had risen or fallen at his beck. At the breath
+of his nostrils cochineal had gone up in the market at an almost magical
+rate, as if the whole civilised world had become suddenly intent upon
+dyeing its garments red, nay, as if even the naked savages of the Gold
+Coast and the tribes of Central Africa were bent on staining their dusky
+skins with the bodies of the female coccus.
+
+Favoured by a hint from Smithson, his particular friends followed his
+lead, and rushed into the markets to buy all the cochineal that could be
+had; to buy at any price, since the market was rising hourly. And then,
+all in a moment, as the sky clouds over on a summer day, there came a
+dulness in the cochineal market, and the female coccus was being sold at
+an enormous sacrifice. And anon it leaked out that Mr. Smithson had
+grown tired of cochineal, and had been selling for the last week or two;
+and it was noised abroad that this rise and fall in cocci had brought
+Mr. Smithson seventy thousand pounds.
+
+Mr. Smithson was said to have commenced life in a very humble capacity.
+There were some who declared he was the very youth who stooped to pick
+up a pin in a Parisian banker's courtyard, after his services as clerk
+had just been rejected by the firm, and who was thereupon recognised as
+a youth worthy of favour and taken into the banker's office. But this
+touching incident of the pin was too ancient a tradition to fit Mr.
+Smithson, still under forty.
+
+Some there were who remembered him eighteen years ago as an adventurer
+in the great wilderness of London, penniless, friendless, a
+Jack-of-all-trades, living as the birds of the air live, and with as
+little certainty of future maintenance. And then Mr. Smithson
+disappeared for a space--he went under, as his friends called it; to
+re-appear fifteen years later as Smithson the millionaire. He had been
+in Peru, Mexico, California. He had traded in hides, in diamonds, in
+silver, in stocks and shares. And now he was the great Smithson, whose
+voice was the voice of an oracle, who was supposed to be able to make
+the fortunes of other men by a word, or a wink, a nod, or a little look
+across the crowd, and whom all the men and women in London
+society--short of that exclusive circle which does _not_ open its ranks
+to Smithsons--were ready to cherish and admire.
+
+Mr. Smithson had been in Petersburg, Paris, Vienna, all over civilised
+Europe during the last five weeks, whether on business or on pleasure
+bent, nobody knew. He affected to be an elegant idler; but it was said
+by the initiated that wherever Smithson went the markets rose or fell,
+and hides, iron, copper, or tin, felt the influence of his presence.
+
+He came back to London in time for the Cup Day, and in time to fall
+desperately in love with Lesbia, whom he met for the first time in the
+Royal enclosure.
+
+She was dressed in white, purest ivory white, from top to toe--radiant,
+dazzling, under an immense sunshade fringed with creamy marabouts. Her
+complexion--untouched by Seraphine--her dark and glossy hair, her large
+violet eyes, luminous, dark almost to blackness, were all set off and
+accentuated by the absence of colour in her costume. Even the cluster of
+exotics on her shoulder were of the same pure tint, gardenias and lilies
+of the valley.
+
+Mr. Smithson was formally presented to the new beauty, and received with
+a cool contempt which riveted his chains. He was so accustomed to be run
+after by women, that it was a new sensation to meet one who was not in
+the least impressed by his superior merits.
+
+'I don't suppose the girl knows who I am,' he said to himself, for
+although he had a very good idea of his intrinsic worth, he knew that
+his wealth ranked first among his merits.
+
+But on after occasions when Lesbia had been told all that could be told
+to the advantage of Mr. Smithson, she accepted his homage with the same
+indifference, and treated him with less favour than she accorded to the
+ruined guardsmen and younger sons who were dying for her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+'PROUD CAN I NEVER BE OF WHAT I HATE.'
+
+
+It was a Saturday afternoon, and even in that great world which has no
+occupation in life except to amuse itself, whose days are all holidays,
+there is a sort of exceptional flavour, a kind of extra excitement on
+Saturday afternoons, distinguished by polo matches at Hurlingham, just
+as Saturday evenings are by the production of new plays at fashionable
+theatres. There was a great military polo match for this particular
+Saturday--Lancers against Dragoons. It was a lovely June afternoon, and
+Hurlingham would be at its best. The cool greensward, the branching
+trees, the flowing river, would afford an unspeakable relief after the
+block of carriages in Bond Street and the heated air of London, where
+even the parks felt baked and arid; and to Hurlingham Lady Kirkbank
+drove directly after luncheon.
+
+Lesbia leaned back in the barouche listening calmly, while her chaperon
+expatiated upon the wealth and possessions of Horace Smithson. It was
+now ten days since the meeting at Ascot, and Mr. Smithson had contrived
+to see a great deal of Lesbia in that short time. He was invited almost
+everywhere, and he had haunted her at afternoon and evening parties; he
+had supped in Arlington Street after the opera; he had played cards with
+Lesbia, and had enjoyed the felicity of winning her money. His
+admiration was obvious, and there was a seriousness in his manner of
+pursuing her which showed that, in Lady Kirkbank's unromantic
+phraseology, 'the man meant business.'
+
+'Smithson is caught at last, and I am glad of it,' said Georgie.
+
+'The creature is an abominable flirt, and has broken more hearts than
+any man in London. He was all but the death of one of the dearest girls
+I know.'
+
+'Mr. Smithson breaks hearts!' exclaimed Lesbia, languidly. 'I should not
+have thought that was in his line. Mr. Smithson is not an Adonis, nor
+are his manners particularly fascinating.'
+
+'My child how fresh you are! Do you suppose it is the handsome men or
+the fascinating men for whom women break their hearts in society? It is
+the rich men they all want to marry--men like Smithson, who can give
+them diamonds, and yachts, and a hunting stud, and half a dozen fine
+houses. Those are the prizes--the blue ribbons of the matrimonial
+race-course--men like Smithson, who pretend to admire all the pretty
+women, who dangle, and dangle, and keep off other offers, and give ten
+guinea bouquets, and then at the end of the season are off to Hombourg
+or the Scotch moors, without a word. Do you think that kind of treatment
+is not hard enough to break a penniless girl's heart? She sees the
+golden prize within her grasp, as she believes; she thinks that she and
+poverty have parted company for ever; she imagines herself mistress of
+town house and country houses, yachts and stables; and then one fine
+morning the gentleman is off and away! Do not you think that is enough
+to break a girl's heart?'
+
+'I can imagine that a girl steeped to the lips in poverty might be willing
+to marry Mr. Smithson's houses and yachts,' answered Lesbia, in her low
+sweet voice, with a faint sneer even amidst the sweetness, 'but, I think
+it must have been a happy release for any one to be let off the
+sacrifice at the last moment.'
+
+'Poor Belle Trinder did not think so.'
+
+'Who was Belle Trinder?'
+
+'An Essex parson's daughter whom I took under my wing five years ago--a
+splendid girl, large and fair, and just a trifle coarse--not to be
+spoken of in the same day with you, dearest; but still a decidedly
+handsome creature. And she took remarkably well. She was a very lively
+girl, "never ran mute," Sir George used to say. Sir George was very fond
+of her. She amused him, poor girl, with her rather brainless rattle.'
+
+'And Mr. Smithson admired her?'
+
+'Followed her about everywhere, sent her whole flower gardens in the way
+of bouquets and Japanese baskets, and floral _parures_ for her gowns,
+and opera boxes and concert tickets. Their names were always coupled.
+People used to call them Bel and the Dragon. The poor child made up her
+mind she was to be Mrs. Smithson. She used to talk of what she would do
+for her own people--the poor old father, buried alive in a damp
+parsonage, and struggling every winter with chronic bronchitis; the four
+younger sisters pining in dulness and penury; the mother who hardly knew
+what it was to rest from the continual worries of daily life.'
+
+'Poor things!' sighed Lesbia, gazing admiringly at the handle of her
+last new sunshade.
+
+'Belle used to talk of what she would do for them all,' pursued Lady
+Kirkbank. 'Father should go every year to the villa at Monte Carlo;
+mother and the girls should have a month in Park Lane every season, and
+their autumn holiday at one of Mr. Smithson's country houses. I knew the
+world well enough to be sure that this kind of thing would never answer
+with a man like Smithson. It is only one man in a thousand--the modern
+Arthur, the modern Quixote--who will marry a whole family. I told Belle
+as much, but she laughed. She felt so secure of her power over the man.
+"He will do anything I ask him," she said.'
+
+'Miss Trinder must be an extraordinary young person,' observed Lesbia,
+scornfully. 'The man had not proposed, had he?'
+
+'No; the actual proposal hung fire, but Belle thought it was a settled
+thing all the same. Everybody talked to her as if she were engaged to
+Smithson, and those poor, ignorant vicarage girls used to write her long
+letters of congratulation, envying her good fortune, speculating about
+what she would do when she was married. The girl was too open and candid
+for London society--talked too much, "gave the view before she was sure
+of her fox," Sir George said. All this silly talk came to Smithson's
+ears, and one morning we read in the Post that Mr. Smithson had started
+the day before for Algiers, where he was to stay at the house of the
+English Consul, and hunt lions. We waited all day, hoping for some
+letter of explanation, some friendly farewell which would mean _à
+revoir_. But there was nothing, and then poor Belle gave way altogether.
+She shut herself up in her room, and went out of one hysterical fit into
+another. I never heard a girl sob so terribly. She was not fit to be
+seen for a week, and then she went home to her father's parsonage in the
+flat swampy country on the borders of Suffolk, and eat her heart, as
+Byron calls it. And the worst of it was that she had no actual
+justification for considering herself jilted. She had talked, and other
+people had talked, and among them they had settled the business. But
+Smithson had said hardly anything. He had only flirted to his heart's
+content, and had spent a few hundreds upon flowers, gloves, fans, and
+opera tickets, which perhaps would not have been accepted by a girl with
+a strong sense of her own dignity.'
+
+'I should think not, indeed,' interjected Lesbia.
+
+'But which poor Belle was only too delighted to get.'
+
+'Miss Trinder must be very bad style,' said Lesbia, with languid scorn,
+'and Mr. Smithson is an execrable person. Did she die?'
+
+'No, my dear, she is alive poor soul!'
+
+'You said she broke her heart.'
+
+'"The heart may break, yet brokenly live on,"' quoted Lady Kirkbank.
+'The disappointed young women don't all die. They take to district
+visiting, or rational dressing, or china painting, or an ambulance
+brigade. The lucky ones marry well-to-do widowers with large families,
+and so slip into a comfortable groove by the time they are
+five-and-thirty. Poor Belle is still single, still buried in the damp
+parsonage, where she paints plates and teacups, and wears out my old
+gowns, just as she is wearing out her own life, poor creature!'
+
+'The idea of any one wanting to marry Mr. Smithson,' said Lesbia. 'It
+seems too dreadful.'
+
+'A case of real destitution, you think. Wait till you have seen
+Smithson's house in Park Lane--his team, his yacht, his orchid houses in
+Berkshire.'
+
+Lesbia sighed. Her knowledge of London society was only seven weeks old;
+and yet already the day of disenchantment had begun! She was having her
+eyes opened to the stern realities of life. A year ago when her
+appearance in the great world was still only a dream of the future, she
+had pictured to herself the crowd of suitors who would come to woo, and
+she had resolved to choose the worthiest.
+
+What would he be like, that worthiest among the wooers, that King Arthur
+among her knights?
+
+First and foremost, he would be of rank higher than her own--a duke, a
+marquis, or one of the first and oldest among earls. Title and lofty
+lineage were indispensable. It would be a fall, a failure, a
+disappointment, were she to marry a commoner, however distinguished.
+
+The worthy one must be noble, therefore, and of the old nobility. He
+must be young, handsome, intellectual. He must stand out from among his
+peers by his gifts of mind and person. He must have won distinction in
+the arena of politics or diplomacy, arms or letters. He must be
+'somebody.'
+
+She had been seven weeks in society, and this modern Arthur had not
+appeared. So far as she had been able to discover, there was no such
+person. The dukes and marquises were mostly men of advanced years. The
+young unmarried nobility were given over to sport, play, and
+foolishness. She had heard of only one man who at all corresponded with
+her ideal, and he was Lord Hartfield. But Lord Hartfield had given
+himself up to politics, and was no doubt a prig. Lady Kirkbank spoke of
+him with contempt, as an intolerable person. But then Lord Hartfield was
+not in Lady Kirkbank's set. He belonged to that serious circle to which
+Lady Kirkbank's house appeared about as reputable a place of gathering
+as a booth on a race-course.
+
+And now Lady Kirkbank told Lesbia that this Mr. Smithson, a nobody with
+a great fortune, was a man whose addresses she, the sister of Lord
+Maulevrier, ought to welcome. Mr. Smithson, who claimed to be a lineal
+descendant of that Sir Michael Carrington, standard-bearer to Coeur de
+Lion in the Holy Land, whose descendants changed their name to Smith
+during the Wars of the Roses. Mr. Smithson bodily proclaimed himself a
+scion of this good old county family, and bore on his plate and his
+coach panels the elephant's head and the three demi-griffins of the
+Hertfordshire Smiths, who only smiled and shrugged their shoulders when
+they were complimented upon the splendid surroundings of their cousin.
+Who could tell? Some lateral branch of the standard-bearer's family tree
+might have borne this illustrious twig.
+
+Lady Kirkbank and all Lady Kirkbank's friends seemed to have conspired
+to teach Lesbia Haselden one lesson, and that lesson meant that money
+was the first prize in the great game of life. Money ranked before
+everything--before titles, before noble lineage, genius, fame, beauty,
+courage, honour. Money was Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end.
+Mr. Smithson, whose antecedents were as cloudy as those of Aphrodite,
+was a greater man than a peer whose broad acres only brought him two per
+cent., or half of whose farms were tenantless, and his fields growing
+cockle instead of barley.
+
+Yes, one by one, Lady Lesbia's illusions were reft from her. A year ago
+she had fancied beauty all-powerful, a gift which must ensure to its
+possessor dominion over all the kingdoms of the earth. Rank, intellect,
+fame would bow down before that magical diadem. And, behold, she had
+been shining upon London society for seven weeks, and only empty heads
+and empty pockets had bowed down--the frivolous, the ineligible,--and
+Mr. Smithson.
+
+Another illusion which had been dispelled was Lesbia's comfortable idea
+of her own expectations. Her grandmother had told her that she might
+take rank among heiresses; and she had held herself accordingly, deeming
+that her place was among the wealthiest. And now, since Mr. Smithson's
+appearance upon the scene, Lady Kirkbank had informed her young friend
+with noble candour that Lady Maulevrier's fortune, however large it
+might seem at Grasmere, would be a poor thing in London; and that Lady
+Maulevrier's ideas about money were as old-fashioned as her notions
+about morals.
+
+'Life is about six times as expensive as it was in your grandmother's
+time.' said Lady Kirkbank, as the carriage rolled softly along the
+shabby road between Knightsbridge and Fulham. 'It is the pace that
+kills. Society, which used to jog along comfortably, like the old
+Brighton stage, at ten miles an hour, now goes as fast as the Brighton
+express. In my mother's time poor Lord Byron was held up to the
+execration of respectable people as the type of cynical profligacy; in
+my own time people talked about Lord Waterford; but, my dear, the young
+men now are all Byrons and Waterfords, without the genius of the one or
+the generosity of the other. We are all going at steeplechase rate.
+Social success without money is impossible. The rich Americans, the
+successful Jews, will crowd us out unless we keep pace with them. Ah,
+Lesbia, my dear girl, there would be a great future before you if you
+could only make up your mind to accept Mr. Smithson.'
+
+'How do you know that he means to propose to me?' asked Lesbia,
+mockingly. 'Perhaps he is only going to behave as he did to Miss
+Trinder.'
+
+'Lady Lesbia Haselden is a very different person from a country parson's
+daughter,' answered her chaperon; 'Smithson told me all about it
+afterwards. He was really taken with Belle's fine figure and good
+complexion; but one of her particular friends told him of her foolish
+talk about her sisters, and how well she meant to get them married when
+she was Mrs. Smithson. This disgusted him. He went down to Essex,
+reconnoitered the parsonage, saw one of the sisters hanging out cuffs
+and collars in the orchard--another feeding the fowls--both in shabby
+gowns and country-made boots; one of them with red hair and freckles.
+The mother was bargaining for fish with a hawker at the kitchen door.
+And these were the people he was expected to import into Park Lane,
+under ceilings painted by Leighton. These were the people he was to
+exhibit on board his yacht, to cart about on his drag. "I had half made
+up my mind to marry the girl, but I would sooner have hung myself than
+marry her mother and sisters so I took the first train for Dover, en
+route for Algiers," said Smithson, and upon my word I could hardly blame
+the man,' concluded Lady Kirkbank.
+
+They were driving up the narrow avenue to the gates of Hurlingham by
+this time. Lesbia shook out her frock and looked at her gloves,
+tan-coloured mousquetaires, reaching up to the elbow, and embroidered to
+match her frock.
+
+To-day she was a study in brown and gold. Brown satin petticoat
+embroidered with marsh marigolds; little bronze shoes, with marsh
+marigolds tied on the latchets; brown stockings with marsh marigold
+clocks; tunic brown foulard smothered with quillings of soft brown lace;
+Princess bonnet of brown straw, with a wreath of marsh marigold and a
+neat little buckle of brown diamonds; parasol brown satin, with an
+immense bunch of marsh marigolds on the top; fan to match parasol.
+
+The seats in front of the field were nearly all full when Lady Kirkbank
+and Lesbia left their carriage; but their interests had been protected
+by a gentleman who had turned down two chairs and sat between them on
+guard. This was Mr. Smithson.
+
+'I have been sitting here for an hour keeping your chairs,' he said, as
+he rose to greet them. 'You have no idea what work I have had, and how
+ferociously all the women have looked at me.'
+
+The match was going on. The Lancers were scuffling for the ball, and
+affording a fine display of hog-maned ponies and close-cropped young men
+in ideal boots. But Lesbia cared very little about the match. She was
+looking along the serried ranks of youth and beauty to see if anybody's
+frock was smarter than her own.
+
+No. She could see nothing she liked so well as her brown satin and
+buttercups. She sat down in a perfectly contented frame of mind, pleased
+with herself and with Seraphine--pleased even with Mr. Smithson, who had
+shown himself devoted by his patient attendance upon the empty chairs.
+
+After the match was over the two ladies and their attendant strolled
+about the gardens. Other men came and fluttered round Lesbia, and women
+and girls exchanged endearing smiles and pretty little words of greeting
+with her, and envied her the brown frock and buttercups and Mr. Smithson
+at her chariot wheel. And then they went to the lawn in front of the
+club-house, which was so crowded that even Mr. Smithson found it
+difficult to get a tea-table, and would hardly have succeeded so soon as
+he did if it had not been for the assistance of a couple of Lesbia's
+devoted Guardsmen, who ran to and fro and badgered the waiters.
+
+After much skirmishing they were seated at a rustic table, the blue
+river gleaming and glancing in the distance, the good old trees
+spreading their broad shadows over the grass, the company crowding and
+chattering and laughing--an animated picture of pretty faces, smart
+gowns, big parasols, Japanese fans.
+
+Lesbia poured out the tea with the prettiest air of domesticity.
+
+'Can you really pour out tea?' gasped a callow lieutenant, gazing upon
+her with goggling, enraptured eyes. 'I did not think you could do
+anything so earthly.'
+
+'I can, and drink it too,' answered Lesbia, laughing. 'I adore tea.
+Cream and sugar?'
+
+'I--I beg your pardon--how many?' murmured the youth, who had lost
+himself in gazing, and no longer understood plain English.
+
+Mr. Smithson frowned at the intruder, and contrived to absorb Lesbia's
+attention for the rest of the afternoon. He had a good deal more to say
+for himself than her military admirers, and was altogether more amusing.
+He had a little cynical air which Lesbia's recent education had taught
+her to enjoy. He depreciated all her female friends--abused their gowns
+and bonnets, and gave her to understand, between the lines, as it were,
+that she was the only woman in London worth thinking about.
+
+She looked at him curiously, wondering how Belle Trinder had been able
+to resign herself to the idea of marrying him.
+
+He was not absolutely bad looking--but he was in all things unlike a
+girl's ideal lover. He was short and stout, with a pale complexion, and
+sunken faded eyes, as of a man who had spent the greater part of his
+life by candle light, and had pored much over ledgers and bank books,
+share lists and prospectuses. He dressed well, or allowed himself to be
+dressed by the most correct of tailors--the Prince's tailor--but he
+never attempted to lead the fashion in his garments. He had no
+originality. Such sublime flights as that of the man who revived
+corduroy, or of that daring genius who resuscitated the half-forgotten
+Inverness coat, were unknown to him. He could only follow the lead of
+the highest. He had small feet, of which he was intensely proud, podgy
+white hands on which he wore the most exquisite rings. He changed his
+rings every day, like a Roman Emperor; was reported to have summer and
+winter rings--onyx and the coolest looking intaglios set in filagree for
+warm weather--fiery rubies and diamonds in massive bands of dull gold
+for winter. He was said to devote half-an-hour every morning to the
+treatment of his nails, which were perfect. All the inkstains of his
+youth had been obliterated, and those nails which had once been bitten
+to the quick during the throes of financial study were now things of
+beauty.
+
+Lady Lesbia surveyed Mr. Smithson critically, and shuddered at the
+thought that this person was the best substitute which the season had
+yet offered her for her ideal knight. She thought of John Hammond, the
+tall, strong figure, straight and square; the head so proudly carried on
+a neck which would have graced a Greek arena. The straight, clearly-cut
+features, the flashing eyes, bright with youth and hope and the promise
+of all good things. Yes, there was indeed a man--a man in all the
+nobility of manhood, as God made him, an Adam before the Fall.
+
+Ah, if John Hammond had only possessed a quarter of Mr. Smithson's
+wealth how gladly would Lesbia have defied the world and married him.
+But to defy the world upon nothing a year was out of the question.
+
+'Why didn't he go on the Stock Exchange and make his fortune?' thought
+Lesbia, pettishly, 'instead of talking vaguely about politics and
+literature.'
+
+She felt angry with her rejected lover for having come to her
+empty-handed. She had seen no man in London who was, or who seemed to
+her, his equal. And yet she did not repent of having rejected him. The
+more she knew of the world and the more she knew of herself the more
+deeply was she convinced that poverty was an evil thing, and that she
+was not the right kind of person to endure it.
+
+She was inwardly making these comparisons as they strolled back to the
+carriage, while Mr. Smithson and Lady Kirkbank talked confidentially at
+her side.
+
+'Do you know that Lady Kirkbank has promised and vowed three things for
+you?' said Mr. Smithson.
+
+'Indeed! I thought I was past the age at which one can be compromised by
+other people's promises. Pray what are those three things?'
+
+'First, that you will come to breakfast in Park Lane with Lady Kirkbank
+next Wednesday morning. I say Wednesday because that will give me time
+to ask some nice people to meet you; secondly, that you will honour me
+by occupying my box at the Lyceum some evening next week; and thirdly,
+that you will allow me to drive you down to the Orleans for supper after
+the play. The drive only takes an hour, and the moonlight nights are
+delicious at this time of the year.'
+
+'I am in Lady Kirkbank's hands,' answered Lesbia, laughing. 'I am her
+goods, her chattels; she takes me wherever she likes.'
+
+'But would you refuse to do me this honour if you were a free agent?'
+
+'I can't tell. I hardly know what it is to be a free agent. At Grasmere
+I did whatever my grandmother told me; in London I obey Lady Kirkbank. I
+was transferred from one master to another. Why should we breakfast in
+Park Lane instead of in Arlington Street? What is the use of crossing
+Piccadilly to eat our breakfast?'
+
+This was a cool-headed style of treatment to which Mr. Smithson was not
+accustomed, and which charmed him accordingly. Young women usually threw
+themselves at his head, as it were; but here was a girl who talked to
+him as indifferently as if he were a tradesman offering his wares.
+
+'What a dreadfully practical person you are!' he exclaimed. 'What is the
+use of crossing Piccadilly? Well, in the first place, you will make me
+ineffably happy. But perhaps that doesn't count. In the second place, I
+shall be able to show you some rather good pictures of the French
+school--'
+
+'I hate the French school!' interjected Lesbia. 'Tricky, flashy, chalky,
+shallow, smelling of the footlights and the studio.'
+
+'Well, sink the pictures. You will meet some very charming people,
+belonging to that artist world which is not to be met everywhere.'
+
+'I will go to Park Lane to meet your people, if Lady Kirkbank likes to
+take me,' said Lesbia; and with this answer Mr. Smithson was bound to be
+content.
+
+'My pet, if you had made it the study of your life how to treat that man
+you could not do it better,' said Lady Kirkbank, when they were driving
+along the dusty road between dusty hedges and dusty trees, past that
+last remnant of country which was daily being debased into London.
+'Upon my word, Lesbia, I begin to think you must be a genius.'
+
+'Did you see any gowns you liked better than mine?' asked Lesbia,
+reclining reposefully, with her little bronze shoes upon the opposite
+cushion.
+
+'Not one--Seraphine has surpassed herself.'
+
+'You are always saying that. One would suppose you were a sleeping
+partner in the firm. But I really think this brown and buttercups is
+rather nice. I saw that odious American girl just now--Miss--Miss
+Milwaukee, that mop-stick girl people raved about at Cannes. She was in
+pale blue and cream colour, a milk and water mixture, and looked
+positively plain.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+LESBIA CROSSES PICCADILLY.
+
+
+Lady Kirkbank and Lady Lesbia drove across Piccadilly at eleven o'clock
+on Wednesday morning to breakfast with Mr. Smithson, and although Lesbia
+had questioned whether it was worth while crossing Piccadilly to eat
+one's breakfast, she had subsequently considered it worth while ordering
+a new gown from Seraphine for the occasion; or, it may be, rather that
+the breakfast made a plausible excuse for a new gown, the pleasure of
+ordering which was one of those joys of a London life that had not yet
+lost their savour.
+
+The gown, devised especially for the early morning, was simplicity
+itself--rusticity, even. It was a Dresden shepherdess gown, made of a
+soft flowered stuff, with roses and forget-me-nots on a creamy ground.
+There was a great deal of creamy lace, and innumerable yards of palest
+azure and palest rose ribbon in the confection, and there was a
+coquettish little hat, the regular Dresden hat, with a wreath of
+rosebuds.
+
+'Dresden china incarnate!' exclaimed Smithson, as he welcomed Lady
+Lesbia on the threshold of his marble hall, under the glass marquise
+which sheltered arrivals at his door. 'Why do you make yourself so
+lovely? I shall want to keep you in one of my Louis Seize cabinets, with
+the rest of my Dresden!'
+
+Lady Kirkbank had considered the occasion suitable for one of her
+favourite cotton frocks and rustic hats--a Leghorn hat, with clusters of
+dog-roses and honeysuckle, and a trail of the same hedge-flowers to
+fasten her muslin fichu.
+
+Mr. Smithson's house in Park Lane was simply perfect. It is wonderful
+what good use a _parvenu_ can make of his money nowadays, and how rarely
+he disgraces himself by any marked offences against good taste. There
+are so many people at hand to teach the _parvenu_ how to furnish his
+house, or how to choose his stud. If he go wrong it must be by sheer
+perversity, an arrogant insistence upon being governed by his own
+ignorant inclinations.
+
+Mr. Smithson was too good a tactician to go wrong in this way. He had
+taken the trouble to study the market before he went out to buy his
+goods. He knew that taste and knowledge were to be bought just as easily
+as chairs and tables, and he went to the right shop. He employed a
+clever Scotchman, an artist in domestic furniture, to plan his house,
+and make drawings for the decoration and furniture of every room--and
+for six months he gave himself up to the task of furnishing.
+
+Money was spent like water. Painters, decorators, cabinet-makers had a
+merry time of it. Royal Academicians were impressed into the service by
+large offers, and the final result of Mr. MacWalter's taste and Mr.
+Smithson's bullion was a palace in the style of the Italian Renaissance,
+frescoed ceilings, painted panels, a staircase of sculptured marble, as
+beautiful as a dream, a conservatory as exquisite as a jewel casket by
+Benvenuto Cellini, a picture gallery which was the admiration of all
+London, and of the enlightened foreigner, and of the inquiring American.
+This was the house which Lesbia had been brought to see, and through
+which she walked with the calmly critical air of a person who had seen
+so many palaces that one more or less could make no difference.
+
+In vain did Mr. Smithson peruse her countenance in the hope of seeing
+that she was impressed by the splendour of his surroundings, and by the
+power of the man who commanded such splendour. Lesbia was as cold as the
+Italian sculptor's Reading Girl in an alcove of Mr. Smithson's picture
+gallery; and the stockbroker felt very much as Aladdin might have done
+if the fair Badroulbadour had shown herself indifferent to the hall of
+the jewelled windows, in that magical palace which sprang into being in
+a single night.
+
+Lesbia had been impressed by that story of poor Belle Trinder and by
+Lady Kirkbank's broad assertion that half the young women in London were
+running after Mr. Smithson; and she had made up her mind to treat the
+man with supreme scorn. She did not want his houses or his yachts.
+Nothing could induce her to marry such a man, she told herself; but her
+vanity fed upon the idea of his subjugation, and her pride was gratified
+by the sense of her power over him.
+
+The guests were few and choice. There was Mr. Meander, the poet, one of
+the leading lights in that new sect which prides itself upon the
+cultivation of abstract beauty, and occasionally touches the verge of
+concrete ugliness. There were a newspaper man--the editor of a
+fashionable journal--and a middle-aged man of letters, playwright,
+critic, humourist, a man whose society was in demand everywhere, and who
+said sharp things with the most supreme good-nature. The only ladies
+whose society Mr. Smithson had deemed worthy the occasion were a
+fashionable actress, with her younger sister, the younger a pretty copy
+of the elder, both dressed picturesquely in flowing cashmere gowns of
+faint sea-green, with old lace fichus, leghorn hats, and a general
+limpness and simplicity of style which suited their cast of feature and
+delicate colouring. Lesbia wondered to see how good an effect could be
+produced by a costume which could have cost so little. Mr. Nightshade,
+the famous tragedian, had been also asked to grace the feast, but the
+early hour made the invitation a mockery. It was not to be supposed that
+a man who went to bed at daybreak would get up again before the sun was
+in the zenith, for the sake of Mr. Smithson's society, or Mr. Smithson's
+Strasbourg pie, for the manufacture whereof a particular breed of geese
+were supposed to be set apart, like sacred birds in Egypt, while a
+particular vineyard in the Gironde was supposed to be devoted wholly and
+solely to the production of Mr. Smithson's claret. It was a cabinet
+wine, like those rare vintages of the Rhineland which are reserved
+exclusively for German princes.
+
+Breakfast was served in Mr. Smithson's smallest dining-room--there were
+three apartments given up to feasting, beginning with a spacious
+banqueting-room for great dinners, and dwindling down to this snuggery,
+which held about a dozen comfortably, with ample room and verge enough
+for the attendants. The walls were old gold silk, the curtains a tawny
+velvet of deeper tone, the cabinets and buffet of dark Italian walnut,
+inlaid with lapis-lazuli and amber. The fireplace was a masterpiece of
+cabinet work, with high narrow shelves, and curious recesses holding
+priceless jars of Oriental enamel. The deep hearth was filled with arum
+lilies and azalias, like a font at Easter.
+
+Lady Kirkbank, who pretended to adore genius, was affectionately
+effusive to Miss Fitzherbert, the popular actress, but she rather
+ignored the sister. Lesbia was less cordial, and was not enchanted at
+finding that Miss Fitzherbert shone and sparkled at the breakfast table
+by the gaiety of her spirits and the brightness of her conversation.
+There was something frank and joyous, almost to childishness, in the
+actress's manner, which was full of fascination; and Lesbia felt herself
+at a disadvantage almost for the first time since she had been in
+London.
+
+The editor, the wit, the poet, the actress, had a language of their own;
+and Lesbia felt herself out in the cold, unable to catch the ball as it
+glanced past her, not quick enough to follow the wit that evoked those
+ripples of silvery laughter from the two fair-haired, pale-faced girls
+in sea-green cashmere. She felt as an Englishman may feel who has made
+himself master of academical French, and who takes up one of Zola's
+novels, or goes into artistic society, and finds that there is another
+French, a complete and copious language, of which he knows not a word.
+
+Lesbia began to think that she had a great deal to learn. She began to
+wonder even whether, in the event of her having made rather too free use
+of Lady Maulevrier's _carte blanche_, it might not be well to make a new
+departure in the art of dressing, and to wear untrimmed cashmere gowns,
+and rags of limp lace.
+
+After breakfast they all went to look at Mr. Smithson's picture gallery.
+His pictures were, as he had told Lesbia, chiefly of the French school,
+and there may have been a remote period--say, in the time of good Queen
+Charlotte--when such pictures would hardly have been exhibited to young
+ladies. His pictures were Mr. Smithson's own unaided choice. Here the
+individual taste of the man stood revealed.
+
+There were two or three Geromes; and in the place of honour at the end
+of the gallery there was a grand Delaroche, Anne Boleyn's last letter to
+the king, the hapless girl-queen sitting at a table in her gloomy cell
+in the Tower, a shaft of golden light from the narrow window streaming
+on the fair, disordered hair, the face bleached with unutterable woe, a
+sublime image of despair and self-abandonment.
+
+The larger pictures were historical, classic, grand; but the smaller
+pictures--the lively little bits of colour dotted in here and
+there--were of that new school which Mr. Smithson affected. They were of
+that school which is called Impressionist, in which ballet dancers and
+jockeys, burlesque actresses, masked balls, and all the humours of the
+side scenes are represented with the sublime audacity of an art which
+disdains finish, and relies on _chic, fougue, chien, flou, élan_, the
+inspiration of the moment. Lesbia blushed as she looked at the ballet
+girls, the maskers in their scanty raiment, the _demi-mondaines_ lolling
+out of their opera boxes, and half out of their gowns, with false smiles
+and frizzled hair. And then there came the works of that other school
+which lavishes the finish of a Meissonier on the most meretricious
+compositions. A woman in a velvet gown warming her dainty little feet on
+a gilded fender, in a boudoir all aglow with colour and lamplight; a
+cavalier in satin raiment buckling his sword-belt before a Venetian
+mirror; a pair of lovers kissing in a sunlit corridor; a girl in a
+hansom cab; a milliner's shop; and so on, and so on.
+
+Then came the classical subjects of the last new school. Weak imitations
+of Alma Tadema. Nero admiring his mother's corpse; Claudius interrupting
+Messalina's marriage with her lover Silus; Clodius disguised among the
+women of Cæsar's household; Pyrrha's grotto. Lady Kirkbank expatiated
+upon all the pictures, and generally made unlucky guesses at the
+subjects of them. Classical literature was not her strong point.
+
+Mr. Meander, the poet, discovered that all the beautiful heads were
+like Miss Fitzherbert. 'It is the same line,' he exclaimed, 'the line of
+lilies and flowing waters--the gracious ineffable upward returning
+ripple of the true _retroussé_ nose, the divine _flou_, the loveliness
+which has lain dormant for centuries--nay, was at one period of debased
+art scorned and trampled under foot by the porcine multitude, as akin to
+the pug and the turn-up, until discovered and enshrined on the altar of
+the Beautiful by the Boticelli Revivalists.'
+
+Miss Fitzherbert simpered, and accepted these remarks as mere statements
+of obvious fact. She was accustomed to hear of Boticelli and the early
+Italian painters in connection with her own charms of face and figure.
+
+Lesbia, whose faultless features were of the aquiline type, regarded the
+bard's rhapsody as insufferable twaddle, and began to think Mr. Smithson
+almost a wit when he made fun of the bard.
+
+Smithson was enchanted when she laughed at his jokelets, even although
+she did not scruple to tell him that she thought his favourite pictures
+detestable, and looked with the eye of indifference on a collection of
+jade that was worth a small fortune.
+
+Mr. Meander fell into another rhapsody over those classic cups and
+shallow little bowls of absinthe-coloured jade.
+
+'Here if you like, are colour and beauty,' he murmured, caressing one of
+the little cups with the roseate tips of his supple fingers. 'These,
+dearest Smithson, are worth all the rest of your collection; worth
+vanloads of your cloisonné enamels, your dragon-jars in blood-colour and
+blue. This cloudy indefinable substance, not crudely transparent nor yet
+distinctly opaque, a something which touches the boundary line of two
+worlds--the real and the ideal. And then the colour! Great heaven, can
+anything be lovelier than this shadowy tint which is neither yellow nor
+green; faint, faint as the dawn of newly-awakened day? After the siege
+of blood-bedabbled Delhi, Baron Rothschild sent a special agent to India
+to buy him a little jade tea-pot which had been the joy of Eastern
+Kings. Only a tea-pot. Yet Rothschild deemed it worth a voyage from
+England to India. That is what the love of the beautiful means, in Jew
+or Gentile,' concluded the bard, smiling on the company, as they
+gathered round the Florentine table on which the jade specimens were set
+out, Lady Kirkbank looking at the little cups and basins as if she
+thought they were going to do something, after all this fuss had been
+made about them. It seemed hardly credible that any reasonable being
+could have given thirty guineas for one of those bits of greenish-yellow
+clouded glass, unless the thing had some peculiar property of expansion
+or contraction.
+
+After this breakfast in Park Lane Lady Lesbia and her admirer met daily.
+He went to all her parties; he sat out waltzes with her, in
+conservatories, and on staircases; for Horace Smithson was much too
+shrewd a man to enter himself in the race for dancing men, handicapped
+by his forty years and his fourteen stone. He contrived to amuse Lesbia
+by his conversation, which was essentially mundane, depreciating people
+whom all the rest of the world admired, or pretended to admire, telling
+her of the secret springs by which the society she saw around her was
+moved. He was judicious in his revelations of hidden evil, and careful
+to say nothing which should offend Lady Lesbia's modesty; yet he
+contrived in a very short time to teach her that the world in which she
+lived was an utterly corrupt world, whose high priest was Satan; that
+all lofty aspirations and noble sentiments were out of place in society;
+and that the worst among the people she met were the people who laid any
+claim to being better than their neighbours.
+
+'That's why I adore Lady Kirkbank,' he said, confidentially. 'The dear
+soul never pretends to be any better than the rest of us. She gambles,
+and we all know she gambles; she pegs, and we all know she pegs; and she
+makes rather a boast of being up to her eyes in debt. No humbug about
+dear old Georgie.'
+
+Lesbia had seen enough of her chaperon by this time to know that Mr.
+Smithson's description of the lady was correct, and, this being so, she
+supposed that the facts and traits of character which he told her about
+in other people were also true. She thus adopted the Smithsonian, or
+fashionable-pessimist view of society in general, and resigned herself
+to the idea that the world was a very wicked world, as well as a very
+pleasant world, that the wickedest people were generally the
+pleasantest, and that it did not much matter.
+
+The fact that Mr. Smithson was at Lesbia Haselden's feet was obvious to
+everybody.
+
+Lesbia, who had at first treated him with supreme hauteur, had grown
+more civil as she began to understand the place he held in the world,
+and how much social influence goes along with unlimited wealth. She was
+civil, but she had quite made up her mind that nothing could ever induce
+her to become Horace Smithson's wife. That offer which had hung fire in
+the case of poor Belle Trinder, was not too long delayed on this
+occasion. Mr. Smithson called in Arlington Street about ten days after
+the breakfast in Park Lane, before luncheon, and before Lady Kirkbank
+had left her room. He brought tickets for a _matinée d'invitation_ in
+Belgrave Square, at which a new and wonderful Russian pianiste was to
+make a kind of semi-official _début_, before an audience of critics and
+distinguished amateurs, and the elect of the musical world. They were
+tickets which money could not buy, and were thus a meet offering for
+Lady Lesbia, and a plausible excuse for an early call.
+
+Mr. Smithson succeeded in seeing Lesbia alone, and then and there, with
+very little circumlocution, asked her to be his wife.
+
+Her social education had advanced considerably since that summer day in
+the pine-wood, when John Hammond had wooed her with passionate wooing.
+Mr. Smithson was a much less ardent suitor, and made his offer with the
+air of a man who expects to be accepted.
+
+Lesbia's beautiful head bent a little, like a lily on its stalk, and a
+faint blush deepened the pale rose tint of her complexion. Her reply was
+courteous and conventional. She was flattered, she was grateful for Mr.
+Smithson's high opinion of her; but she was deeply grieved if anything
+in her manner had given him reason to think that he was more to her than
+a friend, an old friend of dear Lady Kirkbank's, whom she was naturally
+predisposed to like, as Lady Kirkbank's friend.
+
+Horace Smithson turned pale as death, but if he was angry, he gave no
+utterance to his angry feelings. He only asked if Lady Lesbia's answer
+was final--and on being told that it was so, he dismissed the subject in
+the easiest manner, and with a gentlemanlike placidity which very much
+astonished the lady.
+
+'You say that you regard me as your friend,' he said. 'Do not withdraw
+that privilege from me because I have asked for a higher place in your
+esteem. Forget all I have said this morning. Be assured I shall never
+offend you by repeating it.'
+
+'You are more than good,' murmured Lesbia, who had expected a wild
+outbreak of despair or fury, rather than this friendly calm.
+
+'I hope that you and Lady Kirkbank will go and hear Madame Metzikoff
+this afternoon,' pursued Mr. Smithson, returning to the subject of the
+_matinée_. 'The duchess's rooms are lovely; but no doubt you know them.'
+
+Lesbia blushed, and confessed that the Duchess of Lostwithiel was one of
+those select few who were not on Lady Kirkbank's visiting list.
+
+'There are people Lady Kirkbank cannot get on with,' she said. 'Perhaps
+she will hardly like to go to the duchess's, as she does not visit her.'
+
+'Oh, but this affair counts for nothing. We go to hear Metzikoff, not to
+bow down to the duchess. All the people in town who care for music will
+be there, and you who play so divinely must enjoy fine professional
+playing.'
+
+'I worship a really great player,' said Lesbia, 'and if I can drag Lady
+Kirkbank to the house of the enemy, we will be there.'
+
+On this Mr. Smithson discreetly murmured '_au revoir_,' took up his hat
+and cane, and departed, without, in Sir George's parlance, having turned
+a hair.
+
+'Refusal number one,' he said to himself, as he went downstairs, with
+his leisurely catlike pace, that velvet step by which he had gradually
+crept into society. 'We may have to go through refusal number two and
+number three; but she means to have me. She is a very clever girl for a
+countrybred one; and she knows that it is worth her while to be Lady
+Lesbia Smithson.'
+
+This soliloquy may be taken to prove that Horace Smithson knew Lesbia
+Haselden better than she knew herself. She had refused him in all good
+faith; but even to-day, after he had left her, she fell into a day-dream
+in which Mr. Smithson's houses and yachts, drags and hunters, formed the
+shifting pictures in a dissolving view of society; and Lesbia wondered
+if there were any other young woman in London who would refuse such an
+offer as that which she had quietly rejected half-an-hour ago.
+
+Lady Kirkbank surprised her while she was still absorbed in this dreamy
+review of the position. It is just possible that the fair Georgie may
+have had notice of Mr. Smithson's morning visit, and may have kept out
+of the way on purpose, for she was not a person of lazy habits, and was
+generally ready for her nine o'clock breakfast and her morning stroll in
+the park, however late she might have been out overnight.
+
+'Mr. Smithson has been here, I understand,' said Lady Kirkbank, settling
+herself in an arm-chair by the open window, after she had kissed her
+_protégée_. 'Rilboche passed him on the stairs.'
+
+'Rilboche is always passing people on the stairs,' answered Lesbia
+rather pettishly. 'I think she must spend her life on the landing,
+listening for arrivals and departures.'
+
+'I had a kind of vague idea that Smithson would call to-day. He was so
+fussy about those tickets for the Metzikoff recital. I hate pianoforte
+recitals, and I detest that starched old duchess, but I suppose I shall
+have to take you there--or poor Smithson will be miserable,' said Lady
+Kirkbank, watching Lesbia keenly over the top of the newspaper.
+
+She expected Lesbia to confide in her, to announce herself blushingly as
+the betrothed of one of the richest commoners in England. But Lesbia sat
+gazing dreamily across the flowers in the balcony at the house over the
+way, and said never a word; so Lady Kirkbank's curiosity burst into
+speech.
+
+'Well, my dear, has he proposed? There was something in his manner last
+night when he put on your wraps that made me think the crisis was near.'
+
+'The crisis is come and is past, and Mr. Smithson and I are just as good
+friends as ever.'
+
+'What!' screamed Lady Kirkbank. 'Do you mean to tell me that you have
+refused him?'
+
+'Certainly. You know I never meant to do anything else. Did you think I
+was like Miss Trinder, bent upon marrying town and country houses,
+stables and diamonds?'
+
+'I did not think you were a fool,' cried Lady Kirkbank, almost beside
+herself with vexation, for it had been borne in upon her, as the
+Methodists sometimes say, that if Mr. Smithson should prosper in his
+wooing it would be better for her, Lady Kirkbank, who would have a claim
+upon his kindness ever after. 'What can be your motive in refusing one
+of the very best matches of the season--or of ever so many seasons? You
+think, perhaps, you will marry a duke, if you wait long enough for his
+Grace to appear; but the number of marrying dukes is rather small, Lady
+Lesbia, and I don't think any of those would care to marry Lord
+Maulevrier's granddaughter.'
+
+Lesbia started to her feet, pale as ashes.
+
+'Why do you fling my grandfather's name in my face--and with that
+diabolical sneer?' she exclaimed. 'When I have asked you about him you
+have always evaded my questions. Why should a man of the highest rank
+shrink from marrying Lord Maulevrier's granddaughter? My grandfather
+was a distinguished man--Governor of Madras. Such posts are not given to
+nobodies. How can you dare to speak as if it were a disgrace to me to
+belong to him?'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+'CLUBS, DIAMONDS, HEARTS, IN WILD DISORDER SEEN.'
+
+
+Lady Kirkbank had considerable difficulty in smoothing Lesbia's ruffled
+plumage. She did all in her power to undo the effect of her rash
+words--declared that she had been carried away by temper--she had spoken
+she knew not what--words of no meaning. Of course Lesbia's grandfather
+had been a great man--Governor of Madras; altogether an important and
+celebrated person--and Lady Kirkbank had meant nothing, could have meant
+nothing to his disparagement.
+
+'My dearest girl, I was beside myself, and talked sheer nonsense,' said
+Georgie. 'But you know really now, dearest, any woman of the world would
+be provoked at your foolish refusal of that dear good Smithson. Only
+think of that too lovely house in Park Lane, a palace in the style of
+the Italian Renaissance--such a house is in itself equivalent to a
+peerage--and there is no doubt Smithson will be offered a peerage before
+he is much older. I have heard it confidently asserted that when the
+present Ministry retires Smithson will be made a Peer. You have no idea
+what a useful man he is, or what henchman's service he has done the
+Ministry in financial matters. And then there is his villa at
+Deauville--you don't know Deauville--a positively perfect place, the
+villa, I mean, built by the Duke de Morny in the golden days of the
+Empire--and another at Cowes, and his palace in Berkshire, a manor, my
+love, with a glorious old Tudor manor-house; and he has a _pied à terre_
+in Paris, in the Faubourg, a ground-floor furnished in the Pompeian
+style, half-a-dozen rooms opening one out of the other, and surrounding
+a small garden, with a fountain in the middle. Some of the greatest
+people in Paris occupy the upper part of the house, and their rooms of
+course are splendid; but Smithson's ground-floor is the gem of the
+Faubourg. However, I suppose there is no use in talking any more; for
+there is the gong for luncheon.'
+
+Lesbia was in no humour for luncheon.
+
+'I would rather have a cup of tea in my own room,' she said. 'This
+Smithson business has given me an abominable headache.'
+
+'But you will go to hear Metzikoff?'
+
+'No, thanks. You detest the Duchess of Lostwithiel, and you don't care
+for pianoforte recitals. Why should I drag you there?'
+
+'But, my dearest Lesbia, I am not such a selfish wretch as to keep you
+at home, when I know you are passionately fond of good music. Forget all
+about your headache, and let me see how that lovely little Catherine of
+Aragon bonnet suits you. I'm so glad I happened to see it in Seraphine's
+hands yesterday, just as she was going to send it to Lady Fonvielle, who
+gives herself such intolerable airs on the strength of a pretty face,
+and always wants to get the _primeures_ in bonnets and things.'
+
+'Another new bonnet!' replied Lesbia. 'What an infinity of things I seem
+to be having from Seraphine. I'm afraid I must owe her a good deal of
+money.'
+
+This was a vague way of speaking about actual facts. Lady Lesbia might
+have spoken with more certainty. Her wardrobes and old-fashioned hanging
+closets and chests of drawers in Arlington Street were crammed to
+overflowing with finery; and then there were all the things that she had
+grown tired of, or had thought unbecoming, and had given away to Kibble,
+her own maid, or to Rilboche, who had in a great measure superseded
+Kibble on all important occasions; for how could a Westmoreland girl
+know how to dress a young lady for London balls and drawing-rooms?
+
+'If you had only accepted Mr. Smithson it would not matter how much
+money you owed people,' said Lady Kirkbank. 'You had better come down to
+lunch. A glass of Heidseck will bring you up to concert pitch.'
+
+Champagne was Lady Kirkbank's idea of a universal panacea; and she had
+gradually succeeded in teaching Lesbia to believe in the sovereign power
+of Heidseck as a restorative for shattered nerves. At Fellside Lesbia
+had drunk only water; but then at Fellside she had never known that
+feeling of exhaustion and prostration which follows days and nights
+spent in society, the wear and tear of a mind forever on the alert, and
+brilliant spirits which are more often forced than real. For her chief
+stimulant Lesbia had recourse to the teapot; but there were occasions
+when she found that something more than tea was needed to maintain that
+indispensable vivacity of manner which Lady Kirkbank called concert
+pitch.
+
+To-day she allowed herself to be persuaded. She went down to luncheon,
+and took a couple of glasses of dry champagne with her cutlet, and, thus
+restored, was equal to putting on the new bonnet, which was so becoming
+that her spirits revived as she contemplated the effect in her glass. So
+Lady Kirkbank carried her off to the musical _matinée_, beaming and
+radiant, having forgotten all about that dark hint of evil glancing at
+the name of her long dead grandfather.
+
+The duchess was not on view when Lady Kirkbank and her _protégée_
+arrived, and a good many people belonging to Georgie's own particular
+set were scattered like flowers among those real music-lovers who had
+come solely to hear the new pianiste. The music-lovers were mostly dowdy
+in their attire, and seemed a race apart. Among them were several young
+women of the Blessed Damozel school, who wore flowing garments of
+sap-green or ochre, or puffed raiment of Venetian red, and among whom
+the cartwheel hat, the Elizabethan sleeve, and the Toby frill were
+conspicuous.
+
+There were very few men except the musical critics in this select
+assemblage, and Lesbia began to think that it was going to be very
+dreary. She had lived in such an atmosphere of masculine adulation while
+under Lady Kirkbank's wing that it was a new thing to find herself in a
+room where there were none to love and very few to praise her. She felt
+out in the cold, as it were. Those ungloved critics, with their shabby
+coats and dubious shirts, snuffy, smoky, everything they ought not to
+be, seemed to her a race of barbarians.
+
+Finding herself thus cold and lonely in the midst of the duchess's
+splendour of peacock-blue velvet and peacock-feather decoration, Lesbia
+was almost glad when in the middle of Madame Metzikoff's opening
+gondolied--airy, fairy music, executed with surpassing delicacy--Mr.
+Smithson crept gently into the _fauteuil_ just behind hers, and leant
+over the back of the chair to whisper an inquiry as to her opinion of
+the pianist's style.
+
+'She is exquisite,' Lesbia murmured softly, but the whispered question
+and the murmured answer, low as they were, provoked indignant looks from
+a brace of damsels in Venetian red, who shook their Toby frills with an
+outraged air.
+
+Lesbia felt that Mr. Smithson's presence was hardly correct. It would
+have been 'better form' if he had stayed away; and yet she was glad to
+have him here. At the worst he was some one--nay, according to Lady
+Kirkbank, he was the only one amongst all her admirers whose offer was
+worth having. All Lesbia's other conquests had counted as barren honour;
+but if she could have brought herself to accept Mr. Smithson she would
+have secured the very best match of the season.
+
+To marry a plain Mr. Smithson--a man who had made his money in iron--in
+cochineal--on the Stock Exchange--had seemed to her absolute
+degradation, the surrender of all her lofty hopes, her golden dreams.
+But Lady Kirkbank had put the question in a new light when she said that
+Smithson would be offered a peerage. Smithson the peer would be
+altogether a different person from Smithson the commoner.
+
+But was Lady Kirkbank sure of her facts, or truthful in her statement?
+Lesbia's experience of her chaperon's somewhat loose notions of truth
+and exactitude made her doubtful upon this point.
+
+Be this as it might she was inclined to be civil to Smithson, albeit she
+was inwardly surprised and offended at his taking her refusal so calmly.
+
+'You see that I am determined not to lose the privilege of your society,
+because I have been foolish!' he said presently, in the pause after the
+first part of the recital. 'I hope you will consider me as much your
+friend to-day as I was yesterday.'
+
+'Quite as much,' she answered sweetly, and then they talked of Raff, and
+Rubenstein, and Henselt, and all the composers about whom it is the
+correct thing to discourse nowadays.
+
+Before they left Belgrave Square Lady Kirkbank had offered Mr. Smithson
+Sir George's place in her box at the Gaiety that evening, and had
+invited him to supper in Arlington Street afterwards.
+
+It was Sarah Bernhardt's first season in London--the
+never-to-be-forgotten season of the Comédie Française.
+
+'I should love of all things to be there,' said Mr. Smithson, meekly. He
+had a couple of stalls in the third row for the whole of the season.
+'But how can I be sure that I shall not be turning Sir George out of
+doors?'
+
+'Sir George can never sit out a serious play. He only cares for Chaumont
+or Judie. The Demi-monde is much too prosy for him.'
+
+'The Demi-monde is one of the finest plays in the French language,' said
+Smithson. 'You know it, of course, Lady Lesbia?'
+
+'Alas! no. At Fellside I was not allowed to read French plays or novels:
+or only a novel now and then, which my grandmother selected for me.'
+
+'And now you read everything, I suppose,--including Zola?'
+
+'The books are lying about, and I dip into them sometimes while I am
+having my hair brushed,' answered Lesbia, lightly.
+
+'I believe that is the only time ladies devote to literature during the
+season,' said Mr. Smithson. 'Well, I envy you the delight of seeing the
+Demi-monde without knowing what it is all about beforehand.'
+
+'I daresay there are a good many people who would not take their girls
+to see a play by Dumas,' said Lady Kirkbank, 'but I make a point of
+letting _my_ girls see everything. It widens their minds and awakens
+their intelligence.'
+
+'And does away with a good many silly prejudices,' replied Mr.
+Smithson.
+
+Lady Kirkbank and Lesbia were due at a Kensington garden-party after the
+recital, and from the garden-party, for which any hour sufficed, they
+went to show themselves in the Park, then back to Arlington Street to
+dress for the play. Then a hurried dinner, and they were in their places
+at the theatre in time for the rising of the curtain.
+
+'If it were an English play we would not care for being punctual,' said
+Lady Kirkbank; 'but I should hate to lose a word of Dumas. In his plays
+every speech tells.'
+
+There were Royalties present, and the house was good; but not so full as
+it had been on some other nights, for the English public had been told
+that Sarah Bernhardt was the person to admire, and had been flocking
+sheep-like after that golden-haired enchantress, whereby many of these
+sheep--fighting greedily for Sarah's nights, and ignoring all other
+talent--lost some of the finest acting on the French stage, notably that
+of Croizette, Delaunay and Febvre, in this very Demi-monde. Lesbia, who,
+in spite of her affectations, was still fresh enough to be charmed with
+fine acting and a powerful play, was enthralled by the stage, so wrapt
+in the scene that she was quite unaware of her brother's presence in a
+stall just below Lady Kirkbank's box. He too had a stall at the Gaiety.
+He had come in very late, when the play was half over. Lesbia was
+surprised when he presented himself at the door of the box, after the
+fourth act.
+
+Maulevrier and his sister had met very seldom since the young lady's
+_début_. The young Earl did not go to many parties, and the society he
+cultivated was chiefly masculine; and as he neither played polo nor shot
+pigeons his masculine pursuits did not bring him in his sister's way.
+Lady Kirkbank had asked him to her house with that wide and general
+invitation which is so easily evaded. He had promised to go, and he had
+not gone. And thus Lesbia and he had pursued their several ways, only
+crossing each other's paths now and then at a race meeting or in a
+theatre.
+
+'How d'ye do, Lady Kirkbank?--how d'ye do, Lesbia? Just caught sight of
+you from below as the curtain was going down,' said Maulevrier, shaking
+hands with the ladies and saluting Mr. Smithson with a somewhat
+supercilious nod. 'Rather surprised to see you and Lesbia here to-night,
+Lady Kirkbank. Isn't the Demi-monde rather strong meat for babes, eh?
+Not _exactly_ the play one would take a young lady to see.'
+
+'Why should a young lady be forbidden to see a fine play, because there
+are some hard and bitter truths told in it?' asked Lady Kirkbank.
+'Lesbia sees Madame d'Ange and all her sisterhood in the Park and about
+London every day of her life. Why should not she see them on the stage,
+and hear their history, and understand how cruel their fate is, and
+learn to pity them, if she can? I really think this play is a lesson in
+Christian charity; and I should like to see that Oliver man strangled,
+though Delaunay plays the part divinely. What a voice! What a manner!
+How polished! How perfect! And they tell me he is going to leave the
+stage in a year or two. What will the world do without him?'
+
+Maulevrier did not attempt to suggest a solution of this difficulty. He
+was watching Mr. Smithson as he leant against the back of Lesbia's chair
+and talked to her. The two seemed very familiar, laughingly discussing
+the play and the actors. Smithson knew, or pretended to know, all about
+the latter. He told Lesbia who made Croizette's gowns--the upholsterer
+who furnished that lovely house of hers in the Bois--the sums paid for
+her horses, her pictures, her diamonds. It seemed to Lesbia, when she
+had heard all, that Croizette was a much-to-be-envied person.
+
+Mr. Smithson had unpublished _bon-mots_ of Dumas at his finger ends; he
+knew Daudet, and Sarcey, and Sardou, and seemed to be thoroughly at home
+in Parisian artistic society. Lesbia began to think that he would hardly
+be so despicable a person as she had at first supposed. No wonder he and
+his wealth had turned poor Belle Trinder's head. How could a rural
+vicar's daughter, accustomed to poverty, help being dazzled by such
+magnificence?
+
+Maulevrier stayed in the box only a short time, and refused Lady
+Kirkbank's invitation to supper. She did not urge the point, as she had
+surprised one or two very unfriendly glances at Mr. Smithson in
+Maulevrier's honest eyes. She did not want an antagonistic brother to
+interfere with her plans. She had made up her mind to 'run' Lesbia
+according to her own ideas, and any counter influence might be fatal.
+So, when Maulevrier said he was due at the Marlborough after the play
+she let him go.
+
+'I might as well be at Fellside and you in London, for anything I see of
+you,' said Lesbia.
+
+'You are up to your eyes in engagements, and I don't suppose you want to
+see any more of me.' Maulevrier answered, bluntly. 'But I'll call to-morrow
+morning, if I am likely to find you at home. I've some news for you.'
+
+'Then I'll stay at home on purpose to see you. News is always
+delightful. Is it good news, by-the-bye?'
+
+'Very good; at least, I think so.'
+
+'What is it about?'
+
+'Oh! that's a long story, and the curtain is just going up. The news is
+about Mary.'
+
+'About Mary!' exclaimed Lesbia, elevating her eyebrows. 'What news can
+there possibly be about Mary?'
+
+'Such news as there generally is about every nice jolly girl, at least
+once in her life.'
+
+'You don't mean that she is engaged--to a curate?'
+
+'No, not to a curate. There goes the curtain. "I'll see you later," as
+the Yankee President used to say when people bothered him, and he didn't
+like to say no.'
+
+Engaged: Mary engaged! The idea of such an altogether unexpected event
+distracted Lesbia's mind all through the last act of the Demi-monde. She
+hardly knew what the actors were talking about. Mary, her younger
+sister! Mary, a good looking girl enough, but by no means a beauty, and
+with manners utterly unformed. That Mary should be engaged to be
+married, while she, Lesbia, was still free, seemed an obvious absurdity.
+
+And yet the fact was, on reflection, easily to be accounted for. These
+unattractive girls are generally the first to bind themselves with the
+vows of betrothal. Lady Kirkbank had told her of many such cases. The
+poor creatures know that their chances will be few, and therefore
+gratefully welcome the first wooer.
+
+'But who can the man be?' thought Lesbia. 'Mary has been kept as
+secluded as a cloistered nun. There are so few families we have ever
+been allowed to mix with. The man must be a curate, who has taken
+advantage of grandmother's illness to force his way into the family
+circle at Fellside--and who has made love to Mary in some of her lonely
+rambles over the hills, I daresay. It is really very wrong to allow a
+girl to roam about in that way.'
+
+Sir George and a couple of his horsey friends were waiting for supper
+when Lady Kirkbank and her party arrived in Arlington Street. The
+dining-room looked a picture of comfort. The oval table, the low lamps,
+the clusters of candles under coloured shades, the great Oriental bowl
+of wild flowers--eglantine, honeysuckle, foxglove, all the sweet hedge
+flowers of midsummer, made a central mass of colour and brightness
+against the subdued and even sombre tones of walls and curtains. The
+room was old, the furniture old. Nothing had been altered since the time
+of Sir George's great grandfather; and the whirligig of time had just
+now made the old things precious. Yes, those chairs and tables and
+sideboards and bookcases and wine-coolers against which Georgie's soul
+had revolted in the early years of her wedded life were now things of
+beauty, and Georgie's friends envied her the possession of indisputable
+Chippendale furniture.
+
+Mr. Mostyn, a distinguished owner of race-horses, with his pretty wife,
+made up the party. The gentleman was full of his entries for Liverpool
+and Chester, and discoursed mysteriously with Sir George and the horsey
+bachelors all supper time. The lady had lately taken up science as a new
+form of excitement, not incompatible with frocks, bonnets, Hurlingham,
+the Ranelagh, and Sandown. She raved about Huxley and Tyndall, and was
+perpetually coming down upon her friends with awful facts about the sun,
+and startling propositions about latent heat, or spontaneous generation.
+She knew all about gases, and would hardly accept a glass of water
+without explaining what it was made of. Drawn by Mr. Smithson for
+Lesbia's amusement, the scientific matron was undoubtedly 'good fun.'
+The racing men were full of talk. Lesbia and Lady Kirkbank raved about
+the play they had just been seeing, and praised Delaunay with an
+enthusiasm which was calculated to make the rest of mankind burst with
+envy.
+
+'Do you know you are making me positively wretched by your talk about
+that man?' said Colonel Delville, one of Sir George's racing friends,
+and an ancient adorer of the fair Georgie's. 'No, I tell you there was
+never anything offered higher than five to four on the mare,'
+interjectionally, to Sir George. 'There was a day when I thought I was
+your idea of an attractive man. Yes, George, a clear case of roping,'
+again interjectionally. 'And to hear you raving about this play-acting
+fellow--it is too humiliating.'
+
+Lady Kirkbank simpered, and then sighed.
+
+'We are getting old together,' she murmured. 'I have come to an age when
+one can only admire the charm of manner in the abstract--the Beautiful
+for the sake of the Beautiful. I think if I were lying in my grave, the
+music of Delaunay's voice would thrill me, under six feet of London
+clay. Will no one take any more wine? No. Then we may as well go into
+the next room and begin our little Nap.'
+
+The adjoining room was Sir George's snuggery; and it was here that the
+cosy little round games after supper were always played. Sir George was
+not a studious person. He never read, and he never wrote, except an
+occasional cheque on account, for an importunate tradesman. His
+correspondence was conducted by the telegraph or telephone; and the
+room, therefore, was absorbed neither by books nor writing desks. It was
+furnished solely with a view to comfort. There was a round table in the
+centre, under a large moderator lamp which gave an exceptionally
+brilliant light. A divan covered with dark brown velvet occupied three
+sides of the room. A few choice pieces of old blue Oriental ware in the
+corners enlivened the dark brown walls. Three or four easy chairs stood
+about near the broad, old-fashioned fireplace, which had been improved
+with a modern-antique brass grate and a blue and white tiled hearth.
+
+'There isn't a room in my house that looks half as comfortable as this
+den of yours, George,' said Mr. Smithson, as he seated himself by
+Lesbia's side at the card table.
+
+They had agreed to be partners. 'Partners at cards, even if we are not
+to be partners for life,' Smithson had whispered, tenderly; and Lesbia's
+only reply had been a modest lowering of lovely eyelids, and a faint,
+faint blush. Lesbia's blushes were growing fainter every day.
+
+'That is because everything in your house is so confoundedly handsome
+and expensive,' retorted Sir George, who did not very much care about
+being called George, _tout court_, by a person of Mr. Smithson's obscure
+antecedents, but who had to endure the familiarity for reasons known
+only to himself and Mr. Smithson. 'No man can expect to be comfortable
+in a house in which every room has cost a small fortune. My wife
+re-arranged this den half-a-dozen years ago when we took to sittin' here
+of an evenin'. She picked up the chairs and the blue pots at Bonham's,
+had everythin' covered with brown velvet--nice subdued tone, suit old
+people--hung up that yaller curtain, just for a bit of colour, and here
+we are.'
+
+'It's the cosiest room in town,' said Colonel Delville, whereupon Mrs.
+Mostyn, while counters were being distributed, explained to the company
+on scientific principles _why_ the room was comfortable, expatiating
+upon the effect of yellow and brown upon the retina, and some curious
+facts relating to the optic machinery of water-fleas, as lately
+discovered by a great naturalist.
+
+Unfortunately for science, the game had now begun, and the players were
+curiously indifferent as to the visual organs of water-fleas.
+
+The game went on merrily till the pearly lights of dawn began to creep
+through the chinks of Lady Kirkbank's yellow curtain. Everybody seemed
+gay, yet everybody could not be winning. Fortune had not smiled upon
+Lesbia's cards, or on those of her partner. The Smithson and Haselden
+firm had come to grief. Lesbia's little ivory purse had been emptied of
+its three or four half-sovereigns, and Mr. Smithson had been
+capitalising a losing concern for the last two hours. And the play had
+been fast and furious, although nominally for small stakes.
+
+'I am afraid to think of how much I must owe you,' said Lesbia, when Mr.
+Smithson bade her good night.
+
+'Oh, nothing worth speaking of--sixteen or seventeen pounds, at most.'
+
+Lesbia felt cold and creepy, and hardly knew whether it was the chill of
+new-born day, or the sense of owing money to Horace Smithson. Those
+three or four half-sovereigns to-night were the end of her last
+remittance from Lady Maulevrier. She had had a great many remittances
+from that generous grandmother; and the money had all gone, somehow. It
+was gone, and yet she had paid for hardly anything. She had accounts
+with all Lady Kirkbank's tradesmen. The money had melted away--it had
+oozed out of her pockets--at cards, on the race-course, in reckless
+gifts to servants and people, at fancy fairs, for trifles bought here
+and there by the way-side, as it were, for the sake of buying. If she
+had been suddenly asked for an account of her stewardship she could not
+have told what she had done with half of the money. And now she must ask
+for twenty pounds more, and immediately, to pay Mr. Smithson.
+
+She went up to her room in the clear early light, and stood like a
+statue, with fixed thoughtful eyes, while Kibble took off her finery,
+the pretty pale yellow gown which set off her dark brown hair, her
+violet eyes. For the first time in her life she felt the keen pang of
+anxiety about money matters--the necessity to think of ways and means.
+She had no idea how much money she had received from her grandmother
+since she had begun her career in Scotland last autumn. The cheques had
+been sent her as she asked for them; sometimes even before she asked for
+them; and she had kept no account. She thought her grandmother was so
+rich that expenditure could not matter. She supposed that she was
+drawing upon an inexhaustible supply. And now Lady Kirkbank had told her
+that Lady Maulevrier was not rich, as the world reckons nowadays. The
+savings of a dowager countess even in forty years of seclusion could be
+but a small fund to draw upon for the expenses of life at high pressure.
+
+'The sums people spend nowadays are positively appalling,' said Lady
+Kirkbank. 'A man with five or six thousand a year is an absolute pauper.
+I'm sure our existence is only genteel beggary, and yet we spend over
+ten thousand.'
+
+Enlightened thus by the lips of the worldly-wise, Lesbia thought
+ruefully of the bills which her grandmother would have to pay for her at
+the end of the season, bills of the amount whereof she could not even
+make an approximate guess. Seraphine's charges had never been discussed
+in her hearing--but Lady Kirkbank had admitted that the creature was
+dear.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+'SWIFT SUBTLE POST, CARRIER OF GRISLY CARE.'
+
+
+Maulevrier called in Arlington Street before twelve o'clock next day,
+and found Lesbia just returning from her early ride, looking as fresh
+and fair as if there had been no such thing as Nap or late hours in the
+story of her life. She was reposing in a large easy chair by the open
+window, in habit and hat, just as she had come from the Row, where she
+had been laughing and chatting with Mr. Smithson, who jogged demurely by
+her side on his short-legged hunter, dropping out envenomed little jokes
+about the passers by. People who saw him riding by her side upon this
+particular morning fancied there was something more than usual in the
+gentleman's manner, and made up their minds that Lady Lesbia Haselden
+was to be mistress of the fine house in Park Lane. Mr. Smithson had
+fluttered and fluttered for the last five seasons; but this time the
+flutterer was caught.
+
+In her newly-awakened anxiety about money matters, Lesbia had forgotten
+Mary's engagement: but the sight of Maulevrier recalled the fact.
+
+'Come over here and sit down,' she said, 'and tell me this nonsense
+about Mary. I am expiring with curiosity. The thing is too absurd.'
+
+'Why absurd?' asked Maulevrier, sitting where she bade him, and
+studiously perusing the name in his hat, as if it were a revelation.
+
+'Oh, for a thousand reasons,' answered Lesbia, switching the flowers in
+the balcony with her light little whip. 'First and foremost it is absurd
+to think of any one so buried alive as poor Mary is finding an admirer;
+and secondly--well--I don't want to be rude to my own sister--but Mary
+is not particularly attractive.'
+
+'Mary is the dearest girl in the world.'
+
+'Very likely. I only said that she is not particularly attractive.'
+
+'And do you think there is no attraction in goodness, in freshness and
+innocence, candour, generosity--?'
+
+'I don't know. But I think that if Mary's nose had been a thought
+longer, and if she had kept her skin free from freckles she would have
+been almost pretty.'
+
+'Do you really? Luckily for Mary the man who is going to marry her
+thinks her lovely.'
+
+'I suppose he likes freckles. I once heard a man say he did. He said
+they were so original--so much character about them. And, pray, who is
+the man?'
+
+'Your old adorer, and my dear friend, John Hammond.'
+
+Lesbia turned as pale as death--pale with rage and mortification. It was
+not jealousy, this pang which rent her shallow soul. She had ceased to
+care for John Hammond. The whirlpool of society had spun that first
+fancy out of her giddy brain. But that a man who had loved the highest,
+who had worshipped her, the peerless, the beautiful, should calmly
+transfer his affections to her younger sister, was to the last degree
+exasperating.
+
+'Your friend Mr. Hammond must be a fickle fool,' she exclaimed, 'who
+does not know his own mind from day to day.'
+
+'Oh, but it was more than a day after you rejected him that he engaged
+himself to Molly. It was all my doing, and I am proud of my work. I took
+the poor fellow back to Fellside last March, bruised and broken by your
+cruel treatment, heartsore and depressed. I gave him over to Molly, and
+Molly cured him. Unconsciously, innocently, she won that noble heart.
+Ah, Lesbia, you don't know what a heart it is which you so nearly
+broke.'
+
+'Girls in our rank of life can't afford to marry noble hearts,' said
+Lesbia, scornfully. 'Do you mean to tell me that Lady Maulevrier
+consented to the engagement?'
+
+'She cut up rather rough at first; but Molly held her own like a young
+lioness--and the grandmother gave way. You see she has a fixed idea that
+Molly is a very second-rate sort of person compared with you, and that a
+husband who was not nearly good enough for you might pass muster for
+Molly; and so she gave way, and there isn't a happier young woman in
+the three kingdoms than Mary Haselden.'
+
+'What are they to live upon?' asked Lesbia, with an incredulous air.
+
+'Mary will have her five hundred a year. And Hammond is a very clever
+fellow. You may be sure he will make his mark in the world.'
+
+'And how are they to live while he is making his mark? Five hundred a
+year won't do more than pay for Mary's frocks, if she goes into
+society.'
+
+'Perhaps they will live without society.'
+
+'In some horrid little hovel in one of those narrow streets off
+Ecclestone Square,' suggested Lesbia, shudderingly. 'It is too dreadful
+to think of--a young woman dooming herself to life-long penury, just
+because she is so foolish as to fall in love.'
+
+'Your days for falling in love are over, I suppose, Lesbia?' said
+Maulevrier, contemplating his sister with keen scrutiny.
+
+The beautiful face, so perfect in line and colour, curiously recalled
+that other face at Fellside; the dowager's face, with its look of marble
+coldness, and the half-expressed pain under that outward calm. Here was
+the face of one who had not yet known pain or passion. Here was the cold
+perfection of beauty with unawakened heart.
+
+'I don't know; I am too busy to think of such things.'
+
+'You have done with love; and you have begun to think of marriage, of
+establishing yourself properly. People tell me you are going to marry
+Mr. Smithson.'
+
+'People tell you more about me than I know about myself.'
+
+'Come now, Lesbia, I have a right to know the truth upon this point.
+Your brother--your only brother--should be the first person to be told.'
+
+'When I am engaged, I have no doubt you will be the first person, or the
+second person,' answered Lesbia, lightly. 'Lady Kirkbank, living on the
+premises, is likely to be the first.'
+
+'Then you are not engaged to Smithson?'
+
+'Didn't I tell you so just now? Mr. Smithson did me the honour to make
+me an offer yesterday, at about this hour; and I did myself the honour
+to reject him.'
+
+'And yet you were whispering together in the box last night, and you
+were riding in the Row with him this morning. I just met a fellow who
+saw you together. Do you think it is right, Lesbia, to play fast and
+loose with the man--to encourage him, if you don't mean to marry him?'
+
+'How can you accuse me of encouraging a person whom I flatly refused
+yesterday morning? If Mr. Smithson likes my society as a friend, must I
+needs deny him my friendship, ask Lady Kirkbank to shut her door against
+him? Mr. Smithson is very pleasant as an acquaintance; and although I
+don't want to marry him, there's no reason I should snub him.'
+
+'Smithson is not a man to be trifled with. You will find yourself
+entangled in a web which you won't easily break through.'
+
+'I am not afraid of webs. By-the-bye, is it true that Mr. Smithson is
+likely to get a peerage?'
+
+'I have heard people say as much. Smithson has spent no end of money on
+electioneering, and is a power in the House, though he very rarely
+speaks. His Berkshire estate gives him a good deal of influence in that
+county; at the last general election he subscribed twenty thou to the
+Conservative cause; for, like most men who have risen from nothing, your
+friend Smithson is a fine old Tory. He was specially elected at the
+Carlton six years ago, and has made himself uncommonly useful to his
+party. He is supposed to be great on financial questions, and comes out
+tremendously on colonial railways or drainage schemes, about which the
+House in general is in profound ignorance. On those occasions Smithson
+scores high. A man with immense wealth has always chances. No doubt, if
+you were to marry him, the peerage would be easily managed. Smithson's
+money, backed by the Maulevrier influence, would go a long way. My
+grandmother would move heaven and earth in a case of that kind. You had
+better take pity on Smithson.'
+
+Lesbia laughed. That idea of a possible peerage elevated Smithson in her
+eyes. She knew nothing of his political career, as she lived in a set
+which ignored politics altogether. Mr. Smithson had never talked to her
+of his parliamentary duties; and it was a new thing for her to hear that
+he had some kind of influence in public affairs.
+
+'Suppose I were inclined to accept him, would you like him as a
+brother-in-law?' she asked lightly. 'I thought from your manner last
+night that you rather disliked him.'
+
+'I don't quite like him or any of his breed, the newly rich, who go
+about in society swelling with the sense of their own importance,
+perspiring gold, as it were. And one has always a faint suspicion of men
+who have got rich very quickly, an idea that there must be some kind of
+juggling. Not in the case of a great contractor, perhaps, who can point
+to a viaduct and docks and railways, and say, "I built that, and that,
+and that. These are the sources of my wealth." But a man who gets
+enormously rich by mere ciphering! Where can his money come from, except
+out of other people's pockets? I know nothing against your Mr. Smithson,
+but I always suspect that class of men,' concluded Maulevrier shaking
+his head significantly.
+
+Lesbia was not much influenced by her brother's notions, she had never
+been taught to think him an oracle. On the contrary, she had been told
+that his life hitherto had been all foolishness.
+
+'When are Mary and Mr. Hammond to be married?' she asked, 'Grandmother
+says they must wait a year. Mary is much too young--and so on, and so
+forth. But I see no reason for waiting.'
+
+'Surely there are reasons--financial reasons. Mr. Hammond cannot be in a
+position to begin housekeeping.'
+
+'Oh, they will risk all that. Molly is a daring girl. He proposed to her
+on the top of Helvellyn, in a storm of wind and rain.'
+
+'And she never wrote me a word about it. How very unsisterly!'
+
+'She is as wild as a hawk, and I daresay she was too shy to tell you
+anything about it.'
+
+'Pray when did it all occur?'
+
+'Just before I came to London.'
+
+'Two months ago. How absurd for me to be in ignorance all this time!
+Well, I hope Mary will be sensible, and not marry till Mr. Hammond is
+able to give her a decent home. It would be so dreadful to have a sister
+muddling in poverty, and clamouring for one's cast-off gowns.'
+
+Maulevrier laughed at this gloomy suggestion.
+
+'It is not easy to foretell the future,' he said, 'but I think I may
+venture to promise that Molly will never wear your cast-off gowns.'
+
+'Oh, you think she would be too proud. You don't know, perhaps, how
+poverty--genteel poverty--lowers one's pride. I have heard stories from
+Lady Kirkbank that would make your hair stand on end. I am beginning to
+know the world.'
+
+'I am glad of that. If you are to live in the world it is better that
+you should know what it is made of. But if I had a voice or a choice in
+the matter I had rather my sisters stayed at Grasmere, and remained
+ignorant of the world and all its ways.'
+
+'While you enjoy your life in London. That is just like the selfishness
+of a man. Under the pretence of keeping his sisters or his wife secure
+from all possible contact with evil, he buries them alive in a country
+house, while he has all the wickedness for his own share in London. Oh,
+I am beginning to understand the creatures.'
+
+'I am afraid you are beginning to be wise. Remember that knowledge of
+evil was the prelude to the Fall. Well, good-bye.'
+
+'Won't you stay to lunch?'
+
+'No, thanks, I never lunch--frightful waste of time. I shall drop in at
+the _Haute Gomme_ and take a cup of tea later on.'
+
+The _Haute Gomme_ was a new club in Piccadilly, which Maulevrier and
+some of his friends affected.
+
+Lesbia went towards the drawing-room door with her brother, and just as
+he reached the door she laid her hand caressingly upon his shoulder. He
+turned and stared at her, somewhat surprised, for he and she had never
+been given to demonstrations of affection.
+
+'Maulevrier, I want you to do me a favour,' she said, in a low voice,
+blushing a little, for the thing she was going to ask was a new thing
+for her to ask, and she had a deep sense of shame in making her demand.
+'I--I lost money at Nap last night. Only seventeen pounds. Mr. Smithson
+and I were partners, and he paid my losses. I want to pay him
+immediately, and----'
+
+'And you are too hard up to do it. I'll write you a cheque this
+instant,' said Maulevrier goodnaturedly; but while he was writing the
+cheque he took occasion to remonstrate with Lesbia on the foolishness of
+card playing.
+
+'I am obliged to do as Lady Kirkbank does,' she answered feebly. 'If I
+were to refuse to play it would be a kind of reproach to her.'
+
+'I don't think that would kill Lady Kirkbank,' replied Maulevrier, with
+a touch of scorn. 'She has had to endure a good many implied reproaches
+in her day, and they don't seem to have hurt her very much. I wish to
+heaven my grandmother had chosen any one else in London for your
+chaperon.'
+
+'I'm afraid Lady Kirkbank's is rather a rowdy set,' answered Lesbia,
+coolly; 'and I sometimes feel as if I had thrown myself away. We go
+almost everywhere--at least, there are only just a few houses to which
+we are not asked. But those few make all the difference. It is so
+humiliating to feel that one is not in quite the best society. However,
+Lady Kirkbank is a dear, good old thing, and I am not going to grumble
+about her.'
+
+'I've made the cheque for five-and-twenty. You can cash it at your
+milliner's,' said Maulevrier. 'I should not like Smithson to know that
+you had been obliged to ask me for the money.'
+
+'_Apropos_ to Mr. Smithson, do you know if he is in quite the best
+society?' asked Lesbia.
+
+'I don't know what you mean by quite the best. A man of Smithson's
+wealth can generally poke his nose in anywhere, if he knows how to
+behave himself. But of course there are people with whom money and fine
+houses have no weight. The Conservatives are all civil to Smithson
+because he comes down handsomely at General Elections, and is useful to
+them in other ways. I believe that Smithson's wife, if she were a
+thorough-bred one, could go into any society she liked, and make her
+house one of the most popular in London. Perhaps that is what you really
+wanted to ask.
+
+'No, it wasn't,' answered Lesbia, carelessly; 'I was only talking for
+the sake of talking. A thousand thanks for the cheque, you best of
+brothers.'
+
+'It is not worth talking about; but, Lesbia, don't play cards any more.
+Believe me, it is not good form.'
+
+'Well, I'll try to keep out of it in future. It is horrid to see one's
+sovereigns melting away; but there's a delightful excitement in
+winning.'
+
+'No doubt,' answered Maulevrier, with a remorseful sigh.
+
+He spoke as a reformed plunger, and with many a bitter experience of the
+race-course and the card-room. Even now, though he had steadied himself
+wonderfully, he could not get on without a little mild gambling--half-crown
+pool, whist with half-guinea points--but when he condescended to such small
+stakes he felt that he had settled down into a respectable middle-aged
+player, and had a right to rebuke the follies of youth.
+
+Lesbia flew to the piano and sang one of her little German ballads
+directly Maulevrier was gone. She felt as if a burden had been lifted
+from her soul, now that she was able to pay Mr. Smithson without waiting
+to ask Lady Maulevrier for the money. And as she sang she meditated upon
+Maulevrier's remarks about Smithson. He knew nothing to the man's
+discredit, except that he had grown rich in a short space of time.
+Surely no man ought to be blamed for that. And he thought that Mr.
+Smithson's wife might make her house the most popular in London. Lesbia,
+in her mind's eye, beheld an imaginary Lady Lesbia Smithson giving
+dances in that magnificent mansion, entertaining Royal personages. And
+the doorways would be festooned with roses, as she had seen them the
+other night at a ball in Grosvenor Square; but the house in Grosvenor
+Square was a hovel compared with the Smithsonian Palace.
+
+Lesbia was beginning to be a little tired of Lady Kirkbank and her
+surroundings. Life taken _prestissimo_ is apt to pall. Lesbia sighed as
+she finished her little song. She was beginning to look upon her
+existence as a problem which had been given to her to solve, and the
+solution just at present was all dark.
+
+As she rose from the piano a footman came in with two letters on a
+salver--bulky letters, such packages as Lesbia had never seen before.
+She wondered what they could be. She opened the thickest envelope first.
+It was Seraphine's bill--such a bill, page after page on creamy Bath
+post, written in an elegant Italian hand by one of Seraphine's young
+women.
+
+Lesbia looked at it aghast with horror. The total at the foot of the
+first page was appalling, ever so much more than she could have supposed
+the whole amount of her indebtedness; but the total went on increasing
+at the foot of every page, until at sight of the final figures Lesbia
+gave a wild shriek, like a wretched creature who has received a telegram
+announcing bitterest loss.
+
+The final total was twelve hundred and ninety-three pounds seventeen and
+sixpence!
+
+Thirteen hundred pounds for clothes in eight weeks!
+
+No, the thing was a cheat, a mistake. They had sent her somebody else's
+bill. She had not had half these things.
+
+She read the first page, her heart beating violently as she pored over
+the figures, her eyes dim and clouded with the trouble of her brain.
+
+Yes, there was her court dress. The description was too minute to be
+mistaken; and the court dress, with feathers, and shoes, and gloves, and
+fan, came to a hundred and thirty pounds. Then followed innumerable
+items. The very simplest of her gowns cost five-and-twenty
+pounds--frocks about which Seraphine had talked so carelessly, as if two
+or three more or less could make no difference. Bonnets and hats, at
+five or seven guineas apiece, swelled the account. Parasols and fans
+were of fabulous price, as it seemed to Lesbia; and the shoes and
+stockings to match her various gowns occurred again and again between
+the more important items, like the refrain of an old ballad. All the
+useless and unnessary things which she had ordered, because she thought
+them pretty or because she was told they were fashionable, rose up
+against her in the figures of the bill, like the record of forgotten
+sins at the Day of Judgment.
+
+She sank into a chair, pallid with consternation, and sat with the bill
+in her lap, turning the pages listlessly, and staring at the figures.
+
+'It cannot be so much,' she cried to herself. 'It must be added up
+wrong;' and then she feebly tried to cast up a column; but arithmetic
+not being one of those accomplishments which Lady Maulevrier deemed
+necessary to a patrician beauty's success in life, Lesbia's education
+had been somewhat neglected upon this point, and she flung the bill from
+her in a rage, unable to hold the figures in her brain.
+
+She opened the second envelope, her jeweller's account. At the very
+first item she gave another scream, fainter than the first, for her mind
+was getting hardened against such shocks.
+
+'To re-setting a suite of amethysts, with forty-four finest Brazilian
+brilliants, three hundred and fifteen pounds.'
+
+Then followed the trifles she had bought at different visits to the
+shop--casual purchases, bought on the impulse of the moment. These
+swelled the account to a little over eight hundred pounds. Lesbia sat
+like a statue, numbed by despair, appalled at the idea of owing over two
+thousand pounds.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+
+'ROSES CHOKED AMONG THORNS AND THISTLES.'
+
+
+Lady Lesbia ate no luncheon that day. She went to her own room and had a
+cup of tea to steady her nerves, and sent to ask Lady Kirkbank to go to
+her as soon as she had finished luncheon. Lady Kirkbank's luncheon was a
+serious business, a substantial leisurely meal with which she fortified
+herself for the day's work. It enabled her to endure all the fatigues of
+visits and park, and to be airily indifferent to the charms of dinner;
+for Lady Kirkbank was not one of those matrons who with advanced years
+take to _gourmandise_ as a kind of fine art. She gave good dinners,
+because she knew people would not come to Arlington Street to eat bad
+ones; but she was not a person who lived only to dine. At luncheon she
+gave her healthy appetite full scope, and ate like a ploughman.
+
+She found Lesbia in her white muslin dressing-gown, with cheeks as pale
+as the gown she wore. She was sitting in an easy chair, with a low
+tea-table at her side, and the two bills were in the tray among the
+tea-things.
+
+'Have you any idea how much I owe Seraphine and Cabochon?' she asked,
+looking up despairingly at Lady Kirkbank.
+
+'What, have they sent in their bills already?'
+
+'Already! I wish they had sent them before. I should have known how
+deeply I was getting into debt.'
+
+'Are they very heavy?'
+
+'They are dreadful! I owe over two thousand pounds. How can I tell Lady
+Maulevrier that? Two thousand one hundred pounds! It is awful.'
+
+'There are women in London who would think very little of owing twice as
+much,' said Lady Kirkbank, in a comforting tone, though the fact,
+seriously considered, could hardly afford comfort. 'Your grandmother
+said you were to have _carte blanche_. She may think that you have been
+just a little extravagant; but she can hardly be angry with you for
+having taken her at her word. Two thousand pounds! Yes, it certainly is
+rather stiff.'
+
+'Seraphine is a cheat!' exclaimed Lesbia, angrily. 'Her prices are
+positively exorbitant!'
+
+'My dear child, you must not say that. Seraphine is positively moderate
+in comparison with the new people.'
+
+'And Mr. Cabochon, too. The idea of his charging me three hundred
+guineas for re-setting those stupid old amethysts.'
+
+'My dear, you _would_ have diamonds mixed with them,' said Lady
+Kirkbank, reproachfully.
+
+Lesbia turned away her head with an impatient sigh. She remembered
+perfectly that it was Lady Kirkbank who had persuaded her to order the
+diamond setting; but there was no use in talking about it now. The thing
+was done. She was two thousand pounds in debt--two thousand pounds to
+these two people only--and there were ever so many shops at which she
+had accounts--glovers, bootmakers, habit-makers, the tailor who made her
+Newmarket coats and cloth gowns, the stationer who supplied her with
+note-paper of every variety, monogrammed, floral; sporting, illuminated
+with this or that device, the follies of the passing hour, hatched by
+penniless Invention in a garret, pandering to the vanities of the idle.
+
+'I must write to my grandmother by this afternoon's post,' said Lesbia,
+with a heavy sigh.
+
+'Impossible. We have to be at the Ranelagh by four o'clock. Smithson
+and some other men are to meet us there. I have promised to drive Mrs.
+Mostyn down. You had better begin to dress.'
+
+'But I ought to write to-day. I had better ask for this money at once,
+and have done with it. Two thousand pounds! I feel as if I were a thief.
+You say my grandmother is not a rich woman?'
+
+'Not rich as the world goes nowadays. Nobody is rich now, except your
+commercial magnates, like Smithson. Great peers, unless their money is
+in London ground-rents, are great paupers. To own land is to be
+destitute. I don't suppose two thousand pounds will break your
+grandmother's bank; but of course it is a large sum to ask for at the
+end of two months; especially as she sent you a good deal of money while
+we were at Cannes. If you were engaged--about to make a really good
+match--you could ask for the money as a matter of course; but as it is,
+although you have been tremendously admired, from a practical point of
+view you are a failure.'
+
+A failure. It was a hard word, but Lesbia felt it was true. She, the
+reigning beauty, the cynosure of every eye, had made no conquest worth
+talking about, except Mr. Smithson.
+
+'Don't tell your grandmother anything about the bills for a week or
+two,' said Lady Kirkbank, soothingly. 'The creatures can wait for their
+money. Give yourself time to think.'
+
+'I will,' answered Lesbia, dolefully.
+
+'And now make haste, and get ready for the Ranelagh. My love, your eyes
+are dreadfully heavy. You _must_ use a little belladonna. I'll send
+Rilboche to you.'
+
+And for the first time in her life, Lesbia, too depressed to argue the
+point, consented to have her eyes doctored by Rilboche.
+
+She was gay enough at the Ranelagh, and looked her loveliest at a dinner
+party that evening, and went to three parties after the dinner, and went
+home in the faint light of early morning, after sitting out a late waltz
+in a balcony with Mr. Smithson, a balcony banked round with hot-house
+flowers which were beginning to droop a little in the chilly morning
+air, just as beauty drooped under the searching eye of day.
+
+Lesbia put the bills in her desk, and gave herself time to think, as
+Lady Kirkbank advised her. But the thinking progress resulted in very
+little good. All the thought of which she was capable would not reduce
+the totals of those two dreadful accounts. And every day brought some
+fresh bill. The stationer, the bootmaker, the glover, the perfumer,
+people who had courted Lady Lesbia's custom with an air which implied
+that the honour of serving fashionable beauty was the first
+consideration, and the question of payment quite a minor point--these
+now began to ask for their money in the most prosaic way. Every straw
+added to Lesbia's burden; and her heart grew heavier with every post.
+
+'One can see the season is waning when these people begin to pester
+with their accounts,' said Lady Kirkbank, who always talked of tradesmen
+as if they were her natural enemies.
+
+Lesbia accepted this explanation of the avalanche of bills, and never
+suspected Lady Kirkbank's influence in the matter. It happened, however,
+that the chaperon, having her own reasons for wishing to bring Mr.
+Smithson's suit to a successful issue, had told Seraphine and the other
+people to send in their bills immediately. Lady Lesbia would be leaving
+London in a week or so, she informed these purveyors, and would like to
+settle everything before she went away.
+
+Mr. Smithson appeared in Arlington Street almost every day, and was full
+of schemes for new pleasures--or pleasures as nearly new as the world of
+fashion can afford. He was particularly desirous that Sir George and
+Lady Kirkbank, with Lady Lesbia, should stay at his Berkshire place
+during the Henley week. He had a large steam launch, and the regatta was
+a kind of carnival for his intimate friends, who were not too proud to
+riot and batten upon the parvenu's luxurious hospitality, albeit they
+were apt to talk somewhat slightingly of his antecedents.
+
+Lady Kirkbank felt that this invitation was a turning point, and that if
+Lesbia went to stay at Rood Hall, her acceptance of Mr. Smithson was a
+certainty. She would see him at his place in Berkshire in the most
+flattering aspect; his surroundings as lord of the manor, and owner of
+one of the finest old places in the county, would lend dignity to his
+insignificance. Lesbia at first expressed a strong disinclination to go
+to Rood Hall. There would be a most unpleasant feeling in stopping at
+the house of a man whom she had refused, she told Lady Kirkbank.
+
+'My dear, Mr. Smithson has forgiven you,' answered her chaperon. 'He is
+the soul of good nature.'
+
+'One would think he was accustomed to be refused,' said Lesbia. 'I don't
+want to go to Rood Hall, but I don't want to spoil your Henley week.
+Could not I run down to Grasmere for a week, with Kibble to take care of
+me, and see dear grandmother? I could tell her about those dreadful
+bills.'
+
+'Bury yourself at Grasmere in the height of the season! Not to be
+thought of! Besides, Lady Maulevrier objected before to the idea of your
+travelling alone with Kibble. No! if you can't make up your mind to go
+to Rood Hall, George and I must make up our minds to stay away. But it
+will be rather hard lines; for that Henley week is quite the jolliest
+thing in the summer.'
+
+'Then I'll go,' said Lesbia, with a resigned air. 'Not for worlds would
+I deprive you and Sir George of a pleasure.'
+
+In her heart of hearts she rather wished to see Rood Hall. She was
+curious to behold the extent and magnitude of Mr. Smithson's
+possessions. She had seen his Italian villa in Park Lane, the perfection
+of modern art, modern skill, modern taste, reviving the old eternally
+beautiful forms, recreating the Pitti Palace--the homes of the
+Medici--the halls of dead and gone Doges--and now she was told that Rood
+Hall--a genuine old English manor-house, in perfect preservation--was
+even more interesting than the villa in Park Lane. At Rood Hall there
+were ideal stables and farm, hot-houses without number, rose gardens,
+lawns, the river, and a deer park.
+
+So the invitation was accepted, and Mr. Smithson immediately laid
+himself at Lesbia's feet, as it were, with regard to all other
+invitations for the Henley festival. Whom should he ask to meet
+her?--whom would she have?
+
+'You are very good,' she said, 'but I have really no wish to be
+consulted. I am not a royal personage, remember. I could not presume to
+dictate.'
+
+'But I wish you to dictate. I wish you to be imperious in the expression
+of your wishes.'
+
+'Lady Kirkbank has a better right than I, if anybody is to be
+consulted,' said Lesbia, modestly.
+
+'Lady Kirkbank is an old dear, who gets on delightfully with everybody.
+But you are more sensitive. Your comfort might be marred by an obnoxious
+presence. I will ask nobody whom you do not like--who is not thoroughly
+_simpatico_. Have you no particular friends of your own choosing whom
+you would like me to ask?'
+
+Lesbia confessed that she had no such friends. She liked everybody
+tolerably; but she had not a talent for friendship. Perhaps it was
+because in the London season one was too busy to make friends.
+
+'I can fancy two girls getting quite attached to each other, out of the
+season,' she said, 'but in May and June life is all a rush and a
+scramble----'
+
+'And one has no time to gather wayside flowers of friendship,'
+interjected Mr. Smithson. 'Still, if there are no people for whom you
+have an especial liking, there _must_ be people whom you detest.'
+
+Lesbia owned that it was so. Detestation came of itself, naturally.
+
+'Then let me be sure I do not ask any of your pet aversions,' said Mr.
+Smithson. 'You met Mr. Plantagenet Parsons, the theatrical critic, at my
+house. Shall we have him?'
+
+'I like all amusing people.'
+
+'And Horace Meander, the poet. Shall we have him? He is brimful of
+conceits and affectations, but he's a tremendous joke.'
+
+'Mr. Meander is charming.'
+
+'Suppose we ask Mostyn and his wife? Her scraps of science are rather
+good fun.'
+
+'I haven't the faintest objection to the Mostyns,' replied Lesbia. 'But
+who are "we"?'
+
+'We are you and I, for the nonce. The invitations will be issued
+ostensibly by me, but they will really emanate from you.'
+
+'I am to be the shadow behind the throne,' said Lesbia. 'How
+delightful!'
+
+'I would rather you were the sovereign ruler, on the throne,' answered
+Smithson, tenderly. 'That throne shall be empty till you fill it.'
+
+'Please go on with your list of people,' said Lesbia, checking this gush
+of sentiment.
+
+She began to feel somehow that she was drifting from all her moorings,
+that in accepting this invitation to Rood Hall she was allowing herself
+to be ensnared into an alliance about which she was still doubtful. If
+anything better had appeared in the prospect of her life--if any
+worthier suitor had come forward, she would have whistled Mr. Smithson
+down the wind; but no worthier suitor had offered himself. It was
+Smithson or nothing. If she did not accept Smithson, she would go back
+to Fellside heavily burdened with debt, and an obvious failure. She
+would have run the gauntlet of a London season without definite result;
+and this, to a young woman so impressed with her own transcendent
+merits, was a most humiliating state of things.
+
+Other people's names were suggested by Mr. Smithson and approved by
+Lesbia, and a house party of about fourteen in all was made up. Mr.
+Smithson's steam launch would comfortably accommodate that number. He
+had a couple of barges for chance visitors, and kept an open table on
+board them during the regatta.
+
+The visit arranged, the next question was gowns. Lesbia had gowns enough
+to have stocked a draper's shop; but then, as she and Lady Kirkbank
+deplored, the difficulty was that she had worn them all, some as many as
+three or four times. They were doubtless all marked and known. Some of
+them had been described in the society papers. At Henley she would be
+expected to wear something distinctly new, to introduce some new fashion
+of gown or hat or parasol. No matter how ugly the new thing might be, so
+long as it was startling; no matter how eccentric, provided it was
+original.
+
+'What am I to do?' asked Lesbia, despairingly.
+
+'There is only one thing that can be done. We must go instantly to
+Seraphine and insist upon her inventing something. If she has no idea
+ready she must telegraph Worth and get him to send something over. Your
+old things will do very well for Rood Hall. You have no end of pretty
+gowns for morning and evening; but you must be original on the race
+days. Your gowns will be in all the papers.'
+
+'But I shall be only getting deeper into debt,' said Lesbia, with a
+sigh.
+
+'That can't be helped. If you go into society you must be properly
+dressed. We'll go to Clanricarde Place directly after luncheon, and see
+what that old harpy has to show us.'
+
+Lesbia had a rather uncomfortable feeling about facing the fair
+Seraphine, without being able to give her a cheque upon account of that
+dreadful bill. She had quite accepted Lady Kirkbank's idea that bills
+never need be discharged in full, and that the true system of finance
+was to give an occasional cheque on account, as a sop to Cerberus. True,
+that while Cerberus fattened on the sops the bill seemed always growing;
+and the final crash, when Cerberus grew savage and sops could be no more
+accepted, was too awful to be thought about.
+
+Lesbia entered Seraphine's Louis-seize drawing-room with a faint
+expectation of unpleasantness; but after a little whispering between
+Lady Kirkbank and the dressmaker, the latter came to Lesbia smiling
+graciously, and seemingly full of eagerness for new orders.
+
+'Miladi says you want something of the most original--_tant soit peu
+risqué_--for 'Enley,' she said. 'Let us see now,' and she tapped her
+forehead with a gold thimble which nobody had ever seen her use, but
+which looked respectable. 'There is ze dresses that Chaumont wear in zis
+new play, _Une Faute dans le Passé_. Yes, zere is the watare dress--a
+boating party at Bougival, a toilet of the most new, striking,
+_écrasant_, what you English call a "screamer."'
+
+'What a genius you are, Fifine,' exclaimed Lady Kirkbank, rapturously.
+'The _Faute dans le Passé_ was only produced last week. No one will have
+thought of copying Chaumont's gowns yet awhile. The idea is an
+inspiration.'
+
+'What is the boating costume like?' asked Lady Lesbia, faintly.
+
+'An exquisite combination of simplicity with _élan_,' answered the
+dressmaker. 'A skin-tight indigo silk Jersey bodice, closely studded
+with dark blue beads, a flounced petticoat of indigo and amber foulard,
+an amber scarf drawn tightly round the hips, and a dark blue toque with
+a large bunch of amber poppies. Tan-coloured mousquetaire gloves, and
+Hessian boots of tan-coloured kid.'
+
+'Hessian boots!' ejaculated Lesbia.
+
+'But, yes, Miladi. The petticoat is somewhat short, you comprehend, to
+escape the damp of the deck, and, after all, Hessians are much less
+indelicate than silk stockings, legs _à cru_, as one may say.'
+
+'Lesbia, you will look enchanting in yellow Hessians,' said Lady
+Kirkbank, 'Let the dress be put in hand instantly, Seraphine.'
+
+Lesbia was inclined to remonstrate. She did not admire the description
+of the costume, she would rather have something less outrageous.
+
+'Outrageous! It is only original,' exclaimed her chaperon. 'If Chaumont
+wears it you may be sure it is perfect.'
+
+'But on the stage, by gaslight, in the midst of unrealities,' argued
+Lesbia. 'That makes such a difference.'
+
+'My dear, there is no difference nowadays between the stage and the
+drawing-room. Whatever Chaumont wears you may wear. And now let us think
+of the second day. I think as your first costume is to be nautical, and
+rather masculine, your second should be somewhat languishing and
+_vaporeux_. Creamy Indian muslin, wild flowers, a large Leghorn hat.'
+
+'And what will Miladi herself wear?' asked the French woman of Lady
+Kirkbank. 'She must have something of new.'
+
+'No, at my age, it doesn't matter. I shall wear one of my cotton frocks,
+and my Dunstable hat.'
+
+Lesbia shuddered, for Lady Kirkbank in her cotton frock was a spectacle
+at which youth laughed and age blushed. But after all it did not matter
+to Lesbia. She would have liked a less rowdy chaperon; but as a foil to
+her own fresh young beauty Lady Kirkbank was admirable.
+
+They drove down to Rood Hall early next week, Sir George conveying them
+in his drag, with a change of horses at Maidenhead. The weather was
+peerless; the country exquisite, approached from London. How different
+that river landscape looks to the eyes of the traveller returning from
+the wild West of England, the wooded gorges of Cornwall and Devon, the
+Tamar and the Dart. Then how small and poor and mean seems silvery
+Thames, gliding peacefully between his willowy bank, singing his lullaby
+to the whispering sedges; a poor little river, a flat commonplace
+landscape, says the traveller, fresh from moorland and tor, from the
+rocky shore of the Atlantic, the deep clefts of the great, red hills.
+
+To Lesbia's eyes the placid stream and the green pastures, breathing
+odours of meadow-sweet and clover, seemed passing lovely. She was
+pleased with her own hat and parasol too, which made her graciously
+disposed towards the landscape; and the last packet of gloves from North
+Audley Street fitted without a wrinkle. The glovemaker was beginning to
+understand her hand, which was a study for a sculptor, but which had its
+little peculiarities.
+
+Nor was she ill-disposed to Mr. Smithson, who had come up to town by an
+early train, in order to lunch in Arlington Street and go back by coach,
+seated just behind Lady Lesbia, who had the box seat beside Sir George.
+
+The drive was delightful. It was a few minutes after five when the coach
+drove past the picturesque old gate-house into Mr. Smithson's Park, and
+Rood Hall lay on the low ground in front of them, with its back to the
+river. It was an old red brick house in the Tudor style, with an
+advanced porch, and four projecting wings, three stories high, with
+picturesque spire roofs overtopping the main building. Around the house
+ran a boldly-carved stone parapet, bearing the herons and bulrushes
+which were the cognisance of the noble race for which the mansion was
+built. Numerous projecting mullioned windows broke up the line of the
+park front. Lesbia was fain to own that Rood Hall was even better than
+Park Lane. In London Mr. Smithson had created a palace; but it was a new
+palace, which still had a faint flavour of bricks and mortar, and which
+was apt to remind the spectator of that wonderful erection of Aladdin,
+the famous Parvenu of Eastern story. Here, in Berkshire, Mr. Smithson
+had dropped into a nest which had been kept warm for him for three
+centuries, aired and beautified by generations of a noble race which had
+obligingly decayed and dwindled in order to make room for Mr. Smithson.
+Here the Parvenu had bought a home mellowed by the slow growth of years,
+touched into poetic beauty by the chastening fingers of time. His artist
+friends told him that every brick in the red walls was 'precious,' a
+mystery of colour which only a painter could fitly understand and value.
+Here he had bought associations, he had bought history. He had bought
+the dust of Elizabeth's senators, the bones of her court beauties. The
+coffins in the Mausoleum yonder in the ferny depths of the Park, the
+village church just outside the gates--these had all gone with the
+property.
+
+Lesbia went up the grand staircase, through the long corridors, in a
+dream of wonder. Brought up at Fellside, in that new part of the
+Westmoreland house which had been built by her grandmother and had no
+history, she felt thrilled by the sober splendour of this fine old
+manorial mansion. All was sound and substantial, as if created
+yesterday, so well preserved had been the goods and chattels of the
+noble race; and yet all wore such unmistakeable marks of age. The deep
+rich colouring of the wainscot, the faded hues of the tapestry, the
+draperies of costliest velvet and brocade, were all sobered by the
+passing of years.
+
+Mr. Smithson had shown his good taste in having kept all things as Sir
+Hubert Heronville, the last of his race, had left them; and the
+Heronvilles had been one of those grand old Tory races which change
+nothing of the past.
+
+Lady Lesbia's bedroom was the State chamber, which had been occupied by
+kings and queens in days of yore. That grandiose four-poster, with the
+carved ebony columns, cut velvet curtains, and plumes of ostrich
+feathers, had been built for Elizabeth, when she deigned to include Rood
+Hall in one of her royal progresses. Charles the First had rested his
+weary head upon those very pillows, before he went on to the Inn at
+Uxbridge, where he was to be lodged less luxuriously. James the Second
+had stayed there when Duke of York, with Mistress Anne Hyde, before he
+acknowledged his marriage to the multitude; and Anne's daughter had
+occupied the same room as Queen of England forty years later; and now
+the Royal Chamber, with adjacent dressing-room, and oratory, and
+spacious boudoir all in the same suite, was reserved for Lady Lesbia
+Haselden.
+
+'I'm afraid you are spoiling me,' she told Mr. Smithson, when he asked
+if she approved of the rooms that had been allotted to her. 'I feel
+quite ashamed of myself among the ghosts of dead and gone queens.'
+
+'Why so? Surely the Royalty of beauty has as divine a right as that of
+an anointed sovereign.'
+
+'I hope the Royal personages don't walk,' exclaimed Lady Kirkbank, in
+her girlish tone; 'this is just the house in which one would expect
+ghosts.'
+
+Whereupon Mrs. Mostyn hastened to enlighten the company upon the real
+causes of ghost-seeing, which she had lately studied in Carpenter's
+'Mental Physiology,' and favoured them with a diluted version of the
+views of that authority.
+
+This was at afternoon tea in the library, where the brass-wired
+bookcases, filled with mighty folios and handsome octavos in old
+bindings, looked as if they had not been opened for a century. The
+literature of past ages furnished the room, and made a delightful
+background. The literature of the present lay about on the tables, and
+testified that the highest intellectual flight of the inhabitants of
+Rood Hall was a dip into the _Contemporary_ or the _Nineteenth Century_,
+or the perusal of the last new scandal in the shape of Reminiscences or
+Autobiography. One large round table was consecrated to Mudie, another
+to Rolandi. On the one side you had Mrs. Oliphant, on the other Zola,
+exemplifying the genius of the two nations.
+
+After tea Mr. Smithson's visitors, most of whom had arrived in Sir
+George's drag, explored the grounds. These were lovely beyond expression
+in the low afternoon light. Cedars of Lebanon spread their broad shadows
+on the velvet lawn, yews and Wellingtonias of mighty growth made an
+atmosphere of gloom in some parts of the grounds. One great feature was
+the Ladies' Garden, a spot apart, a great square garden surrounded with
+a laurel wall, eight feet high, containing a rose garden, where the
+choicest specimens grew and flourished, while in the centre there was a
+circular fish-pond with a fountain. There was a Lavender Walk too,
+another feature of the grounds at Rood Hall, an avenue of tall lavender
+bushes, much affected by the stately dames of old.
+
+Modern manners preferred the river terrace, as a pleasant place on which
+to loiter after dinner, to watch the boats flashing by in the evening
+light, or the sun going down behind a fringe of willows on the opposite
+bank. This Italian terrace, with its statues, and carved vases filled
+with roses, fuchsias, and geraniums, was the great point of rendezvous
+at Rood Hall--an ideal spot whereon to linger in the deepening twilight,
+from which to gaze upon the moonlit river later on in the night.
+
+The windows of the drawing-room, and music-room, and ballroom opened on
+to this terrace, and the royal wing--the tower-shaped wing now devoted
+to Lady Lesbia, looked upon the terrace and the river.
+
+'Lovely as your house is altogether, I think this river view is the
+best part of it,' said Lady Lesbia, as she strolled with Mr. Smithson on
+the terrace after dinner, dressed in Indian muslin which was almost as
+poetical as a vapour, and with a cloud of delicate lace wrapped round
+her head. 'I think I shall spend half of my life at my boudoir window,
+gloating over that delicious landscape.'
+
+Horace Meander, the poet, was discoursing to a select group upon that
+peculiar quality of willows which causes them to shiver, and quiver, and
+throw little lights and shadows on the river, and on the subtle,
+ineffable beauty of twilight, which perhaps, however utterly beautiful
+in the abstract, would have been more agreeable to him personally if he
+had not been surrounded by a cloud of gnats, which refused to be
+buffeted off his laurel-crowned head.
+
+While Mr. Meander poetised in his usual eloquent style, Mrs. Mostyn, as
+a still newer light, discoursed as eloquently to little a knot of women,
+imparting valuable information upon the anatomical structure and
+individual peculiarities of those various insects which are the pests of
+a summer evening.
+
+'You don't like gnats!' exclaimed the lady; 'how very extraordinary. Do
+you know I have spent days and weeks upon the study of their habits and
+dear little ways. They are the most interesting creatures--far superior
+to _us_ in intellect. Do you know that they fight, and that they have
+tribes which are life-long enemies--like those dreadful Corsicans--and
+that they make little sepulchres in the bark of trees, and bury each
+other--alive, if they can; and they hold vestries, and have burial
+boards. They are most absorbing creatures, if you only give yourself up
+to the study of them; but it is no use to be half-hearted in a study of
+that kind. I went without so much as a cup of tea for twenty-four hours,
+watching my gnats, for fear the opening of the door should startle them.
+Another time I shall make the nursery governess watch for me.'
+
+'How interesting, how noble of you,' exclaimed the other ladies; and
+then they began to talk about bonnets, and about Mr. Smithson, to
+speculate how much money this house and all his other houses had cost
+him, and to wonder if he was really rich, or if he were only one of
+those great financial windbags which so often explode and leave the
+world aghast, marvelling at the ease with which it has been deluded.
+
+They wondered, too, whether Lady Lesbia Haselden meant to marry him.
+
+'Of course she does, my dear,' answered Mrs. Mostyn, decisively.
+
+'You don't suppose that after having studied the habits of _gnats_ I
+cannot read such a poor shallow creature as a silly vain girl. Of course
+Lady Lesbia means to marry Mr. Smithson's fine houses; and she is only
+amusing herself and swelling her own importance by letting him dangle in
+a kind of suspense which is not suspense; for he knows as well as she
+does that she means to have him.'
+
+The next day was given up, first to seeing the house, an amusement which
+lasted very well for an hour or so after breakfast, and then to
+wandering in a desultory manner, to rowing and canoeing, and a little
+sailing, and a good deal of screaming and pretty timidity upon the blue
+bright river; to gathering wild flowers and ferns in rustic lanes, and
+to an _al fresco_ luncheon in the wood at Medmenham, and then dinner,
+and then music, an evening spent half within and half without the
+music-room, cigarettes sparkling, like glowworms on the terrace, tall
+talk from Mr. Meander, long quotations from his own muse and that of
+Rossetti, a little Shelley, a little Keats, a good deal of Swinburne.
+The festivities were late on this second evening, as Mr. Smithson had
+invited a good many people from the neighbourhood, but the house party
+were not the less early on the following morning, which was the first
+Henley day.
+
+It was a peerless morning, and all the brasswork of Mr. Smithson's
+launch sparkled and shone in the sun, as she lay in front of the
+terrace. A wooden pier, a portable construction, was thrown out from the
+terrace steps, to enable the company to go on board the launch without
+the possibility of wet feet or damaged raiment.
+
+Lesbia's Chaumount costume was a success. The women praised it, the men
+stared and admired. The dark-blue silken jersey, sparkling with closely
+studded indigo beads, fitted the slim graceful figure as a serpent's
+scales fit the serpent. The coquettish little blue silk toque, the
+careless cluster of gold-coloured poppies, against the glossy brown
+hair, the large sunshade of old gold satin lined with indigo, the
+flounced petticoat of softest Indian silk, the dainty little
+tan-coloured boots with high heels and pointed toes, were all perfect
+after their fashion; and Mr. Smithson felt that the liege lady of his
+life, the woman he meant to marry willy nilly, would be the belle of the
+race-course. Nor was he disappointed. Everybody in London had heard of
+Lady Lesbia Haselden. Her photograph was in all the West-End windows,
+was enshrined in the albums of South Kensington and Clapham, Maida Vale
+and Haverstock Hill. People whose circles were far remote from Lady
+Lesbia's circle, were as familiar with her beauty as if they had known
+her from her cradle. And all these outsiders wanted to see her in the
+flesh, just as they always thirst to behold Royal personages. So when it
+became known that the beautiful Lady Lesbia Haselden was on board Mr.
+Smithson's launch, all the people in the small boats, or on neighbouring
+barges, made it their business to have a good look at her. The launch
+was almost mobbed by those inquisitive little boats in the intervals
+between the races.
+
+'What are the people all staring and hustling one another for?' asked
+Lesbia, innocently. She had seen the same hustling and whispering and
+staring in the hall at the opera, when she was waiting for her carriage;
+but she chose to affect unconsciousness. 'What do they all want?'
+
+'I think they want to see you,' said Mr. Smithson, who was sitting by
+her side. 'A very natural desire.'
+
+Lesbia laughed, and lowered the big yellow sunshade, so as to hide
+herself altogether from the starers.
+
+'How silly!' she exclaimed. 'It is all the fault of those horrid
+photographers: they vulgarise everything and everybody. I will never be
+photographed again.'
+
+'Oh yes, you will, and in that frock. It's the prettiest thing I've seen
+for a long time. Why do you hide yourself from those poor wretches, who
+keep rowing backwards and forwards in an obviously aimless way, just to
+get a peep at you _en passant_? What happiness for us who live near you,
+and can gaze when we will, without all those absurd manoeuvres. There
+goes the signal--and now for a hard-fought race.'
+
+Lesbia pretended to be interested in the racing--she pretended to be
+gay, but her heart was as heavy as lead. The burden of debt, which had
+been growing ever since Seraphine sent in her bill, was weighing her
+down to the dust.
+
+She owed three thousand pounds. It seemed incredible that she should owe
+so much, that a girl's frivolous fancies and extravagances could amount
+to such a sum within so short a span. But thoughtless purchases,
+ignorant orders, had run on from week to week, and the main result was
+an indebtedness of close upon three thousand pounds.
+
+Three thousand pounds! The sum was continually sounding in her ears like
+the cry of a screech owl. The very ripple of the river flowing so
+peacefully under the blue summer sky seemed to repeat the words. Three
+thousand pounds! 'Is it much?' she wondered, having no standard of
+comparison. 'Is it very much more than my grandmother will expect me to
+have spent in the time? Will it trouble her to have to pay those bills?
+Will she be very angry?'
+
+These were questions which Lesbia kept asking herself, in every pause of
+her frivolous existence; in such a pause as this, for instance, while
+the people round her were standing breathless, open-mouthed, gazing
+after the boats. She did not care a straw for the boats, who won, or who
+lost the race. It was all a hollow mockery. Indeed it seemed just now
+that the only real thing in life was those accursed bills, which would
+have to be paid somehow.
+
+She had told Lady Maulevrier nothing about them as yet. She had allowed
+herself to be advised by Lady Kirkbank, and she had taken time to think.
+But thought had given her no help. The days were gliding onward, and
+Lady Maulevrier would have to be told.
+
+She meditated perplexedly about her grandmother's income. She had never
+heard the extent of it, but had taken for granted that Lady Maulevrier
+was rich. Would three thousand pounds make a great inroad on that
+income? Would it be a year's income?--half a year's? Lesbia had no idea.
+Life at Fellside was carried on in an elegant manner--with considerable
+luxury in house and garden--a luxury of flowers, a lavish expenditure of
+labour. Yet the expenditure of Lady Maulevrier's existence, spent always
+on the same spot, must be as nothing to the money spent in such a life
+as Lady Kirkbank's, which involved the keeping up of three or four
+houses, and costly journeys to and fro, and incessant change of attire.
+
+No doubt Lady Maulevrier had saved money; yes, she must have saved
+thousands during her long seclusion, Lesbia argued. Her grandmother had
+told her that she was to look upon herself as an heiress. This could
+only mean that Lady Maulevrier had a fortune to leave her; and this
+being so, what could it matter if she had anticipated some of her
+portion? And yet there was in her heart of hearts a terrible fear of
+that stern dowager, of the cold scorn in those splendid eyes when she
+should stand revealed in all her foolishness, her selfish, mindless,
+vain extravagances. She, who had never been reproved, shrank with a
+sickly dread from the idea of reproof. And to be told that her career as
+a fashionable beauty had been a failure! That would be the bitterest
+pang of all.
+
+Soon came luncheon, and Heidseck, and then an afternoon which was gayer
+than the morning had been, inasmuch as every one babbled and laughed
+more after luncheon. And then there was five o'clock tea on deck, under
+the striped Japanese awning, to the jingle of banjos, enlivened by the
+wit of black-faced minstrels, amidst wherries and canoes and gondolas,
+and ponderous houseboats, and snorting launches, crowding the sides of
+the sunlit river, in full view of the crowd yonder in front of the Red
+Lion, and here on this nearer bank, and all along either shore, fringing
+the green meadows with a gaudy border of smartly-dressed humanity.
+
+It was a gay scene, and Lesbia gave herself up to the amusement of the
+hour, and talked and chaffed as she had learned to talk and chaff in one
+brief season, holding her own against all comers.
+
+Rood Hall looked lovely when they went back to it in the gloaming, an
+Elizabethan pile crowned with towers. The four wings with their conical
+roofs, the massive projecting windows, grey stone, ruddy brickwork,
+lattices reflecting the sunlight, Italian terrace and blue river in the
+foreground, cedars and yews at the back, all made a splendid picture of
+an English ancestral home.
+
+'Nice old place, isn't it?' asked Mr. Smithson, seeing Lesbia's
+admiring gaze as the launch neared the terrace. They two were standing
+in the bows, apart from all the rest.
+
+'Nice! it is simply perfect.'
+
+'Oh no, it isn't. There is one thing wanted yet.'
+
+'What is that?'
+
+'A wife. You are the only person who can make any house of mine perfect.
+Will you?' He took her hand, which she did not withdraw from his grasp.
+He bent his head and kissed the little hand in its soft Swedish glove.
+
+'Will you, Lesbia?' he repeated earnestly; and she answered softly,
+'Yes.'
+
+That one brief syllable was more like a sigh than a spoken word, and it
+seemed to her as if in the utterance of that syllable the three thousand
+pounds had been paid.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+'KIND IS MY LOVE TO-DAY, TO-MORROW KIND.'
+
+
+While Lady Lesbia was draining the cup of London folly and London care
+to the dregs, Lady Mary was leading her usual quiet life beside the
+glassy lake, where the green hill-sides and sheep walks were reflected
+in all their summer verdure under the cloudless azure of a summer sky. A
+monotonous life--passing dull as seen from the outside--and yet Mary was
+very happy, happy even in her solitude, with the grave deep joy of a
+satisfied heart, a mind at rest. All life had taken a new colour since
+her engagement to John Hammond. A sense of new duties, an awakening
+earnestness had given a graver tone to her character. Her spirits were
+less wild, yet not less joyous than of old. The joy was holier, deeper.
+
+Her lover's letters were the chief delight of her lonely days. To read
+them again and again, and ponder upon them, and then to pour out all her
+heart and mind in answering them. These were pleasures enough for her
+young life. Hammond's letters were such as any woman might be proud to
+receive. They were not love-letters only. He wrote as friend to friend;
+not descending from the proud pinnacle of masculine intelligence to the
+lower level of feminine silliness; not writing down to a simple country
+girl's capacity; but writing fully and fervently, as if there were no
+subject too lofty or too grave for the understanding of his betrothed.
+He wrote as one sure of being sympathised with, wrote as to his second
+self: and Mary showed herself not unworthy of the honour thus rendered
+to her intellect.
+
+There was one world which had newly opened to Mary since her
+engagement, and that was the world of politics. Hammond had told her
+that his ambition was to succeed as a politician--to do some good in his
+day as one of the governing body; and of late she had made it her
+business to learn how England and the world outside England were
+governed.
+
+She had no natural leaning to the study of political economy. Instead,
+she had always imagined any question relating to the government of her
+country to be inherently dry-as-dust and uninviting. But had John
+Hammond devoted his days to the study of Coptic manuscripts, or the
+arrow-headed inscriptions upon Assyrian tablets, she would have toiled
+her hardest in the endeavour to make herself a Coptic scholar, or an
+adept in the cuneiform characters. If he had been a student of Chinese,
+she would not have been discomfited by such a trifle as the fifty
+thousand characters in the Chinese alphabet.
+
+And so, as he was to make his name in the arena of public life, she set
+herself to acquire a proper understanding of the science of politics;
+and to this end she gorged herself with English history,--Hume, Hallam,
+Green, Justin McCarthy, Palgrave, Lecky, from the days of Witenagemote
+to the Reform Bill; the Repeal of the Corn Laws, the Disestablishment of
+the Irish Church, Ballot, Trade Unionism, and unreciprocated Free Trade.
+No question was deep enough to repel her; for was not her lover
+interested in the dryest thereof; and what concerned him and his welfare
+must needs be full of interest for her.
+
+To this end she read the debates religiously day by day; and she one day
+ventured shyly to suggest that she should read them aloud to Lady
+Maulevrier.
+
+'Would it not be a little rest for you if I were to read your Times
+aloud to you every afternoon, grandmother?' she asked. 'You read so many
+books, French, English, and German, and I think your eyes must get a
+little tired sometimes.'
+
+Mary ventured the remark with some timidity, for those falcon eyes were
+fixed upon her all the time, bright and clear and steady as the eyes of
+youth. It seemed almost an impertinence to suggest that such eyes could
+know weariness.
+
+'No, Mary, my sight holds out wonderfully for an old woman,' replied
+her ladyship, gently. 'The new theory of the last oculist whose book I
+dipped into--a very amusing and interesting book, by-the-bye--is that
+the sight improves and strengthens by constant use, and that an
+agricultural labourer, who hardly uses his eyes at all, has rarely in
+the decline of life so good a sight as the watchmaker or the student. I
+have read immensely all my life, and find myself no worse for that
+indulgence. But you may read the debates to me if you like, my dear, for
+if my eyes are strong, I myself am very tired. Sick to death, Mary, sick
+to death.'
+
+The splendid eyes turned from Mary, and looked away to the blue sky, to
+the hills in their ineffable beauty of colour and light--shifting,
+changing with every moment of the summer day. Intense weariness, a
+settled despair, were expressed in that look--tearless, yet sadder than
+all tears.
+
+'It must be very monotonous, very sad for you,' murmured Mary, her own
+eyes brimming over with tears. 'But it will not be always so, dear
+grandmother. I hope a time will come when you will be able to go about
+again, to resume your old life.'
+
+'I do not hope, Mary. No, child, I feel and know that time will never
+come. My strength is ebbing slowly day by day. If I live for another
+year, live to see Lesbia married, and you, too, perhaps--well, I shall
+die at peace. At peace, no; not----' she faltered, and the thin,
+semi-transparent hand was pressed upon her brow. 'What will be said of
+me when I am dead?'
+
+Mary feared that her grandmother's mind was wandering. She came and
+knelt beside the couch, laid and her head against the satin pillows,
+tenderly, caressingly.
+
+'Dear grandmother, pray be calm,' she murmured.
+
+'Mary, do not look at me like that, as if you would read my heart. There
+are hearts that must not be looked into. Mine is like a charnel-house.
+Monotonous, yes; my life has been monotonous. No conventual gloom was
+ever deeper than the gloom of Fellside. My boy did nothing to lighten it
+for me, and his son followed in his father's footsteps. You and Lesbia
+have been my only consolation. Lesbia! I was so proud of her beauty, so
+proud and fond of her, because she was like me, and recalled my own
+youth. And see how easily she forgets me. She has gone into a new world,
+in which my age and my infirmities have no part; and I am as nothing to
+her.'
+
+Mary changed from red to pale, so painful was her embarrassment. What
+could she say in defence of her sister? How could she deny that Lesbia
+was an ingrate, when those rare and hurried letters, so careless in
+their tone, expressing the selfishness of the writer in every syllable,
+told but too plainly of forgetfulness and ingratitude?
+
+'Dear grandmother, Lesbia has so much to do--her life is so full of
+engagements,' she faltered feebly.
+
+'Yes, she goes from party to party--she gives herself up heart and mind
+and soul to pleasures which she ought to consider only as the trivial
+means to great ends; and she forgets the woman who reared her, and cared
+for her, and watched over her from her infancy, and who tried to inspire
+her with a noble ambition.--Yes, read to me, child, read. Give me new
+thoughts, if you can, for my brain is weary with grinding the old ones.
+There was a grand debate in the Lords last night, and Lord Hartfield
+spoke. Let me hear his speech. You can read what was said by the man
+before him; never mind the rest.'
+
+Mary read Lord Somebody's speech, which was passing dull, but which
+prepared the ground for a magnificent and exhaustive reply from Lord
+Hartfield. The question was an important one, affecting the well-being
+of the masses, and Lord Hartfield spoke with an eloquence which rose in
+force and fire as he wound himself like a serpent into the heart of his
+subject--beginning quietly, soberly, with no opening flashes of
+rhetoric, but rising gradually to the topmost heights of oratory.
+
+'What a speech!' cried Lady Maulevrier, delighted, her cheeks glowing,
+her eyes kindling; 'what a noble fellow the speaker must be! Oh, Mary, I
+must tell you a secret. I loved that man's father. Yes, my dear, I loved
+him fondly, dearly, truly, as you love that young man of yours; and he
+was the only man I ever really loved. Fate parted us. But I have never
+forgotten him--never, Mary, never. At this moment I have but to close my
+eyes and I can see his face--see him looking at me as he looked the last
+time we met. He was a younger son, poor, his future quite hopeless in
+those days; but it was not my fault we were parted. I would have married
+him--yes, wedded poverty, just as you are going to marry this Mr.
+Hammond; but my people would not let me; and I was too young, too
+helpless, to make a good fight. Oh, Mary, if I had only fought hard
+enough, what a happy woman I might have been, and how good a wife.'
+
+'You were a good wife to my grandfather, I am sure,' faltered Mary, by
+way of saying something consolatory.
+
+A dark frown came over Lady Maulevrier's face, which had softened to
+deepest tenderness just before.
+
+'A good wife to Maulevrier,' she said, in a mocking tone. Well, yes, as
+good a wife as such a husband deserved. 'I was better than Cæsar's
+wife, Mary, for no breath of suspicion ever rested upon my name. But if
+I had married Ronald Hollister, I should have been a happy woman; and
+that I have never been since I parted from him.'
+
+'You have never seen the present Lord Hartfield, I think?'
+
+'Never; but I have watched his career, I have thought of him. His father
+died while he was an infant, and he was brought up in seclusion by a
+widowed mother, who kept him tied to her apron-strings till he went to
+Oxford. She idolised him, and I am told she taught herself Latin and
+Greek, mathematics even, in order to help him in his boyish studies,
+and, later on, read Greek plays and Latin poetry with him, till she
+became an exceptional classic for a woman. She was her son's companion
+and friend, sympathised with his tastes, his pleasures, his friendships;
+devoted every hour of her life, every thought of her mind to his
+welfare, his interests, walked with him, rode with him, travelled half
+over Europe, yachted with him. Her friends all declared that the lad
+would grow up an odious milksop; but I am told that there never was a
+manlier man than Lord Hartfield. From his boyhood he was his mother's
+protector, helped to administer her affairs, acquired a premature sense
+of responsibility, and escaped almost all those vices which make young
+men detestable. His mother died within a few months of his majority. He
+was broken-hearted at losing her, and left Europe immediately after her
+death. From that time he has been a great traveller. But I suppose now
+that he has taken his seat in the House of Lords, and has spoken a good
+many times, he means to settle down and take his place among the
+foremost men of his day. I am told that he is worthy to take such a
+place.'
+
+'You must feel warmly interested in watching his career,' said Mary,
+sympathetically.
+
+'I am interested in everything that concerns him. I will tell you
+another secret, Mary. I think I am getting into my dotage, my dear, or I
+should hardly talk to you like this,' said Lady Maulevrier, with a touch
+of bitterness.
+
+Mary was sitting on a stool by the sofa, close to the invalid's pillow.
+She clasped her grandmother's hand and kissed it fondly.
+
+'Dear grandmother, I think you are talking to me like this to-day
+because you are beginning to care for me a little,' she said, tenderly.
+
+'Oh, my dear, you are very good, very sweet and forgiving to care for me
+at all, after my neglect of you,' answered Lady Maulevrier, with a
+sigh. 'I have kept you out in the cold so long, Mary. Lesbia--well,
+Lesbia has been a kind of infatuation for me, and like all infatuations
+mine has ended in disappointment and bitterness. Ambition has been the
+bane of my life, Mary; and when I could no longer be ambitious for
+myself--when my own existence had become a mere death in life, I began
+to dream and to scheme for the aggrandisement of my granddaughter.
+Lesbia's beauty, Lesbia's elegance seemed to make success certain--and
+so I dreamt my dream--which may never be fulfilled.'
+
+'What was your dream, grandmother? May I know all about it?'
+
+'That was the secret I spoke of just now. Yes, Mary, you may know, for I
+fear the dream will never be realised. I wanted my Lesbia to become Lord
+Hartfield's wife. I would have brought them together myself, could I
+have but gone to London; but, failing that, I fancied Lady Kirkbank
+would have divined my wishes without being told them, and would have
+introduced Hartfield to Lesbia; and now the London season is drawing to
+a close, and Hartfield and Lesbia have never met. He hardly goes
+anywhere, I am told. He devotes himself exclusively to politics; and he
+is not in Lady Kirkbank's set. A terrible disappointment to me, Mary!'
+
+'It is a pity,' said Mary. 'Lesbia is so lovely. If Lord Hartfield were
+fancy-free he ought to fall in love with her, could they but meet. I
+thought that in London all fashionable people knew each other, and were
+continually meeting.'
+
+'It used to be so in my day, Mary. Almack's was a common ground, even if
+there had been no other. But now there are circles and circles, I
+believe, rings that touch occasionally, but never break and mingle. I am
+afraid poor Georgie's set is not quite so nice as I could have wished.
+Yet Lesbia writes as if she were in raptures with her chaperon, and with
+all the people she meets. And then Georgie tells me that this Mr.
+Smithson whom Lesbia has refused is a very important personage, a
+millionaire, and very likely to be made a peer.'
+
+'A new peer,' said Mary, making a wry face. 'One would rather have an
+old commoner. I always fancy a newly-made peer must be like a
+newly-built house, glaring, and staring, and arid and uncongenial.'
+
+'_C'est selon_,' said Lady Maulevrier. 'One would not despise a Chatham
+or a Wellington because of the newness of his title; but a man who has
+only money to recommend him----'
+
+Lady Maulevrier left her sentence unfinished, save by a shrug; while
+Mary made another wry face. She had that grand contempt for sordid
+wealth which is common to young people who have never known the want of
+money.
+
+'I hope Lesbia will marry some one better than Mr. Smithson,' she said.
+
+'I hope so too, dear; and yet do you know I have an idea that Lesbia
+means to accept Mr. Smithson, or she would hardly have consented to go
+to his house for the Henley week. Here is a letter from Georgie Kirkbank
+which you will have to answer for me to-morrow--a letter full of
+raptures about Mr. Smithson's place in Berkshire, Rood Hall. I remember
+the house well. I was there nearly fifty years ago, when the Heronvilles
+owned it; and now the Heronvilles are all dead or ruined, and this city
+person is master of the fine old mansion. It is a strange world, Mary.'
+
+From that time forward Mary and her grandmother were on more
+confidential terms, and when, two days later, Fellside was startled into
+life by the unexpected arrival of Lord Maulevrier and Mr. Hammond, the
+dowager seemed almost as pleased as her granddaughter at the arrival of
+the young men.
+
+As for Mary, she was almost beside herself with joy when she heard their
+voices from the lawn, and, rushing to the shrubbery, saw them walk up
+the hill, as she had seen them on that first evening nearly a year ago,
+when John Hammond came as a stranger to Fellside.
+
+She tried to take her joy soberly, though her eyes were dancing with
+delight, as she went to the porch to meet them.
+
+'What extraordinary young men you are,' she said, as she emerged
+breathless from her lover's embrace. 'The idea of your descending upon
+us without a moment's notice. Why did you not write or telegraph, that
+your rooms might be ready?'
+
+'Am I to understand that all the spare rooms at Fellside are kept as
+damp as at the bottom of the lake?' asked Maulevrier. 'I did not
+think any preparation was necessary; but we can go back if we're
+not wanted, can't we, Jack?'
+
+'You darling,' cried Mary, hanging affectionately upon her brother's
+arm. 'You _know_ I was only joking, you _know_ how enraptured I am to
+have you.'
+
+'To have _me_, only me,' said Maulevrier. 'Jack doesn't count, I
+suppose?'
+
+'You know how glad I am, and that I want to hide my gladness,' answered
+Mary, radiant and blushing like the rich red roses in the porch. 'You
+men are so vain. And now come and see grandmother, she will be cheered
+by your arrival. She has been so good to me just lately, so sweet.'
+
+'She might have been good and sweet to you all your life,' said Hammond.
+'I am not prepared to be grateful to her at a moment's notice for any
+crumbs of affection she may throw you.'
+
+'Oh but you must be grateful, sir; and you must love her and pity her,'
+retorted Mary. 'Think how sadly she has suffered. We cannot be too kind
+to her, or too fond of her, poor dear.'
+
+'Mary is right,' said Hammond, half in jest and half in earnest. 'What
+wonderful instincts these young women have.'
+
+'Come and see her ladyship; and then you must have dinner, just as you
+had that first evening,' said Mary. 'We'll act that first evening over
+again, Jack; only you can't fall in love with Lesbia, as she isn't
+here.'
+
+'I don't think I surrendered that first evening, Mary. Though I thought
+your sister the loveliest girl I had ever seen.'
+
+'And what did you think of me, sir? Tell me that,' said Mary.
+
+'Shall I tell you the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the
+truth?'
+
+'Of course.'
+
+'Then I freely confess that I did not think about you at all. You were
+there--a pretty, innocent, bright young maiden, with big brown eyes and
+auburn hair; but I thought no more about you than I did about the
+Gainsborough on the wall, which you very much resemble.'
+
+'That is most humiliating,' said Mary, pouting a little in the midst of
+her bliss.
+
+'No, dearest, it is only natural,' answered Hammond. 'I believe if all
+the happy lovers in this world could be questioned, at least half of
+them would confess to having thought very little about each other at
+first meeting. They meet, and touch hands, and part again, and never
+guess the mystery of the future, which wraps them round like a cloud,
+never say of each other. There is my fate; and then they meet again, and
+again, as hazard wills, and never know that they are drifting to their
+doom.'
+
+Mary rang bells and gave orders, just as she had done in that summer
+gloaming a year ago. The young men had arrived just at the same hour, on
+the stroke of nine, when the eight o'clock dinner was over and done
+with; for a _tête-à-tête_ meal with Fräulein Müller was not a feast to
+be prolonged on account of its felicity. Perhaps they had so contrived
+as to arrive exactly at this hour.
+
+Lady Maulevrier received them both with extreme cordiality. But the
+young men saw a change for the worse in the invalid since the spring.
+The face was thinner, the eyes too bright, the flush upon the hollow
+cheek had a hectic tinge, the voice was feebler. Hammond was reminded of
+a falcon or an eagle pining and wasting in a cage.
+
+'I am very glad to see you, Mr. Hammond,' said Lady Maulevrier, giving
+him her hand, and addressing him with unwonted cordiality. 'It was a
+happy thought that brought you and Maulevrier here. When an old woman is
+as near the grave as I am her relatives ought to look after her. I shall
+be glad to have a little private conversation with you to-morrow, Mr.
+Hammond, if you can spare me a few minutes.'
+
+'As many hours, if your ladyship pleases,' said Hammond. 'My time is
+entirely at your service.'
+
+'Oh, no, you will want to be roaming about the hills with Mary,
+discussing your plans for the future. I shall not encroach too much on
+your time. But I am very glad you are here.'
+
+'We shall only trespass on you for a few days,' said Maulevrier, 'just a
+flying visit.'
+
+'How is it that you are not both at Henley?' asked Mary. 'I thought all
+the world was at Henley.'
+
+'Who is Henley? what is Henley?' demanded Maulevrier, pretending
+ignorance.
+
+'I believe Maulevrier has lost so much money backing his college boat
+on previous occasions that he is glad to run away from the regatta this
+year,' said Hammond.
+
+'I have a sister there,' replied his friend. 'That's an all-sufficient
+explanation. When a fellow's women-kind take to going to races and
+regattas it is high time for _him_ to stop away.'
+
+'Have you seen Lesbia lately?' asked his grandmother.
+
+'About ten days ago.'
+
+'And did she seem happy?'
+
+Maulevrier shrugged his shoulders.
+
+'She was vacillating between the refusal or the acceptance of a million
+of money and four or five fine houses. I don't know whether that
+condition of mind means happiness. I should call it an intermediate
+state.'
+
+'Why do you make silly jokes about serious questions? Do you think
+Lesbia means to accept this Mr. Smithson?'
+
+'All London thinks so.'
+
+'And is he a good man?'
+
+'Good for a hundred thousand pounds at half an hour's notice.'
+
+'Is he worthy of your sister?'
+
+Maulevrier paused, looked at his grandmother with a curious expression,
+and then replied--
+
+'I think he is--quite.'
+
+'Then I am content that she should marry him,' said Lady Maulevrier,
+'although he is a nobody.'
+
+'Oh, but he is a very important nobody, a nobody who can get a peerage
+next year, backed by the Maulevrier influence, which I suppose would
+count for something.'
+
+'Most of my friends are dead,' said Lady Maulevrier, 'but there are a
+few survivors of the past who might help me.'
+
+'I don't think there'll be any difficulty or doubt about the peerage.
+Smithson stumped up very handsomely at the last General Election, and
+the Conservatives are not strong enough to be ungrateful. "These have
+no master."'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII.
+
+WAYS AND MEANS.
+
+
+The three days that followed were among the happiest days of Mary
+Haselden's young life. Lady Maulevrier had become strangely indulgent. A
+softening influence of some kind had worked upon that haughty spirit,
+and it seemed as if her whole nature was changed--or it might be, Mary
+thought, that this softer side of her character had always been turned
+to Lesbia, while to Mary herself it was altogether new. Lesbia had been
+the peach on the sunny southern wall, ripening and reddening in a flood
+of sunshine; Mary had been the stunted fruit growing in a north-east
+corner, hidden among leaves, blown upon by cold winds green and hard and
+sour for lack of the warm bright light. And now Mary felt the sunshine,
+and grew glad and gay in those glowing beams.
+
+'Dear grandmother, I believe you are beginning to love me,' she said,
+bending over to arrange the invalid's pillows in the July morning, the
+fresh mountain air blowing in upon old and young from the great open
+window, like a caress.
+
+'I am beginning to know you,' answered Lady Maulevrier, gently.
+
+'I think it is the magic of love, Mary, that has sweetened and softened
+your nature, and endeared you to me. I think you have grown ever so much
+sweeter a girl since your engagement. Or it may be that you were the
+same always, and it was I who was blind. Lesbia was all in all to me.
+All in all--and now I am nothing to her,' she murmured, to herself
+rather than to Mary.
+
+'I am so proud to think that you see an improvement in me since my
+engagement,' said Mary, modestly. 'I have tried very hard to improve
+myself, so that I might be more worthy of him.'
+
+'You are worthy, Mary, worthy of the best and the highest: and I believe
+that, although you are making what the world calls a very bad match, you
+are marrying wisely. You are wedding yourself to a life of obscurity;
+but what does that matter, if it be a happy life? I have known what it
+is to pursue the phantom fortune, and to find youth and hope and
+happiness vanish from the pathway which I followed.'
+
+'Dear grandmother, I wish you had been able to marry the man of your
+choice,' answered Mary, tenderly.
+
+She was ready to weep over that wasted life of her grandmother's; to
+weep for that forced parting of true lovers, albeit the tragedy was half
+a century old.
+
+'I should have been a happier woman and a better woman if fate had been
+kind to me, Mary,' answered Lady Maulevrier, gravely; 'and now that I am
+daily drawing nearer the land of shadows, I will not stand in the way of
+faithful lovers. I have a fancy, Mary, that I have not many months to
+live.'
+
+'Only an invalid's fancy,' said Mary, stooping down to kiss the pale
+forehead, so full of thought and care; 'only a morbid fancy, nursed in
+the monotony of this quiet room. Maulevrier and Jack and I must find
+some way of amusing you.'
+
+'You will never amuse me out of that conviction, my dear. I can see the
+shadows lengthening and the sands running out. There are but a few
+grains left in the glass, Mary; and while those last I should like to
+see you and Mr. Hammond married. I should like to feel that your fate is
+settled before I go. God knows what confusion and trouble may follow my
+death.'
+
+This was said with a sharp ring of despair.
+
+'I am not going to leave you, grandmother,' said Mary.
+
+'Not even for the man you love? You are a good girl, Mary. Lesbia has
+forsaken me for a lesser temptation.'
+
+'Grandmother, that is hardly fair. It was your own wish to have Lesbia
+presented this season,' remonstrated Mary, loyal to the absent.
+
+'True, my dear. I saw she was very tired of her life here, and I thought
+it was better. But I'm sorely afraid London has spoiled her. No, Mary,
+you can stay with me to the end, if you like. There is room enough for
+you and your husband under this roof. I like this Mr. Hammond. His is
+the only face that ever recalled the face of the dead. Yes, I like him;
+and although I know nothing about him except what Maulevrier tells
+me--and that is of the scantiest--still I feel, somehow, that I can
+trust him. Send your lover to me, Mary. I want to have a serious talk
+with him.'
+
+Mary ran off to obey, fluttered, blushing, and trembling. This idea of
+marriage in the immediate future was to be the last degree startling. A
+year had seemed a very long time; and she had been told that she and her
+lover must wait a year at the very least; so that vision of marriage had
+seemed afar off in the dim shadowland of the future. She had been told
+nothing by her lover of where she was to live, or what her life was to
+be like when she was his wife. And now she was told that they were to be
+married almost immediately, that they were to live in the house where
+she had been reared, in that familiar land of hills and waters, that
+they were to roam about the dales and mountains together, they two, as
+man and wife. The whole thing was wonderful, bewildering, impossible
+almost.
+
+This was on the first morning after Mr. Hammond's arrival. Maulevrier
+had gone off to hunt the Rotha for otters, and was up to his waist in
+the water, no doubt, by this time. Hammond was strolling up and down the
+terrace in front of the house, looking at the green expanse of
+Fairfield, the dark bulk of Seat Sandal, the nearer crests of Helm Crag
+and Silver Howe.
+
+'You are to come to her ladyship directly, please,' said Mary, going up
+to him.
+
+He took both her hands, drew her nearer to him, smiling down at her.
+They had been sitting side by side at the breakfast table half-an-hour
+ago, he waiting upon her as she poured out the tea; yet by his tender
+greeting and the delight in his face it might have been supposed they
+had not met for weeks. Such are the sweet inanities of love.
+
+'What does her ladyship want with me, darling? and why are you
+blushing?' he asked.
+
+'I--I think she is going to talk about--our--marriage,' faltered Mary.
+
+'"Why, I will talk to her upon this theme until mine eyelids can no
+longer wag,"' quoted Hammond. 'Take me to her, Mary. I hope her ladyship
+is growing sensible.'
+
+'She is very kind, very sweet. She has changed so much of late.'
+
+Mary went with him to the door of her ladyship's sitting-room, and there
+left him to go in alone. She went to the library--that room over which a
+gloomy shadow seemed to have hung ever since that awful winter afternoon
+when Mary found Lady Maulevrier lying on the floor in the twilight. But
+it was a noble room, and in her studious hours Mary loved to sit here,
+walled round with books, and able to consult or dip into as many volumes
+as she liked. To-day, however, her mind was not attuned to study. She
+sat with a volume of Macaulay open before her: but her thoughts were not
+with the author. She was wondering what those two were saying in the
+room overhead, and finding all attempts at reading futile, she let her
+head sink back upon the cushion of her deep luxurious chair, and sat
+with her dreamy eyes fixed on the summer landscape and her thoughts with
+her lover.
+
+Lady Maulevrier looked very wan and tired in the bright morning light,
+when Mr. Hammond seated himself beside her sofa. The change in her
+appearance since the spring was more marked to-day than it had seemed to
+him last night in the dim lamplight. Yes, there was need here for a
+speedy settlement of all earthly matters. The traveller was nearing the
+mysterious end of the journey. The summons might come at any hour.
+
+'Mr. Hammond, I feel a confidence in your integrity, your goodness of
+heart, and high principle which I never thought I could feel for a man
+of whom I know so little,' began Lady Maulevrier, gravely. 'All I know
+of you or your antecedents is what my grandson has told me--and I must
+say that the information so given has been very meagre. And yet I
+believe in you--and yet I am going to trust you, wholly, blindly,
+implicitly--and I am going to give you my granddaughter, ever so much
+sooner than I intended to give her to you. Soon, very soon, if you will
+have her!'
+
+'I will have her to-morrow, if there is time to get a special licence,'
+exclaimed Hammond, bending down to kiss the dowager's hand, radiant with
+delight.
+
+'You shall marry her very soon, if you like, marry her by special
+licence, in this room. I should like to see your wedding. I have a
+strange impatience to behold one of my granddaughters happily married,
+to know that her future is secure, that come weal, come woe, she is safe
+in the protection of a brave true man. I am not scared by the idea of a
+little poverty. That is often the best education for youth. But while
+you and I are alone we may as well talk about ways and means. Perhaps
+you may hardly feel prepared to take upon yourself the burden of a wife
+this year.'
+
+'As well this year as next. I am not afraid.'
+
+'Young men are so rash. However, as long as I live your responsibilities
+will be only nominal. This house will be Mary's home, and yours whenever
+you are able to occupy it. Of course I should not like to interfere with
+your professional efforts--but if you are cultivating literature,--why
+books can be written at Fellside better than in London. This lakeland of
+ours has been the nursery of deathless writers. But I feel that my days
+are numbered--and when I am dead--well death is always a cause of change
+and trouble of some kind, and Mary will profit very little by my death.
+The bulk of my fortune is left to Lesbia. I have taught her to consider
+herself my heiress; and it would be unjust to alter my will.'
+
+'Pray do not dream of such a thing--there is no need--Mary will be rich
+enough,' exclaimed Hammond, hastily.
+
+'With five hundred a year and the fruits of your industry,' said Lady
+Maulevrier. 'Yes, yes, with modest aspirations and simple habits, people
+can live happily, honourably, on a few hundreds a year. And if you
+really mean to devote yourself to literature, and do not mind burying
+yourself alive in this lake district until you have made your name as a
+writer, why the problem of ways and means will be easily solved.'
+
+'Dear Lady Maulevrier, I am not afraid of ways and means. That is the
+last question which need trouble you. I told Lesbia when I offered
+myself to her nearly a year ago, that if she would trust me, if she
+would cleave to me, poverty should never touch her, sordid care should
+never come near her dwelling. But she could not believe me. She was like
+Thomas the twin. I could show her no palpable security for my
+promise--and she would not believe for the promise' sake. Mary trusted
+me; and Mary shall not regret her confidence.'
+
+'Ah! it was different with Lesbia,' sighed Lady Maulevrier. 'I taught
+her to be ambitious. She had been schooled to set a high price upon
+herself. I know she cared for you--very much, even. But she could not
+face poverty; or, if you like, I will say that she could not face an
+obscure existence--sacrifice her ambition, a justifiable ambition in one
+so lovely, at the bidding of her first wooer. And then, again, she was
+told that if she married you, she would for ever forfeit my regard. You
+must not blame her for obeying me.'
+
+'I do not blame her; for I have won the peerless pearl--the jewel above
+all price--a perfect woman. And now, dear Lady Maulevrier, give me but
+your consent, and I am off to York this afternoon, to interview the
+Archbishop, and get the special licence, which will allow me to wed my
+darling here by your couch to-morrow afternoon.'
+
+'I have no objection to your getting the licence immediately; but you
+must let me write a cheque before you go. A special licence is
+expensive--I believe it costs fifty pounds.'
+
+'If it cost a thousand I should not think it dear. But I have a notion
+that I shall be able to get the licence--cheap. You have made me wild
+with happiness.'
+
+'But you must not refuse my cheque.'
+
+'Indeed I must, Lady Maulevrier. I am not quite such a pauper as you
+think me.'
+
+'But fifty pounds and the expenses of the journey; an outlay altogether
+unexpected on your part. I begin to fear that you are very reckless. A
+spendthrift shall never marry my granddaughter, with my consent.'
+
+'I have never yet spent above half my income.'
+
+Lady Maulevrier looked at him in wonderment and perplexity. Had the
+young man gone suddenly out of his mind, overwhelmed by the greatness of
+his bliss?
+
+'But I thought you were poor,' she faltered.
+
+'It has pleased you to think so, dear Lady Maulevrier; but I have more
+than enough for all my wants, and I shall be able to provide a fitting
+home for my Mary, when you can spare her to preside over her own
+establishment.'
+
+'Establishment' seemed rather a big word, but Lady Maulevrier supposed
+that in this case it meant a cook and housemaid, with perhaps later on a
+boy in buttons, to break windows and block the pantry sink with missing
+teaspoons.
+
+'Well, Mr. Hammond, this is quite an agreeable surprise,' she said,
+after a brief silence. 'I really thought you were poor--as poor as a
+young man of gentlemanlike habits could be, and yet exist. Perhaps you
+will wonder why, thinking this, I brought myself to consent to your
+marriage with my granddaughter.'
+
+'It was a great proof of your confidence in me, or in Providence,'
+replied Hammond, smiling.
+
+'It was no such thing. I was governed by a sentiment--a memory. It was
+my love for the dead which softened my heart towards you, John Hammond.'
+
+'Indeed!' he murmured, softly.
+
+'There was but one man in this world I ever fondly loved--the love of my
+youth--my dearest and best, in the days when my heart was fresh and
+innocent and unambitious. That man was Ronald Hollister, afterwards Lord
+Hartfield. And yours is the only face that ever recalled his to my mind.
+It is but a vague likeness--a look now and then; but slight as that
+likeness is it has been enough to make my heart yearn towards you, as
+the heart of a mother to her son.'
+
+John Hammond knelt beside the sofa, and bent his handsome face over the
+pale face on the pillow, imprinting such a kiss as a son might have
+given. His eyes were full of tears.
+
+'Dear Lady Maulevrier, think that it is the spirit of the dead which
+blesses you for your fidelity to old memories,' he said, tenderly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII.
+
+BY SPECIAL LICENCE.
+
+
+After that interview with John Hammond all the arrangements for the
+marriage were planned by Lady Maulevrier with a calm and business-like
+capacity which seemed extraordinary in one so frail and helpless. For a
+little while after Hammond left her she remained lost in a reverie,
+deeply affected by the speech and manner of her granddaughter's lover,
+as he gave her that first kiss of duty and affection, the affection of
+one who in that act declared the allegiance of a close and holy bond.
+
+Yes, she told herself, this marriage, humble as it might be, was
+altogether satisfactory. Her own feeling towards the man of her
+granddaughter's choice was one of instinctive affection. Her heart had
+yearned to him from the beginning of their acquaintance; but she had
+schooled herself to hide all indications of her liking for him, she had
+made every effort to keep him at a distance, deeming his very merits a
+source of danger in a household where there were two fresh
+impressionable girls.
+
+And despite all her caution and care he had succeeded in winning one of
+those girls: and she was glad, very glad, that he had so succeeded in
+baffling her prudence. And now it was agreeable to discover that he was
+not quite such a pauper as she had supposed him to be.
+
+Her heart felt lighter than it had been for some time when she set about
+planning the wedding.
+
+The first step in the business was to send for James Steadman. He came
+immediately, grave and quiet as of old, and stood with his serious eyes
+bent upon the face of his mistress, awaiting her instructions.
+
+'Lady Mary is going to be married to Mr. Hammond, by special licence, in
+this room, to-morrow afternoon, if it can be managed so soon,' said Lady
+Maulevrier.
+
+'I am very glad to hear it, my lady,' answered Steadman, without the
+faintest indication of surprise.
+
+'Why are you so--particularly glad?' asked his mistress, looking at him
+sharply.
+
+'Because Lady Mary's presence in this house is a source of danger
+to--your arrangements. She is very energetic and enterprising--very
+shrewd--and--well, she is a woman--so I suppose there can be no harm in
+saying she is somewhat inquisitive. Things will be much safer here when
+Lady Mary is gone!'
+
+'But she will not be gone--she is not going away--except for a very
+brief honeymoon. I cannot possibly do without her. She has become
+necessary to my life, Steadman; and there is so little left of that life
+now, that there is no need for me to sacrifice the last gleams of
+sunshine. The girl is very sweet, and loving, and true. I was not half
+fond enough of her in the past; but she has made herself very dear to me
+of late. There are many things in this life, Steadman, which we only
+find out too late.'
+
+'But, surely, my lady, Lady Mary will leave Fellside to go to a home of
+her own after her marriage.'
+
+'No, I tell you, Steadman,' his mistress answered, with a touch of
+impatience; 'Lady Mary and her husband will make this house their home
+so long as I am here. It will not be long.'
+
+'God grant it may be very long before you cease to be mistress here,'
+answered Steadman, with real feeling; and then in a lower tone he went
+on: 'Pardon me, my lady, for the suggestion, but do you think it wise to
+have Mr. Hammond here as a resident?'
+
+'Why should it not be wise? Mr. Hammond is a gentleman.'
+
+'True, my lady; but any accident, such as that which brought Lady Mary
+into the old garden----'
+
+'No such accident need occur--it must not occur, Steadman,' exclaimed
+Lady Maulevrier, with kindling eyes. She who had so long ruled supreme
+was not inclined to have any desire of hers questioned. 'There must have
+been gross carelessness that day--carelessness on your part, or that
+stable door would never have been left open. The key ought to have been
+in your possession. It ought not to have been in the power of the
+stableman to open that door. As to Mr. Hammond's presence at Fellside, I
+cannot see any danger--any reason why harm should come of it, more than
+of Lord Maulevrier's presence here in the past.'
+
+'The two gentlemen are so different, my lady,' said Steadman, with a
+gloomy brow. 'His lordship is so light-hearted and careless, his mind
+taken up with his horses, guns, dogs, fishing, shooting, and all kinds
+of sport. He is not a gentleman to take much notice of anything out of
+his own line. But this Mr. Hammond is different--a very thoughtful
+gentleman, an inquiring mind, as one would say.'
+
+'Steadman, you are getting cowardly in your old age. The danger--such a
+risk as you hint at, must be growing less and less every day. After
+forty years of security----'
+
+'Security' echoed Steadman, with a monosyllabic laugh which expressed
+intense bitterness. 'Say forty years during which I have felt myself
+upon the edge of a precipice every day and every hour. Security! But
+perhaps you are right, my lady, I am growing old and nervous, a feebler
+man than I was a few years ago, feebler in body and mind. Let Mr.
+Hammond make his home here, if it pleases your ladyship to have him. So
+long as I am well and able to get about there can be no danger of
+anything awkward happening.'
+
+Lady Maulevrier looked alarmed.
+
+'But you have no expectation of falling ill, I hope, Steadman; you have
+no premonition of any malady?'
+
+'No, my lady, none--except the malady of old age. I feel that I am not
+the man I once was, that is all. My brain is getting woolly, and my
+sight is clouded now and then. And if I were to fall ill suddenly----'
+
+'Oh, it would be terrible, it would be a dire calamity! There is your
+wife, certainly, to look after things, but----'
+
+'My wife would do her best, my lady. She is a faithful creature, but she
+is not--yes, without any unkindness I must say that Mrs. Steadman is not
+a genius!'
+
+'Oh, Steadman, you must not fail me! I am horror-stricken at the mere
+idea,' exclaimed Lady Maulevrier. 'After forty years--great God! it
+would be terrible. Lesbia, Mary, Maulevrier! the great, malignant,
+babbling world outside these doors. I am hemmed round with perils. For
+God's sake preserve your strength. Take care of your health. You are my
+strong rock. If you feel that there is anything amiss with you, or that
+your strength is failing, consult Mr. Horton--neglect no precaution. The
+safety of this house, of the family honour, hangs upon you.'
+
+'Pray do not agitate yourself, my lady,' entreated Steadman. 'I was
+wrong to trouble you with my fears. I shall not fail you, be sure.
+Although I am getting old, I shall hold out to the end.'
+
+'The end cannot be very far off,' said Lady Maulevrier, gloomily.
+
+'I thought that forty years ago, my lady. But you are right--the end
+must be near now. Yes, it must be near. And now, my lady, your orders
+about the wedding.'
+
+'It will take place to-morrow, as I told you, in this room. You will go
+to the Vicar and ask him to officiate. His two daughters will no doubt
+consent to be Lady Mary's bridesmaids. You will make the request in my
+name. Perhaps the Vicar will call this afternoon and talk matters over
+with me. Lady Mary and her husband will go to Cumberland for a brief
+honeymoon--a week at most--and then they will come back to Fellside.
+Tell Mrs. Power to prepare the east wing for them. She will make one of
+the rooms into a boudoir for Lady Mary; and let everything be as bright
+and pretty as good taste can make it. She can telegraph to London for
+any new furniture that may be wanted to complete her arrangements. And
+now send Lady Mary to me.'
+
+Mary came, fresh from the pine-wood, where she had been walking with her
+lover; her lover of to-day, her husband to-morrow. He had told her how
+he was to start for York directly after luncheon, and to come back by
+the earliest train next day, and how they two were to be married
+to-morrow afternoon.
+
+'It is more wonderful than any dream that I ever dreamt.' exclaimed
+Mary. 'But how can it be? I have not even a wedding gown.'
+
+'A fig for wedding gowns! It is Mary I am to wed, not her gown. Were you
+clad like patient Grisel I should be content. Besides you have no end of
+pretty gowns. And you are to be dressed for travelling, remember; for I
+am going to carry you off to Lodore directly we are married, and you
+will have to clamber up the rocky bed of the waterfall to see the sun
+set behind the Borrowdale hills in your wedding gown. It had better be
+one of those neat little tailor gowns which become you so well.'
+
+'I will wear whatever you tell me,' answered Mary. 'I shall always dress
+to please you, and not the outside world.'
+
+'Will you, my Griselda. Some day you shall be dressed as Grisel was--
+
+    "In a cloth of gold that brighte shone,
+    With a coroune of many a riche stone."
+
+'Yes, you darling, when you are Lord Chancellor; and till that day comes
+I will wear tailor gowns, linsey-wolsey, anything you like,' cried Mary,
+laughing.
+
+She ran to her grandmother's room, ineffably content, without a thought
+of trousseau or finery; but then Mary Haselden was one of those few
+young women for whom life is not a question of fashionable raiment.
+
+'Mary, I am going to send you off upon your honeymoon to-morrow
+afternoon,' said Lady Maulevrier, smiling at the bright, happy face
+which was bent over her. 'Will you come back and nurse a fretful old
+woman when the honeymoon is over?'
+
+'The honeymoon will never be over,' answered Mary, joyously. 'Our wedded
+life is to be one long honeymoon. But I will come back in a very few
+days, and take care of you. I am not going to let you do without me, now
+that you have learnt to love me.'
+
+'And will you be content to stay with me when your husband has gone to
+London?'
+
+'Yes, but I shall try to prevent his going very often, or staying very
+long. I shall try to wind myself into his heart, so that there will be
+an aching void there when we are parted.'
+
+Lady Maulevrier proceeded to tell Mary all her arrangements. Three
+handsome rooms in the east wing, a bedroom, dressing-room, and boudoir,
+were to be made ready for the newly-married couple. Fräulein Müller was
+to be dismissed with a retiring pension, in order that Lady Mary and her
+husband might feel themselves master and mistress in the lower part of
+the house.
+
+'And if your husband really means to devote himself to literature, he
+can have no better workshop than the library I have put together,' said
+Lady Maulevrier.
+
+'And no better adviser and guide than you, dear grandmother, you who
+have read everything that has been written worth reading during the last
+half century.'
+
+'I have read a great deal, Mary, but I hardly know if I am any wiser on
+that account,' answered Lady Maulevrier. 'After all, however much of
+other people's wisdom we may devour, it is in ourselves that we are
+thus, or thus. Our past follies rise up against us at the end of life;
+and we see how little our book-learning has helped us to stand against
+foolish impulses, against evil passions. "Be good," Mary, "and let who
+will be wise," as the poet says. A faithful heart is your only anchor in
+the stormy seas of life. My dear, I am so glad you are going to be
+married.'
+
+'It is very sudden,' said Mary.
+
+'Very sudden; yet in your case that does not much matter. You have quite
+made up your mind about Mr. Hammond, I believe.'
+
+'Made up my mind! I began to worship him the first night he came here.'
+
+'Foolish child. Well, there is no need to wait for settlements. You have
+only your allowance as Lord Maulevrier's daughter--a first charge on the
+estate, which cannot be made away with or anticipated, and of which no
+husband can deprive you.'
+
+'He shall have every sixpence of it,' murmured Mary.
+
+'And Mr. Hammond, though he tells me he is better off than I supposed,
+can have nothing to settle. So there will be nothing forfeited by a
+marriage without settlements.'
+
+Mary could not enter upon the question. It was even of less importance
+than the wedding gown.
+
+The gong sounded for luncheon.
+
+'Steadman's dogcart is to take Mr. Hammond to the station at half-past
+two,' said Lady Maulevrier, 'so you had better go and give him his
+luncheon.'
+
+Mary needed no second bidding. She flew downstairs, and met her lover in
+the hall.
+
+What a happy luncheon it was! Fräulein 'mounched, and mounched, and
+mounched,' like the sailor's wife eating chestnuts: but those two lovers
+lunched upon moonshine, upon each other's little words and little looks,
+upon their own ineffable bliss. They sat side by side, and helped each
+other to the nicest things on the table, but neither could eat, and
+they got considerably mixed in their way of eating, taking chutnee with
+strawberry cream, and currant jelly with asparagus. What did it matter?
+Everything tasted of bliss.
+
+'You have had absolutely nothing to eat,' said Mary, piteously, as the
+dogcart came grinding round upon the dry gravel.
+
+'Oh, I have done splendidly--thanks. I have just had a macaroon and some
+of that capital gorgonzola. God bless you, dearest, and _à revoir, à
+revoir_ to-morrow.'
+
+'And to-morrow I shall be Mary Hammond,' cried Mary, clasping her hands.
+'Isn't it capital fun?'
+
+They were in the porch alone. The servants were all at dinner, save the
+groom with the cart. Miss Müller was still munching at the well-spread
+table in the dining-room.
+
+John Hammond folded his sweetheart in his arms for one brief embrace;
+there was no time for loitering. In another moment he was springing into
+the cart. A shake of the reins, and he was driving slowly down the steep
+avenue.
+
+'Life is full of partings,' Mary said to herself, as she watched the
+last glimpse of the dogcart between the trees down in the road below,
+'but this one is to be very short, thank God.'
+
+She wondered what she should do with herself for the rest of the
+afternoon, and finally, finding that she was not wanted by her
+grandmother until afternoon tea, she set out upon a round of visits to
+her favourite cottagers, to bid them a long farewell as a spinster.
+
+'You'll be away a long time, I suppose, Lady Mary?' said one of her
+humble friends; 'you'll be going to Switzerland or Italy, or some of
+those foreign parts where great ladies and gentlemen travel for their
+honeymoons?'
+
+But Mary declared that she would be absent a week at longest. She was
+coming back to take care of her invalid grandmother; and she was not
+going to marry a great gentleman, but a man who would have to work for
+his living.
+
+She went back to Fellside, and read the _Times_, and poured out Lady
+Maulevrier's tea, and sat on her low stool by the sofa, and the old and
+the young woman were as happy and confidential together as if they had
+been always the nearest and dearest to each other. Her ladyship had seen
+Miss Müller, and had informed that excellent person that her services at
+Fellside would no longer be required after Lady Mary's marriage; but
+that her devotion to her duties during the last fourteen years should be
+rewarded by a pension which, together with her savings, would enable her
+to spend the rest of her days in repose. Miss Müller was duly grateful,
+and owned to a tender longing for the _Heimath_, and declared herself
+ready to retire from her post whenever her ladyship pleased.
+
+'I shall go back to Germany directly I leave you, and I shall live and
+die there, unless I am wanted by one of my old pupils. But should Lady
+Lesbia or Lady Mary need my services for their daughters, in days to
+come, they can command me. For no one else will I abandon the
+Fatherland.'
+
+The Fräulein thus easily disposed of, Lady Mary felt that matrimony
+would verily mean independence. And yet she was prepared to regard her
+husband as her master. She meant to obey him in all meekness and
+reverence of spirit.
+
+She spent the rest of the afternoon and the whole of the evening in her
+grandmother's sitting-room, dining _tête-à-tête_ with the invalid for
+the first time since her illness. Lady Maulevrier talked much of Mary's
+future, and of Lesbia's; but it was evident that she was full of
+uneasiness upon the latter subject.
+
+'I don't know what Lesbia is going to do with her life,' she said, with
+a sigh. 'Her letters tell me of nothing but gowns and parties; and
+Georgina Kirkbank can only expatiate upon Mr. Smithson's wealth, and the
+grand position he is going to occupy by-and-by. I should like to see
+both my granddaughters married before I die--yes, I should like to see
+Lesbia's fate secure, if she were to be only Lady Lesbia Smithson.'
+
+'She cannot fail to make a good match, grandmother,' said Mary.
+
+'I am beginning to lose faith in her future,' answered Lady Maulevrier.
+'There seems to be a fatality about the career of particularly
+attractive girls. They are too confident of their power to succeed in
+life. They trifle with fortune, fascinate the wrong people, and keep the
+right people at arm's length. I think if I had been Lesbia's guide in
+society her first season would have counted for more than it is likely
+to count for under Lady Kirkbank's management. I should have awakened
+Lesbia from the dream of dress and dancing--the mere butterfly life of a
+girl who never looks beyond the present moment. But now go and give
+orders about your packing, Mary. It is past ten, and Clara had better
+pack your trunks early to-morrow morning.'
+
+Clara was a modest Easedale damsel, who had been promoted to be Lady
+Mary's personal attendant, when the more mature Kibble had gone away
+with Lady Lesbia. Mary required very little waiting upon, but she was
+not the less glad to have a neat little smiling maiden devoted to her
+service, ready to keep her rooms neat and trim, to go on errands to the
+cottagers, to arrange the flowers in the old china bowls, and to make
+herself generally useful.
+
+It seemed a strange thing to have to furnish a trousseau from the
+wardrobe of everyday life--a trousseau in which nothing, except
+half-a-dozen pairs of gloves, a pair of boots, and a few odds and ends
+of lace and ribbons would be actually new. Mary thought very little of
+the matter, but the position of things struck her maid as altogether
+extraordinary and unnatural.
+
+'You should have seen the things Miss Freeman had, Lady Mary,' exclaimed
+the damsel, 'the daughter of that cotton-spinning gentleman from
+Manchester, who lives at The Gables--you should have seen her new gowns
+and things when she was married. Mrs. Freeman's maid keeps company with
+my brother James--he's in the stables at Freeman's, you know, Lady
+Mary--and she asked me in to look at the trousseau two days before the
+wedding. I never saw such beautiful dresses--such hats--such
+bonnets--such jackets and mantles. It was like going into one of those
+grand shops at York, and having all the things in the shop pulled out
+for one to look at--such silks and satins--and trimmed--ah! how those
+dresses was trimmed. The mystery was how the young lady could ever get
+herself into them, or sit down when she'd got one of them on.'
+
+'Instruments of torture, Clara. I should hate such gowns, even if I were
+going to marry a rich man, as I suppose Miss Freeman was.'
+
+'Not a bit of it, Lady Mary. She was only going to marry a Bolton doctor
+with a small practice; but her maid told me she was determined she'd get
+all she could out of her pa, in case he should lose all his money and go
+bankrupt. They said that trousseau cost two thousand pounds.'
+
+'Well, Clara, I'd rather have my tailor gowns, in which I can scramble
+about the ghylls and crags just as I like.' There was a pale yellow
+Indian silk, smothered with soft yellow lace, which would serve for a
+wedding gown; for indifferent as Mary was to the great clothes question,
+she wanted to look in some wise as a bride. A neat chocolate-coloured
+cloth, almost new from the tailor's hands, with a little cloth toque to
+match, would do for the wedding journey. All the details of Mary's
+wardrobe were the perfection of neatness. She had grown very neat and
+careful in her habits since her engagement, anxious to be industrious
+and frugal in all things--a really handy housewife for a hard-worked
+bread-winner. And now she was told that Mr. Hammond was not so poor as
+she had thought. She would not be obliged to stint herself, and manage,
+as she had supposed when she went about among the cottagers, taking
+lessons in household economy. It was almost a disappointment.
+
+She and Clara finished the packing that night, Mary being much too
+excited for the possibility of sleep. There was not much to pack, only
+one roomy American trunk--a trunk which held everything--a Gladstone bag
+for things that might possibly be wanted in a hurry, and a handsome
+dressing-bag, Maulevrier's last birthday gift to his sister.
+
+Mary had received no gifts from her lover, save the plain gold
+engagement ring, and a few new books sent straight from the publishers.
+Clara took care to inform her young mistress that Miss Freeman's
+sweetheart had sent her all manner of splendid presents, scent bottles,
+photograph albums, glove boxes, and other things of beauty, albeit his
+means were supposed to be _nil_. It was evident that Clara disapproved
+of Mr. Hammond's conduct in this matter, and even suspected him of
+meanness.
+
+'He did ought to have sent you his photograph, Lady Mary,' said Clara,
+with a reproachful air.
+
+'I daresay he would have done so, Clara, but he has been photographed
+only once in his life.'
+
+'Lawk a mercy, Lady Mary! Why most young gentlemen have themselves
+photographed in every new place they go to; and as Mr. Hammond has been
+a traveller, like his lordship, I made sure he'd have been photographed
+in knickerbockers and every other kind of attitude.'
+
+Mary had not refrained from asking for her lover's portrait; and he had
+told her that he had carefully abstained from having his countenance
+reproduced in any manner since his fifteenth year, when he had been
+photographed at his mother's desire.
+
+'The present fashion of photographs staring out of every stationer's
+window makes a man's face public property,' he told Mary. 'I don't want
+every street Arab in London to recognise me.'
+
+'But you are not a public man,' said Mary. 'Your photograph would not be
+in all the windows; although, in my humble opinion, you are a very
+handsome man.'
+
+Hammond blushed, laughed, and turned the conversation, and Mary had to
+exist without any picture of her lover.
+
+'Millais shall paint me in his grand Reynolds manner by-and-by,' he told
+Mary.
+
+'Millais! Oh, Jack! When will you and I be able to give a thousand or so
+for a portrait?'
+
+'Ah, when, indeed? But we may as well enjoy our day-dreams, like
+Alnaschar, without smashing our basket of crockery.'
+
+And now Mary, who had managed to exist without the picture, was to have
+the original. He was to be all her own--her master, her lord, her love,
+after to-morrow--unto eternity, in life, and in the grave, and in the
+dim hereafter beyond the grave, they two were to be one. In heaven there
+was to be no marrying or giving in marriage, Mary was told; but her own
+heart cried aloud to her that the happily wedded must remain linked in
+heaven. God would not part the blessed souls of true lovers.
+
+A short sleep, broken by happy dreams, and it was morning, Mary's
+wedding morning, fairest of summer days, July in all her beauty. Mary
+went to her grandmother's room, and waited upon her at breakfast.
+
+Lady Maulevrier was in excellent spirits.
+
+'Everything is arranged, Mary. I have had a telegram from Hammond, who
+has got the licence, and will come at half-past one. At three the Vicar
+will come to marry you, his daughters, Katie and Laura, acting as your
+bridesmaids.'
+
+'Bridesmaids!' exclaimed Mary. 'I forgot all about bridesmaids. Am I
+really to have any?'
+
+'You will have two girls of your own age to bear you company, at any
+rate. I have asked dear old Horton to be present; and he, Fräulein, and
+Maulevrier will complete the party. It will not be a brilliant wedding,
+Mary, or a costly ceremonial, except for the licence.'
+
+'And poor Jack will have to pay for that,' said Mary, with a long face.
+
+'Poor Jack refused to let me pay for it,' answered Lady Maulevrier. 'He
+is vastly independent, and I fear somewhat reckless.'
+
+'I like him for his independence; but he mustn't be reckless,' said
+Mary, severely.
+
+He was to be the master in all things! and yet she was to exercise a
+restraining influence, she was to guard him against his own weaknesses,
+his too generous impulses. Her voice was to be the voice of prudence.
+This is how Mary understood the marriage tie.
+
+Under ordinary conditions Mary would have been in the avenue, lying in
+wait for her lover, eager to get the very first glimpse of him when he
+arrived, to see him before he had brushed the dust of the journey from
+his raiment. But to-day she hung back. She stayed in her grandmother's
+room and sat beside the sofa, shy, and even a little downcast. This
+lover who was so soon to be transformed into a husband was a formidable
+personage. She dare not rush forth to greet him. Perhaps he had changed
+his mind by this time, and was sorry he had ever asked her to marry him.
+Perhaps he thought he was being hustled into a marriage. He had been
+told that he was to wait at least a year. And now, all in a moment, he
+was sent off to get a special licence. How could she be quite sure that
+he liked this kind of treatment?
+
+If there is any faith to be placed in the human countenance, Mr. Hammond
+was in no wise an unwilling bridegroom; for his face beamed with happy
+light as he came into the room presently, followed by an elderly man
+with grey hair and whiskers, and in a strictly professional frock coat,
+whom the butler announced as Mr. Dorncliffe. Lady Maulevrier looked
+startled, somewhat offended even at this intrusion, and she gave Mr.
+Dorncliffe a very haughty salutation, which was almost more crushing
+than no salutation at all.
+
+Mary stood up by her grandmother's sofa, and looked rather frightened.
+
+'Dear Lady Maulevrier,' said Hammond, 'I ventured to telegraph to my
+lawyer to meet me at York last night, and come on here with me this
+morning. He has prepared a settlement, which I should like you to hear
+him read, and which he will explain to you, if necessary, while Molly
+and I go for a stroll in the grounds.'
+
+He had never called her Molly before. He put his arm round her with a
+proud air of possession, even under her grandmother's eyes. And she
+nestled close up to his side, forgetting everything but the delight of
+belonging to him.
+
+They went downstairs, and through the billiard room to the terrace, and
+from the terrace to the tennis lawn, where John Hammond sat reading
+Heine nearly a year ago, just before he proposed to Lesbia.
+
+'Do you remember that day?' asked Mary, looking at him, solemnly.
+
+'I remember every day and every hour we have spent together since I began
+to love you,' answered Hammond.
+
+'Ah, but this was before you began to love me,' said Mary, with a
+piteous little grimace. 'This was while you were loving Lesbia as hard
+as ever you could. Don't you remember the day you proposed to her--a
+lovely summer day like this, the lake just as blue, the sun shining upon
+Fairfield just as it is shining now, and you sat there reading
+Heine--those sweet, sweet verses, that seemed made of sighs and tears;
+and every now and then you paused and looked up at Lesbia, and there was
+more love in your eyes than in all Heine's poetry, though that brims
+over with love.'
+
+'But how did you know all this, Molly? You were not here.'
+
+'I was not very far off. I was behind those bushes, watching and
+listening. I knew you were in love with Lesbia, and I thought you
+despised me, and I was very, very wretched; and I listened afterwards
+when you proposed to her there--behind the pine trees--and I hated her
+for refusing you, and I am afraid I hated you for proposing to her.'
+
+'When I ought to have been proposing to my Molly, blind fool that I
+was,' said Hammond, smiling tenderly at her, smiling, though his eyes
+were dim with tears. 'My own sweet love, it was a terrible mistake, a
+mistake that might have cost me the happiness of a lifetime. But Fate
+was very good to me, and let me have my Mary after all. And now let us
+sit down under the old red beech and talk till it is time to go and get
+ready for our wedding. I suppose one ought to brush one's hair and wash
+one's hands for that kind of thing, even when the function is not on a
+ceremonious scale.'
+
+Mary laughed.
+
+'I have a prettier gown than this to be married in, although it isn't a
+wedding gown,' she said.
+
+'Oh, by-the-by, I have something for you,' said her lover, 'something in
+the way of ornaments, but I don't suppose you'd care to wear them
+to-day. I'll run and get them.'
+
+He went back to the house, leaving Mary sitting on the rustic bench
+under the fine old copper beech, a tree that had been standing long
+before Lady Maulevrier enlarged the old stone house into a stately
+villa. He returned in a few minutes, bringing a morocco bag about the
+size of those usually carried by lawyers or lawyers' clerks.
+
+'I don't think I have given you anything since we were engaged, Mary,'
+he said, as he seated himself by her side.
+
+Mary blushed, remembering how Clara, the maid, had remarked upon this
+fact.
+
+'You gave me my ring,' she said, looking down at the massive band of
+gold, 'and you have given me ever so many delightful books.'
+
+'Those were very humble gifts, Molly: but to-day I have brought you a
+wedding present.'
+
+He opened the bag and took out a red morocco case, and then half-a-dozen
+more red morocco cases of various shapes and sizes. The first looked
+new, but the others were old-fashioned and passing shabby, as if they
+had been knocking about brokers' shops for the last quarter of a
+century.
+
+'There is my wedding gift, Mary,' he said, handing her the new case.
+
+It contained an exquisitely painted miniature of a very beautiful woman,
+in a large oval locket set with sapphires.
+
+'You have asked me for my portrait, dearest,' he said. 'I give you my
+mother's rather than my own, because I loved her as I never thought to
+love again, till I knew you. I should like you to wear that locket
+sometimes, Mary, as a kind of link between the love of the past and the
+love of the present. Were my mother living, she would welcome and
+cherish my bride and my wife. She is dead, and you and she can never
+meet on earth: but I should like you to be familiar with the face which
+was once the light of my life.'
+
+Mary's eyes filled with tears as she gazed at the face in the miniature.
+It was the portrait of a woman of about thirty--a face of exquisite
+refinement, of calm and pensive beauty.
+
+'I shall treasure this picture always, above all things,' she said: but
+'why did you have it set so splendidly, Jack? No gems were needed to
+give your mother's portrait value in my eyes.'
+
+'I know that, dearest, but I wanted to make the locket worth wearing.
+And now for the other cases. The locket is your lover's free gift, and
+is yours to keep and to bequeath to your children. These are heirlooms,
+and yours only during your husband's lifetime.'
+
+He opened one of the largest cases, and on a bed of black velvet Mary
+beheld a magnificent diamond necklace, with a large pendant. He opened
+another and displayed a set of sprays for the hair. Another contained
+earrings, another bracelets, the last a tiara.
+
+'What are they for?' gasped Mary.
+
+'For my wife to wear.'
+
+'Oh, but I could never wear such things,' she exclaimed, with an idea
+that these must be stage jewellery. 'They are paste, of course--very
+beautiful for people who like that kind of thing--but I don't.'
+
+She felt deeply shocked at this evidence of bad taste on the part of her
+lover. How the things flashed in the sunshine--but so did the crystal
+drops in the old Venetian girandoles.
+
+'No, Molly, they are not paste; they are Brazilian diamonds, and, as
+Maulevrier would say, they are as good as they make them. They are
+heirlooms, Molly. My dear mother wore them in her summer-tide of wedded
+happiness. My grandmother wore them for thirty years before her; my
+great grandmother wore them at the Court of Queen Charlotte, and they
+were worn at the Court of Queen Anne. They are nearly two hundred years
+old; and those central stones in the tiara came out of a cap worn by the
+Great Mogul, and are the largest table diamonds known. They are
+historic, Mary.'
+
+'Why, they must be worth a fortune.'
+
+'They are valued at something over seventy thousand pounds.'
+
+'But why don't you sell them?' exclaimed Mary, opening her eyes wide
+with surprise, 'they would give you a handsome income.'
+
+'They are not mine to sell, Molly. Did not I tell you that they are
+heirlooms? They are the family jewels of the Countesses of Hartfield.'
+
+'Then what are you?'
+
+'Ronald Hollister, Earl of Hartfield, and your adoring lover!'
+
+Mary gave a cry of surprise, a cry of distress even.
+
+'Oh, that is too dreadful!' she exclaimed; 'grandmother will be so
+unhappy. She had set her heart upon Lesbia marrying Lord Hartfield, the
+son of the man _she_ loved.'
+
+'I got wind of her wish more than a year ago,' said Hartfield, 'from
+your brother; and he and I hatched a little plot between us. He told me
+Lesbia was not worthy of his friend's devotion--told me that she was
+vain and ambitious--that she had been educated to be so. I determined to
+come and try my fate. I would try to win her as plain John Hammond. If
+she was a true woman, I told myself, vanity and ambition would be blown
+to the four winds, provided I could win her love. I came, I saw her; and
+to see was to love her. God knows I tried honestly to win her; but I
+had sworn to myself that I would woo her as John Hammond, and I did not
+waver in my resolution--no, not when a word would have turned the scale.
+She liked me, I think, a little; but she did not like the notion of an
+obscure life as the wife of a hardworking professional man. The pomps
+and vanities of this world had it against love or liking, and she gave
+me up. I thank God that the pomps and vanities prevailed; for this happy
+chance gave me Mary, my sweet Wordsworthian damsel, found, like the
+violet or the celandine, by the wayside, in Wordsworth's own country.'
+
+'And you are Lord Hartfield!' exclaimed Mary, still lost in wonder, and
+with no elation at this change in the aspect of her life. 'I always knew
+you were a great man. But poor grandmother! It will be a dreadful
+disappointment to her.'
+
+'I think not. I think she has learned my Molly's value; rather late, as
+I learned it; and I believe she will be glad that one of her
+granddaughters should marry the son of her first lover. Let us go to
+her, love, and see if she is reconciled to the idea, and whether the
+settlement is ready for execution. Dorncliffe and his clerk were working
+at it half through the night.'
+
+'What is the good of a settlement?' asked Mary. 'I'm sure I don't want
+one.'
+
+'Lady Hartfield must not be dependent upon her husband's whim or
+pleasure for her milliner's bill or her private charities,' answered her
+lover, smiling at her eagerness to repudiate anything business-like.
+
+'But I would rather be dependent on your pleasure. I shall never have
+any milliner's bills; and I am sure you would never deny me money for
+charity.'
+
+'You shall not have to ask me for it, except when you have exceeded your
+pin-money. I hope you will do that now and then, just to afford me the
+pleasure of doing you a favour.'
+
+'Hartfield,' repeated Mary, to herself, as they went towards the house;
+'shall I have to call you Hartfield? I don't like the name nearly so
+well as Jack.'
+
+'You shall call me Jack for old sake's sake,' said Hartfield, tenderly.
+
+'How did you think of such a name as Jack?'
+
+'Rather an effort of genius, wasn't it. Well, first and foremost I was
+christened Ronald John--all the Hollisters are christened John--name of
+the founder of the race; and, secondly, Maulevrier and I were always
+plain Mr. Morland and Mr. Hammond in our travels, and always called each
+other Jack and Jim.'
+
+'How nice!' said Mary; 'would you very much mind our being plain Mr. and
+Mrs. Hammond, while we are on our honeymoon trip?'
+
+'I should like it of all things.'
+
+'So should I. People will not take so much notice of us, and we can do
+what we like, and go where we like.'
+
+'Delightful! We'll even disguise ourselves as Cook's tourists, if you
+like. I would not mind.'
+
+They were at the door of Lady Maulevrier's sitting room by this time.
+They went in, and were greeted with smiles.
+
+'Let me look at the Countess of Hartfield that is to be in half an
+hour,' said her ladyship. 'Oh, Mary, Mary, what a blind idiot I have
+been, and what a lucky girl you are! I told you once that you were wiser
+than Lesbia, but I little thought how much wiser you had been.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV.
+
+'OUR LOVE WAS NEW, AND THEN BUT IN THE SPRING.'
+
+
+Henley Regatta was over. It had passed like a tale that is told; like
+Epsom and Ascot, and all the other glories of the London season. Happy
+those for whom the glory of Henley, the grace of Ascot, the fever of
+Epsom, are not as weary as a twice-told tale, bringing with them only
+bitterest memories of youth that has fled, of hopes that have withered,
+of day-dreams that have never been realised. There are some to whom that
+mad hastening from pleasure to pleasure, that rush from scene to scene
+of excitement, that eager crowding into one day and night of gaieties
+which might fairly relieve the placid monotony of a month's domesticity,
+a month's professional work--some there are to whom this Vanity Fair is
+as a treadmill or the turning of a crank, the felon's deepest
+humiliation, purposeless, unprofitable, labour.
+
+The regatta was over, and Lady Kirkbank and her charge hastened back to
+Arlington Street. Theirs was the very first departure; albeit Mr.
+Smithson pleaded hard for a prolongation of their visit. The weather was
+exceptionally lovely, he urged. Water picnics were delightful just
+now--the banks were alive with the colour of innumerable wild flowers,
+as beautiful and more poetical than the gorgeous flora of the Amazon or
+the Paraguay river. And Lady Lesbia had developed a genius for punting;
+and leaning against her pole, with her hair flying loose and sleeves
+rolled up above the elbow, she was a subject for canvas or marble,
+Millais or Adams Acton.
+
+'When we are in Italy I will have her modelled, just in that attitude,
+and that dress,' said Mr. Smithson. 'She will make a lovely companion
+for my Reading Girl: one all repose and reverie, the other all life and
+action. Dear Lady Kirkbank, you really must stay for another week at
+least. Why go back to the smoke and sultriness of town? Here we can
+almost live on the water; and I will send to London for some people to
+make music for us in the evenings, or if you miss your little game at
+"Nap," we will play for an hour or so every night. It shall not be my
+fault if my house is not pleasant for you.'
+
+'Your house is charming, and I shall be here only too often in the days
+to come; you will have more than enough of me _then_, I promise you,'
+replied Georgie, with her girlish laugh, 'but we must not stop a day
+longer now. People would begin to talk. Besides, we have engagements for
+every hour of the week that is coming, and for a fortnight after; and
+then I suppose I ought to take Lesbia to the North to see her
+grandmother, and to discuss all the preparations and arrangements for
+this very serious event in which you and Lesbia are to be the chief
+performers.'
+
+'I shall be very glad to go to Grasmere myself, and to make the
+acquaintance of my future grandmother-in-law,' said Mr. Smithson.
+
+'You will be charmed with her. She belongs to the old school--something
+of a fossil, perhaps, but a very dignified fossil. She has grown old in
+a rustic seclusion, and knows less of _our_ world than a mother abbess;
+but she has read immensely, and is wonderfully clever. I am bound to
+tell you that she has very lofty ideas about her granddaughter; and I
+believe she will only be reconciled to Lesbia's marriage with a commoner
+by the notion that you are sure of a peerage. I ventured to hint as much
+in my letter to Lady Maulevrier yesterday.'
+
+A shade of sullenness crept over Horace Smithson's visage.
+
+'I should hope that such settlements as I am in a position to make will
+convince Lady Maulevrier that I am a respectable suitor for her
+granddaughter, ex peerage,' he said, somewhat haughtily.
+
+'My dear Smithson, did I not tell you that poor Lady Maulevrier is a
+century behind the times,' exclaimed Lady Kirkbank, with an aggrieved
+look. 'If she were one of _us_, of course she would know that wealth is
+the paramount consideration, and that you are quite the best match of
+the season. But she is dreadfully _arriérée_, poor dear thing; and she
+must have amused herself with the day-dream of seeing Lesbia a duchess,
+or something of that kind. I shall tell her that Lesbia can be one of
+the queens of society without having strawberry leaves on her coach
+panels, and that my dear friend Horace Smithson is a much better match
+than a seedy duke. So don't look cross, my dear fellow; in me you have a
+friend who will never desert you.'
+
+'Thanks,' said Smithson, inwardly resolving that, so soon as this
+little transaction of his marriage were over, he would see as little of
+Georgie Kirkbank and her cotton frocks and schoolgirl hats as bare
+civility would allow.
+
+He had promised her that she should be the richer by a neat little
+bundle of fat and flourishing railway stock when his happiness was
+secured, and he was not going to break his promise. But he did not mean
+to give George and Georgie free quarters at Rood Hall, or at Cowes, or
+Deauville; and he meant to withdraw his wife altogether from Lady
+Kirkbank's pinchbeck set.
+
+What were Lesbia's feelings in the early morning after the last day of
+the regatta, as she slowly paced the lavender walk in the Ladies'
+Garden, alone?--for happily Mr. Smithson was not so early a riser as the
+Grasmere-bred damsel, and she had this fresh morning hour to herself. Of
+what was she thinking as she paced slowly up and down the broad gravel
+walk, between two rows of tall old bushes, on which masses of purple
+blossom stood up from the pale grey foliage, silvery where the summer
+breeze touched it?
+
+Well, she was thinking first what a grand old place Rood Hall was, and
+that it was in a manner hers henceforward. She was to be mistress of
+this house, and of other houses, each after its fashion as perfect as
+Rood Hall. She was to have illimitable money at her command, to spend
+and give away as she liked. She, who yesterday had been tortured by the
+idea of owing a paltry three thousand pounds, was henceforward to count
+her thousands by the hundred. Her senses reeled before that dazzling
+vision of figures with rows of ciphers after them, one cipher more or
+less meaning the difference between thousands and millions. Everybody
+had agreed in assuring her that Mr. Smithson was inordinately rich.
+Everybody had considered it his or her business to give her information
+about the gentleman's income; clearly implying thereby that in the
+opinion of society Mr. Smithson's merits as a suitor were a question of
+so much bullion.
+
+Could she doubt--she who had learned in one short season to know what
+the world was made of and what it most valued--could she, steeped to the
+lips in the wisdom of Lady Kirkbank's set, doubt for an instant that she
+was making a better match in the eye of society, than if she had married
+a man of the highest lineage in all England, a peer of the highest rank,
+without large means? She knew that money was power, that a man might
+begin life as a pot-boy or a greengrocer, a knacker or a dust
+contractor, and climb to the topmost pinnacles, were he only rich
+enough. She knew that society would eat such a man's dinners and dance
+at his wife's balls, and pretend to think him an altogether exceptional
+man, make believe to admire him for his own sake, to think his wife most
+brilliant among women, if he were only rich enough. And could she doubt
+that society would bow down to her as Lady Lesbia Smithson? She had
+learned a great deal in her single season, and she knew how society was
+influenced and governed, almost as well as Sir Robert Walpole knew how
+human nature could be moulded and directed at the will of a shrewd
+diplomatist. She knew that in the fashionable world every man and every
+woman, every child even, has his or her price, and may be bought and
+sold at pleasure. She had her price, she, Lesbia, the pearl of Grasmere;
+and the price having been fairly bidden she had surrendered to the
+bidder.
+
+'I suppose I always meant to marry him,' she thought, pausing in her
+promenade to gaze across the verdant landscape, a fertile vale, against
+a background of low hills. All the landscape, to the edge of those
+hills, belonged to Mr. Smithson. 'Yes, I must have meant to give way at
+last, or I should hardly have tolerated his attentions. It would have
+been a pity to refuse such a place as this; and, he is quite
+gentlemanlike; and as I have done with all romantic ideas, I do not see
+why I should not learn to like him very much.'
+
+She dismissed the idea of Smithson lightly, with this conclusion, which
+she believed very virtuous; and then as she resumed her walk her
+thoughts reverted to the Park Lane Palace.
+
+'I hardly know whether I like it,' she mused languidly; 'beautiful as it
+is, it is only a reproduction of bygone splendour, and it is painfully
+excruciating now. For my own part I would much rather have the shabbiest
+old house which had belonged to one's ancestors, which had come to one
+as a heritage, by divine right as it were, instead of being bought with
+newly made money. To my mind it would rank higher. Yet I doubt if
+anybody nowadays sets a pin's value upon ancestors. People ask, Who is
+he? but they only mean, How much has he? And provided a person is not
+absolutely in trade, not actually engaged in selling soap, or matches,
+or mustard, society doesn't care a straw how his money has been made.
+The only secondary question is, How long will it last? And that is of
+course important.'
+
+Musing thus, wordly wisdom personified, the maiden looked up and saw her
+lover entering at the light little iron gate which gave entrance to this
+feminine Eden. She went to meet him, looking all simplicity and
+freshness in her white morning gown and neat little Dunstable hat. It
+seemed to him as he gazed at her almost as if this delicate, sylph-like
+beauty were some wild white flower of the woods personified.
+
+She gave him her hand graciously, but he drew her to his breast and
+kissed her, with the air of a man who was exercising an indisputable
+right. She supposed that it was his right, and she submitted, but
+released herself as quickly as possible.
+
+'My dearest, how lovely you look in this morning light,' he exclaimed,
+'while all the other women are upstairs making up their faces to meet
+the sun, and we shall see every shade of bismuth by-and-by, from pale
+mauve to purple.'
+
+'It is very uncivil of you to say such a thing of your guests,'
+exclaimed Lesbia.
+
+'But they all indulge in bismuth--you must be quite aware of that. They
+call the stuff by different names--Blanc Rosati, Crême de l'Imperatrice,
+Milk of Beauty, Perline, Opaline, Ivorine--but it means bismuth all the
+same. Expose your fashionable beauty to the fumes of sewer-gas, and that
+dazzling whiteness would turn to a dull brown hue, or even black. Thank
+heaven, my Lesbia wears real lilies and roses. Have you been here long?'
+
+'About half an hour'
+
+'I only wish I had known. I should not have dawdled so long over my
+dressing.'
+
+'I am very glad you did not know,' Lesbia answered coolly. 'Do you
+suppose I never want to be alone? Life in London is perpetual turmoil;
+one's eyes grow weary with ever-moving crowds, one's ears ache
+with trying to distinguish one voice among the buzz of voices.'
+
+'Then why go back to town? Why go back to the turmoil and the treadmill?
+It is only a kind of treadmill, after all, though we choose to call it
+pleasure. Stay here, Lesbia, and let us live upon the river, and among
+the flowers,' urged Smithson, with as romantic an air as if he had never
+heard of contango, or bulling and bearing; and yet only half an hour
+ago, while his valet was shaving him, he was debating within himself
+whether he should be bear or bull in his influence upon certain stock.
+
+It was supposed that he never went near the city, that he had shaken the
+dust of Lombard Street and the House off his shoes, that his fortune was
+made, and he had no further need of speculation. Yet the proverb holds
+good with the stock-jobber. 'He who has once drunk will drink again.' Of
+that fountain there is no satiety.
+
+'Stay and hear the last of the nightingales,' he murmured; 'we are famous
+for our nightingales.'
+
+'I wonder you don't order a _fricassée_ of their tongues, like that
+loathsome person in Roman history.'
+
+'I hope I shall never resemble any loathsome person. Why can you not
+stay?'
+
+'Why, because it is not etiquette, Lady Kirkbank says.'
+
+'Lady Kirkbank, eh? _la belle farce_, Lady Kirkbank standing out for
+etiquette.'
+
+'Don't laugh at my chaperon, sir. Upon what rock can a poor girl lean if
+you undermine her faith in her chaperon, sir.'
+
+'I hope you will have a better guardian before you are a month older. I
+mean to be a very strong rock, Lesbia. You do not know how firmly I
+shall stand between you and all the perils of society. You have been but
+poorly guarded hitherto.'
+
+'You talk as if you mean to be an abominable tyrant,' said Lesbia. 'If
+you don't take care I shall change my mind, and recall my promise.'
+
+'Not on that account, Lesbia: every woman likes a man who stands up for
+his own. It is only your invertebrate husband whose wife drifts into the
+divorce court. I mean to keep and hold the prize I have won. When is it
+to be, dearest--our wedding day?'
+
+'Not for ages, I hope--some time next summer, at the earliest.'
+
+'You would not be so cruel as to keep me waiting a year?'
+
+'Why not?'
+
+'You would not ask that if you loved me.'
+
+'You are asking too much,' said Lesbia, with a flash of defiance. 'There
+has been nothing said about love yet. You asked me to be your wife, and
+I said yes--meaning that at some remote period such a thing might be.'
+
+She knew that the man was her slave--slave to her beauty, slave to her
+superior rank--and she was determined not to lessen the weight of his
+chain by so much as a feather.
+
+'Did not that promise imply something like love?' he asked, earnestly.
+
+'Perhaps it implied a little gratitude for your devotion, which I have
+neither courted nor encouraged; a little respect for your talents, your
+perseverance--a little admiration for your wonderful success in life.
+Perhaps love may follow these sentiments, naturally, easily, if you are
+very patient; but if you talk about our being married before next year,
+you will simply make me hate you.'
+
+'Then I will say very little, except to remind you that there is no
+earthly reason why we should not be married next month. October and
+November are the best months for Rome, and I heard you say last night
+you were pining to see Rome.'
+
+'What then--cannot Lady Kirkbank take me to Rome?'
+
+'And introduce you to the rowdiest people in the city,' cried Mr.
+Smithson. 'Lesbia, I adore you. It is the dream of my life to be your
+husband; but if you are going to spend a winter in Italy with Lady
+Kirkbank, I renounce my right, I surrender my hope. You will not be the
+wife of my dreams after that.'
+
+'Do you assert a right to control my life during our engagement?'
+
+'Some little right; above all, the privilege of choosing your friends.
+And that is one reason why I most fervently desire our marriage should
+not be delayed. You would find it difficult, impossible perhaps, to get
+out of Lady Kirkbank's claws while you are single; but once my wife,
+that amiable old person can be made to keep her distance.'
+
+'Lady Kirkbank's claws! What a horrible way in which to speak of a
+friend. I thought you adored Lady Kirkbank.'
+
+'So I do. We all adore her, but not as a guide for youth. As a specimen
+of the elderly female of the latter half of the nineteenth century, she
+is perfect. Such gush, such juvenility, such broad views, such an utter
+absence of starch; but as a lamp for the footsteps of girlhood--no,
+_there_ we must pause.'
+
+'You are very ungrateful. Do you know that poor Lady Kirkbank has been
+most strenuous in your behalf?'
+
+'Oh, yes, I know that.'
+
+'And you are not grateful?'
+
+'I intend to be very grateful, so grateful as to entirely satisfy Lady
+Kirkbank.'
+
+'You are horribly cynical. That reminds me, there was a poor girl whom
+Lady Kirkbank had under her wing one season--a Miss Trinder, to whom I
+am told you behaved shamefully.'
+
+'There was a parson's daughter who threw herself at my head in a most
+audacious way, and who behaved so badly, egged on by Lady Kirkbank, that
+I had to take refuge in flight. Do you suppose I am the kind of man to
+marry the first adventurous damsel who takes a fancy to my town house,
+and thinks it would be a happy hunting ground for a herd of brothers and
+sisters? Miss Trinder was shocking bad style, and her designs were
+transparent from the very beginning! I let her flirt as much as she
+liked; and when she began to be seriously sentimental I took wing for
+the East.'
+
+'Was she pretty?' asked Lesbia, not displeased at this contemptuous
+summing up of poor Belle Trinder's story.
+
+'If you admire the Flemish type, as illustrated by Rubens, she was
+lovely. A complexion of lilies and roses--cabbage roses, _bien entendu_,
+which were apt to deepen into peonies after champagne and mayonaise at
+Ascot or Sandown--a figure--oh--well--a tremendous figure--hair of an
+auburn that touched perilously on the confines of red--large,
+serviceable feet, and an appetite--the appetite of a ploughman's
+daughter reared upon short commons.'
+
+'You are very cruel to a girl who evidently admired you.'
+
+'A fig for her admiration! She wanted to live in my house and spend my
+money.'
+
+'There goes the gong,' exclaimed Lesbia; 'pray let us go to breakfast.
+You are hideously cynical, and I am wofully tired of you.'
+
+And as they strolled back to the house, by lavender walk and rose
+garden, and across the dewy lawn, Lesbia questioned herself as to
+whether she was one whit better or more dignified than Isabella Trinder.
+She wore her rue with a difference, that was all.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV.
+
+'ALL FANCY, PRIDE, AND FICKLE MAIDENHOOD.'
+
+
+The return to Arlington Street meant a return to the ceaseless whirl of
+gaiety. Even at Rood Hall life had been as near an approach to perpetual
+motion as one could hope for in this world; but the excitement and the
+hurrying and scampering in Berkshire had a rustic flavour; there were
+moments that were almost repose, a breathing space between the blue
+river and the blue sky, in a world that seemed made of green fields and
+hanging woods, the plashing of waters, and the song of the lark. But in
+London the very atmosphere was charged with hurry and agitation; the
+freshness was gone from the verdure of the parks; the glory of the
+rhododendrons had faded; the Green Park below Lady Kirkbank's mansion
+was baked and rusty; the towers of the Houses of Parliament yonder were
+dimly seen in a mist of heat. London air tasted of smoke and dust,
+vibrated with the incessant roll of carriages, and the trampling of
+multitudinous feet.
+
+There are women of rank who can take the London season quietly, and live
+their own lives in the midst of the whirl and the riot--women for whom
+that squirrel-like circulation round and round the fashionable wheel has
+no charm--women who only receive people they like, only go into society
+that is congenial. But Lady Kirkbank was not one of these. The advance
+of age made her only more keen in the pursuit of pleasure. She would
+have abandoned herself to despair had the glass over the mantelpiece in
+her boudoir ceased to be choked and littered with cards--had her book of
+engagements shown a blank page. Happily there were plenty of people--if
+not all of them the best people--who wanted Sir George and Lady Kirkbank
+at their parties. The gentleman was sporting and harmless, the lady was
+good-natured, and just sufficiently eccentric to be amusing without
+degenerating into a bore. And this year she was asked almost everywhere,
+for the sake of the beauty who went under her wing. Lesbia had been as a
+pearl of price to her chaperon, from a social point of view; and now
+that she was engaged to Horace Smithson she was likely to be even more
+valuable.
+
+Mr. Smithson had promised Lady Kirkbank, sportively as it were, and upon
+the impulse of the moment, as he would have offered to wager a dozen of
+gloves, that were he so happy as to win her _protégée's_ hand he would
+find her an investment for, say, a thousand, which would bring her in
+twenty per cent.; nay, more, he would also find the thousand, which
+would have been the initial difficulty on poor Georgie's part. But this
+little matter was in Georgie's mind a detail, compared with the
+advantages to accrue to her indirectly from Lesbia's union with one of
+the richest men in London.
+
+Lady Kirkbank had brought about many good matches, and had been too
+often rewarded with base ingratitude upon the part of her _protégées_,
+after marriage; but there was a touch of Arcady in the good soul's
+nature, and she was always trustful. She told herself that Lesbia would
+not be ungrateful, would not basely kick down the ladder by which she
+had mounted to heights empyrean, would not cruelly shelve the friend who
+had pioneered her to high fortune. She counted upon making the house in
+Park Lane as her own house, upon being the prime mover of all Lesbia's
+hospitalities, the supervisor of her visiting list, the shadow behind
+the throne.
+
+There were balls and parties nightly, dinners, luncheons,
+garden-parties; and yet there was a sense of waning in the glory of the
+world--everybody felt that the fag-end of the season was approaching.
+All the really great entertainments were over--the Cabinet dinners, the
+Reception at the Foreign Office, the last of the State balls and
+concerts. Some of the best people had already left town; and senators
+were beginning to complain that they saw no prospect of early
+deliverance. There was Goodwood still to look forward to; and after
+Goodwood the Deluge--or rather Cowes Regatta, about which Lady
+Kirkbank's set were already talking.
+
+Lady Lesbia was to be at Cowes for the Regatta week. That was a settled
+thing. Mr. Smithson's schooner-yacht, the Cayman, was to be her hotel.
+It was to be Lady Kirkbank and Lady Lesbia's yacht for the nonce; and
+Mr. Smithson was to live on shore at his villa, and at that aristocratic
+club to which, by Maulevrier's influence, and on the score of his
+approaching marriage with an earl's daughter, he had been just selected.
+He would be only Lady Kirkbank's visitor on board the Cayman. The severe
+etiquette of the situation would therefore not be infringed; and yet Mr.
+Smithson would have the happiness of seeing his betrothed sole and
+sovereign mistress of his yacht, and of spending the long summer days at
+her feet. Even to Lady Lesbia this idea of the yacht was not without its
+charm. She had never been on board such a yacht as the Cayman; she was a
+good sailor, as testified by many an excursion, in hired sailing boats,
+at Tynemouth, and St. Bees; and she knew that she would be the queen of
+the hour. She accepted Mr. Smithson's invitation for the Cowes week more
+graciously than she was wont to receive his attentions, and was pleased
+to say that the whole thing would be rather enjoyable.
+
+'It will be simple enchantment,' exclaimed the more enthusiastic
+Georgie Kirkbank. 'There is nothing so rapturous as life on board a
+yacht; there is a flavour of adventure, a _sansgêne_, a--in short
+everything in the world that I like. I shall wear my cotton frocks, and
+give myself up to enjoyment, lie on the deck and look up at the blue
+sky, too deliciously idle even to read the last horrid thing of Zola's.'
+
+But the Cowes Regatta was nearly three weeks ahead; and in the meantime
+there was Goodwood, and the ravelled threads of the London season had to
+be wound up. And by this time it was known everywhere that the affair
+between Mr. Smithson and Maulevrier's sister was really on. 'It's as
+settled a business as the entries and bets for next year's Derby,' said
+one lounger to another in the smoking-room of the Haute Gomme. 'Play or
+pay, don't you know.'
+
+Lady Kirkbank and Lesbia had both written to Lady Maulevrier, Lesbia
+writing somewhat coldly, very briefly, and in a half defiant tone, to
+the effect that she had accepted Mr. Smithson's offer, and that she
+hoped her grandmother would be pleased with a match which everybody
+supposed to be extremely advantageous. She was going to Grasmere
+immediately after the Cowes week to see her dear grandmother, and to be
+assured of her approval. In the meanwhile she was awfully busy; there
+were callers driving up to the door at that very moment, and her brain
+was racked by the apprehension that she might not get her new gown in
+time for the Bachelor's Ball, which was to be quite one of the nicest
+things of the year, so dearest grandmother must excuse a hurried letter,
+etc., etc., etc.
+
+Georgie Kirkbank was more effusive, more lengthy. She expatiated upon
+the stupendous alliance which her sweetest Lesbia was about to make; and
+took credit to herself for having guided Lesbia's footsteps in the right
+way.
+
+'Smithson is a most difficult person,' she wrote. 'The least error of
+taste on your dear girl's part would have _froisséd_ him. Men with that
+immense wealth are always suspicious, ready to imagine mercenary
+motives, on their guard against being trapped. But Lesbia had _me_ at
+her back, and she managed him perfectly. He is positively her slave; and
+you will be able to twist him round your little finger in the matter of
+settlements. You may do what you like with him, for the ground has been
+thoroughly prepared by _me_.'
+
+Lady Maulevrier's reply was not enthusiastic. She had no doubt Mr.
+Smithson was a very good match, according to the modern estimate of
+matrimonial alliances, in which money seemed to be the Alpha and Omega.
+But she had cherished views of another kind. She had hoped to see her
+dear granddaughter wear one of those noble and historic names which are
+a badge of distinction for all time. She had hoped to see her enter one
+of those grand old families which are a kind of royalty. And that Lesbia
+should marry a man whose sole distinction consisted of an immense
+fortune amassed heaven knows how, was a terrible blow to her pride.
+
+'But it is not the first,' wrote Lady Maulevrier. 'My pride has received
+crushing blows in days past, and I ought to be humbled to the dust. But
+there is a stubborn resistance in some natures which stands firm against
+every shock. You and Lesbia will both be surprised to hear that Mary,
+from whom I expected so little, has made a really great match. She was
+married yesterday afternoon in my morning room, by special licence, to
+the Earl of Hartfield, the lover of her choice, whom we at Fellside have
+all known as plain John Hammond. He is an admirable young man, and sure
+to make a great figure in the world, as no doubt you know better than I
+do, for you are in the way of hearing all about him. His courtship of
+Mary is quite an idyll; and the happy issue of this romantic love-affair
+has cheered and comforted me more than anything that has happened since
+Lesbia left me.'
+
+This letter, written in Fräulein's niggling little hand, Lady Kirkbank
+handed to Lesbia, who read it through in silence; but when she came to
+that part of the letter which told of her sister's marriage, her cheek
+grew ashy pale, her brow contracted, and she started to her feet and
+stared at Lady Kirkbank with wild, dilated eyes, as if she had been
+stung by an adder.
+
+'A strange mystification, wasn't it?' said Lady Kirkbank, almost
+frightened at the awful look in Lesbia's face, which was even worse than
+Belle Trinder's expression when she read the announcement of Mr.
+Smithson's flight.
+
+'Strange mystification! It was base treachery--a vile and wicked lie!'
+cried Lesbia, furiously. 'What right had he to come to us under false
+colours, to pretend to be poor, a nobody--with only the vaguest hope of
+making a decent position in the future?--and to offer himself under such
+impossible conditions to a girl brought up as I had been--a girl
+educated by one of the proudest and most ambitious of women--to force me
+to renounce everything except him? How could he suppose that any girl,
+so placed, could decide in his favour? If he had loved me he would have
+told me the truth--he would not have made it impossible for me to accept
+him.'
+
+'I believe he is a very high flown young man,' said Lady Kirkbank,
+soothingly; 'he was never in _my_ set, you know, dear. And I suppose he
+had some old Minerva-press idea that he would find a girl who would
+marry him for his own sake. And your sister, no doubt, eager to marry
+_anybody_, poor child, for the sake of getting away from that very
+lovely dungeon of Lady Maulevrier's, snapped at the chance; and by a
+mere fluke she becomes a countess.'
+
+Lesbia ignored these consolatory remarks. She was pacing the room like
+a tigress, her delicate cambric handkerchief grasped between her two
+hands, and torn and rent by the convulsive action of her fingers. She
+could have thrown herself from the balcony on to the spikes of the area
+railings, she could have dashed herself against yonder big plate-glass
+window looking towards the Green Park, like a bird which shatters his
+little life against the glass barrier which he mistakes for the open
+sky. She could have flung herself down on the floor and grovelled, and
+torn her hair--she could have done anything mad, wicked, desperate, in
+the wild rage of this moment.
+
+'Loved me!' she exclaimed; 'he never loved me. If he had he would have
+told me the truth. What, when I was in his arms, my head upon his
+breast, my whole being surrendered to him, adoring him, what more could
+he want? He must have known that this meant real love. And why should he
+put it upon me to fight so hard a fight--to brave my grandmother's
+anger--to be cursed by her--to face poverty for his sake? I never
+professed to be a heroine. He knew that I was a woman, with all a
+woman's weakness, a woman's fear of trial and difficulty in the future.
+It was a cowardly thing to use me so.'
+
+'It was,' said Lady Kirkbank, in the same soothing tone; 'but if you
+liked this Hammond-Hartfield creature a little in those old days, I
+know you have outlived that liking long ago.'
+
+'Of course; but it is a hard thing to know one has been fooled, cheated,
+weighed in the balance and found wanting,' said Lesbia, scornfully.
+
+She was taming down a little by this time, ashamed of that outbreak of
+violent passion, feeling that she had revealed too much to Lady
+Kirkbank.
+
+'It was a caddish thing to do,' said Georgie; 'and this Hartfield is
+just what I always thought him--an insufferable prig. However, my
+sweetest girl, there is really nothing to lament in the matter. Your
+sister has made a good alliance, which will score high in your favour
+by-and-by, and you are going to marry a man who is three times as rich
+as Lord Hartfield.'
+
+'Rich, yes; and nothing but rich; while Lord Hartfield is a man of the
+very highest standing, belongs to the flower of English nobility. Rich,
+yes; Mr. Smithson is rich; but, as Lady Maulevrier says, he has made his
+money heaven knows how.'
+
+'Mr. Smithson has not made his money heaven knows how,' answered Lady
+Kirkbank, indignantly. 'He has made it in cochineal, in iron, in
+gunpowder, in coal, in all kinds of commodities. Everybody in the City
+knows how he has made his money, and that he has a genius for turning
+everything into gold. If the gold changes back into one of the baser
+metals, it is only when Mr. Smithson has made all he wanted to make. And
+now he has quite done with the City. The House is the only business of
+his life; and he is becoming a power in the House. You have every reason
+to be proud of your choice, Lesbia.'
+
+'I will try to be proud of it,' said Lesbia, resolutely. 'I will not be
+scorned and trampled upon by Mary.'
+
+'She seemed a harmless kind of girl,' said Lady Kirkbank, as if she had
+been talking of a housemaid.
+
+'She is a designing minx,' exclaimed Lesbia, 'and has set her cap at
+that man from the very beginning.'
+
+'But she could not have known that he was Lord Hartfield.'
+
+'No; but he was a man; and that was enough for her.'
+
+From this time forward there was a change in Lady Lesbia's style and
+manner--a change very much for the worse, as old-fashioned people
+thought; but to the taste of some among Lady Kirkbank's set, the change
+was an improvement. She was gayer than of old, gay with a reckless
+vivacity, intensely eager for action and excitement, for cards and
+racing, and all the strongest stimulants of fashionable life. Most
+people ascribed this increased vivacity, this electric manner, to the
+fact of her engagement to Horace Smithson. She was giddy with her
+triumph, dazzled by a vision of the gold which was soon to be hers.
+
+'Egad, if I saw myself in a fair way of being able to write cheques upon
+such an account as Smithson's I should be as wild as Lady Lesbia,' said
+one of the damsel's military admirers at the Rag. 'And I believe the
+young lady was slightly dipped.'
+
+'Who told you that?' asked his friend.
+
+'A mother of mine,' answered the youth, with an apologetic air, as if he
+hardly cared to own such a humdrum relationship. 'Seraphine, the
+dressmaker, was complaining--wanted to see the colour of Lady Lesbia
+Haselden's money--vulgar curiosity--asked my old mother if she thought
+the account was safe, and so on. That's how I came to know all about
+it.'
+
+'Well, she'll be able to pay Seraphine next season.'
+
+Lord Maulevrier came back to London directly after his sister's wedding.
+The event, which came off so quietly, so happily, filled him with
+unqualified joy. He had hoped from the very first that his Molly would
+win the cup, even while Lesbia was making all the running, as he said
+afterwards. And Molly had won, and was the wife of one of the best young
+men in England. Maulevrier, albeit unused to the melting-mood, shed a
+tear or two for very joy as the sister he loved and the friend of his
+boyhood and youth stood side by side in the quiet room at Grasmere, and
+spoke the solemn words that made them one for ever.
+
+The first news he heard after his return to town was of Lesbia's
+engagement, which was common talk at the clubs. The visitors at Rood
+Hall had come back to London full of the event, and were proud of giving
+a detailed account of the affair to outsiders.
+
+They all talked patronisingly of Smithson, and seemed to think it
+rather a wonderful fact that he did not drop his aspirates or eat peas
+with a knife.
+
+'A man of stirling metal,' said the gossips, 'who can hold his own with
+many a fellow born in the purple.'
+
+Maulevrier called in Arlington Street, but Lady Kirkbank and her
+_protégée_ were out; and it was at a cricket match at the Orleans Club
+that the brother and sister met for the first time after Lord
+Hartfield's wedding, which by this time had been in all the papers; a
+very simple announcement:
+
+'On the 29th inst., at Grasmere, by the Reverend Douglass Brooke, the
+Earl of Hartfield to Mary, younger daughter of the ninth Earl of
+Maulevrier.'
+
+Lesbia was the centre of a rather noisy little court, in which Mr.
+Smithson was conspicuous by his superior reserve.
+
+He did not exert himself as a lover, paid no compliments, was not
+sentimental. The pearl was won, and he wore it very quietly; but
+wherever Lesbia went he went; she was hardly ever out of his sight.
+
+Maulevrier received the coolest possible greeting. Lesbia turned pale
+with anger at sight of him, for his presence reminded her of the most
+humiliating passage in her life; but the big red satin sunshade
+concealed that pale angry look, and nothing in Lesbia's manner betrayed
+emotion.
+
+'Where have you been hiding yourself all this time, and why were you not
+at Henley?' she asked.
+
+'I have been at Grasmere.'
+
+'Oh, you were a witness of that most romantic marriage. The Lady of
+Lyons reversed, the gardener's son turning out to be an earl. Was it
+excruciatingly funny?'
+
+'It was one of the most solemn weddings I ever saw.'
+
+'Solemn! what, with my Tomboy sister as bride! Impossible!'
+
+'Your sister ceased to be a Tomboy when she fell in love. She is a sweet
+and womanly woman, and will make an adorable wife to the finest fellow I
+know. I hear I am to congratulate you, Lesbia, upon your engagement with
+Mr. Smithson.'
+
+'If you think _I_ am the person to be congratulated, you are at liberty
+to do so. My engagement is a fact.'
+
+'Oh, of course, Mr. Smithson is the winner. But as I hope you intend to
+be happy, I wish you joy. I am told Smithson is a really excellent
+fellow when one gets to know him; and I shall make it my business to be
+better acquainted with him.'
+
+Smithson was standing just out of hearing, watching the bowling.
+Maulevrier went over to him and shook hands, their acquaintance hitherto
+having been of the slightest, and very shy upon his lordship's part; but
+now Smithson could see that Maulevrier meant to be cordial.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI.
+
+A RASTAQUOUÈRE.
+
+
+There was a dinner party in one of the new houses in Grosvenor Place
+that evening, to which Lady Kirkbank and Lesbia had been bidden. The new
+house belonged to a new man, who was supposed to have made millions out
+of railways, and other gigantic achievements in the engineering line;
+and the new man and his wife were friends of Mr. Smithson, and had made
+the simple Georgie's acquaintance only within the last three weeks.
+
+'Of course they are stupid, my dear,' she remarked, in response to some
+slighting remark of Lesbia's, 'but I am always willing to know rich
+people. One drops in for so many good things; and they never want any
+return in kind. It is quite enough for them to be allowed to spend their
+money _upon us._'
+
+The house was gorgeous in all the glory of the very latest fashions in
+upholstery; hall Algerian; dining-room Pompeian; drawing-room Early
+Italian; music-room Louis Quatorze; billiard-room mediæval English. The
+dinner was as magnificent as dinner can be made. Three-fourths of the
+guests were the _haute gomme_ of the financial world, and perspired
+gold. The other third belonged to a class which Mr. Smithson described
+somewhat contemptuously as the shake-back nobility. An Irish peer, a
+younger son of a ducal house that had run to seed, a political agitator,
+a grass widow whose titled husband was governor of an obscure colony, an
+ancient dowager with hair which was too luxuriant to be anything but a
+wig, and diamonds which were so large as to suggest paste.
+
+Lesbia sat by her affianced at the glittering table, lighted with
+clusters of wax candles, which shone upon a level _parterre_ of tea
+roses, gardenias, and gloire de Malmaison carnations; from which rose at
+intervals groups of silver-gilt dolphins, supporting shallow golden
+dishes piled with peaches, grapes, and all the costliest produce of
+Covent Garden.
+
+Conversation was not particularly brilliant, nor had the guests an
+elated air. The thermometer was near eighty, and at this period of the
+season everybody was tired of this kind of dinner, and would gladly have
+foregone the greatest achievements of culinary art, in favour of a
+chicken and a salad, eaten under green leaves, in a garden at Wargrave
+or Henley, within sound of the rippling river.
+
+On Lesbia's right hand there was a portly personage of Jewish type, dark
+to swarthiness, and somewhat oily, whose every word suggested bullion.
+He and Mr. Smithson were evidently acquaintances of long standing, and
+Mr. Smithson presented him to Lesbia, whereupon he joined in their
+conversation now and then.
+
+His talk was of the usual standard. He had seen everything worth seeing
+in London and in Paris, between which cities he seemed to oscillate with
+such frequency that he might be said to live in both places at once. He
+had his stall at Covent Garden, and his stall at the Grand Opera. He was
+a subscriber at the Theatre Français. He had seen all the races at
+Longchamps and Chantilly, as well as at Sandown and Ascot. But every now
+and then he and Mr. Smithson drifted from the customary talk about
+operas and races, pictures and French novels, to the wider world of
+commerce and speculation, mines, waterworks, and foreign loans--and
+Lesbia leant back in her chair, and fanned herself languidly, with
+half-closed eyelids, while two or three courses went round, she giving
+the little supercilious look at each _entrée_ offered to her, to be
+observed on such occasions, as if the thing offered were particularly
+nasty.
+
+She wondered how long the two men were going to prose about mines and
+shares, in those subdued half-mysterious voices, telling each other
+occult facts in half-expressed phrases, utterly dark to the outside
+world; but, while she was languidly wondering, a change in her lover's
+manner startled her into keenest curiosity.
+
+'Montesma is in Paris,' said Mr. Sampayo, the dark gentleman; 'I dined
+last week with him at the Continental.'
+
+Mr. Smithson's complexion faded curiously, and a leaden darkness came
+over his countenance, as of a man whose heart and lungs suddenly refuse
+their office. But in a few moments he was smiling feebly.
+
+'Indeed! I thought he was played out years ago.'
+
+'A man of that kind is never played out. Don Gomez de Montesma is as
+clever as Satan, as handsome as Apollo, and he bears one of the oldest
+names in Castile. Such a man will always come to the front. _C'est un
+rastaquouère mais rastaquouère de bon genre_. You knew him intimately
+_là bas_, I believe?'
+
+'In Cuba; yes, we were pretty good friends once.'
+
+'And were useful to each other, no doubt,' said Mr. Sampayo, pleasantly.
+'Was that Argentiferous Copper Company in sixty-four yours or his?'
+
+'There were a good many people concerned in it.'
+
+'No doubt; it takes a good many people to work that kind of thing, but I
+fancy you and Montesma were about the only two who came out of it
+pleasantly. And he and you did a little in the shipping line, didn't
+you--African produce? However, that's an old song. You have had so many
+good things since then.'
+
+'Did Montesma talk of coming to London?'
+
+'He did not talk about it; but he would hardly go back to the tropics
+without having a look round on both sides of the Channel. He was always
+fond of society, pretty women, dancing, and amusements of all kinds. I
+have no doubt we shall see him here before the end of the season.'
+
+Mr. Smithson pursued the subject no further. He turned to Lesbia, who had
+been curiously interested in this little bit of conversation--interested
+first because Smithson had seemed agitated by the mention of the
+Spaniard's name; secondly, because of the description of the man, which
+had a romantic sound. The very word tropic suggested a romance. And
+Lesbia, whose mind was jaded by the monotony of a London season, the
+threadbare fabric of society conversation, kindled at any image which
+appealed to her fancy.
+
+Clever as Satan, handsome as Apollo, scion of an old Castilian family,
+fresh from the tropics. Her imagination dwelt upon the ideas which these
+words had conjured up.
+
+Three days after this she was at the opera with her chaperon, her lover
+in attendance as usual. The opera was "Faust," with Nillson as
+Marguerite. After the performance they were to drive down to Twickenham
+on Mr. Smithson's drag, and to dance and sup at the Orleans. The last
+ball of the season was on this evening; and Lesbia had been persuaded
+that it was to be a particular _recherché_ ball, and that only the very
+nicest people were to be present. At any rate, the drive under the light
+of a July moon would be delicious; and if they did not like the people
+they found there they could eat their supper and come away immediately
+after, as Lady Kirkbank remarked philosophically.
+
+The opera was nearly over--that grand scene of Valentine's death was
+on--and Lesbia was listening breathlessly to every note, watching every
+look of the actors, when there came a modest little knock at the door of
+her box. She darted an angry glance round, and shrugged her shoulders
+vexatiously. What Goth had dared to knock during that thrilling scene?
+
+Mr. Smithson rose and crept to the door and quietly opened it.
+
+A dark, handsome man, who was a total stranger to Lesbia, glided in,
+shaking hands with Smithson as he entered.
+
+Till this moment Lesbia's whole being had been absorbed in the
+scene--that bitter anathema of the brother, the sister's cry of anguish
+and shame. Where else is there tragedy so human, so enthralling--grief
+that so wrings the spectator's heart? It needed a Goethe and a Gounod to
+produce this masterpiece.
+
+In an instant, in a flash, Lesbia's interest in the stage was gone. Her
+first glance at the stranger told her who he was. The olive tint, the
+eyes of deepest black, the grand form of the head and perfect chiselling
+of the features could belong only to that scion of an old Castilian race
+whom she had heard described the other evening--'clever as Satan,
+handsome as Apollo.'
+
+Yes, this must be the man, Don Gomez de Montesma. There was nothing in
+Mr. Smithson's manner to indicate that the Spaniard was an unwelcome
+guest. On the contrary, Smithson received him with a cordiality which in
+a man of naturally reserved manner seemed almost rapture. The curtain
+fell, and he presented Don Gomez to Lady Kirkbank and Lady Lesbia;
+whereupon dear Georgie began to gush, after her wont, and to ask a good
+many questions in a manner that was too girlish to seem impertinent.
+
+'How perfectly you speak English!' she exclaimed. 'You must have lived
+in England a good deal.'
+
+'On the contrary, it is my misfortune to have lived here very little,
+but I have known a good many English and Americans in Cuba and in
+Paris.'
+
+'In Cuba! Do you really come from Cuba? I have always fancied that Cuba
+must be an altogether charming place to live in--like Biarritz or Pau,
+don't you know, only further away. Do please tell me where it is, and
+what kind of a place.'
+
+Geographically, Lady Kirkbank's mind was a blank. It was quite a
+revelation to her to find that Cuba was an island.
+
+'It must be a lovely spot!' exclaimed the fervid creature. 'Let me see,
+now, what do we get from Cuba?--cigars--and--and tobacco. I suppose in
+Cuba everybody smokes?'
+
+'Men, women, and children.'
+
+'How delicious! Would that I were a Cuban! And the natives, are they
+nice?'
+
+'There are no aborigines. The Indians whom Columbus found soon perished
+off the face of the island. European civilisation generally has that
+effect. But one of our most benevolent captain-generals provided us with
+an imported population of niggers.'
+
+'How delightful. I have always longed to live among a slave population,
+dear submissive black things dressed in coral necklaces and feathers,
+instead of the horrid over-fed wretches we have to wait upon us. And if
+the aborigines were not wanted it was just as well for them to die out,
+don't you know,' prattled Lady Kirkbank.
+
+'It was very accommodating of them, no doubt. Yet we could employ half a
+million of them, if we had them, in draining our swamps. Agriculture
+suffered by the loss of Indian labour.'
+
+'I suppose they were like the creatures in Pizarro, poor dear yellow
+things with brass bracelets,' said Lady Kirkbank. 'I remember seeing
+Macready as Rolla when I was quite a little thing.'
+
+And now the curtain rose for the last act.
+
+'Do you care about staying for the end?' asked Mr. Smithson of Lesbia.
+'It will make us rather late at the Orleans.'
+
+'Never mind how late we are,' said Lesbia, imperiously. 'I have always
+been cheated out of this last act for some stupid party. Imagine losing
+Gounod and Nillson for the sake of struggling through the mob on a
+stifling staircase, and being elbowed by inane young men, with gardenias
+in their coats.'
+
+Lady Lesbia had a pretty little way of always opposing any suggestion of
+her sweetheart. She was resolved to treat him as badly as a future
+husband could be treated. In consenting to marry him she had done him a
+favour which was a great deal more than such a person had any right to
+expect.
+
+She leant forward to watch and listen, with her elbow resting on the
+velvet cushion--her head upon her hand, and she seemed absorbed in the
+scene. But this was mere outward seeming. All the enchantment of music
+and acting was over. She only heard and saw vaguely, as if it were a
+shadowy scene enacted ever so far away. Every now and then her eyes
+glanced involuntarily toward Don Gomez, who stood leaning against the
+back of the box, pale, languid, graceful, poetic, an altogether
+different type of manhood from that with which she had of late been
+satiated.
+
+Those deep dark eyes of his had a dreamy look. They gazed across the
+dazzling house, into space, above Lady Lesbia's head. They seemed to see
+nothing; and they certainly were not looking at her.
+
+Don Gomez was the first man she ever remembered to have been presented
+to her who did not favour her with a good deal of hard staring, more or
+less discreetly managed, during the first ten minutes of their
+acquaintance. On him her beauty fell flat. He evidently failed to
+recognise her supreme loveliness. It might be that she was the wrong
+type for Cuba. Every nation has its own Venus; and that far away spot
+beyond the torrid zone might have a somewhat barbarous idea of beauty.
+At any rate, Don Gomez was apparently unimpressed. And yet Lesbia
+flattered herself that she was looking her best to-night, and that her
+costume was a success. She wore a white satin gown, short in the skirt,
+for the luxury of freedom in waltzing, and made with Quaker-like
+simplicity, the bodice high to the throat, fitting her like a sheath.
+
+Her only ornaments were a garland of scarlet poppies wreathed from
+throat to shoulder, and a large diamond heart which Mr. Smithson had
+lately given her; 'a bullock's heart,' as Lady Kirkbank called it.
+
+When the curtain fell, and not till then, she rose and allowed herself
+to be clad in a brown velvet Newmarket, which completely covered her
+short satin gown. She had a little brown velvet toque to match the
+Newmarket, and thus attired she would be able to take her seat on the
+drag which was waiting on the quietest side of Covent Garden.
+
+'Why should not you go with us, Don Gomez?' exclaimed Lady Kirkbank, in
+a gush of hospitality. 'The drive will be charming--not equal to your
+tropical Cuba--but intensely nice. And the gardens will be something too
+sweet on such a night as this. I knew them when the dear Duc d'Aumale
+was there. Ay de mi, such a man!'
+
+Lady Kirkbank sighed, with the air of having known his Altesse Royale
+intimately.
+
+'I should be charmed,' said Don Gomez, 'if I thought my friend Smithson
+wanted me. Would you really like to have me, Smithson?'
+
+'I should be enchanted.'
+
+'And there is room on the drag?'
+
+'Room enough for half-a-dozen. I am only taking Sir George Kirkbank and
+Colonel Delville--whom we are to pick up at the Haute Gomme--and Mr. and
+Mrs. Mostyn, who are in the stalls.'
+
+'A nice snug little party,' exclaimed that charming optimist, Lady
+Kirkbank. 'I hate a crowd on a drag. The way some of the members of the
+Four-in-hand Club load their coaches on parade reminds me of a
+Beanfeast!'
+
+They found Lady Kirkbank's footman and one of Mr. Smithson's grooms
+waiting in the hall of the opera house. The groom to conduct them to the
+spot where the drag was waiting; the footman to carry wraps and take his
+mistress's final orders. There was a Bohemian flavour in the little walk
+to the great fruit garden, which was odorous of bruised peaches and
+stale salads as they passed it. Waggon-loads of cabbages and other
+garden stuff were standing about by the old church; the roadway was
+littered with the refuse of the market; and the air was faint and heavy
+with the scent of herbs and flowers.
+
+Lesbia mounted lightly to her place of honour on the box-seat; and Lady
+Kirkbank was hoisted up after her. Mr. and Mrs. Mostyn followed; and
+then Don Gomez took his seat by Lady Kirkbank's side and behind Lesbia,
+a vantage point from which he could talk to her as much as he liked. Mr.
+Smithson seated himself a minute afterwards, and drove off by King
+Street and Leicester Square and on to Piccadilly, steering cleverly
+through the traffic of cabs and carriages, which was at its apogee just
+now, when all the theatres were disgorging their crowds. Piccadilly was
+quieter, yet there were plenty of carriages, late people going to
+parties and early people going home, horses slipping and sliding on
+stones or wood, half the roadway up, and luminous with lanterns. They
+stopped in front of the Haute Gomme, where they picked up Sir George
+Kirkbank and Colonel Delville, a big man with a patriarchal head,
+supposed to be one of the finest whist players in London, and to make a
+handsome income by his play. He had ridden in the Balaclava charge, was
+a favourite everywhere, and, albeit no genius, was much cleverer than
+his friend and school-fellow, George Kirkbank. They had been at Eton
+together, had both made love to the lively Georgie, and had been
+inseparables for the last thirty years.
+
+'Couldn't get on without Delville,' said Sir George; 'dooced smart
+fellow, sir. Knows the ropes; and does all the thinking for both of us.'
+
+And now they were fairly started, and the team fell into a rattling
+pace, with the road pretty clear before them. Hyde Park was one
+umbrageous darkness, edged by long lines of golden light. Coolness and
+silence enfolded all things in the summer midnight, and Lesbia, not
+prone to romance, sank into a dreamy state of mind, as she leaned back
+in her seat and watched the shadowy trees glide by, the long vista of
+lamps and verdure in front of her. She was glad that no one talked to
+her, for talk of any kind must have broken the spell. Don Gomez sat like
+a statue in his place behind her. From Lady Kirkbank, the loquacious,
+came a gentle sound of snoring, a subdued, ladylike snore, breathed
+softly at intervals, like a sigh. Mr. Smithson had his team, and his own
+thoughts, too, for occupation,--thoughts which to-night were not
+altogether pleasant.
+
+At the back of the coach Mrs. Mostyn was descanting on the evolution of
+the nautilus, and the relationship of protoplasm and humanity, to
+Colonel Delville, who sat smiling placidly behind an immense cigar, and
+accepted the most stupendous facts and the most appalling theories with
+a friendly little nod of his handsome head.
+
+Mr. Mostyn frankly slept, as it was his custom to do upon all convenient
+occasions. He called it recuperating.
+
+'Frank ought to be delightfully fresh, for he recuperated all the way
+down,' said his wife, when they alighted in the dewy garden at
+Twickenham, in front of the lamp-lit portico.
+
+'I wouldn't have minded his recuperating if he hadn't snored so
+abominably,' remarked Colonel Delville.
+
+It was nearly one o'clock, and the ball had thinned a little, which made
+it all the better for those who remained. Mr. Smithson's orders had been
+given two days ago, and the very best of the waiters had been told off
+for his especial service. The ladies went upstairs to take off their
+wrappings and mufflings, and Lesbia emerged dazzling from her brown
+velvet Newmarket, while Lady Kirkbank, bending closely over the
+looking-glass, like a witch over a caldron, repaired her complexion with
+cotton wool.
+
+They went through the conservatory to the octagon dining-room, where the
+supper was ready, a special supper, on a table by a window, a table
+laden with exotics and brilliant with glass and silver. The supper was,
+of course, perfect in its way. Mr. Smithson's _chef_ had been down to
+see about it, and Mr. Smithson's own particular champagne and the claret
+grown in his own particular _clos_ in the Gironde, had been sent down
+for the feast. No common cuisine, no common wine could be good enough;
+and yet there was a day when the cheapest gargote in Belleville or
+Montmartre was good enough for Mr. Smithson. There had been days on
+which he did not dine at all, and when the fumes of a _gibelotte_
+steaming from a workman's restaurant made his mouth water.
+
+The supper was all life and gaiety. Everyone was hungry and thirsty, and
+freshened by the drive, except Lesbia. She was singularly silent, ate
+hardly anything, but drank three or four glasses of champagne.
+
+Don Gomez was not a great talker. He had the air of a prince of the
+blood royal, who expects other people to talk and to keep him amused.
+But the little he said was to the point. He had a fine baritone, very
+low and subdued, and had a languor which was almost insolent, but not
+without its charm. There was an air of originality about the manner and
+the man.
+
+He was the typical _rastaquouère_, a man of finished manners, and
+unknown antecedents, a foreigner, apparently rich, obviously
+accomplished, but with that indefinable air which bespeaks the
+adventurer; and which gives society as fair a warning as if the man wore
+a placard on his shoulder with the word _cave_.
+
+But to Lesbia this Spaniard was the first really interesting man she had
+met since she saw John Hammond; and her interest in him was much more
+vivid than her interest in Hammond had been at the beginning of their
+acquaintance. That pale face, with its tint of old ivory, those thin,
+finely-cut lips, indicative of diabolical craft, could she but read
+aright, those unfathomable eyes, touched her fancy as it had never yet
+been touched, awoke within her that latent vein of romance,
+self-abnegation, supreme foolishness, which lurks in the nature of every
+woman, be she chaste as ice and pure as snow.
+
+The supper was long. It was past two o'clock, and the ballroom was
+thinly occupied, when Mr. Smithson's party went there.
+
+'You won't dance to-night, I suppose?' said Smithson, as Lesbia and he
+went slowly down the room arm in arm. It was in a pause between two
+waltzes. The wide window at the end was opened to the summer night, and
+the room was delightfully cool. 'You must be horribly tired?'
+
+'I am not in the least tired, and I mean to waltz, if anyone will ask
+me,' replied Lesbia, decisively.
+
+'I ought to have asked you to dance, and then it would have been the
+other way,' said Smithson, with a touch of acrimony. 'Surely you have
+dancing enough in town, and you might be obliging for once in a way,
+and come and sit with me in the garden, and listen to the nightingales.'
+
+'There are no nightingales after June. There is the Manola,' as the band
+struck up, 'my very favourite waltz.'
+
+Don Gomez was at her elbow at this moment
+
+'May I have the honour of this waltz with you, Lady Lesbia?' he asked;
+and then with a serio-comic glance at his stoutish friend, 'I don't
+think Smithson waltzes?'
+
+'I have been told that nobody can waltz who has been born on this side
+of the Pyrenees,' answered Lesbia, withdrawing her arm from her lover's,
+and slipping, it through the Spaniard's, with the air of a slave who
+obeys a master.
+
+Smithson looked daggers, and retired to a corner of the room glowering.
+Were a man twenty-two times millionaire, like the Parisian Rothschild,
+he could not find armour against the poisoned arrows of jealousy. Don
+Gomez possessed many of those accomplishments which make men dangerous,
+but as a dancer he was _hors ligne_; and Horace Smithson knew that there
+is no surer road to a girl's fancy than the magic circle of a waltz.
+
+Those two were floating round the room in the old slow legato step,
+which recalled to Smithson the picture of a still more spacious room in
+an island under the Southern Cross--the blue water of the bay shining
+yonder under the starlight of the tropics, fire-flies gleaming and
+flashing in the foliage beyond the open windows, fire-flies flashing
+amidst the gauzy draperies of the dancers, and this same Gomez revolving
+with the same slow languid grace, his arm encircling the _svelte_ figure
+of a woman whose southern beauty outshone Lesbia's blonde English
+loveliness as the tropical stars outshine the lamps that light our
+colder skies. Yes, every detail of the scene flashed back into his mind,
+as if a curtain had been suddenly plucked back from a long-hidden
+picture. The Cuban's tall slim figure, the head gently bent towards his
+partner's head, as at this moment, and those dark eyes looking up at
+him, intoxicated with that nameless, indefinable fascination which it is
+the lot of some men to exercise.
+
+'He robbed me of _her_!' thought Smithson, gloomily. 'Will he rob me of
+this one too? Surely not! Havana is Havana--and this one is not a
+Creole. If I cannot trust that lovely piece of marble, there is no woman
+on earth to be trusted.'
+
+He turned his back upon the dancers, and went out into the garden. His
+soul was wrung with jealousy, yet he could watch no longer. There was
+too much pain--there were too many bitter memories of shame, and loss,
+and ignominy evoked by that infernal picture. If he had been free he
+would have asserted his authority as Lesbia's future husband; he would
+have taken her away from the Orleans; he would have told her plainly and
+frankly that Don Gomez was no fit person for her to know; and he would
+have so planned that they two should never meet again. But Horace
+Smithson was not free. He was bound hand and foot by those fetters which
+the chain of past events had forged--stern facts which the man himself
+may forget, or try to forget, but which other people never forget. There
+is generally some dark spot in the history of such men as Smithson--men
+who climb the giddiest heights of this world with that desperate
+rapidity which implies many a perilous leap from crag to crag, many a
+moraine skimmed over, and many an awful gulf spanned by a hair-breadth
+bridge. Mr. Smithson's history was not without such spots; and the
+darkest of all had relation to his career in Cuba. The story had been
+known by very few--perhaps completely known only by one man; and that
+man was Gomez de Montesma.
+
+For the last fifteen years the most fervent desire of Horace Smithson's
+heart had been the hope that tropical nature, in any one of her various
+disagreeable forms, would be obliging enough to make an end of Gomez.
+But the forces of nature had not worked on Mr. Smithson's side. No
+loathsome leprosy had eaten his enemy's flesh; neither cayman nor
+crocodile, neither Juba snake nor poisonous spider had marked him for
+its prey. The tropical sun had left him unsmitten. He had lived and he
+had prospered; and he was here, like a guilty conscience incarnate, to
+spoil Horace Smithson's peace.
+
+'I must be diplomatic,' Smithson said to himself, as he walked up and
+down an avenue of Irish yews, in a solitary part of the grounds, smoking
+his cigarette, and hearing the music swell and sink in the distance. 'I
+will give her a hint as to that man's character, and I will keep them
+apart as much as I can. But if he forces himself upon me there is no
+help for it. I cannot afford to be uncivil to him.'
+
+'Cannot afford' in this instance meant 'dare not,' and Horace Smithson's
+thoughts as he paced the yew-tree walk were full of gloom.
+
+During that long meditation he made up his mind on one point, namely,
+that, let him suffer what pangs he might, he must not betray his
+jealousy. To do that would be to lower himself in Lesbia's eyes, and to
+play into his rival's hand; for a jealous man is almost always
+contemptible in the sight of his mistress. He would carry himself as if
+he were sure of her fidelity; and this very confidence, with a woman of
+honour, a girl reared as Lesbia had been reared, would render it
+impossible for her to betray him. He would show himself high-minded,
+confident, generous, chivalrous, even; and he would trust to chance for
+the issue. Chance was Mr. Smithson's only idea of Divinity; and Chance
+had hitherto been kind to him. There had been dark hours in his life,
+but the darkness had not lasted long; and the lucky accidents of his
+career had been of a nature to beguile him into the belief that among
+the favourites of Destiny he stood first and foremost.
+
+While Mr. Smithson mused thus, alone and in the darkness, Montesma and
+Lady Lesbia were wandering arm in arm in another and lovelier part of
+the grounds, where golden lights were scattered like Cuban fire-flies
+among the foliage of seringa and magnolia, arbutus and rhododendron,
+while at intervals a sudden flush of rosier light was shed over garden
+and river, as if by enchantment, surprising a couple here and there in
+the midst of a flirtation which had begun in darkness.
+
+The grounds were lovely in the balmy atmosphere of a July night, the
+river gliding with mysterious motion under the stars, great masses of
+gloom darkening the stream with an almost awful look where the woods of
+Petersham and Ham House cast their dense shadows on the water. Don Gomez
+and his companion wandered by the river side to a spot where a group of
+magnolias sheltered them from the open lawn, and where there were some
+rustic chairs close to the balustrade which protected the parapet. In
+this spot, which was a kind of island, divided from the rest of the
+grounds by the intervening road, they found themselves quite alone, and
+in the midst of a summer stillness which was broken only by the low,
+lazy ripple of the tide running seawards. The lights of Richmond looked
+far away, and the little town with its variety of levels had an Italian
+air in the distance.
+
+From the ballroom, faint and fitful, came the music of a waltz.
+
+'I'm afraid I've brought you too far,' said Don Gomez.
+
+'On the contrary, it is a relief to get away from the lights and the
+people. How delicious this river is! I was brought up on the shores of a
+lake; but after all a lake is horribly tame. Its limits are always
+staring one in the face. There is no room for one's imagination to
+wander. Now a river like this suggests an infinity of possibilities,
+drifting on and on and on into undiscovered regions, by ever-varying
+shores. I feel to-night as if I should like to step into that little
+boat yonder,' pointing to a light skiff bobbing gently up and down with
+the tide, at the bottom of a flight of steps, 'and let the stream take
+me wherever it chose.'
+
+'If I could but go with you,' said Gomez, in that deep and musical tone
+which made the commonest words seem melody, 'I would ask for neither
+compass nor rudder. What could it matter whither the boat took me? There
+is no place under the stars which would not be a paradise--with you.'
+
+'Please don't make a dreamy aspiration the occasion for a compliment,'
+exclaimed Lesbia, lightly. 'What I said was so silly that I don't wonder
+you thought it right to say something just a little sillier. But
+moonlight and running water have a curious effect upon me; and I, who am
+the most prosaic among women, become ridiculously sentimental.'
+
+'I cannot believe that you are prosaic.'
+
+'I assure you it is perfectly true. I am of the earth, earthy; a woman
+of the world, in my first season, ambitious, fond of pleasure, vain,
+proud, exacting, all those things which I am told a woman ought not to
+be.'
+
+'You pain me when you so slander yourself; and I shall make it the
+business of my life to find out how much truth there is in that
+self-slander. For my own part I do not believe a word of it; but as it
+is rude to contradict a lady I will only say that I reserve my opinion.'
+
+'Are you to stay long in England?' asked Lesbia.
+
+She was leaning against the stone balustrade in a careless attitude, as
+of one who was weary, her elbow on the stone slab, and her head thrown
+back against her arm. The white satin gown, moulded to her figure, had a
+statuesque air, and she looked like a marble statue in the dim light,
+every line of the graceful form expressive of repose.
+
+'That will depend. I am not particularly fond of London. A very little
+of your English Babylon satisfies me, in a general way; but there are
+conditions which might make England enchanting. Where do you go at the
+end of the season?'
+
+'First to Goodwood, and then to Cowes. Mr. Smithson is so kind as to
+place his yacht at Lady Kirkbank's disposal, and I am to be her guest on
+board the Cayman, just as I am in Arlington Street.'
+
+'The Cayman! That name is a reminiscence of Mr. Smithson's South
+American travels.'
+
+'No doubt! Was he long in South America?'
+
+'Three or four years.'
+
+'But not in Cuba all that time, I suppose?'
+
+'He had business relations with Cuba all that time, and oscillated
+between our island and the main. He was rather fortunate in his little
+adventures with us--made almost as much money as General Tacon, of
+blessed memory. But I dare say Smithson has told you all his adventures
+in that part of the world.'
+
+'No, he very rarely talks about his travels: and I am not particularly
+interested in commercial speculations. There is always so much to think
+of and talk about in the business of the moment. Are you fond of Cuba?'
+
+'Not passionately. I always feel as if I were an exile there, and yet
+one of my ancestors was with Columbus when he discovered the island, and
+my race were among the earliest settlers. My family has given three
+Captain-generals to Cuba: but I cannot forget that I belong to an older
+world, and have forfeited that which ought to have been a brilliant
+place in Europe for the luxurious obscurity of a colony.'
+
+'But you must be attached to a place in which your family have lived for
+so many generations?'
+
+'I like the stars and the sea, the mountains and savannas, the tropical
+vegetation, and the dreamy, half-oriental life; but at best it is a kind
+of stagnation, and after a residence of a few months in the island of my
+birth I generally spread my wings for the wider world of the old
+continent or the new.'
+
+'You must have travelled so much,' said Lesbia, with a sigh. 'I have
+been nowhere and seen nothing. I feel like a child who has been shut up
+in a nursery all its life, and knows of no world beyond four walls.'
+
+'Not to travel is not to live,' said Don Gomez.
+
+'I am to be in Italy next November, I believe,' said Lesbia, not caring
+to own that this Italian trip was to be her honeymoon.
+
+'Italy!' exclaimed the Spaniard, contemptuously. 'Once the finishing
+school of the English nobility; now the happy hunting-ground of the
+Cockney tourist and the prosperous Yankee. All the poetry of Italy has
+been dried up, and the whole country vulgarised. If you want romance in
+the old world go to Spain; in the new, try Peru or Brazil, Mexico or
+California.'
+
+'I am afraid I am not adventurous enough to go so far.'
+
+'No: women cling to beaten tracks.'
+
+'We obey our masters,' answered Lesbia, meekly.
+
+'Ah, I forgot. You are to have a master--and soon. I heard as much
+before I saw you to-night.'
+
+Lesbia half rose, as if to leave this cool retreat above the rippling
+tide.
+
+'Yes, it is all settled,' she said; 'and now I think I must go back.
+Lady Kirkbank will be wondering what has become of me.'
+
+'Let her wonder a little longer,' said Don Gomez. 'Why should we hurry
+away from this delightful spot? Why break the spell of--the river? Life
+has so few moments of perfect contentment. If this is one with you--as
+it is with me--let us make the most of it. Lady Lesbia, do you see those
+weeds yonder, drifting with the tide, drifting side by side, touching as
+they drift? They have met heaven knows how, and will part heaven knows
+where, on their way to the sea; but they let themselves go with the
+tide. We have met like those poor weeds. Don't let us part till the tide
+parts us.'
+
+Lesbia gave a little sigh, and submitted. She had talked of women
+obeying their masters; and the implication was that she meant to obey
+Mr. Smithson. But there is a fate in these things; and the man who was
+to be her master, whose lightest breath was to sway her, whose lightest
+look was to rule her, was here at her side in the silence of the summer
+night.
+
+They talked long, but of indifferent subjects; and their talk might have
+been heard by every member of the Orleans Club, and no harm done. Yet
+words and phrases count for very little in such a case. It is the tone,
+it is the melody of a voice, it is the magic of the hour that tells.
+
+The tide came, in the person of Mr. Smithson, and parted these two weeds
+that were drifting towards the great mysterious ocean of fate.
+
+'I have been hunting for you everywhere,' he said, cheerfully. 'If you
+want another waltz, Lady Lesbia, you had better take the next. I believe
+it is to be the last. At any rate our party are clamouring to be driven
+home. I found poor Lady Kirkbank fast asleep in a corner of the
+drawing-room.'
+
+'Will you give me that last waltz?' asked Don Gomez.
+
+Lady Lesbia felt that the long-suffering Smithson had endured enough.
+Womanly instinct constrained her to refuse that final waltz: but it
+seemed to her as if she were making a tremendous sacrifice in so doing.
+And yet she had waltzed to her heart's content during the season that
+was waning, and knew all the waltzes played by all the fashionable
+bands. She gave a little sigh, as she said--
+
+'No, I must not indulge myself. I must go and take care of Lady
+Kirkbank.'
+
+Mr. Smithson offered his arm, and she took it and went away with him,
+leaving Don Gomez to follow at his leisure. There would be some delay no
+doubt before the drag started. The lamps had gone out among the foliage,
+and the stars were waning a little, and there was a faint cold light
+creeping over the garden which meant the advent of morning. Don Gomez
+strolled towards the lighted house, smoking a cigarette.
+
+'She is very lovely, and she is--well--not quite spoiled by her
+_entourage_, and they tell me she is an heiress--sure to inherit a
+fine fortune from some ancient grandmother, buried alive in
+Westmoreland,' he mused. 'What a splendid opportunity it would be if--if
+the business could be arranged on the square. But as it is--well--as it
+is there is the chance of an adventure; and when did a Montesma ever
+avoid an adventure, although there were dagger or poison lurking in the
+background? And here there is neither poison nor steel, only a lovely
+woman, and an infatuated stockbroker, about whom I know enough to
+disgrace and ruin an archbishop. Poor Smithson! How very unlucky that I
+should happen to come across your pathway in the heyday of your latest
+love affair. We have had our little adventures in that line already, and
+we have measured swords together, metaphorically, before to-night. When
+it comes to a question of actual swords my Smithson declines. _Pas si
+bête._'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII.
+
+LORD HARTFIELD REFUSES A FORTUNE.
+
+
+A honeymoon among lakes and mountains, amidst the gorgeous confusion of
+Borrowdale, in a little world of wild, strange loveliness, shut in and
+isolated from the prosaic outer world by the vast and towering masses of
+Skiddaw and Blencathara--a world of one's own, as it were, a world
+steeped in romance and poetry, dear to the souls of poets. There are
+many such honeymoons every summer; indeed, the mountain paths, the
+waterfalls and lakes swarm with happy lovers; and this land of hills and
+waters seems to have been made expressly for honeymoon travellers; yet
+never went truer lovers wandering by lake and torrent, by hill and
+valley, than those two whose brief honeymoon was now drawing to a close.
+
+It was altogether a magical time for Mary, this dawn of a new life. The
+immensity of her happiness almost frightened her. She could hardly
+believe in it, or trust in its continuance.
+
+'Am I really, really, really your wife?' she asked on their last day,
+bending down to speak to her husband, as he led her pony up the rough
+ways of Skiddaw. 'It is all so dreadfully like a dream.'
+
+'Thank God, it is the very truth,' answered Lord Hartfield, looking
+fondly at the fresh young face, brightened by the summer wind, which
+faintly stirred the auburn hair under the neat little hat.
+
+'And am I actually a Countess? I don't care about it one little bit, you
+know, except as a stupendous joke. If you were to tell me that you had
+been only making fun of poor grandmother and me, and that those diamonds
+are glass, and you only plain John Hammond, it wouldn't make the
+faintest difference. Indeed, it would be a weight off my mind. It is an
+awfully oppressive thing to be a Countess.'
+
+'I'm sorry I cannot relieve you of the burden. The law of the land has
+made you Lady Hartfield; and I hope you are preparing your mind for the
+duties of your position.'
+
+'It is very dreadful,' sighed Mary. 'If her ladyship were as well and as
+active as she was when first you came to Fellside, she could have helped
+me; but now there will be no one, except you. And you will help me,
+won't you Jack?'
+
+'With all my heart.'
+
+'My own true Jack,' with a little fervent squeeze of his sunburnt hand.
+'In society I suppose I shall have to call you Hartfield. "Hartfield,
+please ring the bell." "Give me a footstool, Hartfield." How odd it
+sounds. I shall be blurting out the old dear name.'
+
+'I don't think it will much matter. It will pass for one of Lady
+Hartfield's little ways. Every woman is supposed to have little ways,
+don't you know. One has a little way of dropping her friends; another
+has a little way of not paying her dressmaker; another's little way is
+to take too much champagne. I hope Lady Hartfield's little way will be
+her devotion to her husband.'
+
+'I'm afraid I shall end by being a nuisance to you, for I shall love you
+ridiculously,' answered Mary, gaily; 'and from what you have told me
+about society, it seems to me that there can be nothing so unfashionable
+as an affectionate wife. Will you mind my being quite out of fashion,
+Jack?'
+
+'I should very much object to your being in the fashion.'
+
+'Then I am happy. I don't think it is in my nature to become a woman of
+fashion; although I have cured myself, for your sake, of being a hoyden.
+I had so schooled myself for what I thought our new life was to be; so
+trained myself to be a managing economical wife, that I feel quite at
+sea now that I am to be mistress of a house in Grosvenor Square and a
+place in Kent. Still, I will bear with it all; yes, even endure the
+weight of those diamonds for your sake.'
+
+She laughed, and he laughed. They were quite alone among the
+hills--hardy mountaineers both--and they could be as foolish as they
+liked. She rested her head upon his shoulder, and he and she and the
+pony made one as they climbed the hill, close together.
+
+'Our last day,' sighed Mary, as they went down again, after a couple of
+blissful hours in that wild world between earth and sky. 'I shall be
+glad to go back to poor grandmother, who must be sadly lonely; but it is
+so sweet to be quite alone with you.'
+
+They left the Lodore Hotel in an open carriage, after luncheon next day,
+and posted to Fellside, where they arrived just in time to assist at
+Lady Maulevrier's afternoon tea. She received them both with warm
+affection, and made Hartfield sit close beside her sofa; and every now
+and then, in the pauses of their talk, she laid her wasted and too
+delicate fingers upon the young man's strong brown hand, with a
+caressing gesture.
+
+'You can never know how sweet it is to me to be able to love you,' she
+said tenderly. 'You can never know how my heart yearned to you from the
+very first, and how hard it was to keep myself in check and not be too
+kind to you. Oh, Hartfield, you should have told me the truth. You
+should not have come here under false colours.'
+
+'Should I not, Lady Maulevrier? It was my only chance of being loved
+for my own sake; or, at least of knowing that I was so loved. If I had
+come with my rank and my fortune in my hand, as it were--one of the good
+matches of the year--what security could I ever have felt in the
+disinterested love of the girl who chose me? As plain John Hammond I
+wooed and was rejected; as plain John Hammond I wooed and won; and the
+prize which I so won is a pearl above price. Not for worlds, were the
+last year to be lived over again, would I have one day of my life
+altered.'
+
+'Well, I suppose I ought to be satisfied. I wanted you for Lesbia, and I
+have got you for Mary. Best of all, I have got you for myself. Ronald
+Hollister's son is mine; he is of my kin; he belongs to me; he will not
+forsake me in life; he will be near me, God grant, when I die.'
+
+'Dear Lady Maulevrier, as far as in me lies, I will be to you as a son,'
+said Lord Hartfield, very solemnly, stooping to kiss her hand.
+
+Mary came away from her tea-table to embrace her grandmother.
+
+'It makes me so happy to have won a little of your regard,' she
+murmured, 'and to know that I have married a man whom you can love.'
+
+'Of course you have heard of Lesbia's engagement?' Lady Maulevrier said
+presently, when they were taking their tea.
+
+'Maulevrier wrote to us about it.'
+
+'To us.' How nice it sounded, thought Mary, as if they were a firm, and
+a letter written to one was written to both.
+
+'And do you know this Mr. Smithson?'
+
+'Not intimately. I have met him at the Carlton.'
+
+'I am told that he is very much esteemed by your party, and that he is
+very likely to get a peerage when this Ministry goes out of office.'
+
+'That is not improbable. Peerages are to be had if a man is rich enough;
+and Smithson is supposed to be inordinately rich.'
+
+'I hope he has character as well as money,' said Lady Maulevrier,
+gravely. 'But do you think a man can become inordinately rich in a short
+time, with unblemished honour?'
+
+'We are told that nothing is impossible,' answered Hartfield. 'Faith can
+remove a mountain; only one does not often see it done. However, I
+believe Mr. Smithson's character is fairly good as millionaires go. We
+do not inquire too closely into these things nowadays.'
+
+Lady Maulevrier sighed and held her peace. She remembered the day when
+she had protested vehemently, passionately, against Lesbia's marriage
+with a poor man. And now she had an unhappy feeling about Mr. Smithson's
+wealth, a doubt, a dread that all might not be well with those millions,
+that some portion of that golden tide might flow from impure sources.
+She had lived remote from the world, but she had read the papers
+diligently, and she knew how often the splendour of commercial wealth
+has been suddenly obscured behind a black cloud of obloquy. She could
+not rejoice heartily at the idea of Lesbia's engagement.
+
+'I am to see the man early in August,' she said, as if she were talking
+of a butler. 'I hope I may like him. Lady Kirkbank tells me it is a
+brilliant marriage, and I must take her word. What can _I_ do for my
+granddaughter--a useless log--a prisoner in two rooms?'
+
+'It is very hard,' murmured Mary, tenderly, 'but I do not see any reason
+why Lesbia should not be happy. She likes a brilliant life; and Mr.
+Smithson can give her as much gaiety and variety as she can possibly
+desire. And, after all, yachts, and horses, and villas, and diamonds
+_are_ nice things.'
+
+'They are the things for which half the world is ready to cheat or
+murder the other half,' said Lady Maulevrier, bitterly. She had told
+herself long ago that wealth was power, and she had sacrificed many
+things, her own peace, her own conscience among them, in order that her
+children and grandchildren should be rich; and, knowing this, she felt
+it ill became her to be scrupulous, and to inquire too closely as to
+the sources of Mr. Smithson's wealth. He was rich, and the world had no
+fault to find with him. He had attended the last _levée_. He went into
+reputable society. And he could give Lesbia all those things which the
+world calls good.
+
+Fräulein Müller had packed her heavy old German trunks, and had gone
+back to the _Heimath_, laden with presents of all kinds from Lady
+Maulevrier; so Mary and her husband felt as if Fellside was really their
+own. They dined with her ladyship, and left her for the night an hour
+after dinner; and then they went down to the gardens, and roamed about
+in the twilight, and talked, and talked, and talked, as only true lovers
+can talk, be they Strephon and Daphne in life's glad morning, or
+grey-haired Darby and Joan; and lastly they went down to the lake, and
+rowed about in the moonlight, and talked of King Arthur's death, and of
+that mystic sword, Excalibur, 'wrought by the lonely maiden of the
+lake.'
+
+They spent three happy days in wandering about the neighbourhood,
+revisiting in the delicious freedom of their wedded life those spots
+which they had seen together, when Mary was still in bondage, and the
+eye of propriety, as represented by Miss Müller, was always upon her.
+Now they were free to go where they pleased--to linger where they
+liked--they belonged to each other, and were under no other dominion.
+
+The dogcart, James Steadman's dogcart, which he had rarely used during
+the last six months, was put in requisition and Lord Hartfield drove his
+wife about the country. They went to the Langdale Pikes, and to Dungeon
+Ghyll; and, standing beside the waterfall, Mary told her husband how
+miserable she had felt on that very spot a little less than a year ago,
+when she believed that he thought her plain and altogether horrid.
+Whereupon he had to console her with many kisses and sweet words, for
+the bygone pain on her part, the neglect on his.
+
+'I was a wretch,' he said, 'blind, besotted, imbecile.'
+
+'No, no, no. Lesbia is very lovely--and I could not expect you would
+care for me till she was gone away. How glad I am that she went,' added
+Mary, naïvely.
+
+The sky, which had been cloudless all day, began to darken as Lord
+Hartfield drove back to Fellside, and Mary drew a little closer to the
+driver's elbow, as if for shelter from an impending tempest.
+
+'You have your waterproof, of course,' he said, looking down at her, as
+the first big drops of a thunder shower dashed upon the splash-board.
+'No young woman in the Lake country would think of being without a
+waterproof.'
+
+Mary was duly provided, and with the help of the groom put herself into
+a snug little tartan Inverness, while Hartfield sent the cart spinning
+along twelve miles an hour.
+
+They were at Fellside before the storm developed its full power, but the
+sky was leaden, the landscape dull and blotted, the atmosphere heavy and
+stifling. The thunder grumbled hoarsely, far away yonder in the wild
+gorges of Borrowdale; and Mary and her husband made up their minds that
+the tempest would come before midnight.
+
+Lady Maulevrier was suffering from the condition of the atmosphere. She
+had gone to bed, prostrate with a neuralgic headache, and had given
+orders that no one but her maid should go near her. So Lord Hartfield
+and his wife dined by themselves, in the room where Mary had eaten so
+many uninteresting dinners _tête-à-tête_ with Fräulein; and in spite of
+the storm which howled, pelted, and lightened every now and then, Mary
+felt as if she were in Paradise.
+
+There was no chance of going out after dinner. The lake looked like a
+pool of ink, the mountains were monsters of dark and threatening aspect,
+the rain rattled against the windows, and ran from the verandah in
+miniature water-spouts. There was nothing to do but stay in doors, in
+the sultry, dusky house.
+
+'Let us go to my boudoir,' said Mary. 'Let me enjoy the full privilege
+of having a boudoir--my very own room. Wasn't it too good of grandmother
+to have it made so smart for me?'
+
+'Nothing can be too good for my Mary,' answered her husband, still in
+the doting stage, 'but it was very nice of her ladyship--and the room is
+charming.'
+
+Delightful as the new boudoir might be, they dawdled in the picture
+gallery, that long corridor on which all the upper rooms opened, and at
+one end of which was the door of Lady Maulevrier's bedroom, at right
+angles with that red-cloth door, which was never opened, except to give
+egress or ingress to James Steadman, who kept the key of it, as if the
+old part of Fellside House had been an enchanted castle. Lord Hartfield
+had not forgotten that summer midnight last year, when his meditations
+were disturbed by a woman's piercing cry. He thought of it this evening,
+as Mary and he lowered their voices on drawing near Lady Maulevrier's
+door. She was asleep within there now, perhaps, that strange old woman;
+and at any moment an awful shriek, as of a soul in mortal agony, might
+startle them in the midst of their bliss.
+
+The lamps were lighted below; but this upper part of the house was
+wrapped in the dull grey twilight of a stormy evening. A single lamp
+burned dimly at the further end of the corridor, and all the rest was
+shadow.
+
+Mary and her husband walked up and down, talking in subdued tones. He
+was explaining the necessity of his being in London next week, and
+promising to come back to Fellside directly his business at the House
+was over.
+
+'It will be delightful to read your speeches,' said Mary; 'but I am
+silly and selfish enough to wish you were a country squire, with no
+business in London. And yet I don't wish that either, for I am intensely
+proud of you.'
+
+'And some day, before we are much older, you will sit in your robes in
+the peeress's gallery.'
+
+'Oh, I couldn't,' cried Mary. 'I should make a fool of myself, somehow.
+I should look like a housemaid in borrowed plumes. Remember, I have no
+_Anstand_--I have been told so all my life.'
+
+'You will be one of the prettiest peeresses who ever sat in that
+gallery, and the purest, and truest, and dearest,' protested her
+lover-husband.
+
+'Oh, if I am good enough for you, I am satisfied. I married _you_, and
+not the House of Lords. But I am afraid your friends will all say,
+"Hartfield, why in heaven's name did you marry that uncultivated
+person?" Look!'
+
+She stopped suddenly, with her hand on her husband's arm. It was growing
+momentarily darker in the corridor. They were at the end near the lamp,
+and that other end by Lady Maulevrier's door was in deeper darkness, yet
+not too dark for Lord Hartfield to see what it was to which Mary
+pointed.
+
+The red-cloth door was open, and a faint glimmer of light showed within.
+A man was standing in the corridor, a small, shrunken figure, bent and
+old.
+
+'It is Steadman's uncle,' said Mary. 'Do let me go and speak to him,
+poor, poor old man.'
+
+'The madman!' exclaimed Hartfield. 'No, Mary; go to your room at once.
+I'll get him back to his own den.'
+
+'But he is not mad--at any rate, he is quite harmless. Let me just say a
+few words to him. Surely I am safe with you.'
+
+Lord Hartfield was not inclined to dispute that argument; indeed, he
+felt himself strong enough to protect his wife from all the lunatics in
+Bedlam. He went towards the end of the corridor, keeping Mary well
+behind him; but Mary did not mean to lose the opportunity of renewing
+her acquaintance with Steadman's uncle.
+
+'I hope you are better, poor old soul,' she murmured, gently, lovingly
+almost, nestling at her husband's side.
+
+'What, is it you?' cried the old man, tremulous with joy. 'Oh,
+I have been looking for you--looking--looking--waiting, waiting for
+you. I have been hoping for you every hour and every minute. Why didn't
+you come to me, cruel girl?'
+
+'I tried with all my might,' said Mary, 'but people blocked up the door
+in the stables, and they wouldn't let me go to you; and I have been
+rather busy for the last fortnight,' added Mary, blushing in the
+darkness, 'I--I--am married to this gentleman.'
+
+'Married! Ah, that is a good thing. He will take care of you, if he is
+an honest man.'
+
+'I thought he was an honest man, but he has turned out to be an earl,'
+answered Mary, proudly. 'My husband is Lord Hartfield.'
+'Hartfield--Hartfield,' the old man repeated, feebly. 'Surely I have
+heard that name before.'
+
+There was no violence in his manner, nothing but imbecility; so Lord
+Hartfield made up his mind that Mary was right, and that the old man was
+quite harmless, worthy of all compassion and kindly treatment.
+
+This was the same old man whom he had met on the Fell in the bleak March
+morning. There was no doubt in his mind about that, although he could
+hardly see the man's face in the shadowy corridor.
+
+'Come,' said the man, 'come with me, my dear. You forgot me, but I have
+not forgotten you. I mean to leave you my fortune. Come with me, and
+I'll show you your legacy. It is all for you--every rupee--every jewel.'
+
+This word rupee startled Lord Hartfield. It had a strange sound from the
+lips of a Westmoreland peasant.
+
+'Come, child, come!' said the man impatiently. 'Come and see what I have
+left you in my will. I make a new will every day, but I leave everything
+to you--every will is in your favour. But if you are married you had
+better have your legacy at once. Your husband is strong enough to take
+care of you and your fortune.'
+
+'Poor old man,' whispered Mary; 'pray let us humour him.'
+
+It was the usual madman's fancy, no doubt. Boundless wealth, exalted
+rank, sanctity, power--these things all belong to the lunatic. He is the
+lord of creation, and, fed by such fancies, he enjoys flashes of wild
+happiness in the midst of his woe.
+
+'Come, come, both of you,' said the old man, eagerly, breathless with
+impatience.
+
+He led the way across the sacred threshold, looking back, beckoning to
+them with his wasted old hand, and Mary for the first time in her life
+entered that house which had seemed to her from her very childhood as a
+temple of silence and mystery. The passage was dimly lighted by a little
+lamp on a bracket. The old man crept along stealthily, looking back,
+with a face full of cunning, till he came to a broad landing, from which
+an old staircase, with massive oak banisters, led down to the square
+hall below. The ceilings were low, the passages were narrow. All things
+in the house were curiously different from that spacious mansion which
+Lady Maulevrier had built for herself.
+
+A door on the landing stood ajar. The old man pushed it open and went
+in, followed by Mary and her husband.
+
+They both expected to see a room humble almost to poverty--an iron
+bedstead, perhaps, and such furniture as the under servants in a
+nobleman's household are privileged to enjoy. Both were alike surprised
+at the luxury of the apartment they entered, and which was evidently
+reserved exclusively for Steadman's uncle.
+
+It was a sitting-room. The furniture was old-fashioned, but almost as
+handsome as any in Lady Maulevrier's apartments. There was a large sofa
+of most comfortable shape, covered with dark red velvet, and furnished
+with pillows and foot rugs, which would have satisfied a Sybarite of the
+first water. Beside the sofa stood a hookah, with all appliances in the
+Oriental fashion; and half a dozen long cherry-wood pipes neatly
+arranged above the mantelpiece showed that Mr. Steadman's uncle was a
+smoker of a luxurious type.
+
+In the centre of the room stood a large writing table, with a case of
+pigeon-holes at the back, a table which would not have disgraced a Prime
+Minister's study. A pair of wax candles, in tall silver candlesticks,
+lighted this table, which was littered with papers, in a wild confusion
+that too plainly indicated the condition of the owner's mind. The oak
+floor was covered with Persian prayer rugs, old and faded, but of the
+richest quality. The window curtains were dark red velvet; and through
+an open doorway Mary and her husband saw a corresponding luxury in the
+arrangements of the adjoining bedroom.
+
+The whole thing seemed wild and strange as a fairy tale. The weird and
+wizened old man, grinning and nodding his head at them. The handsome
+room, rich with dark, subdued colour, in the dim light of four wax
+candles, two on the table, two on the mantelpiece. The perfume of
+stephanotis and tea-roses, blended faintly with the all-pervading odour
+of latakia and Turkish attar. All was alike strange, bearing in mind
+that this old man was a recipient of Lady Maulevrier's charity, a
+hanger-on upon a confidential servant, who might be supposed to be
+generously treated if he had the run of his teeth and the shelter of a
+decent garret. Verily, there was something regal in such hospitality as
+this, accorded to a pauper lunatic.
+
+Where was Steadman, the alert, the watchful, all this time? Mary
+wondered. They had met no one. The house was as mute as if it were under
+the spell of a magician. It was like that awful chamber in the Arabian
+story, where the young man found the magic horse, and started on his
+fatal journey. Mary felt as if here, too, there must be peril; here,
+too, fate was working.
+
+The old man went to the writing table, pushed aside the papers, and then
+stooped down and turned a mysterious handle or winch under the
+knee-hole, and the writing-desk moved slowly on one side, while the
+pigeon-holes sank, and a deep well full of secret drawers was laid open.
+
+From one of these secret drawers the old man took a bunch of keys,
+nodding, chuckling, muttering to himself as he groped for them with
+tremulous hand.
+
+'Steadman is uncommonly clever--thinks he knows everything--but he
+doesn't know the trick of this table. I could hide a regiment of Sepoys
+in this table, my dear. Well, well, perhaps not Sepoys--too big, too
+big--but I could hide all the State papers of the Presidency. There are
+drawers enough for that.'
+
+Hartfield watched him intently, with thoughtful brow. There was a
+mystery here, a mystery of the deepest dye; and it was for him--it must
+needs be his task, welcome or unwelcome, to unravel it.
+
+This was the Maulevrier skeleton.
+
+'Now, come with me,' said the old man, clutching Mary's wrist, and
+drawing her towards the half-open door leading into the bedroom.
+
+She had a feeling of shrinking, for there was something uncanny about
+the old man, something that might be life or death, might belong to this
+world or the next; but she had no fear. In the first place, she was
+courageous by nature, and in the second her husband was with her, a
+tower of strength, and she could know no fear while he was at her side.
+
+The strange old man led the way across his bedroom to an inner chamber,
+oak pannelled, with very little furniture, but holding much treasure in
+the shape of trunks, portmanteaux--all very old and dusty--and two large
+wooden cases, banded with iron.
+
+Before one of these cases the man knelt down, and applied a key to the
+padlock which fastened it. He gave the candle to Lord Hartfield to hold,
+and then opened the box. It seemed to be full of books, which he began
+to remove, heaping them on the floor beside him; and it was not till he
+had cleared away a layer of dingy volumes that he came to a large metal
+strong box, so heavy that he could not lift it out of the chest.
+
+Slowly, tremulously, and with quickened breathing, he unlocked the box
+where it was, and raised the lid.
+
+'Look,' he said eagerly, 'this is her legacy--this is my little girl's
+legacy.'
+
+Lord Hartfield bent down and looked at the old man's treasure, by the
+wavering light of the candle; Mary looking over his shoulder, breathless
+with wonder.
+
+The strong box was divided into compartments. One, and the largest, was
+filled with rouleaux of coin, packed as closely as possible. The others
+contained jewels, set and unset--diamonds, emeralds, rubies,
+sapphires--which flashed back the flickering flame of the candle with
+glintings of rainbow light.
+
+'These are all for her--all--all,' exclaimed the old man. 'They are
+worth a prince's ransom. Those rouleaux are all gold; those gems are
+priceless. They were the dowry of a princess. But they are hers
+now--yes, my dear, they are yours--because you spoke sweetly, and smiled
+prettily, and were very good to a lonely old man--and because you have
+my mother's face, dear, a smile that recalls the days of my youth. Lift
+out the box and take it away with you, if you are strong enough,--you,
+you,' he said, touching Lord Hartfield. 'Hide it somewhere--keep it from
+_her_. Let no one know--no one except your wife and you must be in the
+secret.'
+
+'My dear sir, it is out of the question--impossible that my wife or I
+should accept one of those coins--or the smallest of those jewels.'
+
+'Why not, in the devil's name?'
+
+'First and foremost, we do not know how you came in possession of them;
+secondly, we do not know who you are.'
+
+'They came to me fairly enough--bequeathed to me by one who had the
+right to leave them. Would you have had all that gold left for an
+adventurer to wallow in?'
+
+'You must keep your treasure, sir, however it may have come to you,'
+answered Lord Hartfield firmly. 'My wife cannot take upon herself the
+burden of a single gold coin--least of all from a stranger. Remember,
+sir, to us your possession of this wealth--nay, your whole existence--is
+a mystery.'
+
+'You want to know who I am?' said the old man drawing himself up, with a
+sudden _hauteur_ which was not without dignity, despite his shrunken
+form and grotesque appearence. 'Well, sir. I am----'
+
+He checked himself abruptly, and looked round the room with a scared
+expression.
+
+'No, no, no,' he muttered; 'caution, caution! They have not done with me
+yet; she warned me--they are lying in wait; I mustn't walk into their
+trap.' And then turning to Lord Hartfield, he said, haughtily, 'I shall
+not condescend to tell you who I am, sir. You must know that I am a
+gentleman, and that is enough for you. There is my gift to your
+wife'--pointing to the chest--'take it or leave it.'
+
+'I shall leave it, sir, with all due respect.'
+
+A frightful change came over the old man's face at this determined
+refusal. His eyes glowered at Lord Hartfield under the heavy scowling
+brows; his bloodless lips worked convulsively.
+
+'Do you take me for a thief?' he exclaimed. 'Are you afraid to touch my
+gold--that gold for which men and women sell their souls, blast their
+lives with shame, and pain, and dishonour, all the world over? Do you
+stand aloof from it--refuse to touch it, as if it were infected? And
+you, too, girl! Have you no sense? Are you an idiot?'
+
+'I can do nothing against my husband's wish,' Mary answered, quietly;
+'and, indeed, there is no need for us to take your money. We are rich
+without it. Please leave that chest to a hospital. It will be ever so
+much better than giving it to us.'
+
+'You told me you were going to marry a poor man?'
+
+'I know. But he cheated me, and turned out to be a rich man. He was a
+horrid impostor,' said Mary, drawing closer to her husband, and smiling
+up at him.
+
+The old man flung down the lid of his strong box, which shut with a
+sonorous clang. He locked it, and put the key in his pocket.
+
+'I have done with you.' he said. 'You can go your ways, both of you.
+Fools, fools, fools! The world is peopled with rogues and fools; and, by
+heaven, I would rather have to do with the rogues!'
+
+He flung himself into an arm-chair, one of the few objects of furniture
+in the room, and left them to find their way back alone.
+
+'Good-night, sir,' said Lord Hartfield; but the old man made no reply.
+He sat frowning sullenly.
+
+'Good-night, sir,' said Mary, in her gentle voice, breathing infinite
+pity.
+
+'Good-night, child,' he growled. 'I am sorry you have married an ass.'
+
+This was more than Mary could stand, and she was about to reply with
+some acrimony, when her husband put his hand upon her lips and hurried
+her away.
+
+On the landing they met Mrs. Steadman, a stout, commonplace person, who
+always had the same half-frightened look, as of one who lived in the
+shadow of an abiding terror, obviously cowed and brow-beaten by her
+husband, according to the Fellside household.
+
+At sight of Lord Hartfield and his wife she looked a little more
+frightened than usual.
+
+'Goodness gracious, Lady Mary! how ever did you come here?' she gasped,
+not yet having quite realised the fact that Mary had been promoted.
+
+'We came to please Steadman's uncle--he brought us in here,' Mary
+answered, quietly.
+
+'But where did you find him?'
+
+'In the corridor--just by her ladyship's room.'
+
+'Then he must have taken the key out of Steadman's pocket, or Steadman
+must have left it about somewhere,' muttered Mrs. Steadman, as if
+explaining the matter to herself, rather than to Mary. 'My poor husband
+is not the man he was. And so you met him in the corridor, and he
+brought you in here. Poor old gentleman! He gets madder and madder every
+day.'
+
+'There is method in his madness,' said Lord Hartfield. 'He talked very
+much like sanity just now. Has your husband had the charge of him long?'
+
+Mrs. Steadman answered somewhat confusedly.
+
+'A goodish time, sir. I can't quite exactly say--time passes so quiet in
+a place like this. One hardly keeps count of the years.'
+
+'Forty years, perhaps?'
+
+Mrs. Steadman blenched under Lord Hartfield's steadfast look--a look
+which questioned more searchingly than his words.
+
+'Forty years,' she repeated, with a faint laugh. 'Oh, dear no, sir, not
+a quarter as long. It isn't so many years, after all, since Steadman's
+poor old uncle went a little queer in his head; and Steadman, having
+such a quiet home here, and plenty of spare room, made bold to ask her
+ladyship if he might give the poor old man a home, where he would be in
+nobody's way.'
+
+'And the poor old man seems to have a very luxurious home,' answered
+Lord Hartfield. 'Pray when and where did Mr. Steadman's uncle learn to
+smoke a hookah?'
+
+Simple as the question was, it proved too much for Mrs. Steadman. She
+only shook her head, and faltered some unintelligible reply.
+
+'Where is your husband?' asked Lord Hartfield; 'I should like to have a
+little talk with him, if he is disengaged.'
+
+'He is not very well, my lord,' answered Mrs. Steadman. 'He has been
+ailing off and on for the last six months, but I couldn't get him to see
+the doctor, or to tell her ladyship that he was in bad health. And about
+a week ago he broke down altogether, and fell into a kind of drowsy
+state. He keeps about, and he does his work pretty much the same as
+usual, but I can see that it's too much for him. If you like to come
+downstairs I can let you through the lower door into the hall; and if he
+should have woke up since I have left him he'll be at your lordship's
+service. But I'd rather not wake him out of his sleep.'
+
+'There is no occasion. What I have to say will keep till to-morrow.'
+
+Lord Hartfield and his wife followed Mrs. Steadman downstairs to the low
+dark hall, where an old eight-day clock ticked with hoarse and solemn
+beat, and a fine stag's head over each doorway gave evidence of some
+former Haselden's sporting tastes. The door of a small panelled parlour
+stood half-way open; and within the room Lord Hartfield saw James
+Steadman asleep in an arm-chair by the fire, which burned as brightly as
+if it had been Christmas time.
+
+'He was so chilly and shivery this afternoon that I was obliged to light
+a fire,' said Mrs. Steadman.
+
+'He seems to be sleeping heavily,' said Hartfield. 'Don't awaken him.
+I'll see him to-morrow morning before I go to London.'
+
+'He sleeps half the day just as heavy as that, my lord,' said the wife,
+with a troubled air. 'I don't think it can be right.'
+
+'I don't think so either,' answered Lord Hartfield. 'You had better call
+in the doctor.'
+
+'I will, my lord, to-morrow morning. James will be angry with me, I
+daresay; but I must take upon myself to do it without his leave.'
+
+She led the way along a passage corresponding with the one above, and
+unlocked a door opening into a lobby near the billiard-room.
+
+'Come, Molly, see if you can beat me at a fifty game,' said Lord
+Hartfield, with the air of a man who wants to shake off the impression
+of some dominant idea.
+
+'Of course you will annihilate me, but it will be a relief to play,'
+answered Mary. 'That strange old man has given me a shock. Everything
+about his surroundings is so different from what I expected. And how
+could an uncle of Steadman's come by all that money--and those
+jewels--if they were jewels, and not bits of glass which the poor old
+thing has chopped up, in order to delude himself with an imaginary
+treasure?'
+
+'I do not think they are bits of glass, Molly.'
+
+'They sparkled tremendously--almost as much as my--our--the family
+diamonds,' said Mary, puzzled how to describe that property which she
+held in right of her position as countess regnant; 'but if they are real
+jewels, and all those rouleaux real money, how could Steadman's uncle
+become possessed of such wealth?'
+
+'How, indeed?' said Lord Hartfield, choosing his cue
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII.
+
+ON BOARD THE 'CAYMAN.'
+
+
+Goodwood had come and gone, a brief bright season of loss and gain, fine
+gowns, flirtation, lobster en mayonaise, champagne, sunshine, dust,
+glare, babble of many voices, successes, failures, triumphs,
+humiliations. A very pretty picture to contemplate from the outside,
+this little world in holiday clothes, framed in greenery! but just on
+the Brocken, where the nicest girl among the dancers had the unpleasant
+peculiarity of dropping a little red mouse out of her mouth--so too here
+under different forms there were red mice dropping about among the
+company. Here a hint of coming insolvency; there a whisper of a
+threatened divorce suit, staved off for a while, compromises, family
+secrets, little difficulties everywhere; betrothed couples smilingly
+accepting congratulations, who should never have been affianced were
+truth and honour the rule of life; forsaken wives pretending to think
+their husbands models of fidelity; jovial creatures with ruin staring in
+their faces; households divided and shamming union; almost everybody
+living above his or her means; and the knowledge that nobody is any
+better or any happier than his neighbour society's only fountain of
+consolation.
+
+Lady Lesbia's gowns and parasols had been admired, her engagement had
+furnished an infinity of gossip, and the fact of Montesma's constant
+attendance upon her had given zest to the situation, just that flavour
+of peril and fatality which the soul of society loveth.
+
+'Is she going to marry them both?' asked an ancient dowager of the
+ever-young type.
+
+'No, dear Lady Sevenoaks, she can only marry one, don't you know; but
+the other is nice to go about with; and I believe it is the other she
+really likes.'
+
+'It is always the other that a woman likes,' answered the dowager; 'I am
+madly in love with this Peruvian--no, I think you said Cuban--myself. I
+wish some good-natured creature would present him to me. If you know
+anybody who knows him, tell them to bring him to my next
+afternoon--Saturday. But why does--_chose_--_machin_--Smithson allow
+such a handsome hanger-on? After marriage I could understand that he
+might not be able to help himself; but before marriage a man generally
+has some kind of authority.'
+
+The world wondered a little, just as Lady Sevenoaks wondered, at
+Smithson's complacency in allowing a man so attractive as Montesma to be
+so much in the society of his future wife, yet even the censorious could
+but admit that the Cuban's manner offered no ground for offence. He
+came to Goodwood 'on his own hook,' as society put it: and every man who
+wears a decent coat and is not a welsher has a right to enjoy the
+prettiest race-course in England. He spent a considerable part of the
+day in Lesbia's company; but since she was the centre of a little crowd
+all the time, there could be no offence in this. He was a stranger,
+knowing very few people, and having nothing to do but to amuse himself.
+Smithson was an old and familiar friend, and was in a measure bound to
+give him hospitality.
+
+Mr. Smithson had recognised that obligation, but in a somewhat sparing
+manner. There were a dozen unoccupied bedchambers in the Park Lane
+Renaissance villa; but Smithson did not invite his Cuban acquaintance to
+shift his quarters from the Bristol to Park Lane. He was civil to Don
+Gomez: but anyone who had taken the trouble to watch and study the
+conduct and social relations of these two men would have seen that his
+civility was a forced civility, and that he endured the Spaniard's
+society under constraint of some kind.
+
+And now all the world was flocking to Cowes for the regatta, and Lesbia
+and her chaperon were established on board Mr. Smithson's yacht, the
+_Cayman_; and the captain of the _Cayman_ and all her crew were
+delivered over to Lesbia to be her slaves and to obey her lightest
+breath. The _Cayman_ was to lie at anchor off Cowes for the regatta
+week; and then she was to sail for Hyde, and lie at anchor there for
+another regatta week; and she was to be a floating hotel for Lady Lesbia
+so long as the young lady would condescend to occupy her.
+
+The captain was an altogether exceptional captain, and the crew were a
+picked crew, ruddy faced, sandy whiskered for the most part, Englishmen
+all, honest, hardy fellows from between the Nore and the Wash, talking
+in an honest provincial patois, dashed with sea slang. They were the
+very pink and pattern of cleanliness, and the _Cayman_ herself from stem
+to stern was dazzling and spotless to an almost painful degree.
+
+Not content with the existing arrangements of the yacht, which were at
+once elegant and luxurious, Mr. Smithson had sent down a Bond Street
+upholsterer to refit the saloon and Lady Lesbia's cabin. The dark velvet
+and morocco which suited a masculine occupant would not have harmonised
+with girlhood and beauty; and Mr. Smithson's saloon, as originally
+designed, had something of the air of a _tabagie_. The Bond Street man
+stripped away all the velvet and morocco, plucked up the Turkey carpet,
+draped the scuttle-ports with pale yellow cretonne garnished with orange
+pompons, subdued the glare of the skylight by a blind of oriental silk,
+covered the divans with Persian saddlebags, the floor with a delicate
+Indian matting, and furnished the saloon with all that was most feminine
+in the way of bamboo chairs and tea-tables, Japanese screens and fans
+of gorgeous colouring. Here and there against the fluted yellow drapery
+he fastened a large Rhodes plate; and the thing was done. Lady Lesbia's
+cabin was all bamboo and embroidered India muslin. An oval glass, framed
+in Dresden biscuit, adorned the side, a large white bearskin covered the
+floor. The berth was pretty enough for the cradle of a duchess's first
+baby. Even Lesbia, spoiled by much indulgence and unlimited credit, gave
+a little cry of pleasure at sight of the nest that had been made ready
+for her.
+
+'Really, Mr. Smithson is immensely kind!' she exclaimed.
+
+'Smithson is always kind,' answered Lady Kirkbank, 'and you don't half
+enough appreciate him. He has given me his very own cabin--such a dear
+little den! There are his cigar boxes and everything lovely on the
+shelves, and his own particular dressing-case put open for me to
+use--all the backs of all the brushes _repoussé_ silver, and all the
+scent-bottles filled expressly for me. If the yacht would only stand
+quite still, I should think it more delicious than the best house I ever
+stayed in: only I don't altogether enjoy that little way it has of
+gurgling up and down perpetually.'
+
+Mr. Smithson's chief butler, a German Swiss, and a treasure of
+intelligence, had come down to take the domestic arrangements of the
+yacht into his control. The Park Lane _chef_ was also on board, Mr.
+Smithson's steward acting as his subordinate. This great man grumbled
+sorely at the smallness of his surroundings; for the most luxurious
+yacht was a poor substitute for the spacious kitchens and storerooms and
+stillrooms of the London mansion. There was a cabin for Lady Kirkbank's
+Rilboche and Lady Lesbia's Kibble, where the two might squabble at their
+leisure; in a word, everything had been done that forethought could do
+to make the yacht as perfect a place of sojourn as any floating
+habitation, from Noah's Ark to the Orient steamers, had ever been made.
+
+It was between four and five upon a delicious July afternoon that Lady
+Kirkbank and her charge came on board. The maids and the luggage had
+been sent a day in advance, so that everything might be in its place,
+and the empty boxes all stowed away, before the ladies arrived. They had
+nothing to do but walk on board and fling themselves into the low
+luxurious chairs ready for them on the deck, a little wearied by the
+heat and dust of a railway journey, and with that delicious sense of
+languid indifference to all the cares of life which seems to be in the
+very atmosphere of a perfect summer afternoon.
+
+A striped awning covered the deck, and great baskets of roses--pink, and
+red, and yellow--were placed about here and there. Tea was ready on a
+low table, a swinging brass kettle hissing merrily, with an air of
+supreme homeliness.
+
+Mr. Smithson had accompanied his _fiancée_ from town, and now sat
+reading the _Globe_, and meekly waiting for his tea, while Lesbia took a
+languid survey of the shore and the flotilla of boats, little and big,
+and while Lady Kirkbank rhapsodised about the yacht, praising
+everything, and calling everything by a wrong name. He was to be their
+guest all day, and every day. They were to have enough of him, as Lesbia
+had observed to her chaperon, with a spice of discontent, not quite so
+delighted with the arrangement as her faithful swain. To him the idea
+was rapture.
+
+'You have contrived somehow to keep me very much at a distance
+hitherto,' he told Lesbia, 'and I feel sometimes as if we were almost
+strangers; but a yacht is the best place in the world to bring two
+people together, and a week at Cowes will make us nearer to each other
+and more to each other than three months in London;' and Lesbia had said
+nothing, inwardly revolting at the idea of becoming any nearer and
+dearer to this man whom she had pledged herself to marry. She was to be
+his wife--yes, some day--and it was his desire the some day should be
+soon: but in the interval her dearest privilege was the power to keep
+him at a distance.
+
+And yet she could not make up her mind to break with him, to say
+honestly, 'I never liked you much, and now we are engaged I find myself
+liking you less and less every day. Save me from the irrevocable
+wickedness of a loveless marriage. Forgive me, and let me go.' No, this
+she could not bring herself to say. She did not like Mr. Smithson, but
+she valued the position he was able to give her. She wanted to be
+mistress of that infinite wealth--she could not renounce that right to
+which she fancied she had been born, her right to be one of the Queens
+of Society: and the only man who had offered to crown her as queen, to
+find her a palace and a court, was Horace Smithson. Without Mr. Smithson
+her first season would have resulted in dire failure. She might perhaps
+have endured that failure, and been content to abide the chances of a
+second season, had it not been for Mary's triumph. But for Mary to be a
+Countess, and for Lesbia to remain Lesbia Haselden, a nobody, dependent
+upon the caprices of a grandmother whose means might after all be but
+limited--no, such a concatenation as that was not to be endured. Lesbia
+told herself that she could not go back to Fellside to remain there
+indefinitely, a spinster and a dependent. She had learnt the true value
+of money; she had found out what the world was like; and it seemed to
+her that some such person as Mr. Smithson was essential to her
+existence, just as a butler is a necessity in a house. One may not like
+the man, but the post must be filled.
+
+Again, if she were to throw over Mr. Smithson, and speculate upon her
+chances of next year, what hope had she of doing better in her second
+season than in her first? The horizon was blank. There was no great
+_parti_ likely to offer himself for competition. She had seen all that
+the market could produce. Wealthy bachelors, high-born lovers, could not
+drop from the moon. Lesbia, schooled by Lady Kirkbank, knew her peerage
+by heart; and she knew that, having missed Lord Hartfield, there was
+really no one in the Blue Book worth waiting for. Thus, caring only for
+those things which wealth can buy, she had made up her mind that she
+could not do without Horace Smithson's money; and she must therefore
+needs resign herself to the disagreeable necessity of taking Smithson
+and his money together. The great auctioneer Fate would not divide the
+lot.
+
+She told herself that for her a loveless marriage was, after all, no
+prodigious sacrifice. She had found out that heart made but a small
+figure in the sum of her life. She could do without love. A year ago she
+had fancied herself in love with John Hammond. In her seclusion at St.
+Bees, in the long, dull August days, sauntering up and down by the edge
+of the sea, in the melancholy sunset hour, she thought that her heart
+was broken, that life was worthless without the man she loved. She had
+thought and felt all this, but not strongly enough to urge her to any
+great effort, not keenly enough to make her burst her chains. She had
+preferred to suffer this loss than to sacrifice her chances of future
+aggrandisement. And now she looked back and remembered those sunset
+walks by the sea, and all her thoughts and feelings in those silent
+summer hours; and she smiled at herself, half in scorn, half in pity,
+for her own weakness. How easily she had learned to do without him who
+at that hour seemed the better part of her existence. A good deal of
+gaiety and praise, a little mild flirtation at Kirkbank Castle, and lo!
+the image of her first lover began to grow dim and blurred, like a faded
+photograph. A season at Cannes, and she was cured. A week in London, and
+that first love was a thing of the past, a dream from which the dreamer
+awaketh, forgetting the things that he has dreamt.
+
+Remembering all this she told herself that she had no heart, that love
+or no love was a question of very little moment, and that the personal
+qualities of the man whom she chose for a husband mattered nothing to
+her, provided that his lands and houses and social status came up to her
+standard of merit. She had seen Mr. Smithson's houses and lands; and she
+was distinctly assured that he would in due course be raised to the
+peerage. She had, therefore, every reason to be satisfied.
+
+Having thus reasoned out the circumstances of her new life, she accepted
+her fate with a languid grace, which harmonised with her delicate and
+patrician beauty. Nobody could have for a moment supposed from her
+manner that she loved Horace Smithson; but nobody had the right to
+think that she detested him. She accepted all his attentions as a thing
+of course. The flowers which he strewed beneath her footsteps, the
+pearls which he melted in her wine--metaphorically speaking--were just
+'good enough' and no more. This afternoon, when Mr. Smithson asked her
+how she liked the arrangements of the saloon and cabin, she said she
+thought they would do very nicely. 'They would do.' Nothing more.
+
+'It is dreadfully small, of course,' she said, 'when one is accustomed
+to rooms: but it is rather amusing to be in a sort of doll's house, and
+on deck it is really very nice.'
+
+This was the most Mr. Smithson had for his pains, and he seemed to be
+content therewith. If a man will marry the prettiest girl of the year he
+must be satisfied with such scant civility as conscious perfection may
+give him. We know that Aphrodite was not altogether the most comfortable
+wife, and that Helen was a cause of trouble.
+
+Mr. Smithson sat in a bamboo chair beside his mistress, and looked
+ineffably happy when she handed him a cup of tea. Sky and sea were one
+exquisite azure--the colours of the boats glancing in the sunshine as if
+they had been jewels; here an emerald rudder, there a gunwale painted
+with liquid rubies. White sails, white frocks, white ducks made vivid
+patches of light against the blue. The landscape yonder shone and
+sparkled as if it had been incandescent. All the world of land and sky
+and sea was steeped in sunshine. A day on which to do nothing, read
+nothing, think nothing, only to exist.
+
+While they sat basking in the balmy atmosphere, looking lazily at that
+bright, almost insupportable picture of blue sea under blue sky, there
+came the dip of oars, making music, and a sound of coolness with every
+plash of water.
+
+'How good it is of somebody to row about, just to give us that nice
+soothing sound,' murmured Lesbia.
+
+Lady Kirkbank, with her dear old head thrown back upon the cushion of
+her luxurious chair, and her dear little cornflower hat just a thought
+on one side, was sleeping the sleep of the just, and unconsciously
+revealing the little golden arrangements which gave variety to her front
+teeth.
+
+The soothing sound came nearer and nearer, close under the _Cayman's_
+quarter, and then a brown hand clasped the man-ropes, and a light slim
+figure swung itself upon deck, while the boat bobbed and splashed below.
+
+It was Montesma, who had not been expected till the racing, which was
+not to begin for two days. A faint, faint rose bloom flushed Lady
+Lesbia's cheek at sight of him; and Mr. Smithson gave a little look of
+vexation, just one rapid contraction of the eyebrows, which resumed
+their conventional placidity the next instant.
+
+'So good of you,' he murmured. 'I really did not expect you till the
+beginning of the week.'
+
+'London is simply insupportable in this weather--most of all for a man
+born in the Havanas. My soul thirsted for blue water. So I said to
+myself, This good Smithson is at Cowes; he will give me the run of his
+yacht and a room at his villa. Why not go to Cowes at once?'
+
+'The room is at your service. I have only two or three of my people at
+Formosa, but just enough to look after a bachelor friend.'
+
+'I want very little service, my dear fellow,' answered Montesma,
+pleasantly. 'A man who has crossed the Cordilleras and camped in the
+primeval forest on the shores of the Amazon, learns to help himself. So
+this is the _Cayman_? _Muy deleitoso, mi amigo_. A floating Paradise in
+little. If the ark had been like this, I don't think any of the
+passengers would have wanted the flood to dry up.'
+
+He shook hands with Lady Lesbia as he spoke, and with Lady Kirkbank, who
+looked at him as if he were part of her dream, and then he sank into the
+chair on Lesbia's left hand, with the air of being established for the
+rest of the day.
+
+'I have left my portmanteaux at the end of the pier,' he said lazily. 'I
+dare say one of your fellows will be good enough to take them to Formosa
+for me?'
+
+Mr. Smithson gave the necessary order. All the beauty had gone out of the
+sea and the sky for him, all the contentment from his mind; and yet he
+was in no position to rebel against Fate--in no position to say directly
+or indirectly, 'Don Gomez de Montesma, I don't want you here, and I must
+request you to transfer yourself elsewhither.'
+
+Lesbia's feelings were curiously different. The very sight of that
+nervous brown hand upon the rope just now had sent a strange thrill
+through her veins. She who believed herself heartless could scarce trust
+herself to speak for the vehement throbbing of her heart. A sense of joy
+too deep for words possessed her as she reclined in her low chair, with
+drooping eyelids, yet feeling the fire of those dark southern eyes upon
+her face, scorching her like an actual flame.
+
+'Lady Lesbia, may I have a cup of tea?' he asked; not because he wanted
+the tea, but only for the cruel delight of seeing if she were able to
+give it to him calmly.
+
+Her hands shook, fluttered, wandered helplessly, as she poured out that
+cup of tea and handed it to Montesma, a feminine office which she had
+performed placidly enough for Mr. Smithson. The Spaniard took the cup
+from her with a quiet smile, a subtle look which seemed to explore the
+inmost depth of her consciousness.
+
+Yes, this man was verily her master. She knew it, and he know it, as
+that look of his told her. Vain to play her part of languid
+indifference--vain to struggle against her bondage. In heart and spirit
+she was at his feet, an odalisque, recognising and bowing down to her
+sultan.
+
+Happily for the general peace, Mr. Smithson had been looking away
+seaward, with a somewhat troubled brow, while that little cup and saucer
+episode was being enacted. And in the next minute Lesbia had recovered
+her self-command, and resumed that graceful languor which was one of her
+charms. She was weak, but she was not altogether foolish; and she had no
+idea of succumbing to this new influence--of yielding herself up to this
+conqueror, who seemed to take her life into his hand as if it were a bit
+of thistledown. Her agitation of those first few minutes was due to the
+suddenness of his appearance--the reaction from dulness to delight. She
+had been told that he was not to be at Cowes till Monday, and lo! he was
+here at her side, just as she was thinking how empty and dreary life was
+without him.
+
+He dropped into his place so naturally and easily, made himself so
+thoroughly at home and so agreeable to every one, that it was almost
+impossible for Horace Smithson to resent his audacity! Mr. Smithson's
+vitals might be devoured by the gnawing of the green-eyed monster, but
+however fierce that gnawing were, he did not want to seem jealous.
+Montesma was there as the very incarnation of some experiences in Mr.
+Smithson's past career, and he dared not object to the man's presence.
+
+And so the summer day wore on. They had the yacht all to themselves that
+evening, for the racing yachts were fulfilling engagements in other
+waters, and the gay company of pleasure-seekers had not yet fully
+assembled. They were dropping in one by one, all the evening, and Cowes
+roads grew fuller of life with every hour of the summer night.
+
+Mr. Smithson and his guests dined in the saloon, a snug little party of
+four, and sat long over dessert, deep into the dusk; and they talked of
+all things under heaven, things frivolous, things grave, but most of all
+about that fair, strange world in far-off southern waters, the sunny
+islands of the Caribbean Sea, and the dreamy, luxurious life of that
+tropical clime, half Spanish, half Oriental, wholly independent of
+European conventionalities. Lesbia listened, enchanted by the picture.
+What were Park Lane palaces, and Berkshire manors, the petty splendours
+of the architect and the upholsterer, weighed against a world in which
+all nature is on a grander scale? Mr. Smithson might give her fine
+houses and costly upholstery; but only the Tropic of Cancer could give
+her larger and brighter stars, a world of richer colouring, a land of
+perpetual summer, nights luminous with fire-flies, gardens in which the
+fern and the cactus were as forest trees, and where humming-birds
+flashed among the foliage like living flowers; nay, where the flowers
+themselves took the forms of the animal world and seemed instinct with
+life and motion.
+
+'Yes,' said Mr. Smithson, with his gentlemanlike drawl, 'Spanish America
+and the West Indies are delightful places to talk about. There are so
+many things one leaves out of the picture--thieves, niggers, jiggers,
+snakes, mosquitoes, yellow Jack, creeping, crawling creatures of all
+kinds. I always feel very glad I have been to South America.'
+
+'Why?'
+
+'In order that I may never go there again,' replied Mr. Smithson.
+
+'I was beginning to hope you would take me there some day,' said Lesbia.
+
+'Never again, no, not even for your sake. No man should ever leave
+Europe after he is five-and-thirty; indeed, I doubt if after that age he
+should venture beyond the Mediterranean. That is the sea of
+civilisation. Anything outside it means barbarism.'
+
+'I hope we are going to travel by-and-by,' said Lesbia; 'I have been
+mewed up in Grasmere half my life, and if you are going to confine me to
+the shores of the Mediterranean, which is, after all, only a larger
+lake, for the other half of my life, my existence will be a dull piece
+of work after all. I agree with what Don Gomez said the other night:
+"Not to travel is not to live."'
+
+They went on deck presently and sat in the summer darkness, lighted only
+by the stars, and by the lights of the yachts, and the faintly gleaming
+windows of the lighted town, sat long and late, in a state of ineffable
+repose. Lady Kirkbank, fortified by the produce of Mr. Smithson's
+particular _clos_, and by a couple of glasses of green Chartreuse, slept
+profoundly. She had not enjoyed herself so much for the last three
+months. She had been stretched on Society's rack, and she had been
+ground in Society's mill; and neither mind nor body had been her own to
+do what she liked withal. She had toiled early and late, and had spared
+herself in no wise. And now the trouble was over for a space. Here were
+rest and respite. She had done her duty as a chaperon, had provided her
+charge with the very best thing the matrimonial market offered. She had
+paid her creditors something on account all round, and had left them
+appeased and trustful, if not content. Sir George had gone oft alone to
+drink the waters at Spa, and to fortify himself for Scotland and the
+grouse season. She was her own mistress, and she could fold her hands
+and take her rest, eat and drink and sleep and be merry, all at Mr.
+Smithson's expense.
+
+The yachts came flocking in next day, like a flight of white-winged sea
+birds, and Mr. Smithson had enough to do receiving visitors upon the
+_Cayman_. He was fully occupied; but Montesma had nothing to do, except
+to amuse Lady Lesbia and her chaperon, and in this onerous task he
+succeeded admirably. Lesbia found that it was too warm to be on the deck
+when there were perspiring people, whose breath must be ninety by the
+thermometer, perpetually coming on board; so she and Lady Kirkbank sat
+in the saloon, and had the more distinguished guests brought down to
+them as to a Court; and the shrewder of the guests were quick to divine
+that no company beyond that of Don Gomez de Montesma was really wanted
+in that rose-scented saloon.
+
+The Spaniard taught Lady Kirkbank _monte_, which delighted her, and
+which she vowed she would introduce at her supper parties in the half
+season of November, when she should be in London for a week or two, as a
+bird of passage, flitting southwards. He began to teach Lesbia Spanish,
+a language for which she had taken a sudden fancy; and it is curious
+what tender accents, what hidden meanings even a grammar can take from
+such a teacher. Spanish came easily enough to a learner who had been
+thoroughly drilled in French and Italian, and who had been taught the
+rudiments of Latin; so by the end of a lesson, which went on at
+intervals all day, the pupil was able to lisp a passage of Don Quixote
+in the sweetest Castilian, very sweet to the ear of Don Gomez--a kind of
+baby language, precious as the first half-formed syllables of infancy to
+mothers.
+
+Montesma had nothing to do but to amuse himself and his companions all
+day in the saloon, amidst odours of roses and peaches, in a shadowy
+coolness made by striped silken blinds; but Mr. Smithson was not so much
+his own master. That innumerable company of friends which are the
+portion of the rich man given to hospitality would not let the owner of
+the _Cayman_ go scot-free.
+
+At a place like Cowes, on the eve of the regatta week, the freelances of
+society expect to find entertainment; and Mr. Smithson had to maintain
+his character for princely hospitalities at the sacrifice of his
+feelings as a lover. Every ripple of Lesbia's silvery laughter, every
+deep tone of Montesma's voice, from the cabin below, sent a pang to his
+jealous soul; and yet he had to smile, and to order more champagne cup,
+and to be lavish of his best cigars, albeit insisting that his friends
+should smoke their cigars in the bows well to leeward, so that no foul
+breathings of tobacco should pollute his Cleopatra galley.
+
+Cleopatra was very happy meanwhile, sublimely indifferent even to the
+odours of tobacco. She had her Antony at her feet, looking up at her,
+as she recited her lesson, with darkly luminous eyes, obviously
+worshipping her, obviously intent on winning her without counting the
+cost. When had a Montesma ever counted the cost to himself or
+others--the cost in gold, in honour, in human life? The records of Cuba
+in the palmy days of the slave trade would tell how lightly they held
+the last; and for honour, well, the private hells of island and main
+could tell their tale of specially printed playing cards, in which the
+swords or stars on the back of each card had a secret language of their
+own, and were as finger-posts for the initiated player.
+
+Mr. Smithson had business on shore, and was fain to leave the yacht for
+an hour or two before dinner. He invited Don Gomez to go with him, but
+the offer was graciously declined.
+
+'Amigo, I don't care even to look at land in such weather. It is so
+detestably dry,' he pleaded. 'It is only the sound of the sea gurgling
+against the hull that reconciles one to existence. Go, and be happy at
+your club, and send off those occult telegrams of yours, dearest. I
+shall not leave the _Cayman_ till bed-time.'
+
+He looked as fresh and cool as if utterly unaffected by the heat, which
+to a Cuban must have been a merely lukewarm condition of the atmosphere.
+But he affected to be prostrate, and Smithson could not insist. He had
+his cards to play in a game which required extremest caution, and there
+were no friendly indicators on the backs of his kings and aces. He was
+feeling his way in the dark, and did not know how much mischief Montesma
+was prepared to do.
+
+When the owner of the yacht was gone Don Gomez proposed an adjournment
+to the deck for afternoon tea, and the trio sat under the awning,
+tea-drinking and gossiping for the next hour. Lady Kirkbank told the
+steward to say not at home to everybody, just as if she had a street
+door.
+
+'There is a good deal of the _dolce far niente_ about this,' said
+Montesma, presently; 'but don't you think we have been anchored in sight
+of that shabby little town quite long enough, and that it would be
+rather nice to spread our wings and sail round the island before the
+racing begins?'
+
+'It would be exquisite,' said Lesbia. 'I am very tired of inaction,
+though I dearly love learning Spanish,' she added, with a lovely smile,
+and a look that was half submissive, half mutinous. 'But I have really
+been beginning to wonder whether this boat can move.'
+
+'You will see that she can, and at a smart pace, too, if I sail her.
+Shall we circumnavigate the island? We can set sail after dinner.'
+
+'Will Mr. Smithson consent, do you think?'
+
+'Why does Smithson exist, except to obey you?'
+
+'I don't know if Lady Kirkbank would quite like it,' said Lesbia,
+looking at her chaperon, who was waving a big Japanese fan, slowly,
+unsteadily, and with a somewhat drunken air, the while she slid into
+dreamland.
+
+'Quite like what?' she murmured, drowsily.
+
+'A little sail.'
+
+'I should dearly love it, if it didn't make me sea-sick.'
+
+'Sea-sick on a glassy lake like this! Impossible,' said Montesma. 'I
+consider the thing settled. We set sail after dinner.'
+
+Mr. Smithson came back to the yacht just in time to dress for dinner.
+Don Gomez excused himself from putting on his dress suit. He was going
+to sail the yacht himself, and he was dressed for his work,
+picturesquely, in white duck trousers, white silk shirt, and black
+velvet shooting jacket. He dined with the permission of the ladies, in
+this costume, in which he looked so much handsomer than in the livery of
+polite life. He had a red scarf tied round his waist, and when at his
+work by-and-by, he wore a little red silk cap, just stuck lightly on his
+dark hair. The dinner to-day was all animation and even excitement, very
+different from the languorous calm of yesterday. Lesbia seemed a new
+creature. She talked and laughed and flashed and sparkled as she had
+never yet done within Mr. Smithson's experience. He contemplated the
+transformation with wonder not unmixed with suspicion. Never for him had
+she been so brilliant--never in response to his glances had her violet
+eyes thus kindled, had her smile been so entrancingly sweet. He watched
+Montesma, but in him he could find no fault. Even jealousy could hardly
+take objection to the Spaniard's manner to Lady Lesbia. There was not a
+look, not a word that hinted at a private understanding between them, or
+which seemed to convey deeper meanings than the common language of
+society. No, there was no ground for fault-finding; and yet Smithson was
+miserable. He knew this man of old, and knew his influence over women.
+
+Mr. Smithson handed over the management of the yacht without a murmer,
+albeit he pretended to be able to sail her himself, and was in the habit
+of taking the command for a couple of hours on a sunny afternoon, much
+to the amusement of skipper and crew. But Montesma was a sailor born and
+bred--the salt keen breath of the sea had been the first breath in his
+nostrils--he had managed his light felucca before he was twelve years
+old, had sailed every inch of the Caribbean Sea, and northward to the
+furthermost of the Bahamas before he was fifteen. He had lived more on
+the water than on the land in that wild boyhood of his; a boyhood in
+which books and professors had played but small part. Montesma's school
+had been the world, and beautiful women his only professors. He had
+learnt arithmetic from the transactions of bubble companies; modern
+languages from the lips of the women who loved him. He was a crack shot,
+a perfect swordsman, a reckless horseman, and a dancer in whom dancing
+almost rose to genius. Beyond these limits he was as ignorant as dirt;
+but he had a cleverness which served as a substitute for book learning,
+and he seldom failed in impressing the people he met with the idea that
+he, Gomez de Montesma, was no ordinary man.
+
+Directly after dinner the preparations for an immediate start began;
+very much to the disgust of skipper and crew, who were not in the habit
+of working after dinner; but Montesma cared nothing for the short
+answers of the captain, or the black look of the men.
+
+Lesbia wanted to learn all about everything--the name of every sail, of
+every rope. She stood near the helmsman, a slim graceful figure in a
+white gown of some soft material, with never a jewel or a flower to
+relieve that statuesque simplicity. She wore no hat, and the rich
+chesnut hair was rolled in a loose knot at the back of the small
+Greek-looking head. Montesma came to her every now and then to explain
+what was being done; and by-and-by, when the canvas was all up, and the
+yacht was skimming over the water, like a giant swan borne by the
+current of some vast strong river, he came and stayed by her side, and
+they two sat making little baby sentences in Spanish, he as teacher and
+she as pupil, with no one near them but the sailors.
+
+The owner of the _Cayman_ had disappeared mysteriously a quarter of an
+hour after the sails were unfurled, and Lady Kirkbank had tottered down
+to the saloon.
+
+'I am not going--cabin,' she faltered, when Lesbia remonstrated with
+her, 'only--going--saloon--sofa--lie down--little--Smithson take
+care--you,' not perceiving that Smithson had vanished, 'shall be--quite
+close.'
+
+So Lesbia and Don Gomez were alone under the summer stars, murmuring
+little bits of Spanish.
+
+'It is the only true way of learning a language,' he said; 'grammars are
+a delusion.'
+
+It was a very delightful and easy way of learning, at any rate. Lesbia
+reclined in her bamboo chair, and fanned herself indolently, and watched
+the shadowy shores of the island, cliff and hill, down and wooded crest,
+flitting past her like dream-pictures, and her lips slowly shaped the
+words of that soft lisping language--so simple, so musical--a language
+made for lovers and for song, one would think. It was wonderful what
+rapid progress Lesbia made.
+
+She heard a church clock on the island striking, and asked Don Gomez the
+hour.
+
+'Ten,' he said.
+
+'Ten! Surely it must be later. It was past eight before we began dinner,
+and we have been sailing for ever so long. Captain, kindly tell me the
+time,' she called to the skipper, who was lolling over the gunwale near
+the foremast smoking a meditative pipe.
+
+'Twelve o'clock, my lady.'
+
+'Heavens, can I possibly have been sitting here so long. I should like
+to stay on deck all night and watch the sailing; but I must really go
+and take care of poor Lady Kirkbank. I am afraid she is not very well.'
+
+'She had a somewhat distracted air when she went below, but I daresay
+she will sleep off her troubles. If I were you I should leave her to
+herself.'
+
+'Impossible! What can have become of Mr. Smithson?'
+
+'I have a shrewd suspicion that it is with Smithson as with poor Lady
+Kirkbank.'
+
+'Do you mean that he is ill?'
+
+'Precisely.'
+
+'What, on a calm summer night, sailing over a sea of glass. The owner of
+a yacht!'
+
+'Rather ignominious for poor Smithson, isn't it? But men who own yachts
+are only mortal, and are sometimes wretched sailors. Smithson is feeble
+on that point, as I know of old.'
+
+'Then wasn't it rather cruel of us to sail his yacht?'
+
+'Yachts are meant for sailing, and again, sea-sickness is supposed to be
+a wholesome exercise.'
+
+'Good-night.'
+
+'Good-night,' both good nights in Spanish, and with a touch of
+tenderness which the words could hardly have expressed in English.
+
+'Must you really go?' pleaded Montesma, holding her hand just a thought
+longer than he had ever held it before.
+
+'Ah, the little more, and how much it is,' says the poet.
+
+'Really and truly.'
+
+'I am so sorry. I wish you could have stayed on deck all night.'
+
+'So do I, with all my heart. This calm sea under the starlit sky is like
+a dream of heaven.'
+
+'It is very nice, but if you stayed I think I could promise you
+considerable variety. We shall have a tempest before morning.'
+
+'Of all things in the world I should love to see a thunderstorm at sea.'
+
+'Be on the alert then, and Captain Parkes and I will try to oblige you.'
+
+'At any rate you have made it impossible for me to sleep. I shall stay
+with Lady Kirkbank in the saloon. Good-night, again.'
+
+'Good-night.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX.
+
+IN STORM AND DARKNESS.
+
+
+Lesbia found Lady Kirkbank prostrate on a low divan in the saloon,
+sleepless, and very cross. The atmosphere reeked with red lavender,
+sal-volatile, eau de Cologne, and brandy, which latter remedy poor
+Georgie had taken freely in her agonies. Kibble, the faithful Grasmere
+girl, sat by the divan, fanning the sufferer with a large Japanese fan.
+Rilboche had naturally, as a Frenchwoman, succumbed utterly to her own
+feelings, and was moaning in her berth, wailing out every now and then
+that she would never have taken service with Miladi had she suspected
+her to be capable of such cruelty as to take her to live for weeks upon
+the sea.
+
+If this was the state of affairs now while the ocean was only gently
+stirred, what would it be by-and-by if the tempest should really come?
+
+'What can you be thinking of, staying on deck all night with those men?'
+exclaimed Lady Kirkbank, peevishly. 'It is hardly respectable.'
+
+She would have been still more inclined to object had she known that
+Lesbia's companion had been 'that man' rather than 'those men.'
+
+'What do you mean by all night?' Lesbia retorted, contemptuously; 'it is
+only just twelve.'
+
+'Only twelve. I thought we were close upon daylight. I have suffered an
+eternity of agony.'
+
+'I am very sorry you should be ill; but really the sea has been so
+deliciously calm.'
+
+'I believe I should have suffered less if it had been diabolically
+rough. Oh, that monotonous flip-flap of the water, that slow heaving of
+the boat! Nothing could be worse.'
+
+'I am glad to hear you say that, for Don Gomez says we are likely to
+have a tempest.'
+
+'A tempest!' shrieked Georgie. 'Then let him stop the boat this instant
+and put me on shore. Tell him to land me anywhere--on the Needles even.
+I could stop at the lighthouse till morning. A storm at sea will be
+simply my death.'
+
+'Dear Lady Kirkbank, I was only joking,' said Lesbia, who did not want
+to be worried by her chaperon's nervous apprehensions: 'so far the night
+is lovely.'
+
+'Give me a spoonful more brandy, my good creature,'--to Kibble. 'Lesbia,
+you ought never to have brought me into this miserable state. I
+consented to staying on board the yacht; but I never consented to
+sailing on her.'
+
+'You will soon be well, dear Lady Kirkbank; and you will have such an
+appetite for breakfast to-morrow morning.'
+
+'Where shall we be at breakfast time?'
+
+'Off St. Catherine's Point, I believe--just half way round the island.'
+
+'If we are not at the bottom of the sea,' groaned Georgie.
+
+They were now in the open Channel, and the boat dipped and rose to
+larger billows than had encountered her course before. Lady Kirkbank lay
+in a state of collapse, in which life seemed only sustainable by
+occasional teaspoonfuls of cognac gently tilted down her throat by the
+patient Kibble.
+
+Lesbia went to her cabin, but with no intention of remaining there. She
+was firmly convinced that the storm would come, and she meant to be on
+deck while it was raging. What harm could thunder or lightning, hail or
+rain, do to her while he was by to protect her? He would be busy sailing
+the boat, perhaps, but still he would have a moment now and then in
+which to think of her and care for her.
+
+Yes, the storm was coming. There was a livid look upon the waters, and
+the atmosphere was heavy with heat; the sky to windward black as a
+funeral pall. Lesbia was almost fearless, yet she felt a thrill of awe
+as she looked into that dense blackness. To leeward the stars were still
+visible; but that gigantic mass of cloud came creeping slowly, solemnly
+over the sky, while the shadow flitted fast across the water, swallowing
+up that ghastly electric glare.
+
+Lesbia wrapped herself in a white cashmere _sortie de bal_ and stole up
+the companion. Montesma was working at the ropes with his own hands,
+calling directions to the sailors to shorten and take in the canvas,
+urging them to increased efforts by working at the ropes with his own
+hands, springing up the rigging and on deck, flashing backwards and
+forwards amidst the rigging like a being of supernatural power. He had
+taken off his jacket, and was clad from top to toe in white, save for
+that streak of scarlet which tightly girdled his waist. His tall
+flexible form, perfect in line as a Greek statue of Hermes, stood out
+against the background of black night. His voice, with its tones of
+brief imperious command, the proud carriage of his head, the easy grace
+of his rapid movements, all proclaimed the man born to rule over his
+fellow-men. And it is these master spirits, these born rulers, whom
+women instinctively recognise as their sovereign lords, and for whom
+women count no sacrifice too costly.
+
+In the midst of his activity Montesma suddenly saw that white-robed
+figure standing at the top of the companion, and flew to her side. The
+boat was pitching heavily, dipping into the trough of the sea at an
+angle of forty-five degrees, as it seemed to Lesbia.
+
+'You ought not to be here,' said Montesma; 'it is much rougher than I
+expected.'
+
+'I am not afraid,' she answered; 'but I will go back to my cabin if I am
+in your way.'
+
+'In my way' (with deepest tenderness): 'yes, you are in my way, for I
+shall think of nothing else now you are here. But I believe we have done
+all that need be done to the yacht, and I can take care of you till the
+storm is over.'
+
+He put his arm round her as the stem dipped, and led her towards the
+stern, guiding her footsteps, supporting her as her light figure swayed
+against him with the motion of the boat. A vivid flash of lightning
+showed him her face as they stood for an instant leaning against each
+other, his arm encircling her. Ah, what deep feeling in that
+countenance, once so passionless; what a new light in those eyes. It was
+like the awakening of a long dormant soul.
+
+He took the helm from the captain and stood steering the vessel, and
+calling out his orders, with Lesbia close beside him, holding her with
+his disengaged arm, drawing her near him as the vessel pitched
+violently, drawing her nearer still when they shipped a sea, and a great
+fountain of spray enfolded them both in a dense cloud of salt water.
+
+The thunder roared and rattled, as if it began and ended close beside
+them. Forked lightnings zigzagged amidst the rigging. Sheet lightning
+enwrapped those two in a luminous atmosphere, revealing faces that were
+pale with passion, lips that trembled with emotion. There were but scant
+opportunity for speech, and neither of these two felt the need of words.
+To be together, bound nearer to each other than they had ever been yet,
+than they might ever be again, in the midst of thunder and lightning and
+dense clouds of spray. This was enough. Once when the _Cayman_ pitched
+with exceptional fury, when the thunder crashed and roared loudest,
+Lesbia found her head lying on Montesma's breast and his arms round her,
+his lips upon her face. She did not wrench herself from that forbidden
+embrace. She let those lips kiss hers as never mortal man had kissed her
+before. But an instant later, when Montesma's attention was distracted
+by his duties as steersman, and he let her go, she slipped away in the
+darkness, and melted from his sight and touch like a modern Undine. He
+dared not leave the helm and follow her then. He sent one of the sailors
+below a little later, to make sure that she was safe in her cabin; but
+he saw her no more that night.
+
+The storm abated soon after daybreak, and the morning was lovely; but
+Don Gomez and Lady Lesbia did not meet again till the church bells on
+the island were ringing for morning service, and then the lady was safe
+under the wing of her chaperon, with her affianced husband in
+attendance upon her at the breakfast table in the saloon.
+
+She received Montesma with the faintest inclination of the head, and she
+carefully avoided all occasion of speech with him during the leisurely,
+long spun-out meal. She was as white as her muslin gown, and her eyes
+told of a sleepless night. She talked a little, very little to Lady
+Kirkbank and Mr. Smithson; to the Spaniard not at all. And yet Montesma
+was in no manner dashed by this appearance of deep offence. So might
+Francesca have looked the morning after that little scene over the book;
+yet she sacrificed her salvation for her lover all the same. It was a
+familiar stage upon the journey which Montesma knew by heart. Here the
+inclination of the road was so many degrees more or less; for this hill
+you are commanded to put on an extra horse; at this stage it is
+forbidden to go more than eight miles an hour, and so on, and so on.
+Montesma knew every inch of the ground. He put on a melancholy look, and
+talked very little. He had been on deck all night, and so there was an
+excuse for his being quiet.
+
+Lady Kirkbank related her impressions of the storm, and talked enough
+for four. She had suffered the pangs of purgatory, but her natural
+cheeriness asserted itself, and she made no moaning about past agonies
+which had exercised a really delightful influence on her appetite. Mr.
+Smithson also was cheerful. He had paid his annual tribute to Neptune,
+and might hope to go scot-free for the rest of the season.
+
+'If I had stayed on deck I must have had my finger in the pie; so I
+thought it better to go below and get a good night's rest in the
+steward's cabin,' he said, not caring to confess his sufferings as
+frankly as Lady Kirkbank admitted hers.
+
+After breakfast, which was prolonged till noon, Montesma asked Smithson
+to smoke a cigarette on deck with him.
+
+'I want to talk to you on a rather serious matter,' he said.
+
+Lesbia heard the words, and looked up with a frightened glance. Could he
+mean to attempt anything desperate? Was he going to confess the fatal
+truth to Horace Smithson, to tell her affianced lover that she was
+untrue to her bond, that she loved him, Montesma, as fondly as he loved
+her, that their two souls had mingled like two flames fanned by the same
+current, and thence had risen to a conflagration which must end in ruin,
+if she were not set free to follow where her heart had gone, free to
+belong to that man whom her spirit chose for lord and master. Her heart
+leapt at the hope that Montesma was going to do this, that he was strong
+enough to break her bonds for her, powerful and rich enough to secure
+her a brilliant future. Yet this last consideration, which hitherto had
+been paramount, seemed now of but little moment. To be with _him_, to
+belong to _him_, would be enough for bliss. Albeit that in such a
+choice she forfeited all that she had ever possessed or hoped for of
+earthly prosperity. Adventurer, beggar, whatever he might be, she chose
+him, and loved him with all the strength of a weak soul newly awakened
+to passionate feeling.
+
+Unhappily for Lesbia Haselden, Montesma was not at all the kind of man
+to take so direct and open a course as that which she imagined possible.
+
+His business with Mr. Smithson was of quite a different kind.
+
+'Smithson, do you know that you have an utterly incompetent crew?' he
+said, gravely, when they two were standing aft, lighting their
+cigarettes.
+
+'Indeed I do not. The men are all experienced sailors, and the captain
+ranks high among yachtsmen.'
+
+'English yachtsmen are not particularly good judges of sailors. I tell
+you your skipper is no sailor, and his men are fools. If it had not been
+for me the _Cayman_ would have gone to pieces on the rocks last night,
+and if you are to cross to St. Malo, as you talked of doing, for the
+regatta there, you had better sack these men and let me get you a South
+American crew. I know of a fellow who is in London just now--the captain
+of a Rio steamer, who'll send you a crew of picked men, if you give me
+authority to telegraph to him.'
+
+'I don't like foreign sailors,' said Smithson, looking perplexed and
+worried; 'and I have perfect confidence in Wilkinson.'
+
+'Which is as much as to say that you consider me a liar! Go to the
+bottom your own way, _mon ami: ce n'est pas mon affaire,_' said
+Montesma, turning on his heel, and leaving his friend to his own
+devices.
+
+Had he pressed the point, Smithson would have suspected him of some evil
+motive, and would have been resolute in his resistance; but as he said
+no more about it, Smithson began to feel uncomfortable.
+
+He was no sailor himself, knew absolutely nothing about the navigation
+of his yacht, though he sometimes pretended to sail her; and he had no
+power to judge of his skipper's capacity or his men's seamanship. He had
+engaged the captain wholly on the strength of the man's reputation,
+guaranteed by certain certificates which seemed to mean a great deal.
+But after all such certificates might mean very little--such a
+reputation might be no real guarantee. The sailors had been engaged by
+the captain, and their ruddy faces and thoroughly British appearence,
+the exquisite cleanliness which they maintained in every detail of the
+yacht, had seemed to Mr. Smithson the perfection of seamanship.
+
+But it was not the less true that the cleanest of yachts, with deck of
+spotless whiteness, sails of unsullied purity, brasses shining and
+sparkling like gold fresh from the goldsmith's, might be spiked upon a
+rock, or might founder on a sand-bank, or heel over under too much
+canvas. Mr. Smithson was inclined to suspect any proposition of
+Montesma's; yet he was not the less disturbed in mind by the assertion.
+
+The day wore on, and the yacht sailed merrily over a summer sea. Mr.
+Smithson fidgeted about the deck uneasily, watching every movement of
+the sailors. No boat could be sailing better, as it seemed to him; but
+in such weather and over such waters any boat must needs go easily. It
+was in the blackness of night, amidst the fury of the storm, that
+Montesma's opinion had been formed. Smithson began to think that his
+friend was right. The sailors had honest countenances, but they looked
+horribly stupid. Could men with such vacuous grins, such an air of
+imbecile good-nature, be capable of acting wisely in any terrible
+crisis?--could they have nerve and readiness, quickness, decision, all
+those grand qualites which are needed by the seaman who has to contend
+with the fury of the elements?
+
+Mr. Smithson and his guests had breakfasted too late for the possibility
+of luncheon. They were in Cowes Roads by one o'clock. A fleet of yachts
+had arrived during their absence, and the scene was full of life and
+gaiety. Lady Lesbia held a _levée_ at the afternoon tea, and had a crowd
+of her old admirers around her--adorers whose presence in no wise
+disturbed Horace Smithson's peace. He would have been content that his
+wife should go through life with a herd of such worshippers following in
+her footsteps. He knew the aimless innocence, the almost infantine
+simplicity of the typical Johnnie, Chappie, _Muscadin, Petit Creve,
+Gommeux_--call him by what name you will. From these he feared no evil.
+But in that one follower who gave no outward token of his worship he
+dreaded peril. It was Montesma he watched, while dragoons with
+close-cropped hair, and imbecile youths with heads rigid in four-inch
+collars, were hanging about Lady Lesbia's low bamboo chair, and
+administering obsequiously to the small necessities of the tea-table.
+
+It was while this tea-table business was going on that Mr. Smithson took
+the opportunity of setting his mind at rest, were it possible, as to the
+merits of Captain Wilkinson. Among his visitors this afternoon there was
+the owner of three or four racing yachts--a man renowned for his
+victories, at home and abroad.
+
+'I think you knew something of my captain, Wilkinson, before I engaged
+him,' said Smithson, with assumed carelessness.
+
+'I know every skipper on board every boat in the squadron,' answered his
+friend. 'A good fellow, Wilkinson--thoroughly honest fellow.'
+
+'Honest; oh yes, I know all about that. But how about his seamanship?
+His certificates were wonderfully good, but they are not everything.
+
+'Everything, my dear fellow,' cried the other; 'they are next to
+nothing. But I believe Wilkinson is a tolerable sailor.'
+
+This was not encouraging.
+
+'He has never been unlucky, I believe.'
+
+'My dear Smithson, you are a great authority in the City, but you are
+not very well up in the records of the yachting world, or you would know
+that your Captain Wilkinson was skipper on the _Orinoco_ when she ran
+aground on the Chesil Bank, coming home from Cherbourg Regatta, fifteen
+lives lost, and the yacht, in less than half an hour, ground to powder.
+That was rather a bad case, I remember; for though it was a tempestuous
+night, the accident would never have happened if Wilkinson had not
+mistaken the lights. So you see his Trinity House papers didn't prevent
+his going wrong.'
+
+Good heavens! This was the strongest confirmation of Montesma's charge.
+The man was a stupid man, an incapable man, a man to whose intelligence
+and care human life should never be trusted. A fig for his honesty! What
+would honesty be worth in a hurricane off the Chesil Beach? What would
+honesty serve a ship spitted on the Jailors off Jersey? Montesma was
+right. If the _Cayman_ was to make a trip to St. Malo she must be
+navigated by competent men. Horace Smithson hated foreign sailors,
+copper-faced ruffians, with flashing black eyes which seemed to threaten
+murder, did you but say a rough word to them; sleek, raven-haired
+scoundrels, with bowie-knives in their girdles, ready for mutiny. But,
+after all, life is worth too much to be risked for a prejudice, a
+sentiment.
+
+Perhaps that St. Malo business might be avoided; and then there need be
+no change in captain or crew. The yacht must be safe enough lying at
+anchor in the roadstead. By-and-by, when the visitors had departed, and
+Mr. Smithson was reposefully enjoying his tea by Lady Lesbia's side, he
+approached the subject.
+
+'Do you really care about crossing to St. Malo after this--really prefer
+the idea to Ryde?'
+
+'Infinitely,' exclaimed Lesbia, quickly. 'Ryde would only be Cowes ever
+again--a lesser Cowes; and I thought when you first proposed it that the
+plan was rather stupid, though I did not want to be uncivil and say so.
+But I was delighted with Don Gomez de Montesma's amendment, substituting
+St. Malo for Ryde. In the first place the trip across will be
+delicious'--Lady Kirkbank gave a faint groan--'and in the second place I
+am dying to see Brittany.'
+
+'I doubt if you will highly appreciate St. Malo. It is a town of many
+and various smells.'
+
+'But I want to smell those foreign smells of which one hears much. At
+least it is an experience. We need not be on shore any longer than we
+like. And I want to see that fine rocky coast, and Chateaubriand's tomb
+on the what's-its-name. So nice to be buried in that way.'
+
+'Then you have set your heart on going to St. Malo, and would not like
+any change in our plan?'
+
+'Any change will be simply detestable,' answered Lesbia, all the more
+decidedly since she suspected a desire for change on the part of Mr.
+Smithson.
+
+She was in no amiable humour this afternoon. All her nerves seemed
+strained to their utmost tension. She was irritated, tremulous with
+nervous excitement, inclined to hate everybody, Horace Smithson most of
+all. In her cabin a little later on, when she was changing her gown for
+dinner, and Kibble was somewhat slow and clumsy in the lacing of the
+bodice, she wrenched herself from the girl's hands, flung herself into a
+chair, and burst into a flood of passionate tears.
+
+'O God! that I were on one of those islands in the Caribbean Sea--an
+island where Europeans never come--where I might lie down among the
+poisonous tropical flowers, and sleep the rest of my days away. I am
+sick to death of my life here; of the yacht, the people--everything.'
+
+'This air is too relaxing, Lady Lesbia,' the girl murmured, soothingly;
+'and you didn't have your natural rest last night. Shall I get you a
+nice strong cup of tea?'
+
+'Tea! no. I have been living upon tea for the last twenty-four hours. I
+have eaten nothing. My mouth is parched and burning. Oh, Kibble!'
+flinging her head upon the girl's buxom arm, and letting it rest there,
+'what a happy creature you are--not a care--not a care.'
+
+'I'm sure you can't have any cares, Lady Lesbia,' said Kibble, with an
+incredulous smile, trying to smooth the disordered hair, anxious to make
+haste with the unfinished toilet, for it was within a few minutes of
+eight.
+
+'I am full of care. I am in debt--horribly in debt--getting deeper and
+deeper every day--and I am going to sell myself to the only man who can
+pay my debts and give me fine houses, and finery like this,' plucking at
+the _crêpe de chine_ gown, with its flossy fringe, its delicate lace, a
+marvel of artistic expenditure; a garment which looked simplicity
+itself, and yet was so cleverly contrived as to cost five-and-thirty
+guineas. The greatest effects in it required to be studied with a
+microscope.
+
+'But surely, dear Lady Lesbia, you won't marry Mr. Smithson, if you
+don't love him?'
+
+'Do you suppose love has anything to do with marriages in society?'
+
+'Oh, Lady Lesbia, it would be so unkind to him, so cruel to yourself.'
+
+'Cruel to myself. Yes, I am cruel to myself. I had the chance of
+happiness a year ago, and I lost it. I have the chance of happiness
+now--yes, of consummate bliss--and haven't the courage to snatch at it.
+Take off this horrid gown, Kibble; my head is splitting: I shan't go to
+dinner.'
+
+'Oh, Lady Lesbia, you are treading on the pearl embroidery,'
+remonstrated poor Kibble, as Lesbia kicked the new gown from under her
+feet.
+
+'What does it matter!' she exclaimed with a bitter little laugh. 'It has
+not been paid for--perhaps it never will be.'
+
+The dinner was silent and gloomy. It was as if a star had been suddenly
+blotted out of the sky. Smithson, ordinarily so hospitable, had been too
+much disturbed in mind to ask any of his friends to stay to dinner; so
+there were only Lady Kirkbank, who was too tired to be lively, and
+Montesma, who was inclined to be thoughtful. Lesbia's absence, and the
+idea that she was ill, gave the feast almost a funereal air.
+
+After dinner Smithson and Montesma sat on deck, smoking their cigars,
+and lazily watching the lights on sea, and the lights on shore; these
+brilliant in the foreground, those dim in the distance.
+
+'You can telegraph to your Rio Janeiro friend to-morrow morning, if you
+like,' said Smithson, presently, 'and tell him to send a first-rate
+skipper and crew. Lady Lesbia has made up her mind to see St. Malo
+Regatta, and with such a sacred charge I can't be too careful.'
+
+'I'll wire before eight o'clock to-morrow,' answered Montesma, 'You have
+decided wisely. Your respectable English Wilkinson is an excellent
+man--but nothing would surprise me less than his reducing your _Cayman_
+to matchwood in the next gale.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL.
+
+A NOTE OF ALARM.
+
+
+That strange scene in the old house at Fellside made a profound
+impression upon Lord Hartfield. He tried to disguise his trouble, and
+did all in his power to seem gay and at perfect ease in his wife's
+company; but his mind was full of anxiety, and Mary loved him too well
+to be for a moment in doubt as to his feelings.
+
+'There is something wrong, Jack,' she said, while they were breakfasting
+at a table in the verandah, with the lake and the bills in front of them
+and the sweet morning air around them. 'You try to talk and to be
+lively, but there is a little perpendicular wrinkle in your forehead
+which I know as well as the letters of the alphabet, and that little
+line means worry. I used to see it in the old days, when you were
+breaking your heart for Lesbia. Why cannot you be frank and confide in
+me. It is your duty, sir, as my husband.'
+
+'Is it my duty to halve my burdens as well as my joys? How do I know if
+those girlish shoulders are strong enough to bear the weight of them?'
+
+'I can bear anything you can bear, and I won't be cheated out of my
+share in your worries. If you were obliged to have a tooth out, I would
+have one out too, for company.'
+
+'I hope the dentist would be too conscientious to allow that.'
+
+'Tell me your trouble, Hartfield,' she said, earnestly, leaning across
+the table, bringing her grave intelligent face near to him.
+
+They were quite alone, he and she. The servants had done their
+ministering. Behind them there was the empty dining-room, in front of
+them the sunlit panorama of lake and hill. There could not be a safer
+place for telling secrets.
+
+'Tell me what it is that worries you,' Mary pleaded again.
+
+'I will, dear. After all perfect trust is the best; nay, it is your due,
+for you are brave enough and true enough to be trusted with secrets that
+mean life and death. In a word, then, Mary, the cause of my trouble is
+that old man we saw the other night.'
+
+'Steadman's uncle?'
+
+'Do you really believe that he is Steadman's uncle?'
+
+'My grandmother told me so,' answered Mary, reddening to the roots of
+her hair.
+
+To this girl, who was the soul of truth, there was deepest shame in the
+idea that her kinswoman, the woman whom of all the world she most owed
+reverence and honour, could be deemed capable of falsehood.
+
+'Do you think my grandmother would tell me an untruth?'
+
+'I do not believe that man is a poor dependent, an old servant's
+kinsman, sheltered and cared for in this house for charity's sake.
+Forgive me, Mary, if I doubt the word of one you love; but there are
+positions in life in which a man must judge for himself. Would Mr.
+Steadman's kinsman be lodged as that old man is lodged; would he talk as
+that old man talks; and last and greatest perplexity of all, would he
+possess a treasure of gold and jewels which must be worth many
+thousands?'
+
+'But you cannot know for certain that those things are valuable; they
+may be rubbish that this poor old man has scraped together and hoarded
+for years, glass jewels bought at country fairs. Those rouleaux may
+contain lead or coppers.'
+
+'I do not think so, Mary. The stones had all the brilliancy of valuable
+gems, and then there were others in the finest filagree
+settings--goldsmith's work which bore the stamp of an Eastern world.
+Take my word for it, that treasure came from India; and it must have
+been brought to England by Lord Maulevrier. It may have existed all
+these years without your grandmother's knowledge. That is quite
+possible; but it seems to me impossible that such wealth should be
+within the knowledge and the power of a pauper lunatic.'
+
+'But if that unhappy old man is not a relation of Steadman's supported
+here by my grandmother's benevolence, who can he be, and why is he
+here?' asked Mary.
+
+'Oh, Molly dear, these are two questions which I cannot answer, and
+which yet ought to be answered somehow. Since that night I have felt as
+if there were a dark cloud lowering over this house--a cloud almost as
+terrible in its menace of danger as the forshadowing of fate in a Greek
+legend. For your sake, for the honour of your race, for my own
+self-respect as your husband, I feel that this mystery ought to be
+solved, and all dark things made light before your grandmother's death.
+When she is gone the master-key to the past will be lost.'
+
+'But she will be spared for many years, I hope, spared to sympathise
+with my happiness, and with Lesbia's.'
+
+My dearest girl, we cannot hope that. The thread of her life is worn
+very thin. It may snap at any moment. You cannot look seriously in your
+grandmother's face, and yet delude yourself with the hope that she has
+years of life before her.'
+
+'It will be very hard to part, just as she has begun to care for me,'
+said Mary, with her eyes full of tears.
+
+'All such partings are hard, and your grandmother's life has been so
+lonely and joyless that the memory of it must always have a touch of
+pain. One cannot say of her as we can of the happy; she has lived her
+life--all things have been given to her, and she falls asleep at the
+close of a long and glorious day. For some reason which I cannot
+understand, Lady Maulevrier's life has been a prolonged sacrifice.'
+
+'She has always given us to understand that she was fond of Fellside,
+and that this secluded life suited her,' said Mary, meditatively.
+
+'I cannot help doubting her sincerity on that point. Lady Maulevrier is
+too clever a woman, and forgive me, dear, if I add too worldly a woman,
+to be content to live out of the world. The bird must have chafed its
+breast against the bars of the cage many and many a time when you
+thought that all was peace. Be sure, Mary, that your grandmother had a
+powerful motive for spending all her days in this place, and I can but
+think that the old man we saw the other night had some part in that
+motive. Do you remember telling me of her ladyship's vehement anger when
+she heard you had made the acquaintance of her pensioner?'
+
+'Yes, she was very angry,' Mary answered, with a troubled look. 'I
+never saw her so angry--she was almost beside herself--said the harshest
+things to me--talked as if I had done some dreadful mischief.'
+
+'Would she have been so moved, do you think, unless there was some fatal
+secret involved in that man's presence here?'
+
+'I hardly know what to think. Tell me everything. What is it that you
+fear?--what is it that you suspect?'
+
+'To tell you my fears and suspicions is to tell you a family secret that
+has been kept from you out of kindness all the years of your life--and I
+hardly think I could bring myself to that if I did not know what the
+world is, and how many good-natured friends Lady Hartfield will meet in
+society, by-and-by, ready to tell her, by hints and innuendoes, that her
+grandfather, the Governor of Madras, came back to England under a cloud
+of disgrace.'
+
+'My poor grandfather! How dreadful!' exclaimed Mary, pale with pity and
+shame. 'Did he deserve his disgrace, poor unhappy creature--or was he
+the victim of false accusation?'
+
+'I can hardly tell you that, Mary, any more than I can tell whether
+Warren Hastings deserved the abuse that was wreaked upon him at one
+time, or the acquittal that gave the lie to his slanderers in after
+years. The events occurred forty years ago--the story was only half
+known then, and like all such stories formed the basis for every kind of
+exaggeration and perversion.'
+
+'Does Maulevrier know?' faltered Mary.
+
+'Maulevrier knows all that is known by the general public, and no more.'
+
+'And you have married the granddaughter of a disgraced man,' said Mary,
+with a piteous look. 'Did you know--when you married me?'
+
+'As much as I know now, dear love. If you had been Jonathan Wild's
+granddaughter you would have been just as dear to me. I married _you_,
+dearest; I love _you_; I believe in _you_. All the grandfathers in
+Christendom would not shake my faith by one tittle.'
+
+She threw herself into his arms, and sobbed upon his breast. But sweet
+as this assurance of his love was to her, she was not the less stricken
+by shame at the thought of possible infamy in the past, a shameful
+memory for ever brooding over her name in the present.
+
+'Society never forgets a scandal,' she said; 'I have heard Maulevrier
+say that.'
+
+'Society has a long memory for other people's sins, but it only avenges
+its own wrongs. Give the wicked fairy Society a bad dinner, or leave her
+out of your invitation list for a ball, and she will twit you with the
+crimes or the misfortunes of a remote ancestor--she will go about
+talking of your grandfather the leper, or your great aunt who ran away
+with her footman. But so long as the wicked fairy gets all she wants out
+of you, she cares not a straw for the misdeeds of past generations.'
+
+He spoke lightly, laughingly almost, and then he ordered the dogcart to
+be brought round immediately, and he drove Mary across the hills towards
+Langdale, to bring the colour back to her blanched cheeks. He brought
+her home in time to give her grandmother an hour for letter-writing
+before luncheon, while he walked up and down the terrace below Lady
+Maulevrier's windows, meditating the course he was to take.
+
+He was to leave Westmoreland next day to take his place in the House of
+Lords during the last important debate of the session. He made up his
+mind that before he left he would seek an interview with Lady
+Maulevrier, and boldly ask her to explain the mystery of that old man's
+presence at Fellside. He was her kinsman by marriage, and he had sworn
+to honour her and to care for her as a son; and as a son he would urge
+her to confide in him, to unburden her conscience of any dark secret,
+and to make the crooked things straight, before she was called away.
+
+While he was forecasting this interview, meeting imaginary objections,
+arguing points which might have to be argued, a servant came out to him
+with an ochre envelope on a little silver tray--that unpleasant-looking
+envelope which seems always a presage of trouble, great or small.
+
+'Lord Maulevrier, Albany, to Lord Hartfield, Fellside, Grasmere.
+
+'For God's sake come to me at once. I am in great trouble; not on my own
+account, but about a relation.'
+
+A relation--except his grandmother and his two sisters Maulevrier had no
+relations for whom he cared a straw. This message must have relation to
+Lesbia. Was she ill--dying, the victim of some fatal accident, runaway
+horses, boat upset, train smashed? There was something; and Maulevrier
+appealed to his nearest and best friend. There was no withstanding such
+an appeal. It must be answered, and immediately.
+
+Lord Hartfield went into the library and wrote his reply message, which
+consisted of six words.
+
+'Going to you by first train.'
+
+The next train left Windermere at three. There was just time to get a
+fresh horse put in the dogcart, and a Gladstone bag packed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI.
+
+PRIVILEGED INFORMATION.
+
+
+Lord Hartfield did not arrive at Euston Square until near eleven o'clock
+at night. A hansom deposited him at the entrance to the Albany just as
+the clock of St. James's Church chimed the hour. He found only
+Maulevrier's valet. His lordship had waited indoors all the evening, and
+had only gone out a quarter of an hour ago. He had gone to the
+Cerberus, and begged that Lord Hartfield would be kind enough to follow
+him there.
+
+Lord Hartfield was not fond of the Cerberus, and indeed deemed that
+lively place of rendezvous a very dangerous sphere for his friend
+Maulevrier; but in the face of Maulevrier's telegram there was no time
+to be lost, so he walked across Piccadilly and down St. James's Street
+to the fashionable little club, where the men were dropping in after the
+theatres and dinners, and where sheafs of bank notes were being
+exchanged for those various coloured counters which represented divers
+values, from the respectable 'pony' to the modest 'chip.'
+
+Maulevrier was in the first room Hartfield looked into, standing behind
+some men who were playing.
+
+'That's something like friendship,' he exclaimed, when he saw Lord
+Hartfield, and then he hooked his arm through his friend's, and led him
+off to the dining room.
+
+'Come and have some supper, old fellow,' he said, 'and I can tell you my
+troubles while you are eating it. James, bring us a grill, and a
+lobster, and a bottle of Mumms, number 27, you know.'
+
+'Yes, my lord.'
+
+'Sorry to find you in this den, Maulevrier,' said Lord Hartfield.
+
+'Haven't touched a card. Haven't done half an hour's punting this
+season. But it's a kind of habit with me to wander in here now and then.
+I know so many of the members. One poor devil lost nine thousand one
+night last week. Rather rough upon him, wasn't it? All ready money at
+this shop, don't you know.'
+
+'Thank God, I know nothing about it. And now, Maulevrier, what is wrong,
+and with whom?'
+
+'Everything is wrong, and with my sister Lesbia.'
+
+'Good heavens! what do you mean?'
+
+'Only this, that there is a fellow after her whose very name means ruin
+to women--a Spanish-American adventurer--reckless, handsome, a gambler,
+seducer, duellist, dare-devil. The man she is to marry seems to have
+neither nous nor spunk to defend her. Everybody at Goodwood saw the game
+that was being played, everybody at Cowes is watching the cards, betting
+on the result. Yes, great God, the men at the Squadron Club are staking
+their money upon my sister's character--even monkeys that she bolts with
+Montesma--five to three against the marriage with Smithson ever coming
+off.'
+
+'Is this true?'
+
+'It is as true as your marriage with Molly, as true as your loyalty to
+me. I was told of it all this morning at the Haute Gomme by a man I can
+rely upon, a really good fellow, who would not leave me in the dark
+about my sister's danger when all the smoking-rooms in Pall Mall were
+sniggering about it. My first impulse was to take the train for Cowes;
+but then I knew if I went alone I should let my temper get the better of
+me. I should knock somebody down--throw somebody out of the window--make
+a devil of a scene. And this would be fatal for Lesbia. I wanted your
+counsel, your cool head, your steady common-sense. "Not a step forward
+without Jack," I said to myself, so I bolted off and sent that telegram.
+It relieved my feeling a little, but I've had a wretched day.'
+
+'Waiter, bring me a Bradshaw, or an A B C,' said Lord Hartfield.
+
+He had eaten nothing but a biscuit since breakfast, but he was ready to
+go off at once, supperless, if there were a train to carry him.
+Unluckily there was no train. The mail had started. Nothing till seven
+o'clock next morning.
+
+'Eat your supper, old fellow,' said Maulevrier. 'After all, the danger
+may not be so desperate as I fancied this morning. Slander is the
+favourite amusement of the age we live in. We must allow a margin for
+exaggeration.'
+
+'A very liberal margin,' answered Hartfield. 'No doubt the man who
+warned you meant honestly, but this scandal may have grown out of the
+merest trifles. The feebleness of the Masher's brain is only exceeded by
+the foulness of the Masher's tongue. I daresay this rumour about Lady
+Lesbia has its beginning and end among the Masher species.'
+
+'I hope so, but--I have seen those two together--I met them at Victoria
+one evening after Goodwood. Old Kirkbank was shuffling on ahead,
+carrying Smithson with her, absorbing his attention by fussification
+about her carriage. Lesbia and that Cuban devil were in the rear. They
+looked as if they had all the world to themselves. Faust and Marguerite
+in the garden were not in it for the expression of intense absorbing
+feeling compared with those two. I'm not an intellectual party, but I
+know something of human nature, and I know when a man and woman are in
+love with each other. It is one of the things that never has been, that
+never can be hidden.'
+
+'And you say this Montesma is a dangerous man?'
+
+'Deadly.'
+
+'Well, we must lose no time. When we are on the spot it will be easy to
+find out the truth; and it will be your duty, if there be danger, to
+warn Lesbia and her future husband.
+
+'I would much rather shoot the Cuban,' said Maulevrier. 'I never knew
+much good come of a warning in such a case: it generally precipitates
+matters. If I could play _écarté_ with him at the club, find him
+sporting an extra king, throw my cards in his face, and accept his
+challenge for an exchange of shots on the sands beyond Cherbourg--there
+would be something like satisfaction.'
+
+'You say the man is a gambler?'
+
+'Report says something worse of him. Report says he is a cheat.'
+
+'We must not be dependent upon society gossip,' replied Lord Hartfield.
+'I have an idea, Maulevrier. The more we know about this man--Montesma,
+I think you called him----'
+
+'Gomez de Montesma.'
+
+'The more fully we are acquainted with Don Gomez de Montesma's
+antecedents the better we shall be able to cope with him, if we come to
+handy-grips. It's too late to start for Cowes, but it is not too late to
+do something. Fitzpatrick, the political-economist, spent a quarter of a
+century in South America. He is a very old friend--knew my father--and I
+can venture to knock at his door after midnight--all the more as I know
+he is a night-worker. He is very likely to enlighten us about your Cuban
+hidalgo.'
+
+'You shall finish your supper before I let you stir. After that you may
+do what you like. I was always a child in your hands, Jack, whether it
+was climbing a mountain or crossing the Horse-shoe Fall. I consider the
+business in your hands now. I'll go with you wherever you like, and do
+what you tell me. When you want me to kick anybody, or fight anybody,
+you can give me the office and I'll do it. I know that Lesbia's
+interests are safe in your hands. You once cared very much for her. You
+are her brother-in-law now, and, next to me, you are her natural
+protector, taking into account that her future husband is a cad and
+doesn't score.'
+
+'Meet me at Waterloo at ten minutes to seven to-morrow morning, and
+we'll go down to Cowes together. I'm off to find Fitzpatrick. Good
+night.'
+
+So they parted. Lord Hartfield walked across the Park to Great George
+Street, where Mr. Fitzpatrick had chambers of a semi-official character,
+on the first floor of a solemn-looking old house, spacious, gloomy
+without and within, walls sombre with the subdued colouring of
+decorations half a century old.
+
+The lighted windows of those first-floor rooms told Lord Hartfield that
+he was not too late. He rang the bell, which was answered with the
+briefest delay by a sleepy-looking clerk, who had been taking shorthand
+notes for Mr. Fitzpatrick's great book upon 'Protection _versus_ Free
+Trade.' The clerk looked sleepy, but his employer had as brisk an air as
+if he were just beginning the day; although he had been working without
+intermission since nine o'clock that evening, and had done a long day's
+work before dinner. He was walking up and down the spacious unluxurious
+room, half office, half library, smoking a cigar. Upon a large table in
+the centre of the room stood two powerful reading lamps with green
+shades, illuminating a chaotic mass of books and pamphlets, heaped and
+scattered all over the table, save just on that spot between the two
+lamps, which accommodated Mr. Fitzpatrick's blotting pad and inkpot, a
+pewter inkpot which held about a pint.
+
+'How d'ye do, Hartfield? Glad you've looked me up at last,' said the
+Irishman, as if a midnight call were the most natural thing in the
+world. 'Just come from the House?'
+
+'No; I've just come from Westmoreland. I thought I should find you among
+those everlasting books of yours, late as it is. Can I have a few words
+alone with you?'
+
+'Certainly. Morgan, you can go away for a bit.'
+
+'Home, sir?'
+
+'Home--well--yes, I suppose it's late. You look sleepy. I should have
+been glad to finish the chapter on Beetroot Sugar to-night--but it may
+stand over for the morning. Be sure you're early.'
+
+'Yes, sir,' the clerk responded with a faint sigh.
+
+He was paid handsomely for late hours, liberally rewarded for his
+shorthand services; and yet he wished the great Fitzpatrick had not been
+quite so industrious.
+
+'Now, my dear Hartfield, what can I do for you?' asked Fitzpatrick, when
+the clerk had gone. 'I can see by your face that you've something
+serious in hand. Can I help you?'
+
+'You can, I believe, in a very material way. You were five-and-twenty
+years in Spanish America?'
+
+'Rather more than less.'
+
+'Here, there, and everywhere?'
+
+'Yes; there is _not_ a city in South America that I have not lived
+in--for something between a day and a year.'
+
+'You know something about most men of any mark in that part of the
+world, I conclude?'
+
+'It was my business to know men of all kinds. I had my mission from the
+Spanish Government. I was engaged to examine the condition of commerce
+throughout the colony, the working of protection as against free trade,
+and so on. Strange, by-the-bye, that Cuba, the last place to foster the
+slave trade, was of all spots of the earth the first to carry free-trade
+principles into practical effect, long before they were recognised in
+any European country.'
+
+'Strange to me that you should speak of Cuba so soon after my coming
+in,' answered Lord Hartfield. 'I am here to ask you to help me to find
+out the antecedents of a man who hails from that island.'
+
+'I ought to know something about him, whoever he is,' replied Mr.
+Fitzpatrick, briskly. 'I spent six months in Cuba not very long before
+my return to England. Cuba is one of my freshest memories; and I have a
+pretty tight memory for facts, names and figures. Never could remember
+two lines of poetry in my life.'
+
+'Did you ever hear of, or meet with, a man called Montesma--Gomez de
+Montesma?'
+
+'Couldn't have stopped a month in Havana without hearing something about
+that gentleman,' answered Fitzpatrick, 'I hope he isn't a friend of
+yours, and that you have not lent him money?'
+
+'Neither; but I want to know all you can tell me about him.'
+
+'You shall have it in black and white, out of my Cuban note-book,'
+replied the other, unlocking a drawer in the official table; 'I always
+take notes of anything worth recording, on the spot. A man is a fool who
+trusts to memory, where personal character is at stake. Montesma is as
+well known at Havana as the Morro Fort or the Tacon Theatre. I have
+heard stories enough about him to fill a big volume; but all the facts
+recorded there'--striking the morocco cover of the note-book--'have been
+thoroughly sifted; I can vouch for them.'
+
+He looked at the index, found the page, and handed the book to Lord
+Hartfield.
+
+'Read for yourself,' he said, quietly.
+
+Lord Hartfield read three or four pages of plain statement as to various
+adventures by sea and land in which Gomez de Montesma had figured, and
+the reputation which he bore in Cuba and on the Main.
+
+'You can vouch for this?' he said at last, after a long silence.
+
+'For every syllable.'
+
+'The story of his marriage?'
+
+'Gospel truth: I knew the lady.'
+
+'And the rest?'
+
+'All true.'
+
+'A thousand thanks. I know now upon what ground I stand. I have to save
+an innocent, high-bred girl from the clutches of a consummate
+scoundrel.'
+
+'Shoot him, and shoot her, too, if there's no better way of saving her.
+It will be an act of mercy,' said Mr. Fitzpatrick, without hesitation.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII.
+
+'SHALL IT BE?'
+
+
+While Lord Hartfield sat in his friend's office in Great George Street
+reading the life story of Gomez de Montesma, told with the cruel
+precision and the unvarnished language of a criminal indictment, the
+hero of that history was gliding round the spacious ballroom of the
+Cowes Club, with Lady Lesbia Haselden's dark-brown head almost reclining
+on his shoulder, her violet eyes looking up at his every now and then,
+shyly, entrancingly, as he bent his head to talk to her.
+
+The Squadron Ball was in full swing between midnight and the first hour
+of morning. The flowers had not lost their freshness, the odours of dust
+and feverish human breath had not yet polluted the atmosphere. The
+windows were open to the purple night, the purple sea. The stars seemed
+to be close outside the verandah, shining on purpose for the dancers;
+and these two--the man tall, pale, dark, with flashing eyes and short,
+sleek raven hair, small head, noble bearing; the girl divinely lovely in
+her marble purity of complexion, her classical grace of form--these two
+were, as every one avowed and acknowledged, the handsomest couple in the
+room.
+
+'We're none of us in it compared with them,' said a young naval
+commander to his partner, whereupon the young lady looked somewhat
+sourly, and replied that Lady Lesbia's features were undeniably regular
+and her complexion good, but that she was wanting in soul.
+
+'Is she?' asked the sailor, incredulously, 'Look at her now. What do you
+call that, if it isn't soul?'
+
+'I call it simply disgraceful,' answered his partner, sharply turning
+away her head.
+
+Lesbia was looking up at the Spaniard, her lips faintly parted, all her
+face listening eagerly as she caught some whispered word, breathed among
+the soft ripples of her hair, from lips that almost touched her brow.
+People cannot go on waltzing for ten minutes in a dead silence, like
+automatic dancers. There must be conversation. Only it is better that
+the lips should do most of the talking. When the eyes have so much to
+say society is apt to be censorious.
+
+Mr. Smithson was smoking a cigarette on the lawn with a sporting peer. A
+man to whom tobacco is a necessity cannot be always on guard; but it is
+quite possible that in the present state of Lady Lesbia's feelings
+Smithson would have had no restraining influence had he been ever so
+watchful. To what act in the passion drama had her love come to-night as
+she floated round the room, with her head inclined towards her lover's
+breast, the strong pulsation of his heart sounding in her ear, like the
+rhythmical beat of the basses yonder in Waldteufel's last waltz? Was
+there still the uncertainty as to the _dénouement_ which marks the third
+act of a good play? or was there the dread foreboding, the sense of
+impending doom which should stir the spectators with pity and terror as
+the fourth act hurries to its passionate close? Who could tell? She had
+been full of life and energy to-day on board the yacht during the
+racing, in which she seemed to take an ardent interest. The _Cayman_ had
+followed the racers for three hours through a freshening sea, much to
+Lady Kirkbank's disgust, and Lesbia had been the soul of the party.
+The same yesterday. The yacht had only got back to Cowes in time for the
+ball, and all had been hurry and excitement while the ladies dressed and
+crossed to the club, the spray dashing over their opera mantles, poor
+Lady Kirkbank's complexion yellow with _mal de mer_, in spite of a
+double coating of _Blanc de Fedora_, the last fashionable cosmetic.
+
+To-night Lesbia was curiously silent, depressed even, as it seemed to
+those who were interested in observing her; and all the world is
+interested in a famous beauty. She was very pale, even her lips were
+colourless, and the large violet eyes and firmly pencilled brows alone
+gave colour to her face. She looked like a marble statue, the eyes and
+eyebrows accentuated with touches of colour. Those lovely eyes had a
+heavy look, as of trouble, weariness; nay, absolute distress.
+
+Never had she looked less brilliant than to-night; never had she looked
+more beautiful. It was the loveliness of a newly-awakened soul. The
+wonderful Pandora-casket of life, with its infinite evil, its little
+good, had given up its secret. She knew what passionate love really
+means. She knew what such love mostly means--self-sacrifice, surrender
+of the world's wealth, severance from friends, the breaking of all old
+ties. To love as she loved means the crossing of a river more fatal than
+the Rubicon, the casting of a die more desperate than that which Cæsar
+flung upon the board when he took up arms against the Republic.
+
+The river was not yet crossed, but her feet were on the margin, wet with
+the ripple of the stream. The fatal die was not yet cast, but the
+dice-box was in her hand ready for the throw. Lesbia and Montesma danced
+together--not too often, three waltzes out of sixteen--but when they
+were so waltzing they were the cynosure of the room. That betting of
+which Maulevrier had heard was rife to-night, and the odds upon the
+Cuban had gone up. It was nine to four now that those two would be over
+the border before the week was out.
+
+Mr. Smithson was not neglectful of his affianced. He took her into the
+supper-room, where she drank some Moselle cup, but ate nothing. He sat
+out three or four waltzes with her on the lawn, listening to the murmer
+of the sea, and talking very little.
+
+'You are looking wretchedly ill to-night, Lesbia,' he said, after a
+dismal silence.
+
+'I am sorry that I should put you to shame by my bad looks,' she
+answered, with that keen acidity of tone which indicates irritated
+nerves.
+
+'You know that I don't mean anything of the kind; you are always lovely,
+always the loveliest everywhere; but I don't like to see you so ghastly
+pale.'
+
+'I suppose I am over-fatigued: that I have done too much in London and
+here. Life in Westmoreland was very different,' she added, with a sigh,
+and a touch of wonder that the Lesbia Haselden, whose methodical life
+had never been stirred by a ruffle of passion, could have been the same
+flesh and blood--yes, verily, the same woman, whose heart throbbed so
+vehemently to-night, whose brain seemed on fire.
+
+'Are you sure there is nothing the matter?' he asked, with a faint
+quiver in his voice.
+
+'What should there be the matter?'
+
+'Who can say? God knows that I know no cause for evil. I am honest
+enough, and faithful enough, Lesbia. But your face to-night is like a
+presage of calamity, like the dull, livid sky that goes before a
+thunderstorm.'
+
+'I hope there is no thunderbolt coming,' she answered, lightly. 'What
+very tall talk about a headache, for really that is all that ails me.
+Hark, they have begun "My Queen." I am engaged for this waltz.'
+
+'I am sorry for that.'
+
+'So am I. I would ever so much rather have stayed out here.'
+
+Two hours later, in the steely morning light, when sea and land and sky
+had a metallic look as if lit by electricity, Lady Lesbia stood with her
+chaperon and her affianced husband on the landing stage belonging to the
+club, ready to step into the boat in which six swarthy seamen in red
+shirts and caps were to row them back to the yacht. Mr. Smithson drew
+the warm _sortie de bal_, with its gold-coloured satin lining and white
+fox border, closer round Lesbia's slender form.
+
+'You are shivering,' he said; 'you ought to have warmer wraps.
+
+'This is warm enough for St. Petersburg. I am only tired--very tired.'
+
+'The _Cayman_ will rock you to sleep.'
+
+Don Gomez was standing close by, waiting for his host. The two men were
+to walk up the hill to Formosa, a village with a classic portico,
+delightfully situated above the town.
+
+'What time are we to come to breakfast? asked Mr. Smithson.
+
+'Not too early, in mercy's name. Two o'clock in the afternoon, three,
+four;--why not make it five--combine breakfast with afternoon tea,'
+exclaimed Lady Kirkbank, with a tremendous yawn. 'I never was so
+thoroughly fagged; I feel as if I had been beaten with sticks,
+basti--what's its name.'
+
+She was leaning all her weight upon Mr. Smithson, as he handed her down
+the steps and into the boat. Her normal weight was not a trifle, and
+this morning she was heavy with champagne and sleep. Carefully as
+Smithson supported her she gave a lurch at the bottom of the steps, and
+plunged ponderously into the boat, which dipped and careened under her,
+whereat she shrieked, and implored Mr. Smithson to save her.
+
+All this occupied some minutes, and gave Lesbia and the Cuban just
+time for a few words that had to be said somehow.
+
+'Good-night,' said Montesma, as they clasped hands; 'good-night;' and
+then in a lower voice he said, 'Well, have you decided at last? Shall it
+be?'
+
+She looked at him for a moment or so, pale in the starlight, and then
+murmured an almost inaudible syllable.
+
+'Yes.'
+
+He bent quickly and pressed his lips upon her gloved hand, and when Mr.
+Smithson looked round they two were standing apart, Montesma in a
+listless attitude, as if tired of waiting for his host.
+
+It was Smithson who handed Lesbia into the boat and arranged her wraps,
+and hung over her tenderly as he performed those small offices.
+
+'Now really,' he asked, just before the boat put off, 'when are we to be
+with you to-morrow?'
+
+'Lady Kirkbank says not till afternoon tea, but I think you may come a
+few hours earlier. I am not at all sleepy.'
+
+'You look as if you needed sleep badly,' answered Smithson. 'I'm afraid
+you are not half careful enough of yourself. Good-night.'
+
+The boat was gliding off, the oars dipping, as he spoke. How swiftly it
+shot from his ken, flashing in and out among the yachts, where the lamps
+were burning dimly in that clear radiance of new-born day.
+
+Montesma gave a tremendous yawn as he took out his cigar-case, and he
+and Mr. Smithson did not say twenty words between them during the walk
+to Formosa, where servants were sitting up, lamps burning, a great
+silver tray, with brandy, soda, liqueurs, coffee, in readiness.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIII.
+
+'ALAS, FOR SORROW IS ALL THE END OF THIS'
+
+
+Lady Kirkbank retired to her cabin directly she got on board the
+_Cayman_.
+
+'Good-night, child! I am more than half asleep,' she said; 'and I think
+if there were to be an earthquake an hour hence I should hardly hear it.
+Go to your berth directly, Lesbia; you look positively awful. I have
+seen girls look bad after balls before now, but I never saw such a
+spectre as you look this morning.'
+
+Poor Georgie's own complexion left something to be desired. The _Blanc
+de Fedora_ had been a brilliant success for the first two hours: after
+that the warm room began to tell upon it, and there came a greasiness,
+then a streakiness, and now all that was left of an alabaster skin was a
+livid patch of purplish paint here and there, upon a crow's-foot ground.
+The eyebrows, too, had given in, and narrow lines of Vandyke brown
+meandered down Lady Kirkbank's cheeks. The frizzy hair had gone
+altogether wrong, and had a wild look, suggestive of the witches in
+Macbeth, and the scraggy neck and poor old shoulders showed every year
+of their age in the ghastly morning light.
+
+Lesbia waited in the saloon till Lady Kirkbank had bolted herself into
+her cabin, and then she went up to the deck wrapped in her satin-lined,
+fur-bordered cloak, and coiled herself in a bamboo arm-chair, and
+nestled her bare head into a Turkish pillow, and tried to sleep, there
+with the cool morning breeze blowing upon her burning forehead, and the
+plish-plash of seawater soothing her ear.
+
+There were only three or four sailors on deck, weird, almost
+diabolical-looking creatures, Lesbia thought, in striped shirts, with
+bare arms, of a shining bronze complexion, flashing black eyes, sleek
+raven hair, a sinister look. What species of men they were--Mestizoes,
+Coolies, Yucatekes--she knew not, but she felt that they were something
+wild and strange, and their presence filled her with a vague fear. _He_,
+whose influence now ruled her life, had told her that these men were
+born mariners, and that she was twenty times safer with them than when
+the yacht had been under the control of those honest, grinning
+red-whiskered English Jack Tars. But she liked the English sailors best,
+all the same; and she shrank from the faintest contact with these
+tawny-visaged strangers, plucking away the train of her gown as they
+passed her chair, lest they should brush against her drapery.
+
+On deck this morning, with only those dark faces near, she had a sense
+of loneliness, of helplessness, of abandonment even. Unbidden the image
+of her home at Grasmere flashed into her mind--all things so calm, so
+perfectly ordered, such a sense of safety, of home--no peril, no
+temptation, no fever--only peace: and she had grown sick to death of
+peace. She had prayed for tempest: and the tempest had come.
+
+There was a heavenly quiet in the air in the early summer morning, only
+the creaking of a spar, the scream of a seagull now and then. How pale
+the lamps were growing on board the yachts. Paler still, yellow, and
+dim, and blurred yonder in the town. The eastward facing windows were
+golden with the rising sun. Yes, this was morning. The yachts were
+moving away yonder, majestical, swan-like, white sails shining against
+the blue.
+
+She closed her eyes, and tried to sleep; but sleep would not come. She
+was always listening--listening for the dip of oars, listening for a
+snatch of melody from a mellow baritone whose every accent she knew so
+well.
+
+It came at last, the sound her soul longed for. She lay among her
+cushions with closed eyes, listening, drinking in those rich ripe notes
+as they came nearer and nearer, to the measure of dipping oars, _'La
+donna e mobile--'_
+
+Nearer and nearer, until the little boat ground against the hull. She
+lifted her heavy eyelids as Montesma leapt over the gunwale, almost into
+her arms. He was at her side, kneeling by her low chair, kissing the
+little hands, chill with the freshness of morning.
+
+'My own, my very own,' he murmured, passionately.
+
+He cared no more for those copper-faced Helots yonder than if they had
+been made of wood. He had fate in his own hands now, as it seemed to
+him. He went to the skipper and gave him some orders in Spanish, and
+then the sails were unfurled, the _Cayman_ spread her broad white wings,
+and moved off among those other yachts which were gliding, gliding,
+gliding out to sea, melting from Cowes Roads like a vision that fadeth
+with the broad light of morning.
+
+When the sails were up and the yacht was running merrily through the
+water, Montesma went back to Lady Lesbia, and they two sat side by side,
+gilded and glorified in the vivid lights of sunrise, talking as they had
+never talked before, her head upon his shoulder, a smile of ineffable
+peace upon her lips, as of a weary child that has found rest.
+
+They were sailing for Havre, and at Havre they were to be married by the
+English chaplain, and from Havre they were to sail for the Havana, and
+to live there ever afterwards in a fairy-tale dream of bliss, broken
+only by an annual visit to Paris, just to buy gowns and bonnets.
+Surrendered were all Lesbia's ambitious hopes--forgotten--gone; her
+desire to reign princess paramount in the kingdom of fashion--her thirst
+to be wealthiest among the wealthy--gone--forgotten. Her dreams now were
+of the _dolce far niente_ of a tropical climate, a boudoir giving on the
+Caribbean sea, cigarettes, coffee, nights spent in a foreign opera
+house, the languid, reposeful existence of a Spanish dama--with him,
+with him. It was for his sake that she had modified all her ideas of
+life. To be with him she would have been content to dwell in the tents
+of the Patagonians, on the wild and snow-clad Pampas. A love which was
+strong enough to make her sacrifice duty, the world, her fair fame as a
+well-bred woman, was a love that recked but little of the paths along
+which her lover's hand was to lead. For him, to be with him, she
+renounced the world. The rest did not count.
+
+The summer hours glided past them. The _Cayman_ was far out at sea; all
+the other yachts had vanished, and they were alone amidst the blue,
+with only a solitary three-master yonder, on the edge of the horizon.
+More than once Lesbia had talked of going below to change her ball gown
+for the attire of everyday life; but each time her lover had detained
+her a little longer, had pleaded for a few more words. Lady Kirkbank
+would be astir presently, and there would be no more solitude for them
+till they were married, and could shake her off altogether. So Lesbia
+stayed, and those two drank the cup of bliss, hushed by the monotonous
+sing-song of the sea, the rhythm of the swinging sails. But now it was
+broad morning. The hour when society, however late it may keep its
+revels overnight, is apt to awaken, were it only to call for a cup of
+strong tea and to turn again on the pillow of lassitude, after that
+refreshment, like the sluggard of Holy Writ. At ten o'clock the sun sent
+his golden arrows across the silken coverlet of her berth and awakened
+Lady Kirkbank, who opened her eyes and looked about languidly. The
+little cabin was heaving itself up and down in a curious way; Mr.
+Smithson's cigar-cases were sloping as if they were going to fall upon
+Lady Kirkbank's couch, and the looking-glass, with all its dainty
+appliances, was making an angle of forty-five degrees. There was more
+swirling and washing of water against the hull than ever Georgie
+Kirkbank had heard in Cowes Roads.
+
+'Mercy on me! this horrid thing must be moving,' she exclaimed to the
+empty air. 'It must have broken loose in the night.'
+
+She had no confidence in those savage-looking sailors, and she had a
+vision of the yacht drifting at the mercy of winds and waves, drifting
+for days, weeks, and months; drifting to the German Ocean, drifting to
+the North Pole. Mr. Smithson and Montesma on shore--no one on board to
+exercise authority over those fearful men.
+
+Perhaps they had mutinied, and were carrying off the yacht as their
+booty, with Lesbia and her chaperon, and all their gowns.
+
+'I am almost glad that harpy Seraphine has my diamonds,' thought poor
+Georgie, 'or I should have had them with me on board this hateful boat.'
+
+And then she rapped vehemently against the panel of the cabin, and
+screamed for Rilboche, whose den was adjacent.
+
+Rilboche, who detested the sea, made her appearance after some delay,
+looking even greener than her mistress, who, in rising from her berth,
+already began to suffer the agonies of sea-sickness.
+
+'What does this mean?' exclaimed Lady Kirkbank; 'and where are we
+going?'
+
+'That's what I should like to know, my lady. But I daresay Lady Lesbia
+and Mr. Montesma can tell you. They are both on deck.'
+
+'Montesma! Why, we left him on shore!'
+
+'Yes, my lady, but he came on board at five o'clock this morning. I
+looked at my watch when I heard him land, and he and Lady Lesbia have
+been sitting on deck ever since.'
+
+'And now it is ten. Five hours on deck--impossible!'
+
+'Time doesn't seem long when one is happy, my lady,' murmured Rilboche,
+in her own language.
+
+'Help me to dress this instant,' screamed her mistress: 'that dreadful
+Spaniard is eloping with us.'
+
+Despite the hideous depression of that malady which strikes down Kaiser
+and beggar with the same rough hand, Lady Kirkbank contrived to get
+herself dressed decently, and to stagger up the companion to that part
+of the deck where the Persian carpet was spread, and the bamboo chairs
+and tables were set out under the striped awning. Lesbia and her lover
+were sitting together, he giving her a first lesson in the art of
+smoking a cigarette. He had told her playfully that every man, woman,
+and child in Cuba was a smoker, and she had besought him to let her
+begin, and now, with infinite coquetry, was taking her first lesson.
+
+'You shameless minx!' exclaimed Georgie, pale with anger.
+
+'Where is Smithson--my poor, good Smithson?'
+
+'Fast asleep in his bed at Formosa, I hope, dear Lady Kirkbank,' the
+Cuban answered, with perfect _sang froid_. 'Smithson is out of it, as
+you idiomatic English say. I hope, Lady Kirkbank, you will be as kind to
+me as you have been to Smithson; and depend upon it I shall make Lady
+Lesbia as good a husband as ever Smithson could have done.'
+
+'You!' exclaimed the matron, contemptuously. 'You!--a foreigner, an
+adventurer, who may be as poor as Job, for anything I know about you.'
+
+'Job was once rather comfortably off, Lady Kirkbank; and I can answer
+for it that Montesma's wife will know none of the pangs of poverty.'
+
+'If you were a beggar I would not care,' said Lesbia, drawing nearer to
+him.
+
+They had both risen at Lady Kirkbank's approach, and were standing side
+by side, confronting her. Lesbia had shrunk from the idea of poverty
+with John Hammond; yet, for this man's sake, she was ready to face
+penury, ruin, disgrace, anything.
+
+'Do you mean to tell me that Lord Maulevrier's sister, a young lady
+under my charge, answerable to me for her conduct, is capable of jilting
+the man to whom she has solemnly bound herself, in order to marry you?'
+demanded Lady Kirkbank, turning to Montesma.
+
+'Yes; that is what I am going to do,' answered Lesbia, boldly. 'It would
+be a greater sin to keep my promise than to break it. I never liked that
+man, and you know it. You badgered me into accepting him, against my own
+better judgment. You drifted me so deeply into debt that I was willing
+to marry a man I loathed in order to get my debts paid. _This_ is what
+you did for the girl placed under your charge. But, thank God, I have
+released myself from your clutches. I am going far away to a new world,
+where the memory of my old life cannot follow me. People may be angry or
+pleased! I do not care. I shall be the wife of the man I have chosen out
+of all the world for my husband--the man God made to be my master.'
+
+'You are----' gasped Lady Kirkbank. 'I can't say what you are. I never
+in my life felt so tempted to use improper language.'
+
+'Dear Lady Kirkbank, be reasonable,' pleaded Montesma; 'you can have no
+interest in seeing Lesbia married to a man she dislikes.'
+
+Georgia reddened a little, remembering that she was interested to the
+amount of some thousands in the Smithson and Haselden alliance; but she
+took a higher ground than mercenary considerations.
+
+'I am interested in doing the very best for a young lady who has been
+entrusted to my care, the granddaughter of an old friend,' she answered,
+with dignity. 'I have no objection to you in the abstract, Don Gomez.
+You have always been vastly civil, I am sure----'
+
+'Stand by us in our day of need, Lady Kirkbank, and you will find me the
+staunchest friend you ever had.'
+
+'I am bound in honour to consider Mr. Smithson, Lesbia,' said Lady
+Kirkbank. 'I wonder that a decently-brought up girl can behave so
+abominably.'
+
+'It would be more abominable to marry a man I detest. I have made up my
+mind, Lady Kirkbank. We shall be at Havre to-morrow morning, and we
+shall be married to-morrow--shall we not, Gomez?'
+
+She let her head sink upon his breast, and his arm enfold her. Thus
+sheltered, she felt safe, thus and thus only. She had thrown her cap
+over the mills; snapped her fingers at society; cared not a jot what the
+world might think or say of her. This man would she marry and no other;
+this man's fortune would she follow for good or evil. He had that kind
+of influence with women which is almost 'possession.' It smells of
+brimstone.
+
+'Come, my dear good soul,' said Montesma, smiling at the angry matron,
+'why not take things quietly? You have had a good many girls under your
+wing; and you must know that youth and maturity see life from a
+different standpoint. In your eyes my old friend Smithson is an
+admirable match. You measure him by his houses, his stable, his banker's
+book; but Lesbia would rather marry the man she loves, and take the
+risks of his fate. I am not a pauper, Lady Kirkbank, and the home to
+which I shall take my love is pretty enough for a princess of the blood
+royal, and for her sake I shall grow richer yet,' he added, with his
+eyes kindling; 'and if you care to pay us a visit next February in our
+Parisian apartment I will promise you as pleasant a nest as you can wish
+to occupy.'
+
+'How do I know that you will ever bring her back to Europe?' said Lady
+Kirkbank, piteously. 'How do I know that you will not bury her alive in
+your savage country, among blackamoors, like those horrid sailors, over
+there--kill her, perhaps, when you are tired of her?'
+
+At these words of Lady Kirkbank's, flung out at random, Montesma
+blanched, and his deep black eye met hers with a strangely sinister
+look.
+
+'Yes,' she cried, hysterically--'kill her, kill her! You look as if you
+could do it.'
+
+Lesbia nestled closer to her lover's heart.
+
+'How dare you say such things to him,' she cried, angrily. '_I_ trust
+him, don't you see; trust him with my whole heart, with all my soul. I
+shall be his wife to-morrow, for good or evil.'
+
+'Very much for evil, I'm afraid,' said Lady Kirkbank. 'Perhaps you will
+be kind enough to come to your cabin and take off that ball gown, and
+make yourself just a little less disreputable in outward appearance,
+while I get a cup of tea.'
+
+Lesbia obeyed, and went down to her cabin, where Kibble was waiting with
+a fresh white muslin frock and all its belongings, laid out ready for
+her mistress, sorely perplexed at the turn which affairs were taking.
+She had never liked Horace Smithson, although he had given her tips
+which were almost a provision for her old age; but she had thought it a
+good thing that her mistress, who was frightfully extravagant, should
+marry a millionaire; and now they were sailing over the sea with a lot
+of coloured sailors, and the millionaire was left on shore.
+
+Lady Kirkbank went into the saloon, where breakfast was laid ready, and
+where the steward was in attendance with that air of being absolutely
+unconscious of any domestic disturbance, which is the mark of a
+well-trained servant.
+
+Lesbia appeared in something less than an hour, newly dressed and fresh
+looking, in her pure white gown, her brown hair bound in a coronet round
+her small Greek head. She sat down by Lady Kirkbank's side, and tried to
+coax her into good humour.
+
+'Why can't you take things pleasantly, dear?' she pleaded. 'Do now, like
+a good soul. You heard him say he was well off, and that he will take me
+to Paris next winter, and you can come to us there on your way from
+Cannes, and stay with us till Easter. It will be so nice when the Prince
+and all the best people are in Paris. We shall only stay in Cuba till
+the fuss about my running away is all over, and people have forgotten,
+don't you know. As for Mr. Smithson, why should I have any more
+compunction about jilting him than he had about that poor Miss Trinder?
+By-the-bye, I want you to send him back all his presents for me. They
+are almost all in Arlington Street. I brought nothing with me except my
+engagement ring,' looking down at the half-hoop of diamonds, and pulling
+it off her fingers as she talked. 'I had a kind of presentiment----'
+
+'You mean that you had made up your mind to throw him over.'
+
+'No. But I felt there were breakers ahead. It might have come to
+throwing myself into the sea. Perhaps you would have liked that better
+than what has happened.'
+
+'I don't know, I'm sure. The whole thing is disgraceful. London will
+ring with the scandal. What am I to say to Lady Maulevrier, to your
+brother? And pray how do you propose to get married at Havre? You cannot
+be married in a French town by merely holding up your finger. There are
+no registry offices. I am sure I have no idea how the thing is done.'
+
+'Don Gomez has arranged all that--everything has been thought
+of--everything has been planned. A steamer will take us to St. Thomas,
+and another steamer will take us on to Cuba.'
+
+'But the marriage--the licence?'
+
+'I tell you everything has been provided for. Please take this ring and
+send it to Mr. Smithson when you go back to England.'
+
+'Send it to him yourself. I will have nothing to do with it.'
+
+'How dreadfully disagreeable you are,' said Lesbia, pouting, 'just
+because I am marrying to please myself, instead of to please you. It is
+frightfully selfish of you.'
+
+Montesma came in at this moment. He, too, had dressed himself freshly,
+and was looking his handsomest, in that buccaneer style of costume which
+he wore when he sailed the yacht. He and Lesbia breakfasted at their
+ease, while Lady Kirkbank reclined in her bamboo arm-chair, feeling very
+unhappy in her mind and far from well. Neptune and she could not
+accommodate themselves.
+
+After a leisurely breakfast, enlivened by talk and laughter, the cabin
+windows open, the sun shining, the freshening breeze blowing in, Lesbia
+and Don Gomez went on deck, and he reclined at her feet while she read
+to him from the pages of her favourite Keats, read languidly, lazily,
+yet exquisitely, for she had been taught to read as well as to sing. The
+poetry seemed to have been written on purpose for them; and the sky and
+the atmosphere around them seemed to have been made for the poetry. And
+so, with intervals of strolling on the deck, and an hour or so dawdled
+away at luncheon, and a leisurely afternoon tea, the day wore on to
+sunset, and they went back to Keats, while Lady Kirkbank sulked and
+slept in a corner of the saloon.
+
+'This is the happiest day of my life,' Lesbia murmured, in a pause of
+their reading, when they had dropped Endymion's love to talk of their
+own.
+
+'But not of mine, my angel. I shall be happier still when we are far
+away on broader waters, beyond the reach of all who can part us.'
+
+'Can any one part us, Gomez, now that we have pledged ourselves to each
+other?' she asked, incredulously.
+
+'Ah, love, such pledges are sometimes broken. All women are not
+lion-hearted. While the sea is smooth and the ship runs fair, all is
+easy enough; but when tempest and peril come--that is the test, Lesbia.
+Will you stand by me in the tempest, love?'
+
+'You know that I will,' she answered, with her hand locked in his two
+hands, clasped as with a life-long clasp.
+
+She could not imagine any severe ordeal to be gone through. If
+Maulevrier heard of her elopement in time for pursuit, there would be a
+fuss, perhaps--an angry bother raging and fuming. But what of that? She
+was her own mistress. Maulevrier could not prevent her marrying
+whomsoever she pleased.
+
+'Swear that you will hold to me against all the world,' he said,
+passionately, turning his head to look across the stern of the vessel.
+
+'Against all the world,' she answered, softly.
+
+'I believe your courage will be tested before long,' he said; and then
+he cried to the skipper, 'Crowd on all sail, Tomaso. That boat is
+chasing us.'
+
+Lesbia sprang to her feet, looking as he looked to a spot of vivid white
+on the horizon. Montesma had snatched up a glass and was watching that
+distant spot.
+
+'It is a steam-yacht,' he said. 'They will catch us.'
+
+He was right. Although the _Cayman_ strained every timber so that her
+keel cut through the water like a boomerang, wind and steam beat wind
+without steam. In less than an hour the steam-yacht was beside the
+_Cayman_, and Lord Maulevrier and Lord Hartfield had boarded Mr.
+Smithson's deck.
+
+'I have come to take you and Lady Kirkbank back to Cowes, Lesbia,' said
+Maulevrier. 'I'm not going to make any undue fuss about this little
+escapade of yours, provided you go back with Hartfield and me at once,
+and pledge yourself never to hold any further communication with Don
+Gomez de Montesma.'
+
+The Spaniard was standing close by, silent, white as death, but ready to
+make a good fight. That pallor of the clear olive skin was not from want
+of pluck; but there was the deadly knowledge of the ground he stood
+upon, the doubt that any woman, least of all such a woman as Lady Lesbia
+Haselden, could be true to him if his character and antecedents were
+revealed to her. And how much or how little these two men could tell her
+about himself or his past life was the question which the next few
+minutes would solve.
+
+'I am not going back with you,' answered Lesbia. 'I am going to Havre
+with Don Gomez de Montesma. We are to be married there as soon as we
+arrive.'
+
+'To be married--at Havre,' cried Maulevrier. 'An appropriate place. A
+sailor has a wife in every port, don't you know.'
+
+'We had better go down to the cabin,' said Hartfield, laying his hand
+upon his friend's shoulder. 'If Lady Lesbia will be good enough to come
+with us we can tell her all that we have to tell quietly there.'
+
+Lord Hartfield's tone was unmistakeable. Everything was known.
+
+'You can talk at your ease here,' said Montesma, facing the two men with
+a diabolical recklessness and insolence of manner. 'Not one of these
+fellows on board knows a dozen sentences of English.'
+
+'I would rather talk below, if it is all the same to you, Señor; and I
+should be glad to speak to Lady Lesbia alone.'
+
+'That you shall not do unless she desires it,' answered Montesma.
+
+'No, he shall hear all that you have to say. He shall hear how I answer
+you,' said Lesbia.
+
+Lord Hartfield shrugged his shoulders.
+
+'As you please,' he said. 'It will make the disclosure a little more
+painful than it need have been; but that cannot be helped.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIV.
+
+'OH, SAD KISSED MOUTH, HOW SORROWFUL IT IS!'
+
+
+They all went down to the saloon, where Lady Kirkbank sat, looking the
+image of despair, which changed to delighted surprise at sight of Lord
+Hartfield and his friend.
+
+'Did you give your consent to my sister's elopement with this man, Lady
+Kirkbank?' Maulevrier asked, brusquely.
+
+'I give my consent! Good gracious! no. He has eloped with me ever so
+much more than with your sister. She knew all about it, I've no doubt:
+but the wretch ran away with me in my sleep.'
+
+'I am glad, for your own self-respect, that you had no hand in this
+disgraceful business,' replied Maulevrier; and then turning to Lord
+Hartfield, he said, 'Hartfield, will you tell my sister who and what
+this man is? Will you make her understand what kind of pitfall she has
+escaped? Upon my soul, I cannot speak of it.'
+
+'I recognise no right of Lord Hartfield's to interfere with my actions,
+and I will hear nothing that he may have to say,' said Lesbia, standing
+by her lover's side, with head erect and eyes dark with anger.
+
+'Your sister's husband has the strongest right to control your actions,
+Lady Lesbia, when the family honour is at stake,' answered Hartfield,
+with grave authority. 'Accept me at least as a member of your family, if
+you will not accept me as your disinterested and devoted friend.'
+
+'Friend!' echoed Lesbia, scornfully. 'You might have been my friend
+once. Your friendship then would have been of some value to me, if you
+had told me the truth, instead of approaching me with a lie upon your
+lips. You talk of honour, Lord Hartfield; you, who came to my
+grandmother's house as an impostor, under a false name!'
+
+'I went there as a man standing on his own merits, assuming no rank save
+that which God gave him among his fellow-men, claiming to be possessed
+of no fortune except intellect and industry. If I could not win a wife
+with such credentials, it were better for me never to marry at all, Lady
+Lesbia. But we have no time to speak of the past. I am here as your
+brother's friend, here to save you.'
+
+'To part me from the man to whom I have given my heart. That you cannot
+do. Gomez, why do you not speak? Tell him, tell him!' cried Lesbia, with
+a voice strangled by sobs; 'tell him that I am to be your wife
+to-morrow, at Havre. Your wife!'
+
+'Dear Lady Lesbia, that cannot be,' said Lord Hartfield, sorrowfully,
+pitying her in her helplessness, as he might have pitied a young bird in
+the fowler's net. 'I am assured upon undeniable authority that Señor
+Montesma has a wife living at Cuba; and even were this not so--were he
+free to marry you--his character and antecedents would for ever forbid
+such a marriage.'
+
+'A wife! No, no, no!' shrieked Lesbia, looking wildly from one to the
+other. 'It is a lie--a lie, invented by my brother, who always hated
+me--by you, who fooled and deceived me! It is a lie, an infamous
+invention! Don Gomez, speak to them: for pity's sake answer them! Don't
+you see that they are driving me mad?'
+
+She flung herself into his arms, she buried her dishevelled head upon
+his breast; she clung to him with hands that writhed convulsively in her
+agony.
+
+Maulevrier sprang across the cabin and wrenched her from her lover's
+grasp.
+
+'You shall not pollute her with your touch,' he cried; 'you have
+poisoned her mind already. Scoundrel, seducer, slave-dealer! Do you
+hear, Lesbia? Shall I tell you what this man is--what trade he followed
+yonder, on his native island--this Spanish hidalgo--this
+all-accomplished gentleman--lineal descendant of the Cid--fine flower
+of Andalusian chivalry? It was not enough for him to cheat at cards, to
+float bubble companies, bogus lotteries. His profligate extravagance,
+his love of sybarite luxury, required a larger resource than the petty
+schemes which enrich smaller men. A slave ship, which could earn nearly
+twenty thousand pounds on every voyage, and which could make two runs in
+a year--that was the trade for Don Gomez de Montesma, and he carried it
+on merrily for six or seven years, till the British cruisers got too
+keen for him, and the good old game was played out. You see that scar
+upon the hidalgo's forehead, Lesbia--a token of knightly prowess, you
+think, perhaps. No, my girl, that is the mark of an English cutlass in a
+scuffle on board a slaver. A merry trade, Lesbia--the living cargo
+stowed close under hatches have rather a bad time of it now and
+then--short rations of food and water, yellow Jack. They die like rotten
+sheep sometimes--bad then for the dealer. But if he can land the bulk of
+his human wares safe and sound the profits are enormous. The
+Captain-General takes his capitation fee, the blackies are drafted off
+to the sugar plantations, and everybody is satisfied; but I think,
+Lesbia, that your British prejudices would go against marriage with a
+slave-trader, were he ever so free to make you his wife, which this
+particular dealer in blackamoors is not.'
+
+'Is this true, this part of their vile story?' demanded Lesbia, looking
+at her lover, who stood apart from them all now, his arms folded, his
+face deadly pale, the lower lip quivering under the grinding of his
+strong white teeth.
+
+'There is some truth in it,' he answered, hoarsely. 'Everybody in Cuba
+had a finger in the African trade, before your British philanthropy
+spoiled it. Mr. Smithson made sixty thousand pounds in that line. It was
+the foundation of his fortune. And yet he had his misfortunes in running
+his cargo--a ship burnt, a freight roasted alive. There are some very
+black stories in Cuba against poor Smithson. He will never go there
+again.'
+
+'Mr. Smithson may be a scoundrel; indeed, I believe he is a pretty bad
+specimen in that line,' said Lord Hartfield. 'But I doubt if there is
+any story that can be told of him quite so bad as the history of your
+marriage, and the events that went before it. I have been told the story
+of the beautiful Octoroon, who loved and trusted you, who shared your
+good and evil fortunes for the most desperate years of your life, was
+almost accepted as your wife, and whose strangled corpse was found in
+the harbour while the bells were ringing for your marriage with a rich
+planter's heiress--the lady who, no doubt, now patiently awaits your
+return to her native island.'
+
+'She will wait a long time,' said Montesma, 'or fare ill if I go back to
+her. Lesbia, his lordship's story of the Octoroon is a fable--an
+invention of my Cuban enemies, who hate us old Spaniards with a
+poisonous hatred. But this much is true. I am a married man--bound,
+fettered by a tie which I abhor. Our Havre marriage would have been
+bigamy on my part, a delusion on yours. I could not have taken you to
+Cuba. I had planned our life in a fairer, more civilised world. I am
+rich enough to have surrounded you with all that makes life worth
+living. I would have given you love as true and as deep as ever man gave
+to woman. All that would have been wanting would have been the legality
+of the tie: and as law never yet made a marriage happy which lacked the
+elements of bliss, our lawless union need not have missed happiness.
+Lesbia, you said that you would hold by me, come what might. The worst
+has come, love; but it leaves me not the less your true lover.'
+
+She looked at him with wild despairing eyes, and then, with a hoarse
+strange cry, rushed from the cabin, and up the companion, with a
+desperate swiftness which seemed like the flight of a bird. Montesma,
+Hartfield, Maulevrier, all followed her, heedless of everything except
+the dire necessity of arresting her flight. Each in his own mind had
+divined her purpose.
+
+They were not too late. It was Hartfield's strong arm that caught her,
+held her as in a vice, dragged her away from the edge of the deck, just
+where there was a space open to the waves. Another instant and she would
+have flung herself overboard. She fell back into Lord Hartfield's arms,
+with a wild choking cry: 'Let me go! Let me go!' Another moment, and a
+flood of crimson stained his shirt-front, as she lay upon his breast,
+with closed eyelids and blood-bedabbled lips, in blessed
+unconsciousness.
+
+They carried her on to the steam-yacht, and down to the cabin, where
+there was ample accommodation and some luxury, although not the elegance
+of Bond Street upholstery. Rilboche, Lady Kirkbank, Kibble, luggage of
+all kinds were transferred from one yacht to the other, even to the
+vellum bound Keats which lay face downwards on the deck, just where
+Lesbia had flung it when the _Cayman_ was boarded. The crew of the
+steam-yacht _Philomel_ helped in the transfer: there were plenty of
+hands, and the work was done quickly; while the Meztizoes, Yucatekes,
+Caribs, or whatever they were, looked on and grinned; and while Montesma
+stood leaning against the mast, with folded arms and sombre brow, a
+cigarette between his lips.
+
+When the women and all their belongings were on board the _Philomel_,
+Lord Hartfield addressed himself to Montesma.
+
+'If you consider yourself entitled to call me to account for this
+evening's work you know where to find me,' he said.
+
+Montesma shrugged his shoulders, and threw away his cigarette with a
+contemptuous gesture.
+
+_'Ce n'est pas la peine,'_ he said; 'I am a dead shot, and
+should be pretty sure to send a bullet through you if you gave me
+the chance; but I should not be any nearer winning her if I killed
+you: and it is she and she only that I want. You may think me an
+adventurer--swindler--gambler--slave-dealer--what you will--but I love her
+as I never thought to love a woman, and I should have been true as steel,
+if she had been plucky enough to trust me. But, as I told her an hour ago,
+women have not lion hearts. They can talk tall while the sky is clear and
+the sun shines, but at the first crack of thunder--_va te promener_.'
+
+'If you have killed her--' began Hartfield.
+
+'Killed her! No. Some small bloodvessel burst in the agitation of that
+terrible scene. She will be well in a week, and she will forget me. But
+I shall not forget her. She is the one flower that has sprung on the
+barren plain of my life. She was my Picciola.'
+
+He turned his back on Lord Hartfield and walked to the other end of the
+deck. Something in his face, in the vibration of his deep voice,
+convinced Hartfield of his truth. A bad man undoubtedly--steeped to the
+lips in evil--and yet so far true that he had passionately, deeply,
+devotedly loved this one woman.
+
+It was the dead of night when Lesbia recovered consciousness, and even
+then she lay silent, taking no heed of those around her, in a state of
+utter prostration. Kibble nursed her carefully, tenderly, all through
+the night; Maulevrier hardly left the cabin, and Lady Kirkbank, always
+more or less a victim to the agonies of sea-sickness, still found time
+to utter lamentations and wailings over the ruin of her protégée's
+fortune.
+
+'Never had a girl such a chance,' she moaned. 'Quite the best match in
+society. The house in Park Lane alone cost a fortune. Her diamonds would
+have been the finest in London.'
+
+'They would have been stained with the blood of the niggers he traded in
+out yonder,' answered Maulevrier. 'Do you think I would have let my
+sister marry a slave-dealer?'
+
+'I don't believe a syllable of it,' protested Lady Kirkbank, dabbing her
+brow with a handkerchief steeped in eau de Cologne. 'A vile fabrication
+of Montesma's, who wanted to blacken poor Smithson's character in order
+to extenuate his own crimes.'
+
+'Well, we won't go into that question,' said Maulevrier wearily. 'The
+Smithson match is off, anyhow; and it matters very little to us whether
+he made most money out of niggers or bubble companies, or lotteries or
+gaming hells.'
+
+'I am convinced that Smithson made his fortune in a thoroughly
+gentlemanlike manner,' argued Lady Kirkbank. 'Look at the people who
+visit him, and the houses he goes to. And I don't see why the match need
+be off. I'm sure, if Lesbia plays her cards properly, he will look over
+this--this--little escapade.'
+
+Maulevrier contemplated the worldly old face with infinite scorn.
+
+'Does she look like a girl who will play her cards in your fashion?' he
+asked, pointing to his sister, whose white face upon the pillow seemed
+like a mask cut out of marble. 'Upon my soul, Lady Kirkbank, I consider
+my sister's elopement with this Spanish adventurer, with whom she was
+over head and ears in love, a far more respectable act than her
+engagement to Smithson, for whom she cared not a straw.'
+
+'Well, I hope if you so approve of her conduct you will help her to pay
+her dressmaker, and the rest of them,' retorted Lady Kirkbank. 'She has
+been plunging rather deeply, I believe, under the impression that
+Smithson would pay all her bills when she was married. Your grandmother
+may not quite like the budget.'
+
+'I will do all I can for her,' answered Maulevrier. 'I would do a great
+deal to save her from the degradation to which your teaching has brought
+her.'
+
+Lady Kirkbank looked at him for a moment or so with reproachful eyes,
+and then shrugged her shoulders contemptuously.
+
+'If I ever expected gratitude from people I might feel the
+injustice--the insolence--of your last remark,' she said; 'but as I
+never do expect gratitude, I am not disappointed in this case. And now I
+think if there is a cabin which I can have to myself I should like to
+retire to it,' she added. 'My cares are thrown away here.'
+
+There was a cabin at Lady Kirkbank's disposal. It had been already
+appropriated by Rilboche, and smelt of cognac; but Rilboche resigned her
+berth to her mistress, and laid herself meekly on the floor for the rest
+of the voyage.
+
+They were in Cowes Roads at eight o'clock next morning, and Lord
+Hartfield went on shore for a doctor, whom he brought back before nine,
+and who pronounced Lady Lesbia to be in a very weak and prostrate
+condition, and forbade her being moved within the next two days. Happily
+Lord Hartfield had borrowed the _Philomel_ and her crew from a friend
+who had given him _carte blanche_ as to the use he made of her, and who
+freely left her at his disposal so long as he and his party should need
+the accommodation. Lesbia could nowhere be better off than on the yacht,
+where she was away from the gossip and tittle-tattle of the town.
+
+The roadstead was quiet enough now. All the racing yachts had melted
+away like a dream, and most of the pleasure yachts were off to Ryde.
+Lady Lesbia lay in her curtained cabin, with Kibble keeping watch beside
+her bed, while Maulevrier came in every half-hour to see how she
+was--sitting by her a little now and then, and talking of indifferent
+things in a low kind voice, which was full of comfort.
+
+She seemed grateful for his kindness, and smiled at him once in a way,
+with a piteous little smile; but she had the air of one in whom the
+mainspring of life is broken. The pallid face and heavy violet eyes,
+the semi-transparent hands which lay so listlessly upon the crimson
+coverlet, conveyed an impression of supreme despair. Hartfield, looking
+down at her for the last time when he came to say good-bye before
+leaving for London, was reminded of the story of one whose life had been
+thus rudely broken, who had loved as foolishly and even more fondly, and
+for whom the world held nothing when that tie was severed.
+
+    'She looked on many a face with vacant eye,
+      On many a token without knowing what;
+    She saw them watch her, without asking why,
+      And recked not who around her pillow sat.'
+
+But Lesbia Haselden belonged to a wider and more sophisticated world
+than that of the daughter of the Grecian Isle, and for her existence
+offered wider horizons. It might be prophesied that for her the dark
+ending of a girlish dream would not be a life-long despair. The
+passionate love had been at fever point; the passionate grief must have
+its fever too, and burn itself out.
+
+'Do all you can to cheer her,' said Lord Hartfield to Maulevrier, 'and
+bring her to Fellside as soon as ever she is strong enough to bear the
+journey. You and Kibble, with your own man, will be able to do all that
+is necessary.'
+
+'Quite able.'
+
+'That's right. I must be in the House for the expected division
+to-night, and I shall go back to Grasmere to-morrow morning. Poor Mary
+is horribly lonely.'
+
+Lord Hartfield went off in the boat to catch the Southampton steamer;
+and Maulevrier was now sole custodian of the yacht and of his sister. He
+and the doctor had agreed to keep her on board, in the fresh sea air,
+till she was equal to the fatigue of the journey to Grasmere. There was
+nothing to be gained by taking her on to the island or by carrying her
+to London. The yacht was well found, provided with all things needful
+for comfort, and Lesbia could be nowhere better off until she was safe
+in her old home:--that home she had left so gaily, in the freshness of
+her youthful inexperience, nearly a year ago, and to which she would
+return so battered and broken, so deeply degraded by the knowledge of
+evil.
+
+Lady Kirkbank had started for London on the previous day.
+
+'I am evidently not wanted _here_,' she said, with an offended air; 'and
+I must have everything at Kirkbank ready for a house full of people
+before the twelfth of August, so the sooner I get to Scotland the
+better. I shall make a _détour_ in order to go and see Lady Maulevrier
+on my way down. It is due to myself that I should let her know that _I_
+am entirely blameless in this most uncomfortable business.'
+
+'You can tell her ladyship what you please,' answered Maulevrier,
+bluntly. 'I shall not gainsay you, so long as you do not slander my
+sister; but as long as I live I shall regret that I, knowing something
+of London society, did not interfere to prevent Lesbia being given over
+to your keeping.'
+
+'If I had known the kind of girl she is I would have had nothing to do
+with her,' retorted Lady Kirkbank with exasperation; and so they parted.
+
+The _Philomel_ had been lying off Cowes three days before Mr. Smithson
+appeared upon the scene. He had got wind somehow from a sailor, who had
+talked with one of the foreign crew, of the destination of the _Cayman_,
+and he had crossed from Southampton to Havre on the steamer _Wolf_
+during that night in which Lesbia had been carried back to Cowes on the
+_Philomel_.
+
+He was at Havre when the _Cayman_ arrived, with Montesma and his
+tawny-visaged crew on board, no one else.
+
+'You may examine every corner of your ship,' Montesma cried, scornfully,
+when Smithson came on board and swore that Lesbia must be hidden
+somewhere in the vessel. 'The bird has flown: she will shelter in
+neither your nest nor in mine, Smithson. You have lost her--and so have
+I. We may as well be friends in misfortune.'
+
+He was haggard, livid with grief and anger. He looked ten years older
+than he had looked the other night at the ball, when his dash and
+swagger, and handsome Spanish head had been the admiration of the room.
+
+Smithson was very angry, but he was not a fighting man. He had enjoyed
+various opportunities for distinguishing himself in that line in the
+island of Cuba; but he had always avoided such opportunities. So now,
+after a good deal of bluster and violent language, which Montesma took
+as lightly as if it had been the whistling of the wind in the shrouds,
+poor Smithson calmed down, and allowed Gomez de Montesma to leave the
+yacht, with his portmanteaux, unharmed. He meant to take the first
+steamer for the Spanish Main, he told Smithson. He had had quite enough
+of Europe.
+
+'I daresay it will end in your marrying her,' he said, at the last
+moment. 'If you do, be kind to her.'
+
+His voice faltered, choked by a sob, at those last words. After all, it
+is possible for a man without principle, without morality, to begin to
+make love to a woman in a mere spirit of adventure, in sheer devilry,
+and to be rather hard hit at the last.
+
+Horace Smithson sailed his yacht back to Cowes without loss of time, and
+sent his card to Lord Maulevrier on board the _Philomel_. His lordship
+replied that he would wait upon Mr. Smithson that afternoon at four
+o'clock, and at that hour Maulevrier again boarded the _Cayman_; but
+this time very quietly, as an expected guest.
+
+The interview that followed was very painful. Mr. Smithson was willing
+that this unhappy episode in the life of his betrothed, this folly into
+which she had been beguiled by a man of infinite treachery, a man of
+all other men fatal to women, should be forgotten, should be as if it
+had never been.
+
+'It was her very innocence which made her a victim to that scoundrel,'
+said Smithson, 'her girlish simplicity and Lady Kirkbank's folly. But I
+love your sister too well to sacrifice her lightly, Lord Maulevrier; and
+if she can forget this midsummer madness, why, so can I.'
+
+'She cannot forget, Mr. Smithson,' answered Maulevrier, gravely. 'She
+has done you a great wrong by listening to your false friend's
+addresses; but she did you a still greater wrong when she accepted you
+as her husband without one spark of love for you. She and you are both
+happy in having escaped the degradation, the deep misery of a loveless
+union. I am glad--yes, glad even of this shameful escapade with
+Montesma--though it has dragged her good name through the gutter,--glad
+of the catastrophe that has saved her from such a marriage. You are very
+generous in your willingness to forget my sister's folly. Let your
+forgetfulness go a step further, and forget that you ever met her.'
+
+'That cannot be, Lord Maulevrier. She has ruined my life.'
+
+'Not at all. An affair of a season,' answered Maulevrier, lightly. 'Next
+year I shall hear of you as the accepted husband of some new beauty. A
+man of Mr. Smithson's wealth--and good nature--need not languish in
+single blessedness.'
+
+With this civil speech Lord Maulevrier went back to the _Philomel's_
+gig, and this was his last meeting with Mr. Smithson, until they met a
+year later in the beaten tracks of society.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLV.
+
+'THAT FELL ARREST, WITHOUT ALL BAIL.'
+
+
+It was the beginning of August before Lesbia was pronounced equal to the
+fatigue of a long journey; and even then it was but the shadow of her
+former self which returned to Fellside, the pale spectre of joys
+departed, of trust deceived.
+
+Maulevrier had been very good to her, patient, unselfish as a woman, in
+his ministering to the broken-hearted girl. That broken heart would be
+whole again, no doubt, in the future, as many other broken hearts have
+been; but the grief, the despair, the sense of hopelessness and
+aimlessness in life were very real in the present. If the picturesque
+seclusion of Fellside had seemed dull and joyless to Lesbia in days gone
+by, it was much duller to her now. She was shocked at the change in her
+grandmother, and she showed a good deal of feeling and affection in her
+intercourse with the invalid; but once out of her presence Lady
+Maulevrier was forgotten, and Lesbia's thoughts drifted back into the
+old current. They dwelt obstinately, unceasingly upon Montesma, the man
+whose influence had awakened the slumbering soul from its torpor, had
+stirred the deeps of a passionate nature.
+
+Slave-dealer, gambler, adventurer, liar--his name blackened by the
+suspicion of a still darker crime. She shuddered at the thought of the
+villain from whose snare she had been rescued: and yet, his image as he
+had been to her in the brief golden time when she believed him noble,
+and chivalrous, and true, haunted her lonely days, mixed itself with her
+troubled dreams, came between her and every other thought.
+
+Everybody was good to her. That pale and joyless face, that look of
+patient, hopeless suffering which she tried to disguise every now and
+then with a faint forced smile, and silvery little ripple of society
+laughter, seemed unconsciously to implore pity and pardon. Lady
+Maulevrier uttered no word of reproach. 'My dearest, Fate has not been
+kind to you,' she said, gently, after telling Lesbia of Lady Kirkbank's
+visit. 'The handsomest women are seldom the happiest. Destiny seems to
+have a grudge against them. And if things have gone amiss it is I who am
+most to blame. I ought never to have entrusted you with such a woman as
+Georgina Kirkbank. But you will be happier next season, I hope, dearest.
+You can live with Mary and Hartfield. They will take care of you.'
+
+Lesbia shuddered.
+
+'Do you think I am going back to the society treadmill?' she exclaimed.
+'No, I have done with the world. I shall end my days here, or in a
+convent.'
+
+'You think so now, dear, but you will change your mind by-and-by. A
+fancy that has lasted only a few weeks cannot alter your life. It will
+pass as other dreams have passed. At your age you have the future before
+you.'
+
+'No, it is the past that is always before me,' answered Lesbia. 'My
+future is a blank.'
+
+The bills came pouring in; dressmaker, milliner, glover, bootmaker,
+tailor, stationer, perfumer; awful bills which made Lady Maulevrier's
+blood run cold, so degrading was their story of selfish self-indulgence,
+of senseless extravagance. But she paid them all without a word. She
+took upon her shoulders the chief burden of Lesbia's wrongdoing. It was
+her indulgence, her weak preference which had fostered her
+granddaughter's selfishness, trained her to vanity and worldly pride.
+The result was ignominious, humiliating, bitter beyond all common
+bitterness; but the cup was of her own brewing, and she drank it without
+a murmur.
+
+Parliament was prorogued; the season was over; and Lord Hartfield was
+established at Fellside for the autumn--he and his wife utterly happy in
+their affection for each other, but not without care as to their
+surroundings, which were full of trouble. First there was Lesbia's
+sorrow. Granted that it was a grief which would inevitably wear itself
+out, as other such griefs have done from time immemorial; but still the
+sorrow was there, at their doors. Next, there was the state of Lady
+Maulevrier's health, which gave her old medical adviser the gravest
+fears. At Lord Hartfield's earnest desire a famous doctor was summoned
+from London; but the great man could only confirm Mr. Horton's verdict.
+The thread of life was wearing thinner every day. It might snap at any
+hour. In the meantime the only regime was repose of body and mind, an
+all-pervading calm, the avoidance of all exciting topics. One moment of
+violent agitation might prove fatal.
+
+Knowing this, how could Lord Hartfield call her ladyship to account for
+the presence of that mysterious old man under Steadman's charge?--how
+venture to touch upon a topic which, by Mary's showing, had exercised a
+most disturbing influence upon her ladyship's mind on that solitary
+occasion when the girl ventured to approach the subject?
+
+He felt that any attempt at an explanation was impossible. It was not
+for him to precipitate Lady Maulevrier's end by prying into her secrets.
+Granted that shame and dishonour of some kind were involved in the
+existence of that strange old man, he, Lord Hartfield, must endure his
+portion in that shame--must be content to leave the dark riddle
+unsolved.
+
+He resigned himself to this state of things, and tried to forget the
+cloud that hung over the house of Haselden; but the sense of a mystery,
+a fatal family secret, which must come to light sooner or later--since
+all such secrets are known at last--known, sifted, and bandied about
+from lip to lip, and published in a thousand different newspapers, and
+cried aloud in the streets--the sense of such a secret, the dread of
+such a revelation weighed upon him heavily.
+
+Maulevrier, the restless, was off to Argyleshire for the grouse shooting
+as soon as he had deposited Lady Lesbia comfortably at Fellside.
+
+'I should only be in your way if I stopped,' he said, 'for you and Molly
+have hardly got over the honeymoon stage yet, though you put on the airs
+of Darby and Joan. I shall be back in a week or ten days.'
+
+'In Lady Maulevrier's state of health I don't think you ought to stay
+away very long,' said Hartfield.
+
+'Poor Lady Maulevrier! She never cared much for me, don't you know. But
+I suppose it would seem unkind if I were to be out of the way when the
+end comes. The end! Good heavens! how coolly I talk of it; and a year
+ago I thought she was as immortal as Fairfield yonder.'
+
+He went away, his spirits dashed by that awful thought of death, and
+Lord and Lady Hartfield had the house to themselves, since Lesbia hardly
+counted. She seldom left her own rooms, except to sit with her
+grandmother for an hour. She lay on her sofa--or sat in a low arm-chair
+by the window, reading Keats or Shelley--or only dreaming--dreaming over
+the brief golden time of her life, with its fond delusions, its false
+brightness. Mr. Horton went to see her every day--felt the feeble little
+pulse which seemed hardly to have force enough to beat--urged her to
+struggle against apathy and inertia, to walk a little, to go for a long
+drive every day, to live in the open air--to which instructions she paid
+not the slightest attention. The desire for life was gone. Disappointed
+in her ambition, betrayed in her love, humiliated, duped, degraded--a
+social failure. What had she to live for? She felt as if it would have
+been a good thing, quite the best thing that could happen, if she could
+turn her face to the wall and die. All that past season, its triumphs,
+its pleasures, its varieties, was like a garish dream, a horror to look
+back upon, hateful to remember.
+
+In vain did Mary and Hartfield urge Lesbia to join in their simple
+pleasures, their walks and rides and drives, and boating excursions. She
+always refused.
+
+'You know I never cared much for roaming about these everlasting hills,'
+she told Mary. 'I never had your passion for Lakeland. It is very good
+of you to wish to have me, but it is quite impossible. I have hardly
+strength enough for a little walk in the garden.'
+
+'You would have more strength if you went out more,' pleaded Mary,
+almost with tears. 'Mr. Horton says sun and wind are the best doctors
+for you. Lesbia, you frighten me sometimes. You are just letting
+yourself fade away.'
+
+'If you knew how I hate the world and the sky, Mary, you wouldn't urge
+me to go out of doors,' Lesbia answered, moodily. 'Indoors I can read,
+and get away from my own thoughts somehow, for a little while. But out
+yonder, face to face with the hills and the lake--the scenes I have
+known all my life--I feel a heart-sickness that is worse than death. It
+maddens me to see that old, old picture of mountain and water, the same
+for ever and ever, no matter what hearts are breaking.'
+
+Mary crept close beside her sister's couch, put her arm round her neck,
+laid her cheek--rich in the ruddy bloom of health--against Lesbia's
+pallid and sunken cheek, and comforted her as much as she could with
+tender murmurs and loving kisses. Other comfort, she could give none.
+All the wisdom in the world will not cure a girl's heart-sickness when
+she has flung away the treasures of her love upon a worthless object.
+
+And so the days went by, peacefully, but sadly; for the shadow of doom
+hung heavily over the house upon the Fell. Nobody who looked upon Lady
+Maulevrier could doubt that her days were numbered, that the oil was
+waxing low in the lamp of life. The end, the awful, mysterious end, was
+drawing near; and she who was called was making no such preparations as
+the Christian makes to answer the dread summons. As she had lived, she
+meant to die--an avowed unbeliever. More than once Mary had taken
+courage, and had talked to her grandmother of the world beyond, the
+blessed hope of re-union with the friends we have lost, in a new and
+brighter life, only to be met by the sceptic's cynical smile, the
+materialist's barren creed.
+
+'My dearest, we know nothing except the immutable laws of material life.
+All the rest is a dream--a beautiful dream, if you like--a consolation
+to that kind of temperament which can take comfort from dreams; but for
+anyone who has read much, and thought much, and kept as far as possible
+on a level with the scientific intellect of the age--for such an one,
+Mary, these old fables are too idle. I shall die as I have lived, the
+victim of an inscrutable destiny, working blindly, evil to some, good to
+others. Ah! love, life has begun very fairly for you. May the fates be
+kind always to my gentle and loving girl!'
+
+There was more talk between them on this dark mystery of life and death.
+Mary brought out her poor little arguments, glorified by the light of
+perfect faith; but they were of no avail against opinions which had been
+the gradual growth of a long and joyless life. Time had attuned Lady
+Maulevrier's mind to the gospel of Schopenhauer and the Pessimists, and
+she was contented to see the mystery of life as they had seen it. She
+had no fear, but she had some anxiety as to the things that were to
+happen after she was gone. She had taken upon herself a heavy burden,
+and she had not yet come to the end of the road where her burden might
+be laid quietly down, her task accomplished. If she fell by the wayside
+under her load the consequences for the survivors might be full of
+trouble.
+
+Her anxieties were increased by the fact that her faithful servant and
+adviser, James Steadman, was no longer the man he had been. The change
+in him was painfully evident--memory failing, energy gone. He came to
+his mistress's room every morning, received her orders, answered her
+questions; but Lady Maulevrier felt that he went through the old duties
+in a mechanical way, and that his dull brain but half understood their
+importance.
+
+One evening at dusk, just as Hartfield and Mary were leaving Lady
+Maulevrier's room, after dinner, an appalling shriek ran through the
+house--a cry almost as terrible as that which Lord Hartfield heard in
+the summer midnight just a year ago. But this time the sound came from
+the old part of the house.
+
+'Something has happened,' exclaimed Hartfield, rushing to the door of
+communication.
+
+It was bolted inside. He knocked vehemently; but there was no answer. He
+ran downstairs, followed by Mary, breathless, in an agony of fear. Just
+as they approached the lower door, leading to the old house, it was
+flung open, and Steadman's wife stood before them pale with terror.
+
+'The doctor,' she cried; 'send for Mr. Horton, somebody, for God's sake.
+Oh, my lord,' with a sudden burst of sobbing, 'I'm afraid he's dead.'
+
+'Mary, despatch some one for Horton,' said Lord Hartfield. Keeping his
+wife back with one hand, he closed the door against her, and then
+followed Mrs. Steadman through the long low corridor to her husband's
+sitting-room.
+
+James Steadman was lying upon his back upon the hearth, near the spot
+were Lord Hartfield had seen him sleeping in his arm-chair a month ago.
+
+One look at the distorted face, dark with injected blood, the dreadful
+glassy glare of the eyes, the foam-stained lips, told that all was over.
+The faithful servant had died at his post. Whatever his charge had been,
+his term of service was ended. There was a vacancy in Lady Maulevrier's
+household.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVI.
+
+THE DAY OF RECKONING.
+
+
+Lord Hartfield stayed with the frightened wife while she knelt beside
+that awful figure on the hearth, wringing her hands with piteous
+bewailings and lamentations over the unconscious clay. He had always
+been a good husband to her, she murmured; hard and stern perhaps, but a
+good man. And she had obeyed him without a question. Whatever he did or
+said she had counted right.
+
+'We have not had a happy life, though there are many who have envied us
+her ladyship's favour,' she said in the midst of her lamentations. 'No
+one knows where the shoe pinches but those who have to wear it. Poor
+James! Early and late, early and late, studying her ladyship's
+interests, caring and thinking, in order to keep trouble away from her.
+Always on the watch, always on the listen. That's what wore him out, poor
+fellow!'
+
+'My good soul, your husband was an old man,' argued Lord Hartfield, in
+a consolatory tone, 'and the end must come to all of us somehow.'
+
+'He might have lived to be a much older man if he had had less worry,'
+said the wife, bending her face to kiss the cold dead brow. 'His days
+were full of care. We should have been happier in the poorest cottage in
+Grasmere than we ever were in this big grand house.'
+
+Thus, in broken fragments of speech, Mrs. Steadman lamented over her
+dead, while the heavy pendulum of the eight-day clock in the hall
+sounded the slowly-passing moments, until the coming of the doctor broke
+upon the quiet of the house, with the noise of opening doors and
+approaching footsteps.
+
+James Steadman was dead. Medicine could do nothing for that lifeless
+clay, lying on the hearth by which he had sat on so many winter nights,
+for so many years of faithful unquestioning service. There was nothing
+to be done for that stiffening form, save the last offices for the dead;
+and Lord Hartfield left Mr. Horton to arrange with the weeping woman as
+to the doing of these. He was anxious to go to Lady Maulevrier, to break
+to her, as gently as might be, the news of her servant's death.
+
+And what of that strange old man in the upper rooms? Who was to attend
+upon him, now that the caretaker was laid low?
+
+While Lord Hartfield lingered on the threshold of the door that led from
+the old house to the new, pondering this question, there came the sound
+of wheels on the carriage drive, and then a loud ring at the hall door.
+
+It was Maulevrier, just arrived from Scotland, smelling of autumn rain
+and cool fresh air.
+
+'Dreadfully bored on the moors,' he said, as they shook hands. 'No
+birds--nobody to talk to--couldn't stand it any longer. How are the
+sisters? Lesbia better? Why, man alive, how queer you look! Nothing
+amiss, I hope?'
+
+'Yes, there is something very much amiss. Steadman is dead.'
+
+'Steadman! Her ladyship's right hand. That's rather bad. But you will
+drop into his stewardship. She'll trust your long head, I know. Much
+better that she should look to her granddaughter's husband for advice in
+all business matters than to a servant. When did it happen?'
+
+'Half an hour ago. I was just going to Lady Maulevrier's room when you
+rang the bell. Take off your Inverness, and come with me.'
+
+'The poor grandmother,' muttered Maulevrier. 'I'm afraid it will be a
+blow.'
+
+He had much less cause for fear than Lord Hartfield, who knew of deep
+and secret reasons why Steadman's death should be a calamity of dire
+import for his mistress. Maulevrier had been told nothing of that scene
+with the strange old man--the hidden treasures--the Anglo-Indian
+phrases--which had filled Lord Hartfield's mind with the darkest doubts.
+
+If that half-lunatic old man, described by Lady Maulevrier as a kinsman
+of Steadman's, were verily the person Lord Hartfield believed, his
+presence under that roof, unguarded by a trust-worthy attendant, was
+fraught with danger. It would be for Lady Maulevrier, helpless, a
+prisoner to her sofa, at death's door, to face that danger. The very
+thought of it might kill her. And yet it was imperative that the truth
+should be told her without delay.
+
+The two young men went to her ladyship's sitting room. She was alone, a
+volume of her favourite Schopenhauer open before her, under the light of
+the shaded reading-lamp. Sorry comfort in the hour of trouble!
+
+Maulevrier went over to her and kissed her; and then dropped silently
+into a chair near at hand, his face in shadow. Hartfield seated himself
+nearer the sofa, and nearer the lamp.
+
+'Dear Lady Maulevrier, I have come to tell you some very bad news--'
+
+'Lesbia?' exclaimed her ladyship, with a frightened look.
+
+'No, there is nothing wrong with Lesbia. It is about your old servant
+Steadman.'
+
+'Dead?' faltered Lady Maulevrier, ashy pale, as she looked at him in the
+lamplight.
+
+He bent his head affirmatively.
+
+'Yes. He was seized with apoplexy--fell from his chair to the hearth,
+and never spoke or stirred again.'
+
+Lady Maulevrier uttered no word of sorrow or surprise. She lay, looking
+straight before her into vacancy, the pale attenuated features rigid as
+if they had been marble. What was to be done--what must be told--whom
+could she trust? Those were the questions repeating themselves in her
+mind as she stared into space. And no answer came to them.
+
+No answer came, except the opening of the door opposite her couch. The
+handle turned slowly, hesitatingly, as if moved by feeble fingers; and
+then the door was pushed slowly open, and an old man came with shuffling
+footsteps towards the one lighted spot in the middle of the room.
+
+It was the old man Lord Hartfield had last seen gloating over his
+treasury of gold and jewels--the man whom Maulevrier had never
+seen--whose existence for forty years had been hidden from every
+creature in that house, except Lady Maulevrier and the Steadmans, until
+Mary found her way into the old garden.
+
+He came close up to the little table in front of Lady Maulevrier's
+couch, and looked down at her, a strange, uncanny being, withered and
+bent, with pale, faded eyes in which there was a glimmer of unholy
+light.
+
+'Good-evening to you, Lady Maulevrier,' he said in a mocking voice. 'I
+shouldn't have known you if we had met anywhere else. I think, of the
+two of us, you are more changed than I.'
+
+She looked up at him, her features quivering, her haughty head drawn
+back; as a bird shrinks from the gaze of a snake, recoiling, but too
+fascinated to fly. Her eyes met his with a look of unutterable horror.
+For some moments she was speechless, and then, looking at Lord
+Hartfield, she said, piteously--
+
+'Why did you let him come here? He ought to be taken care of--shut up.
+It is Steadman's old uncle--a lunatic--I sheltered. Why is he allowed to
+come to my room?'
+
+'I am Lord Maulevrier,' said the old man, drawing himself up and
+planting his crutch stick upon the floor; 'I am Lord Maulevrier, and this
+woman is my wife. Yes, I am mad sometimes, but not always. I have my bad
+fits, but not often. But I never forget who and what I am, Algernon,
+Earl of Maulevrier, Governor of Madras.'
+
+'Lady Maulevrier, is this horrible thing true?' cried her grandson,
+vehemently.
+
+'He is mad, Maulevrier. Don't you see that he is mad?' she exclaimed,
+looking from Hartfield to her grandson, and then with a look of loathing
+and horror at her accuser.
+
+'I tell you, young man, I am Maulevrier,' said the accuser; 'there is no
+one else who has a right to be called by that name, while I live. They
+have shut me up--she and her accomplice--denied my name--hidden me from
+the world. He is dead, and she lies there--stricken for her sins.'
+
+'My grandfather died at the inn at Great Langdale, faltered Maulevrier.
+
+'Your grandfather was brought to this house--ill--out of his wits. All
+cloud and darkness here,' said the old man, touching his forehead. 'How
+long has it been? Who can tell? A weary time--long, dark nights, full of
+ghosts. Yes, I have seen him--the Rajah, that copper-faced scoundrel,
+seen him as she told me he looked when she gave the signal to her slaves
+to strangle him, there in the hall, where the grave was dug ready for
+the traitor's carcass. She too--yes, she has haunted me, calling upon me
+to give up her treasure, to restore her son.'
+
+'Yes,' cried the paralytic woman, suddenly lifted out of herself, as it
+were, in a paroxysm of fury, every feature convulsed, every nerve
+strained to its utmost tension; 'yes, this is Lord Maulevrier. You have
+heard the truth, and from his own lips. You, his only son's only son.
+You his granddaughter's husband. You hear him avow himself the
+instigator of a diabolical murder; you hear him confess how his
+paramour's husband was strangled at his false wife's bidding, in his own
+palace, buried under the Moorish pavement in the hall of many arches.
+You hear how he inherited the Rajah's treasures from a mistress who
+died strangely, swiftly, conveniently, as soon so he had wearied of her,
+and a new favourite had begun to exercise her influence. Such things are
+done in the East--dynasties annihilated, kingdoms overthrown, poison or
+bowstring used at will, to gratify a profligate's passion, or pay for a
+spendthrift's extravagances. Such things were done when that man was
+Governor of Madras as were never done by an Englishman in India before
+his time. He went there fettered by no prejudices--he was more Mussulman
+than the Mussulmen themselves--a deeper, darker traitor. And it was to
+hide such crimes as these--to interpose the great peacemaker Death
+between him and the Government which was resolved upon punishing him--to
+save the honour, the fortune of my son, and the children who were to
+come after him, the name of a noble race, a name that was ever stainless
+until he defiled it--it was for this great end I took steps to hide that
+feeble, useless life of his from the world he had offended; it was for
+this end that I caused a peasant to be buried in the vault of the
+Maulevriers, with all the pomp and ceremony that befits the funeral of
+one of England's oldest earls. I screened him from his enemies--I saved
+him from the ignominy of a public trial--from the execration of his
+countrymen. His only punishment was to eat his heart under this roof, in
+luxurious seclusion, his comfort studied, his whims gratified so far as
+they could be by the most faithful of servants. A light penance for the
+dark infamies of his life in India, I think. His mind was all but gone
+when he came here, but he had his rational intervals, and in these the
+burden of his lonely life may have weighed heavily upon him. But it was
+not such a heavy burden as I have borne--I, his gaoler, I who have
+devoted my existence to the one task of guarding the family honour.'
+
+He, whom she thus acknowledged as her husband, had sunk exhausted into a
+chair near her. He took out his gold snuff-box, and refreshed himself
+with a leisurely pinch of snuff, looking about him curiously all the
+while, with a senile grin. That flash of passion which for a few minutes
+had restored him to the full possession of his reason had burnt itself
+out, and his mind had relapsed into the condition in which it had been
+when he talked to Mary in the garden.
+
+'My pipe, Steadman,' he said, looking towards the door; 'bring me my
+pipe,' and then, impatiently, 'What has become of Steadman? He has been
+getting inattentive--very inattentive.'
+
+He got up, and moved slowly to the door, leaning on his crutch-stick,
+his head sunk upon his breast, muttering to himself as he went; and thus
+he vanished from them, like the spectre of some terrible ancestor which
+had returned from the grave to announce the coming of calamity to a
+doomed race. His grandson looked after him, with an expression of
+intense displeasure.
+
+'And so, Lady Maulevrier,' he exclaimed, turning to his grandmother, 'I
+have borne a title that never belonged to me, and enjoyed the possession
+of another man's estates all this time, thanks to your pretty little
+plot. A very respectable position for your grandson to occupy, upon my
+life!'
+
+Lord Hartfield lifted his hand with a warning gesture.
+
+'Spare her,' he said. 'She is in no condition to endure your
+reproaches.'
+
+Spare her--yes. Fate had not spared her. The beautiful face--beautiful
+even in age and decay--changed suddenly as she looked at them--the mouth
+became distorted, the eyes fixed: and then the heavy head fell back upon
+the pillow--the paralysed form, wholly paralysed now, lay like a thing
+of stone. It never moved again. Consciousness was blotted out for ever
+in that moment. The feeble pulses of heart and brain throbbed with
+gradually diminishing power for a night and a day; and in the twilight
+of that dreadful day of nothingness the last glimmer of the light died
+in the lamp, and Lady Maulevrier and the burden of her sin were beyond
+the veil.
+
+Viscount Haselden, _alias_ Lord Maulevrier, held a long consultation
+with Lord Hartfield on the night of his grandmother's death, as to what
+steps ought to be taken in relation to the real Earl of Maulevrier: and
+it was only at the end of a serious and earnest discussion that both
+young men came to the decision that Lady Maulevrier's secret ought to be
+kept faithfully to the end. Assuredly no good purpose could be achieved
+by letting the world know of old Lord Maulevrier's existence. A
+half-lunatic octogenarian could gain nothing by being restored to rights
+and possessions which he had most justly forfeited. All that justice
+demanded was that the closing years of his life should be made as
+comfortable as care and wealth could make them; and Hartfield and
+Haselden took immediate steps to this end. But their first act was to
+send the old earl's treasure chest under safe convoy to the India House,
+with a letter explaining how this long-hidden wealth, brought from India
+by Lord Maulevrier, had been discovered among other effects in a
+lumber-room at Lady Maulevrier's country house. The money so delivered
+up might possibly have formed part of his lordship's private fortune;
+but, in the absence of any knowledge as to its origin, his grandson, the
+present Lord Maulevrier, preferred to deliver it up to the authorities
+of the India House, to be dealt with as they might think fit.
+
+The old earl made no further attempt to assert himself. He seemed
+content to remain in his own rooms as of old, to potter about the
+garden, where his solitude was as complete as that of a hermit's cell.
+The only moan be made was for James Steadman, whose services he missed
+sorely. Lord Hartfield replaced that devoted servant by a clever
+Austrian valet, a new importation from Vienna, who understood very
+little English, a trained attendant upon mental invalids, and who was
+quite capable of dealing with old Lord Maulevrier.
+
+Lord Hartfield went a step farther; and within a week of those two
+funerals of servant and mistress, which cast a gloom over the peaceful
+valley of Grasmere, he brought down a famous mad-doctor to diagnose his
+lordship's case. There was but little risk in so doing, he argued with
+his friend, and it was their duty so to do. If the old man should assert
+himself to the doctor as Lord Maulevrier, the declaration would pass as
+a symptom of his lunacy. But it happened that the physician arrived at
+Fellside on one of Lord Maulevrier's bad days, and the patient never
+emerged from the feeblest phase of imbecility.
+
+'Brain quite gone,' pronounced the doctor, 'bodily health very poor.
+Take him to the South of France for the winter--Hyères, or any quiet
+place. He can't last long.'
+
+To Hyères the old man was taken, with Mrs. Steadman as nurse, and the
+Austrian valet as body-servant and keeper. Mary, for whom, in his
+brighter hours he showed a warm affection, went with him under her
+husband's wing.
+
+Lord Hartfield rented a chateau on the slope of an olive-clad hill,
+where he and his young wife, whose health was somewhat delicate at this
+time, spent a winter in peaceful seclusion; while Lesbia and her brother
+travelled together in Italy. The old man's strength improved in that
+lovely climate. He lived to see the roses and orange blossoms of the
+early spring, and died in his arm-chair suddenly, without a pang, while
+Mary sat at his feet reading to him: a quiet end of an evil and troubled
+life. And now he whom the world had known as Lord Maulevrier was verily
+the earl, and could hear himself called by his title once more without a
+touch of shame.
+
+The secret of Lady Maulevrier's sin had been so faithfully kept by the
+two young men that neither of her granddaughters knew the true story of
+that mysterious person whom Mary had first heard of as James Steadman's
+uncle. She and Lesbia both knew that there were painful circumstances of
+some kind connected with this man's existence, his hidden life in the
+old house at Fellside; but they were both content to learn no more.
+Respect for their grandmother's memory, sorrowful affection for the
+dead, prevailed over natural curiosity.
+
+Early in February Maulevrier sent decorators and upholsterers into the
+old house in Curzon Street, which was ready before the middle of May to
+receive his lordship and his young wife, the girlish daughter of a
+Florentine nobleman, a gazelle-eyed Italian, with a voice whose every
+tone was music, and with the gentlest, shyest, most engaging manners of
+any girl in Florence. Lady Lesbia, strangely subdued and changed by the
+griefs and humiliations of her last campaign, had been her brother's
+counsellor and confidante throughout his wooing of his fair Italian
+bride. She was to spend the season under her brother's roof, to help to
+initiate young Lady Maulevrier in the mysterious rites of London
+society, and to warn her of those rocks and shoals which had wrecked her
+own fortunes.
+
+The month of May brought a son and heir to Lord Hartfield; and it was
+not till after his birth that Mary, Countess of Hartfield, was presented
+to her sovereign, and began her career as a matron of rank and standing,
+very much overpowered by the weight of her honours, and looking forward
+with delight to the end of the season and a flight to Argyleshire with
+her husband and baby.
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Phantom Fortune, A Novel, by M. E. Braddon
+
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+<html>
+  <head>
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content=
+    "text/html; charset=utf-8">
+    <title>
+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of Phantom Fortune, by The Author Of "Lady Audley'S Secret," "Vixen," Etc. Etc. Etc..
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css">
+
+    * {  font-family: Times;}
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+   </head>
+<body>
+
+
+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Phantom Fortune, A Novel, by M. E. Braddon
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Phantom Fortune, A Novel
+
+Author: M. E. Braddon
+
+Release Date: February 1, 2004 [EBook #10905]
+[Last updated: August 4, 2013]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PHANTOM FORTUNE, A NOVEL ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jonathan Ingram and PG Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+
+<h1>PHANTOM FORTUNE</h1>
+<br>
+
+<h2>A Novel</h2>
+
+
+<h2>BY THE AUTHOR OF &quot;LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET,&quot; &quot;VIXEN,&quot; ETC. ETC. ETC.</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CONTENTS"></a><h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<!-- Autogenerated TOC. Modify or delete as required. -->
+<a href="#CHAPTER_I">I.         PENELOPE</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_II">II.         ULYSSES</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_III">III.         ON THE WRONG ROAD</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_IV">IV.         THE LAST STAGE</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_V">V.         FORTY YEARS AFTER</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VI">VI.         MAULEVRIER'S HUMBLE FRIEND</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VII">VII.         IN THE SUMMER MORNING</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">VIII.         THERE IS ALWAYS A SKELETON</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_IX">IX.         A CRY IN THE DARKNESS</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_X">X.         'O BITTERNESS OF THINGS TOO SWEET'</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XI">XI.         'IF I WERE TO DO AS ISEULT DID'</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XII">XII.         'THE GREATER CANTLE OF THE WORLD IS LOST'</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">XIII.         'SINCE PAINTED OR NOT PAINTED ALL SHALL FADE'</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">XIV.         'NOT YET'</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XV">XV.         'OF ALL MEN ELSE I HAVE AVOIDED THEE'</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XVI">XVI.         'HER FACE RESIGNED TO BLISS OR BALE'</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XVII">XVII.         'AND THE SPRING COMES SLOWLY UP THIS WAY'</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII">XVIII.         'AND COME AGEN, BE IT BY NIGHT OR DAY'</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XIX">XIX.         THE OLD MAN ON THE FELL</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XX">XX.         LADY MAULEVRIER'S LETTER-BAG</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXI">XXI.         ON THE DARK BROW OF HELVELLYN</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXII">XXII.         WISER THAN LESBIA</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXIII">XXIII.         'A YOUNG LAMB'S HEART AMONG THE FULL-GROWN FLOCKS'</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXIV">XXIV.         'NOW NOTHING LEFT TO LOVE OR HATE'</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXV">XXV.         CARTE BLANCHE</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXVI">XXVI.         'PROUD CAN I NEVER BE OF WHAT I HATE'</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXVII">XXVII.         LESBIA CROSSES PICCADILLY</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXVIII">XXVIII.         'CLUBS, DIAMONDS, HEARTS, IN WILD DISORDER SEEN'</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXIX">XXIX.         'SWIFT, SUBTLE POST, CARRIER OF GRISLY CARE'</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXX">XXX.         'ROSES CHOKED AMONG THORNS AND THISTLES'</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXXI">XXXI.         'KIND IS MY LOVE TO-DAY, TO-MORROW KIND'</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXXII">XXXII.         WAYS AND MEANS</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXXIII">XXXIII.         BY SPECIAL LICENCE</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXXIV">XXXIV.         'OUR LOVE WAS NEW, AND THEN BUT IN THE SPRING'</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXXV">XXXV.         'ALL FANCY, PRIDE, AND FICKLE MAIDENHOOD'</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXXVI">XXXVI.         A RASTAQUOUÈRE</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXXVII">XXXVII.         LORD HARTFIELD REFUSES A FORTUNE</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXXVIII">XXXVIII.         ON BOARD THE 'CAYMAN'</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXXIX">XXXIX.         IN STORM AND DARKNESS</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XL">XL.         A NOTE OF ALARM</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XLI">XLI.         PRIVILEGED INFORMATION</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XLII">XLII.         'SHALL IT BE?'</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XLIII">XLIII.         'ALAS, FOR SORROW IS ALL THE END OF THIS'</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XLIV">XLIV.         'OH, SAD KISSED MOUTH, HOW SORROWFUL IT IS!'</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XLV">XLV.         'THAT FELL ARREST WITHOUT ALL BAIL'</a><br>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XLVI">XLVI.         THE DAY OF RECKONING</a><br>
+<!-- End Autogenerated TOC. -->
+
+<br>
+<br>
+
+<a name="image-1"><!-- Image 1 --></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/001.jpg" height="378" width="300"
+alt="H. French, Del.) (T. Symmons, Sc 'the Old Man Sat Looking at Mary in Silence for Some Moments.'">
+</center>
+
+<h5>H. French, del.) (T. Symmons, sc &quot;The old man sat looking
+at Mary in silence for some moments.&quot;</h5>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_I"></a><h2>CHAPTER I.</h2>
+<h3>PENELOPE.</h3>
+
+<br>
+
+<p>People dined earlier forty years ago than they do now. Even that salt of
+the earth, the elect of society, represented by that little great world
+which lies between the narrow circle bounded by Bryanstone Square on the
+north and by Birdcage Walk on the south, did not consider seven o'clock
+too early an hour for a dinner party which was to be followed by routs,
+drums, concerts, conversazione, as the case might be. It was seven
+o'clock on a lovely June evening, and the Park was already deserted, and
+carriages were rolling swiftly along all the Westend squares, carrying
+rank, fashion, wealth, and beauty, political influence, and intellectual
+power, to the particular circle in which each was destined to illumine
+upon that particular evening.</p>
+
+<p>Stateliest among London squares, Grosvenor—in some wise a wonder to the
+universe as newly lighted with gas—grave Grosvenor, with its heavy old
+Georgian houses and pompous porticoes, sparkled and shone, not alone
+with the novel splendour of gas, but with the light of many wax candles,
+clustering flower-like in silver branches and girandoles, multiplying
+their flame in numerous mirrors; and of all the houses in that stately
+square none had a more imposing aspect than Lord Denyer's dark red brick
+mansion, with stone dressings, and the massive grandeur of an Egyptian
+mausoleum.</p>
+
+<p>Lord Denyer was an important personage in the political and diplomatic
+world. He had been ambassador at Constantinople and at Paris, and had
+now retired on his laurels, an influence still, but no longer an active
+power in the machine of government. At his house gathered all that was
+most brilliant in London society. To be seen at Lady Denyer's evening
+parties was the guinea stamp of social distinction; to dine with Lord
+Denyer was an opening in life, almost as valuable as University honours,
+and more difficult of attainment.</p>
+
+<p>It was during the quarter of an hour before dinner that a group of
+persons, mostly personages, congregated round Lord Denyer's
+chimney-piece, naturally trending towards the social hearth, albeit it
+was the season for roses and lilies rather than of fires, and the hum of
+the city was floating in upon the breath of the warm June evening
+through the five tall windows which opened upon Lord Denyer's balcony.</p>
+
+<p>The ten or twelve persons assembled seemed only a sprinkling in the large
+lofty room, furnished sparsely with amber satin sofas, a pair of Florentine
+marble tables, and half an acre or so of looking glass. Voluminous amber
+draperies shrouded the windows, and deadened the sound of rolling wheels,
+and the voices and footfalls of western London. The drawing rooms of those
+days were neither artistic nor picturesque—neither Early English nor Low
+Dutch, nor Renaissance, nor Anglo-Japanese. A stately commonplace
+distinguished the reception rooms of the great world. Upholstery stagnated
+at a dead level of fluted legs, gilding, plate glass, and amber satin.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Denyer stood a little way in advance of the group on the hearthrug,
+fanning herself, with her eye on the door, while she listened languidly
+to the remarks of a youthful diplomatist, a sprig of a lordly tree, upon
+the last <i>d&eacute;but</i> at Her Majesty's Theatre.</p>
+
+<p>'My own idea was that she screamed,' said her ladyship. 'But the new
+Rosinas generally do scream. Why do we have a new Rosina every year,
+whom nobody ever hears of afterwards? What becomes of them? Do they die,
+or do they set up as singing mistresses in second-rate watering-places?'
+hazarded her ladyship, with her eye always on the door.</p>
+
+<p>She was a large woman in amethyst satin, and a gauze turban with a
+diamond aigrette, a splendid jewel, which would not have misbeseemed the
+head-gear of an Indian prince. Lady Denyer was one of the last women who
+wore a turban, and that Oriental head-dress became her bold and massive
+features.</p>
+
+<p>Infinitely bored by the whiskerless attach&eacute;, who had entered upon a
+disquisition on the genius of Rossini as compared with this new man
+Meyerbeer, her ladyship made believe to hear, while she listened
+intently to the confidential murmurs of the group on the hearthrug, the
+little knot of personages clustered round Lord Denyer.
+
+'Indian mail in this morning,' said one—'nothing else talked of at the club. Very
+flagrant case! A good deal worse than Warren Hastings. Quite clear there
+must be a public inquiry—House of Lords—criminal prosecution.'</p>
+
+<p>'I was told on very good authority, that he has been recalled, and is
+now on his passage home,' said another man.</p>
+
+<p>Lord Denyer shrugged his shoulders, pursed up his lips, and looked
+ineffably wise, a way he had when he knew very little about the subject
+under discussion.</p>
+
+<p>'How will <i>she</i> take it, do you think?' inquired Colonel Madison, of the
+Life Guards, a man about town, and an inveterate gossip, who knew
+everybody, and everybody's family history, down to the peccadilloes of
+people's great grandmothers.</p>
+
+<p>'You will have an opportunity of judging,' replied his lordship, coolly.
+'She's to be here this evening.'</p>
+
+<p>'But do you think she'll show?' asked the Colonel. 'The mail must have
+brought the news to her, as well as to other people—supposing she knew
+nothing about it beforehand. She must know that the storm has burst. Do
+you think she'll----'</p>
+
+<p>'Come out in the thunder and lightning?' interrupted Lord Denver; 'I'm
+sure she will. She has the pride of Lucifer and the courage of a lion.
+Five to one in ponies that she is here before the clock strikes seven!'</p>
+
+<p>'I think you are right. I knew her mother, Constance Talmash. Pluck was
+a family characteristic of the Talmashes. Wicked as devils, and brave as
+lions. Old Talmash, the grandfather, shot his valet in a paroxysm of
+<i>delirium tremens</i>,' said Colonel Madison. 'She's a splendid woman, and
+she won't flinch. I'd rather back her than bet against her.'</p>
+
+<p>'Lady Maulevrier!' announced the groom of the chambers; and Lady Denyer
+moved at least three paces forward to meet her guest.</p>
+
+<p>The lady who entered, with slow and stately movements and proudly
+balanced head, might have served for a model as Juno or the Empress
+Livia. She was still in the bloom of youth, at most seven-and-twenty,
+but she had all the calm assurance of middle-age. No dowager, hardened
+by the varied experiences of a quarter of a century in the great world,
+could have faced society with more perfect coolness and self-possession.
+She was beautiful, and she let the world see that she was conscious of
+her beauty, and the power that went along with it. She was clever, and
+she used her cleverness with unfailing tact and unscrupulous audacity.
+She had won her place in the world as an acknowledged beauty, and one of
+the leaders of fashion. Two years ago she had been the glory and delight
+of Anglo-Indian society in the city of Madras, ruling that remote and
+limited kingdom with a despotic power. Then all of a sudden she was
+ordered, or she ordered her physician to order her, an immediate
+departure from that perilous climate, and she came back to England with
+her three-year-old son, two Ayahs, and four European servants, leaving
+her husband, Lord Maulevrier, Governor of the Madras Presidency, to
+finish the term of his service in an enforced widowhood.</p>
+
+<p>She returned to be the delight of London society. She threw open the
+family mansion in Curzon Street to the very best people, but to those
+only. She went out a great deal, but she was never seen at a second-rate
+party. She had not a single doubtful acquaintance upon her visiting
+list. She spent half of every year at the family seat in Scotland, was a
+miracle of goodness to the poor of her parish, and taught her boy his
+alphabet.</p>
+
+<p>Lord Denyer came forward while his wife and Lady Maulevrier were shaking
+hands, and greeted her with more than his usual cordiality. Colonel
+Madison watched for the privilege of a recognising nod from the
+divinity. Sir Jasper Paulet, a legal luminary of the first brilliancy,
+likely to be employed for the Crown if there should be an inquiry into
+Lord Maulevrier's conduct out yonder, came to press Lady Maulevrier's
+hand and murmur a tender welcome.</p>
+
+<p>She accepted their friendliness as a matter of course, and not by the
+faintest extra quiver of the tremulous stars which glittered in a
+circlet above her raven hair did she betray her consciousness of the
+cloud that darkened her husband's reputation. Never had she appeared
+gayer, or more completely satisfied with herself and the world in which
+she lived. She was ready to talk about anything and everything—the
+newly-wedded queen, and the fortunate Prince, whose existence among us
+had all the charm of novelty—of Lord Melbourne's declining health—and
+Sir Robert Peel's sliding scale—mesmerism—the Oxford Tracts—the
+latest balloon ascent—the opera—Macready's last production at Drury
+lane—Bulwer's new novel—that clever little comic paper, just
+struggling into popularity—what do you call the thing—<i>Punch?</i>—yes,
+<i>Punch, or the London Charivari</i>—a much more respectable paper than its
+Parisian prototype.</p>
+
+<p>Seated next Lord Denyer, who was an excellent listener, Lady
+Maulevrier's vivacity never flagged throughout the dinner, happily not
+so long as a modern banquet, albeit more ponderous and not less
+expensive. From the turtle to the pines and strawberries, Lady
+Maulevrier held her host or her right-hand neighbour in interested
+conversation. She always knew the particular subjects likely to interest
+particular people, and was a good listener as well as a good talker. Her
+right-hand neighbour was Sir Jasper Paulet, who had been allotted to the
+pompous wife of a court physician, a lady who had begun her married life
+in the outer darkness of Guildford Street, Bloomsbury, with a household
+consisting of a maid-of-all-work and a boy in buttons, with an
+occasional interregnum of charwoman; and for whom all the length and
+breadth of Harley Street was now much too small.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Jasper was only decently civil to this haughty matron, who on the
+strength of a card for a ball or a concert at the palace once in a
+season affected to be on the most intimate terms with Royalty, and knew
+everything that happened, and every fluctuation of opinion in that
+charmed circle. The great lawyer's left ear was listening greedily for
+any word of meaning that might fall from the lips of Lady Maulevrier;
+but no such word fell. She talked delightfully, with a touch-and-go
+vivacity which is the highest form of dinner-table talk, not dwelling
+with a heavy hand upon any one subject, but glancing from theme to theme
+with airy lightness. But not one word did she say about the governor of
+Madras; and at this juncture of affairs it would have been the worst
+possible taste to inquire too closely after his lordship's welfare.</p>
+
+<p>So the dinner wore on to its stately close, and just as the solemn
+procession of flunkeys, long as the shadowy line of the kings in
+'Macbeth,' filed off with the empty ice-dishes, Lady Maulevrier said
+something which was as if a shell had exploded in the middle of the
+table.</p>
+
+<p>'Perhaps you are surprised to see me in such good spirits,' she said,
+beaming upon her host, and speaking in those clear, perfectly finished
+syllables which are heard further than the louder accents of less
+polished speakers, 'but you will not wonder when I let you into the
+secret. Maulevrier is on his way home.'</p>
+
+<p>'Indeed!' said Lord Denyer, with the most benignant smile he could
+command at such short notice. He felt that the muscles round his eyes
+and the corners of his mouth were betraying too much of his real
+sentiments. 'You must be very glad.'</p>
+
+<p>'I am gladder than I can say,' answered Lady Maulevrier, gaily. 'That
+horried climate—a sky like molten copper—an atmosphere that tastes of
+red-hot sand—that flat barren coast never suited him. His term of
+office would expire in little more than a year, but I hardly think he
+could have lived out the year. However, I am happy to say the mail that
+came in to-day—I suppose you know the mail is in?' (Lord Denyer
+bowed)—'brought me a letter from his Lordship, telling me that he has
+sent in his resignation, and taken his passage by the next big ship that
+leaves Madras. I imagine he will be home in October.'</p>
+
+<p>'If he have a favourable passage,' said Lord Denyer. 'Favoured by your
+good wishes the winds and the waves ought to deal gently with him.'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, we have done with the old days of Greek story, when Neptune was
+open to feminine influence,' sighed her ladyship. 'My poor Ulysses has
+no goddess of wisdom to look after him.'</p>
+
+<p>'Perhaps not, but he has the most charming of Penelopes waiting for him
+at home.'</p>
+
+<p>'A Penelope who goes to dinners, and takes life pleasantly in his
+absence. That is a new order of things, is it not?' said her ladyship,
+laughingly. 'I hope my poor Ulysses will not come home thoroughly broken
+in health, but that our Sutherlandshire breezes will set him up again.'</p>
+
+<p>'Rather an ordeal after India, I should think,' said Lord Denyer.</p>
+
+<p>'It is his native air. He will revel in it.'</p>
+
+<p>'Delicious country, no doubt,' assented his lordship, who was no
+sportsman, and who detested Scotland, grouse moors, deer forests, salmon
+rivers included.</p>
+
+<p>His only idea of a winter residence was Florence or Capri, and of the
+two he preferred Capri. The island was at that time little frequented by
+Englishmen. It had hardly been fashionable since the time of Tiberius,
+but Lord Denyer went there, accompanied by his French chef, and a dozen
+other servants, and roughed it in a native hotel; while Lady Denyer
+wintered at the family seat among the hills near Bath, and gave herself
+over to Low Church devotion, and works of benevolence. She made herself
+a terror to the neighbourhood by the strictness of her ideas all through
+the autumn and winter; and in the spring she went up to London, put on
+her turban and her diamonds, and plunged into the vortex of West-End
+society, where she revolved among other jewelled matrons for the season,
+telling herself and her intimates that this sacrifice of inclination was
+due to his lordship's position. Lady Denyer was not the less
+serious-minded because she was seen at every aristocratic resort, and
+wore low gowns with very short sleeves, and a great display of mottled
+arm and dimpled elbow.</p>
+
+<p>Now came her ladyship's smiling signal for the withdrawal of that fairer
+half of the assembly which was supposed to be indifferent to Lord
+Denyer's famous port and Madeira. She had been throwing out her gracious
+signals unperceived for at least five minutes before Lady Maulevrier
+responded, so entirely was that lady absorbed in her conversation with
+Lord Denyer; but she caught the look at last, and rose, as if moved by
+the same machinery which impelled her hostess, and then, graceful as a
+swan sailing with the current, she drifted down the room to the distant
+door, and headed the stately procession of matronly velvet and diamonds,
+herself at once the most regal and the most graceful figure in that bevy
+of fair woman.</p>
+
+<p>In the drawing-room nobody could be gayer than Lady Maulevrier, as she
+marked the time of Signor Paponizzi's saltarello, exquisitely performed
+on the Signor's famed Amati violin—or talked of the latest
+scandal—always excepting that latest scandal of all which involved her
+own husband—in subdued murmurs with one of her intimates. In the
+dining-room the men drew closer together over their wine, and tore Lord
+Maulevrier's character to rags. Yea, they rent him with their teeth and
+gnawed the flesh from his bones, until there was not so much left of him
+as the dogs left of Jezebel.</p>
+
+<p>He had been a scamp from his cradle, a spendthrift at Eton and Oxford, a
+blackleg in his manhood. False to men, false to women. Clever? Yes,
+undoubtedly, just as Satan is clever, and as unscrupulous as that very
+Satan. This was what his friends said of him over their wine. And now he
+was rumoured to have sold the British forces in the Carnatic provinces
+to one of the native Princes. Yes, to have taken gold, gold to an amount
+which Clive in his most rapacious moments never dreamt of, for his
+countrymen's blood. Tidings of dark transactions between the Governor
+and the native Princes had reached the ears of the Government, tidings
+so vague, so incredible, that the Government might naturally be slow to
+believe, still slower to act. There were whispers of a woman's
+influence, a beautiful Ranee, a creature as fascinating and as
+unscrupulous as Cleopatra. The scandal had been growing for months past,
+but it was only in the letters received to-day that the rumour had taken
+a tangible shape, and now it was currently reported that Lord Maulevrier
+had been recalled, and would have to answer at the bar of the House of
+Lords for his misdemeanours, which were of a much darker colour than
+those acts for which Warren Hastings had been called to account fifty
+years before.</p>
+
+<p>Yet in the face of all this, Lady Maulevrier bore herself as proudly as
+if her husband's name were spotless, and talked of his return with all
+the ardour of a fond and trusting wife.</p>
+
+<p>'One of the finest bits of acting I ever saw in my life,' said the court
+physician. 'Mademoiselle Mars never did anything better.'</p>
+
+<p>'Do you really think it was acting?' inquired Lord Denyer, affecting a
+youthful candour and trustfulness which at his age, and with his
+experience, he could hardly be supposed to possess.</p>
+
+<p>'I know it,' replied the doctor. 'I watched her while she was talking of
+Maulevrier, and I saw just one bead of perspiration break out on her
+upper lip—an unmistakable sign of the mental struggle.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_II"></a><h2>CHAPTER II.</h2>
+<h3>ULYSSES.</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>October was ending drearily with north-east winds, dust, drifting dead
+leaves, and a steel-grey sky; and the Dolphin Hotel at Southampton was
+glorified by the presence of Lady Maulevrier and suite. Her ladyship's
+suite was on this occasion limited to three servants—her French maid, a
+footman, and a kind of factotum, a man of no distinct and arbitrary
+signification in her ladyship's household, neither butler nor steward,
+but that privileged being, an old and trusted servant, and a person who
+was supposed to enjoy more of Lady Maulevrier's confidence than any
+other member of her establishment.</p>
+
+<p>This James Steadman had been valet to her ladyship's father, Lord
+Peverill, during the declining years of that nobleman. The narrow limits
+of a sick room had brought the master and servant into a closer
+companionship than is common to that relation. Lady Diana Angersthorpe
+was a devoted daughter, and in her attendance upon the Earl during the
+last three years of his life—a life which closed more than a year
+before her own marriage—she saw a great deal of James Steadman, and
+learned to trust him as servants are not often trusted. He was not more
+than twenty years of age at the beginning of his service, but he was a
+man of extraordinary gravity, much in advance of his years; a man of
+shrewd common-sense and clear, sharp intellect. Not a reading man, or a
+man in any way superior to his station and belongings, but a man who
+could think quickly, and understand quickly, and who always seemed to
+think rightly. Prompt in action, yet steady as a rock, and to all
+appearance recognising no earthly interest, no human tie, beyond or
+above the interests of his master. As a nurse Steadman showed himself
+invaluable. Lord Peverill left him a hundred pounds in acknowledgment of
+his services, which was something for Lord Peverill, who had very little
+ready cash wherewith to endow his only daughter. After his death the
+title and the estates went to a distant cousin; Lady Diana Angersthorpe
+was taken in hand by her aunt, the Dowager Marchioness of Carrisbrook;
+and James Steadman would have had to find employment among strangers, if
+Lady Diana had not pleaded so urgently with her aunt as to secure him a
+somewhat insignificant post in her ladyship's establishment.</p>
+
+<p>'If ever I have a house of my own, you shall have a better place in it,
+Steadman,' said Lady Diana.</p>
+
+<p>She kept her word, and on her marriage with Lord Maulevrier, which
+happened about eighteen months afterwards, Steadman passed into that
+nobleman's service. He was a member of her ladyship's bodyguard, and his
+employment seemed to consist chiefly in poking fires, cutting the leaves
+of books and newspapers, superintending the footman's attendance upon
+her ladyship's household pets, and conveying her sentiments to the other
+servants. He was in a manner Lady Maulevrier's mouthpiece, and although
+treated with a respect that verged upon awe, he was not a favourite with
+the household.</p>
+
+<p>And now the house in Mayfair was given over to the charge of caretakers.
+All the other servants had been despatched by coach to her ladyship's
+favourite retreat in Westmoreland, within a few miles of the Laureate's
+home at Rydal Mount, and James Steadman was charged with the whole
+responsibility of her ladyship's travelling arrangements.</p>
+
+<p>Penelope had come to Southampton to wait for Ulysses, whose ship had
+been due for more than a week, and whose white sails might be expected
+above the horizon at any moment. James Steadman spent a good deal of his
+time waiting about at the docks for the earliest news of Greene's ship,
+the <i>Hypermnestra</i>; while Lady Maulevrier waited patiently in her
+sitting-room at the Dolphin, whose three long French windows commanded a
+full view of the High Street, with all those various distractions
+afforded by the chief thoroughfare of a provincial town. Her ladyship
+was provided with a large box of books, from Ebers' in Bond Street, a
+basket of fancy work, and her favourite Blenheim spaniel, Lalla Rookh;
+but even these sources of amusement did not prevent the involuntary
+expression of weariness in occasional yawns, and frequent pacings up and
+down the room, where the formal hotel furniture had a comfortless and
+chilly look.</p>
+
+<p>Fellside, her ladyship's place in Westmoreland, was the pleasure house
+which, among all her possessions, she most valued; but it had hitherto
+been reserved for summer occupation, or for perhaps two or three weeks
+at Easter, when the spring was exceptionally fine. The sudden
+determination to spend the coming winter in the house near Grasmere was
+considered a curious freak of Lady Maulevrier's, and she was constrained
+to explain her motives to her friends.</p>
+
+<p>'His lordship is out of health,' she said, 'and wants perfect rest and
+retirement. Now, Fellside is the only place we have in which he is
+likely to get perfect rest. Anywhere else we should have to entertain.
+Fellside is out of the world. There is no one to be entertained.'</p>
+
+<p>'Except your neighbour, Wordsworth. I suppose you see him sometimes?'</p>
+
+<p>'Dear simple-minded old soul, he gives nobody any trouble,' said her
+ladyship.</p>
+
+<p>'But is not Westmoreland very cold in winter?' asked her friend.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Maulevrier smiled benignly, as at an inoffensive ignorance.</p>
+
+<p>'So sheltered,' she murmured. 'We are at the base of the Fell. Loughrigg
+rises up like a cyclopean wall between us and the wind.'</p>
+
+<p>'But when the wind is in the other direction?'</p>
+
+<p>'We have Nabb Scar. You do not know how we are girdled and defended by
+hills.'</p>
+
+<p>'Very pleasant,' agreed the friend; 'but for my own part I would rather
+winter in the south.'</p>
+
+<p>Those terrible rumours which had first come upon the world of London
+last June, had been growing darker and more defined ever since, but
+still Lady Maulevrier made believe to ignore them; and she acted her
+part of unconsciousness with such consummate skill that nobody in her
+circle could be sure where the acting began and where the ignorance left
+off. The astute Lord Denyer declared that she was a wonderful woman, and
+knew more about the real state of the case than anybody else.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile it was said by those who were supposed to be well-informed
+that a mass of evidence was accumulating against Lord Maulevrier. The
+India House, it was rumoured, was busy with the secret investigation of
+his case, prior to that public inquiry which was to come on during the
+next session. His private fortune would be made answerable for his
+misdemeanours—his life, said the alarmists, might pay the penalty of
+his treason. On all sides it was agreed that the case against Lord
+Maulevrier was black as Erebus; and still Lady Maulevrier looked society
+in the face with an unshaken courage, and was ready with smiles and
+gracious words for all comers.</p>
+
+<p>But now came a harder trial, which was to receive the man who had
+disgraced her, lowered her pride to the dust, degraded the name she
+bore. She had married him, not loving him—nay, plucking another love
+out of her heart in order that she might give herself to him. She had
+married him for position and fortune; and now by his follies, by his
+extravagance, and by that greed of gold which is inevitable in the
+spendthrift and profligate, he had gone near to cheat her out of both
+name and fortune. Yet she so commanded herself as to receive him with a
+friendly air when he arrived at the Dolphin, on a dull grey autumn
+afternoon, after she had waited for him nearly a fortnight.</p>
+
+<p>James Steadman ushered in his lordship, a frail attenuated looking
+figure, of middle height, wrapped in a furred cloak, yet shivering, a
+pale sickly face, light auburn whiskers, light blue eyes, full and
+large, but with no intellectual power in them. Lady Maulevrier was
+sitting by the fire, in a melancholy attitude, with the Blenheim spaniel
+on her lap. Her son was at Hastings with his nurses. She had nothing
+nearer and dearer than the spaniel.</p>
+
+<p>She rose and went over to her husband, and let him kiss her. It would
+have been too much to say that she kissed him; but she submitted her
+lips unresistingly to his, and then they sat down on opposite sides of
+the hearth.</p>
+
+<p>'A wretched afternoon,' said his lordship, shivering, and drawing his
+chair closer to the fire. Steadman had taken away his fur-lined cloak.
+'I had really underrated the disagreeableness of the English climate. It
+is abominable!'</p>
+
+<p>'To-day is not a fair sample,' answered her ladyship, trying to be
+cheerful; 'we have had some pleasant autumn days.'</p>
+
+<p>'I detest autumn!' exclaimed Lord Maulevrier, 'a season of dead leaves,
+damp, and dreariness. I should like to get away to Montpellier or Nice
+as soon as we can.'</p>
+
+<p>Her ladyship gave him a scathing look, half-scornful, half-incredulous.</p>
+
+<p>'You surely would not dream of leaving the country,' she said, 'under
+present circumstances. So long as you are here to answer all charges no
+one will interfere with your liberty; but if you were to cross the
+Channel—'</p>
+
+<p>'My slanderers might insinuate that I was running away,' interrupted
+Maulevrier, 'although the very fact of my return ought to prove to every
+one that I am able to meet and face this cabal.'</p>
+
+<p>'Is it a cabal?' asked her ladyship, looking at him with a gaze that
+searched his soul. 'Can you meet their charges? Can you live down this
+hideous accusation, and hold up your head as a man of honour?'</p>
+
+<p>The sensualist's blue eyes nervously shunned that look of earnest
+interrogation. His lips answered the wife's spoken question with a lie,
+a lie made manifest by the expression of his countenance.</p>
+
+<p>'I am not afraid,' he said.</p>
+
+<p>His wife answered not a word. She was assured that the charges were
+true, and that the battered rake who shivered over the fire had neither
+courage nor ability to face his accusers. She saw the whole fabric of
+her life in ruins, her son the penniless successor to a tarnished name.
+There was silence for some minutes. Lady Maulevrier sat with lowered
+eyelids looking at the fire, deep in painful thought. Two perpendicular
+wrinkles upon her broad white forehead—so calm, so unclouded in
+society—told of gnawing cares. Then she stole a look at her husband,
+as he reclined in his arm-chair, his head lying back against the
+cushions in listless repose, his eyes looking vacantly at the window,
+whence he could see only the rain-blurred fronts of opposite houses,
+blank, dull windows, grey slated roofs, against a leaden sky.</p>
+
+<p>He had been a handsome man, and he was handsome still, albeit premature
+decay, the result of an evil life, was distinctly marked in his faded
+face. The dull, yellow tint of the complexion, the tarnished dimness of
+the large blue eyes, the discontented droop of the lips, the languor of
+the attitude, the pallid transparency of the wasted hands, all told of a
+life worn threadbare, energies exhausted, chances thrown away, a mind
+abandoned to despair.</p>
+
+<p>'You look very ill,' said his wife, after that long blank interval,
+which marked so unnatural an apathy between husband and wife meeting
+after so long a severance.</p>
+
+<p>'I am very ill. I have been worried to death—surrounded by rogues and
+liars—the victim of a most infernal conspiracy.' He spoke hurriedly,
+growing whiter and more tremulous as he went on.</p>
+
+<p>'Don't talk about it. You agitate yourself to no purpose,' said Lady
+Maulevrier, with a tranquillity which seemed heartless yet which might
+be the result of suppressed feeling. 'If you are to face this scandal
+firmly and boldly next January, you must try to recover physical
+strength in the meanwhile. Mental energy may come with better health.'</p>
+
+<p>'I shall never be any better,' said Lord Maulevrier, testily; 'that
+infernal climate has shattered my constitution.'</p>
+
+<p>'Two or three months of perfect rest and good nursing will make a new
+man of you. I have arranged that we shall go straight from here to
+Fellside. No one can plague you there with that disguised impertinence
+called sympathy. You can give all your thoughts to the ordeal before
+you, and be ready to meet your accusers. Fortunately, you have no Burke
+against you.'</p>
+
+<p>'Fellside? You think of going to Fellside?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes. You know how fond I am of that place. I little thought when you
+settled it upon me—a cottage in Westmoreland with fifty acres of garden
+and meadow—so utterly insignificant—that I should ever like it better
+than any of your places.'</p>
+
+<p>'A charming retreat in summer; but we have never wintered there? What
+put it into your head to go there at such a season as this? Why, I
+daresay the snow is on the tops of the hills already.'</p>
+
+<p>'It is the only place I know where you will not be watched and talked
+about,' replied Lady Maulevrier. 'You will be out of the eye of the
+world. I should think that consideration would weigh more with you than
+two or three degrees of the thermometer.'</p>
+
+<p>'I detest cold,' said the Earl, 'and in my weak health----'</p>
+
+<p>'We will take care of you,' answered her ladyship; and in the discussion
+which followed she bore herself so firmly that her husband was fain to
+give way.</p>
+
+<p>How could a disgraced and ruined man, broken in health and spirits,
+contest the mere details of life with a high-spirited woman ten years
+his junior?</p>
+
+<p>The Earl wanted to go to London, and remain there at least a week, but
+this her ladyship strenuously opposed. He must see his lawyer, he urged;
+there were steps to be taken which could be taken only under legal
+advice—counsel to be retained. If this lying invention of Satan were
+really destined to take the form of a public trial, he must be prepared
+to fight his foes on their own ground.</p>
+
+<p>'You can make all your preparations at Fellside,' answered his wife,
+resolutely. 'I have seen Messrs. Rigby and Rider, and your own
+particular ally, Rigby, will go to you at Fellside whenever you want
+him.'</p>
+
+<p>'That is not like my being on the spot,' said his lordship, nervously,
+evidently much disconcerted by her ladyship's firmness, but too feeble
+in mind and body for a prolonged contest.</p>
+
+<p>'I ought to be on the spot. I am not without influence; I have friends,
+men in power.'</p>
+
+<p>'Surely you are not going to appeal to friendship in order to vindicate
+your honour. These charges are true or false. If they are false your own
+manhood, your own rectitude, can face them and trample upon them,
+unaided by back-stairs influence. If they are true, no one can help
+you.'</p>
+
+<p>'I think you, at least, ought to know that they are as false as hell,'
+retorted the Earl, with an attempt to maintain his dignity.</p>
+
+<p>'I have acted as if I so believed,' replied his wife. 'I have lived as
+if there were no such slanders in the air. I have steadily ignored every
+report, every insinuation—have held my head as high as if I knew you
+were immaculate.'</p>
+
+<p>'I expected as much from you,' answered the Earl, coolly. 'If I had not
+known you were a woman of sense I should not have married you.'</p>
+
+<p>This was his utmost expression of gratitude. His next remarks had
+reference solely to his own comfort. Where were his rooms? at what hour
+were they to dine? And hereupon he rang for his valet, a German Swiss,
+and a servant out of a thousand.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_III"></a><h2>CHAPTER III.</h2>
+<h3>ON THE WRONG ROAD.</h3>
+
+<br>
+
+<p>Lord and Lady Maulevrier left Southampton next morning, posting. They
+took two servants in the rumble, Steadman and the footman. Steadman was
+to valet his lordship, the footman to be useful in all emergencies of
+the journey. The maid and the valet were to travel by heavy coach, with
+the luggage—her ladyship dispensing with all personal attendance during
+the journey.</p>
+
+<p>The first day took them to Rugby, whither they travelled across country
+by Wallingford and Oxford. The second day took them to Lichfield. Lord
+Maulevrier was out of health and feeble, and grumbled a good deal about
+the fatigue of the journey, the badness of the weather, which was dull
+and cold, east winds all day, and a light frost morning and night. As
+they progressed northward the sky looked grayer, the air became more
+biting. His lordship insisted upon the stages being shortened. He lay in
+bed at his hotel till noon, and was seldom ready to start till two
+o'clock. He could see no reason for haste; the winter would be long
+enough in all conscience at Fellside. He complained of mysterious aches
+and pains, described himself in the presence of hotel-keepers and
+headwaiters as a mass of maladies. He was nervous, irritable, intensely
+disagreeable. Lady Maulevrier bore his humours with unwavering patience,
+and won golden opinions from all sorts of people by her devotion to a
+husband whose blighted name was the common talk of England. Everybody,
+even in distant provincial towns, had heard of the scandal against the
+Governor of Madras; and everybody looked at the sallow, faded
+Anglo-Indian with morbid curiosity. His lordship, sensitive on all
+points touching his own ease and comfort, was keenly conscious of this
+unflattering inquisitiveness.</p>
+
+<p>The journey, protracted by Lord Maulevrier's languor and ill-health,
+dragged its slow length along for nearly a fortnight; until it seemed to
+Lady Maulevrier as if they had been travelling upon those dismal, flat,
+unpicturesque roads for months. Each day was so horribly like yesterday.
+The same hedgerows and flat fields, and passing glimpse of river or
+canal. The same absence of all beauty in the landscape—the same formal
+hotel rooms, and smirking landladies—and so on till they came to
+Lancaster, after which the country became more interesting—hills arose
+in the background. Even the smoky manufacturing towns through which
+they passed without stopping, were less abominable than the level
+monotony of the Midland counties.</p>
+
+<p>But now as they drew nearer the hills the weather grew colder, snow was
+spoken of, and when they got into Westmoreland the mountain-peaks
+gleamed whitely against a lead-coloured sky.</p>
+
+<p>'You ought not to have brought me here in such weather,' complained the
+Earl, shivering in his sables, as he sat in his corner of the travelling
+chariot, looking discontentedly at the gloomy landscape. 'What is to
+become of us if we are caught in a snowstorm?'</p>
+
+<p>'We shall have no snow worth talking about before we are safely housed
+at Fellside, and then we can defy the elements,' said Lady Maulevrier,
+coolly.</p>
+
+<p>They slept that night at Oxenholme, and started next morning, under a
+clean, bright sky, intending to take luncheon at Windermere, and to be
+at home by nightfall.</p>
+
+<p>But by the time they got to Windermere the sky had changed to a dark
+grey, and the people at the hotel prophesied a heavy fall before night,
+and urged the Earl and Countess to go no further that day. The latter
+part of the road to Fellside was rough and hilly. If there should be a
+snowstorm the horses would never be able to drag the carriage up the
+steepest bit of the way. Here, however, Lord Maulevrier's obstinacy came
+into play. He would not endure another night at an hotel so near his own
+house. He was sick to death of travelling, and wanted to be at rest
+among comfortable surroundings.</p>
+
+<p>'It was murder to bring me here,' he said to his wife. 'If I had gone to
+Hastings I should have been a new man by this time. As it is I am a
+great deal worse than when I landed.'</p>
+
+<p>Everyone at the hotel noticed his lordship's white and haggard looks. He
+had been known there as a young man in the bloom of health and strength,
+and his decay was particularly obvious to these people.</p>
+
+<p>'I saw death in his face,' the landlord said, afterwards.</p>
+
+<p>Every one, even her ladyship's firmness and good sense, gave way before
+the invalid's impatience. At three in the afternoon they left the hotel,
+with four horses, to make the remaining nineteen miles of the way in one
+stage. They had not been on the road half an hour before the snow began
+to fall thickly, whitening everything around them, except the lake,
+which showed a dark leaden surface at the bottom of the slope along the
+edge of which they were travelling. Too sullen for speech, Lord
+Maulevrier sat back in his corner, with his sable cloak drawn up to his
+chin, his travelling cap covering head and ears, his eyes contemplating
+the whitening world with a weary anger. His wife watched the landscape
+as long as she could, but the snow soon began to darken all the air,
+and she could see nothing save that blank blinding fall.</p>
+
+<p>Half-way to Fellside there was a point where two roads met, one leading
+towards Grasmere, the other towards the village of Great Langdale, a
+cluster of humble habitations in the heart of the hills. When the horses
+had struggled as far as this point, the snow was six inches deep on the
+road, and made a thick curtain around them as it fell. By this time the
+Earl had dozed off to sleep.</p>
+
+<p>He woke an hour after, let down the window, which let in a snow-laden
+gust, and tried to pierce the gloom without.</p>
+
+<p>'As black as Erebus!' he exclaimed, 'but we ought to be close at home by
+this time. Yes, thank God, there are the lights.'</p>
+
+<p>The carriage drew up a minute afterwards, and Steadman came to the door.</p>
+
+<p>'Very sorry, my lord. The horses must have taken a wrong turn after we
+crossed the bridge. And now the men say they can't go back to Fellside
+unless we can get fresh horses; and I'm afraid there's no chance of that
+here.'</p>
+
+<p>'Here!' exclaimed the Earl, 'what do you mean by here? Where the devil
+are we?'</p>
+
+<p>'Great Langdale, my lord.'</p>
+
+<p>A door opened and let out a flood of light—the red light of a wood
+fire, the pale flame of a candle—upon the snowy darkness, revealing the
+panelled hall of a neat little rustic inn: an eight-day clock ticking in
+the corner, a black and white sheep-dog coming out at his master's heels
+to investigate the travellers. To the right of the door showed the light
+of a window, sheltered by a red curtain, behind which the chiefs of the
+village were enjoying their evening.</p>
+
+<p>'Have you any post-horses?' asked the Earl, discontentedly, as the
+landlord stood on the threshold, shading the candle with his hand. 'No,
+sir. We don't keep post-horses.'</p>
+
+<p>'Of course not. I knew as much before I asked,' said the Earl.</p>
+
+<p>'We are fixed in this dismal hole for the night, I suppose. How far are
+we from Fellside?'</p>
+
+<p>'Seven miles,' answered the landlord. 'I beg your pardon, my lord; I
+didn't know it was your lordship,' he added, hurriedly. 'We're in sore
+trouble, and it makes a man daft-like; but if there's anything we can
+do----'</p>
+
+<p>'Is there no hope of getting on, Steadman?' asked the Earl, cutting
+short these civilities.</p>
+
+<p>'Not with these horses, my lord.'</p>
+
+<p>'And you hear we can't get any others. Is there any farmer about here
+who could lend us a pair of carriage horses?'</p>
+
+<p>The landlord knew of no such person.</p>
+
+<p>'Then we must stop here till to-morrow morning. What infernal fools
+those post-boys must be,' protested Lord Maulevrier.</p>
+
+<p>James Steadman apologised for the postilions, explaining that when they
+came to the critical point of their journey, where the road branched off
+to the Langdales, the snow was falling so thickly, the whole country was
+so hidden in all-pervading whiteness, that even he, who knew the way so
+well, could give no help to the drivers. He could only trust to the
+instinct of local postilions and local horses; and instinct had proved
+wrong.</p>
+
+<p>The travellers alighted, and were ushered into a not
+uncomfortable-looking parlour; very low as to the ceiling, very
+old-fashioned as to the furniture, but spotlessly clean, and enlivened
+by a good fire, to which his lordship drew near, shivering and muttering
+discontentedly to himself.</p>
+
+<p>'We might be worse off,' said her ladyship, looking round the bright
+little room, which pleased her better than many a state apartment in the
+large hotels at which they had stopped.</p>
+
+<p>'Hardly, unless we were out on the moor,' grumbled her husband. 'I am
+sick to death of this ill-advised, unreasonable journey. I am at a loss
+to imagine your motive in bringing me here. You must have had a motive.'</p>
+
+<p>'I had,' answered Lady Maulevrier, with a freezing look. 'I wanted to
+get you out of the way. I told you that plainly enough at Southampton.'</p>
+
+<p>'I don't see why I should be hurried away and hidden,' said Lord
+Maulevrier. 'I must face my accusers, sooner or later.'</p>
+
+<p>'Of course. The day of reckoning must come. But in the meantime have you
+no delicacy? Do you want to be pointed at everywhere?'</p>
+
+<p>'All I know is that I am very ill,' answered her husband, 'and that this
+wretched journey has made me twenty years older.'</p>
+
+<p>'We shall be safe at home before noon to-morrow, and you can have Horton
+to set you right again. You know you always believed in his skill.'</p>
+
+<p>'Horton is a clever fellow enough, as country doctors go; but at
+Hastings I could have had the best physicians in London to see me,'
+grumbled his lordship.</p>
+
+<p>The rustic maid-servant came in to lay the table, assisted by her
+ladyship's footman, who looked a good deal too tall for the room.</p>
+
+<p>'I shan't dine,' said the Earl. 'I am a great deal too ill and cold.
+Light a fire in my room, girl, and send Steadman to me'—this to the
+footman, who hastened to obey. 'You can send me up a basin of soup
+presently. I shall go to bed at once.'</p>
+
+<p>He left the room without another word to his wife, who sat by the hearth
+staring thoughtfully at the cheery wood fire. Presently she looked up,
+and saw that the man and maid were going on with their preparations for
+dinner.</p>
+
+<p>'I do not care about dining alone,' said her ladyship. 'We lunched at
+Windermere, and I have no appetite. You can clear away those things, and
+bring me some tea.'</p>
+
+<p>When the table furniture had been cleared, and a neat little tea-tray
+set upon the white cloth, Lady Maulevrier drew her chair to the table,
+and took out her pocket-book, from which she produced a letter. This she
+read more than once, meditating profoundly upon its contents.</p>
+
+<p>'I am very sorry he has come home,' wrote her correspondent, 'and yet if
+he had stayed in India there must have been an investigation on the
+spot. A public inquiry is inevitable, and the knowledge of his arrival
+in the country will precipitate matters. From all I hear I much fear
+that there is no chance of the result being favourable to him. You have
+asked me to write the unvarnished truth, to be brutal even, remember.
+His delinquencies are painfully notorious, and I apprehend that the last
+sixpence he owns will be answerable. His landed estate I am told can
+also be confiscated, in the event of an impeachment at the bar of the
+House of Lords, as in the Warren Hastings case. But as yet nobody seems
+clear as to the form which the investigation will take. In reply to your
+inquiry as to what would have happened if his lordship had died on the
+passage home, I believe I am justified in saying the scandal would have
+been allowed to die with him. He has contrived to provoke powerful
+animosities both in the Cabinet and at the India House, and there is, I
+fear, an intention to pursue the inquiry to the bitter end.'</p>
+
+<p>Assurances of the writer's sympathy followed these harsh truths. But to
+this polite commonplace her ladyship paid no attention. Her mind was
+intent on hard facts, the dismal probabilities of the near future.</p>
+
+<p>'If he had died upon the passage home!' she repeated. 'Would to God that
+he had so died, and that my son's name and fortune could be saved.'</p>
+
+<p>The innocent child who had never given her an hour's care; the one
+creature she loved with all the strength of her proud nature—his future
+was to be blighted by his father's misdoings—overshadowed by shame and
+dishonour in the very dawn of life. It was a wicked wish—an unnatural
+wish to find room in a woman's breast; but the wish was there. Would to
+God he had died before the ship touched an English port.</p>
+
+<p>But he was living, and would have to face his accusers—and she, his
+wife, must give him all the help she could.</p>
+
+<p>She sat long by the waning fire. She took nothing but a cup of tea,
+although the landlady had sent in substantial accompaniments to the
+tea-tray in the shape of broiled ham, new-laid eggs, and hot cakes,
+arguing that a traveller on such a night must be hungry, albeit
+disinclined for a ceremonious dinner. She had been sitting for nearly
+an hour in almost the same attitude, when there came a knock at the
+door, and, on being bidden to enter, the landlady came in, with some
+logs in her apron, under pretence of replenishing the fire.</p>
+
+<p>'I was afraid your fire must be getting low, and that you'd be amost
+starved, my lady,' she said, as she put on the logs, and swept up the
+ashes on the hearth. 'Such a dreadful night. So early in the year, too.
+I'm thinking we shall have a gay hard winter.'</p>
+
+<p>'That does not always follow,' said Lady Maulevrier. 'Has Steadman come
+downstairs?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, my lady. He told me to tell your ladyship that his lordship is
+pretty comfortable, and hopes to pass a good night.'</p>
+
+<p>'I am glad to hear it. You can give me another room, I suppose. It would
+be better for his lordship not to be disturbed, as he is very much out
+of health.'</p>
+
+<p>'There is another room, my lady, but it's very small.'</p>
+
+<p>'I don't mind how small, if it is clean and airy.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, my lady. I am thankful to say you won't find dirt or stuffiness
+anywhere in this house. His lordship do look mortal badly,' added the
+landlady, shaking her head dolefully; 'and I remember him such a fine
+young gentleman, when he used to come down the Rothay with the otter
+hounds, running along the bank—joomping in and out of the beck—up to
+his knees in the water—and now to see him, so white and mashiated, and
+broken-down like, in the very prime of life, all along of living out in
+a hot country, among blackamoors, which is used to it—poor, ignorant
+creatures—and never knew no better. It must be a hard trial for you, my
+lady.'</p>
+
+<p>'It is a hard trial.'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah! we all have our trials, rich and poor,' sighed the woman, who
+desired nothing better than to be allowed to unbosom her woes to the
+grand looking lady in the fur-bordered cloth pelisse, with beautiful
+dark hair piled up in clustering masses above a broad white forehead,
+and slender white hands on which diamonds flashed and glittered in the
+firelight, an unaccustomed figure by that rustic hearth.</p>
+
+<p>'We all have our trials—high and low.'</p>
+
+<p>'That reminds me,' said Lady Maulevrier, looking up at her, 'your
+husband said you were in trouble. What did that mean?'</p>
+
+<p>'Sickness in the house, my lady. A brother of mine that went to America
+to make his fortune, and seemed to be doing so well for the first five
+or six years, and wrote home such beautiful letters, and then left off
+writing all at once, and we made sure as he was dead, and never got a
+word from him for ten years, and just three weeks ago he drops in upon
+us as we was sitting over our tea between the lights, looking as white
+as a ghost. I gave a shriek when I saw him, for I was regular scared
+out of my senses. &quot;Robert's ghost!&quot; I cried; but it was Robert himself,
+come home to us to die. And he's lying upstairs now, with so little life
+in him that I expect every breath to be his last.'</p>
+
+<p>'What is his complaint?'</p>
+
+<p>'Apathy, my lady. Dear, dear, that's not it. I never do remember the
+doctor's foreign names.'</p>
+
+<p>'Atrophy,' perhaps.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, my lady, that was it. Happen such crack-jaw words come easy to a
+scholar like your ladyship.'</p>
+
+<p>'Does the doctor give no hope?'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, no, my lady. He don't go so far as to say there's no hope, though
+Robert has been badly so long. It all depends, he says, upon the
+rallying power of the constitution. The lungs are not gone, and the
+heart is not diseased. If there's rallying power, Robert will come
+round, and if there isn't he'll sink. But the doctor says nature will
+have to make an effort. But I have my own idea about the case,' added
+the landlady, with a sigh.</p>
+
+<p>'What is your idea?'</p>
+
+<p>'That our Robert was marked for death when he came into this house, and
+that he meant what he said when he spoke of coming home to die. Things
+had gone against him for the last ten years in America. He married and
+took his wife out to a farm in the Bush, and thought to make a good
+thing out of farming with the bit of brass he'd saved at heeam. But
+America isn't Gert Langdale, you see, my lady, and his knowledge stood
+him in no stead in the Bush; and first he lost his money, and he fashed
+himself terrible about that, and then he lost a child or two, and then
+he lost his wife, and he came back to us a broken-hearted man, with no
+wish to live. The doctor may call it atrophy, but I will call it what
+the Scripture calls it, a broken and a wounded spirit.'</p>
+
+<p>'Who is your doctor?'</p>
+
+<p>'Mr. Evans, of Ambleside.'</p>
+
+<p>'That little half-blind old man!' exclaimed her ladyship. 'Surely you
+have no confidence in him?'</p>
+
+<p>'Not much, my lady. But I don't believe all the doctors in London could
+do anything for Robert. Good nursing will bring him round if anything
+can; and he gets that, I can assure your ladyship. He's my only brother,
+the only kith and kin that's left to me, and he and I were gay fond of
+each other when he was young. You may be sure I don't spare any trouble,
+and my good man thinks the best of his larder or his celler hardly good
+enough for Robert.'</p>
+
+<p>'I am sure you are kind good people,' replied her ladyship gently; 'but
+I should have thought Mr. Horton, of Grasmere, could have done more than
+old Evans. However, you know best. I hope his lordship is not going to
+add to your cares by being laid up here, but he looked very ill this
+evening.'</p>
+
+<p>'He did, my lady, mortal bad.'</p>
+
+<p>'However, we must hope for the best. Steadman is a splendid servant in
+illness. He nursed my father for years. Will you tell him to come to me,
+if you please? I want to hear what he thinks of his lordship, and to
+discuss the chances of our getting home early to-morrow.'</p>
+
+<p>The landlady retired, and summoned Mr. Steadman, who was enjoying his
+modest glass of grog in front of the kitchen fire. He had taught himself
+to dispense with the consolations of tobacco, lest he should at any time
+make himself obnoxious to her ladyship.</p>
+
+<p>Steadman was closeted with Lady Maulevrier for the next half-hour,
+during which his lordship's condition was gravely discussed. When he
+left the sitting-room he told the landlord to be sure and feed the
+post-horses well, and make them comfortable for the night, so that they
+might be ready for the drive to Fellside early next morning.</p>
+
+<p>'Do you think his lordship will be well enough to travel?' asked the
+landlord.</p>
+
+<p>'He has made up his mind to get home—ill or well,' answered Steadman.
+'He has wasted about a week by his dawdling ways on the road; and now
+he's in a fever to get to Fellside.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_IV"></a><h2>CHAPTER IV.</h2>
+<h3>THE LAST STAGE.</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>The post-horses—which had been well fed, but accommodated somewhat
+poorly in stable and barn—were quite ready to go on next morning; but
+Lord Maulevrier was not able to leave his room, where her ladyship
+remained in close attendance upon him. The hills and valleys were white
+with snow, but there was none falling, and Mr. Evans, the elderly
+surgeon from Ambleside, rode over to Great Langdale on his elderly cob
+to look at Robert Haswell, and was called in to see Lord Maulevrier. Her
+ladyship had spoken lightly of his skill on the previous evening, but
+any doctor is better than none, so this feeble little personage was
+allowed to feel his lordship's pulse, and look at his lordship's tongue.</p>
+
+<p>His opinion, never too decidedly given, was a little more hazy than
+usual on this occasion, perhaps because of a certain awfulness, to
+unaccustomed eyes, in Lady Maulevrier's proud bearing. He said that his
+lordship was low, very low, and that the pulse was more irregular than
+he liked, but he committed himself no further than this, and went away,
+promising to send such pills and potions as were appropriate to the
+patient's condition.</p>
+
+<p>A boy rode the same pony over to Langdale later in the afternoon with
+the promised medicines.</p>
+
+<p>Throughout the short winter day, which seemed terribly long in the
+stillness and solitude of Great Langdale, Lady Maulevrier kept watch in
+the sick-room, Steadman going in and out in constant attendance upon his
+master—save for one half-hour only, which her ladyship passed in the
+parlour below, in conversation with the landlady, a very serious
+conversation, as indicated by Mrs. Smithson's grave and somewhat
+troubled looks when she left her ladyship; but a good deal of her
+trouble may have been caused by her anxiety about her brother, who was
+pronounced by the doctor to be 'much the same.'</p>
+
+<p>At eleven o'clock that night a mounted messenger was sent off to
+Ambleside in hot haste to fetch Mr. Evans, who came to the inn to find
+Lady Maulevrier kneeling beside her husband's bed, while Steadman stood
+with a troubled countenance at a respectful distance.</p>
+
+<p>The room was dimly lighted by a pair of candles burning on a table near
+the window, and at some distance from the old four-post bedstead,
+shaded by dark moreen curtains. The surgeon looked round the room, and
+then fumbled in his pockets for his spectacles, without the aid of which
+the outside world presented itself to him under a blurred and uncertain
+aspect.</p>
+
+<p>He put on his spectacles, and moved towards the bed; but the first
+glance in that direction showed him what had happened. The outline of
+the rigid figure under the coverlet looked like a sculptured effigy upon
+a tomb. A sheet was drawn over the face of death.</p>
+
+<p>'You are too late to be of any use, Mr. Evans,' murmured Steadman,
+laying his hand upon the doctor's sleeve and drawing him away towards
+the door.</p>
+
+<p>They went softly on to the landing, off which opened the door of that
+other sick-room where the landlady's brother was lying.</p>
+
+<p>'When did this happen?'</p>
+
+<p>'A quarter of an hour after the messenger rode off to fetch you,'
+answered Steadman. 'His lordship lay all the afternoon in a heavy sleep,
+and we thought he was going on well; but after dark there was a
+difficulty in his breathing which alarmed her ladyship, and she insisted
+upon you being sent for. The messenger had hardly been gone a quarter of
+an hour when his lordship woke suddenly, muttered to himself in a
+curious way, gave just one long drawn sigh, and—and all was over. It
+was a terrible shock for her ladyship.'</p>
+
+<p>'Indeed it must have been,' murmured the village doctor. 'It is a great
+surprise to me. I knew Lord Maulevrier was low, very low, the pulse
+feeble and intermittent; but I had no fear of anything of this kind. It
+is very sudden.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, it is awfully sudden,' said Steadman, and then he murmured in the
+doctor's ear, 'You will give the necessary certificate, I hope, with as
+little trouble to her ladyship as possible. This is a dreadful blow, and
+she----'</p>
+
+<p>'She shall not be troubled. The body will be removed to-morrow, I
+suppose.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes. He must be buried from his own house. I sent a second messenger to
+Ambleside for the undertaker. He will be here very soon, no doubt, and
+if the shell is ready by noon to-morrow, the body can be removed then. I
+have arranged to get her ladyship away to-night.'</p>
+
+<p>'So late? After midnight?'</p>
+
+<p>'Why not? She cannot stay in this small house—so near the dead. There
+is a moon, and there is no snow falling, and we are within seven miles
+of Fellside.'</p>
+
+<p>The doctor had nothing further to say against the arrangement, although
+such a drive seemed to him a somewhat wild and reckless proceeding. Mr.
+Steadman's grave, self-possessed manner answered all doubts. Mr. Evans
+filled in the certificate for the undertaker, drank a glass of hot
+brandy and water, and remounted his nag, in nowise relishing his
+midnight ride, but consoling himself with the reflection that he would
+be handsomely paid for his trouble.</p>
+
+<p>An hour later Lady Maulevrier's travelling carriage stood ready in the
+stable yard, in the deep shadow of wall and gables. It was at Steadman's
+order that the carriage waited for her ladyship at an obscure side door,
+rather than in front of the inn. An east wind was blowing keenly along
+the mountain road, and the careful Steadman was anxious his mistress
+should not be exposed to that chilly blast.</p>
+
+<p>There was some delay, and the four horses jingled their bits
+impatiently, and then the door of the inn opened, a feeble light gleamed
+in the narrow passage within, Steadman stood ready to assist her
+ladyship, there was a bustle, a confusion of dark figures on the
+threshold, a huddled mass of cloaks and fur wraps was lifted into the
+carriage, the door was clapped to, the horses went clattering out of the
+yard, turned sharply into the snowy road, and started at a swinging pace
+towards the dark sullen bulk of Loughrigg Fell.</p>
+
+<p>The moon was shining upon Elterwater in the valley yonder—the mountain
+ridges, the deep gorges below those sullen heights, looked back where
+the shadow of night enfolded them, but all along the snow-white road the
+silver light shone full and clear, and the mountain way looked like a
+path through fairyland.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_V"></a><h2>CHAPTER V.</h2>
+
+<h3>FORTY YEARS AFTER.</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>'What a horrid day!' said Lady Mary, throwing down her book with a yawn,
+and looking out of the deep bay window into a world of mountain and lake
+which was clouded over by a dense veil of rain and dull grey mist; such
+rain as one sees only in a lake district, a curtain of gloom which shuts
+off sky and distance, and narrows the world to one solitary dwelling,
+suspended amidst cloud and water, like another ark in a new deluge.</p>
+
+<p>Rain—such rain as makes out-of-door exercise impossible—was always an
+affliction to Lady Mary Haselden. Her delight was in open air and
+sunshine—fishing in the lake and rivers—sitting in some sheltered
+hollow of the hills more fitting for an eagle's nest than for the
+occupation of a young lady, trying to paint those ever-varying,
+unpaintable mountain peaks, which change their hues with every change of
+the sky—swimming, riding, roving far and wide over hill and
+heather—pleasures all more or less masculine in their nature, and which
+were a subject of regret with Lady Maulevrier.</p>
+
+<p>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. Grandmother
+and Lesbia adored each other. Lesbia was the one person for whom Lady
+Maulevrier's stateliness was subjugated by perfect love. To all the rest
+of the world the Countess was marble, but to Lesbia she was wax. Lesbia
+could mould her as she pleased; but happily Lesbia was not the kind of
+young person to take advantage of this privilege; she was thoroughly
+ductile or docile, and had no desire, at present, which ran counter to
+her grandmother.</p>
+
+<p>Lesbia was a beauty. In her nineteenth year she was a curious
+reproduction in face and figure, expression and carriage, of that Lady
+Diana Angersthorpe who five and forty years ago fluttered the dove-cots
+of St. James's and Mayfair by her brilliant beauty and her keen
+intelligence. There in the panelled drawing-room at Fellside hung
+Harlow's portrait of Lady Diana in her zenith, in a short-waisted, white
+satin frock, with large puffed gauze sleeves, through which the perfect
+arm showed dimly. Standing under that picture Lady Lesbia looked as if
+she had stepped out of the canvas. She was to be painted by Millais next
+year. Lady Maulevrier said, when she had been introduced, and society
+was beginning to talk about her: for Lady Maulevrier made up her mind
+five or six years ago that Lesbia should be the reigning beauty of her
+season. To this end she had educated and trained her, furnishing her
+with all those graces best calculated to please and astonish society.
+She was too clever a woman not to discover Lesbia's shallowness and lack
+of all great gifts, save that one peerless dower of perfect beauty. She
+knew exactly what Lesbia could be trained to do; and to this end Lesbia
+had been educated; and to this end Lady Maulevrier brought down to
+Fellside the most accomplished of Hanoverian governesses, who had
+learned French in Paris, and had toiled in the educational mill with
+profit to herself and her pupils for a quarter of a century. To this
+lady the Countess entrusted the education of her granddaughters' minds,
+while for their physical training she provided another teacher in the
+person of a clever little Parisian dancing mistress, who had set up at
+the West-End of London as a teacher of dancing and calisthenics, and had
+utterly failed to find pupils enough to pay her rent and keep her modest
+<i>pot-au-feu</i> going. Mademoiselle Thiebart was very glad to exchange the
+uncertainties of a first floor in North Audley Street for the comfort
+and security of Fellside Manor, with a salary of one hundred and fifty
+pounds a year.</p>
+
+<p>Both Fr&auml;ulein and Mademoiselle had been quick to discover that Lady
+Lesbia was the apple of her grandmother's eye, while Lady Mary was
+comparatively an outsider.</p>
+
+<p>So it came about that Mary's education was in somewise a mere picking-up
+of the crumbs which fell from Lesbia's table, and that she was allowed
+in a general way to run wild. She was much quicker at any intellectual
+exercise than Lesbia. She learned the lessons that were given her at
+railroad speed, and rattled off her exercises with a slap-dash
+penmanship which horrified the neat and niggling Fr&auml;ulein, and then
+rushed off to the lake or mountain, and by this means grew browner and
+browner, and more indelibly freckled day by day, thus widening the gulf
+between herself and her beauty sister.</p>
+
+<p>But it is not to be supposed that because Lesbia was beautiful, Mary was
+plain. This is very far from the truth. Mary had splendid hazel eyes,
+with a dancing light in them when she smiled, ruddy auburn hair, white
+teeth, a deeply-dimpled chin, and a vivacity and archness of expression,
+which served only in her present state of tutelage for the subjugation
+of old women and shepherd boys. Mary had been taught to believe that her
+chances of future promotion were of the smallest; that nobody would ever
+talk of her, or think of her by-and-by when she in her turn would make
+her appearance in London society, and that it would be a very happy
+thing for her if she were so fortunate as to attract the attention of a
+fashionable physician, a Canon of Westminster or St. Paul's, or a
+barrister in good practice.</p>
+
+<p>Mary turned up her pert little nose at this humdrum lot.</p>
+
+<p>'I would much rather spend all my life among these dear hills than marry
+a nobody in London,' she said, fearless of that grand old lady at whose
+frown so many people shivered. 'If you don't think people will like me
+and admire me—a little—you had better save yourself the trouble of
+taking me to London. I don't want to play second fiddle to my sister.'</p>
+
+<p>'You are a very impertinent person, and deserve to be taken at your
+word,' replied my lady, scowling at her; 'but I have no doubt before you
+are twenty you will tell another story.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh!' said Mary, now just turned seventeen, 'then I am not to come out
+till I am twenty.'</p>
+
+<p>'That will be soon enough,' answered the Countess. 'It will take you as
+long to get rid of those odious freckles. And no doubt by that time
+Lesbia will have made a brilliant marriage.'</p>
+
+<p>And now on this rainy July morning these two girls, neither of whom had
+any serious employment for her life, or any serious purpose in living,
+wasted the hours, each in her own fashion.</p>
+
+<p>Lesbia reclined upon a cushioned seat in the deep embrasure of a Tudor
+window, her <i>pose</i> perfection—it was one of many such attitudes which
+Mademoiselle had taught her, and which by assiduous training had become
+a second nature. Poor Mademoiselle, having finished her mission and
+taught Lesbia all she could teach, had now departed to a new and far
+less luxurious situation in a finishing school at Passy; but Fr&auml;ulein
+M&uuml;ller was still retained, as watch-dog and duenna.</p>
+
+<p>Lesbia's pale blue morning gown harmonised exquisitely with a complexion
+of lilies and roses, violet eyes, and golden-brown hair. Her features
+were distinguished by that perfect chiselling which gave such a haughty
+grace to her grandmother's countenance, even at sixty-seven years of
+age—a loveliness which, like the sculptured marble it resembles, is
+unalterable by time. Lesbia was reading Keats. It was her habit to read
+the poets, carefully and deliberately, taking up one at a time, and duly
+laying a volume aside when she found herself mistress of its contents.
+She had no passion for poetry, but it was an elegant leisurely kind of
+reading which suited her languid temperament. Moreover, her grandmother
+had told her that an easy familiarity with the great poets is of all
+knowledge that which best qualifies a woman to shine in conversation,
+without offending the superior sex by any assumption of scholarship.</p>
+
+<p>Mary was a very different class of reader; capricious, omniverous,
+tearing out the hearts of books, roaming from flower to flower in the
+fields of literature, loving old and new, romance and reality, novels,
+travels, plays, poetry, and never dwelling long on any one theme.
+Perhaps if Mary had lived in the bosom of a particularly sympathetic
+family she might have been reckoned almost a genius, so much of poetry
+and originality was there in her free unconventional character; but
+hitherto it had been Mary's mission in life to be snubbed, whereby she
+had acquired a very poor opinion of her own talents.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh,' she cried with a desperate yawn, while Lesbia smiled her languid
+smile over Endymion, 'how I wished something would happen—anything to
+stir us out of this statuesque, sleeping-beauty state of being. I verily
+believe the spiders are all asleep in the ivy, and the mice behind the
+wainscot, and the horses in the stable.'</p>
+
+<p>'What could happen?' asked Lesbia, with a gentle elevation of pencilled
+brows. 'Are not these lovely lines—</p>
+
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">&quot;And coverlids gold-tinted like the peach,</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Or ripe October's faded marigolds,</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Fell sleek about him in a thousand folds.&quot;</span><br>
+
+<p>Faded marigolds! Is not that intensely sweet?'</p>
+
+<p>'Very well for your sleepy Keats, but I don't suppose you would have
+noticed the passage if marigolds were not in fashion,' said Mary, with a
+touch of scorn. 'What could happen? Why a hundred things—an earthquake,
+flood, or fire. What could happen, do you say, Lesbia? Why Maulevrier
+might come home unexpectedly, and charm us out of this death-in-life.'</p>
+
+<p>'He would occasion a good deal of unpleasantness if he did,' answered
+Lesbia, coldly. 'You know how angry he has made grandmother.'</p>
+
+<p>'Because he keeps race-horses which have an unlucky knack of losing,'
+said Mary, dubiously. 'I suppose if his horses won, grandmother would
+rather approve?'</p>
+
+<p>'Not at all. That would make hardly any difference, except that he would
+not ruin himself quite so quickly. Grandmother says that a young man
+who goes on the turf is sure to be ruined sooner or later. And then
+Maulevrier's habits are altogether wild and foolish. It is very hard
+upon grandmother, who has such noble ambition for all of us.'</p>
+
+<p>'Not for me,' answered Mary smiling. 'Her views about me are very
+humble. She considers that I shall be most fortunate if a doctor or a
+lawyer condescend to like me well enough to make me an offer. He might
+make me the offer without liking me, for the sake of hearing himself and
+his wife announced as Mr. and Lady Mary Snooks at dinner parties. That
+would be too horrid! But I daresay such things have happened.'</p>
+
+<p>'Don't talk nonsense, Mary,' said Lesbia, loftily. 'There is no reason
+why you should not make a really good marriage, if you follow
+grandmother's advice and don't affect eccentricity.'</p>
+
+<p>'I don't affect eccentricity, but I'm afraid I really am eccentric,'
+murmured Mary, meekly, 'for I like so many things I ought not to like,
+and detest so many things which I ought to admire.'</p>
+
+<p>'I daresay you will have tamed down a little before you are presented,'
+said Lesbia, carelessly.</p>
+
+<p>She could not even affect a profound interest in anyone but herself. She
+had a narrowness of mental vision which prevented her looking beyond the
+limited circle of her own pleasures, her own desires, her own dreams and
+hopes. She was one of those strictly correct young women who was not
+likely to do much harm in the world but who was just as unlikely to do
+any good. Mary sighed, and went back to her book, a bulky volume of
+travels, and tried to lose herself in the sandy wastes of Africa, and to
+be deeply interested in the sources of the Congo, not, in her heart of
+hearts, caring a straw whether that far-away river comes from the
+mountains of the moon, or from the moon itself. To-day she could not pin
+her mind to pages which might have interested her at another time. Her
+thoughts were with Lord Maulevrier, that fondly-loved only brother, just
+seven years her senior, who had taken to race-horses and bad ways, and
+seemed to be trying his hardest to dissipate the splendid fortune which
+his grandmother, the dowager Countess, had nursed so judiciously during
+his long minority. Maulevrier and Mary had always been what the young
+man called 'no end of chums.'</p>
+
+<p>He called her his own brown-eyed Molly, much to the annoyance of Lady
+Maulevrier and Lesbia; and Mary's life was all gladness when Maulevrier
+was at Fellside. She devoted herself wholly to his amusements, rode and
+drove with him, followed on her pony when he went otter hunting, and
+very often abandoned the pony to the care of some stray mountain youth
+in order to join the hunters, and go leaping from stone to stone on the
+margin of the stream, and occasionally, in moments of wild excitement,
+when the hounds were in full cry, splashing in and out of the water,
+like a naiad in a neat little hunting-habit.</p>
+
+<p>Mary looked after Maulevrier's stable when he was away, and had supreme
+command of a kennel of fox-terriers which cost her brother more money
+than the Countess would have cared to know; for in the wide area of Lady
+Maulevrier's ambition there was no room for two hundred guinea
+fox-terriers, were they never so perfect.</p>
+
+<p>Altogether Mary's life was a different life when her brother was at
+home; and in his absence the best part of her days were spent in
+thinking about him and fulfilling the duties of her position as his
+representative in stable and kennel, and among certain rustics in the
+district, chiefly of the sporting type, who were Maulevrier's chosen
+allies or <i>prot&eacute;g&eacute;s</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Never, perhaps, had two girls of patrician lineage lived a more secluded
+life than Lady Maulevrier's granddaughters. They had known no pleasures
+beyond the narrow sphere of home and home friends. They had never
+travelled—they had seen hardly anything of the outside world. They had
+never been to London or Paris, or to any city larger than York; and
+their visits to that centre of dissipation had been of the briefest, a
+mere flash of mild gaiety, a horticultural show or an oratorio, and back
+by express train, closely guarded by governess and footmen, to Fellside.
+In the autumn, when the leaves were falling in the wooded grounds of
+Fellside, the young ladies were sent, still under guardianship of
+governesses and footmen, to some quiet seaside resort between Alnwick
+and Edinburgh, where Mary lived the wild free life she loved, roaming
+about the beach, boating, shrimping, seaweed-gathering, making hard work
+for the governesses and footmen who had been sent in charge of her.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Maulevrier never accompanied her granddaughters on these occasions.
+She was a vigorous old woman, straight as a dart, slim as a girl, active
+in her degree as any young athlete among those hills, and she declared
+that she never felt the need of change of air. The sodden shrubberies,
+the falling leaves, did her no harm. Never within the memory of this
+generation had she left Fellside. Her love of this mountain retreat was
+a kind of <i>culte</i>. She had come here broken spirited, perhaps broken
+hearted, bringing her dead husband from the little inn at Great Langdale
+forty years ago, and she had hardly left the spot since that day.</p>
+
+<p>In those days Fellside House was a very different kind of dwelling from
+the gracious modern Tudor mansion which now crowned and beautified the
+hill-side above Grasmere Lake. It was then an old rambling stone house,
+with queer little rooms and inconvenient passages, low ceilings,
+thatched gables, and all manner of strange nooks and corners. Lady
+Maulevrier was of too strictly conservative a temper to think of
+pulling down an old house which had been in her husband's family for
+generations. She left the original cottage undisturbed, and built her
+new house at right angles with it, connecting the two with a wide
+passage below and a handsome corridor above, so that access should be
+perfect in the event of her requiring the accommodation of the old
+quaint, low ceiled rooms for her family or her guests. During forty
+years no such necessity had ever arisen; but the old house, known as the
+south wing, was still left intact, the original furniture undisturbed,
+although the only occupants of the building were her ladyship's faithful
+old house-steward, James Steadman, and his elderly wife.</p>
+
+<p>The house which Lady Maulevrier had built for herself and her
+grandchildren had not been created all at once, though the nucleus
+dating forty years back was a handsome building. She had added more
+rooms as necessity or fancy dictated, now a library with bedrooms over
+it, now a music room for Lady Lesbia and her grand piano—anon a
+billiard-room, as an agreeable surprise for Maulevrier when he came home
+after a tour in America. Thus the house had grown into a long low pile
+of Tudor masonry—steep gables, heavily mullioned casements, grey stone
+walls, curtained with the rich growth of passion-flower, magnolia,
+clematis, myrtle and roses—and all those flowers which thrive and
+flourish in that mild and sheltered spot.</p>
+
+<p>The views from those mullioned casements were perfect. Switzerland could
+give hardly any more exquisite picture than that lake shut in by hills,
+grand and bold in their varied outlines, so rich in their colouring that
+the eye, dazzled with beauty, forgot to calculate the actual height of
+those craggy peaks and headlands, the mind forgot to despise them
+because they were not so lofty as Mont Blanc or the Matterhorn. The
+velvet sward of the hill sloped steeply downward from Lady Maulevrier's
+drawing-room windows to the road beside the lake, and this road was so
+hidden by the wooded screen which bounded her ladyship's grounds that
+the lake seemed to lie in the green heart of her gardens, a lovely,
+placid lake on summer days, reflecting the emerald hue of the
+surrounding hills, and looking like a smooth green meadow, which invited
+the foot passenger to cross it.</p>
+
+<p>The house was approached by a winding carriage drive that led up and up
+and up from the road beside the lake, so screened and sheltered by
+shrubberies and pine woods, that the stranger knew not whither he was
+going, till he came upon an opening in the wood, and the stately Italian
+garden in front of a massive stone porch, through which he entered a
+spacious oak-panelled hall, and anon, descending a step or two, he found
+himself in Lady Maulevrier's drawing-room, and face to face with that
+divine view of the everlasting hills, the lake shining below him,
+bathed in sunlight.</p>
+
+<p>Or if it were the stranger's evil fate to come in wet weather, he saw
+only a rain-blotted landscape—the blurred outlines of grey mountain
+peaks, scowling at him from the other side of a grey pool. But if the
+picture without were depressing, the picture within was always good to
+look upon, for those oak-panelled or tapestried rooms, communicating by
+richly-curtained doorways from drawing room to library, from library to
+billiard room, were as perfect as wealth and taste could make them. Lady
+Maulevrier argued that as there was but one house among all the
+possessions of her race which she cared to inhabit, she had a right to
+make that house beautiful, and she had spared nothing upon the
+beautification of Fellside; and yet she had spent much less than would
+have been squandered by any pleasure-loving dowager, restlessly roving
+from Piccadilly to the Engadine, from Pontresina to Nice or Monaco,
+winding up with Easter in Paris, and then back to Piccadilly. Her
+ladyship's friends wondered that she could care to bury herself alive in
+Westmoreland, and expatiated on the eccentricity of such a life; nay,
+those who had never seen Fellside argued that Lady Maulevrier had taken
+in her old age to hoarding, and that she pigged at a cottage in the Lake
+district, in order to swell a fortune which young Maulevrier would set
+about squandering as soon as she was in her coffin. But here they were
+wrong. It was not in Lady Maulevrier's nature to lead a sordid life in
+order to save money. Yet in these quiet years that were gone—starting
+with that golden nucleus which her husband was supposed to have brought
+home from India, obtained no one knows how, the Countess had amassed one
+of the largest fortunes possessed by any dowager in the peerage. She had
+it, and she held it, with a grasp that nothing but death could loosen;
+nay, that all-foreseeing mind of hers might contrive to cheat grim death
+itself, and to scheme a way for protecting this wealth, even when she
+who had gathered and garnered it should be mouldering in her grave. The
+entailed estates belonged to Maulevrier, were he never such a fool or
+spendthrift; but this fortune of the dowager's was her own, to dispose
+of as she pleased, and not a penny of it was likely to go to the young
+Earl.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Maulevrier's pride and hopes were concentrated upon her
+granddaughter Lesbia. She should be the inheritress of this noble
+fortune—she should spread and widen the power of the Maulevrier race.
+Lesbia's son should link the family name with the name of his father;
+and if by any hazard of fate the present Earl should die young and
+childless, the old Countess's interest should be strained to the
+uttermost to obtain the title for Lesbia's offspring. Why should she not
+be Countess of Maulevrier in her own right? But in order to make this
+future possible the most important factor in the sum was yet to be
+found in the person of a husband for Lady Lesbia—a husband worthy of
+peerless beauty and exceptional wealth, a husband whose own fortune
+should be so important as to make him above suspicion. That was Lady
+Maulevrier's scheme—to wed wealth to wealth—to double or quadruple the
+fortune she had built up in the long slow years of her widowhood, and
+thus to make her granddaughter one of the greatest ladies in the land;
+for it need hardly be said that the man who was to wed Lady Lesbia must
+be her equal in wealth and lineage, if not her superior.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Maulevrier was not a miser. She was liberal and benevolent to all
+who came within the circle of her life. Wealth for its own sake she
+valued not a jot. But she lived in an age in which wealth is power, and
+ambition was her ruling passion. As she had been ambitious for her
+husband in the days that were gone, she was now ambitious for her
+granddaughter. Time had intensified the keen eagerness of her mind. She
+had been disappointed, cruelly, bitterly, in the ambition of her youth.
+She had been made to drink the cup of shame and humiliation. But to this
+ambition of her old age she held with even greater tenacity. God help
+her if she should be disappointed here!</p>
+
+<p>It is not to be supposed that so astute a schemer as Lady Maulevrier had
+not surveyed the marriage market in order to discover that fortunate
+youth who should be deemed worthy to become the winner of Lesbia's hand.
+Years ago, when Lesbia was still in the nursery, the dowager had made
+herself informed of the age, weight, and colours of every likely runner
+in the matrimonial stakes; or, in plainer words, had kept herself, by
+her correspondence with a few intimate friends, and her close study of
+the fashionable newspapers, thoroughly acquainted with the characters
+and exploits, the dispositions and antecedents, of those half-dozen
+elder sons, among whom she hoped to find Lesbia's lord and master. She
+knew her peerage by heart, and she knew the family history of every
+house recorded therein; the sins and weaknesses, the follies and losses
+of bygone years; the taints, mental and physical; the lateral branches
+and intermarriages; the runaway wives and unfaithful husbands; idiot
+sons or scrofulous daughters. She knew everything that was to be known
+about that aristocratic world into which she had been born sixty-seven
+years ago; and the sum-total of her knowledge was that there was one man
+whom she desired for her granddaughter's husband—one man, and one only,
+and into whose hands, when earth and sky should fade from her glazing
+eyes, she could be content to resign the sceptre of power.</p>
+
+<p>There were no doubt half-a-dozen, or more, in the list of elder sons,
+who were fairly eligible. But this young man was the Achilles in the
+rank and file of chivalry, and her soul yearned to have him and no other
+for her darling.</p>
+
+<p>Her soul yearned to him with a tenderness which was not all on Lesbia's
+account. Forty-nine years ago she had fondly loved his father—loved him
+and had been fain to renounce him; for Ronald Hollister, afterwards Earl
+of Hartfield, was then a younger son, and the two families had agreed
+that marriage between paupers was an impudent flying in the face of
+Providence, which must be put down with an iron hand. Lord Hartfield
+sent his son to Turkey in the diplomatic service; and the old dowager
+Lady Carrisbrook whisked her niece off to London, and kept her there,
+under watch and ward, till Lord Maulevrier proposed and was accepted by
+her. There should be no foolishness, no clandestine correspondence. The
+iron hand crushed two young hearts, and secured a brilliant future for
+the bodies which survived.</p>
+
+<p>Fifteen years later Ronald's elder brother died unmarried. He abandoned
+that career of vagrant diplomacy which had taken him all over Europe,
+and as far as Washington, and re-appeared in London, the most elegant
+man of his era, but thoroughly <i>blas&eacute;</i>. There were rumours of an unhappy
+attachment in the Faubourg Saint Germain; of a tragedy at Petersburg.
+Society protested that Lord Hartfield would die a bachelor, as his
+brother died before him. The Hollisters are not a marrying family, said
+society. But six or seven years after his return to England Lord
+Hartfield married Lady Florence Ilmington, a beauty in her first season,
+and a very sweet but somewhat prudish young person. The marriage
+resulted in the birth of an heir, whose appearance upon this mortal
+stage was followed within a year by his father's exit. Hence the
+Hartfield property, always a fine estate, had been nursed and fattened
+during a long minority, and the present Lord Hartfield was reputed one
+of the richest young men of his time. He was also spoken of as a
+superior person, inheriting all his father's intellectual gifts, and
+having the reputation of being singularly free from the vices of
+profligate youth. He was neither prig nor pedant, and he was very
+popular in the best society; but he was not ashamed to let it be seen
+that his ambition soared higher than the fashionable world of turf and
+stable, cards and pigeon matches.</p>
+
+<p>Though not of the gay world, nor in it, Lady Maulevrier had contrived to
+keep herself thoroughly <i>en rapport</i> with society. Her few chosen
+friends, with whom she corresponded on terms of perfect confidence, were
+among the best people in London—not the circulators of club-house
+canards, the pickers-up of second-hand gossip from the society papers,
+but actors in the comedy of high life, arbiters of fashion and taste,
+born and bred in the purple.</p>
+
+<p>Last season Lord Hartfield's absence had cast a cloud over the
+matrimonial horizon. He had been a traveller for more than a
+year—Patagonia, Peru, the Pyramids, Japan, the North Pole—society
+cared not where—the fact that he was gone was all-sufficient. Bachelors
+a shade less eligible came to the front in his absence and became first
+favourites. Lady Maulevrier, well informed in advance, had deferred
+Lesbia's presentation till next season, when she was told Lord Hartfield
+would certainly re-appear. His plans had been made for return before
+Christmas; and it would seem that his scheme of life was laid down with
+as much precision as if he had been a prince of the blood royal. Thus it
+happened, to Lesbia's intense disgust, that her <i>d&eacute;but</i> was deferred
+till the verge of her twentieth birthday. It would never do, Lady
+Maulevrier told herself, for the edge to be taken off the effect which
+Lesbia's beauty was to make on society during Lord Hartfield's absence.
+He must be there, on the spot, to see this star rise gently and slowly
+above society's horizon, and to mark how everybody bowed down and
+worshipped the new light.</p>
+
+<p>'I shall be an old woman before I appear in society,' said Lesbia,
+petulantly; 'and I shall be like a wild woman of the woods; for I have
+seen nothing, and know nothing of the civilised world.'</p>
+
+<p>'You will be ever so much more attractive than the young women I hear
+of, who have seen and known a great deal too much,' answered the
+dowager; and as her granddaughter knew that Lady Maulevrier's word was a
+law that altered not, there were no more idle repinings.</p>
+
+<p>Her ladyship gave no reason for the postponement of Lesbia's
+presentation. She was far too diplomatic to breathe a word of her ideas
+with regard to Lord Hartfield. Anything like a matrimonial scheme would
+have been revolting to Lesbia, who had grand, but not sordid views about
+matrimony. She thought it her mission to appear and to conquer. A crowd
+of suitors would sigh around her, like the loves and graces round that
+fair Belinda whose story she had read so often; and it would be her part
+to choose the most worthy. The days are gone when a girl would so much
+as look at such a fribble as Sir Plume. Her virgin fancy demands the
+Tennysonian ideal, the grave and knightly Arthur.</p>
+
+<p>But when Lesbia thought of the most worthy, it was always of the
+worthiest in her own particular sphere; and he of course would be titled
+and wealthy, and altogether fitted to be her husband. He would take her
+by the hand and lead her to a higher seat on the dais, and place upon
+her head, or at least upon her letter-paper and the panels of her
+carriage, a coronet in which the strawberry leaves should stand out more
+prominently than in her brother's emblazonment. Lesbia's mind could not
+conceive an ignoble marriage, or the possibility of the most worthy
+happening to be found in a lower circle than her own.</p>
+
+<p>And now it was the end of July, and the season which should have been
+glorified by Lady Lesbia's <i>d&eacute;but</i> was over and done with. She had read
+in the society papers of all the balls, and birthdays, and race
+meetings, and regattas, and cricket matches, and gowns, and parasols,
+and bonnets—what this beauty wore on such an occasion, and how that
+other beauty looked on another occasion—and she felt as she read like a
+spell-bound princess in a fairy tale, mewed up in a battlemented tower,
+and deprived of her legitimate share in all the pleasures of earth. She
+had no patience with Mary—that wild, unkempt, ungraceful creature, who
+could be as happy as summer days are long, racing about the hills with
+her bamboo alpenstock, rioting with a pack of fox-terriers, practising
+long losers, rowing on the lake, doing all things unbecoming Lady
+Maulevrier's granddaughter.</p>
+
+<p>That long rainy day dragged its slow length to a close; and then came fine
+days, in which Molly and her fox-terriers went wandering over the sunlit
+hills, skipping and dancing across the mountain streamlets—gills, as they
+were called in this particular world—almost as gaily as the shadows of
+fleecy cloudlets dancing up yonder in the windy sky. Molly spent half her
+days among the hills, stealing off from governess and grandmother and the
+stately beauty sister, and sometimes hardly being missed by them, so ill
+did her young exuberance harmonise with their calmer life.</p>
+
+<p>'One can tell when Mary is at home by a perpetual banging of doors,'
+said Lesbia, which was a sisterly exaggeration founded upon fact, for
+Molly was given to impetuous rushing in and out of rooms when that eager
+spirit of hers impelled the light lithe body upon some new expedition.
+Nor is the society of fox-terriers conducive to repose or stateliness of
+movement; and Maulevrier's terriers, although strictly forbidden the
+house, were for ever breaking bonds and leaping in upon Molly's
+retirement at all unreasonable hours. She and they were enchanted to get
+away from the beautiful luxurious rooms, and to go roving by hill-side
+and force, away to Easedale Tarn, to bask for hours on the grassy margin
+of the deep still water, or to row round and round the mountain lake in
+a rotten boat. It was here, or in some kindred spot, that Molly got
+through most of her reading—here that she read Shakespeare, Byron, and
+Shelley, and Wordsworth—dwelling lingeringly and lovingly upon every
+line in which that good old man spoke of her native land. Sometimes she
+climbed to higher ground, and felt herself ever so much nearer heaven
+upon the crest of Silver Howe, or upon the rugged stony steep of Dolly
+Waggon pike, half way up the dark brow of Helvellyn; sometimes she
+disappeared for hours, and climbed to the summit of the hill, and
+wandered in perilous pathways on Striding Edge, or by the dark still
+water of the Red Tarn. This had been her life ever since she had been
+old enough to have an independent existence; and the hills and the
+lakes, and the books of her own choosing, had done a great deal more in
+ripening her mind than Fr&auml;ulein M&uuml;ller and that admirable series of
+educational works which has been provided for the tuition of modern
+youth. Grammars and geographies, primers and elementary works of all
+kinds, were Mary's detestation; but she loved books that touched her
+heart and filled her mind with thoughts wide and deep enough to reach
+into the infinite of time and space, the mystery of mind and matter,
+life and death.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing occurred to break the placid monotony of life at Fellside for
+three long days after that rainy morning; and then came an event which,
+although commonplace enough in itself, marked the beginning of a new era
+in the existence of Lady Maulevrier's granddaughters.</p>
+
+<p>It was evening, and the two girls were dawdling about on the sloping
+lawn before the drawing-room windows, where Lady Maulevrier read the
+newspapers in her own particular chair by one of those broad Tudor
+windows, according to her infallible custom. Remote as her life bad been
+from the busy world, her ladyship had never allowed her knowledge of
+public life and the bent of modern thought to fall into arrear. She took
+a keen interest in politics, in progress of all kinds. She was a staunch
+Conservative, and looked upon every Liberal politician as her personal
+enemy; but she took care to keep herself informed of everything that was
+being said or done in the enemy's camp. She had an intense respect for
+Lord Bacon's maxim: Knowledge is power. It was a kind of power secondary
+to the power of wealth, perhaps; but wealth unprotected by wisdom would
+soon dwindle into poverty.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Lesbia sauntered about the lawn, looking very elegant in her
+cream-coloured Indian silk gown, very listless, very tired of her lovely
+surroundings. Neither lake nor mountain possessed any charm for her. She
+had had too much of them. Mary roamed about with a swifter footstep,
+looking at the roses, plucking off a dead leaf, or a cankered bud here
+and there. Presently she tore across the lawn to the shrubbery which
+screened the lawn and flower gardens from the winding carriage drive
+sunk many feet below, and disappeared in a thicket of arbutus and Irish
+yew.</p>
+
+<p>'What terribly hoydenish manners!' murmured Lesbia, with a languid shrug
+of her shoulders, as she strolled back to the drawing-room.</p>
+
+<p>She cared very little for the newspapers, for politics not at all; but
+anything was better than everlasting contemplation of the blue still
+water, and the rugged crest of Helm Crag.</p>
+
+<p>'What was the matter with Mary that she rushed off like a mad woman?'
+inquired Lady Maulevrier, looking up from the <i>Times</i>.</p>
+
+<p>'I haven't the least idea. Mary's movements are quite beyond the limits
+of my comprehension. Perhaps she has gone after a bird's-nest.'</p>
+
+<p>Mary was intent upon no bird's-nest. Her quick ear had caught the sound
+of manly voices in the winding drive under the pine wood; and surely,
+yes, surely one was a clear and familiar voice, which heralded the
+coming of happiness. In such a moment she seemed to have wings. She
+became unconscious that she touched the earth; she went skimming
+bird-like over the lawn, and in and out, with fluttering muslin frock,
+among arbutus and bay, yew and laurel, till she stood poised lightly on
+the top of the wooded bank which bordered the steep ascent to Lady
+Maulevrier's gate, looking down at two figures which were sauntering up
+the drive.</p>
+
+<p>They were both young men, both tall, broad-shouldered, manly, walking
+with the easy swinging movement of men accustomed to active exercise.
+One, the handsomer of the two in Mary's eyes, since she thought him
+simply perfection, was fair-haired, blue-eyed, the typical Saxon. This
+was Lord Maulevrier. The other was dark, bronzed by foreign travel,
+perhaps, with black hair, cut very close to an intelligent-looking head,
+bared to the evening breeze.</p>
+
+<p>'Hulloa!' cried Maulevrier. 'There's Molly. How d'ye do, old girl?'</p>
+
+<p>The two men looked up, and Molly looked down. Delight at her brother's
+return so filled her heart and mind that there was no room left for
+embarrassment at the appearance of a stranger.</p>
+
+<p>'O, Maulevrier, I am so glad! I have been pining for you. Why didn't you
+write to say you were coming? It would have been something to look
+forward to.'</p>
+
+<p>'Couldn't. Never knew from day to day what I was going to be up to;
+besides, I knew I should find you at home.'</p>
+
+<p>'Of course. We are always at home,' said Mary; 'go up to the house as
+fast as ever you can. I'll go and tell grandmother.'</p>
+
+<p>'And tell them to get us some dinner,' said Maulevrier.</p>
+
+<p>Mary's fluttering figure dipped and was gone, vanishing in the dark
+labyrinth of shrubs. The two young men sauntered up to the house.</p>
+
+<p>'We needn't hurry,' said Maulevrier to his companion, whom he had not
+taken the trouble to introduce to his sister. 'We shall have to wait for
+our dinner.'</p>
+
+<p>'And we shall have to change our dusty clothes,' added the other; 'I
+hope that man will bring our portmanteaux in time.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, we needn't dress. We can spend the evening in my den, if you
+like!'</p>
+
+<p>Mary flew across the lawn again, and bounded up the steps of the
+verandah—a picturesque Swiss verandah which made a covered promenade in
+front of the house.</p>
+
+<p>'Mary, may I ask the meaning of this excitement,' inquired her ladyship,
+as the breathless girl stood before her.</p>
+
+<p>'Maulevrier has come home.'</p>
+
+<p>'At last?'</p>
+
+<p>'And he has brought a friend.'</p>
+
+<p>'Indeed! He might have done me the honour to inquire if his friend's
+visit would be agreeable. What kind of person?'</p>
+
+<p>'I have no idea. I didn't look at him. Maulevrier is looking so well.
+They will be here in a minute. May I order dinner for them?'</p>
+
+<p>'Of course, they must have dinner,' said her ladyship, resignedly, as if
+the whole thing were an infliction; and Mary ran out and interviewed the
+butler, begging that all things might be made particularly comfortable
+for the travellers. It was nine o'clock, and the servants were enjoying
+their eventide repose.</p>
+
+<p>Having given her orders, Mary went back to the drawing-room, impatiently
+expectant of her brother's arrival, for which event Lesbia and her
+grandmother waited with perfect tranquillity, the dowager calmly
+continuing the perusal of her <i>Times</i>, while Lesbia sat at her piano in
+a shadowy corner, and played one of Mendelssohn's softest Lieder. To
+these dreamy strains Maulevrier and his friend presently entered.</p>
+
+<p>'How d'ye do, grandmother? how do, Lesbia? This is my very good friend
+and Canadian travelling companion, Jack Hammond—Lady Maulevrier, Lady
+Lesbia.'</p>
+
+<p>'Very glad to see you, Mr. Hammond,' said the dowager, in a tone so
+purely conventional that it might mean anything. 'Hammond? I ought to
+remember your family—the Hammonds of----'</p>
+
+<p>'Of nowhere,' answered the stranger in the easiest tone; 'I spring from
+a race of nobodies, of whose existence your ladyship is not likely to
+have heard.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_VI"></a><h2>CHAPTER VI.</h2>
+
+<h3>MAULEVRIER'S HUMBLE FRIEND.</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>That faint interest which Lady Lesbia had felt in the advent of a
+stranger dwindled to nothing after Mr. Hammond's frank avowal of his
+insignificance. At the very beginning of her career, with the world
+waiting to be conquered by her, a high-born beauty could not be expected
+to feel any interest in nobodies. Lesbia shook hands with her brother,
+honoured the stranger with a stately bend of her beautiful throat, and
+then withdrew herself from their society altogether as it were, and
+began to explore her basket of crewels, at a distant table, by the soft
+light of a shaded lamp, while Maulevrier answered his grandmother's
+questions, and Mary stood watching him, hanging on his words, as if
+unconscious of any other presence.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Hammond went over to the window and looked out at the view. The moon
+was rising above the amphitheatre of hills, and her rays were silvering
+the placid bosom of the lake. Lights were dotted here and there about
+the valley, telling of village life. The Prince of Wales's hotel yonder
+sparkled with its many lights, like a castle in a fairy tale. The
+stranger had looked upon many a grander scene, but on none more lovely.
+Here were lake and mountain in little, without the snow-peaks and awful
+inaccessible regions of solitude and peril; homely hills that one might
+climb, placid English vales in which English poets have lived and died.</p>
+
+<p>'Hammond and I mean to spend a month or six weeks with you, if you can
+make us comfortable,' said Maulevrier.</p>
+
+<p>'I am delighted to hear that you can contemplate staying a month
+anywhere,' replied her ladyship. 'Your usual habits are as restless as
+if your life were a disease. It shall not be my fault if you and Mr.
+Hammond are uncomfortable at Fellside.'</p>
+
+<p>There was courtesy, but no cordiality in the reply. If Mr. Hammond was a
+sensitive man, touchily conscious of his own obscurity, he must have
+felt that he was not wanted at Fellside—that he was an excrescence,
+matter in the wrong place.</p>
+
+<p>Nobody had presented the stranger to Lady Mary. It never entered into
+Maulevrier's mind to be ceremonious about his sister Molly. She was so
+much a part of himself that it seemed as if anyone who knew him must
+needs know her. Molly sat a little way from the window by which Mr.
+Hammond was standing, and looked at him doubtfully, wonderingly, with
+not altogether a friendly eye, as he stood with his profile turned to
+her, and his eyes upon the landscape. She was inclined to be jealous of
+her brother's friend, who would most likely deprive her of much of that
+beloved society. Hitherto she had been Maulevrier's chosen companion, at
+Fellside—indeed, his sole companion after the dismissal of his tutor.
+Now this brown, bearded stranger would usurp her privileges—those two
+young men would go roaming over the hills, fishing, otter-hunting, going
+to distant wrestling matches and leaving her at home. It was a hard
+thing, and she was prepared to detest the interloper. Even to-night she
+would be a loser by his presence. Under ordinary circumstances she would
+have gone to the dining-room with Maulevrier, and sat by him and waited
+upon him as he ate. But she dared not intrude herself upon a meal that
+was to be shared with a stranger.</p>
+
+<p>She looked at John Hammond critically, eager to find fault with his
+appearence; but unluckily for her present humour there was not much room
+for fault-finding.</p>
+
+<p>He was tall, broad-shouldered, well-built. His enemies would hardly deny
+that he was good-looking—nay, even handsome. The massive regular
+features were irreproachable. He was more sunburnt than a gentleman
+ought to be, Mary thought. She told herself that his good looks were of
+a vulgar quality, like those of Charles Ford, the champion wrestler,
+whom she saw at the sports the other day. Why did Maulevrier pick up a
+companion who was evidently not of his own sphere? Hoydenish,
+plain-spoken, frank and affectionate as Mary Haselden was, she knew that
+she belonged to a race apart, that there were circles beneath circles,
+below her own world, circles which hers could never touch, and she
+supposed Mr. Hammond to be some waif from one of those nethermost
+worlds—a village doctor's son, perhaps, or even a tradesman's—sent to
+the University by some benevolent busybody, and placed at a disadvantage
+ever afterwards, an unfortunate anomaly, suspended between two worlds
+like Mahomet's coffin.</p>
+
+<p>The butler announced that his lordship's dinner was served.</p>
+
+<p>'Come along, Molly,' said Maulevrier; 'come and tell me about the
+terriers, while I eat my dinner.'</p>
+
+<p>Mary hesitated, glanced doubtfully at her grandmother, who made no sign,
+and then slipped out of the room, hanging fondly on her brother's arm,
+and almost forgetting that there was any such person as Mr. Hammond in
+existence.</p>
+
+<p>When these three were gone Lady Lesbia expressed herself strongly upon
+Maulevrier's folly in bringing such a person as Mr. Hammond to Fellside.</p>
+
+<p>'What are we to do with him, grandmother?' she said, pettishly. 'Is he
+to live with us, and be one of us, a person of whose belongings we know
+positively nothing, who owns that his people are common?'</p>
+
+<p>'My dear, he is your brother's friend, and we have the right to suppose
+he is a gentleman.'</p>
+
+<p>'Not on that account,' said Lesbia, more sharply than her wont. 'Didn't
+he make a friend, or almost a friend of Jack Howell, the huntsman, and
+of Ford, the wrestler. I have no confidence in Maulevrier's ideas of
+fitness.'</p>
+
+<p>'We shall find out all about this Mr. Hamleigh—no Hammond—in a day or
+two,' replied her ladyship, placidly; 'and in the meantime we must
+tolerate him, and be grateful to him if he reconcile Maulevrier to
+remaining at Fellside for the next six weeks.'</p>
+
+<p>Lesbia was silent. She did not consider Maulevrier's presence at
+Fellside an unmitigated advantage, or, indeed, his presence anywhere.
+Those two were not sympathetic. Maulevrier made fun of his elder
+sister's perfections, chaffed her intolerably about the great man she
+was going to captivate, in her first season, the great houses in which
+she was going to reign. Lesbia despised him for that neglect of all his
+opportunities of culture which had left him, after the most orthodox and
+costly curriculum, almost as ignorant as a ploughboy. She despised a man
+whose only delight was in horse and hound, gun and fishing-tackle. Molly
+would have cared very little for the guns or the fishing-tackle perhaps
+in the abstract; but she cared for everything that interested
+Maulevrier, even to the bagful of rats which were let loose in the
+stable-yard sometimes, for the education of a particularly game
+fox-terrier.</p>
+
+<p>There was plenty of talk and laughter at the dinner-table, while the
+Countess and Lady Lesbia conversed gravely and languidly in the
+dimly-lighted drawing-room. The dinner was excellent, and both
+travellers were ravenous. They had eaten nothing since breakfast, and
+had driven from Windermere on the top of the coach in the keen evening
+air. When the sharp edge of the appetite was blunted, Maulevrier began
+to talk of his adventures since he and Molly had last met. He had not
+being dissipating in London all the time—or, indeed, any great part of
+the time of his absence from Fellside; but Molly had been left in
+Cimmerian, darkness as to his proceedings. He never wrote a letter if he
+could possibly avoid doing so. If it became a vital necessity to him to
+communicate with anyone he telegraphed, or, in his own language, 'wired'
+to that person; but to sit down at a desk and labour with pen and ink
+was not within his capacities or his views of his mission in life.</p>
+
+<p>'If a fellow is to write letters he might as well be a clerk in an
+office,' he said, 'and sit on a high stool.'</p>
+
+<p>Thus it happened that when Maulevrier was away from Fellside, no fair
+<i>châtelaine</i> of the Middle Ages could be more ignorant of the movements
+or whereabouts of her crusader knight than Mary was of her brother's
+goings on. She could but pray for him with fond and faithful prayer, and
+wait and hope for his return. And now he told her that things had gone
+badly with him at Epsom, and worse at Ascot, that he had been, as he
+expressed it, 'up a tree,' and that he had gone off to the Black Forest
+directly the Ascot week was over, and at Rippoldsau he had met his old
+friend and fellow traveller, Hammond, and they had gone for a walking
+tour together among the homely villages, the watchmakers, the timber
+cutters, the pretty peasant girls. They had danced at fairs—and shot at
+village sports—and had altogether enjoyed the thing. Hammond, who was
+something of an artist, had sketched a good deal. Maulevrier had done
+nothing but smoke his German pipe and enjoy himself.</p>
+
+<p>'I was glad to find myself in a world where a horse was an exception and
+not the rule,' he said.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, how I should love to see the Black Forest!' cried Mary, who knew
+the first part of Faust by heart, albeit she had never been given
+permission to read it, 'the gnomes and the witches—der Freisch&uuml;tz—all
+that is lovely. Of course, you went up the Brocken?'</p>
+
+<p>'Of course,' answered Mr. Hammond; 'Mephistopheles was our <i>valet de
+place</i>, and we went up among a company of witches riding on
+broomsticks.' And then quoted,</p>
+
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">'Seh' die B&auml;ume hinter B&auml;umen,</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Wie sie schnell vor&uuml;berr&uuml;cken,</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Und die Klippen, die sich b&uuml;cken,</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Und die langen Felsennasen,</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Wie sie schnarchen, wie sie blasen!'</span><br>
+
+<p>This was the first time he had addressed himself directly to Mary, who
+sat close to her brother's side, and never took her eyes from his face,
+ready to pour out his wine or to change his plate, for the serving-men
+had been dismissed at the beginning of this unceremonious meal.</p>
+
+<p>Mary looked at the stranger almost as superciliously as Lesbia might
+have done. She was not inclined to be friendly to her brother's friend.</p>
+
+<p>'Do you read German?' she inquired, with a touch of surprise.</p>
+
+<p>'You had better ask him what language he does not read or speak,' said
+her brother. 'Hammond is an admirable Crichton, my dear—by-the-by, who
+was admirable Crichton?—knows everything, can twist your little head
+the right way upon any subject.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh,' thought Mary, 'highly cultivated, is he? Very proper in a man who
+was educated on charity to have worked his hardest at the University.'</p>
+
+<p>She was not prepared to think very kindly of young men who had been
+successful in their college career, since poor Maulevrier had made such
+a dismal failure of his, had been gated and sent down, and ploughed, and
+had everything ignominious done to him that could be done, which
+ignominy had involved an expenditure of money that Lady Maulevrier
+bemoaned and lamented until this day. Because her brother had not been
+virtuous, Mary grudged virtuous young men their triumphs and their
+honours. Great, raw-boned fellows, who have taken their degrees at
+Scotch Universities, come to Oxford and Cambridge and sweep the board,
+Maulevrier had told her, when his own failures demanded explanation.
+Perhaps this Mr. Hammond had graduated north of the Tweed, and had come
+southward to rob the native. Mary was not any more inclined to be civil
+to him because he was a linguist. He had a pleasant manner, frank and
+easy, a good voice, a cheery laugh. But she had not yet made up her mind
+that he was a gentleman.</p>
+
+<p>'If some benevolent old person were to take a fancy to Charles Ford, the
+wrestler, and send him to a Scotch University, I daresay he would turn
+out just as fine a fellow,' she thought, Ford being somewhat of a
+favourite as a local hero.</p>
+
+<p>The two young men went off to the billiard-room after they had dined. It
+was half-past ten by this time, and, of course, Mary did not go with
+them. She bade her brother good-night at the dining-room door.</p>
+
+<p>'Good-night, Molly; be sure you are up early to show me the dogs,' said
+Maulevrier, after an affectionate kiss.</p>
+
+<p>'Good-night, Lady Mary,' said Mr. Hammond, holding out his hand, albeit
+she had no idea of shaking hands with him.</p>
+
+<p>She allowed her hand to rest for an instant in that strong, friendly
+grasp. She had not risen to giving a couple of fingers to a person whom
+she considered her inferior; but she was inclined to snub Mr. Hammond as
+rather a presuming young man.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, Jack, what do you think of my beauty sister?' asked his lordship,
+as he chose his cue from the well-filled rack.</p>
+
+<p>The lamps were lighted, the table uncovered and ready, Carambole in his
+place, albeit it was months since any player had entered the room.
+Everything which concerned Maulevrier's comfort or pleasure was done as
+if by magic at Fellside; and Mary was the household fairy whose
+influence secured this happy state of things.</p>
+
+<p>'What can any man think except that she is as lovely as the finest of
+Reynold's portraits, as that Lady Diana Beauclerk of Colonel Aldridge's,
+or the Kitty Fisher, or any example you please to name of womanly
+loveliness?'</p>
+
+<p>'Glad to hear it,' answered Maulevrier, chalking his cue; 'can't say I
+admire her myself—not my style, don't you know. Too much of my lady
+Di—too little of poor Kitty. But still, of course, it always pleases a
+fellow to know that his people are admired; and I know that my
+grandmother has views, grand views,' smiling down at his cue. 'Shall I
+break?' and he began with the usual miss in baulk.</p>
+
+<p>'Thank you,' said Mr. Hammond, beginning to play. 'Matrimonial views, of
+course. Very natural that her ladyship should expect such a lovely
+creature to make a great match. Is there no one in view? Has there been
+no family conclave—no secret treaty? Is the young lady fancy free?'</p>
+
+<p>'Perfectly. She has been buried alive here; except parsons and a few
+decent people whom she is allowed to meet now and then at the houses
+about here, she has seen nothing of the world. My grandmother has kept
+Lesbia as close as a nun. She is not so fond of Molly, and that young
+person has wild ways of her own, and gives everybody the slip.
+By-the-by, how do you like my little Moll?'</p>
+
+<p>The adjective was hardly accurate about a young lady who measured five
+feet six, but Maulevrier had not yet grown out of the ideas belonging to
+that period when Mary was really his little sister, a girl of twelve,
+with long hair and short petticoats.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Hammond was slow to reply. Mary had not made a very strong
+impression upon him. Dazzled by her sister's pure and classical beauty,
+he had no eyes for Mary's homelier charms. She seemed to him a frank,
+affectionate girl, not too well-mannered; and that was all he thought of
+her.</p>
+
+<p>'I'm afraid Lady Mary does not like me,' he said, after his shot, which
+gave him time for reflection.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, Molly is rather <i>farouche</i> in her manners; never would train fine,
+don't you know. Her ladyship lectured till she was tired, and now Mary
+runs wild, and I suppose will be left at grass till six months before
+her presentation, and then they'll put her on the pillar-reins a bit to
+give her a better mouth. Good shot, by Jove!'</p>
+
+<p>John Hammond was used to his lordship's style of conversation, and
+understood his friend at all times. Maulevrier was not an intellectual
+companion, and the distance was wide between the two men; but his
+lordship's gaiety, good-nature, and acuteness made amends for all
+shortcomings in culture. And then Mr. Hammond may have been one of those
+good Conservatives who do not expect very much intellectual power in an
+hereditary legislator.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_VII"></a><h2>CHAPTER VII.</h2>
+
+<h3>IN THE SUMMER MORNING.</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>John Hammond loved the wild freshness of morning, and was always eager
+to explore a new locality; so he was up at five o'clock next morning,
+and out of doors before six. He left the sophisticated beauty of the
+Fellside gardens below him, and climbed higher and higher up the Fell,
+till he was able to command a bird's-eye view of the lake and village,
+and just under his feet, as it were, Lady Maulevrier's favourite abode.
+He was provided with a landscape glass which he always carried in his
+rambles, and with the aid of this he could see every stone of the
+building.</p>
+
+<p>The house, added to at her ladyship's pleasure, and without regard to
+cost, covered a considerable extent of ground. The new part consisted of
+a straight range of about a hundred and twenty feet, facing the lake,
+and commandingly placed on the crest of a steepish slope; the old
+buildings, at right angles with the new, made a quadrangle, the third
+and fourth sides of which were formed by the dead walls of servants'
+rooms and coach-houses, which had no windows upon this inner enclosed
+side. The old buildings were low and irregular, one portion of the roof
+thatched, another tiled. In the quadrangle there was an old-fashioned
+garden, with geometrical flower-beds, a yew tree hedge, and a stone
+sun-dial in the centre. A peacock stalked about in the morning light,
+and greeted the newly risen sun with a discordant scream. Presently a
+man came out of a half glass door under a verandah which shaded one side
+of the quadrangle, and strolled about the garden, stopping here and
+there to cut a dead rose, or trim a geranium, a stoutly-built broad
+shouldered man, with gray hair and beard, the image of well-fed
+respectability.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Hammond wondered a little at the man's leisurely movements as he
+sauntered about, whistling to the peacock. It was not the manner of a
+servant who had duties to perform—rather that of a gentleman living at
+ease, and hardly knowing how to get rid of his time.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Some superior functionary, I suppose,&quot; thought Hammond, &quot;the
+house-steward, perhaps.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He rambled a long way over the hill, and came back to Fellside by a path
+of his own discovering, which brought him to a wooden gate leading into
+the stable-yard, just in time to meet Maulevrier and Lady Mary emerging
+from the kennel, where his lordship had been inspecting the terriers.</p>
+
+<p>'Angelina is bully about the muzzle,' said Maulevrier; 'we shall have to
+give her away.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, don't,' cried Mary. 'She is a most perfect darling, and laughs so
+deliciously whenever she sees me.'</p>
+
+<p>Angelina was in Lady Mary's arms at this moment; a beautifully marked
+little creature, all thew and sinew, palpitating with suppressed
+emotions, and grinning to her heart's content.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Mary looked very fresh and bright in her neat tailor gown, kilted
+kirtle, and tight-fitting bodice, with neat little brass buttons. It was
+a gown of Maulevrier's ordering, made at his own tailor's. Her splendid
+chestnut hair was uncovered, the short crisp curls about her forehead
+dancing in the morning air. Her large, bright, brown eyes were dancing,
+too, with delight at having her brother home again.</p>
+
+<p>She shook hands with Mr. Hammond more graciously than last night; but
+still with a carelessness which was not complimentary, looking at him
+absently, as if she hardly knew that he was there, and hugging Angelina
+all the time.</p>
+
+<p>Hammond told his friend about his ramble over the hills, yonder, up
+above that homely bench called 'Rest, and be Thankful,' on the crest of
+Loughrigg Fell. He was beginning to learn the names of the hills
+already. Yonder darkling brow, rugged, gloomy looking, was Nab Scar;
+yonder green slope of sunny pasture, stretching wide its two arms as if
+to enfold the valley, was Fairfield; and here, close on the left, as he
+faced the lake, were Silver Howe and Helm Crag, with that stony
+excrescence on the summit of the latter known as the 'Lion and the
+Lamb.' Lady Maulevrier's house stood within a circle of mountain peaks
+and long fells, which walled in the deep, placid, fertile valley.</p>
+
+<p>'If you are not too tired to see the gardens, we might show them to you
+before breakfast,' said Maulevrier. 'We have three-quarters of an hour
+to the good.'</p>
+
+<p>'Half an hour for a stroll, and a quarter to make myself presentable
+after my long walk,' said Hammond, who did not wish to face the dowager
+and Lady Lesbia in disordered apparel. Lady Mary was such an obvious
+Tomboy that he might be pardoned for leaving her out of the question.</p>
+
+<p>They set out upon an exploration of the gardens, Mary clinging to her
+brother's arm, as if she wanted to make sure of him, and still carrying
+Angelina.</p>
+
+<p>The gardens were as other gardens, but passing beautiful. The sloping
+lawns and richly-timbered banks, winding shrubberies, broad terraces cut
+on the side of the hill, gave infinite variety. All that wealth and
+taste and labour could do to make those grounds beautiful had been
+done—the rarest conifers, the loveliest flowering shrubs grew and
+flourished there, and the flowers bloomed as they bloom only in
+Lakeland, where every cottage garden can show a wealth of luxurious
+bloom, unknown in more exposed and arid districts. Mary was very proud
+of those gardens. She had loved them and worked in them from her
+babyhood, trotting about on chubby legs after some chosen old gardener,
+carrying a few weeds or withered leaves in her pinafore, and fancying
+herself useful.</p>
+
+<p>'I help 'oo, doesn't I, Teeven?' she used to say to the gray-headed old
+gardener, who first taught her to distinguish flowers from weeds.</p>
+
+<p>'I shall never learn as much out of these horrid books as poor old
+Stevens taught me,' she said afterwards, when the gray head was at rest
+under the sod, and governesses, botany manuals, and hard words from the
+Greek were the order of the day.</p>
+
+<p>Nine o'clock was the breakfast hour at Fellside. There were no family
+prayers. Lady Maulevrier did not pretend to be pious, and she put no
+restraints of piety upon other people. She went to Church on Sunday
+mornings for the sake of example; but she read all the newest scientific
+books, subscribed to the Anthropological Society, and thought as the
+newest scientific people think. She rarely communicated her opinions
+among her own sex; but now and then, in strictly masculine and superior
+society, she had been heard to express herself freely upon the nebular
+hypothesis and the doctrine of evolution.</p>
+
+<p>'After all, what does it matter?' she said, finally, with her grand air;
+'I have only to marry my granddaughters creditably, and prevent my
+grandson going to the dogs, and then my mission on this insignificant
+planet will be accomplished. What new form that particular modification
+of molecules which you call Lady Maulevrier may take afterwards is
+hidden in the great mystery of material life.'</p>
+
+<p>There was no family prayer, therefore, at Fellside. The sisters had been
+properly educated in their religious duties, had been taught the
+Anglican faith carefully and well by their governess, Fr&auml;ulein M&uuml;ller,
+who had become a staunch Anglican before entering the families of the
+English nobility, and by the kind Vicar of Grasmere, who took a warm
+interest in the orphan girls. Their grandmother had given them to
+understand that they might be as religious as they liked. She would be
+no let or hindrance to their piety; but they must ask her no awkward
+questions.</p>
+
+<p>'I have read a great deal and thought a great deal, and my ideas are
+still in a state of transition,' she told Lesbia; and Lesbia, who was
+somewhat automatic in her piety, had no desire to know more.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Maulevrier seldom appeared in the forenoon. She was an early riser,
+being too vivid and highly strung a creature, even at sixty-seven years
+of age, to give way to sloth. She rose at seven, summer and winter, but
+she spent the early part of the day in her own rooms, reading, writing,
+giving orders to her housekeeper, and occasionally interviewing
+Steadman, who, without any onerous duties, was certainly the most
+influential person in the house. People in the village talked of him,
+and envied him so good a berth. He had a gentleman's house to live in,
+and to all appearance lived as a gentleman. This tranquil retirement,
+free from care or labour, was a rich reward for the faithful service of
+his youth. And it was known by the better informed among the Grasmere
+people that Mr. Steadman was saving money, and had shares in the
+North-Western Railway. These facts had oozed out, of themselves, as it
+were. He was not a communicative man, and rarely wasted half an hour at
+the snug little inn near St. Oswald's Church, amidst the cluster of
+habitations that was once called Kirktown. He was an unsociable man,
+people said, and thought himself better than Grasmere folk, the
+lodging-house keepers, and guides, and wrestlers, and the honest
+friendly souls who were the outcome of that band of Norwegian exiles
+which found a home in these peaceful vales.</p>
+
+<p>Miss M&uuml;ller, more commonly known as Fr&auml;ulein, officiated at breakfast.
+She never appeared at the board when Lady Maulevrier was present, but in
+her ladyship's absence Miss M&uuml;ller was guardian of the proprieties. She
+was a stout, kindly creature, and by no means a formidable dragon. When
+the gong sounded, John Hammond went into the dining-room, where he found
+Miss M&uuml;ller seated alone in front of the urn.</p>
+
+<p>He bowed, quick to read 'governess' or 'companion' in the lady's
+appearance; and she bowed.</p>
+
+<p>'I hope you have had a nice walk,' she said. 'I saw you from my bedroom
+window.'</p>
+
+<p>'Did you? Then I suppose yours is one of the few windows which look into
+that curious old quadrangle?'</p>
+
+<p>'No, there are no windows looking into the quadrangle. Those that were
+in the original plan of the house were walled up at her ladyship's
+orders, to keep out the cold winds which sweep down from the hills in
+winter and early spring, when the edge of Loughrigg Fell is white with
+snow. My window looks into the gardens, and I saw you there with his
+lordship and Lady Mary.'</p>
+
+<p>Lady Lesbia came in at this moment, and saluted Mr. Hammond with a
+haughty inclination of her beautiful head. She looked lovelier in her
+simple morning gown of pale blue cambric than in her more elaborate
+toilette of last evening; such purity of complexion, such lustrous eyes;
+the untarnished beauty of youth, breathing the delicate freshness of a
+newly-opened flower. She might be as scornful as she pleased, yet John
+Hammond could not withhold his admiration. He was inclined to admire a
+woman who kept him at a distance; for the general bent of young women
+now-a-days is otherwise.</p>
+
+<p>Maulevrier and Mary came in, and everyone sat down to breakfast. Lady
+Lesbia unbent a little presently, and smiled upon the stranger. There
+was a relief in a stranger's presence. He talked of new things, places
+and people she had never seen. She brightened and became quite friendly,
+deigned to invite the expression of Mr. Hammond's opinions upon music
+and art, and after breakfast allowed him to follow her into the
+drawing-room, and to linger there fascinated for half an hour, looking
+over her newest books, and her last batch of music, but looking most of
+all at her, while Maulevrier and Mary were loafing on the lawn outside.</p>
+
+<p>'What are you going to do with yourself this morning?' asked Maulevrier,
+appearing suddenly at the window.</p>
+
+<p>'Anything you like,' answered Hammond. 'Stay, there is one pilgrimage I
+am eager to make. I must see Wordsworth's grave, and Wordsworth's
+house.'</p>
+
+<p>'You shall see them both, but they are in opposite directions—one at
+your elbow, the other a four mile walk. Which will you see first? We'll
+toss for it,' taking a shilling from a pocketful of loose cash, always
+ready for moments of hesitation. 'Heads, house; tails, grave. Tails it
+is. Come and have a smoke, and see the poet's grave. The splendour of
+the monument, the exquisite neatness with which it is kept, will astound
+you, considering that we live in a period of Wordsworth worship.'</p>
+
+<p>Hammond hesitated, and looked at Lady Lesbia.</p>
+
+<p>'Aren't you coming?' called Maulevrier from the lawn. 'It was a fair
+offer. I've got my cigarette case.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, I'm coming,' answered the other, with a disappointed air.</p>
+
+<p>He had hoped that Lesbia would offer to show him the poet's grave. He
+could not abandon that hope without a struggle.</p>
+
+<p>'Will you come with us, Lady Lesbia? We'll suppress the cigarettes!'</p>
+
+<p>'Thanks, no,' she said, becoming suddenly frigid. 'I am going to
+practice.'</p>
+
+<p>'Do you never walk in the morning—on such a lovely morning as this?'</p>
+
+<p>'Not very often.'</p>
+
+<p>She had re-entered those frozen regions from which his attentions had
+lured him for a little while. She had reminded herself of the inferior
+social position of this person, in whose conversation she had allowed
+herself to be interested.</p>
+
+<p>'<i>Filons</i>!' cried Maulevrier from below, and they went.</p>
+
+<p>Mary would have very much liked to go with them, but she did not want to
+be intrusive; so she went off to the kennels to see the terriers eat
+their morning and only meal of dog biscuit.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_VIII"></a><h2>CHAPTER VIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>THERE IS ALWAYS A SKELETON.</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>The two young men strolled through the village, Maulevrier pausing to
+exchange greetings with almost everyone he met, and so to the rustic
+churchyard, above the beck.</p>
+
+<p>The beck was swollen with late rains, and was brawling merrily over its
+stony bed; the churchyard grass was deep and cool and shadowy under the
+clustering branches. The poet's tomb was disappointing in its unlovely
+simplicity, its stern, slatey hue. The plainest granite cross would have
+satisfied Mr. Hammond, or a cross in pure white marble, with a
+sculptured lamb at the base. Surely the lamb, emblem at once pastoral
+and sacred, ought to enter into any monument to Wordsworth; but that
+gray headstone, with its catalogue of dates, those stern iron
+railings—were these fit memorials of one whose soul so loved nature's
+loveliness?</p>
+
+<p>After Mr. Hammond had seen the little old, old church, and the medallion
+portrait inside, had seen all that Maulevrier could show him, in fact,
+the two young men went back to the place of graves, and sat on the low
+parapet above the beck, smoking their cigarettes, and talking with that
+perfect unreserve which can only obtain between men who are old and
+tried friends. They talked, as it was only natural they should talk, of
+that household at Fellside, where all things were new to John Hammond.</p>
+
+<p>'You like my sister Lesbia?' said Maulevrier.</p>
+
+<p>'Like her! well, yes. The difficulty with most men must be not to
+worship her.'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, she's not my style. And she's beastly proud.'</p>
+
+<p>'A little <i>hauteur</i> gives piquancy to her beauty; I admire a grand
+woman.'</p>
+
+<p>'So do I in a picture. Titian's Queen of Cyprus, or any party of that
+kind; but for flesh and blood I like humility—a woman who knows she is
+human, and not infallible, and only just a little better than you or me.
+When I choose a wife, she will be no such example of cultivated
+perfection as my sister Lesbia. I want no goddess, but a nice little
+womanly woman, to jog along the rough and tumble road of life with me.'</p>
+
+<p>'Lady Maulevrier's influence, no doubt, has in a great measure
+determined the bent of your sister's character: and from what you have
+told me about her ladyship, I should think a fixed idea of her own
+superiority would be inevitable in any girl trained by her.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, she is a proud woman—a proud, hard woman—and she has steeped
+Lesbia's mind in all her own pet ideas and prejudices. Yet, God knows,
+we have little reason to hold our heads high,' said Maulevrier, with a
+gloomy look.</p>
+
+<p>John Hammond did not reply to this remark: perhaps there was some
+difficulty for a man situated as he was in finding a fit reply. He
+smoked in silence, looking down at the pure swift waters of the Rotha
+tumbling over the crags and boulders below.</p>
+
+<p>'Doesn't somebody say there is always a skeleton in the cupboard, and
+the nobler and more ancient the race the bigger the skeleton?' said
+Maulevrier, with a philosophical air.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, your family secret is an attribute of a fine old race. The
+Pelopidæ, for instance—in their case it was not a single skeleton, but
+a whole charnel house. I don't think your skeleton need trouble you,
+Maulevrier. It belongs to the remote past.'</p>
+
+<p>'Those things never belong to the past,' said the young man. 'If it were
+any other kind of taint—profligacy—madness, even—the story of a duel
+that went very near murder—a runaway wife—a rebellious son—a cruel
+husband. I have heard such stories hinted at in the records of families.
+But our story means disgrace. I seldom see strangers putting their heads
+together at the club without fancying they are telling each other about
+my grandfather, and pointing me out as the grandson and heir of a
+thief.'</p>
+
+<p>'Why use unduly hard words?'</p>
+
+<p>'Why should I stoop to sophistication with you, my friend. Dishonesty
+is dishonesty all the world over; and to plunder Rajahs on a large scale
+is no less vile than to pick a pocket on Ludgate Hill.'</p>
+
+<p>'Nothing was ever proved against your grandfather.'</p>
+
+<p>'No, he died in the nick of time, and the inquiry was squashed, thanks
+to the Angersthorpe interest, and my grandmother's cleverness. But if he
+had lived a few weeks longer England would have rung with the story of
+his profligacy and dishonour. Some people say he committed suicide in
+order to escape the inquiry; but I have heard my mother emphatically
+deny this. My father told her that he had often talked with the people
+who kept the little inn where his father died, and they were clear
+enough in their assertion that the death was a natural death—the sudden
+collapse of an exhausted constitution.'</p>
+
+<p>'Was it on account of this scandal that your father spent the best part
+of his life away from England?' Hammond asked, feeling that it was a
+relief to Maulevrier to talk about this secret burden of his.</p>
+
+<p>The young Earl was light-hearted and frivolous by nature, yet even he
+had his graver moments; and upon this subject of the old Maulevrier
+scandal he was peculiarly sensitive, perhaps all the more so because his
+grandmother had never allowed him to speak to her about it, had never
+satisfied his curiosity upon any details of that painful story.</p>
+
+<p>'I have very little doubt it was so—though I wasn't old enough when he
+died to hear as much from his own lips. My father went straight from the
+University to Vienna, where he began his career in the diplomatic
+service, and where he soon afterwards married a dowerless English girl
+of good family. He went to Rio as first secretary, and died of fever
+within seven years of his marriage, leaving a widow and three babies,
+the youngest in long clothes. Mother and babies all came over to
+England, and were at once established at Fellside. I can remember the
+voyage—and I can remember my poor mother who never recovered the blow
+of my father's death, and who died in yonder house, after five years of
+broken health and broken spirits. We had no one but the dowager to look
+to as children—hardly another friend in the world. She did what she
+liked with us; she kept the girls as close as nuns, so <i>they</i> have never
+heard a hint of the old history; no breach of scandal has reached
+<i>their</i> ears. But she could not shut me up in a country house for ever,
+though she did succeed in keeping me away from a public school. The time
+came when I had to go to the University, and there I heard all that had
+been said about Lord Maulevrier. The men who told me about the old
+scandal in a friendly way pretended not to believe it; but one night,
+when I had got into a row at a wine-party with a tailor's son, he told
+me that if his father was a snip my grandfather was a thief, and so he
+thought himself the better bred of the two. I smashed his nose for him,
+but as it was a decided pug before the row began, that hardly squared
+the matter.'</p>
+
+<p>'Did you ever hear the exact story?'</p>
+
+<p>'I have heard a dozen stories; and if only a quarter of them are true my
+grandfather was a scoundrel. It seems that he was immensely popular for
+the first year or so of his government, gave more splendid
+entertainments than had been given at Madras for half a century before
+his time, lavished his wealth upon his favourites. Then arose a rumour
+that the governor was insolvent and harassed by his creditors, and then
+a new source of wealth seemed to be at his command; he was more
+reckless, more princely than ever; and then, little by little, there
+arose the suspicion that he was trafficking in English interests,
+selling his influence to petty princes, winking at those mysterious
+crimes by which rightful heirs are pushed aside to make room for
+usurpers. Lastly it became notorious that he was the slave of a wicked
+woman, false wife, suspected murderess, whose husband, a native prince,
+disappeared from the scene just when his existence became perilous to
+the governor's reputation. According to one version of the story, the
+scandal of this Rajah's mysterious disappearance, followed not long
+after by the Ranee's equally mysterious death, was the immediate cause
+of my grandfather's recall. How much, or how little of this story—or
+other dark stories of the same kind—is true, whether my grandfather was
+a consummate scoundrel, or the victim of a baseless slander,—whether he
+left India a rich man or a poor man, is known to no mortal except Lady
+Maulevrier, and compared with her the Theban Sphinx was a communicative
+individual.'</p>
+
+<p>'Let the dead bury their dead,' said Hammond. 'Neither you nor your
+sisters can be the worse for this ancient slander. No doubt every part
+of the story has been distorted and exaggerated in the telling; and a
+great deal of it may be pure invention, evolved from the inner
+consciousness of the slanderer. God forbid that any whisper of scandal
+should ever reach Lady Lesbia's ears.'</p>
+
+<p>He ignored poor Mary. It was to him as if there were no such person. Her
+feeble light was extinguished by the radiance of her sister's beauty;
+her very individuality was annihilated.</p>
+
+<p>'As for you, dear old fellow,' he said, with warm affection, 'no one
+will ever think the worse of you on account of your grandfather's
+peccadilloes.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, they will. Hereditary genius is one of our modern crazes. When a
+man's grandfather was a rogue, there must be a taint in his blood.
+People don't believe in spontaneous generation, moral or physical,
+now-a-days. Typhoid breeds typhoid, and typhus breeds typhus, just as
+dog breeds dog; and who will believe that a cheat and a liar can be the
+father of honest men?'</p>
+
+<p>'In that case, knowing what kind of man the grandson is, I will never
+believe that the grandfather was a rogue,' said Hammond, heartily.</p>
+
+<p>Maulevrier put out his hand without a word, and it was warmly grasped by
+his friend.</p>
+
+<p>'As for her ladyship, I respect and honour her as a woman who has led a
+life of self-sacrifice, and has worn her pride as an armour,' continued
+Hammond.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, I believe the dowager's character is rather fine,' said
+Maulevrier; 'but she and I have never hit our horses very well together.
+She would have liked such a fellow as you for a grandson, Jack—a man
+who took high honours at Oxford, and could hold his own against all
+comers. Such a grandson would have gratified her pride, and would have
+repaid her for the trouble she had taken in nursing the Maulevrier
+estate; for however poor a property it was when her husband went to
+India there is no doubt that it is a very fine estate now, and that the
+dowager has been the making of it.'</p>
+
+<p>The two young men strolled up to Easedale Tarn before they went back to
+Fellside, where Lady Maulevrier received them with a stately
+graciousness, and where Lady Lesbia unbent considerably at luncheon, and
+condescended to an animated conversation with her brother's friend. It
+was such a new thing to have a stranger at the family board, a man whose
+information was well abreast with the march of progress, who could talk
+eloquently upon every subject which people care to talk about. In this
+new and animated society Lesbia seemed like an enchanted princess
+suddenly awakened from a spell-bound slumber. Molly looked at her sister
+with absolute astonishment. Never had she seen her so bright, so
+beautiful—no longer a picture or a statue, but a woman warm with the
+glow of life.</p>
+
+<p>'No wonder Mr. Hammond admires her,' thought poor Molly, who was quite
+acute enough to see the stranger's keen appreciation of her sister's
+charms, and positive indifference towards herself.</p>
+
+<p>There are some things which women find out by instinct, just as the
+needle turns towards the magnet. Shut a girl up in a tower till she is
+eighteen years old, and on the day of her release introduce her to the
+first man her eyes have ever looked upon, and she will know at a glance
+whether he admires her.</p>
+
+<p>After luncheon the four young people started for Rydal Mount; with
+Fr&auml;ulein as chaperon and watch-dog. The girls were both good walkers.
+Lady Lesbia even, though she looked like a hot-house flower, had been
+trained to active habits, could walk and ride, and play tennis, and
+climb a hill as became a mountain-bred damsel. Molly, feeling that her
+conversational powers were not appreciated by her brother's friend, took
+half a dozen dogs for company, and with three fox-terriers, a little
+Yorkshire dog, a colley and an otter-hound, was at no loss for society
+on the road, more especially as Maulevrier gave her most of his company,
+and entertained her with an account of his Black Forest adventures, and
+all the fine things he had said to the fair-haired, blue-eyed Baden
+girls, who had sold him photographs or wild strawberries, or had
+awakened the echoes of the hills with the music of their rustic flutes.</p>
+
+<p>Fr&auml;ulein was perfectly aware that her mission upon this particular
+afternoon was not to let Lady Lesbia out of her sight for an instant, to
+hear every word the young lady said, and every word Mr. Hammond
+addressed to her. She had received no specific instructions from Lady
+Maulevrier. They were not necessary, for the Fr&auml;ulein knew her
+ladyship's intentions with regard to her elder granddaughter,—knew
+them, at least, so far as that Lesbia was intended to make a brilliant
+marriage; and she knew, therefore, that the presence of this handsome
+and altogether attractive young man was to the last degree obnoxious to
+the dowager. She was obliged to be civil to him for her nephew's sake,
+and she was too wise to let Lesbia imagine him dangerous: but the fact
+that he was dangerous was obvious, and it was Fr&auml;ulein's duty to protect
+her employer's interests.</p>
+
+<p>Everybody knew Lord Maulevrier, so there was no difficulty about getting
+admission to Wordsworth's garden and Wordsworth's house, and after Mr.
+Hammond and his companions had explored these, they went back to the
+shores of the little lake, and climbed that rocky eminence upon which
+the poet used to sit, above the placid waters of silvery Rydal. It is a
+lovely spot, and that narrow lake, so poor a thing were magnitude the
+gauge of beauty, had a soft and pensive loveliness in the clear
+afternoon light.</p>
+
+<p>'Poor Wordsworth' sighed Lesbia, as she stood on the grassy crag looking
+down on the shining water, broken in the foreground by fringes of
+rushes, and the rich luxuriance of water-lilies. 'Is it not pitiable to
+think of the years he spent in this monotonous place, without any
+society worth speaking of, with only the shabbiest collection of books,
+with hardly any interest in life except the sky, and the hills, and the
+peasantry?'</p>
+
+<p>'I think Wordsworth's was an essentially happy life, in spite of his
+narrow range,' answered Hammond. 'You, with your ardent youth and vivid
+desire for a life of action, cannot imagine the calm blisses of reverie
+and constant communion with nature. Wordsworth had a thousand companions
+you and I would never dream of; for him every flower that grows was an
+individual existence—almost a soul.'</p>
+
+<p>'It was a mild kind of lunacy, an everlasting opium dream without the
+opium; but I am grateful to him for living such a life, since it has
+bequeathed us some exquisite poetry,' said Lesbia, who had been too
+carefully cultured to fleer or flout at Wordsworth.</p>
+
+<p>'I do believe there's an otter just under that bank,' cried Molly, who
+had been watching the obvious excitement of her bandy-legged hound; and
+she rushed down to the brink of the water, leaping lightly from stone to
+stone, and inciting the hound to business.</p>
+
+<p>'Let him alone, can't you?' roared Maulevrier; 'leave him in peace till
+he's wanted. If you disturb him now he'll desert his holt, and we may
+have a blank day. The hounds are to be out to-morrow.'</p>
+
+<p>'I may go with you?' asked Mary, eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, yes, I suppose you'll want to be in it.' Molly and her brother
+went on an exploring ramble along the edge of the water towards
+Ambleside, leaving John Hammond in Lesbia's company, but closely guarded
+by Miss M&uuml;ller. These three went to look at Nab Cottage, where poor
+Hartley Coleridge ended his brief and clouded days; and they had gone
+some way upon their homeward walk before they were rejoined by
+Maulevrier and Mary, the damsel's kilted skirt considerably the worse
+for mud and mire.</p>
+
+<p>'What would grandmother say if she were to see you!' exclaimed Lesbia,
+looking contemptuously at the muddy petticoat.</p>
+
+<p>'I am not going to let her see me, so she will say nothing,' cried Mary,
+and then she called to the dogs, 'Ammon, Agag, Angelina;' and the three
+fox terriers flew along the road, falling over themselves in the
+swiftness of their flight, darting, and leaping, and scrambling over
+each other, and offering the spectators the most intense example of
+joyous animal life.</p>
+
+<p>The colley was far up on the hill-side, and the otter-hound was still
+hunting the water, but the terriers never went out of Mary's sight. They
+looked to her to take the initiative in all their sports.</p>
+
+<p>They were back at Fellside in time for a very late tea. Lady Maulevrier
+was waiting for them in the drawing-room.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, grandmother, why did you not take your tea!' exclaimed Lesbia,
+looking really distressed. 'It is six o'clock.'</p>
+
+<p>'I am used to have you at home to hand me my cup,' replied the dowager,
+with a touch of reproachfulness.</p>
+
+<p>'I am so sorry,' said Lesbia, sitting down before the tea-table, and
+beginning her accustomed duty. 'Indeed, dear grandmother, I had no idea
+it was so late; but it was such a lovely afternoon, and Mr. Hammond is
+so interested in everything connected with Wordsworth—'</p>
+
+<p>She was looking her loveliest at this moment, all that was softest in
+her nature called forth by her desire to please her grandmother, whom
+she really loved. She hung over Lady Maulevrier's chair, attending to
+her small wants, and seeming scarcely to remember the existence of
+anyone else. In this phase of her character she seemed to Mr. Hammond
+the perfection of womanly grace.</p>
+
+<p>Mary had rushed off to her room to change her muddy gown, and came in
+presently, dressed for dinner, looking the picture of innocence.</p>
+
+<p>John Hammond received his tea-cup from Lesbia's hand, and lingered in
+the drawing-room talking to the dowager and her granddaughters till it
+was time to dress. Lady Maulevrier found herself favourably impressed by
+him in spite of her prejudices. It was very provoking of Maulevrier to
+have brought such a man to Fellside. His very merits were objectionable.
+She tried with exquisite art to draw him into some revealment as to his
+family and antecedents: but he evaded every attempt of that kind. It was
+too evident that he was a self-made man, whose intellect and good looks
+were his only fortune. It was criminal in Maulevrier to have brought
+such a person to Fellside. Her ladyship began to think seriously of
+sending the two girls to St. Bees or Tynemouth for change of air, in
+charge of Fr&auml;ulein. But any sudden proceeding of that kind would
+inevitably awaken Lesbia's suspicions; and there is nothing so fatal to
+a woman's peace as this idea of danger. No, the peril must be faced. She
+could only hope that Maulevrier would soon tire of Fellside. A week's
+Westmoreland weather—gray skies and long rainy days, would send these
+young men away.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_IX"></a><h2>CHAPTER IX.</h2>
+
+<h3>A CRY IN THE DARKNESS.</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>The peril had to be faced, for the weather did not favour Lady
+Maulevrier's hopes. Westmoreland skies forgot to shed their accustomed
+showers. Westmoreland hills seemed to have lost their power of drawing
+down the rain. That August was a lovely month, and the young people at
+Fellside revelled in ideal weather. Maulevrier took his friend
+everywhere—by hill and stream and force and gill—to all those chosen
+spots which make the glory of the Lake country—on Windermere and
+Thirlmere, away through the bleak pass of Kirkstone to Ullswater—on
+driving excursions, and on boating excursions, and pedestrian rambles,
+which latter the homely-minded Hammond seemed to like best of all, for
+he was a splendid walker, and loved the freedom of a mountain ramble,
+the liberty to pause and loiter and waste an hour at will, without being
+accountable to anybody's coachman, or responsible for the well-being of
+anybody's horses.</p>
+
+<p>On some occasions the two girls and Miss M&uuml;ller were of the party, and
+then it seemed to John Hammond as if nothing were needed to complete the
+glory of earth and sky. There were other days—rougher journeys—when
+the men went alone, and there were days when Lady Mary stole away from
+her books and music, and all those studies which she was supposed still
+to be pursuing—no longer closely supervised by her governess, but on
+parole, as it were—and went with her brother and his friend across the
+hills and far away. Those were happy days for Mary, for it was always
+delight to her to be with Maulevrier; yet she had a profound conviction
+of John Hammond's indifference, kind and courteous as he was in all his
+dealings with her, and a sense of her own inferiority, of her own humble
+charms and little power to please, which was so acute as to be almost
+pain. One day this keen sense of humiliation broke from her unawares in
+her talk with her brother, as they two sat on a broad heathy slope face
+to face with one of the Langdale pikes, and with a deep valley at their
+feet, while John Hammond was climbing from rock to rock in the gorge on
+their right, exploring the beauties of Dungeon Ghyll.</p>
+
+<p>'I wonder whether he thinks me very ugly?' said Mary, with her hands
+clasped upon her knees, her eyes fixed on Wetherlam, upon whose steep
+brow a craggy mass of brown rock clothed with crimson heather stood out
+from the velvety green of the hill-side.</p>
+
+<p>'Who thinks you ugly?'</p>
+
+<p>'Mr. Hammond. I'm sure he does. I am so sunburnt and so horrid!'</p>
+
+<p>'But you are not ugly. Why, Molly, what are you dreaming about?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, yes, I am ugly. I may not seem so to you, perhaps, because you are
+used to me, but I know he must think me very plain compared with Lesbia,
+whom he admires so much.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, he admires Lesbia. There is no doubt of that.'</p>
+
+<p>'And I know he thinks me plain,' said Molly, contemplating Wetherlam
+with sorrowful eyes, as if the sequence were inevitable.</p>
+
+<p>'My dearest girl, what nonsense! Plain, forsooth? Ugly, quotha? Why,
+there are not a finer pair of eyes in Westmoreland than my Molly's, or a
+prettier smile, or whiter teeth.'</p>
+
+<p>'But all the rest is horrid,' said Mary, intensely in earnest. 'I am
+sunburnt, freckled, and altogether odious—like a haymaker or a market
+woman. Grandmother has said so often enough, and I know it is the truth.
+I can see it in Mr. Hammond's manner.'</p>
+
+<p>'What! freckles and sunburn, and the haymaker, and all that?' cried
+Maulevrier, laughing. 'What an expressive manner Jack's must be, if it
+can convey all that—like Lord Burleigh's nod, by Jove. Why, what a
+goose you are, Mary. Jack thinks you a very nice girl, and a very pretty
+girl, I'll be bound; but aren't you clever enough to understand that
+when a man is over head and ears in love with one woman, he is apt to
+seem just a little indifferent to all the other women in the world? and
+there is no doubt Jack is desperately in love with Lesbia.'</p>
+
+<p>'You ought not to let him be in love with her,' protested Mary. 'You
+know it can only lead to his unhappiness. You must know what grandmother
+is, and how she has made up her mind that Lesbia is to marry some great
+person. You ought not to have brought Mr. Hammond here. It is like
+letting him into a trap.'</p>
+
+<p>'Do you think it was wrong?' asked her brother, smiling at her
+earnestness. 'I should be very sorry if poor Jack should come to grief.
+But still, if Lesbia likes him—which I think she does—we ought to be
+able to talk over the dowager.'</p>
+
+<p>'Never,' cried Mary. 'Grandmother would never give way. You have no idea
+how ambitious she is. Why, once when Lesbia was in a poetical mood, and
+said she would marry the man she liked best in the world, if he were a
+pauper, her ladyship flew into a terrible passion, and told her she
+would renounce her, that she would curse her, if she were to marry
+beneath her, or marry without her grandmother's consent.'</p>
+
+<p>'Hard lines for Hammond,' said Maulevrier, rather lightly. 'Then I
+suppose we must give up the idea of a match between him and Lesbia.'</p>
+
+<p>'You ought not to have brought him here,' retorted Mary. 'You had better
+invent some plan for sending him away. If he stay it will be only to
+break his heart.'</p>
+
+<p>'Dear child, men's hearts do not break so easily. I have fancied that
+mine was broken more than once in my life, yet it is sound enough, I
+assure you.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh!' sighed Mary, 'but you are not like him; wounds do not go so deep
+with you.'</p>
+
+<p>The subject of their conversation came out of the rocky cleft in the
+hills as Mary spoke. She saw his hat appearing out of the gorge, and
+then the man himself emerged, a tall well-built figure, clad in brown
+tweed, coming towards them, with sketch-book and colour-box in his
+pocket. He had been making what he called memoranda of the waterfall, a
+stone or two here, a cluster of ferns there, or a tree torn up by the
+roots, and yet green and living, hanging across the torrent, a rude
+natural bridge.</p>
+
+<p>This round by the Langdale Pikes and Dungeon Ghyll was one of their best
+days; or, at least, Molly and her brother thought so; for to those two
+the presence of Lesbia and her chaperon was always a restraint.</p>
+
+<p>Mary could walk twice as far as her elder sister, and revelled in
+hill-side paths and all manner of rough places. They ordered their
+luncheon at the inn below the waterfall, and had it carried up on to the
+furzy slope in front of Wetherlam, where they could eat and drink and be
+merry to the music of the force as it came down from the hills behind
+them, while the lights and shadows came and went upon yonder rugged
+brow, now gray in the shadow, now ruddy in the sunshine.</p>
+
+<p>Mary was as gay as a bird during that rough and ready luncheon. No one
+would have suspected her uneasiness about John Hammond's peril or her
+own plainness. She might let her real self appear to her brother, who
+had been her trusted friend and father confessor from her babyhood; but
+she was too thorough a woman to let Mr. Hammond discover the depth of
+her sympathy, the tenderness of her compassion for his woes. Later, as
+they were walking home across the hills, by Great Langdale and Little
+Langdale, and Fox Howe and Loughrigg Fell, she fell behind a few paces
+with Maulevrier, and said to him very earnestly—</p>
+
+<p>'You won't tell, will you, dear?'</p>
+
+<p>'Tell what?' he asked, staring at her.</p>
+
+<p>'Don't tell Mr. Hammond what I said about his thinking me ugly. He might
+want to apologise to me, and that would be too humiliating. I was very
+childish to say such a silly thing.'</p>
+
+<p>'Undoubtedly you were.'</p>
+
+<p>'And you won't tell him?'</p>
+
+<p>'Tell him anything that would degrade my Mary? Assail her dignity by so
+much as a breath? Sooner would I have this tongue torn out with red-hot
+pincers.'</p>
+
+<p>On the next day, and the next, sunshine and summer skies still
+prevailed; but Mr. Hammond did not seem to care for rambling far afield.
+He preferred loitering about in the village, rowing on the lake, reading
+in the garden, and playing lawn tennis. He had only inclination for
+those amusements which kept him within a stone's throw of Fellside: and
+Mary knew that this disposition had arisen in his mind since Lesbia had
+withdrawn herself from all share in their excursions. Lesbia had not
+been rude to her brother or her brother's friend; she had declined their
+invitations with smiles and sweetness; but there was always some
+reason—a new song to be practised, a new book to be read, a letter to
+be written—why she should not go for drives or walks or steamboat trips
+with Maulevrier and his friend.</p>
+
+<p>So Mr. Hammond suddenly found out that he had seen all that was worth
+seeing in the Lake country, and that there was nothing so enjoyable as
+the placid idleness of Fellside; and at Fellside Lady Lesbia could not
+always avoid him without a too-marked intention, so he tasted the
+sweetness of her society to a much greater extent than was good for his
+peace, if the case were indeed as hopeless as Lady Mary declared. He
+strolled about the grounds with her; he drank the sweet melody of her
+voice in Heine's tenderest ballads; he read to her on the sunlit lawn in
+the lazy afternoon hours; he played billiards with her; he was her
+faithful attendant at afternoon tea; he gave himself up to the study of
+her character, which, to his charmed eyes, seemed the perfection of pure
+and placid womanhood. There might, perhaps, be some lack of passion and
+of force in this nature, a marked absence of that impulsive feeling
+which is a charm in some women: but this want was atoned for by
+sweetness of character, and Mr. Hammond argued that in these calm
+natures there is often an unsuspected depth, a latent force, a grandeur
+of soul, which only reveals itself in the great ordeals of life.</p>
+
+<p>So John Hammond hung about the luxurious drawing-room at Fellside in a
+manner which his friend Maulevrier ridiculed as unmanly.</p>
+
+<p>'I had no idea you were such a tame cat,' he said: 'if when we were
+salmon fishing in Canada anybody had told me you could loll about a
+drawing-room all day listening to a girl squalling and reading novels, I
+shouldn't have believed a word of it.'</p>
+
+<p>'We had plenty of roughing on the shores of the St. Lawrence,' answered
+Hammond. 'Summer idleness in a drawing-room is an agreeable variety.'</p>
+
+<p>It is not to be supposed that John Hammond's state of mind could long
+remain unperceived by the keen eyes of the dowager. She saw the gradual
+dawning of his love, she saw the glow of its meridian. She was pleased
+to behold this proof of Lesbia's power over the heart of man. So would
+she conquer the man foredoomed to be her husband when the coming time
+should bring them together. But agreeable as the fact of this first
+conquest might be, as an evidence of Lesbia's supremacy among women, the
+situation was not without its peril; and Lady Maulevrier felt that she
+could no longer defer the duty of warning her granddaughter. She had
+wished, if possible, to treat the thing lightly to the very last, so
+that Lesbia should never know there had been danger. She had told her, a
+few days ago, that those drives, and walks with the two young men were
+undignified, even although guarded by the Fr&auml;ulein's substantial
+presence.</p>
+
+<p>'You are making yourself too much a companion to Maulevrier and his
+friend,' said the dowager. 'If you do not take care you will grow like
+Mary.'</p>
+
+<p>'I would do anything in the world to avoid <i>that</i>,' replied Lesbia. 'Our
+walks and drives have been very pleasant. Mr. Hammond is extremely
+clever, and can talk about everything.'</p>
+
+<p>Her colour heightened ever so little as she spoke of him, an indication
+duly observed by Lady Maulevrier.</p>
+
+<p>'No doubt the man is clever; all adventurers are clever; and you have
+sense enough to see that this man is an adventurer—a mere sponge and
+toady of Maulevrier's.'</p>
+
+<p>'There is nothing of the sponge or the toady in his manner,' protested
+Lady Lesbia, with a still deeper blush, the warm glow of angry feeling.</p>
+
+<p>'My dear child, what do you know of such people—or of the atmosphere in
+which they are generated? The sponge and toady of to-day is not the
+clumsy fawning wretch you have read about in old-fashioned novels. He
+can flatter adroitly, and feed upon his friends, and yet maintain a show
+of manhood and independence. I'll wager Mr. Hammond's trip to Canada did
+not cost him sixpence, and that he hardly opened his purse all the time
+he was in Germany.'</p>
+
+<p>'If my brother wants the company of a friend who is much poorer than
+himself, he must pay for it,' argued Lesbia. 'I think Maulevrier is
+lucky to have such a companion as Mr. Hammond.'</p>
+
+<p>Yet, even while she so argued, Lady Lesbia felt in some manner
+humiliated by the idea that this man who so palpably worshipped her was
+too poor to pay his own travelling expenses.</p>
+
+<p>Poets and philosophers may say what they will about the grandeur of
+plain living and high thinking; but a young woman thinks better of the
+plain liver who is not compelled to plainness by want of cash. The idea
+of narrow means, of dependence upon the capricious generosity of a
+wealthy friend is not without its humiliating influence. Lesbia was
+barely civil to Mr. Hammond that evening when he praised her singing;
+and she refused to join in a four game proposed by Maulevrier, albeit
+she and Mr. Hammond had beaten Mary and Maulevrier the evening before,
+with much exultant hilarity.</p>
+
+<p>Hammond had been at Fellside nearly a month, and Maulevrier was
+beginning to talk about a move further northward. There was a grouse
+moor in Argyleshire which the two young men talked about as belonging to
+some unnamed friend of the Earl's, which they had thought of shooting
+over before the grouse season was ended.</p>
+
+<p>'Lord Hartfield has property in Argyleshire,' said the dowager, when
+they talked of these shootings. 'Do you know his estate, Mr. Hammond?'</p>
+
+<p>'Hammond knows that there is such a place, I daresay,' replied
+Maulevrier, replying for his friend.</p>
+
+<p>'But you do not know Lord Hartfield, perhaps,' said her ladyship, not
+arrogantly, but still in a tone which implied her conviction that John
+Hammond would not be hand-in-glove with earls, in Scotland or elsewhere.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, yes! I know him by sight—every one in Argyleshire knows him by
+sight.'</p>
+
+<p>'Naturally. A young man in his position must be widely known. Is he
+popular?'</p>
+
+<p>'Fairly so.'</p>
+
+<p>'His father and I were friends many years ago,' said Lady Maulevrier,
+with a faint sigh. 'Have you ever heard if he resembles his father?'</p>
+
+<p>'I believe not. I am told he is like his mother's family.'</p>
+
+<p>'Then he ought to be handsome. Lady Florence Ilmington was a famous
+beauty.'</p>
+
+<p>They were sitting in the drawing-room after dinner, the room dimly
+lighted by darkly-shaded lamps, the windows wide open to the summer sky
+and moonlit lake. In that subdued light Lady Maulevrier looked a woman
+in the prime of life. The classical modelling of her features and the
+delicacy of her complexion were unimpaired by time, while those traces
+of thought and care which gave age to her face in the broad light of day
+were invisible at night. John Hammond contemplated that refined and
+placid countenance with profound admiration. He remembered how her
+ladyship's grandson had compared her with the Sphinx; and it seemed to
+him to-night, as he studied her proud and tranquil beauty, that there
+was indeed something of the mysterious, the unreadable in that
+countenance, and that beneath its heroic calm there might be the ashes
+of tragic passion, the traces of a life-long struggle with fate. That
+such a woman, so beautiful, so gifted, so well fitted to shine and
+govern in the great world, should have been content to live a long life
+of absolute seclusion in this remote valley was in itself a social
+mystery which must needs set an observant young man wondering. It was
+all very well to say that Lady Maulevrier loved a country life, that she
+had made Fellside her earthly Paradise, and had no desire beyond it. The
+fact remained that it was not in Lady Maulevrier's temperament to be
+satisfied with such an existence; that falcon eye was never meant to
+gaze for ever upon one narrow range of mountain and lake; that lip was
+made to speak among the great ones of the world.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Maulevrier was particularly gracious to her grandson's friend this
+evening. Maulevrier spoke so decisively about a speedy migration
+northward, seemed so inclined to regret the time wasted since the
+twelfth of the month, that she thought the danger was past, and she
+could afford to be civil. She really liked the young man, had no doubt
+in her own mind that he was a gentleman in the highest and broadest
+sense of the word, but not in the sense which made him an eligible
+husband for either of her granddaughters.</p>
+
+<p>Lesbia was in a pensive mood this evening. She sat in the verandah,
+looking dreamily at the lake, and at Fairfield yonder, a broad green
+slope, silvered with moonlight, and seeming to stretch far away into
+unfathomable distance.</p>
+
+<p>If one could but take one's lover by the hand and go wandering over
+those mystic moonlit slopes into some new unreal world where it would
+not matter whether a man were rich or poor, high-born or low-born, where
+there should be no such things as rank and state to be won or lost!
+Lesbia felt to-night as if she would like to live out her life in
+dreamland. Reality was too hard, too much set round by difficulties and
+sacrifices.</p>
+
+<p>While Lesbia was losing herself in that dream-world, Lady Maulevrier
+unbent considerably to John Hammond, and talked to him with more
+appearance of interest in his actual self, and in his own affairs, than
+she had manifested, hitherto although she had been uniformly courteous.</p>
+
+<p>She asked him his plans for the future—had he chosen a profession?</p>
+
+<p>He told her that he had not. He meant to devote himself to literature
+and politics.</p>
+
+<p>'Is not that rather vague?' inquired her ladyship.</p>
+
+<p>'Everything is vague at first.'</p>
+
+<p>'But literature now—as an amusement, no doubt, it is delightful—but as
+a profession—does literature ever pay?'</p>
+
+<p>'There have been such cases.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, I suppose so. Walter Scott, Gibbon, Macaulay, Froude, those made
+money no doubt. But there is a suspicion of hopelessness in the idea of
+a young man starting in life intending to earn his bread by literature.
+One remembers Chatterton. I should have thought that in your case the
+law or the church would have been better. In the latter Maulevrier might
+have been useful to you. He is patron of three or four livings.'</p>
+
+<p>'You are too good even to think of such a thing,' said Hammond; 'but I
+have set my heart upon a political career. I must swim or sink in that
+sea.'</p>
+
+<p>Lady Maulevrier looked at him with a compassionate smile Poor young man!
+No doubt he thought himself a genius, and that doors which had remained
+shut to everybody else would turn on their hinges directly he knocked at
+them. She was sincerely sorry for him. Young, clever, enthusiastic, and
+doomed to bitterest disappointment.</p>
+
+<p>'You have parents, perhaps, who are ambitious for you—a mother who
+thinks her son a heaven-born statesman!' said her ladyship, kindly.</p>
+
+<p>'Alas, no! that incentive to ambition is wanting in my case. I have
+neither father nor mother living.'</p>
+
+<p>'That is very sad. No doubt that fact has been a bond of sympathy
+between you and Maulevrier?'</p>
+
+<p>'I believe it has.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, I hope Providence will smile upon your path.'</p>
+
+<p>'Come what may, I shall never forget the happy weeks I have spent at
+Fellside,' said Hammond, 'or your ladyship's gracious hospitality.'</p>
+
+<p>He took up the beautiful hand, white to transparency, showing the
+delicate tracing of blue veins, and pressed his lips upon it in
+chivalrous worship of age and womanly dignity.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Maulevrier smiled upon him with her calm, grave smile. She would
+have liked to say, 'You shall be welcome again at Fellside,' but she
+felt that the man was dangerous. Not while Lesbia remained single could
+she court his company. If Maulevrier brought him she must tolerate his
+presence, but she would do nothing to invite that danger.</p>
+
+<p>There was no music that evening. Maulevrier and Mary were playing
+billiards; Fr&auml;ulein M&uuml;ller was sitting in her corner working at a
+high-art counterpane. Lesbia came in from the verandah presently, and
+sat on a low stool by her grandmother's arm-chair, and talked to her in
+soft, cooing accents, inaudible to John Hammond, who sat a little way
+off turning the leaves of the <i>Contemporary Review</i>: and this went on
+till eleven o'clock, the regular hour for retiring, when Mary came in
+from the billiard-room, and told Mr. Hammond that Maulevrier was waiting
+for a smoke and a talk. Then candles were lighted, and the ladies all
+departed, leaving John Hammond and his friend with the house to
+themselves.</p>
+
+<p>They played a fifty game, and smoked and talked till the stroke of
+midnight, by which time it seemed as if there were not another creature
+awake in the house. Maulevrier put out the lamps in the billiard-room,
+and then they went softly up the shadowy staircase, and parted in the
+gallery, the Earl going one way, and his friend the other.</p>
+
+<p>The house was large and roomy, spread over a good deal of ground, Lady
+Maulevrier having insisted upon there being only two stories. The
+servants' rooms were all in a side wing, corresponding with those older
+buildings which had been given over to Steadman and his wife, and among
+the villagers of Grasmere enjoyed the reputation of being haunted. A
+wide panelled corridor extended from one end of the house to the other.
+It was lighted from the roof, and served as a gallery for the display of
+a small and choice collection of modern art, which her ladyship had
+acquired during her long residence at Fellside. Here, too, in Sheraton
+cabinets, were those treasures of old English china which Lady
+Maulevrier had inherited from past generations.</p>
+
+<p>Her ladyship's rooms were situated at the southern end of this corridor,
+her bed-chamber being at the extreme end of the house, with windows
+commanding two magnificent views, one across the lake and the village of
+Grasmere to the green slopes of Fairfield, the other along the valley
+towards Rydal Water. This and the adjoining boudoir were the prettiest
+rooms in the house, and no one wondered that her ladyship should spend
+so much of her life in the luxurious seclusion of her own apartments.</p>
+
+<p>John Hammond went to his room, which was on the same side of the house
+as her ladyship's; but he was in no disposition for sleep. He opened the
+casement, and stood looking out upon the moonlit lake and the quiet
+village, where one solitary light shone like a faint star in a cottage
+window, amidst that little cluster of houses by the old church, once
+known as Kirktown. Beyond the village rose gentle slopes, crowned with
+foliage, and above those wooded crests appeared the grand outline of the
+hills, surrounding and guarding Easedale's lovely valley, as the hills
+surrounded Jerusalem of old.</p>
+
+<p>He looked at that delicious landscape with eyes that hardly saw its
+beauty. The image of a lovely face came between him and all the glory of
+earth and sky.</p>
+
+<p>'I think she likes me,' he was saying to himself. 'There was a look in
+her eyes to-night that told me the time was come when----'</p>
+
+<p>The thought died unfinished in his brain. Through the silent house,
+across the placid lake, there rang a wild, shrill cry that froze the
+blood in his veins, or seemed so to freeze it—a shriek of agony, and in
+a woman's voice. It rang out from an open window near his own. The sound
+seemed close to his ear.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_X"></a><h2>CHAPTER X.</h2>
+
+<h3>'O BITTERNESS OF THINGS TOO SWEET.'</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>Only for an instant did John Hammond stand motionless after hearing that
+unearthly shriek. In the next moment he rushed into the corridor,
+expecting to hear the sound repeated, to find himself face to face with
+some midnight robber, whose presence had caused that wild cry of alarm.
+But in the corridor all was silent as the grave. No open door suggested
+the entrance of an intruder. The dimly-burning lamps showed only the
+long empty gallery. He stood still for a few moments listening for
+voices, footsteps, the rustle of garments: but there was nothing.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing? Yes, a groan, a long-drawn moaning sound, as of infinite pain.
+This time there was no doubt as to the direction from which the sound
+came. It came from Lady Maulevrier's room. The door was ajar, and he
+could see the faint light of the night-lamp within. That fearful cry had
+come from her ladyship's room. She was in peril or pain of some kind.</p>
+
+<p>Convinced of this one fact, Mr. Hammond had not an instant's hesitation.
+He pushed open the door without compunction, and entered the room,
+prepared to behold some terrible scene.</p>
+
+<p>But all was quiet as death itself. No midnight burglar had violated the
+sanctity of Lady Maulevrier's apartment. The soft, steady light of the
+night-lamp shone on the face of the sleeper. Yes, all was quiet in the
+room, but not in that sleeper's soul. The broad white brow was painfully
+contracted, the lips drawn down and distorted, the delicate hand, half
+hidden by the deep Valenciennes ruffle, clutched the coverlet with
+convulsive force. Sigh after sigh burst from the agitated breast. John
+Hammond gazed upon the sleeper in an agony of apprehension, uncertain
+what to do. Was this dreaming only; or was it some kind of seizure which
+called for medical aid? At her ladyship's age the idea of paralysis was
+not too improbable for belief. If this was a dream, then indeed the
+visions of Lady Maulevrier's head upon her bed were more terrible than
+the dreams of common mortals.</p>
+
+<p>In any case Mr. Hammond felt that it was his duty to send some attendant
+to Lady Maulevrier, some member of the household who was familiar with
+her ladyship's habits, her own maid if that person could be unearthed
+easily. He knew that the servants slept in a separate wing; but he
+thought it more than likely that her ladyship's personal attendant
+occupied a room near her mistress.</p>
+
+<p>He went back to the corridor and looked round him in doubt, for a moment
+or two.</p>
+
+<p>Close against her ladyship's door there was a swing door, covered with
+red cloth, which seemed to communicate with the old part of the house.
+John Hammond pushed this door, and it yielded to his hand, revealing a
+lamp-lit passage, narrow, old-fashioned, and low. He thought it likely
+that Lady Maulevrier's maid might occupy a room in this half-deserted
+wing. As he pushed open the door he saw an elderly man coming towards
+him, with a candle in his hand, and with the appearance of having
+huddled on his clothes hastily.</p>
+
+<p>'You heard that scream?' said Hammond.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes. It was her ladyship, I suppose. Nightmare. She is subject to
+nightmare.'</p>
+
+<p>'It is very dreadful. Her whole countenance was convulsed just now, when
+I went into her room to see what was wrong. I was almost afraid of a fit
+of some kind. Ought not her maid to go to her?'</p>
+
+<p>'She wants no assistance,' the man answered, coolly. 'It was only a
+dream. It is not the first time I have been awakened by a shriek like
+that. It is a kind of nightmare, no doubt; and it passes off in a few
+minutes, and leaves her sleeping calmly.'</p>
+
+<p>He went to her ladyship's door, pushed it open a little way, and looked
+in. 'Yes, she is sleeping as quietly as an infant,' he said, shutting
+the door softly as he spoke.</p>
+
+<p>'I am very glad; but surely she ought to have her maid near her at
+night, if she is subject to those attacks.'</p>
+
+<p>'It is no attack, I tell you. It is nothing but a dream,' answered
+Steadman impatiently.</p>
+
+<p>'Yet you were frightened, just as I was, or you would not have got up
+and dressed,' said Hammond, looking at the man suspiciously.</p>
+
+<p>He had heard of this old servant Steadman, who was supposed to enjoy
+more of her ladyship's confidence than any one else in the household;
+but he had never spoken to the man before that night.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, I came. It was my duty to come, knowing her ladyship's habits. I
+am a light sleeper, and that scream woke me instantly. If her ladyship's
+maid were wanted I should call her. I am a kind of watch-dog, you see,
+sir.'</p>
+
+<p>'You seem to be a very faithful dog.'</p>
+
+<p>'I have been in her ladyship's service more than forty years. I have
+reason to be faithful. I know her ladyship's habits better than any one
+in the house. I know that she had a great deal of trouble in her early
+life, and I believe the memory of it comes back upon her sometimes in
+her dreams, and gets the better of her.'</p>
+
+<p>'If it was memory that wrung that agonised shriek from her just now, her
+recollections of the past must be very terrible.'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, sir, there is a skeleton in every house,' answered James Steadman,
+gravely.</p>
+
+<p>This was exactly what Maulevrier had said under the yew trees which
+Wordsworth planted.</p>
+
+<p>'Good-night, sir,' said Steadman.</p>
+
+<p>'Good-night. You are sure that Lady Maulevrier may be left safely—that
+there is no fear of illness of any kind?'</p>
+
+<p>'No, sir. It was only a bad dream. Good-night, sir.'</p>
+
+<p>Steadman went back to his own quarters. Mr. Hammond heard him draw the
+bolts of the swing door, thus cutting off all communication with the
+corridor.</p>
+
+<p>The eight-day clock on the staircase struck two as Mr. Hammond returned
+to his room, even less inclined for sleep than when he left it. Strange,
+that nocturnal disturbance of a mind which seemed so tranquil in the
+day. Or was that tranquillity only a mask which her ladyship wore before
+the world: and was the bitter memory of events which happened forty
+years ago still a source of anguish to that highly strung nature?</p>
+
+<p>'There are some minds which cannot forget,' John Hammond said to
+himself, as he meditated upon her ladyship's character and history. 'The
+story of her husband's crime may still be fresh in her memory, though it
+is only a tradition for the outside world. His crime may have involved
+some deep wrong done to herself, some outrage against her love and faith
+as a wife. One of the stories Maulevrier spoke of the other day was of a
+wicked woman's influence upon the governor—a much more likely story
+than that of any traffic in British interests or British honour, which
+would have been almost impossible for a man in Lord Maulevrier's
+position. If the scandal was of a darker kind—a guilty wife—the
+mysterious disappearance of a husband—the horror of the thing may have
+made a deeper impression on Lady Maulevrier than even her nearest and
+dearest dream of: and that superb calm which she wears like a royal
+mantle may be maintained at the cost of struggles which tear her
+heart-strings. And then at night, when the will is dormant, when the
+nervous system is no longer ruled by the power of waking intelligence,
+the old familiar agony returns, the hated images flash back upon the
+brain, and in proportion to the fineness of the temperament is the
+intensity of the dreamer's pain.'</p>
+
+<p>And then he went on to reflect upon the long monotonous years spent in
+that lonely house, shut in from the world by those everlasting hills.
+Albeit the house was an ideal house, set in a landscape of infinite
+beauty, the monotony must be none the less oppressive for a mind
+burdened with dark memories, weighed down by sorrows which could seek no
+relief from sympathy, which could never become familiarised by
+discussion.</p>
+
+<p>'I wonder that a woman of Lady Maulevrier's intellect should not have
+better known how to treat her own malady,' thought Hammond.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Hammond inquired after her ladyship's health next morning, and was
+told she was perfectly well.</p>
+
+<p>'Grandmother is in capital spirits,' said Lady Lesbia. 'She is pleased
+with the contents of yesterday's <i>Globe</i>. Lord Denyer, the son of one of
+her oldest friends, has been making a great speech at Liverpool in the
+Conservative interest, and her ladyship thinks we shall have a change of
+parties before long.'</p>
+
+<p>'A general shuffle of the cards,' said Maulevrier, looking up from his
+breakfast. 'I'm sure I hope so. I'm no politician, but I like a row.'</p>
+
+<p>'I hope you are a Conservative, Mr. Hammond,' said Lesbia.</p>
+
+<p>'I had hoped you would have known that ever so long ago, Lady Lesbia.'</p>
+
+<p>Lesbia blushed at his tone, which was almost a reproach.</p>
+
+<p>'I suppose I ought to have understood from the general tenor of your
+conversation,' she said; 'but I am terribly stupid about politics. I
+take so little interest in them. I am always hearing that we are being
+badly governed—that the men who legislate for us are stupid or wicked;
+yet the world seems to go on somehow, and we are no worse.'</p>
+
+<p>'It is just the same with sport,' said Maulevrier. 'Every rainy spring
+we are told that all the young birds have been drowned, or that the
+grouse-disease has decimated the fathers and mothers, and that we shall
+have nothing to shoot; but when August comes the birds are there all the
+same.'</p>
+
+<p>'It is the nature of mankind to complain,' said Hammond. 'Cain and Abel
+were the first farmers, and you see one of them grumbled.'</p>
+
+<p>They were rather lively at breakfast that morning—Maulevrier's last
+breakfast but one—for he had announced his determination of going to
+Scotland next day. Other fellows would shoot all the birds if he dawdled
+any longer. Mary was in deep despondency at the idea of his departure,
+yet she laughed and talked with the rest. And perhaps Lesbia felt a
+little moved at the thought of losing Mr. Hammond. Maulevrier would come
+back to Mary, but John Hammond was hardly likely to return. Their
+parting would be for ever.</p>
+
+<p>'You needn't sit quite in my pocket, Molly,' said Maulevrier to his
+younger sister.</p>
+
+<p>'I like to make the most of you, now you are going away,' sighed Mary.
+'Oh, dear, how dull we shall all be when you are gone.'</p>
+
+<p>'Not a bit of it! You will have some fox-hunting, perhaps, before the
+snow is on the hills.'</p>
+
+<p>At the very mention of fox-hounds Lady Mary's bright young face
+crimsoned, and Maulevrier began to laugh in a provoking way, with
+side-long glances at his younger sister.</p>
+
+<p>'Did you ever hear of Molly's fox-hunting, by-the-by, Hammond?' he
+asked.</p>
+
+<p>Mary tried to put her hand before his lips, but it was useless.</p>
+
+<p>'Why shouldn't I tell?' he exclaimed. 'It was quite a heroic adventure.
+You must know our fox-hunting here is rather a peculiar
+institution,—very good in its way, but strictly local. No horse could
+live among our hills, so we hunt on foot, and as the pace is good, and
+the work hard, nobody who starts with the hounds is likely to be in at
+the death, except the huntsmen. We are all mad for the sport, and off we
+go, over the hills and far away, picking up a fresh field as we go. The
+ploughman leaves his plough, and the shepherd leaves his flock, and the
+farmer leaves his thrashing, to follow us; in every field we cross we
+get fresh blood, while those who join us at the start fall off by
+degrees. Well, it happened one day late in October, when there were long
+ridges of snow on Helvellyn, and patches of white on Fairfield, Mistress
+Mary here must needs take her bamboo staff and start for the Striding
+Edge. It was just the day upon which she might have met her death easily
+on that perilous point, but happily something occurred to divert her
+juvenile fancy, for scarcely had she got to the bottom of Dolly Waggon
+Pike—you know Dolly----'</p>
+
+<p>'Intimately,' said Hammond, with a nod.</p>
+
+<p>'Scarcely had she neared the base of Dolly Waggon when she heard the
+huntsman's horn and the hounds at full cry, streaming along towards
+Dunmail Raise. Off flew Molly, all among the butcher boys, and farmers'
+men, and rosy-cheeked squireens of the district—racing over the rugged
+fields—clambering over the low stone walls—up hill, down
+hill—shouting when the others shouted—never losing sight of the waving
+sterns—winding and doubling, and still going upward and upward, till
+she stood, panting and puffing like a young grampus, on the top of Seat
+Sandal, still all among the butcher boys and the farmer's men, and the
+guides and the red-cheeked squireens, her frock torn to ribbons, her hat
+lost in a ditch, her hair streaming down her back, and every inch of
+her, from her nose downwards, splashed and spattered with mire and clay.
+What a spectacle for gods and men, guides and butcher boys. And there
+she stood with the sun going down beyond Coniston Old Man, and a
+seven-mile walk between her and Fellside.</p>
+
+<p>'Poor Lady Mary!' said Hammond, looking at her very kindly: but Mary did
+not see that friendly glance, which betokened sympathy rather than
+scorn. She sat silent and very red, with drooping eyelids, thinking her
+brother horribly cruel for thus publishing her foolishness.</p>
+
+<p>'Poor, indeed!' exclaimed Maulevrier. 'She came crawling home after
+dark, footsore and draggled, looking like a beggar girl, and as evil
+fate would have it, her ladyship, who so seldom goes out, must needs
+have been taking afternoon tea at the Vicarage upon that particular
+occasion, and was driving up the avenue as Mary crawled to the gate. The
+storm that followed may be more easily imagined than described.'</p>
+
+<p>'It was years and years ago,' expostulated Mary, looking very angry.
+'Grandmother needn't have made such a fuss about it.'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, but in those days she still had hopes of civilising you,' answered
+Maulevrier. 'Since then she has abandoned all endeavour in that
+direction, and has given you over to your own devices—and me. Since
+then you have become a chartered libertine. You have letters of mark.'</p>
+
+<p>'I don't care what you call me,' said Mary. 'I only know that I am very
+happy when you are at home, and very miserable when you are away.'</p>
+
+<p>'It is hardly kind of you to say that, Lady Mary,' remonstrated Fr&auml;ulein
+M&uuml;ller, who, up to this point, had been busily engaged with muffins and
+gooseberry jam.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, I don't mean that any one is unkind to me or uses me badly,' said
+Mary. 'I only mean that my life is empty when Maulevrier is away, and
+that I am always longing for him to come back again.'</p>
+
+<p>'I thought you adored the hills, and the lake, and the villagers, and
+your pony, and Maulevrier's dogs,' said, Lesbia faintly contemptuous.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, but one wants something human to love,' answered Mary, making it
+very obvious that there was no warmth of affection between herself and
+the feminine members of her family.</p>
+
+<p>She had not thought of the significance of her speech. She was very
+angry with Maulevrier for having held her up to ridicule before Mr.
+Hammond, who already despised her, as she believed, and whose contempt
+was more galling than it need have been, considering that he was a mere
+casual visitor who would go away and return no more. Never till his
+coming had she felt her deficiencies; but in his presence she writhed
+under the sense of her unworthiness, and had an almost agonising
+consciousness of all those faults which her grandmother had told her
+about so often with not the slightest effect. In those days she had not
+cared what Lady Maulevrier or any one else might say of her, or think of
+her. She lived her life, and defied fortune. She was worse than her
+reputation. To-day she felt it a bitter thing that she had grown to the
+age of womanhood lacking all those graces and accomplishments which made
+her sister adorable, and which might make even a plain woman charming.</p>
+
+<p>Never till John Hammond's coming had she felt a pang of envy in the
+contemplation of Lesbia's beauty or Lesbia's grace; but now she had so
+keen a sense of the difference between herself and her sister that she
+began to fear that this cruel pain must indeed be that lowest of all
+vices. Even the difference in their gowns was a source of humiliation to
+her how. Lesbia was looking her loveliest this morning, in a gown that
+was all lace and soft Madras muslin, flowing, cloud-like; while Mary's
+tailor gown, with its trim tight bodice, horn buttons, and kilted skirt,
+seemed to cry aloud that it had been made for a Tomboy. And this tailor
+gown was a costume to which Mary had condemned herself by her own folly.
+Only a year ago, moved by an artistic admiration for Lesbia's delicate
+breakfast gowns, Mary had told her grandmother that she would like to
+have something of the same kind, whereupon the dowager, who did not take
+the faintest interest in Mary's toilet, but who had a stern sense of
+justice, replied—</p>
+
+<p>'I do not think Lesbia's frocks and your habits will agree, but you can
+have some pretty morning gowns if you like;' and the order had been
+given for a confection in muslin and lace for Lady Mary.</p>
+
+<p>Mary came down to breakfast one bright June morning, in the new frock,
+feeling very proud of herself, and looking very pretty.</p>
+
+<p>'Fine feathers make fine birds,' said Fr&auml;ulein M&uuml;ller. 'I should hardly
+have known you.'</p>
+
+<p>'I wish you would always dress like that,' said Lesbia; 'you really look
+like a young lady;' and Mary danced about on the lawn, feeling
+sylph-like, and quite in love with her own elegance, when a sudden
+uplifting of canine voices in the distance had sent her flying to see
+what was the matter with the terrier pack.</p>
+
+<p>In the kennel there was riot and confusion. Ahab was demolishing
+Angelina, Absalom had Agamemnon in a deadly grip. Dog-whip in hand, Mary
+rushed to the rescue, and laid about her, like the knights of old,
+utterly forgetful of her frock. She soon succeeded in restoring order,
+but the Madras muslin, the Breton lace had perished in the conflict. She
+left the kennel panting, and in rags and tatters, some of the muslin and
+lace hanging about her in strips a yard long, but the greater part
+remaining in the possession of the terriers, who had mauled and munched
+her finery to their hearts' content, while she was reading the Riot Act.</p>
+
+<p>She went back to the house, bowed down by shame and confusion, and
+marched straight to the dowager's morning-room.</p>
+
+<p>'Look what the terriers have done to me, grandmother,' she said, with a
+sob. 'It is all my own fault, of course. I ought not to have gone near
+them in that stupid muslin. Please forgive me for being so foolish. I am
+not fit to have pretty frocks.'</p>
+
+<p>'I think, my dear, you can now have no doubt that the tailor gowns are
+fittest for you,' answered Lady Maulevrier, with crushing placidity. 'We
+have tried the experiment of dressing you like Lesbia, and you see it
+does not answer. Tell Kibble to throw your new gown in the rag-bag, and
+please let me hear no more about it.'</p>
+
+<p>After this dismal failure Mary could not feel herself ill-used in
+having to wear tailor gowns all the year round. She was allowed cotton
+frocks for very warm weather, and she had pretty gowns for evening wear;
+but her usual attire was cloth or linsey woolsey, made by the local
+tailor. Sometimes Maulevrier ordered her a gown or a coat from his own
+man in Conduit Street, and then she felt herself smart and fashionable.
+And even the local tailor contrived to make her gowns prettily, having a
+great appreciation of her straight willowy figure, and deeming it a
+privilege to work for her, so that hitherto Mary had felt very well
+content with her cloth and linsey. But now that John Hammond so
+obviously admired Lesbia's delicate raiment, poor Mary began to think
+her woollen gowns odious.</p>
+
+<p>After breakfast Mary and Maulevrier went straight off to the kennels.
+His lordship had numerous instructions to give on this last day, and his
+lieutenant had to receive and register his orders. Lesbia went to the
+garden with her book and with Fr&auml;ulein—the inevitable Fr&auml;ulein as
+Hammond thought her—in close attendance.</p>
+
+<p>It was a lovely morning, sultry, summer-like, albeit September had just
+begun. The tennis lawn, which had been levelled on one side of the
+house, was surrounded on three sides by shrubberies planted forty years
+ago, in the beginning of Lady Maulevrier's widowhood. All loveliest
+trees grew there in perfection, sheltered by the mighty wall of the
+mountain, fed by the mists from the lake. Larch and mountain ash, and
+Lawsonian cyprus,—deodara and magnolia, arbutus, and silver broom,
+acacia and lilac, flourished here in that rich beauty which made every
+cottage garden in the happy district a little paradise; and here in a
+semi-circular recess at one end of the lawn were rustic chairs and
+tables and an umbrella tent. This was Lady Lesbia's chosen retreat on
+summer mornings, and a favourite place for afternoon tea.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Hammond followed the two ladies to their bower.</p>
+
+<p>'This is to be my last morning,' he said, looking at Lesbia. 'Will you
+think me a great bore if I spend it with you?'</p>
+
+<p>'We shall think it very nice of you,' answered Lesbia, without a vestige
+of emotion; 'especially if you will read to us.'</p>
+
+<p>'I will do any thing to make myself useful. What shall I read?'</p>
+
+<p>'Anything you like. What do you say to Tennyson?'</p>
+
+<p>'That he is a noble poet, a teacher of all good; but too philosophical
+for my present mood. May I read you some of Heine's ballads, those songs
+which you sing so exquisitely, or rather some you do not sing, and which
+will be fresher to you. My German is far from perfect, but I am told it
+is passable, and Fr&auml;ulein M&uuml;ller can throw her scissors at me when my
+accent is too dreadful.'</p>
+
+<p>'You speak German beautifully,' said Fr&auml;ulein. 'I wonder where you
+learned it?'</p>
+
+<p>'I have been a good deal in Germany, and I had a Hanoverian valet who
+was quite a gentleman, and spoke admirably. I think I learned more from
+him than from grammars or dictionaries. I'll go and fetch Heine.'</p>
+
+<p>'What a very agreeable person Mr. Hammond is,' said Fr&auml;ulein, when he
+was gone. 'We shall quite miss him.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, I have no doubt we shall miss him,' said Lesbia, again without the
+faintest emotion.</p>
+
+<p>The governess began to think that the ordeal of an agreeable young man's
+presence at Fellside had been passed in safety, and that her pupil was
+unscathed. She had kept a close watch on the two, as in duty bound. She
+knew that Hammond was in love with Lesbia; but she thought Lesbia was
+heart-whole.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Hammond came back with a shabby little book in his hand and
+established himself comfortably in one of the two Beaconsfield chairs.</p>
+
+<p>He opened his book at that group of short poems called Heimkehr, and
+read here and there, as fancy led him. Sometimes the strain was a
+love-song, brief, passionate as the cry of a soul in pain; sometimes the
+verses were bitter and cynical; sometimes full of tenderest simplicity,
+telling of childhood, and youth and purity; sometimes dark with hidden
+meanings, grim, awful, cold with the chilling breath of the
+charnel-house. Sometimes Lesbia's heart beat a little faster as Mr.
+Hammond read, for it seemed as if it was he who was speaking to her, and
+not the dead poet.</p>
+
+<p>An hour or more passed in this way. Fr&auml;ulein M&uuml;ller was charmed at
+hearing some of her favourite poems, asking now for this little bit, and
+anon for another, and expatiating upon the merits of German poets in
+general, and Heine in particular, in the pauses of the lecture. She was
+quite carried away by her delight in the poet, and was so entirely
+uplifted to the ideal world that, when a footman came with a message
+from Lady Maulevrier requesting her presence, she tripped gaily off at
+once, without a thought of danger in leaving those two together on the
+lawn. She had been a faithful watch-dog up to this point; but she was
+now lulled into a false sense of security by the idea that the time of
+peril was all but ended.</p>
+
+<p>So she left them; but could she have looked back two minutes afterwards
+she would have perceived the unwisdom of that act.</p>
+
+<p>No sooner had the Fr&auml;ulein turned the corner of the shrubbery than
+Hammond laid aside his book and drew nearer Lesbia, who sat looking
+downward, with her eyes upon the delicate piece of fancy work which had
+occupied her fingers all the morning.</p>
+
+<p>'Lesbia, this is my last day at Fellside, and you and I may never have a
+minute alone together again while I am here. Will you come for a little
+walk with me on the Fell? There is something I must say to you before I
+go.'</p>
+
+<p>Lesbia's delicate cheek grew a shade more pale. Instinct told her what
+was coming, though never mortal man had spoken to her of love. Nor until
+now had Mr. Hammond ever addressed her by her Christian name without
+the ceremonious prefix. There was a deeper tone in his voice, a graver
+look in his eyes, than she had ever noticed before.</p>
+
+<p>She rose, and took up her sunshade, and went with him meekly through the
+cultivated shrubbery of ornamental timber to the rougher pathway that
+wound through a copse of Scotch fir, which formed the outer boundary of
+Lady Maulevrier's domain. Beyond the fir trees rose the grassy slope of
+the hill, on the brow of which sheep were feeding. Deep down in the
+hollow below the lawns and shrubberries of Fellside the placid bosom of
+the lake shone like an emerald floor in the sunlight, reflecting the
+verdure of the hill, and the white sheep dotted about here and there.</p>
+
+<p>There was not a breath in the air around them as those two sauntered
+slowly side by side in the pine wood, not a cloud in the dazzling blue
+sky above; and for a little time they too were silent, as if bound by a
+spell which neither dared to break. Then at last Hammond spoke.</p>
+
+<p>'Lesbia, you know that I love you,' he began, in his low, grave voice,
+tremulous with feeling. 'No words I can say to-day can tell you of my
+love more plainly than my heart has been telling you in every hour of
+this happy, happy time that you and I have spent together. I love you as
+I never hoped to love, fervently, completely, believing that the
+perfection of earthly bliss will be mine if I can but win you. Dearest,
+is there such a sweet hope for me; are you indeed my own, as I am yours,
+heart and soul, and mind and being, till the last throb of life in this
+poor clay?'</p>
+
+<p>He tried to take her hand, but she drew herself away from him with a
+frightened look. She was very pale, and there was infinite distress in
+the dark violet eyes, which looked entreatingly, deprecatingly at her
+lover.</p>
+
+<p>'I dare not answer as you would like me to answer,' she faltered, after
+a painful pause. 'I am not my own mistress. My grandmother has brought
+me up, devoted herself to me almost, and she has her own views, her own
+plans. I dare not frustrate them!'</p>
+
+<p>'She would like to marry you to a man of rank and fortune—a man who
+will choose you, perhaps, because other people admire you, rather than
+because he himself loves you as you ought to be loved; who will choose
+you because you are altogether the best and most perfect thing of your
+year; just as he would buy a yearling at Newmarket or Doncaster. Her
+ladyship means you to make a great alliance—coronets, not hearts, are
+the counters for her game; but, Lesbia, would you, in the bloom and
+freshness of youth—you with the pulses of youth throbbing at your
+heart—lend yourself to the calculations of age which has lived its life
+and forgotten the very meaning of love? Would you submit to be played as
+a card in the game of a dowager's ambition? Trust me, dearest, in the
+crisis of a woman's life there is one only counsellor she should listen
+to, and that counsellor is her own heart. If you love me—as I dare to
+hope you do—trust in me, hold by me, and leave the rest to Heaven. I
+know that I can make your life happy.'</p>
+
+<p>'You frighten me by your impetuosity,' said Lesbia. 'Surely you forget
+how short a time we have known each other.'</p>
+
+<p>'An age. All my life before the day I saw you is a dead, dull blank as
+compared with the magical hours I have spent with you.'</p>
+
+<p>'I do not even know who and what you are.'</p>
+
+<p>'First, I am a gentleman, or I should not be your brother's friend. A
+poor gentleman, if you like, with only my own right arm to hew my
+pathway through the wood of life to the temple of fortune; but trust me,
+only trust me, Lesbia, and I will so hew my path as to reach that
+temple. Look at me, love. Do I look like a man born to fail?'</p>
+
+<p>She looked up at him shyly, with eyes that were dim with tears. He
+looked like a demi-god, tall, straight as the pine trunks amongst which
+he was standing, a frame formed for strength and activity, a face
+instinct with mental power, dark eyes that glowed with the fire of
+intellect and passion. The sunlight gave an almost unearthly radiance to
+the clear dark of his complexion, the curly brown hair cut close to the
+finely shaped head, the broad brow and boldly modelled features.</p>
+
+<p>Lesbia felt in her heart that such a man must be destined for success,
+born to be a conqueror in all strifes, a victor upon every field.</p>
+
+<p>'Have I the thews and sinews of a man doomed to be beaten in the
+battle?' he asked her. 'No, dearest; Heaven meant me to succeed; and
+with you to fight for I shall not be beaten by adverse fortune. Can you
+not trust Providence and me?'</p>
+
+<p>'I cannot disobey my grandmother. If she will consent----'</p>
+
+<p>'She will not consent. You must defy Lady Maulevrier, Lesbia, if you
+mean to reward my love. But I will promise you this much, darling, that
+if you will be my wife—with your brother's consent—which I am sure of
+before I ask for it, within one year of our marriage I will find means
+of reconciling her ladyship to the match, and winning her entire
+forgiveness for you and me.'</p>
+
+<p>'You are talking of impossibilities,' said Lesbia, frowning. 'Why do you
+talk to me as if I were a child? I know hardly anything of the world,
+but I do know the woman who has reared and educated me. My grandmother
+would never forgive me if I married a poor man. I should be an outcast.'</p>
+
+<p>'We would be outcasts together—happy outcasts. Besides, we should not
+always be poor. I tell you I am predestined to conquer fate.'</p>
+
+<p>'But we should have to begin from the beginning.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, we should have to begin from the beginning, as Adam and Eve did
+when they left Paradise.'</p>
+
+<p>'We are not told in the Bible that they had any happiness after that. It
+seems to have been all trouble and weariness, and toil and death, after
+the angel with the flaming sword drove them out of Eden.'</p>
+
+<p>'They were together, and they must have been happy. Oh, Lesbia, if you
+do not feel that you can face poverty and the world's contempt by my
+side, and for my sake, you do not love me. Love never calculates so
+nicely; love never fears the future; and yet you do love me, Lesbia,' he
+said, trying to fold her in his arms; but again she drew herself away
+from him—this time with a look almost of horror—and stood facing him,
+clinging to one of the pine trunks, like a scared wood-nymph.</p>
+
+<p>'You have no right to say that,' she said.</p>
+
+<p>'I have the divine right of my own deep love—of heart which cries out
+to heart. Do you think there is no magnetic power in true love which can
+divine the answering love in another? Lesbia, call me an insolent
+coxcomb if you like, but I know you love me, and that you and I may be
+utterly happy together. Oh, why—why do you shrink from me, my beloved;
+why withhold yourself from my arms! Oh, love, let me hold you to my
+heart—let me seal our betrothal with a kiss!'</p>
+
+<p>'Betrothal—no, no; not for the world,' cried Lesbia. 'Lady Maulevrier
+would cast me off for ever; she would curse me.'</p>
+
+<p>'What would the curse of an ambitious woman weigh against my love? And I
+tell you that her anger would be only a passing tempest. She would
+forgive you.'</p>
+
+<p>'Never—you don't know her.'</p>
+
+<p>'I tell you she would forgive you, and all would be well with us before
+we had been married a year. Why cannot you believe me, Lesbia?'</p>
+
+<p>'Because I cannot believe impossibilities, even from your lips,' she
+answered sullenly.</p>
+
+<p>She stood before him with downcast eyes, the tears streaming down her
+pale cheeks, exquisitively lovely in her agitation and sorrow. Yes, she
+did love him; her heart was beating passionately; she was longing to
+throw herself on his breast, to be folded upon that manly heart, in
+trust in that brave, bright look which seemed to defy fortune. Yes, he
+was a man born to conquer; he was handsome, intellectual, powerful in
+all mental and physical gifts. A man of men. But he was, by his own
+admission, a very obscure and insignificant person, and he had no money.
+Life with him meant a long fight with adverse circumstances; life for
+his wife must mean patience, submission, long waiting upon destiny, and
+perhaps with old age and grey hairs the tardy turning of Fortune's
+wheel. And was she for this to resign the kingdom that had been
+promised to her, the giddy heights which she was born to scale, the
+triumphs and delights and victories of the great world? Yes, Lesbia
+loved this fortuneless knight; but she loved herself and her prospects
+of promotion still better.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, Lesbia, can you not be brave for my sake—trustful for my sake? God
+will be good to us if we are true to each other.'</p>
+
+<p>'God will not be good to me if I disobey my grandmother. I owe her too
+much; ingratitude in me would be doubly base. I will speak to her. I
+will tell her all you have said, and if she gives me the faintest
+encouragement----'</p>
+
+<p>'She will not; that is a foregone conclusion. Tell her all, if you like;
+but let us be prepared for the answer. When she denies the right of your
+heart to choose its own mate, then rise up in the might of your
+womanhood and defy her. Tell her, &quot;I love him, and be he rich or poor, I
+will share his fate;&quot; tell her boldly, bravely, nobly, as a true woman
+should; and if she be adamant still, proclaim your right to disobey her
+worldly wisdom rather than the voice of your own heart. And then come to
+me, darling, and be my own, and the world which you and I will face
+together shall not be a bad world. I will answer for that. No trouble
+shall come near you. No humiliation shall ever touch you. Only believe
+in me.'</p>
+
+<p>'I can believe in you, but not in the impossible,' answered Lesbia, with
+measured accents.</p>
+
+<p>The voice was silver-sweet, but passing cold. Just then there was a
+rustling among the pine branches, and Lesbia looked round with a
+startled air.</p>
+
+<p>'Is there any one listening?' she exclaimed. 'What was that?'</p>
+
+<p>'Only the breath of heaven. Oh, Lesbia, if you were but a little less
+wise, a little more trustful. Do not be a dumb idol. Say that you love
+me, or do not love me. If you can look me in the face and say the last,
+I will leave you without another word. I will take my sentence and go.'</p>
+
+<p>But this was just what Lesbia could not do. She could not deny her love;
+and yet she could not sacrifice all things for her love. She lifted the
+heavy lids which veiled those lovely eyes, and looked up at him
+imploringly.</p>
+
+<p>'Give me time to breathe, time to think,' she said.</p>
+
+<p>'And then will you answer me plainly, truthfully, without a shadow of
+reserve, remembering that the fate of two lives hangs on your words.'</p>
+
+<p>'I will.'</p>
+
+<p>'Let it be so, then. I'll go for a ramble over the hills, and return in
+time for afternoon tea. I shall look for you on the tennis lawn at
+half-past four.'</p>
+
+<p>He took her in his arms, and this time she yielded herself to him, and
+the beautiful head rested for a few moments upon his breast, and the
+soft eyes looked up at him in confiding fondness. He bent and kissed her
+once only, but a kiss that meant for life and death. In the next moment
+he was gone, leaving her alone among the pine trees.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XI"></a><h2>CHAPTER XI.</h2>
+
+<h3>'IF I WERE TO DO AS ISEULT DID.'</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>Lady Maulevrier rarely appeared at luncheon. She took some slight
+refection in her morning-room, among her books and papers, and in the
+society of her canine favourites, whose company suited her better at
+certain hours than the noisier companionship of her grandchildren. She
+was a studious woman, loving the silent life of books better than the
+inane chatter of everyday humanity. She was a woman who thought much and
+read much, and who lived more in the past than the present. She lived
+also in the future, counting much upon the splendid career of her
+beautiful granddaughter, which should be in a manner a lengthening out,
+a renewal of her own life. She looked forward to the day when Lesbia
+should reign supreme in the great world, a famous beauty and leader of
+fashion, her every act and word inspired and directed by her
+grandmother, who would be the shadow behind the throne. It was
+possible—nay, probable—that in those days Lady Maulevrier would
+herself re-appear in society, establish her salon, and draw around her
+closing years all that is wittiest, best, and wisest in the great world.</p>
+
+<p>Her ladyship was reposing in her low reading-chair, with a volume of
+Tyndall on the book-stand before her, when the door was opened softly
+and Lesbia came gliding in, and seated herself without a word on the
+hassock at her grandmother's feet. Lady Maulevrier passed her hand
+caressingly over the girl's soft brown hair, without looking up from her
+book.</p>
+
+<p>'You are a late visitor,' she said; 'why did you not come to me after
+breakfast?'</p>
+
+<p>'It was such a lovely morning, we went straight from the breakfast table
+to the garden; I did not think you wanted me.'</p>
+
+<p>'I did not want you; but I am always glad to see my pet. What were you
+doing in the garden all the morning? I did not hear you playing tennis.'</p>
+
+<p>Lady Maulevrier had already interrogated the German governess upon this
+very subject, but she had her own reasons for wishing to hear Lesbia's
+account.</p>
+
+<p>'No, it was too warm for tennis. Fr&auml;ulein and I sat and worked, and Mr.
+Hammond read to us.'</p>
+
+<p>'What did he read?'</p>
+
+<p>'Heine's ballads. He reads German beautifully.</p>
+
+<p>'Indeed! I daresay he was at school in Germany. There are cheap schools
+there to which middle-class people send their boys.'</p>
+
+<p>This was like a thrust from a rusty knife.</p>
+
+<p>'Mr. Hammond was at Oxford,' Lesbia said, reproachfully; and then, after
+a longish pause, she clasped her hands upon the arm of Lady Maulevrier's
+chair, and said, in a pleading voice, 'Grandmother, Mr. Hammond has
+asked me to marry him.'</p>
+
+<p>'Indeed! Only that? And pray, did he tell you what are his means of
+maintaining Lord Maulevrier's sister in the position to which her birth
+entitles her?' inquired the dowager, with crushing calmness.</p>
+
+<p>'He is not rich; indeed, I believe, he is poor; but he is brave and
+clever, and he is full of confidence in his power to conquer fortune.'</p>
+
+<p>'No doubt; that is your true adventurer's style. He confides implicitly
+in his own talents, and in somebody else's banker. Mr. Hammond would
+make a tremendous figure in the world, I daresay, and while he was
+making it your brother would have to keep him. Well, my dear Lesbia, I
+hope you gave this gentleman the answer his insolence deserved; or that
+you did better, and referred him to me. I should be glad to give him my
+opinion of his conduct—a person admitted to this house as your
+brother's hanger-on—tolerated only on your brother's account; such a
+person, nameless, penniless, friendless (except for Maulevrier's too
+facile patronage), to dare to lift his eyes to my granddaughter! It is
+ineffable insolence!'</p>
+
+<p>Lesbia crouched by her grandmother's chair, her face hidden from Lady
+Maulevrier's falcon eye. Every word uttered by her ladyship stung like
+the knotted cords of a knout. She knew not whether to be most ashamed of
+her lover or of herself—of her lover for his obscure position, his
+hopeless poverty; of herself for her folly in loving such a man. And she
+did love him, and would fain have pleaded his cause, had she not been
+cowed by the authority that had ruled her all her life.</p>
+
+<p>'Lesbia, if I thought you had been silly enough, degraded enough, to
+give this young man encouragement, to have justified his audacity of
+to-day by any act or word of yours, I should despise, I should detest
+you,' said Lady Maulevrier, sternly. 'What could be more contemptible,
+more hateful in a girl reared as you have been than to give
+encouragement to the first comer—to listen greedily to the first
+adventurer who had the insolence to make love to you, to be eager to
+throw yourself into the arms of the first man who asked you. That my
+granddaughter, a girl reared and taught and watched and guarded by me,
+should have no more dignity, no more modesty, or womanly feeling, than a
+barmaid at an inn!'</p>
+
+<p>Lesbia began to cry.</p>
+
+<p>'I don't see why a barmaid should not be a good woman, or why it
+should be a crime to fall in love,' she said, in a voice broken by sobs.
+'You need not speak to me so unkindly. I am not going to marry Mr.
+Hammond.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, you are not? that is very good of you. I am deeply grateful for
+such an assurance.'</p>
+
+<p>'But I like him better than anyone I ever saw in my life before.'</p>
+
+<p>'You have seen so many people. You have had such a wide area for
+choice.'</p>
+
+<p>'No; I know I have been kept like a nun in a convent: but I don't think
+when I go into the world I shall ever see anyone I should like better
+than Mr. Hammond.'</p>
+
+<p>'Wait till you have seen the world before you make up your mind about
+that. And now, Lesbia, leave off talking and thinking like a child; look
+me in the face and listen to me, for I am going to speak seriously; and
+with me, when I am in earnest, what is said once is said for ever.'</p>
+
+<p>Lady Maulevrier grasped her granddaughter's arm with long slender
+fingers which held it as tightly as the grasp of a vice. She drew the
+girl's slim figure round till they were face to face, looking into each
+other's eyes, the dowager's eagle countenance lit up with impassioned
+feeling, severe, awful as the face of one of the fatal sisters, the
+avengers of blood, the harbingers of doom.</p>
+
+<p>'Lesbia, I think I have been good to you, and kind to you,' she said.</p>
+
+<p>'You have been all that is kind and dear,' faltered Lesbia.</p>
+
+<p>'Then give me measure for measure. My life has been a hard one, child;
+hard and lonely, and loveless and joyless. My son, to whom I devoted
+myself in the vigour of youth and in the prime of life, never loved me,
+never repaid me for my love. He spent his days far away from me, when
+his presence would have gladdened my difficult life. He died in a
+strange land. Of his three children, you are the one I took into my
+heart. I did my duty to the others; I lavished my love upon you. Do not
+give me cursing instead of blessing. Do not give me a stone instead of
+bread. I have built every hope of happiness or pleasure in this world
+upon you and your obedience. Obey me, be true to me, and I will make you
+a queen, and I will sit in the shadow of your throne. I will toil for
+you, and be wise for you. You shall have only to shine, and dazzle, and
+enjoy the glory of life. My beautiful darling, for pity's sake do not
+give yourself over to folly.'</p>
+
+<p>'Did not you marry for love, grandmother?'</p>
+
+<p>'No, Lesbia. Lord Maulevrier and I got on very well together, but ours
+was no love-match.'</p>
+
+<p>'Does nobody in our rank ever marry for love? are all marriages a mere
+exchange and barter?'</p>
+
+<p>'No, there are love-matches now and then, which often turn out badly.
+But, my darling, I am not asking you to marry for rank or for money. I
+am only asking you to wait till you find your mate among the noblest in
+the land. He may be the handsomest and most accomplished of men, a man
+born to win women's hearts; and you may love him as fervently as ever a
+village girl loved her first lover. I am not going to sacrifice you, or
+to barter you, dearest. I mean to marry you to the best and noblest
+young man of his day. You shall never be asked to stoop to the unworthy,
+not even if worthlessness wore strawberry leaves in his cap, and owned
+the greatest estate in the land.'</p>
+
+<p>'And if—instead of waiting for this King Arthur of yours—I were to do
+as Iseult did—as Guinevere did—choose for myself----'</p>
+
+<p>'Iseult and Guinevere were wantons. I wonder that you can name them in
+comparison with yourself.'</p>
+
+<p>'If I were to marry a good and honourable man who has his place to make
+in the world, would you never forgive me?'</p>
+
+<p>'You mean Mr. Hammond? You may just as well speak plainly,' said Lady
+Maulevrier, freezingly. 'If you were capable of such idiocy as that,
+Lesbia, I would pluck you out of my heart like a foul weed. I would
+never look upon you, or hear your name spoken, or think of you again as
+long as I lived. My life would not last very long after that blow. Old
+age cannot bear such shocks. Oh, Lesbia, I have been father and mother
+to you; do not bring my grey hairs in sorrow to the grave.'</p>
+
+<p>Lesbia gave a deep sigh, and brushed the tears from her cheeks. Yes, the
+very idea of such a marriage was foolishness. Just now, in the pine
+wood, carried away by the force of her lover's passion, by her own
+softer feelings, it had seemed to her as if she could count the world
+well lost for his sake; but now, at Lady Maulevrier's feet, she became
+again true to her training, and the world was too much to lose.</p>
+
+<p>'What can I do, grandmother?' she asked, submissively, despairingly. 'He
+loves me, and I love him. How can I tell him that he and I can never be
+anything to each other in this world?'</p>
+
+<p>'Refer him to me. I will give him his answer.'</p>
+
+<p>'No, no; that will not do. I have promised to answer him myself. He has
+gone for a walk on the hills, and will come back at four o'clock for my
+answer.'</p>
+
+<p>'Sit down at that table, and write as I dictate.'</p>
+
+<p>'But a letter will be so formal.'</p>
+
+<p>'It is the only way in which you can answer him. When he comes back from
+his walk you will have left Fellside. I shall send you off to St. Bees
+with Fr&auml;ulein. You must never look upon that man's face again.'</p>
+
+<p>Lesbia brushed away a few more tears, and obeyed. She had been too well
+trained to attempt resistance. Defiance was out of the question.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XII"></a><h2>CHAPTER XII.</h2>
+
+<h3>'THE GREATER CANTLE OF THE WORLD IS LOST.'</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>The sky was still cloudless when John Hammond strolled slowly up the
+leafy avenue at Fellside. He had been across the valley and up the hill
+to Easedale Tarn, and then by rough untrodden ways, across a chaos of
+rock and heather, into a second valley, long, narrow, and sterile, known
+as Far Easedale, a desolate gorge, a rugged cleft in the heart of the
+mountains. The walk had been long and laborious; but only in such
+clambering and toiling, such expenditure of muscular force and latent
+heat, could the man's restless soul endure those long hours of suspense.</p>
+
+<p>'How will she answer me? Oh, my God! how will she answer?' he said
+within himself, as he walked up the romantic winding road, which made so
+picturesque an approach to Lady Maulevrier's domain, 'Is my idol gold or
+clay? How will she come through the crucible? Oh, dearest, sweetest,
+loveliest, only be true to the instinct of your womanhood, and my cup
+will be full of bliss, and all my days will flow as sweetly as the
+burden of a song. But if you prove heartless, if you love the world's
+wealth better than you love me—ah! then all is over, and you and I are
+lost to each other for ever. I have made up my mind.'</p>
+
+<p>His face settled into an expression of indomitable determination, as of
+a man who would die rather than be false to his own purpose. There was
+no glow of hope in his heart. He had no deep faith in the girl he loved;
+indeed in his heart of hearts he knew that this being to whom he had
+trusted his hopes of bliss was no heroine. She was a lovely, loveable
+girl, nothing more. How would she greet him when they met presently on
+the tennis lawn? With tears and entreaties, and pretty little
+deprecating speeches, irresolution, timidity, vacillation, perhaps;
+hardly with heroic resolve to act and dare for his sake.</p>
+
+<p>There was no one on the tennis lawn when he went there, though the hour
+was close at hand at which Lesbia had promised to give him his answer.
+He sat down in one of the low chairs, glad to rest after his long ramble
+having had no refreshment but a bottle of soda-water and a biscuit at
+the cottage by Easedale Tarn. He waited, calmly as to outward seeming,
+but with a heavy heart.</p>
+
+<p>'If it were Mary now whom I loved, I should have little fear of the
+issue,' he thought, weighing his sweetheart's character, as he weighed
+his chances of success. 'That young termagant would defy the world for
+her lover.'</p>
+
+<p>He sat in the summer silence for nearly half-an-hour, and still there
+was no sign of Lady Lesbia. Her satin-lined workbasket, with the work
+thrown carelessly across it, was still on the rustic table, just as she
+had left it when they went to the pine wood. Waiting was weary work when
+the bliss of a lifetime trembled in the balance; and yet he did not want
+to be impatient. She might find it difficult to get away from her
+family, perhaps. She was closely watched and guarded, as the most
+precious thing at Fellside.</p>
+
+<p>At last the clock struck five, and Hammond could endure delay no longer.
+He went round by the flower garden to the terrace before the
+drawing-room windows, and through an open window to the drawing-room.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Maulevrier was in her accustomed seat, with her own particular
+little table, magazines, books, newspapers at her side. Lady Mary was
+pouring out the tea, a most unusual thing; and Maulevrier was sitting on
+a stool at her feet, with his knees up to his chin, very warm and dusty,
+eating pound cake.</p>
+
+<p>'Where the mischief have you been hiding yourself all day, Jack?' he
+called out as Hammond appeared, looking round the room as he entered,
+with eager, interrogating eyes, for that one figure which was absent.</p>
+
+<p>'I have been for a walk.'</p>
+
+<p>'You might have had the civility to announce your design, and Molly and
+I would have shared your peregrinations.'</p>
+
+<p>'I am sorry that I lost the privilege of your company.'</p>
+
+<p>'I suppose you lost your luncheon, which was of more importance,' said
+Maulevrier.</p>
+
+<p>'Will you have some tea?' asked Mary, who looked more womanly than usual
+in a cream-coloured surah gown—one of her Sunday gowns.</p>
+
+<p>She had a faint hope that by this essentially feminine apparel she might
+lessen the prejudicial effect of Maulevrier's cruel story about the
+fox-hunt.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Hammond answered absently, hardly looking at Mary, and quite
+unconscious of her pretty gown.</p>
+
+<p>'Thanks, yes,' he said, taking the cup and saucer, and looking at the
+door by which he momently expected Lady Lesbia's entrance, and then, as
+the door did not open, he looked down at Mary, very busy with china
+teapots and a brass kettle which hissed and throbbed over a spirit lamp.</p>
+
+<p>'Won't you have some cake,' she asked, looking up at him gently, grieved
+at the distress and disappointment in his face. 'I am sure you must be
+dreadfully hungry.'</p>
+
+<p>'Not in the least, thanks. How came you to be entrusted with those
+sacred vessels, Lady Mary? What has become of Fr&auml;ulein and your sister?'</p>
+
+<p>'They have rushed off to St. Bees. Grandmother thought Lesbia looking
+pale and out of spirits, and packed her off to the seaside at a minute's
+notice.'</p>
+
+<p>'What! She has left Fellside?' asked Hammond, paling suddenly, as if a
+man had struck him. 'Lady Maulevrier, do I understand that Lady Lesbia
+has gone away?'</p>
+
+<p>He asked the question in an authoritative tone, with the air of a man
+who had a right to be answered. The dowager wondered at his surpassing
+insolence.</p>
+
+<p>'My granddaughter has gone to the seaside with her governess,' she said,
+haughtily.</p>
+
+<p>'At a minute's notice?'</p>
+
+<p>'At a minute's notice. I am not in the habit of hesitating about any
+step which I consider necessary for my grandchildren's welfare.'</p>
+
+<p>She looked him full in the face, with those falcon eyes of hers; and he
+gave her back a look as resolute, and every whit as full of courage and
+of pride.</p>
+
+<p>'Well,' he said, after a very perceptible pause, 'no doubt your ladyship
+has done wisely, and I must submit to your jurisdiction. But I had asked
+Lady Lesbia a question, and I had been promised an answer.'</p>
+
+<p>'Your question has been answered by Lady Lesbia. She left a note for
+you,' replied Lady Maulevrier.</p>
+
+<p>'Thanks,' answered Mr. Hammond, briefly, and he hurried from the room
+without another word.</p>
+
+<p>The letter was on the table in his bedroom. He had little hope of any
+good waiting for him in a letter so written. The dowager and the world
+had triumphed over a girl's dawning love, no doubt.</p>
+
+<p>This was Lesbia's letter:</p>
+
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">'Dear Mr. Hammond,—Lady Maulevrier desires me to say that the</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">proposal which you honoured me by making this morning is one which I</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">cannot possibly accept, and that any idea of an engagement between</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">you and me could result only in misery and humiliation to both. She</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">thinks it best, under these circumstances, that we should not again</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">meet, and I shall therefore have left Fellside before you receive</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">this letter.</span><br>
+
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">'With all good wishes, very faithfully yours,</span><br>
+
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">'LESBIA HASELDEN.'</span><br>
+
+<p>'Very faithfully mine—faithful to her false training, to the worldly
+mind that rules her; faithful to the gods of this world—Belial and
+Mammon, and the Moloch Fashion. Poor cowardly soul! She loves me, and
+owns as much, yet weakly flies from me, afraid to trust the strong arm
+and the brave heart of the man who loves her, preferring the glittering
+shams of the world to the reality of true and honest love. Well, child,
+I have weighed you in the balance and found you wanting. Would to God it
+had been otherwise! If you had been brave and bold for love's sake,
+where is that pure and perfect chrysolite for which I would have
+bartered you?'</p>
+
+<p>He flung himself into a chair, and sat with his head bowed upon his
+folded arms, and his eyes not innocent of tears. What would he not have
+given to find truth and courage and scorn of the world's wealth in that
+heart which he had tried to win. Did he think her altogether heartless
+because she so glibly renounced him? No, he was too just for that. He
+called her only half-hearted. She was like the cat in the adage,
+'Letting I dare not, wait upon I would.' But he told himself with one
+deep sigh of resignation that she was lost to him for ever.</p>
+
+<p>'I have tried her, and found her not worth the winning,' he said.</p>
+
+<p>The house, even the lovely landscape smiling under his windows, the
+pastoral valley, smooth lake and willowy island, seemed hateful to him.
+He felt himself hemmed round by those green hills, by yonder brown and
+rugged wall of Nabb Scar, stifled for want of breathing space. The
+landscape was lovely enough, but it was like a beautiful grave. He
+longed to get away from it.</p>
+
+<p>'Another man would follow her to St. Bees,' he said. 'I will not.'</p>
+
+<p>He flung a few things into a Gladstone bag, sat down, and wrote a brief
+note to Maulevrier, asking him to make his excuses to her ladyship. He
+had made up his mind to go to Keswick that afternoon, and would rejoin
+his friend to-morrow, at Carlisle. This done, he rang for Maulevrier's
+valet, and asked that person to look after his luggage and bring it on
+to Scotland with his master's things; and then, without a word of adieu
+to anyone, John Hammond went out of the house, with the Gladstone bag in
+his hand, and shook the dust of Fellside off his feet.</p>
+
+<p>He ordered a fly at the Prince of Wales's Hotel, and drove to Keswick,
+whence he went on to the Lodore. The gloom and spaciousness of
+Derwentwater, grey in the gathering dusk, suited his humour better than
+the emerald prettiness of Grasmere—the roar of the waterfall made music
+in his ear. He dined in a private room, and spent the evening roaming on
+the shores of the lake, and at eleven o'clock went back to his hotel and
+sat late into the night reading Heine, and thinking of the girl who had
+refused him.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Hammond's letter was delivered to Lord Maulevrier five minutes
+before dinner, as he sat in the drawing-room with her ladyship and Mary.
+Poor Mary had put on another pretty gown for dinner, still bent upon
+effacing Mr. Hammond's image of her as a tousled, frantic creature in
+torn and muddy raiment. She sat watching the door, just as Hammond had
+watched it three hours ago.</p>
+
+<p>'So,' said Maulevrier, 'your ladyship has succeeded in driving my friend
+away. Hammond has left Fellside, and begs me to convey to you his
+compliments and his grateful acknowledgment of all your kindness.'</p>
+
+<p>'I hope I have not been uncivil to him,' answered Lady Maulevrier
+coldly. 'As you had both made up your minds to go to-morrow, it can
+matter very little that he should go to-day.'</p>
+
+<p>Mary looked down at the ribbon and lace on her prettiest frock, and
+thought that it mattered a great deal to her. Yet, if he had stayed,
+would he have seen her frock or her? With his bodily eyes, perhaps, but
+not with the eyes of his mind. Those eyes saw only Lesbia.</p>
+
+<p>'No, perhaps it hardly matters,' answered Maulevrier, with suppressed
+anger. 'The man is not worth talking about or thinking about. What is
+he? Only the best, truest, bravest fellow I ever knew.'</p>
+
+<p>'There are shepherds and guides in Grasmere of whom we could say almost
+as much,' said Lady Maulevrier, 'yet you would scarcely expect me to
+encourage one of them to pay his addresses to your sister? Pray spare us
+all nonsense-talk, Maulevrier. This business is very well ended. You
+ought never to have brought Mr. Hammond here.'</p>
+
+<p>'I am sure of that now. I am very sorry I did bring him.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, the man will not die for love. A disappointment of that kind is
+good for a young man in his position. It will preserve him from more
+vulgar entanglements, and perhaps from the folly of a too early
+marriage.'</p>
+
+<p>'That is a mighty philosophical way of looking at the matter.'</p>
+
+<p>'It is the only true way. I hope when you are my age you will have
+learnt to look at everything in a philosophical spirit.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, Lady Maulevrier, you have had it all your own way,' said the
+young man, walking up and down the room in an angry mood. 'I hope you
+will never be sorry for having come between two people who loved each
+other, and might have made each other happy.'</p>
+
+<p>'I shall never be sorry for having saved my granddaughter from an
+imprudent marriage. Give me your arm, Maulevrier, and let me hear no
+more about Mr. Hammond. We have all had quite enough of him,' said her
+ladyship, as the butler announced dinner.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XIII"></a><h2>CHAPTER XIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>'SINCE PAINTED OR NOT PAINTED ALL SHALL FADE.'</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>Fr&auml;ulein M&uuml;ller and her charge returned from St. Bees after a sojourn of
+about three weeks upon that quiet shore: but Lady Lesbia did not appear
+to be improved in health or spirits by the revivifying breezes of the
+ocean.</p>
+
+<p>'It is a dull, horrid place, and I was bored to death there!' she said,
+when Mary asked how she had enjoyed herself. 'There was no question of
+enjoyment. Grandmother took it into her head that I was looking ill, and
+sent me to the sea; but I should have been just as well at Fellside.'</p>
+
+<p>This meant that between Lesbia and that distinctly inferior being, her
+younger sister, there was to be no confidence. Mary had watched the
+life-drama acted under her eyes too closely not to know all about it,
+and was not inclined to be so put off.</p>
+
+<p>That pale perturbed countenance of John Hammond's, those eager inquiring
+eyes looking to the door which opened not, had haunted Mary's waking
+thoughts, had even mingled with the tangled web of her dreams. Oh, how
+could any woman scorn such love? To be so loved, and by such a man,
+seemed to Mary the perfection of earthly bliss. She had never been
+educated up to those wider and loftier views of life, which teach a
+woman that houses and lands, place and power, are the supreme good.</p>
+
+<p>'I can't understand how you could treat that noble-minded man so badly,'
+she exclaimed one day, when she and Lesbia were alone in the library,
+and after she had sat for ever so long, staring out of the window,
+meditating upon her sister's cruelty.</p>
+
+<p>'Of whom are you speaking, pray?'</p>
+
+<p>'As if you didn't know! Of Mr. Hammond.'</p>
+
+<p>'And pray, how do you know that he is noble-minded, or that I treated
+him badly?'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, as to his being noble-minded, that jumps to the eyes, as French
+books say. As for your treatment of him, I was looking on all the time,
+and I know how unkind you were, and I heard him talking to you in the
+fir-copse that day.'</p>
+
+<p>'You were listening' cried Lesbia indignantly.</p>
+
+<p>'I was not listening! I was passing by. And if people choose to carry on
+their love affairs out of doors they must expect to be overheard. I
+heard him pleading to you, telling you how he would work for you, fight
+the battle of life for you, asking you to be trustful and brave for his
+sake. But you have a heart of stone. You and grandmother both have
+hearts of stone. I think she must have taken out your heart when you
+were little, and put a stone in its place.'</p>
+
+<p>'Really,' said Lesbia, trying to carry things with a high hand, albeit
+her very human heart was beating passionately all the time, 'I think you
+ought to be very grateful to me—and grandmother—for refusing Mr.
+Hammond.'</p>
+
+<p>'Why grateful?'</p>
+
+<p>'Because it leaves you a chance of getting him for yourself; and
+everybody can see that you are over head and ears in love with him. That
+jumps to the eyes, as you say.'</p>
+
+<p>Mary turned crimson, trembled with rage, looked at her sister as if she
+would kill her, for a moment or so, and finally burst into tears.</p>
+
+<p>'That is not true, and it is shameful for you to say such a thing,' she
+cried.</p>
+
+<p>'Why, what a virago you are, Mary. Well, I'm very glad it is not true.
+Mr. Hammond is—yes, I will be quite candid with you—he is the only man
+I am ever likely to admire for his own sake. He is good, brave, clever,
+all that you think him. But you and I do not live in a world in which
+girls are free to follow their own inclinations. I should break Lady
+Maulevrier's heart if I were to make a foolish marriage; and I owe her
+too much to set her wishes at naught, or to make her declining years
+unhappy. I must obey her, at any cost to my own feelings. Please never
+mention Mr. Hammond's name. I'm sure I've had quite enough unhappiness
+about him.'</p>
+
+<p>'I see,' said Mary, bitterly. 'It is your own pain you think of, not
+his. He may suffer, so long as you are not worried.'</p>
+
+<p>'You are an impertinent chit,' retorted Lesbia, 'and you know nothing
+about it.'</p>
+
+<p>After this there was no more said about Mr. Hammond; but Mary did not
+forget him. She wrote long letters to her brother, who was still in
+Scotland, shooting, deer-stalking, fishing, killing something or other
+daily, in the most approved fashion of an Englishman taking his
+pleasure. Maulevrier occasionally repaid her with a telegram; but he was
+not a good correspondent. He declared that life was too short for
+letter-writing.</p>
+
+<p>Summer was gone; the lake was no longer a shining emerald floor, dotted
+with the reflection of the flock upon the verdant slopes above it, but
+dull and grey of hue, and broken by white-edged wavelets. Patches of
+snow gleamed on the misty heights of Helvellyn, and the autumn winds
+howled and shrieked around Fellside in the evenings, when all the
+shutters were shut, and the outside world seemed little more than an
+idea: that mystic hour when the sheep are slumbering under the starry
+sky, and when, as the Westmoreland peasant believes, the fairies help
+the housewife at her spinning-wheel.</p>
+
+<p>Those October evenings were very long and weary for Lesbia and her
+sister. Lady Maulevrier read and mused in her low chair beside the fire,
+with her books piled upon her own particular table, and lighted by her
+own particular lamp. She talked very little, but she was always gracious
+to her granddaughters and their governess, and she liked them to be with
+her in the evening. Lesbia played or sang, or sat at work at her
+basket-table, which occupied the other side of the fireplace; and
+Fr&auml;ulein and Mary had the rest of the room to themselves, as it were,
+those two places by the hearth being sacred, as if dedicated to
+household gods. Mary read immensely in those long evenings, devouring
+volume after volume, feeding her imagination with every kind of
+nutriment, good, bad, and indifferent. Fr&auml;ulein M&uuml;ller knitted a woollen
+shawl, which seemed to have neither beginning, middle, nor end, and was
+always ready for conversation, but there were times when silence brooded
+over the scene for long intervals, and when every sound of the light
+wood-ashes dropping on the tiled hearth was distinctly audible.</p>
+
+<p>This state of things went on for about three weeks after Lesbia's return
+from St. Bees, Lady Maulevrier watchful of her granddaughter all the
+time, though saying nothing. She saw that Lesbia was not happy, not as
+she had been in the time before the coming of John Hammond. She had
+never been particularly gay or light-hearted, never gifted with the wild
+spirits and buoyancy which make girlhood so lovely a season to some
+natures, a time of dance and song and joyousness, a morning of life
+steeped in the beauty and gladness of the universe. She had never been
+gay as young lambs and foals and fawns and kittens and puppy dogs are
+gay, by reason of the well-spring of delight within them, needing no
+stimulus from the outside world. She had been just a little inclined to
+murmur at the dulness of her life at Fellside; yet she had borne herself
+with a placid sweetness which had been Lady Maulevrier's delight. But
+now there was a marked change in her manner. She was not the less
+submissive and dutiful in her bearing to her grandmother, whom she both
+loved and feared; but there were moments of fretfulness and impatience
+which she could not conceal. She was captious and sullen in her manner
+to Mary and the Fr&auml;ulein. She would not walk or drive with them, or
+share in any of their amusements. Sometimes of an evening that studious
+silence of the drawing-room was suddenly broken by Lesbia's weary sigh,
+breathed unawares as she bent over her work.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Maulevrier saw, too, that Lesbia's cheek was paler than of old, her
+eyes less bright. There was a heavy look that told of broken slumbers,
+there was a pinched look in that oval check. Good heavens! if her beauty
+were to pale and wane, before society had bowed down and worshipped it;
+if this fair flower were to fade untimely; if this prize rose in the
+garden of beauty were to wither and decay before it won the prize.</p>
+
+<p>Her ladyship was a woman of action, and no sooner did this fear shape
+itself in her mind than she took steps to prevent the evil her thoughts
+foreshadowed.</p>
+
+<p>Among those friends of her youth and allies of her house with whom she
+had always maintained an affectionate correspondence was Lady Kirkbank,
+the fashionable wife of a sporting baronet, owner of a castle in
+Scotland, a place in Yorkshire, a villa at Cannes, and a fine house in
+Arlington Street, with an income large enough for their enjoyment. When
+Lady Diana Angersthorpe shone forth in the West End world as the
+acknowledged belle of the season, the star of Georgina Lorimer was
+beginning to wane. She was the eldest daughter of Colonel Lorimer, a man
+of good old family, and a fine soldier, who had fought shoulder to
+shoulder with Gough and Lawrence, and who had contrived to make a figure
+in society with very small means. Georgina's sisters had all married
+well. It was a case of necessity, the Colonel told them; they must
+either marry or gravitate ultimately to the workhouse. So the Miss
+Lorimers made the best use of their youth and freshness, and 'no good
+offer refused' was the guiding rule of their young lives. Lucy married
+an East India merchant, and set up a fine house in Porchester Terrace.
+Maud married wealth personified in the person of a leading member of the
+Tallow Chandlers' Company, and had her town house and country house, and
+as fine a set of diamonds as a duchess.</p>
+
+<p>But Georgina, the eldest, trifled with her chances, and her
+twenty-seventh birthday beheld her pouring out her father's tea in a
+small furnished house in a street off Portland Place, which the Colonel
+had hired on his return from India, and which he declared himself unable
+to maintain another year.</p>
+
+<p>'Directly the season is over I shall give up housekeeping and take a
+lodging at Bath,' said Colonel Lorimer. 'If you don't like Bath all the
+year round you can stay with your sisters.'</p>
+
+<p>'That is the last thing I am likely to do,' answered Georgina; 'my
+sisters were barely endurable when they were single and poor. They are
+quite intolerable now they are married and rich. I would sooner live in
+the monkey-house at the Zoological than stay with either Lucy or Maud.'</p>
+
+<p>'That's rank envy,' retorted her father 'You can't forgive them for
+having done so much better than you.'</p>
+
+<p>'I can't forgive them for having married snobs. When I marry I shall
+marry a gentleman.'</p>
+
+<p>'When!' echoed the parent, with a sneering laugh. 'Hadn't you better say
+&quot;if&quot;?'</p>
+
+<p>At this period Georgina's waning good looks were in some measure
+counterbalanced by the cumulative effects of half a dozen seasons in
+good society, which had given style to her person, ease to her manners,
+and sharpness to her tongue. Nobody in society said sharper or more
+unpleasant things than Miss Lorimer, and by virtue of this gift she got
+invited about a great deal more than she might have done had she been
+distinguished for sweetness of speech and manner. Georgie Lorimer's
+presence at a dinner table gave just that pungent flavour which is like
+the faint suspicion of garlic in a fricassee or of tarragon in a salad.</p>
+
+<p>Now in this very season, when Colonel Lorimer was inclined to speak of
+his daughter, as Sainte Beuve wrote of Musset, as a young woman with a
+very brilliant past, a lucky turn of events gave Georgina a fresh start
+in life, which may be called a new departure. Lady Diana Angersthorpe,
+the belle of the season, took a fancy to her, was charmed with her sharp
+tongue and acute sense of the ridiculous. The two became fast friends,
+and were seen everywhere together. The best men all flocked round the
+beauty, and all talked to the beauty's companion: and before the season
+was over, Sir George Kirkbank, who had half made up his mind to
+propose to Lady Diana, found himself engaged to that uncommonly jolly
+girl, Lady Diana's friend. Georgina spent August and September with Lady
+Di, at the Marchioness of Carisbroke's delightful villa in the Isle of
+Wight, and Sir George kept his yacht at Cowes all the time, and was in
+constant attendance upon his fianc&eacute;e. It was George and Georgie
+everywhere. In October Colonel Lorimer had the profound pleasure of
+giving away his daughter, before the altar in St. George's, Hanover
+Square, and it may be said of him that nothing in his relations with
+that young lady became him better than his manner of parting with her.</p>
+
+<p>So the needy Colonel's daughter became Lady Kirkbank, and in the
+following spring Diana Angersthorpe was married at the same St. George's
+to the Earl of Maulevrier. The friends were divided by distance and by
+circumstance as the years rolled on; but friendship was steadily
+maintained; and a regular correspondence with Lady Kirkbank, whose pen
+was as sharp as her tongue, was one of the means by which Lady
+Maulevrier had kept herself thoroughly posted in all those small events,
+unrecorded by newspapers, which make up the secret history of society.</p>
+
+<p>It was of her old friend Georgie that her ladyship thought in her
+present anxiety. Lady Kirkbank had more than once suggested that Lady
+Maulevrier's granddaughters should vary the monotony of Fellside by a
+visit to her place near Doncaster, or her castle north of Aberdeen; but
+her ladyship had evaded these friendly suggestions, being very jealous
+of any strange influence upon Lesbia's life. Now, however, there had
+come a time when Lesbia must have a complete change of scenery and
+surroundings, lest she should pine and dwindle in sullen submission to
+fate, or else defy the world and elope with John Hammond.</p>
+
+<p>Now, therefore, Lady Maulevrier decided to accept Lady Kirkbank's
+hospitality. She told her friend the whole story with perfect frankness,
+and her letter was immediately answered by a telegram.</p>
+
+<p>'I start for Scotland to-morrow, will break my journey by staying a
+night at Fellside, and will take Lady Lesbia on to Kirkbank with me next
+day, if she can be ready to go.'</p>
+
+<p>'She shall be ready,' said Lady Maulevrier.</p>
+
+<p>She told Lesbia that she had accepted an invitation for her, and that
+she was to go to Kirkbank Castle the day after to-morrow. She was
+prepared for unwillingness, resistance even; but Lesbia received the
+news with evident pleasure.</p>
+
+<p>'I shall be very glad to go,' she said, 'this place is so dull. Of
+course I shall be sorry to leave you, grandmother, and I wish you would
+go with me; but any change will be a relief. I think if I had to stay
+here all the winter, counting the days and the hours, I should go out of
+my mind.'</p>
+
+<p>The tears came into her eyes, but she wiped them away hurriedly, ashamed
+of her emotion.</p>
+
+<p>'My dearest child, I am so sorry for you,' murmured Lady Maulevrier.
+'But believe me the day will come when you will be very glad that you
+conquered the first foolish inclination of your girlish heart.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, I daresay, when I am eighty,' Lesbia answered, impatiently. She
+had made up her mind to submit to the inevitable. She had loved John
+Hammond—had been as near breaking her heart for him as it was in her
+nature to break her heart for anybody; but she wanted to make a great
+marriage, to be renowned and admired. She had been reared and trained
+for that; and she was not going to belie her training.</p>
+
+<p>A visitor from the great London world was so rare an event that there
+was naturally a little excitement in the idea of Lady Kirkbank's
+arrival. The handsomest and most spacious of the spare bedrooms was
+prepared for the occasion. The housekeeper was told that the dinner must
+be perfect. There must be nothing old-fashioned or ponderous; there must
+be mind as well as matter in everything. Rarely did Lady Maulevrier look
+at a bill of fare; but on this particular morning she went carefully
+through the menu, and corrected it with her own hand.</p>
+
+<p>A pair of post-horses brought Lady Kirkbank and her maid from Windermere
+station, in time for afternoon tea, and the friends who had only met
+twice within the last forty years, embraced each other on the threshold
+of Lady Maulevrier's morning-room.</p>
+
+<p>'My dearest Di,' cried Lady Kirkbank, 'what a delight to see you again
+after such ages; and what a too lovely spot you have chosen for your
+retreat from the world, the flesh, and the devil. If I could be a
+recluse anywhere, it would be amongst just such delicious surroundings.'</p>
+
+<p>Without, twilight shades were gathering; within, there was only the
+light of a fire and a shaded lamp upon the tea table; there was just
+light enough for the two women to see each other's faces, and the change
+which time had wrought there.</p>
+
+<p>Never did womanhood in advanced years offer a more striking contrast
+than that presented by the woman of fashion and the recluse. Lady
+Maulevrier was almost as handsome in the winter of her days as she had
+been when life was in its spring. The tall, slim figure, erect as a
+dart, the delicately chiselled features and alabaster complexion, the
+soft silvery hair, the perfect hand, whiter and more transparent than
+the hand of girlhood, the stately movements and bearing, all combined to
+make Lady Maulevrier a queen among women. Her brocade gown of a deep
+shade of red, with a border of dark sable on cuffs and collar, suggested
+a portrait by Velasquez. She wore no ornaments except the fine old
+Brazilian diamonds which flashed and sparkled upon her slender fingers.</p>
+
+<p>If Lady Maulevrier looked like a picture in the Escurial, Lady Kirkbank
+resembled a caricature in <i>La Vie Parisienne</i>. Everything she wore was
+in the very latest fashion of the Parisian <i>demi-monde</i>, that
+exaggerated elegance of a fashion plate which only the most exquisite of
+women could redeem from vulgarity. Plush, brocade, peacock's feathers,
+golden bangles, mousquetaire gloves, a bonnet of purple plumage set off
+by ornaments of filagree gold, an infantine little muff of lace and wild
+flowers, buttercups and daisies; and hair, eyebrows and complexion as
+artificial as the flowers on the muff.</p>
+
+<p>All that art could do to obliterate the traces of age had been done for
+Georgina Kirkbank. But seventy years are not to be obliterated easily,
+and the crow's feet showed through the bloom de Ninon, and the eyes
+under the painted arches were glassy and haggard, the carnation lips had
+a withered look. Age was made all the more palpable by the artifice
+which would have disguised it.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Maulevrier suffered an absolute shock at beholding the friend of
+her youth. She had not accustomed herself to the idea that women in
+society could raddle their cheeks, stain their lips, and play tricks
+before high heaven with their eyebrows and eyelashes. In her own youth
+painted faces had been the ghastly privilege of a class of womankind of
+which the women of society were supposed to know nothing. Persons who
+showed their ankles and rouged their cheeks were to be seen of an
+afternoon in Bond Street; but Lady Diana Angersthorpe had been taught to
+pass them by as if she saw them not, to behold without seeing these
+creatures outside the pale. And now she saw her own dearest friend, a
+person distinctly within the pale, plastered with bismuth and stained
+with carmine, and wearing hair of a colour so obviously false and
+inharmonious, that child-like faith could hardly accept it as reality.
+Forty years ago Lady Kirkbank's long ringlets had been darkest glossiest
+brown, to-day she wore a tousled fringe of bright yellow, piquantly
+contrasting with Vandyke brown eyebrows.</p>
+
+<p>It took Lady Maulevrier some moments to get over the shock. She drew a
+chair to the fire and established her friend in it, and then, with a
+little gasp, she said:</p>
+
+<p>'I am charmed to see you again, Georgie!'</p>
+
+<p>'You darling, I was sure you would be glad. But you must find me awfully
+changed—awfully.'</p>
+
+<p>For worlds Lady Maulevrier could not have denied this truth. Happily
+Lady Kirkbank did not wait for an answer.</p>
+
+<p>'Society is so wearing, and George and I never seem to get an interval
+of quiet. Kirkbank is to be full of men next week. Your granddaughter
+will have a good time.'</p>
+
+<p>'There will be a few women, of course?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, yes, there's no avoiding that; only one doesn't reckon them. Sir
+George only counts his guns. We expect a splendid season. I shall send
+you some birds of my own shooting.'</p>
+
+<p>'You shoot!' exclaimed Lady Maulevrier, amazed.</p>
+
+<p>'Shoot! I should think I do. What else is there to amuse one in
+Scotland, after the salmon fishing is over? I have never missed a season
+for the last thirty years, unless we have been abroad.'</p>
+
+<p>'Please, don't innoculate Lesbia with your love of sport.'</p>
+
+<p>'What! you wouldn't like her to shoot? Well, perhaps you are right. It
+is hardly the thing for a pretty girl with her fortune to make. It
+spoils the delicacy of the skin. But I'm afraid she'll find Kirkbank
+dull if she doesn't go out with the guns. She can meet us with the rest
+of the women at luncheon. We have some capital picnic luncheons on the
+moor, I can assure you.'</p>
+
+<p>'I know she will enjoy herself with you. She has been accustomed to a
+very quiet life here.'</p>
+
+<p>'It is a lovely spot; but I own I cannot understand how you can have
+lived here exclusively during all these years—you who used to be all
+life and fire, loving change, action, political and diplomatic society,
+to dance upon the crest of the wave, as it were. Your whole nature must
+have suffered some curious change.'</p>
+
+<p>Their close intimacy of the past warranted freedom of speech in the
+present.</p>
+
+<p>'My nature did undergo a change, and a severe one,' answered Lady
+Maulevrier, gloomily.</p>
+
+<p>'It was that horrid—and I daresay unfortunate scandal about his
+lordship; and then the sad shock of his death,' murmured Lady Kirkbank,
+sympathetically. 'Most women, with your youth and beauty, would have
+forgotten the scandal and the husband in a twelvemonth, and would have
+made a second marriage more brilliant than the first. But no Indian
+widow who ever performed suttee was more worthy of praise than you, or
+even that person of Ephesus, whose story I have heard somewhere. Indeed,
+I have always spoken of your life as a long suttee. But you mean to
+re-appear in society next season, I hope, when you present your
+granddaughter?'</p>
+
+<p>'I shall certainly go up to London to present her, and possibly I may
+spend the season in town; but I shall feel like Rip Van Winkle.'</p>
+
+<p>'No, no, you won't, my dear Di. You have kept yourself <i>au courant</i>, I
+know. Even my silly gossiping letters may have been of <i>some</i> use.'</p>
+
+<p>'They have been most valuable. Let me give you another cup of tea,' said
+Lady Maulevrier, who had been officiating at her own exquisite
+tea-table, an arrangement of inlaid woods, antique silver, and modern
+china, which her friend pronounced a perfect poem.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, the whole room was poetic, Lady Kirkbank declared, and there are
+many highly praised scenes which less deserve the epithet. The dark red
+walls and cedar dado, the stamped velvet curtains, of an indescribable
+shade between silver-grey and olive, the Sheraton furniture, the
+parqueterie floor and Persian prayer-rugs, the deep yet brilliant hues
+of crackle porcelain and Chinese cloisonn&eacute; enamel, the artistic
+fireplace, with dog-stove, low brass fender, and ingle-nook recessed
+under the high mantelpiece, all combined to form a luxurious and
+harmonious whole.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Kirkbank admired the <i>tout ensemble</i> in the fitful light of the
+fire, the dim grey of deepening twilight.</p>
+
+<p>'There never was a more delicious cell!' she exclaimed, 'but still I
+should feel it a prison, if I had to spend six weeks in the year in it.
+I never stay more than six weeks anywhere out of London; and I always
+find six weeks more than enough. The first fortnight is rapture, the
+third and fourth weeks are calm content, the fifth is weariness, the
+sixth a fever to be gone. I once tried a seventh week at Pontresina, and
+I hated the place so intensely that I dared not go back there for the
+next three years. But now tell me. Diana, have you really performed
+suttee, have you buried yourself alive in this sweet spot deliberately,
+or has the love of retirement grown upon you, and have you become a kind
+of lotus-eater?'</p>
+
+<p>'I believe I have become a kind of lotus-eater. My retirement here has
+been no sentimental sacrifice to Lord Maulevrier's memory.'</p>
+
+<p>'I am glad to hear that; for I really think the worst possible use a
+woman can make of her life is in wasting it on lamentation for a dead
+and gone husband. Life is odiously short at the best, and it is mere
+imbecility to fritter away any of our scanty portion upon the dead, who
+can never be any the better for our tears.'</p>
+
+<p>'My motive in living at Fellside was not reverence for the dead. And now
+let us talk of the gay world, of which you know all the secrets. Have
+you heard anything more about Lord Hartfield?'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, there is a subject in which you have reason to be interested. I
+have not forgotten the romance of your youth—that first season in which
+Ronald Hollister used to haunt every place at which you appeared. Do you
+remember that wet afternoon at the Chiswick flower-show, when you and he
+and I took shelter in the orange house, and you two made love to each
+other most audaciously in an atmosphere of orange-blossoms that almost
+stifled me? Yes, those were glorious days!'</p>
+
+<p>'A short summer of gladness, a brief dream,' sighed Lady Maulevrier. 'Is
+young Lord Hartfield like his father?'</p>
+
+<p>'No, he takes after the Ilmingtons; but still there is a look of your
+old sweetheart—yes, I think there is an expression. I have not seen him
+for nearly a year. He is still abroad, roaming about somewhere in search
+of adventures. These young men who belong to the Geographical and the
+Alpine Club are hardly ever at home.'</p>
+
+<p>'But though they may be sometimes lost to society, they are all the
+more worthy of society's esteem when they do appear,' said Lady
+Maulevrier. 'I think there must be an ennobling influence in Alpine
+travel, or in the vast solitudes of the Dark Continent. A man finds
+himself face to face with unsophisticated nature, and with the grandest
+forces of the universe. Professor Tyndall writes delightfully of his
+Alpine experiences; his mind seems to have ripened in the solitude and
+untainted air of the Alps. And I believe Lord Hartfield is a young man
+of very high character and of considerable cultivation, is he not?'</p>
+
+<p>'He is a splendid young fellow. I never heard a word to his
+disparagement, even from those people who pretend to know something bad
+about everybody. What a husband he would make for one of your girls!'</p>
+
+<p>'Admirable! But those perfect arrangements, which seem predestined by
+heaven itself, are so rarely realised on earth,' answered the dowager,
+lightly.</p>
+
+<p>She was not going to show her cards, even to an old friend.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, it would be very sweet if they were to meet next season and fall
+in love with each other,' said Lady Kirkbank. 'He is enormously rich, and
+I daresay your girls will not be portionless.'</p>
+
+<p>'Lesbia may take a modest place among heiresses,' answered Lady
+Maulevrier. 'I have lived so quietly during the last forty years that I
+could hardly help saving money.'</p>
+
+<p>'How nice!' sighed Georgie. 'I never saved sixpence in my life, and am
+always in debt.'</p>
+
+<p>'The little fortune I have saved is much too small for division. Lesbia
+will therefore have all I can leave her. Mary has the usual provision as
+a daughter of the Maulevrier house.'</p>
+
+<p>'And I suppose Lesbia has that provision also?'</p>
+
+<p>'Of course.'</p>
+
+<p>'Lucky Lesbia. I only wish Hartfield were coming to us for the shooting.
+I would engage he should fall in love with her. Kirkbank is a splendid
+place for match-making. But the fact is I am not very intimate with him.
+He is almost always travelling, and when he is at home he is not in our
+set. And now, my dear Diana, tell me more about yourself, and your own
+life in this delicious place.'</p>
+
+<p>'There is so little to tell. The books I have read, the theories of
+literature and art and science which I have adopted and dismissed,
+learnt and forgotten—those are the history of my life. The ideas of the
+outside world reach me here only in books and newspapers; but you who
+have been living in the world must have so much to say. Let me be the
+listener.'</p>
+
+<p>Lady Kirkbank desired nothing better. She rattled on for three-quarters
+of an hour about her doings in the great world, her social triumphs, the
+wonderful things she had done for Sir George, who seemed to be as a
+puppet in her hands, the princes and princelings she had entertained,
+the songs she had composed, the comedy she had written, for private
+representation only, albeit the Haymarket manager was dying to produce
+it, the scathing witticisms with which she had withered her social
+enemies. She would have gone on much longer, but for the gong, which
+reminded her that it was time to dress for dinner.</p>
+
+<p>Half-an-hour later Lady Kirkbank was in the drawing-room, where Mary had
+retired to the most shadowy corner, anxious to escape the gaze of the
+fashionable visitor.</p>
+
+<p>But Lady Kirkbank was not inclined to take much notice of Mary. Lesbia's
+brilliant beauty, the exquisite Greek head, the faultless complexion,
+the deep, violet eyes, caught Georgina Kirkbank's eye the moment she had
+entered the room, and she saw that this girl and no other must be the
+beauty, the beloved and chosen grandchild.</p>
+
+<p>'How do you do, my dear?' she said, taking Lesbia's hand, and then, as
+if with a gush of warm feeling, suddenly drawing the girl towards her
+and kissing her on both cheeks. 'I am going to be desperately fond of
+you, and I hope you will soon contrive to like me—just a little.'</p>
+
+<p>'I feel sure that I shall like you very much,' Lesbia answered sweetly.
+'I am prepared to love you as grandmother's old friend.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, my dear, to think that I should ever be the old friend of anybody's
+grandmother!' sighed Lady Kirkbank, with unaffected regret. 'When I was
+your age I used to think all old people odious. It never occurred to me
+that I should live to be one of them.'</p>
+
+<p>'Then you had no dear grandmother whom you loved,' said Lesbia, 'or you
+would have liked old people for her sake.'</p>
+
+<p>'No, my love, I had no grandparents. I had a father, and he was
+all-sufficient—anything beyond him in the ancestral line would have
+been a burden laid upon me greater than I could bear, as the poet says.'</p>
+
+<p>Dinner was announced, and Mary came shyly out of her corner, blushing
+deeply.</p>
+
+<p>'And this is Lady Mary, I suppose?' said Lady Kirkbank, in an off-hand
+way, 'How do you do, my dear? I am going to steal your sister.'</p>
+
+<p>'I am very glad,' faltered Mary. 'I mean I am glad that Lesbia should
+enjoy herself.'</p>
+
+<p>'And some fine day, when Lesbia is married and a great lady, I shall ask
+you to come to Scotland,' said Lady Kirkbank, condescendingly, and then
+she murmured in her friend's ear, as they went to the dining-room,
+'Quite an English girl. Very fresh and frank and nice,' which was great
+praise for such a second-rate young person as Lady Mary.</p>
+
+<p>'What do you think of Lesbia?' asked Lady Maulevrier, in the same
+undertone.</p>
+
+<p>'She is simply adorable. Your letters prepared me to expect beauty, but
+not such beauty. My dear, I thought the progress of the human race was
+all in a downward line since our time; but your granddaughter is as
+handsome as you were in your first season, and that is going very far.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XIV"></a><h2>CHAPTER XIV.</h2>
+
+<h3>'NOT YET.'</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>Lady Kirkbank carried off Lesbia early next day, the girl radiant at the
+idea of seeing life under new conditions. She had a few minutes' serious
+talk with her grandmother before she went.</p>
+
+<p>'Lesbia, you are going into the world,' said Lady Maulevrier; 'yes, even
+a country house is the world in little. You will have many admirers
+instead of one; but I think, I believe, that you will be true to me and
+to yourself.'</p>
+
+<p>'You need not fear, grandmother. I have been an idiot; but—but it was
+only a passing folly, and I shall never be so weak again.'</p>
+
+<p>Lesbia's scornful lips and kindling eyes gave intensity to her speech.
+It was evident that she despised herself for that one touch of womanly
+softness which had made her as ready to fall in love with her first
+wooer as any peasant girl in Grasmere Vale.</p>
+
+<p>'I am delighted to hear you speak thus, dearest,' said Lady Maulevrier.
+'And if Mr. Hamilton—Hammond, I mean—should have the audacity to
+follow you to Kirkbank, and to intrude himself upon you there—perhaps
+to persecute you with clandestine addresses----'</p>
+
+<p>'I do not believe he would do anything clandestine,' said Lesbia,
+drawing herself up. 'He is quite above that.'</p>
+
+<p>'My dear child, we know absolutely nothing about him. He has his way to
+make in the world unaided by family or connections. He is
+clever—daring. Such a man cannot help being an adventurer; and an
+adventurer is capable of anything. I warn you to beware of him.'</p>
+
+<p>'I don't suppose I shall ever see his face again,' retorted Lesbia,
+irritably.</p>
+
+<p>She had made up her mind that her life was not to be spoiled, her
+brilliant future sacrificed, for the sake of John Hammond; but the wound
+which she had suffered in renouncing him was still fresh, her feelings
+were still sore. Any contemptuous mention of him stung her to the quick.</p>
+
+<p>'I hope not. And you will beware of other adventurers, Lesbia, men of a
+worse stamp than Mr. Hammond, more experienced in ruse and iniquity, men
+steeped to the lips in worldly knowledge, men who look upon women as
+mere counters in the game of life. The world thinks that I am rich, and
+you will no doubt take rank as an heiress. You will therefore be a mark
+for every spendthrift, noble or otherwise, who wants to restore his
+broken fortunes by a wealthy marriage. And now, my dearest, good-bye.
+Half my heart goes with you. Nothing could induce me to part with you,
+even for a few weeks, except the conviction that it is for your good.'</p>
+
+<p>'But we shall not be parted next year, I hope, grandmother,' said
+Lesbia, affectionately. 'You said something about presenting me, and
+then leaving me in Lady Kirkbank's care for the season. I should not
+like that at all. I want you to go everywhere with me, to teach me all
+the mysteries of the great world. You have always promised me that it
+should be so.'</p>
+
+<p>'And I have always intended that it should be so. I hope that it will be
+so,' answered her grandmother, with a sigh; 'but I am an old woman,
+Lesbia, and I am rooted to this place.'</p>
+
+<p>'But why should you be rooted here? What charm can keep you here, when
+you are so fitted to shine in society? You are old in nothing but years,
+and not even old in years in comparison with women whom we hear of,
+going everywhere and mixing in every fashionable amusement. You are full
+of fire and energy, and as active as a girl. Why should you not enjoy a
+London season, grandmother?' pleaded Lesbia, nestling her head lovingly
+against Lady Maulevrier's shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>'I should enjoy it, dearest, with you. It would be a renewal of my youth
+to see you shine and conquer. I should be as proud as if the glory were
+all my own. Yes, dear, I hope that I shall be a spectator of your
+triumphs. But do not let us plan the future. Life is so full of changes.
+Remember what Horace says----'</p>
+
+<p>'Horace is a bore,' said Lesbia. 'I hate a poet who is always harping
+upon change and death.'</p>
+
+<p>The carriage, which was to take the travellers to Windermere Station,
+was announced at this moment, and Lesbia and her grandmother gave each
+other the farewell embrace.</p>
+
+<p>'You like Lady Kirkbank, I hope?' said Lady Maulevrier, as they went
+towards the hall, where that lady was waiting for them, with Lady Mary
+and Fr&auml;ulein M&uuml;ller in attendance upon her.</p>
+
+<p>'She seems very kind, but I should like her better if she did not
+paint—or if she painted better.'</p>
+
+<p>'My dear child I'm afraid it is the fashion of the day, just as it was
+in Pope's time, and we ought to think nothing about it.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, I suppose I shall get hardened in time.'</p>
+
+<p>'My dearest Lesbia,' shrieked Lady Kirkbank from below, 'remember we
+have to catch a train.'</p>
+
+<p>Lesbia hurried downstairs, followed by Lady Maulevrier, who had to bid
+her friend adieu. The luggage had been sent on in a cart, Lesbia's
+trunks and dress baskets forming no small item. She was so well
+furnished with pretty gowns of all kinds that there had been no
+difficulty in getting her ready for this sudden visit. Her maid was on
+the box beside the coachman. Lady Kirkbank's attendant, a Frenchwoman of
+five-and-thirty, who looked as if she had graduated at Mabille, was to
+occupy the back seat of the landau.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Mary looked after her sister longingly, as the carriage drove down
+the hill. She was going into a new world, to see all kinds of
+people—clever people—distinguished people—musical, artistic,
+political people—hunting and shooting people—while Mary was to stay at
+home all the winter among the old familiar faces. Dearly as she loved
+these hills and vales her heart sank a little at the thought of those
+long lonely months, days and evenings that would be all alike, and which
+must be spent without sympathetic companionship. And there would be
+dreary days on which the weather would keep her a prisoner in her
+luxurious gaol, when the mountains, and the rugged paths beside the
+mountain streams, would be inaccessible, when she would be restricted to
+Fr&auml;ulein's phlegmatic society, that lady being stout and lazy, fond of
+her meals, and given to afternoon slumbers. Lesbia and Mary were not by
+any means sympathetic; yet, after all, blood is thicker than water; and
+Lesbia was intelligent, and could talk of the things Mary loved, which
+was better than total dumbness, even if she generally took an
+antagonistic view of them.</p>
+
+<p>'I shall miss her dreadfully,' thought Mary, as she strolled listlessly
+in the gardens, where the leaves where falling and the flowers fading.</p>
+
+<p>'I wonder if she will see Mr. Hammond at Lady Kirkbank's?' mused Mary.
+'If he were anything like a lover he would find out all about her visit,
+and seize the opportunity of her being away from grandmother. But then
+if he had been much of a lover he would have followed her to St. Bees.'</p>
+
+<p>Lady Maulevrier sorely missed her favourite grandchild. In a life spent
+in such profound seclusion, so remote from the busy interests of the
+world, this beloved companionship had become a necessity to her. She had
+concentrated her affections upon Lesbia, and the girl's absence made a
+fearful blank. But her ladyship's dignity was not compromised by any
+outward signs of trouble or loss.</p>
+
+<p>She spent her mornings in her own room, reading and writing and musing
+at her leisure; she drove or walked every fine afternoon, sometimes
+alone, sometimes attended by Mary, who hated these stately drives and
+walks. She dined <i>tête-à-tête</i> with Mary, except on those rare occasions
+when there were visitors—the Vicar and his wife, or some wandering star
+from other  worlds. Mary lived in profound awe of her grandmother, but
+was of far too frank a nature to be able to adapt her speech or her
+manners to her ladyship's idea of feminine perfection. She was silent
+and shy under those falcon eyes; but she was still the same Mary, the
+girl to whom pretence or simulation of any kind was impossible.</p>
+
+<p>Letters came almost every day from Kirkbank Castle, letters from Lesbia
+describing the bright gay life she was living at that hospitable abode,
+the excursions, the rides, the picnic luncheons after the morning's
+sport, the dinner parties, the dances.</p>
+
+<p>'It is the most delightful house you can imagine,' wrote Lesbia; 'and
+Lady Kirkbank is an admirable hostess. I have quite forgiven her for
+wearing false eyebrows; for after all, you know, one must <i>have</i>
+eyebrows; they are a necessity; but why does she not have the two arches
+alike? They are <i>never</i> a pair, and I really think that French maid of
+hers does it on purpose.</p>
+
+<p>'By-the-bye, Lady Kirkbank is going to write to you to beseech you to
+let me go to Cannes and Monte Carlo with her. Sir George insists upon
+it. He says they both like young society, and will be horribly vexed if
+I refuse to go with them. And Lady Kirkbank thinks my chest is just a
+little weak—I almost broke down the other night in that lovely little
+song of Jensen's—and that a winter in the south is just what I want.
+But, of course, dear grandmother, I won't ask you to let me be away so
+long if you think you will miss me.'</p>
+
+<p>'If I think I shall miss her!' repeated Lady Maulevrier. 'Has the girl
+no heart, that she can ask such a question? But can I wonder at that? Of
+what account was I or my love to her father, although I sacrificed
+myself for his good name? Can I expect that she should be of a different
+clay?'</p>
+
+<p>And then, meditating upon the events of the summer that was gone, Lady
+Maulevrier thought—</p>
+
+<p>She renounced her first lover at my bidding; she renounces her love for
+me at the bidding of the world. Or was it not rather self-interest, the
+fear of making a bad marriage, which influenced her in her renunciation
+of Mr. Hammond. It was not obedience to me, it was not love for me which
+made her give him up. It was the selfishness engrained in her race.
+Well, I have heaped my love upon her, because she is fair and sweet, and
+reminds me of my own youth. I must let her go, and try to be happy in
+the knowledge that she is enjoying her life far away from me.'</p>
+
+<p>Lady Maulevrier wrote her consent to the extension of Lesbia's visit,
+and by return of post came a letter from Lesbia which seemed brimming
+over with love, and which comforted the grandmother's wounded heart.</p>
+
+<p>'Lady Kirkbank and I are both agreed, dearest, that you must join us at
+Cannes,' wrote Lesbia. 'At your age it is very wrong of you to spend a
+winter in our horrible climate. You can travel with Steadman and your
+maid. Lady Kirkbank will secure you a charming suite of rooms at the
+hotel, or she would like it still better if you would stay at her own
+villa. Do consent to this plan, dear grandmother, and then we shall not
+be parted for a long winter. Of course Mary would be quite happy at home
+running wild.'</p>
+
+<p>Lady Maulevrier sighed as she read this letter, sighed again, and
+heavily, as she put it back into the envelope. Alas, how many and many a
+year had gone, long, monotonous, colourless years, since she had seen
+that bright southern world which she was now urged to revisit. In fancy
+she saw it again to-day, the tideless sea of deepest sapphire blue, the
+little wavelets breaking on a yellow beach, the white triangular sails,
+the woods full of asphodel and great purple and white lilies, the
+atmosphere steeped in warmth and light and perfume, the glare of white
+houses in the sun, the red and yellow blinds, the pots of green and
+orange and crimson clay, with oleanders abloom, the wonderful glow of
+colour everywhere and upon all things. And then as the eyes of the mind
+recalled these vivid images her bodily eyes looked out upon the
+rain-blotted scene, the mountains rising in a dark and dismal circle
+round that sombre pool below, walling her in from the outer world.</p>
+
+<p>'I am at the bottom of a grave,' she said to herself. 'I am in a living
+tomb, from which there is no escape. Forty years! Forty years of
+patience and hope, for what? For dreams which may never be realised; for
+descendants who may never give me the price of my labours. Yes, I should
+like to go to my dear one. I should like to revisit the South of France,
+to go on to Italy. I should feel young again amidst that eternal,
+unchangeable loveliness. I should forget all I have suffered. But it
+cannot be. Not yet, not yet!'</p>
+
+<p>Presently with a smile of concentrated bitterness she repeated the words
+'Not yet!'</p>
+
+<p>'Surely at my age it must be folly to dream of the future; and yet I
+feel as if there were half a century of life in me, as if I had lost
+nothing in either mental or bodily vigour since I came here forty years
+ago.'</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>'I had no notion that clothes were so dear,' said Lesbia, when she saw
+how little she had got for her money.</p>
+
+<p>'My dear, you have two gowns which are absolutely <i>chien</i>,' replied Lady
+Kirkbank, 'and you have a corset which gives you a figure, which you
+must forgive me for saying you never had before.'</p>
+
+<p>Lady Kirkbank had to explain that <i>chien</i> as applied to a gown or bonnet
+was the same thing as <i>chic</i>, only a little more so.</p>
+
+<p>'I hope my gowns will always be <i>chien</i>,' said Lesbia meekly.</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>tête-à-tête</i> at Fellside, with the feathery
+snow flakes falling outside, and the world whitening all around them.</p>
+
+<p>Next day the world was all white, and Mary's beloved hills were
+inaccessible.</p>
+
+<p>Who could tell how long they might be covered; the winding tracks
+hidden; the narrow forces looking like black water or molten iron
+against that glittering whiteness? Mary could only walk along the road
+by Loughrigg to the bench called 'Rest and be thankful,' from which she
+looked with longing eyes across towards the Langdale Pikes, and to the
+sharp cone-shaped peak, known as Coniston Old Man, just visible above
+the nearer hills. Fr&auml;ulein M&uuml;ller suggested that it was in just such
+weather as this that a well brought up young lady, a young lady with
+<i>Vernunft</i> and <i>Anstand</i>, should devote herself to the improvement of
+her mind.</p>
+
+<p>'Let us read German this <i>abscheulich</i> afternoon,' said the Fr&auml;ulein.
+'Suppose we go on with the &quot;Sorrows of Werther.&quot;'</p>
+
+<p>'Werther was a fool,' cried Mary; 'any book but that.'</p>
+
+<p>'Will you choose your own book?'</p>
+
+<p>'Let me read Heine.'</p>
+
+<p>Fr&auml;ulein looked doubtful. There were things in Heine—an all-pervading
+tone—which rendered him hardly an appropriate poet for 'the young
+person.' But Fr&auml;ulein compromised the matter by letting Mary read Atta
+Troll, the exact bearing of which neither of them understood.</p>
+
+<p>'How beautifully Mr. Hammond read Heine that morning!' said Mary,
+breaking off suddenly from a perfectly automatic reading.</p>
+
+<p>'You did not hear him, did you? You were not there,' said the Fr&auml;ulein.</p>
+
+<p>'I was not <i>there</i>, but I heard him. I—I was sitting on the bank among
+the pine trees.'</p>
+
+<p>'Why did you not come and sit with us? It would have been more ladylike
+than to hide yourself behind the trees.'</p>
+
+<p>Mary blushed crimson.</p>
+
+<p>'I had been in the kennels with Maulevrier; I was not fit to be seen,'
+she said.</p>
+
+<p>'Hardly a ladylike admission,' replied the Fr&auml;ulein, who felt that with
+Lady Mary her chief duty was to reprove.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XV"></a><h2>CHAPTER XV.</h2>
+
+<h3>'OF ALL MEN ELSE I HAVE AVOIDED THEE.'</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>It was afternoon. The white hills yonder and all the length of the
+valley were touched here and there with gleams of wintry sunlight, and
+Lady Maulevrier was taking her solitary walk on the terrace in front of
+her house, a stately figure wrapped in a furred mantle, tall, erect,
+moving with measured pace up and down the smooth gravel path. Now and
+then at the end of the walk the dowager stopped for a minute or so, and
+stood as if in deep thought, with her eyes dreamily contemplating the
+landscape. An intense melancholy shadowed her face, as she thus gazed
+with brooding eyes on the naked monotony of those wintry hills. So had
+she looked in many and many a winter, and it seemed to her that her life
+was of a piece with those bleak hills, where in the dismal winter time
+nothing living trod. She stood gazing at the sinking sun, a fiery ball
+shining at the end of a long gallery of crag and rock, like a lamp at
+the end of a corridor; and as she gazed the red round orb dropped
+suddenly behind the edge of a crag, as if she had been an enchantress
+and had dismissed it with a wave of her wand.</p>
+
+<p>'O Lord, how long, how long?' she said. 'How many times have I seen that
+sun go down from this spot, in winter and summer, in spring and autumn!
+And now that the one being I loved and cared for is far away, I feel all
+the weariness and emptiness of my life.'</p>
+
+<p>As she turned to resume her walk she heard the muffled sound of wheels
+in the road below, that road which was completely hidden by foliage in
+summer, but which was now visible here and there between the leafless
+trees. A carriage with a pair of horses was coming along the road from
+Ambleside.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Maulevrier stood and watched until the carriage drew up at the
+lodge gate, and then, when the gate had been opened, slowly ascended the
+winding drive to the house.</p>
+
+<p>She expected no visitor; indeed, there was no one likely to come to her
+from the direction of Ambleside. Her heart began to beat heavily, with
+the apprehension of coming evil. What kind of evil she knew not. Bad
+news about her granddaughter, perhaps, or about Maulevrier. And yet that
+could hardly be. Evil tidings of that kind would have reached her by
+telegram.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps it was Maulevrier himself. His movements were generally erratic.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Maulevrier hurried back to the house. She went through the
+conservatory, where the warm whiteness of azalia, and spirea, and arum
+lilies contrasted curiously with the cold white snow out of doors, to
+the hall, where a stranger was standing talking to the butler.</p>
+
+<p>He was a man of foreign appearance, wearing a cloak lined with sables,
+and a sable cap, which he removed as Lady Maulevrier approached. He was
+thin and small, with a clear olive complexion, olive inclining to pale
+bronze, sleek raven hair, and black almond-shaped eyes. At the first
+glance Lady Maulevrier knew that he was an Oriental. Her heart sank
+within her, and seemed to grow chill as death at sight of him. Anything
+associated with India was horrible to her.</p>
+
+<p>The stranger came forward to meet her, bowing deferentially. He had
+those lithe, gliding movements which she remembered of old, when she had
+seen princes and dignitaries of the East creeping shoeless to her
+husband's feet.</p>
+
+<p>'Will your ladyship do me the honour to grant me an interview?' he said
+in very good English. 'I have travelled from London expressly for that
+privilege.'</p>
+
+<p>'Then I fear you have wasted your time, sir, whatever your mission may
+be,' the dowager answered, haughtily. 'However, I am willing to hear
+anything you may have to say, if you will be good enough to come this
+way.'</p>
+
+<p>She moved towards the library, the butler preceding her to open the
+door, and the stranger followed her into the spacious room, where coals
+and logs were heaped high upon the wide dog stove, deeply recessed
+beneath the old English mantelpiece.</p>
+
+<p>It was one of the handsomest rooms of the house, furnished with oak
+bookcases about seven feet high, above which vases of Oriental ware and
+varied colouring stood boldly out against the dark oak wall. Richly
+bound books in infinite variety testified to the wealth and taste of the
+owner; while one side of the room was absorbed by a wide Gothic window,
+beyond which appeared the panorama of lake and mountain, beautiful in
+every season. A tawny velvet curtain divided this room from the
+drawing-room; but there was also a strong oak door behind the curtain,
+which was generally closed in cold weather.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Maulevrier went over to this door, and took the precaution to draw
+the bolt, before she seated herself in her arm-chair by the hearth. She
+had her own particular chair in all the rooms she occupied—a chair
+which was sacred as a throne.</p>
+
+<p>She drew off her sealskin gloves, and motioned with a slender white hand
+to the stranger to be seated.</p>
+
+<p>'To whom have I the honour of speaking?' she asked, looking; him through
+and through with an unflinching gaze, as she would have looked at Death
+himself, had the grim skeleton figure come to beckon her.</p>
+
+<p>He handed her a visiting card on which was engraved—</p>
+
+<p>'Louis Asoph, Rajah of Bisnagar.'</p>
+
+<p>'If my memory does not deceive me as to the history of modern India, the
+territory from which you take your title has been absorbed into the
+English dominion?' said Lady Maulevrier.</p>
+
+<p>'It was trafficked away forty-three years ago, stolen, filched from my
+father! but so long as I have power to think and to act I will maintain
+my claim to that land; yes, if only by the empty mockery of a name on a
+visiting card. It is a duty I owe to myself as a man, which I owe still
+more to my murdered father.'</p>
+
+<p>'Have you come all the way from London, and in such weather, only to
+tell me this story?'</p>
+
+<p>She had twisted his card between her fingers as she listened to him, and
+now, with an action at once careless and contemptuous, she flung it upon
+the burning logs. Slight as the action was it was eloquent of scorn for
+the man.</p>
+
+<p>'No, Lady Maulevrier, my mention of this story, with which you are no
+doubt perfectly familiar, is only a preliminary. I have come to claim my
+own, and to appeal to you as a woman of honour to do me justice. Nay, I
+will say as a woman of common honesty; since there is no nice point of
+honour in question, only the plain laws of mine and thine, which I
+believe are the same among all nations and creeds. I come to you, Lady
+Maulevrier, to ask you to restore to me the wealth which your husband
+stole from my father.'</p>
+
+<p>'You come to my house, to me, an old woman, helpless, defenceless, in
+the absence of my grandson, the present Earl, to insult me, and insult
+the dead,' said Lady Maulevrier, white as statuary marble, and as cold
+and calm. 'You come to rake up old lies, and to fling them in the face
+of a solitary woman, old enough to be your mother. Do you think that is
+a noble thing to do? Even in your barbarous Eastern code of morals and
+manners is <i>that</i> the act of a gentleman?'</p>
+
+<p>'We are no barbarians in the East, Lady Maulevrier. I come from the
+cradle of civilisation, the original fount of learning. We were
+scholars and gentleman, priests and soldiers, two thousand years before
+your British ancestors ran wild in their woods, and sacrificed to their
+unknown gods or rocky altars reeking with human blood! I know the errand
+upon which I have come is not a pleasant one, either for you or for me;
+but I come to you strong in the right of a son to claim the heritage
+which was stolen from him by an infamous mother and her more infamous
+paramour----'</p>
+
+<p>'I will not hear another word!' cried Lady Maulevrier, starting to her
+feet, livid with passion. 'Do not dare to pronounce that name in my
+hearing—the name of that abominable woman who brought disgrace and
+dishonour upon my husband and his race.'</p>
+
+<p>'And who brought your husband the wealth of my murdered father,'
+answered the Indian, defiantly. 'Do not ignore that fact, Lady
+Maulevrier. What has become of that fortune—two hundred thousand pounds
+in money and jewels. It was known to have passed into Lord Maulevrier's
+possession after my father was put away by his paid instruments.</p>
+
+<p>'How dare you bring that vile charge against the dead?'</p>
+
+<p>'There are men living in India who know the truth of that charge: men
+who were at Bisnagar when my father, sick and heartbroken, was shut up
+in his deserted harem, hemmed in by spies and traitors, men with murder
+in their faces. There are those who know tint he was strangled by one of
+those wretches, that a grave was dug for him under the marble floor of
+his zenana, a grave in which his bones were found less than a year ago,
+in my presence, and fitly entombed at my bidding. He was said to have
+disappeared of his own free will—to have left his palace under cover of
+night, and sought refuge from possible treachery in another province;
+but there were those, and not a few, who knew the real history of his
+disappearance—who knew, and at the time were ready to testify in any
+court of justice, that he had been got rid of by the Ranee's agents, and
+at Lord Maulevrier's instigation, and that his possessions in money and
+jewels had been conveyed in the palankins that carried the Ranee and her
+women to his lordship's summer retreat near Madras. The Ranee died at
+that retreat six months after her husband's murder, not without
+suspicion of poison, and the wealth which she carried with her when she
+left Bisnagar passed into his lordship's possession. Had your husband
+lived, Lady Maulevrier, this story must have been brought to light.
+There were too many people in Madras interested in sifting the facts.
+There must have been a public inquiry. It was a happy thing for you and
+your race that Lord Maulevrier died before that inquiry had been
+instituted, and that many animosities died with him. Lucky too for you
+that I was a helpless infant at the time, and that the Mahratta
+adventurer to whom my father's territory had been transferred in the
+shuffling of cards at the end of the war was deeply concerned in hushing
+up the story.'</p>
+
+<p>'And pray, why have you nursed your wrath in all these years? Why do
+you intrude on me after nearly half a century, with this legend of
+rapine and murder?'</p>
+
+<p>'Because for nearly half a century I have been kept in profound
+ignorance of my father's fate—in ignorance of my race. Lord
+Maulevrier's jealousy banished me from my mother's arms shortly after my
+father's death. I was sent to the South of France under the care of an
+ayah. My first memories are of a monastery near Marseilles, where I was
+reared and educated by a Jesuit community, where I was baptised and
+brought up in the Roman Catholic faith. By the influence of the Jesuit
+Fathers I was placed in a house of commerce at Marseilles. Funds to
+provide for my education and establishment in life, under very modest
+conditions, were sent periodically by an agent at Madras. It was known
+that I was of East Indian birth, but little more was known about me. It
+was only when years had gone by and I was a merchant on my own account
+and could afford to go to India on a voyage of discovery—yes, as much a
+voyage of discovery as that of Vasco de Gama or of Drake—that I got
+from the Madras agent the clue which enabled me, at the cost of infinite
+patience and infinite labour, to unravel the mystery of my birth. There
+is no need to enter now upon the details of that story. I have
+overwhelming documentary evidence—a cloud of witnesses—to convince the
+most sceptical as to who and what I am. The documents are some of them
+in my valise, at your ladyship's service. Others are at my hotel in
+London, ready for the inspection of your ladyship's lawyers. I do not
+think you will desire to invite a public inquiry, or force me to recover
+my birthright in a court of justice. I believe that you will take a
+broader and nobler view of the case, and that you will restore to the
+wronged and abandoned son the fortune stolen from his murdered father.'</p>
+
+<p>'How dare you come to me with this tissue of lies? How dare you look me
+in the face and charge my dead husband with treachery and dishonour? I
+believe neither in your story nor in you, and I defy you to the proof of
+this vile charge against the dead!'</p>
+
+<p>'In other words you mean that you will keep the money and jewels which
+Lord Maulevrier stole from my father?'</p>
+
+<p>'I deny the fact that any such jewels or money ever passed into his
+lordship's possession. That vile woman, your mother, whose infamy cast a
+dark cloud over Lord Maulevrier's honour, may have robbed her husband,
+may have emptied the public treasury. But not a rupee or a jewel
+belonging to her ever came into my possession. I will not bear the
+burden of her crimes. Her existence spoiled my life—banished me from
+India, a widow in all but the name, and more desolate than many widows.'</p>
+
+<p>'Lord Maulevrier was known to leave India carrying with him two large
+chests—supposed to contain books—but actually containing treasure. A
+man who was in the Governor's confidence, and who had been the
+go-between in his intrigues, confessed on his death-bed that he had
+assisted in removing the treasure. Now, Lady Maulevrier, since your
+husband died immediately after his arrival in England, and before he
+could have had any opportunity of converting or making away with the
+valuables so appropriated, it stands to reason that those valuables must
+have passed into your possession, and it is from your honour and good
+feeling that I claim their restitution. If you deny the claim so
+advanced, there remains but one course open to me, and that is to make
+my wrongs public, and claim my right from the law of the land.'</p>
+
+<p>'And do you suppose that any English judge or English jury would believe
+so wild a story—or countenance so vile an accusation against the
+defenceless?' demanded Lady Maulevrier, standing up before him, tall,
+stately, with flashing eye and scornful lip, the image of proud
+defiance. 'Bring forward your claim, produce your documents, your
+witnesses, your death-bed confessions. I defy you to injure my dead
+husband or me by your wild lies, your foul charges! Go to an English
+lawyer, and see what an English law court will do for you—and your
+claim. I will hear no more of either.'</p>
+
+<p>She rang the bell once, twice, thrice, with passionate hand, and a
+servant flew to answer that impatient summons.</p>
+
+<p>'Show this gentlemen to his carriage,' she said, imperiously.</p>
+
+<p>The gentleman who called himself Louis Asoph bowed, and retired without
+another word.</p>
+
+<p>As the door closed upon him, Lady Maulevrier stood, with clenched hands
+and frowning brow, staring into vacancy. Her right arm was outstretched,
+as if she would have waved the intruder away. Suddenly, a strange
+numbness crept over that uplifted arm, and it fell to her side. From her
+shoulder down to her foot, that proud form grew cold and feelingless and
+dead, and she, who had so long carried herself as a queen among women,
+sank in a senseless heap upon the floor.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XVI"></a><h2>CHAPTER XVI.</h2>
+
+<h3>'HER FACE RESIGNED TO BLISS OR BALE.'</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>Lady Mary and the Fr&auml;ulein had been sitting in the drawing-room all this
+time waiting for Lady Maulevrier to come to tea. They heard her come in
+from the garden; and then the footman told them that she was in the
+library with a stranger. Not even the muffled sound of voices penetrated
+the heavy velvet curtain and the thick oak door. It was only by the loud
+ringing of the bell and the sound of footsteps in the hall that Lady
+Mary knew of the guest's departure. She went to the door between the
+two rooms, and was surprised to find it bolted.</p>
+
+<p>'Grandmamma, won't you come to tea?' she asked timidly, knocking on the
+oaken panel, but there was no reply.</p>
+
+<p>She knocked again, and louder. Still no reply.</p>
+
+<p>'Perhaps her ladyship is going to take tea in her own room,' she said,
+afraid to be officious.</p>
+
+<p>Attendance upon her grandmother at afternoon tea had been one of
+Lesbia's particular duties; but Mary felt that she was an unwelcome
+substitute for Lesbia. She wanted to get a little nearer her
+grandmother's heart if she could; but she knew that her attentions were
+endured rather than liked.</p>
+
+<p>She went into the hall, where the footman on duty was staring at the
+light snowflakes dancing past the window, perhaps wishing he were a
+snowflake himself, and enjoying himself in that white whirligig.</p>
+
+<p>'Is her ladyship having tea in the morning-room?' asked Mary.</p>
+
+<p>The footman gave a little start, as if awakened out of a kind of trance.
+The sheer vacuity of his mind might naturally slide into mesmeric sleep.</p>
+
+<p>He told Lady Mary that her ladyship had not left the library, and Mary
+went in timidly, wondering why her grandmother had not joined them in
+the drawing-room when the stranger was gone.</p>
+
+<p>The sky was dark outside the wide windows, white hills and valleys
+shrouded in the shades of night. The library was only lighted by the
+glow of the logs on the hearth, and in that ruddy light the spacious
+room looked empty. Mary was turning to go away, thinking the footman had
+been mistaken, when her eye suddenly lighted upon a dark figure lying on
+the ground. And then she heard an awful stertorous breathing, and knew
+that her grandmother was lying there, stricken and helpless.</p>
+
+<p>Mary shrieked aloud, with a cry that pierced curtains and doors, and
+brought Fr&auml;ulein and half-a-dozen servants to her help. One of the men
+brought a lamp, and among them they lifted the smitten figure. Oh, God!
+how ghastly the face looked in the lamplight!--the features drawn to one
+side, the skin livid.</p>
+
+<p>'Her ladyship has had a stroke,' said the butler.</p>
+
+<p>'Is she dying?' faltered Mary, white as ashes. 'Oh, grandmother, dear
+grandmother, don't look at us like that!'</p>
+
+<p>One of the servants rushed off to the stables to send for the doctor. Of
+course, being an indoor man, he no more thought of going out himself
+into the snowy night on such an errand than Noah thought of going out of
+the ark to explore the face of the waters in person.</p>
+
+<p>They carried Lady Maulevrier to her bed and laid her there, like a
+figure carved out of stone. She was not unconscious. Her eyes were
+open, and she moaned every now and then as if in bodily or mental pain.
+Once she tried to speak, but had no power to shape a syllable aright,
+and ended with a shuddering sigh. Once she lifted her left arm and waved
+it in the air, as if waving some one off in fear or anger. The right
+arm, indeed the whole of the right side, was lifeless, motionless as a
+stone. It was a piteous sight to see the beautiful features drawn and
+distorted, the lips so accustomed to command mouthing the broken
+syllables of an unknown tongue. Lady Mary sat beside the bed with
+clasped hands, praying dumbly, with her eyes fixed on her grandmother's
+altered face.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Horton came, as soon as his stout mountain pony could bring him. He
+did not seem surprised at her ladyship's condition, and accepted the
+situation with professional calmness.</p>
+
+<p>'A marked case of hemiplegia,' he said, when he had observed the
+symptoms.</p>
+
+<p>'Will she die?' asked Mary.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, dear, no! She will want great care for a little while, but we shall
+bring her round easily. A splendid constitution, a noble frame; but I
+think she has overworked her brain a little, reading Huxley and Darwin,
+and the German physiologists upon whom Huxley and Darwin have built
+themselves. Metaphysics too. Schopenhauer, and the rest of them. A
+wonderful woman! Very few brains could hold what hers has had poured
+into it in the last thirty years. The conducting nerves between the
+brain and the spinal marrow have been overworked: too much activity, too
+constant a strain. Even the rails and sleepers on the railroad wear out,
+don't you know, if there's excessive traffic.'</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Horton had known Mary from her childhood, had given her Gregory's
+powder, and seen her safely through measles and other infantine
+ailments, so he was quite at home with her, and at Fellside generally.
+Lady Maulevrier had given him a good deal of her confidence during those
+thirty years in which he had practised as his father's partner and
+successor at Grasmere. He used to tell people that he owed the best part
+of his education to her ladyship, who condescended to talk to him of the
+new books she read, and generally gave him a volume to put in his pocket
+when he was leaving her.</p>
+
+<p>'Don't be downhearted, Lady Mary,' he said; 'I shall come in two or
+three times a day and see how things are going on, and if I see the
+slightest difficulty in the case I'll telegraph for Jenner.'</p>
+
+<p>Mary and the Fr&auml;ulein sat up with the invalid all that night. Lady
+Maulevrier's maid was also in attendance, and one of the menservants
+slept in his clothes on a couch in the corridor, ready for any
+emergency. But the night passed peacefully, the patient slept a good
+deal, and next day there was evident improvement. The stroke which had
+prostrated the body, which reduced the vigorous, active frame to an
+awful statue—like stillness—a quietude as of death of itself—had not
+overclouded the intellect. Lady Maulevrier lay on her bed in her
+luxurious room, with wide Tudor windows commanding half the circle of
+the hills, and was still the ruling spirit of the house, albeit
+powerless to move that slender hand, the lightest wave of which had been
+as potent to command in her little world as royal sign-manual or sceptre
+in the great world outside.</p>
+
+<p>Now there remained only one thing unimpaired by that awful shock which
+had laid the stately frame low, and that was the will and sovereign
+force of the woman's nature. Voice was altered, speech was confused and
+difficult; but the strength of will, the supreme power of mind, seemed
+undiminished.</p>
+
+<p>When Lady Maulevrier was asked if Lesbia should be telegraphed for, she
+replied no, not unless she was in danger of sudden death.</p>
+
+<p>'I should like to see her before I go,' she said, labouring to pronounce
+the words.</p>
+
+<p>'Dear grandmother,' said Mary, tenderly, 'Mr. Horton says there is no
+danger.'</p>
+
+<p>'Then do not send for her; do not even tell her what has happened; not
+yet.'</p>
+
+<p>'But she will miss your letters.'</p>
+
+<p>'True. You must write twice a week at my dictation. You must tell her
+that I have hurt my hand, that I am well but cannot use a pen. I would
+not spoil her pleasure for the world.'</p>
+
+<p>'Dear grandmother, how unselfish you are! And Maulevrier, shall he be
+sent for? He is not so far away,' said Mary, hoping her grandmother
+would say yes.</p>
+
+<p>What a relief, what an unspeakable solace Maulevrier's presence would be
+in that dreary house, smitten to a sudden and awful stillness, as if by
+the Angel of Death!</p>
+
+<p>'No, I do not want Maulevrier!' answered her ladyship impatiently.</p>
+
+<p>'May I sit here and read to you, grandmother?' Mary asked, timidly. 'Mr.
+Horton said you were to be kept very quiet, and that we were not to let
+you talk, or talk much to you, but that we might read to you if you
+like.'</p>
+
+<p>'I do not wish to be read to. I have my thoughts for company,' said Lady
+Maulevrier.</p>
+
+<p>Mary felt that this implied a wish to be alone. She bent over the
+invalid's pillow and kissed the pale cheek, feeling as if she were
+taking a liberty in venturing so much. She would hardly have done it had
+Lesbia been at home; but she bad a feeling that in Lesbia's absence Lady
+Maulevrier must want somebody's love—even hers. And then she crept
+away, leaving Halcott the maid in attendance, sitting at her work at the
+window furthest from the bed.</p>
+
+<p>'Alone with my thoughts,' mused Lady Maulevrier, looking out at the
+panorama of wintry hills, white, ghost-like against an iron sky.
+'Pleasant thoughts, truly! Walled in by the hills—walled in and hemmed
+round for ever. This place has always felt like a grave: and now I know
+that it <i>is</i> my grave.'</p>
+
+<p>Fr&auml;ulein, and Lady Mary, and the maid Halcott, a sedate personage of
+forty summers, had all been instructed by the doctor that Lady
+Maulevrier was to be kept profoundly quiet. She must not talk much,
+since speech was likely to be a painful effort with her for some little
+time; she must not be talked to much by anyone, least of all must she be
+spoken to upon any agitating topic. Life must be made as smooth and easy
+for her as for a new-born infant. No rough breath from the outer world
+must come near her. She was to see no one but her maid and her
+granddaughter. Mr. Horton, a plain family man, took it for granted that
+the granddaughter was dear to her heart, and likely to exercise a
+soothing influence. Thus it happened that although Lady Maulevrier asked
+repeatedly that James Steadman should be brought to her, she was not
+allowed to see him. She whose will had been paramount in that house,
+whose word had been law, was now treated as a little child, while the
+will was still as strong, the mind as keen as ever.</p>
+
+<p>'She would talk to him of business,' said Mr. Horton, when he was told
+of her ladyship's desire to see Steadman, 'and that cannot be allowed,
+not for some little time at least.'</p>
+
+<p>'She is very angry with us for refusing to obey her,' said Lady Mary.</p>
+
+<p>'Naturally, but it is for her own welfare she is disobeyed. She can have
+nothing to say to Steadman which will not keep till she is better. This
+establishment goes by clockwork.'</p>
+
+<p>Mary wished it was a little less like clockwork. Since Lady Maulevrier
+had been lying upstairs—the voice which had once ruled over the house
+muffled almost to dumbness—the monotony of life at Fellside had seemed
+all the more oppressive. The servants crept about with stealthier tread.
+Mary dared not touch either piano or billiard balls, and was naturally
+seized with a longing to touch both. The house had a darkened look, as
+if the shadow of doom overhung it.</p>
+
+<p>During this regimen of perfect quiet Lady Maulevrier was not allowed to
+see the newspapers; and Mary was warned that in reading to her
+grandmother she was to avoid all exciting topics. Thus it happened that
+the account of a terrible collision between the Scotch express and a
+luggage train, a little way beyond Preston, an accident in which seven
+people were killed and about thirty seriously hurt, was not made known
+to her ladyship; and yet that fact would have been of intense interest
+and significance to her, since one of those passengers whose injuries
+were fatal bore the name of Louis Asoph.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XVII"></a><h2>CHAPTER XVII.</h2>
+
+<h3>'AND THE SPRING COMES SLOWLY UP THIS WAY.'</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>The wintry weeks glided smoothly by in a dull monotony, and now Lady
+Maulevrier, still helpless, still compelled to lie on her bed or her
+invalid couch, motionless as marble, had at least recovered her power of
+speech, was allowed to read and to talk, and to hear what was going on
+in that metropolitan world which she seemed unlikely ever to behold
+again.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Lesbia was still at Cannes, whence she wrote of her pleasures and
+her triumphs, of flowers and sapphire sea, and azure sky, of all things
+which were not in the grey bleak mountain world that hemmed in Fellside.
+She was meeting many of the people whom she was to meet again next
+season in the London world. She had made an informal <i>d&eacute;but</i> in a very
+select circle, a circle in which everybody was more or less <i>chic</i>, or
+<i>chien</i>, or <i>zinc</i>, and she was tasting all the sweets of success. But
+in none of her letters was there any mention of Lord Hartfield. He was
+not in the little great world by the blue tideless sea.</p>
+
+<p>There was no talk of Lesbia's return. She was to stay till the carnival;
+she was to stay till the week before Easter. Lady Kirkbank insisted upon
+it; and both Lesbia and Lady Kirkbank upbraided Lady Maulevrier for her
+cruelty in not joining them at Cannes.</p>
+
+<p>So Lady Maulevrier had to resign herself to that solitude which had
+become almost the habit of her life, and to the society of Mary and the
+Fr&auml;ulein. Mary was eager to be of use, to sit with her grandmother, to
+read to her, to write for her. The warm young heart was deeply moved by
+the spectacle of this stately woman stricken into helplessness, chained
+to her couch, immured within four walls. To Mary, who so loved the hills
+and the streams, the sun and the wind, this imprisonment seemed
+unspeakable woe. In her pity for such a martyrdom she would have done
+anything to give pleasure or solace to her grandmother. Unhappily there
+was very little Mary could do to increase the invalid's sum of pleasure.
+Lady Maulevrier was a woman of strong feeling, not capable of loving
+many people. She had concentrated her affection upon Lesbia: and she
+could not open her heart to Mary all at once because Lesbia was out of
+the way.</p>
+
+<p>'If I had a dog I loved, and he were to die, I would never have another
+in his place,' Lady Maulevrier said once; and that speech was the
+keynote of her character.</p>
+
+<p>She was very courteous to Mary, and seemed grateful for her attentions;
+but she did not cultivate the girl's society. Mary wrote all her letters
+in a fine bold hand, and with a rapid pen; but when the letter-writing
+was over Lady Maulevrier always dismissed her.</p>
+
+<p>'My dear, you want to be out in the air, riding your pony, or
+scampering about with your dogs,' she said, kindly. 'It would be a
+cruelty to keep you indoors.'</p>
+
+<p>'No, indeed, dear grandmother, I should like to stay. May I stop and
+read to you?'</p>
+
+<p>'No, thank you, Mary. I hate being read to. I like to devour a book.
+Reading aloud is such slow work.</p>
+
+<p>'But I am afraid you must sometimes feel lonely,' faltered Mary.</p>
+
+<p>'Lonely,' echoed the dowager, with a sigh. 'I have been lonely for the
+last forty years—I have been lonely all my life. Those I loved never
+gave me back love for love—never—not even your sister. See how lightly
+she cuts the link that bound her to me. How happy she is among
+strangers! Yes, there was one who loved me truly, and fate parted us.
+Does fate part all true lovers, I wonder?'</p>
+
+<p>'You parted Lesbia and Mr. Hammond,' said Mary, impetuously. 'I am sure
+they loved each other truly.'</p>
+
+<p>'The old and the worldly-wise are Fate, Mary,' answered the dowager, not
+angry at this daring reproach. 'I know your sister; and I know she is
+not the kind of woman to be happy in an ignoble life—to bear poverty
+and deprivation. If it had been you, now, whom Mr. Hammond had chosen, I
+might have taken the subject into my consideration.'</p>
+
+<p>Mary flamed crimson.</p>
+
+<p>'Mr. Hammond never gave me a thought,' she said, 'unless it was to think
+me contemptible. He is worlds too good for such a Tomboy. Maulevrier
+told him about the fox-hunt, and they both laughed at me—at least I
+have no doubt Mr. Hammond laughed, though I was too much ashamed to look
+at him.'</p>
+
+<p>'Poor Mary, you are beginning to find out that a young lady ought to be
+ladylike,' said Lady Maulevrier; 'and now, my dear, you may go. I was
+only joking with you. Mr. Hammond would be no match for any
+granddaughter of mine. He is nobody, and has neither friends nor
+interest. If he had gone into the church Maulevrier could have helped
+him; but I daresay his ideas are too broad for the church; and he will
+have to starve at the bar, where nobody can help him. I hope you will
+bear this in mind, Mary, if Maulevrier should ever bring him here
+again.'</p>
+
+<p>'He is never likely to come back again. He suffered too much; he was
+treated too badly in this house.'</p>
+
+<p>'Lady Mary, be good enough to remember to whom you are speaking,' said
+her ladyship, with a frown. 'And now please go, and tell some one to
+send Steadman to me.'</p>
+
+<p>Mary retired without a word, gave Lady Maulevrier's message to a footman
+in the corridor, slipped off to her room, put on her sealskin hat and
+jacket, took her staff and went out for a long ramble. The hills and
+valleys were still white. It had been a long, cold winter, and spring
+was still far off—February had only just begun.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Maulevrier's couch had been wheeled into the morning-room—that
+luxurious room which was furnished with all things needful to her quiet
+life, her books, her favourite colours, her favourite flowers, every
+detail studiously arranged for her pleasure and comfort. She was wheeled
+into this room every day at noon. When the day was bright and sunny her
+couch was placed near the window: and when the day was dull and grey the
+couch was drawn close to the low hearth, which flashed and glittered
+with brightly coloured tiles and artistic brass.</p>
+
+<p>To-day the sky was dull, and the velvet couch stood beside the hearth.
+Halcott sat at work in the adjoining bed-chamber, and came in every now
+and then to replenish the fire: a footman was always on duty in the
+corridor. A spring bell stood among the elegant trifles upon her
+ladyship's table; and the lightest touch of her left hand upon the bell
+brought her attendants to her side. She resolutely refused to have any
+one sitting with her all day long. Solitude was a necessity of her
+being, she told Mr. Horton, when he recommended that she should have
+some one always in attendance upon her.</p>
+
+<p>As the weeks wore on her features had been restored to their proud, calm
+beauty, her articulation was almost as clear as of old: yet, now and
+then, there would be a sudden faltering, the tongue and lips would
+refuse their office, or she would forget a word, or use a wrong word
+unconsciously. But there was no recovery of power or movement on that
+side of the body which had been stricken. The paralysed limbs were still
+motionless, lifeless as marble; and it was clear that Mr. Horton had
+begun to lose heart about his patient. There was nothing obscure in the
+case, but the patient's importance made the treatment a serious matter,
+and the surgeon begged to be allowed to summon Sir William Jenner.</p>
+
+<p>This, however, Lady Maulevrier refused.</p>
+
+<p>'I don't want any fuss made about me,' she said. 'I am content to trust
+myself to your skill, and I beg that no other doctor may be summoned.'</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Horton understood his patient's feelings on this point. She had a
+sense of humiliation in her helplessness, and, like some wounded animal
+that crawls to its covert to die, she would fain have hidden her misery
+from the eye of strangers. She had allowed no one, not even Maulevrier,
+to be informed of the nature of her illness.</p>
+
+<p>'It will be time enough for him to know all about me when he comes
+here,' she said. 'I shall be obliged to see him whenever he does come.'</p>
+
+<p>Maulevrier had spent Christmas and New Year in Paris, Mr. Hammond still
+his companion. Her ladyship commented upon this with a touch of scorn.</p>
+
+<p>'Mr. Hammond is like the Umbra you were reading about the other day in
+Lord Lytton's &quot;Last Days of Pompeii,&quot;' she said to Mary. 'It must be
+very nice for him to go about the world with a friend who franks him
+everywhere.'</p>
+
+<p>'But we don't know that Maulevrier franks him,' protested Mary,
+blushing. 'We have no right to suppose that Mr. Hammond does not pay his
+own expenses.'</p>
+
+<p>'My dear child, is it possible for a young man who has no private means
+to go gadding about the world on equal terms with a spendthrift like
+Maulevrier—to pay for Moors in Scotland and apartments at the Bristol?'</p>
+
+<p>'But they are not staying at the Bristol,' exclaimed Mary.
+'They are staying at an old-established French hotel on the left side of
+the Seine. They are going about amongst the students and the workmen,
+dining at popular restaurants, hearing people talk. Maulevrier says it
+is delightfully amusing—ever so much better than the beaten track of
+life in Anglo-American Paris.'</p>
+
+<p>'I daresay they are leading a Bohemian life, and will get into trouble
+before they have done,' said her ladyship, gloomily.
+'Maulevrier is as wild as a hawk.'</p>
+
+<p>'He is the dearest boy in the world,' exclaimed Mary.</p>
+
+<p>She was deeply grateful for her brother's condescension in writing her a
+letter of two pages long, letting her into the secrets of his life. She
+felt as if Mr. Hammond were ever so much nearer to her now she knew
+where he was, and how he was amusing himself.</p>
+
+<p>'Hammond is such a queer fellow,' wrote Maulevrier, 'the strangest
+things interest him. He sits and talks to the workmen for hours; he
+pokes his nose into all sorts of places—hospitals, workshops,
+poverty-stricken dens—and people are always civil to him. He is what
+Lesbia calls <i>sympatico</i>. Ah! what a mistake Lesbia and my grandmother
+made when they rejected Hammond! What a pearl above price they threw
+away! But, you see, neither my lady nor Lesbia could appreciate a gem,
+unless it was richly set.'</p>
+
+<p>And now Lady Maulevrier lay on her couch by the fire, waiting for James
+Steadman. She had seen him several times since the day of her seizure,
+but never alone. There was an idea that Steadman must necessarily talk
+to her of business matters, or cause her mind to trouble itself about
+business matters; so there had been a well-intentioned conspiracy in the
+house to keep him out of her way; but now she was much better, and her
+desire to see Steadman need no longer be thwarted.</p>
+
+<p>He came at her bidding, and stood a little way within the door, tall,
+erect, square-shouldered, resolute-looking, with a quiet force of
+character expressed in every feature. He was very much the same man that
+he had been forty years ago, when he went with her ladyship to
+Southampton, and accompanied his master and mistress on that tedious
+journey which was destined to be Lord Maulevrier's last earthly
+pilgrimage. Time had done little to Steadman in those forty years,
+except to whiten his hair and beard, and imprint some thoughtful lines
+upon his sagacious forehead. Time had done something for him mentally,
+insomuch as he had read a great many books and cultivated his mind in
+the monotonous quiet of Fellside. Altogether he was a superior man for
+the passage of those forty years.</p>
+
+<p>He had married within the time, choosing for himself the buxom daughter
+of a lodgekeeper, whose wife had long been laid at rest in Grasmere
+churchyard. The buxom girl had grown into a bulky matron, but she was a
+colourless personage, and her existence made hardly any difference in
+James Steadman's life. She had brought him no children, and their
+fireside was lonely; but Steadman seemed to be one of those
+self-contained personages to whom a solitary life is no affliction.</p>
+
+<p>'I hope I see you in better health, my lady,' he said, standing straight
+and square, like a soldier on parade.</p>
+
+<p>'I am better, thank you, Steadman; better, but a poor lifeless log
+chained to this sofa. I sent for you because the time has come when I
+must talk to you upon a matter of business. You heard, I suppose, that a
+stranger called upon me just before I had my attack?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, my lady.'</p>
+
+<p>'Did you hear who and what he was?'</p>
+
+<p>'Only that he was a foreigner, my lady.'</p>
+
+<p>'He is of Indian birth. He claims to be the son of the Ranee of
+Bisnagar.'</p>
+
+<p>'He could do you no harm, my lady, if he were twenty times her son.'</p>
+
+<p>'I hope not. Now, I want to ask you a question. Among those trunks and
+cases and packages of Lord Maulevrier's which were sent here by heavy
+coach, after they were landed at Southampton, do you remember two cases
+of books?'</p>
+
+<p>'There are two large cases among the luggage, my lady; very heavy cases,
+iron clamped. I should not be surprised if they were full of books.'</p>
+
+<p>'Have they never been opened?'</p>
+
+<p>'Not to my knowledge.'</p>
+
+<p>'Are they locked?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, my lady. There are two padlocks on each chest.'</p>
+
+<p>'And are the keys in your possession?'</p>
+
+<p>'No, my lady.'</p>
+
+<p>'Where are the cases?'</p>
+
+<p>'In the Oak Room, with the rest of the Indian luggage.'</p>
+
+<p>'Let them remain there. No doubt those cases contain the books of which
+I have been told. You have not heard that the person calling himself
+Rajah of Bisnagar has been here since my illness, have you?'</p>
+
+<p>'No, my lady; I am sure he has not been here.'</p>
+
+<p>Lady Maulevrier gave him a scrutinising look.</p>
+
+<p>'He might have come, and my people might have kept the knowledge from
+me, out of consideration for my infirmity,' she said. 'I should be very
+angry if it were so. I should hate to be treated like a child.'</p>
+
+<p>'You shall not be so treated, my lady, while I am in this house; but I
+know there is no member of the household who would presume so to treat
+you.'</p>
+
+<p>'They might do it out of kindness; but I should loathe such kindness,'
+said Lady Maulevrier, impatiently. 'Though I have been smitten down,
+though I lie here like a log, I have a mind to think and to plan; and I
+am not afraid to meet danger, face to face. Are you telling me the
+truth, Steadman? Have there been no visits concealed from me, no letters
+kept from me since I have been ill?'</p>
+
+<p>'I am telling you nothing but the truth, my lady. No letter has been
+kept from you; no visitor has been to this house whose coming you have
+not been told of.'</p>
+
+<p>'Then I am content,' said her ladyship, with a sigh of relief.</p>
+
+<p>After this there followed some conversation upon business matters. James
+Steadman was trusted with the entire management of the dowager's income,
+the investment of her savings. His honesty was above all suspicion. He
+was a man of simple habits, his wants few. He had saved money in every
+year of his service; and for a man of his station was rich enough to be
+unassailable by the tempter.</p>
+
+<p>He had reconciled his mind to the monotonous course of life at Fellside
+in the beginning of things; and, as the years glided smoothly by, his
+character and wants and inclinations had, as it were, moulded themselves
+to fit that life. He had easy duties, a comfortable home, supreme
+authority in the household. He was looked up to and made much of in the
+village whenever he condescended to appear there; and by the rareness of
+his visits to the Inn or the Reading-room, and his unwillingness to
+accept hospitality from the tradesmen of Grasmere and Ambleside, he
+maintained his dignity and exaggerated his importance. He had his books
+and his newspapers, his evening leisure, which no one ever dared to
+disturb. He had the old wing of the house for his exclusive occupation;
+and no one ventured to intrude upon him in his privacy. There was a bell
+in the corridor which communicated with his rooms, and by this bell he
+was always summoned. There were servants who had been ten years at
+Fellside, and who had never crossed the threshold of the red cloth door
+which was the only communication between the new house and the old one.
+Steadman's wife performed all household duties of cooking and cleaning
+in the south wing, where she and her husband took all their meals, and
+lived entirely apart from the other servants, an exclusiveness which was
+secretly resented by the establishment.</p>
+
+<p>'Mr. Steadman may be a very superior man,' said the butler 'and I know
+that in his own estimation the Premier isn't in it compared with him;
+but I never was fond of people who set themselves upon pinnacles, and
+I'm not fond of the Steadmans.'</p>
+
+<p>'Mrs. Steadman's plain and homely enough,' replied the housekeeper, 'and
+I know she'd like to be more sociable, and drop into my room for a cup
+of tea now and then; but Steadman do so keep her under his thumb: and
+because he's a misanthrope she's obliged to sit and mope alone.'</p>
+
+<p>If Steadman wanted to drive, there was a dogcart and horse at his
+disposal; but he did not often leave Fellside. He seemed in his humble
+way to model his life upon Lady Maulevrier's secluded habits. It was
+growing dusk when Steadman left his mistress, and she lay for some time
+looking at the landscape over which twilight shadows were stealing, and
+thinking of her own life. Over that life, too, the shadows of evening
+were creeping. She had begun to realise the fact that she was an old
+woman; that for her all personal interest in life was nearly over. She
+had never felt her age while her activity was unimpaired. She had been
+obliged to remind herself very often that the afternoon and evening of
+life had slipped away unawares in that tranquil retirement, and that the
+night was at hand.</p>
+
+<p>For her the close of earthly life meant actual night. No new dawn, no
+mysterious after-life shone upon her with magical gleams of an unknown
+light upon the other side of the dark river. She had accepted the
+Materialist's bitter and barren creed, and had taught herself that this
+little life was all. She had learned to scorn the idea of a great
+Artificer outside the universe, a mighty spirit riding amidst the
+clouds, and ruling the course of nature and the fate of man. She had
+schooled herself to think that the idea of a blind, unconscious Nature,
+working automatically through infinite time and space, was ever so much
+grander than the old-world notion of a personal God, a Being of infinite
+power and inexhaustible beneficence, mighty to devise and direct the
+universe, with knowledge reaching to the farthest confines of space,
+with ear to listen to the prayer of His lowest creatures. Her belief
+stopped short even of the Deist's faith in an Almighty Will. She saw in
+creation nothing but the inevitable development of material laws; and it
+seemed to her that there was quite as much hope of a heavenly world
+after death for the infusoria in the pool as for man in his pride and
+power.</p>
+
+<p>She read her Bible as diligently as she read her Shakespeare, and the
+words of the Royal Preacher in some measure embodied her own dreary
+creed. And now, in the darkening winter day, she watched the gloomy
+shadows creep over the rugged breast of Nabb Scar, and she thought how
+there was a time for all things, and that her day of hope and ambition
+was past.</p>
+
+<p>Of late years she had lived for Lesbia, looking forward to the day when
+she was to introduce this beloved grandchild to the great world of
+London; and now that hope was gone for ever.</p>
+
+<p>What could a helpless cripple do for a fashionable beauty? What good
+would it be for her to be conveyed to London, and to lie on a couch in
+Mayfair, while Lesbia rode in the Row and went to three or four parties
+every night with a more active chaperon?</p>
+
+<p>She had hoped to go everywhere with her darling, to glory in all her
+successes, to shield her from all possibility of failure. And now Lesbia
+must stand or fall alone.</p>
+
+<p>It was a hard thing; but perhaps the hardest part of it was that Lesbia
+seemed so very well able to get on without her. The girl wrote in the
+highest spirits; and although her letters were most affectionately
+worded, they were all about self. That note was dominant in every
+strain. Her triumphs, her admirers, her bonnets, her gowns. She had had
+more money from her grandmother, and more gowns from Paris.</p>
+
+<p>'You have no idea how the people dress in this place,' she wrote. 'I
+should have been quite out in the cold without my three new frocks from
+Worth. The little Princess bonnets I wear are the rage. Worth
+recommended me to adopt special flowers and colours; so I have worn
+nothing but primroses since I have been here, and my little primrose
+bonnets are to be seen everywhere, sometimes on hideous old women. Lady
+Kirkbank hopes you will be able to go to London directly after Easter.
+She says I must be presented at the May drawing-room—that is
+imperative. People have begun to talk about me; and unless I make my
+<i>d&eacute;but</i> while their interest is fresh I shall be a failure. There is an
+American beauty here, and I believe she and I are considered rivals, and
+young men lay wagers about us, as to which will look best at a ball, or
+a regatta, what colours we shall wear, and so on. It is immense fun. I
+only wish you were here to enjoy it. The American girl is a most
+insolent person, but I have had the pleasure of crushing her on several
+occasions in the calmest way. In the description of the concert in last
+week's newspaper I was called <i>l'Anglais de marbre</i>. I certainly had the
+decency to hold my tongue while Faure was singing. Miss Bolsover's voice
+was heard ever so many times above the music. According to our English
+ideas she has most revolting manners, and the money she spends on her
+clothes would make your hair stand on end. Now do, dearest grandmother,
+make all your arrangements for beginning the campaign directly after
+Easter. You must take a house in the very choicest quarter—Lady
+Kirkbank suggests Grosvenor-place—and it <i>must</i> be a large house, for
+of course you will give a ball. Lady K. says we might have Lord
+Porlock's house—poor Lady Porlock and her baby died a few weeks ago,
+and he has gone to Sweden quite broken-hearted. It is one of the new
+houses, exquisitely furnished, and Lady K. thinks you might have it for
+a song. Will you get Steadman to write to his lordship's steward, and
+see what can be done?</p>
+
+<p>'I hope the dear hand is better. You have never told me how you hurt
+it. It is very sweet of Mary to write me such long letters, and quite a
+pleasant surprise to find she can spell; but I want to see your own dear
+hand once more.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XVIII"></a><h2>CHAPTER XVIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>'AND COME AGEN BE IT BY NIGHT OR DAY.'</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>Those winter months were unutterably dreary for Lady Mary Haselden. She
+felt weighed down by a sense of death and woe near at hand. The horror
+of that dreadful moment in which she found her grandmother lying
+senseless on the ground, the terror of that distorted countenance, those
+starting eyes, that stertorous breathing, was not easily banished from a
+vivid girlish imagination; seeing how few distractions there were to
+divert Mary's thoughts, and how the sun sank and rose again upon the
+same inevitable surroundings, to the same monotonous routine.</p>
+
+<p>Her grandmother was kinder than she had been in days gone by, less
+inclined to find fault; but Mary knew that her society gave Lady
+Maulevrier very little pleasure, that she could do hardly anything
+towards filling the gap made by Lesbia's absence. There was no one to
+scold her, no one to quarrel with her. Fr&auml;ulein M&uuml;ller lectured her
+mildly from time to time; but that stout German was too lazy to put any
+force or fire into her lectures. Her reproofs were like the fall of
+waterdrops on a stone, and infinite ages would have been needed to cause
+any positive impression.</p>
+
+<p>February came to an end without sign or token from the outer world to
+disturb the even tenor of life at Fellside. Mary read, and read, and
+read, till she felt she was made up of the contents of books, crammed
+with other people's ideas. She read history, or natural science, or
+travels, or German poetry in the morning, and novels or English poetry
+in the evening. She had pledged herself to devote her morning indoor
+hours to instructive literature, and to accomplish some portion of study
+in every day. She was carrying on her education on parole, as before
+stated; and she was too honourable to do less than was expected from
+her.</p>
+
+<p>March came in with its most leonine aspect, howling and blustering;
+north-east winds shrieking along the gorges and wailing from height to
+height.</p>
+
+<p>'I wonder the lion and the lamb are not blown into the lake,' said Mary,
+looking at Helm Crag from the library window.</p>
+
+<p>She scampered about the gardens in the very teeth of those bitter
+blasts, and took her shivering terriers for runs on the green slopes of
+the Fell. The snow had gradually melted from the tides of the lowermost
+range of hills, but the mountain peaks were still white and ghostly,
+the ground was still hard and slippery in the early mornings. Mary had
+to take her walks alone in this bleak weather. Fr&auml;ulein had a convenient
+bronchial affection which forbade her to venture so much as the point of
+her nose outside the house in an east wind, and which justified her in
+occasionally taking her breakfast in bed. She spent her days for the
+most part in her arm-chair, drawn close to the fireplace, which she
+still insisted upon calling the oven, knitting diligently, or reading
+the <i>Rundschau</i>. Even music, which had once been her strong point, was
+neglected in this trying weather. It was such a cold journey from the
+oven to the piano.</p>
+
+<p>Mary played a good deal in her desultory manner, now that she had the
+drawing-room all to herself, and no fear of Lady Maulevrier's critical
+ear or Lesbia's superior smile. The Fr&auml;ulein was pleased to hear her
+pupil ramble on with her favourite bits from Raff, and Hensel, and
+Schubert, and Mendelssohn, and Mozart, and was very well content to let
+her play just what she liked, and to escape the trouble of training her
+to that exquisite perfection into which Lady Lesbia had been drilled.
+Lesbia was not a genius, and the training process had been quite as hard
+for the governess as for the pupil.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the slow days wore on till the first week in March, and on one
+bleak bitter afternoon, when Fr&auml;ulein M&uuml;ller stuck to the oven even a
+little closer than usual, Mary felt she must go out, in the face of the
+east wind, which was tossing the leafless branches in the valley below
+until the trees looked like an angry crowd, hurling its arms in the air,
+fighting, struggling, writhing. She must leave that dreary house for a
+little while, were it even to be lashed and bruised and broken by that
+fierce wind. So she told Fr&auml;ulein that she really must have her
+constitutional; and after a feeble remonstrance Fr&auml;ulein let her go, and
+subsided luxuriously into the pillowed depth of her arm-chair.</p>
+
+<p>There had been a hard frost, and all the mountain ways were perilous, so
+Mary set out upon a steady tramp along the road leading towards the
+Langdales. The wind seemed to assail her from every side, but she had
+accustomed herself to defy the elements, and she only hugged her
+sealskin jacket closer to her, and quickened her pace, chirruping and
+whistling to Ahab and Ariadne, the two fox-terriers which she had
+selected for the privilege of a walk.</p>
+
+<p>The terriers raced along the road, and Mary, seeing that she had the
+road all to herself, raced after them. A light snow-shower, large
+feathery flakes flying wide apart, fell from the steel-grey sky; but
+Mary minded the snow no more than she minded the wind. She raced on, the
+terriers scampering, rushing, flying before her, until, just where the
+road took a curve, she almost ran into a horse, which was stepping along
+at a tremendous pace, with a light, high dogcart behind him.</p>
+
+<p>'Hi!' cried the driver, 'where are you coming, young woman? Have you
+never seen a horse till to-day?'</p>
+
+<p>Some one beside the driver leapt out, and ran to see if Mary was hurt.
+The horse had swerved to one side, reared a little, and then spun on for
+a few yards, leaving her standing in the middle of the road.</p>
+
+<p>'Why, it's Molly!' cried the driver, who was no less distinguished a
+whip than Lord Maulevrier, and who had recognised the terriers.</p>
+
+<p>'I hope you are not hurt,' said the gentleman who had alighted,
+Maulevrier's friend and shadow, John Hammond.</p>
+
+<p>Mary was covered with confusion by her exploit, and could hardly answer
+Mr. Hammond's very simple question.</p>
+
+<p>She looked up at him piteously, trying to speak, and he took alarm at
+her scared expression.</p>
+
+<p>'I am sure you are hurt,' he said earnestly, 'the horse must have struck
+you, or the shaft perhaps, which was worse. Is it your shoulder that is
+hurt, or your chest? Lean on me, if you feel faint or giddy. Maulevrier,
+you had better drive your sister home, and get her looked after.'</p>
+
+<p>'Indeed, I am not hurt; not the least little bit,' gasped Mary, who had
+recovered her senses by this time. 'I was only frightened, and it was
+such a surprise to see you and Maulevrier.'</p>
+
+<p>A surprise—yes—a surprise which had set her heart throbbing so
+violently as to render her speechless. Had horse or shaft-point struck
+her ever so, she would have hardly been more tremulous than she felt at
+this moment. Never had she hoped to see him again. He had set his all
+upon one cast—loved, wooed, and lost her sister. Why should he ever
+come again? What was there at Fellside worth coming for? And then she
+remembered what her grandmother thought of him. He was a hanger-on, a
+sponge, a led captain. He was Maulevrier's Umbra, and must go where his
+patron went. It was a hard thing so to think of him, and Mary's heart
+sank at the thought that Lady Maulevrier's worldly wisdom might have
+reckoned aright.</p>
+
+<p>'It was very foolish of me to run into the horse,' said Mary, while Mr.
+Hammond stood waiting for her to recover herself.</p>
+
+<p>'It was very foolish of Maulevrier to run into you. If he didn't drive
+at such a break-neck pace it wouldn't have happened.'</p>
+
+<p>Umbra was very plain-spoken, at any rate.</p>
+
+<p>'There's rank ingratitude,' cried Maulevrier, who had turned back, and
+was looking down at them from his elevated perch. 'After my coming all
+the way round by Langdale to oblige you with a view of Elterwater.
+Molly's all safe and sound. She wouldn't have minded if I'd run over
+her. Come along, child, get up beside me, Hammond will take the back
+seat.'</p>
+
+<p>This was easier said than done, for the back of the dogcart was piled
+with Gladstone bags, fishing rods, and hat-boxes; but Umbra was ready
+to oblige. He handed Mary up to the seat by the driver, and clambered up
+at the back, when he hooked himself on somehow among the luggage.</p>
+
+<p>'Dear Maulevrier, how delicious of you to come!' said Mary, when they
+were rattling on towards Fellside; 'I hope you are going to stay for
+ages.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, I dare say, if you make yourself very agreeable, I may stay till
+after Easter.'</p>
+
+<p>Mary's countenance fell.</p>
+
+<p>'Easter is in three weeks,' she said, despondingly.</p>
+
+<p>'And isn't three weeks an age, at such a place as Fellside? I don't know
+that I should have come at all on this side of the August sports, only
+as the grandmother was ill, I thought it a duty to come and see her. A
+fellow mayn't care much for ancestors when they're well, you know; but
+when a poor old lady is down on her luck, her people ought to look after
+her. So, here I am; and as I knew I should be moped to death here----'</p>
+
+<p>'Thank you for the compliment,' said Mary.</p>
+
+<p>'I brought Hammond along with me. Of course, I knew Lesbia was safe out
+of the way,' added Maulevrier in an undertone.</p>
+
+<p>'It is very obliging of Mr. Hammond always to go where you wish,'
+returned Mary, who could not help a bitter feeling when she remembered
+her grandmother's cruel suggestion. 'Has he no tastes or inclinations of
+his own?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, he has, plenty of them, and much loftier tastes than mine, I can
+tell you. But he's kind enough to let me hang on to him, and to put up
+with my frivolity. There never were two men more different than he and I
+are; and I suppose that's why we get on so well together. When we were
+in Paris he was always up to his eyes in serious work—lectures, public
+libraries, workmen's syndicates, Mary Anne, the International—heaven
+knows what, making himself master of the political situation in France;
+while I was <i>rigolant</i> and <i>chaloupant</i> at the Bal Bullier.'</p>
+
+<p>It was generous of Maulevrier to speak of his hanger-on thus; and no
+doubt the society of a well-informed earnest young man was a great good
+for Maulevrier, a good far above the price of those pounds, shillings,
+and pence which the Earl might spend for his dependent's benefit; but
+when a girl of Mary's ardent temper has made a hero of a man, it galls
+her to think that her hero's dignity should be sacrificed, his honour
+impeached, were it by the merest tittle.</p>
+
+<p>Maulevrier made a good many inquiries about his grandmother, and seemed
+really full of kindness and sympathy; but it was with a feeling of
+profound awe, nay, of involuntary reluctance and shrinking, that he
+presently entered her ladyship's sitting-room, ushered in by Mary, who
+had been to her grandmother beforehand to announce the grandson's
+arrival.</p>
+
+<p>The young man had hardly ever been in a sick room before. He half
+expected to see Lady Maulevrier in bed, with a crowd of medicine bottles
+and a cut orange on a table by her side, and a sick nurse of the
+ancient-crone species cowering over the fire. It was an infinite relief
+to him to find his grandmother lying on a sofa by the fire in her pretty
+morning room. A little tea-table was drawn close up to her sofa, and she
+was taking her afternoon tea. It was rather painful to see her lifting
+her tea-cup slowly and carefully with her left hand, but that was all.
+The dark eyes still flashed with the old eagle glance, the lines of the
+lips were as proud and firm as ever. All sign of contraction or
+distortion had passed away. In hours of calm her ladyship's beauty was
+unimpaired; but with any strong emotion there came a convulsive working
+of the features, and the face was momentarily drawn and distorted, as it
+had been at the time of the seizure.</p>
+
+<p>Maulevrier's presence had not an unduly agitating effect on her
+ladyship. She received him with tranquil graciousness, and thanked him
+for his coming.</p>
+
+<p>'I hope you have spent your winter profitably in Paris,' she said.
+'There is a great deal to be learnt there if you go into the right
+circles.'</p>
+
+<p>Maulevrier told her that he had found much to learn, and that he had
+gone into circles where almost everything was new to him. Whereupon his
+grandmother questioned him about certain noble families in the Faubourg
+Saint Germain who had been known to her in her own day of power, and
+whose movements she had observed from a distance since that time; but
+here she found her grandson dark. He had not happened to meet any of the
+people she spoke about: the plain truth being that he had lived
+altogether as a Bohemian, and had not used one of the letters of
+introduction that had been given to him.</p>
+
+<p>'Your friend Mr. Hammond is with you, I am told,' said Lady Maulevrier,
+not altogether with delight.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, I made him come; but he is quite safe. He will bolt like a shot at
+the least hint of Lesbia's return. He doesn't want to meet that young
+lady again, I can assure you.'</p>
+
+<p>'Pray don't talk in that injured tone. Mr. Hammond is a gentlemanlike
+person, very well informed, very agreeable. I have never denied that.
+But you could not expect me to allow my granddaughter to throw herself
+away upon the first adventurer who made her an offer.'</p>
+
+<p>'Hammond is not an adventurer.'</p>
+
+<p>'Very well, I will not call him so, if the term offends you. But Mr.
+Hammond is—Mr. Hammond, and I cannot allow Lesbia to marry Mr. Hammond
+or Mr. Anybody, and I am very sorry you have brought him here again.
+There is Mary, a silly, romantic girl. I am very much afraid he has made
+an impression upon her. She colours absurdly when she talks of him, and
+flew into a passion with me the other day when I ventured to hint that
+he is not a Rothschild, and that his society must be expensive to you.'</p>
+
+<p>'His society does not cost me anything. Hammond is the soul of
+independence. He worked as a blacksmith in Canada for three months, just
+to see what life was like in a wild district. There never was such a
+fellow to rough it. And as for Molly, well, now, really, if he happened
+to take a fancy to her, and if she happened to like him, I wouldn't bosh
+the business, if I were you, grandmother. Take my word for it, Molly
+might do worse.'</p>
+
+<p>'Of course. She might marry a chimney sweep. There is no answering for a
+girl of her erratic nature. She is silly enough and romantic enough for
+anything; but I shall not countenance her if she wants to throw herself
+away on a person without prospects or connections; and I look to you,
+Maulevrier, to take care of her, now that I am a wretched log chained to
+this room.'</p>
+
+<p>'You may rely upon me, grandmother, Molly shall come to no harm, if I
+can help it.'</p>
+
+<p>'Thank you,' said her ladyship, touching her bell twice.</p>
+
+<p>The two clear silvery strokes were a summons for Halcott, the maid, who
+appeared immediately.</p>
+
+<p>'Tell Mrs. Power to get his lordship's room ready immediately, and to
+give Mr. Hammond the room he had last summer,' said Lady Maulevrier,
+with a sigh of resignation.</p>
+
+<p>While Maulevrier was with his grandmother John Hammond was smoking a
+solitary cigar on the terrace, contemplating the mountain landscape in
+its cold March greyness, and wondering very much to find himself again
+at Fellside. He had gone forth from that house full of passionate
+indignation, shaking off the dust from his feet, sternly resolved never
+again to cross the threshold of that fateful cave, where he had met his
+cold-hearted Circe. And now, because Circe was safe out of the way, he
+had come back to the cavern; and he was feeling all the pain that a man
+feels who beholds again the scene of a great past sorrow.</p>
+
+<p>Was this the old love and the old pain again, he wondered, or was it
+only the sharp thrust of a bitter memory? He had believed himself cured
+of his useless love—a great and noble love, wasted on a smaller nature
+than his own. He had thought that because his eyes were opened, and he
+understood the character of the girl he loved, his cure must needs be
+complete. Yet now, face to face with the well-remembered landscape,
+looking down upon that dull grey lake which he had seen smiling in the
+sunshine, he began to doubt the completeness of his cure. He recalled
+the lovely face, the graceful form, the sweet, low voice—the perfection
+of gracious womanhood, manner, dress, movements, tones, smiles, all
+faultless; and in the absence of that one figure, it seemed to him as if
+he had come back to a tenantless, dismantled house, where there was
+nothing that made life worth living.</p>
+
+<p>The red sun went down—a fierce and lurid face that seemed to scowl
+through the grey—and Mr. Hammond felt that it was time to arouse
+himself from gloomy meditation and go in and dress for dinner.
+Maulevrier's valet was to arrive by the coach with the heavier part of
+the luggage, and Maulevrier's valet did that very small portion of
+valeting which was ever required by Mr. Hammond. A man who has worked at
+a forge in the backwoods is not likely to be finicking in his ways, or
+dependent upon servants for looking after his raiment.</p>
+
+<p>Despite Mr. Hammond's gloomy memories of past joys and disillusions, he
+contrived to make himself very agreeable, by-and-by, at dinner, and in
+the drawing-room after dinner, and the evening was altogether gay and
+sprightly. Maulevrier was in high spirits, full of his Parisian
+experiences, and talking slang as glibly as a student of the Quartier
+Latin. He would talk nothing but French, protesting that he had almost
+forgotten his native tongue, and his French was the language of
+Larchey's Dictionary of Argot, in which nothing is called by its right
+name. Mary was enchanted with this new vocabulary, and wanted to have
+every word explained to her; but Maulevrier confessed that there was a
+good deal that was unexplainable.</p>
+
+<p>The evening was much livelier than those summer evenings when the
+dowager and Lady Lesbia were present. There was something less of
+refinement, perhaps, and Fr&auml;ulein remonstrated now and then about some
+small violation of the unwritten laws of 'Anstand,' but there was more
+mirth. Maulevrier felt for the first time as if he were master at
+Fellside. They all went to the billiard room soon after dinner, and
+Fr&auml;ulein and Mary sat by the fire looking on, while the two young men
+played. In such an evening there was no time for bitter memories: and
+John Hammond was surprised to find how little he had missed that
+enchantress whose absence had made the house seem desolate to him when
+he re-entered it.</p>
+
+<p>He was tired with his journey and the varying emotions of the day, for
+it was not without strong emotion that he had consented to return to
+Fellside—and he slept soundly for the earlier part of the night. But he
+had trained himself long ago to do with a very moderate portion of
+sleep, and he was up and dressed while the dawn was still slowly
+creeping along the edges of the hills. He went quietly down to the hall,
+took one of the bamboos from a collection of canes and mountain sticks,
+and set out upon a morning ramble over the snowy slopes. The snow
+showers of yesterday had only sprinkled the greensward upon the lower
+ground, but in the upper regions the winter snows still lingered, giving
+an Alpine character to the landscape.</p>
+
+<p>John Hammond was too experienced a mountaineer to be deterred by a
+little snow. He went up Silver Howe, and from the rugged breast of the
+mountain saw the sun leap up from amidst a chaos of hill and crag, in
+all his majesty, while the grey mists of night slowly floated up from
+the valley that had lain hidden below them, and Grasmere Lake sparkled
+and flashed in the light of the newly-risen sun.</p>
+
+<p>The church clock was striking eight as Hammond came at a brisk pace down
+to the valley. There was still an hour before breakfast, so he took a
+circuitous path to Fellside, and descended upon the house from the Fell,
+as he had done that summer morning when he saw James Steadman sauntering
+about in his garden.</p>
+
+<p>Within about a quarter of a mile of Lady Maulevrier's shrubberies Mr.
+Hammond encountered a pedestrian, who, like himself, was evidently
+taking a constitutional ramble in the morning air, but on a much less
+extended scale, for this person did not look capable of going far
+afield.</p>
+
+<p>He was an old man, something under middle height, but looking as if he
+had once been taller; for his shoulders were much bent, and his head was
+sunk on his chest. His whole form looked wasted and shrunken, and John
+Hammond thought he had never seen so old a man—or at any rate any man
+who was so deeply marked with all the signs of extreme age; and yet in
+the backwoods of America he had met ancient settlers who remembered
+Franklin, and who had been boys when the battle of Bunker's Hill was
+fresh in the memory of their fathers and mothers.</p>
+
+<p>The little old man was clad in a thick grey overcoat of some shaggy kind
+of cloth which looked like homespun. He wore a felt hat, and carried a
+thick oak stick, and there was nothing in his appearance to indicate
+that he belonged to any higher grade than that of the shepherds and
+guides with whom Hammond had made himself familiar during his previous
+visit. And yet there was something distinctive about the man, Hammond
+thought, something wild and uncanny, which made him unlike any of those
+hale and hearty-looking dalesmen on whom old age sate so lightly. No,
+John Hammond could not fancy this man, with his pallid countenance and
+pale crafty eyes, to be of the same race as those rugged and
+honest-looking descendants of the Norsemen.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps it was the man's exceeding age, for John Hammond made up his
+mind that he must be a centenarian, which gave him so strange and unholy
+an air. He had the aspect of a man who had been buried and brought back
+to life again.</p>
+
+<p>So might look one of those Indian Fakirs who have the power to suspend life
+by some mysterious process, and to lie in the darkness of the grave for a
+given period, and then at their own will to resume the functions of the
+living. His long white hair fell upon the collar of his grey coat, and
+would have given him a patriarchal appearance had the face possessed the
+dignity of age: but it was a countenance without dignity, a face deeply
+scored with the lines of evil passions and guilty memories—the face of
+the vulture, with a touch of the ferret—altogether a most unpleasant
+face, Mr. Hammond thought.</p>
+
+<p>And yet there was a kind of fascination about that bent and shrunken
+figure, those feeble movements, and shuffling gait. John Hammond turned
+to look after the old man when he had passed him, and stood to watch him
+as he went slowly up the Fell, plant his crutch stick upon the ground
+before every footstep, as if it were a third leg, and more serviceable
+than either of the other two.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Hammond watched him for two or three minutes, but, as the old man's
+movements had an automatic regularity, the occupation soon palled, and
+he turned and walked toward Fellside. A few yards nearer the grounds he
+met James Steadman, walking briskly, and smoking his morning pipe.</p>
+
+<p>'You are out early this morning,' said Hammond, by way of civility.</p>
+
+<p>'I am always pretty early, sir. I like a mouthful of morning air.'</p>
+
+<p>'So do I. By-the-bye, can you tell me anything about a queer-looking old
+man I passed just now a little higher up the Fell? Such an old, old man,
+with long white hair.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, sir. I believe I know him.'</p>
+
+<p>'Who is he? Does he live in Grasmere?'</p>
+
+<p>Steadman looked puzzled.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, you see, sir, your description might apply to a good many; but if
+it's the man I think you mean he lives in one of the cottages behind the
+church. Old Barlow, they call him.'</p>
+
+<p>'There can't be two such men—he must be at least a century old. If any
+one told me he were a hundred and twenty I shouldn't be inclined to
+doubt the fact. I never saw such a shrivelled, wrinkled visage,
+bloodless, too, as if the poor old wretch never felt your fresh mountain
+air upon his hollow cheeks. A dreadful face. It will haunt me for a
+month.'</p>
+
+<p>'It must be old Barlow,' replied Steadman. 'Good day, sir.'</p>
+
+<p>He walked on with his swinging step, and at such a pace that he was up
+the side of the Fell and close upon old Barlow's heels when Hammond
+turned to look after him five minutes later.</p>
+
+<p>'There's a man who shows few traces of age, at any rate,' thought
+Hammond. 'Yet her ladyship told me that he is over seventy.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XIX"></a><h2>CHAPTER XIX.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE OLD MAN ON THE FELL.</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>Having made up his mind to stay at Fellside until after Easter,
+Maulevrier settled down very quietly—for him. He rode a good deal,
+fished a little, looked after his dogs, played billiards, made a devout
+appearance in the big square pew at St. Oswald's on Sunday mornings, and
+behaved altogether as a reformed character. Even his grandmother was
+fain to admit that Maulevrier was improved, and that Mr. Hammond's
+influence upon him must be exercised for good and not for evil.</p>
+
+<p>'I plunged awfully last year, and the year before that,' said
+Maulevrier, sitting at tea in her ladyship's morning room one afternoon
+about a week after his return, when she had expressed her gracious
+desire that the two young men should take tea with her.</p>
+
+<p>Mary was in charge of the tea-pot and brass kettle, and looked as
+radiant and as fresh as a summer morning. A regular Gainsborough girl,
+Hammond called her, when he praised her to her brother; a true English
+beauty, unsophisticated, a little rustic, but full of youthful
+sweetness.</p>
+
+<p>'You see, I didn't know what a racing stable meant,' continued
+Maulevrier, mildly apologetic—'in fact, I thought it was an easy way
+for a nobleman to make as good a living as your City swells, with their
+soft goods or their Brummagem ware, a respectable trade for a gentleman
+to engage in. And it was only when I was half ruined that I began to
+understand the business; and as soon as I did understand it I made up my
+mind to get out of it; and I am happy to say that I sold the very last
+of my stud in February, and Tony Lumpkin is his own man again. So you
+may welcome the prodigal grandson, and order the fatted calf to be
+slain, grandmother!'</p>
+
+<p>Lady Maulevrier stretched out her left hand to him, and the young man
+bent over it and kissed it affectionately. He felt really touched by her
+misfortunes, and was fonder of her than he had ever been before. She had
+been somewhat hard with him in his boyhood, but she had always cared for
+his dignity and protected his interests: and, after all, she was a noble
+old woman, a grandmother of whom a man might be justly proud. He thought
+of the painted harridans, the bare-shouldered skeletons, whom some of
+his young friends were obliged to own in the same capacity, and he was
+thankful that he could reverence his father's mother.</p>
+
+<p>'That is the best news I have heard for a long time, Maulevrier,' said
+her ladyship graciously; 'better medicine for my nerves than any of Mr.
+Horton's preparations. If Mr. Hammond's advice has influenced you to get
+rid of your stable I am deeply grateful to Mr. Hammond.'</p>
+
+<p>Hammond smiled as he sipped his tea, sitting close to Mary's tray, ready
+to fly to her assistance on the instant should the brazen kettle become
+troublesome. It had a threatening way of hissing and bubbling over its
+spirit lamp.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, you have no idea what a fellow Hammond is to lecture,' answered
+Maulevrier. 'He is a tremendous Radical, and he thinks that every young
+man in my position ought to be a reformer, and devote the greater part
+of his time and trouble to turning out the dirty corners of the world,
+upsetting those poor dear families who like to pig together in one room,
+ordering all the children off to school, marrying the fathers and
+mothers, thrusting himself between free labour and free beer, and
+interfering with the liberty of the subject in every direction.'</p>
+
+<p>'All that may sound like Radicalism, but I think it is the true
+Conservatism, and that every young man ought to do as much, if he wants
+this timeworn old country to maintain its power and prosperity,'
+answered Lady Maulevrier, with an approving glance at John Hammond's
+thoughtful face.</p>
+
+<p>'Right you are, grandmother,' returned Maulevrier, 'and I believe
+Hammond calls himself a Conservative, and means to vote with the
+Conservatives.'</p>
+
+<p>Means to vote! An idle phrase, surely, thought her ladyship, where the
+young man's chance of getting into Parliament was so remote.</p>
+
+<p>That afternoon tea in Lady Maulevrier's room was almost as cheerful as
+the tea-drinkings in the drawing-room, unrestrained by her ladyship's
+presence. She was pleased with her grandson's conduct, and was therefore
+inclined to be friendly to his friend. She could see an improvement in
+Mary, too. The girl was more feminine, more subdued, graver, sweeter;
+more like that ideal woman of Wordsworth's, whose image embodies all
+that is purest and fairest in womanhood.</p>
+
+<p>Mary had not forgotten that unlucky story about the fox-hunt, and ever
+since Hammond's return she had been as it were on her best behaviour,
+refraining from her races with the terriers, and holding herself aloof
+from Maulevrier's masculine pursuits. She sheltered herself a good deal
+under the Fr&auml;ulein's substantial wing, and took care never to intrude
+herself upon the amusements of her brother and his friend. She was not
+one of those young women who think a brother's presence an excuse for a
+perpetual <i>tête-à-tête</i> with a young man. Yet when Maulevrier came in
+quest of her, and entreated her to join them in a ramble, she was not
+too prudish to refuse the pleasure she so thoroughly enjoyed. But
+afternoon tea was her privileged hour—the time at which she wore her
+prettiest frock, and forgot to regret her inferiority to Lesbia in all
+the graces of womanhood.</p>
+
+<p>One afternoon, when they had all three walked to Easedale Tarn, and were
+coming back by the side of the force, picking their way among the grey
+stones and the narrow threads of silvery water, it suddenly occurred to
+Hammond to ask Mary about that queer old man he had seen on the Fell
+nearly a fortnight before. He had often thought of making the inquiry
+when he was away from Mary, but had always forgotten the thing when he
+was with her. Indeed, Mary had a wonderful knack of making him forget
+everything but herself.</p>
+
+<p>'You seem to know every creature in Grasmere, down to the two-year-old
+babies,' said Hammond, Mary having just stopped to converse with an
+infantine group, straggling and struggling over the boulders. 'Pray, do
+you happen to know a man called Barlow, a very old man?'</p>
+
+<p>'Old Sam Barlow,' exclaimed Mary; 'why, of course I know him.'</p>
+
+<p>She said it as if he were a near relative, and the question palpably
+absurd.</p>
+
+<p>'He is an old man, a hundred, at least, I should think,' said Hammond.</p>
+
+<p>'Poor old Sam, not much on the wrong side of eighty. I go to see him
+every week, and take him his week's tobacco, poor old dear. It is his
+only comfort.'</p>
+
+<p>'Is it?' asked Hammond. 'I should have doubted his having so humanising
+a taste as tobacco. He looks too evil a creature ever to have yielded to
+the softening influence of a pipe.'</p>
+
+<p>'An evil creature! What, old Sam? Why he is the most genial old thing,
+and as cheery—loves to hear the newspaper read to him—the murders and
+railway accidents. He doesn't care for politics. Everybody likes old Sam
+Barlow.'</p>
+
+<p>'I fancy the Grasmere idea of reverend and amiable age must be strictly
+local. I can only say that I never saw a more unholy countenance.'</p>
+
+<p>'You must have been dreaming when you saw him,' said Mary. 'Where did
+you meet him?'</p>
+
+<p>'On the Fell, about a quarter of a mile from the shrubbery gate.'</p>
+
+<p>'<i>Did</i> you? I shouldn't have thought he could have got so far. I've a
+good mind to take you to see him, this very afternoon, before we go
+home.'</p>
+
+<p>'Do,' exclaimed Hammond, 'I should like it immensely. I thought him a
+hateful-looking old person; but there was something so thoroughly
+uncanny about him that he exercised an absolute fascination upon me: he
+magnetised me, I think, as the green-eyed cat magnetises the bird. I
+have been positively longing to see him again. He is a kind of human
+monster, and I hope some one will have a big bottle made ready for him
+and preserve him in spirits when he dies.'</p>
+
+<p>'What a horrid idea! No, sir, dear old Barlow shall lie beside the
+Rotha, under the trees Wordsworth planted. He is such a man as
+Wordsworth would have loved.'</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Hammond shrugged his shoulders, and said no more. Mary's little
+vehement ways, her enthusiasm, her love of that valley, which might be
+called her native place, albeit her eyes had opened upon heaven's light
+far away, her humility, were all very delightful in their way. She was
+not a perfect beauty, like Lesbia; but she was a fresh, pure-minded
+English girl, frank as the day, and if he had had a brother he would
+have recommended that brother to choose just such a girl for his wife.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Samuel Barlow occupied a little old cottage, which seemed to consist
+chiefly of a gable end and a chimney stack, in that cluster of dwellings
+behind St. Oswald's church, which was once known as the Kirk Town.
+Visitors went downstairs to get to Mr. Barlow's ground-floor, for the
+influence of time and advancing civilisation had raised the pathway in
+front of Mr. Barlow's cottage until his parlour had become of a
+cellar-like aspect. Yet it was a very nice little parlour when one got
+down to it, and it enjoyed winter and summer a perpetual twilight, since
+the light that crept through the leaded casement was tempered by a
+screen of flowerpots, which were old Barlow's particular care. There
+were no finer geraniums in all Grasmere than Barlow's, no bigger
+carnations or picotees, asters or arums.</p>
+
+<p>It was about five o'clock in the March afternoon, when Mary ushered John
+Hammond into Mr. Barlow's dwelling, and, in the dim glow of a cheery
+little fire and the faint light that filtered through the screen of
+geranium leaves, the visitor looked for a moment or so doubtfully at the
+owner of the cottage. But only for a moment. Those bright blue eyes and
+apple cheeks, that benevolent expression, bore no likeness to the
+strange old man he had seen on the Fell. Mr. Barlow was toothless and
+nut-cracker like of outline; he was thin and shrunken, and bent with the
+burden of long years, but his healthy visage had none of those deep
+lines, those cross markings and hollows which made the pallid
+countenance of that other old man as ghastly as would be the abstract
+idea of life's last stage embodied by the bitter pencil of a Hogarth.</p>
+
+<p>'I have brought a gentleman from London to see you, Sam,' said Mary. 'He
+fancied he met you on the Fell the other morning.'</p>
+
+<p>Barlow rose and quavered a cheery welcome, but protested against the
+idea of his having got so far as the Fell.</p>
+
+<p>'With my blessed rheumatics, you know it isn't in me, Lady Mary. I shall
+never get no further than the churchyard; but I likes to sit on the wall
+hard by Wordsworth's tomb in a warm afternoon, and to see the folks pass
+over the bridge; and I can potter about looking after my flowers, I can.
+But it would be a dull life, now the poor old missus is gone and the
+bairns all out at service, if it wasn't for some one dropping in to have
+a chat, or read me a bit of the news sometimes. And there isn't anybody
+in Grasmere, gentle or simple, that's kinder to me than you, Lady Mary.
+Lord bless you, I do look forward to my newspaper. Any more of them
+dreadful smashes?'</p>
+
+<p>'No, Sam, thank Heaven, there have been no railway accidents.'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, we shall have 'em in August and September,' said the old man,
+cheerily. 'They're bound to come then. There's a time for all things,
+as Solomon says. When the season comes t'smashes all coom. And no more
+of these mysterious murders, I suppose, which baffle t'police and keep
+me awake o' nights thinking of 'em.'</p>
+
+<p>'Surely you do not take delight in murder, Mr. Barlow?' said Hammond.</p>
+
+<p>'No, sir, I do not wish my fellow-creatures to mak' awa' wi' each other;
+but if there is a murder going in the papers I like to get the benefit
+of it. I like to sit in front of my fire of an evening and wonder about
+it while I smoke my pipe, and fancy I can see the murderer hiding in a
+garret in an out-of-the-way alley, or as a stowaway on board a gert
+ship, or as a miner deep down in a coalpit, and never thinking that even
+there t'police can track him. Did you ever hear tell o' Mr. de Quincey,
+sir?'</p>
+
+<p>'I believe I have read every line he ever wrote.'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, you should have heard him talk about murders. It would have made
+you dream queer dreams, just as he did. He lived for years in the white
+cottage that Wordsworth once lived in, just behind the street yonder—a
+nice, neat, lile gentleman, in a houseful of books. I've had many a talk
+with him when I was a young man.'</p>
+
+<p>'And how old may you be now, Mr. Barlow?'</p>
+
+<p>'Getting on for eighty four, sir.'</p>
+
+<p>'But you are not the oldest man in Grasmere, I should say, by twenty
+years?'</p>
+
+<p>'I don't think there's many much older than me, sir.'</p>
+
+<p>'The man I saw on the Fell looked at least a hundred. I wish you could
+tell me who he is; I feel a morbid curiosity about him.'</p>
+
+<p>He went on to describe the old man in the grey coat, as minutely as he
+could, dwelling on every characteristic of that singular-looking old
+person; but Samuel Barlow could not identify the description with any
+one in Grasmere. Yet a man of that age, seen walking on the hill-side at
+eight in the morning, could hardly have come from far afield.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XX"></a><h2>CHAPTER XX.</h2>
+
+<h3>LADY MAULEVRIER'S LETTER-BAG.</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>Although Maulevrier had assured his grandmother that John Hammond would
+take flight at the first warning of Lesbia's return, Lady Maulevrier's
+dread of any meeting between her granddaughter and that ineligible lover
+determined her in making such arrangements as should banish Lesbia from
+Fellside, so long as there seemed the slightest danger of such a
+meeting. She knew that Lesbia had loved her fortuneless suitor; and she
+did not know that the wound was cured, even by a season in the
+little-great world of Cannes. Now that she, the ruler of that
+household, was a helpless captive in her own apartments, she felt that
+Lesbia at Fellside would be her own mistress, and hemmed round with the
+dangers that beset richly-dowered beauty and inexperienced youth.</p>
+
+<p>John Hammond might be playing a very deep game, perhaps assisted by
+Maulevrier. He might ostensibly leave Fellside before Lesbia's return,
+yet lurk in the neighbourhood, and contrive to meet her every day. If
+Maulevrier encouraged this folly, they might be married and over the
+border, before her ladyship—fettered, impotent as she was—could
+interfere.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Maulevrier felt that Georgie Kirkbank was her strong rock. So long
+as Lesbia was under that astute veteran's wing there could be no danger.
+In that embodied essence of worldliness and diplomacy, there was an
+ever-present defence from all temptations that spring from romance and
+youthful impulses. It was a bitter thing, perhaps, to steep a young and
+pure soul in such an atmosphere, to harden a fresh young nature in the
+fiery crucible of fashionable life; but Lady Maulevrier believed that
+the end would sanctify the means. Lesbia, once married to a worthy man,
+such a man as Lord Hartfield, for instance, would soon rise to a higher
+level than that Belgravian swamp over which the malarian vapours of
+falsehood, and slander, and self-seeking, and prurient imaginings hang
+dense and thick. She would rise to the loftier table-land of that really
+great world which governs and admonishes the ruck of mankind by examples
+of noble deeds and noble thoughts; the world of statesmen, and soldiers,
+and thinkers, and reformers; the salt wherewithal society is salted.</p>
+
+<p>But while Lesbia was treading the tortuous mazes of fashion, it was well
+for her to be guided and guarded by such an old campaigner as Lady
+Kirkbank, a woman who, in the language of her friends, 'knew the ropes.'</p>
+
+<p>Lesbia's last letter had been to the effect that she was to go back to
+London with the Kirkbanks directly after Easter, and that directly they
+arrived she would set off with her maid for Fellside, to spend a week or
+a fortnight with her dearest grandmother, before going back to Arlington
+Street for the May campaign.</p>
+
+<p>'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.'</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>However, the letters had to be written, so Mary was told to open her
+desk and begin.</p>
+
+<p>The letter to Lesbia ran thus:—</p>
+
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">'My dearest Child,</span><br>
+
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">'This is a world in which our brightest day-dreams generally end in</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">mere dreaming. For years past I have cherished the hope of</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">presenting you to your sovereign, to whom I was presented six and</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">forty years ago, when she was so fair and girlish a creature that</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">she seemed to me more like a queen in a fairy tale than the actual</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">ruler of a great country. I have beguiled my monotonous days with</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">thoughts of the time when I should return to the great world, full</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">of pride and delight in showing old friends what a sweet flower I</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">had reared in my mountain home; but, alas, Lesbia, it may not be.</span><br>
+
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">'Fate has willed otherwise. The maimed hand does not recover,</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">although Horton is very clever, and thoroughly understands my case.</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">I am not ill, I am not in danger; so you need feel no anxiety about</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">me; but I am a cripple; and I am likely to remain a cripple for</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">months; so the idea of a London season this year is hopeless.</span><br>
+
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">'Now, as you have in a manner made your <i>d&eacute;but</i> at Cannes, it would</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">never do to bury you here for another year. You complained of the</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">dullness last summer; but you would find Fellside much duller now</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">that you have tasted the elixir of life. No, my dear love, it will</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">be well for you to be presented, as Lady Kirkbank proposes, at the</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">first drawing-room after Easter; and Lady Kirkbank will have to</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">present you. She will be pleased to do this, I know, for her letters</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">are full of enthusiasm about you. And, after all, I do not think you</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">will lose by the exchange. Clever as I think myself, I fear I should</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">find myself sorely at fault in the society of to-day. All things are</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">changed: opinions, manners, creeds, morals even. Acts that were</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">crimes in my day are now venial errors—opinions that were</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">scandalous are now the mark of &quot;advanced thought.&quot; I should be too</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">formal for this easy-going age, should be ridiculed as old-fashioned</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">and narrow-minded, should put you to the blush a dozen times a day</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">by my prejudices and opinions.</span><br>
+
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">'It is very good of you to think of travelling so long a distance to</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">see me; and I should love to look at your sweet face, and hear you</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">describe your new experiences; but I could not allow you to travel</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">with only the protection of a maid; and there are many reasons why I</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">think it better to defer the meeting till the end of the season,</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">when Lady Kirkbank will bring my treasure back to me, eager to tell</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">me the history of all the hearts she has broken.'</span><br>
+
+<p>The dowager's letter to Lady Kirkbank was brief and business-like. She
+could only hope that her old friend Georgie, whose acuteness she knew of
+old, would divine her feelings and her wishes, without being explicitly
+told what they were.</p>
+
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">'My dear Georgie,</span><br>
+
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">'I am too ill to leave this house; indeed I doubt if I shall ever</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">leave it till I am taken away in my coffin; but please say nothing</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">to alarm Lesbia. Indeed, there is no ground for fear, as I am not</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">dangerously ill, and may drag out an imprisonment of long years</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">before the coffin comes to fetch me. There are reasons, which you</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">will understand, why Lesbia should not come here till after the</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">season; so please keep her in Arlington Street, and occupy her mind</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">as much as you can with the preparations for her first campaign. I</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">give you <i>carte blanche</i>. If Carson is still in business I should</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">like her to make my girl's gowns; but you must please yourself in</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">this matter, as it is quite possible that Carson is a little behind</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">the times.</span><br>
+
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">'I must ask you to present my darling, and to deal with her exactly</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">as if she were a daughter of your own. I think you know all my views</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">and hopes about her; and I feel that I can trust to your friendship</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">in this my day of need. The dream of my life has been to launch her</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">myself, and direct her every step in the mazes of town life; but</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">that dream is over. I have kept age and infirmity at a distance,</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">have even forgotten that the years were going by; and now I find</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">myself an old woman all at once, and my golden dream has vanished.'</span><br>
+
+<p>Lady Kirkbank's reply came by return of post, and happily this gushing
+epistle had not to be submitted to Mary's eye.</p>
+
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">'My dearest Di,</span><br>
+
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">'My heart positively bleeds for you. What is the matter with your</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">hand, that you talk of being a life-long prisoner to your room? Pray</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">send for Paget or Erichsen, and have yourself put right at once. No</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">doubt that local simpleton is making a mess of your case. Perhaps</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">while he is dabbing with lint and lotions the real remedy is the</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">knife. I am sure amputation would be less melancholy than the</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">despondent state of feeling which you are now suffering. If any limb</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">of mine went wrong, I should say to the surgeon, &quot;Cut it off, and</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">patch up the stump in your best style; I give you a fortnight, and</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">at the end of that time I expect to be going to parties again.&quot; Life</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">is not long enough for dawdling surgery.</span><br>
+
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">'As regards Lesbia, I can only say that I adore her, and I am</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">enchanted at the idea that I am to run her myself. I intend her to</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">be <i>the</i> beauty of the season—not <i>one of the loveliest</i></span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>debutantes</i>, or any rot of that kind—but just the girl whom</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">everybody will be crazy about. There shall be a mob wherever she</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">appears, Di, I promise you that. There is no one in London who can</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">work a thing of that kind better than your humble servant. And when</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">once the girl is the talk of the town, all the rest is easy. She can</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">choose for herself among the very best men in society. Offers will</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">pour in as thickly as circulars from undertakers and mourning</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">warehouses after a death.</span><br>
+
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">'Lesbia is so cool-headed and sensible that I have not the least</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">doubt of her success. With an impulsive or romantic girl there is</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">always the fear of a <i>fiasco</i>. But this sweet child of yours has</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">been well brought up, and knows her own value. She behaved like a</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">queen here, where I need not tell you society is just a little</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">mixed; though, of course, we only cultivate our own set. Your heart</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">would swell with pride if you could see the way she puts down men</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">who are not quite good style; and the ease with which she crushes</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">those odious American girls, with their fine complexions and loud</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">manners.</span><br>
+
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">'Be assured that I shall guard her as the apple of my eye, and that</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">the detrimental who circumvents me will be a very Satan of schemers.</span><br>
+
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">'I can but smile at your mention of Carson, whose gowns used to fit</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">us so well in our girlish days, and whose bills seem moderate</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">compared with the exorbitant accounts I get now.</span><br>
+
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">'Carson has long been forgotten, my dear soul, gone with the snows</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">of last year. A long procession of fashionable French dressmakers</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">has passed across the stage since her time, like the phantom kings</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">in Macbeth; and now the last rage is to have our gowns made by an</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Englishman who works for the Princess, and who gives himself most</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">insufferable airs, or an Irishwoman who is employed by all the best</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">actresses. It is to the latter, Kate Kearney, I shall entrust our</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">sweet Lesbia's toilettes.'</span><br>
+
+<p>The same post brought a loving letter from Lesbia, full of regret at not
+being allowed to go down to Fellside, and yet full of delight at the
+prospect of her first season.</p>
+
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">'Lady Kirkbank and I have been discussing my court dress,' she wrote,</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">'and we have decided upon a white cut-velvet train, with a border of</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">ostrich feathers, over a satin petticoat embroidered with seed</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">pearl. It will be expensive, but we know you will not mind that.</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Lady Kirkbank takes the idea from the costume Buckingham wore at the</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Louvre the first time he met Anne of Austria. Isn't that clever of</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">her? She is not a deep thinker like you; is horribly ignorant of</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">science, metaphysics, poetry even. She asked me one day who Plato</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">was, and whether he took his name from the battle of Platoea; and</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">she says she never could understand why people make a fuss about</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Shakespeare; but she has read all the secret histories and memoirs</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">that ever were written, and knows all the ins and outs of court life</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">and high life for the last three hundred years; and there is not a</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">person in the peerage whose family history she has not at her</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">fingers' ends, except my grandfather. When I asked her to tell me</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">all about Lord Maulevrier and his achievements as Governor of</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Madras, she had not a word to say. So, perhaps, she draws upon her</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">invention a little in talking about other people, and felt herself</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">restrained when she came to speak of my grandfather.'</span><br>
+
+<p>This passage in Lesbia's letter affected Lady Maulevrier as if a
+scorpion had wriggled from underneath the sheet of paper. She folded the
+letter, and laid it in the satin-lined box on her table, with a deep
+sigh.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, she is in the world now, and she will ask questions. I have never
+warned her against pronouncing her grandfather's name. There are some
+who will not be so kind as Georgie Kirkbank; some, perhaps, who will
+delight in humiliating her, and who will tell her the worst that can be
+told. My only hope is that she will make a great marriage, and speedily.
+Once the wife of a man with a high place in the world, worldlings will
+be too wise to wound her by telling her that her grandfather was an
+unconvicted felon.'</p>
+
+<p>The die was cast. Lady Maulevrier might dread the hazard of evil
+tongues, of slanderous memories; but she could not recall her consent to
+Lesbia's <i>d&eacute;but</i>. The girl was already launched; she had been seen and
+admired. The next stage in her career must be to be wooed and won by a
+worthy wooer.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XXI"></a><h2>CHAPTER XXI.</h2>
+
+<h3>ON THE DARK BROW OF HELVELLYN.</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>While these plans were being settled, and while Lesbia's future was the
+all-absorbing subject of Lady Maulevrier's thoughts, Mary contrived to
+be happier than she had ever been in her life before. It was happiness
+that grew and strengthened with every day; and yet there was no obvious
+reason for this deep joy. Her life ran in the same familiar groove. She
+walked and rode on the old pathways; she rowed on the lake she had known
+from babyhood; she visited her cottagers, and taught in the village
+school, just the same as of old. The change was only that she was no
+longer alone; and of late the solitude of her life, the ever-present
+consciousness that nobody shared her pleasures or sympathised with her
+upon any point, had weighed upon her like an actual burden. Now she had
+Maulevrier, who was always kind, who understood and shared almost all
+her tastes, and Maulevrier's friend, who, although not given to saying
+smooth things, seemed warmly interested in her pursuits and opinions. He
+encouraged her to talk, although he generally took the opposite side in
+every argument; and she no longer felt oppressed or irritated by the
+idea that he despised her.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, although he never flattered or even praised her, Mr. Hammond let
+her see that he liked her society. She had gone out of her way to avoid
+him, very fearful lest he should think her bold or masculine; but he had
+taken pains to frustrate all her efforts in that direction; he had
+refused to go upon excursions which she could not share. 'Lady Mary must
+come with us,' he said, when they were planning a morning's ramble. Thus
+it happened that Mary was his guide and companion in all his walks, and
+roamed with him bamboo in hand, over every one of those mountainous
+paths she knew and loved so well. Distance was as nothing to
+them—sometimes a boat helped them, and they went over wintry Windermere
+to climb the picturesque heights above Bowness. Sometimes they took
+ponies, and a groom, and left their steeds to perform the wilder part of
+the way on foot. In this wise John Hammond saw all that was to be seen
+within a day's journey of Grasmere, except the top of Helvellyn.
+Maulevrier had shirked the expedition, had always put off Mary and Mr.
+Hammond when they proposed it. The season was not advanced enough—the
+rugged pathway by the Tongue Ghyll would be as slippery as glass—no
+pony could get up there in such weather.</p>
+
+<p>'We have not had any frost to speak of for the last fortnight,' pleaded
+Mary, who was particularly anxious to do the honours of Helvellyn, as
+the real lion of the neighbourhood.</p>
+
+<p>'What a simpleton you are, Molly!' cried Maulevrier. 'Do you suppose
+because there is no frost in your grandmother's garden—and if you were
+to ask Staples about his peaches he would tell you a very different
+story—that there's a tropical atmosphere on Dolly Waggon Pike? Why, I'd
+wager the ice on Grisdale Tarn is thick enough for skating. Helvellyn
+won't run away, child. You and Hammond can dance the Highland
+Schottische on Striding Edge in June, if you like.'</p>
+
+<p>'Mr. Hammond won't be here in June,' said Mary.</p>
+
+<p>'Who knows?—the train service is pretty fair between London and
+Windermere. Hammond and I would think nothing of putting ourselves in
+the mail on a Friday night, and coming down to spend Saturday and Sunday
+with you—if you are good.'</p>
+
+<p>There came a sunny morning soon after Easter which seemed mild enough
+for June; and when Hammond suggested that this was the very day for
+Helvellyn, Maulevrier had not a word to say against the truth of that
+proposition. The weather had been exceptionally warm for the last week,
+and they had played tennis and sat in the garden just as if it had been
+actually summer. Patches of snow might still linger on the crests of the
+hills—but the approach to those bleak heights could hardly be glacial.</p>
+
+<p>Mary clasped her hands delightedly.</p>
+
+<p>'Dear old Maulevrier!' she exclaimed, 'you are always good to me. And
+now I shall be able to show you the Red Tarn, the highest pool of water
+in England,' she said, turning to Hammond. 'And you will see Windermere
+winding like a silvery serpent between the hills, and Grasmere shining
+like a jewel in the depth of the valley, and the sea glittering like a
+line of white light between the edges of earth and heaven, and the dark
+Scotch hills like couchant lions far away to the north.'</p>
+
+<p>'That is to say these things are all supposed to be on view from the top
+of the mountain; but as a peculiar and altogether exceptional state of
+the atmosphere is essential to their being seen, I need not tell you
+that they are rarely visible,' said Maulevrier. 'You are talking to old
+mountaineers, Molly. Hammond has done Cotapaxi and had his little
+clamber on the equatorial Andes, and I—well, child, I have done my
+Righi, and I have always found the boasted panorama enveloped in dense
+fog.'</p>
+
+<p>'It won't be foggy to-day,' said Mary. 'Shall we do the whole thing on
+foot, or shall I order the ponies?'</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Hammond inquired the distance up and down, and being told that it
+involved only a matter of eight miles, decided upon walking.</p>
+
+<p>'I'll walk, and lead your pony,' he said to Mary, but Mary declared
+herself quite capable of going on foot, so the ponies were dispensed
+with as a possible encumbrance.</p>
+
+<p>This was planned and discussed in the garden before breakfast. Fr&auml;ulein
+was told that Mary was going for a long walk with her brother and Mr.
+Hammond; a walk which might last over the usual luncheon hour; so
+Fr&auml;ulein was not to wait luncheon. Mary went to her grandmother's room
+to pay her duty visit. There were no letters for her to write that
+morning, so she was perfectly free.</p>
+
+<p>The three pedestrians started an hour after breakfast, in light marching
+order. The two young men wore their Argyleshire shooting
+clothes—homespun knickerbockers and jackets, thick-ribbed hose knitted
+by Highland lasses in Inverness. They carried a couple of hunting flasks
+filled with claret, and a couple of sandwich boxes, and that was all.
+Mary wore her substantial tailor-gown of olive tweed, and a little toque
+to match, with a silver mounted grouse-claw for her only ornament.</p>
+
+<p>It was a delicious morning, the air fresh and sweet, the sun comfortably
+warm, a little too warm, perhaps, presently, when they had trodden the
+narrow path by the Tongue Ghyll, and were beginning to wind slowly
+upwards over rough boulders and last year's bracken, tough and brown and
+tangled, towards that rugged wall of earth and stone tufted with rank
+grasses, which calls itself Dolly Waggon Pike. Here they all came to a
+stand-still, and wiped the dews of honest labour from their foreheads;
+and here Maulevrier flung himself down upon a big boulder, with the
+soles of his stout shooting boots in running water, and took out his
+cigar case.</p>
+
+<p>'How do you like it?' he asked his friend, when he had lighted his
+cigarette. 'I hope you are enjoying yourself.'</p>
+
+<p>'I never was happier in my life,' answered Hammond.</p>
+
+<p>He was standing on higher ground, with Mary at his elbow, pointing out
+and expatiating upon the details of the prospect. There were the
+lakes—Grasmere, a disk of shining blue; Rydal, a patch of silver; and
+Windermere winding amidst a labyrinth of wooded hills.</p>
+
+<p>'Aren't you tired?' asked Maulevrier.</p>
+
+<p>'Not a whit.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, I forgot you had done Cotapaxi, or as much of Cotapaxi as living
+mortal ever has done. That makes a difference. I am going home.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, Maulevrier!' exclaimed Mary, piteously.</p>
+
+<p>'I am going home. You two can go to the top. You are both hardened
+mountaineers, and I am not in it with either of you. When I rashly
+consented to a pedestrian ascent of Helvellyn I had forgotten what the
+gentleman was like; and as to Dolly Waggon I had actually forgotten her
+existence. But now I see the lady—as steep as the side of a house, and
+as stony—no, naught but herself can be her parallel in stoniness. No,
+Molly, I will go no further.'</p>
+
+<p>'But we shall go down on the other side,' urged Mary. 'It is a little
+steeper on the Cumberland side, but not nearly so far.'</p>
+
+<p>'A little steeper! I Can anything be steeper than Dolly Waggon? Yes, you
+are right. It is steeper on the Cumberland side. I remember coming down
+a sheer descent, like an exaggerated sugar-loaf; but I was on a pony,
+and it was the brute's look-out. I will not go down the Cumberland side
+on my own legs. No, Molly, not even for you. But if you and Hammond want
+to go to the top, there is nothing to prevent you. He is a skilled
+mountaineer. I'll trust you with him.'</p>
+
+<p>Mary blushed, and made no reply. Of all things in the world she least
+wanted to abandon the expedition. Yet to climb Helvellyn alone with her
+brother's friend would no doubt be a terrible violation of those laws of
+maidenly propriety which Fr&auml;ulein was always expounding. If Mary were to
+do this thing, which she longed to do, she must hazard a lecture from
+her governess, and probably a biting reproof from her grandmother.</p>
+
+<p>'Will you trust yourself with me, Lady Mary?' asked Hammond, looking at
+her with a gaze so earnest—so much more earnest than the occasion
+required—that her blushes deepened and her eyelids fell. 'I have done a
+good deal of climbing in my day, and I am not afraid of anything
+Helvellyn can do to me. I promise to take great care of you if you will
+come.'</p>
+
+<p>How could she refuse? How could she for one moment pretend that she did
+not trust him, that her heart did not yearn to go with him. She would
+have climbed the shingly steep of Cotapaxi with him—or crossed the
+great Sahara with him—and feared nothing. Her trust in him was
+infinite—as infinite as her reverence and love.</p>
+
+<p>'I am afraid Fr&auml;ulein would make a fuss,' she faltered, after a pause.</p>
+
+<p>'Hang Fr&auml;ulein,' cried Maulevrier, puffing at his cigarette, and kicking
+about the stones in the clear running water. 'I'll square it with
+Fr&auml;ulein. I'll give her a pint of fiz with her lunch, and make her see
+everything in a rosy hue. The good soul is fond of her Heidseck. You
+will be back by afternoon tea. Why should there be any fuss about the
+matter? Hammond wants to see the Red Tarn, and you are dying to show him
+the way. Go, and joy go with you both. Climbing a stony hill is a form
+of pleasure to which I have not yet risen. I shall stroll home at my
+leisure, and spend the afternoon on the billiard-room sofa reading
+Mudie's last contribution to the comforts of home.'</p>
+
+<p>'What a Sybarite,' said Hammond. 'Come, Lady Mary, we mustn't loiter, if
+we are to be back at Fellside by five o'clock.'</p>
+
+<p>Mary looked at her brother doubtfully, and he gave her a little nod
+which seemed to say, 'Go, by all means;' so she dug the end of her staff
+into Dolly's rugged breast, and mounted cheerily, stepping lightly from
+boulder to boulder.</p>
+
+<p>The sun was not so warm as it had been ten minutes ago, when Maulevrier
+flung himself down to rest. The sky had clouded over a little, and a
+cooler wind was blowing across the breast of the hill. Fairfield yonder,
+that long smooth slope of verdure which a little while ago looked
+emerald green in the sunlight, now wore a soft and shadowy hue. All the
+world was greyer and dimmer in a moment, as it were, and Coniston Lake
+in its distant valley disappeared beneath a veil of mist, while the
+shimmering sea-line upon the verge of the horizon melted and vanished
+among the clouds that overhung it. The weather changes very quickly in
+this part of the world. Sharp drops of rain came spitting at Hammond and
+Mary as they climbed the crest of the Pike, and stopped, somewhat
+breathless, to look back at Maulevrier. He was trudging blithely down
+the winding way, and seemed to have done wonders while they had been
+doing very little.</p>
+
+<p>'How fast he is going!' said Mary.</p>
+
+<p>'Easy is the descent of Avernus. He is going down-hill, and we are going
+upwards. That makes all the difference in life, you see,' answered
+Hammond.</p>
+
+<p>Mary looked at him with divine compassion. She thought that for him the
+hill of life would be harder than Helvellyn. He was brave, honest,
+clever; but her grandmother had impressed upon her that modern
+civilisation hardly has room for a young man who wants to get on in the
+world, without either fortune or powerful connexions. He had better go
+to Australia and keep sheep, than attempt the impossible at home.</p>
+
+<p>The rain was a passing shower, hardly worth speaking of, but the glory
+of the day was over. The sky was grey, and there were dark clouds
+creeping up from the sea-line. Silvery Windermere had taken a leaden
+hue; and now they turned their last fond look upon the Westmoreland
+valley, and set their faces steadily towards Cumberland, and the fine
+grassy plateau on the top of the hill.</p>
+
+<p>All this was not done in a flash. It took them some time to scale
+Dolly's stubborn breast, and it took them another hour to reach Seat
+Sandal; and by the time they came to the iron gate in the fence, which
+at this point divides the two counties, the atmosphere had thickened
+ominously, and dark wreaths of fog were floating about and around them,
+whirled here and there by a boisterous wind which shrieked and roared at
+them with savage fury, as if it were the voice of some Titan monarch of
+the mountain protesting against this intrusion upon his domain.</p>
+
+<p>'I'm afraid you won't see the Scottish hills,' shouted Mary, holding on
+her little cloth hat.</p>
+
+<p>She was obliged to shout at the top of her voice, though she was close
+to Mr. Hammond's elbow, for that shrill screaming wind would have
+drowned the voice of a stentor.</p>
+
+<p>'Never mind the view,' replied Hammond in the same fortissimo, 'but I
+really wish I hadn't brought you up here. If this fog should get any
+worse, it may be dangerous.'</p>
+
+<p>'The fog is sure to get worse,' said Mary, in a brief lull of the
+hurly-burly, 'but there is no danger. I know every inch of the hill, and
+I am not a bit afraid. I can guide you, if you will trust me.'</p>
+
+<p>'My bravest of girls,' he exclaimed, looking down at her. 'Trust you!
+Yes, I would trust my life to you—my soul—my honour—secure in your
+purity and good faith.'</p>
+
+<p>Never had eyes of living man or woman looked down upon her with such
+tenderness, such fervent love. She looked up at him; looked with eyes
+which, at first bewildered, then grew bold, and lost themselves, as it
+were, in the dark grey depths of the eyes they met. The savage wind,
+hustling and howling, blew her nearer to him, as a reed is blown against
+a rock. Dark grey mists were rising round them like a sea; but had that
+ever-thickening, ever-darkening vapour been the sea itself, and death
+inevitable, Mary Haselden would have hardly cared. For in this moment
+the one precious gift for which her soul had long been yearning had been
+freely given to her. She knew all at once, that she was fondly loved by
+that one man whom she had chosen for her idol and her hero.</p>
+
+<p>What matter that he was fortuneless, a nobody, with but the poorest
+chances of success in the world? What if he must needs, only to win the
+bare means of existence, go to Australia and keep sheep, or to the Bed
+River valley and grow corn? What if he must labour, as the peasants
+laboured on the sides of this rude hill? Gladly would she go with him to
+a strange country, and keep his log cabin, and work for him, and share
+his toilsome life, rough or smooth. No loss of social rank could lessen
+her pride in him, her belief in him.</p>
+
+<p>They were standing side by side a little way from the edge of the sheer
+descent, below which the Bed Tarn showed black in a basin scooped out of
+the naked hill, like water held in the hollow of a giant's hand.</p>
+
+<p>'Look,' cried Mary, pointing downward, 'you must see the Red Tarn, the
+highest water in England?'</p>
+
+<p>But just at this moment there came a blast which shook even Hammond's
+strong frame, and with a cry of fear he snatched Mary in his arms and
+carried her away from the edge of the hill. He folded her in his arms
+and held her there, thirty yards away from the precipice, safely
+sheltered against his breast, while the wind raved round them, blowing
+her hair from the broad, white brow, and showing him that noble forehead
+in all its power and beauty; while the darkness deepened round them so
+that they could see hardly anything except each other's eyes.</p>
+
+<p>'My love, my own dear love,' he murmured fondly; 'I will trust you with
+my life. Will you accept the trust? I am hardly worthy; for less than a
+year ago I offered myself to your sister, and I thought she was the only
+woman in this wide world who could make me happy. And when she refused
+me I was in despair, Mary; and I left Fellside in the full belief that I
+had done with life and happiness. And then I came back, only to oblige
+Maulevrier, and determined to be utterly miserable at Fellside. I was
+miserable for the first two hours. Memories of dead and gone joys and
+disappointed hopes were very bitter. And I tried honestly to keep up my
+feeling of wretchedness for the first few days. But it was no use,
+Molly. There was a genial spirit in the place, a laughing fairy who
+would not let me be sad; and I found myself becoming most unromantically
+happy, eating my breakfast with a hearty appetite, thinking my cup of
+afternoon tea nectar for love of the dear hand that gave it. And so, and
+so, till the new love, the purer and better love, grew and grew into a
+mighty tree, which was as an oak to an orchid, compared with that
+passion flower of earlier growth. Mary, will you trust your life to me,
+as I trust mine to you. I say to you almost in the words I spoke last
+year to Lesbia,' and here his tone grew grave almost to solemnity,
+'trust me, and I will make your life free from the shadow of care—trust
+me, for I have a brave spirit and a strong arm to fight the battle of
+life—trust me, and I will win for you the position you have a right to
+occupy—trust me, and you shall never repent your trust.'</p>
+
+<p>She looked up at him with eyes which told of infinite faith, child-like,
+unquestioning faith.</p>
+
+<p>'I will trust you in all things, and for ever,' she said. 'I am not
+afraid to face evil fortune. I do not care how poor you are—how hard
+our lives may be—if—if you are sure you love me.'</p>
+
+<p>'Sure! There is not a beat of my heart or a thought of my mind that does
+not belong to you. I am yours to the very depths of my soul. My innocent
+love, my clear-eyed, clear-souled angel! I have studied you and watched
+you and thought of you, and sounded the depths of your lovely nature,
+and the result is that you are for me earth's one woman. I will have no
+other, Mary, no other love, no other wife.'</p>
+
+<p>'Lady Maulevrier will be dreadfully angry,' faltered Mary.</p>
+
+<p>'Are you afraid of her anger?'</p>
+
+<p>'No; I am afraid of nothing, for your sake.'</p>
+
+<p>He lifted her hand to his lips, and kissed it reverently, and there was
+a touch of chivalry in that reverential kiss. His eyes clouded with
+tears as he looked down into the trustful face. The fog had darkened to
+a denser blackness, and it was almost as if they were engulfed in sudden
+night.</p>
+
+<p>'If we are never to find our way down the hill; if this were to be the
+last hour of our lives, Mary, would you be content?'</p>
+
+<p>'Quite content,' she answered, simply. 'I think I have lived long
+enough, if you really love me—if you are not making fun.'</p>
+
+<p>'What, Molly, do you still doubt? Is it strange that I love you?'</p>
+
+<p>'Very strange. I am so different from Lesbia.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, very different, and the difference is your highest charm. And now,
+love, we had better go down whichever side of the hill is easiest, for
+this fog is rather appalling. I forgive the wind, because it blew you
+against my heart just now, and that is where I want you to dwell for
+ever!'</p>
+
+<p>'Don't be frightened,' said Mary. 'I know every step of the way.'</p>
+
+<p>So, leaning on her lover, and yet guiding him, slowly, step by step,
+groping their way through the darkness, Lady Mary led Mr. Hammond down
+the winding track along which the ponies and the guides travel so often
+in the summer season. And soon they began to descend out of that canopy
+of fog which enveloped the brow of Helvellyn, and to see the whole world
+smiling beneath them, a world of green pastures and sheepfolds, with a
+white homestead here and there amidst the fields, looking so human and
+so comfortable after that gloomy mountain top, round which the tempest
+howled so outrageously. Beyond those pastures stretched the dark waters
+of Thirlmere, looking like a broad river.</p>
+
+<p>The descent was passing steep, but Hammond's strong arm and steady
+steps made Mary's progress very easy, while she had in no wise
+exaggerated her familiarity with the windings and twistings of the
+track. Yet as they had need to travel very slowly so long as the fog
+still surrounded them, the journey downward lasted a considerable time,
+and it was past five when they arrived at the little roadside inn at the
+foot of the hill.</p>
+
+<p>Here Mr. Hammond insisted that Mary should rest at least long enough to
+take a cup of tea. She was very white and tired. She had been profoundly
+agitated, and looked on the point of fainting, although she protested
+that she was quite ready to walk on.</p>
+
+<p>'You are not going to walk another step,' said Hammond. 'While you are
+taking your tea I will get you a carriage.'</p>
+
+<p>'Indeed, I had rather hurry on at once,' urged Mary. 'We are so late
+already.'</p>
+
+<p>'You will get home all the sooner if you obey me. It is your duty to
+obey me now,' said Hammond, in a lowered voice.</p>
+
+<p>She smiled at him, but it was a weak, wan little smile, for that descent
+in the wind and the fog had quite exhausted her. Mr. Hammond took her
+into a snug little parlour where there was a cheerful fire, and saw her
+comfortably seated in an arm chair by the hearth, before he went to look
+after a carriage.</p>
+
+<p>There was no such thing as a conveyance to be had, but the Windermere
+coach would pass in about half an hour, and for this they must wait. It
+would take them back to Grasmere sooner than they could get there on
+foot, in Mary's exhausted condition.</p>
+
+<p>The tea-tray was brought in presently, and Hammond poured out the tea
+and waited upon Lady Mary. It was a reversal of the usual formula but it
+was very pleasant to Mary to sit with her feet on the low brass fender
+and be waited upon by her lover. That fog on the brow of Helvellyn—that
+piercing wind—had chilled her to the bone, and there was unspeakable
+comfort in the glow and warmth of the fire, in the refreshment of a good
+cup of tea.</p>
+
+<p>'Mary, you are my own property now, remember,' said Hammond, watching
+her tenderly as she sipped her tea.</p>
+
+<p>She glanced up at him shyly, now and then, with eyes full of innocent
+wonder. It was so strange to her, as strange as sweet, to know that he
+loved her; such a marvellous thing that she had pledged herself to be
+his wife.</p>
+
+<p>'You are my very own—mine to guard and cherish, mine to think and work
+for,' he went on, 'and you will have to trust me, sweet one, even if the
+beginning of things is not altogether free from trouble.'</p>
+
+<p>'I am not afraid of trouble.'</p>
+
+<p>'Bravely spoken! First and foremost, then, you will have to announce
+your engagement to Lady Maulevrier. She will take it ill, no doubt; will
+do her utmost to persuade you to give me up. Have you courage and
+resolution, do you think, to stand against her arguments? Can you hold
+to your purpose bravely, and cry, no surrender?'</p>
+
+<p>'There shall be no surrender,' answered Mary, 'I promise you that. No
+doubt grandmother will be very angry. But she has never cared for me
+very much. It will not hurt her for me to make a bad match, as it would
+have done in Lesbia's case. She has had no day-dreams—no grand ambition
+about me!'</p>
+
+<p>'So much the better, my wayside flower! When you have said all that is
+sweet and dutiful to her, and have let her know at the same time that
+you mean to be my wife, come weal come woe, I will see her, and will
+have my say. I will not promise her a grand career for my darling: but I
+will pledge myself that nothing of that kind which the world calls
+evil—no penury, or shabbiness of surroundings—shall ever touch Mary
+Haselden after she is Mary Hammond. I can promise at least so much as
+that.'</p>
+
+<p>'It is more than enough,' said Mary. 'I have told you that I would
+gladly share poverty with you.'</p>
+
+<p>'Sweet! it is good of you to say as much, but I would not take you at
+your word. You don't know what poverty is.'</p>
+
+<p>'Do you think I am a coward, or self-indulgent? You are wrong, Jack. May
+I call you Jack, as Maulevrier does?'</p>
+
+<p>'May you?'</p>
+
+<p>The question evoked such a gush of tenderness that he was fain to kneel
+beside her chair and kiss the little hand holding the cup, before he
+considered he had answered properly.</p>
+
+<p>'You are wrong, Jack. I do know what poverty means. I have studied the
+ways of the poor, tried to console them, and help them a little in their
+troubles; and I know there is no pain that want of money can bring which
+I would not share willingly with you. Do you suppose my happiness is
+dependent on a fine house and powdered footmen? I should like to go to
+the Red River with you, and wear cotton gowns, and tuck up my sleeves
+and clean our cottage.'</p>
+
+<p>'Very pretty sport, dear, for a summer day; but my Mary shall have a
+sweeter life, and shall occasionally walk in silk attire.'</p>
+
+<p>That tea-drinking by the fireside in the inn parlour was the most
+delicious thing within John Hammond's experience. Mary was a bewitching
+compound of earnestness and simplicity, so humble, so confiding, so
+perplexed and astounded at her own bliss.</p>
+
+<p>'Confess, now, in the summer, when you were in love with Lesbia, you
+thought me a horrid kind of girl,' she said, presently, when they were
+standing side by side at the window, waiting for the coach.</p>
+
+<p>'Never, Mary. My crime is to have thought very little about you in those
+days. I was so dazzled by Lesbia's beauty, so charmed by her
+accomplishments and girlish graces, that I forgot to take notice of
+anything else in the world. If I thought of you at all it was as
+another Maulevrier—a younger Maulevrier in petticoats, very gay, and
+good-humoured, and nice.'</p>
+
+<p>'But when you saw me rushing about with the terriers—I must have seemed
+utterly horrid.'</p>
+
+<p>'Why, dearest? There is nothing essentially horrible in terriers, or in a
+bright lively girl running races with them. You made a very pretty
+picture in the sunlight, with your hat hanging on your shoulder, and
+your curly brown hair and dancing hazel eyes. If I had not been deep in
+love with Lesbia's peerless complexion and Grecian features, I should
+have looked below the surface of that Gainsborough picture, and
+discovered what treasures of goodness, and courage, and truth and purity
+those frank brown eyes and that wide forehead betokened. I was sowing my
+wild oats last summer, Mary, and they brought me a crop of sorrow. But I
+am wiser now—wiser and happier.</p>
+
+<p>'But if you were to see Lesbia again would not the old love revive?'</p>
+
+<p>'The old love is dead, Mary. There is nothing left of it but a handful
+of ashes, which I scatter thus to the four winds,' with a wave of his
+hand towards the open casement. 'The new love absorbs and masters my
+being. If Lesbia were to re-appear at Fellside this evening, I could
+offer her my hand in all brotherly frankness, and ask her to accept me
+as a brother. Here comes the coach. We shall be at Fellside just in time
+for dinner.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XXII"></a><h2>CHAPTER XXII.</h2>
+
+<h3>WISER THAN LESBIA.</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>Lady Mary and Mr. Hammond were back at Fellside at a quarter before
+eight, by which time the stars were shining on pine woods and Fell. They
+managed to be in the drawing-room when dinner was announced, after the
+hastiest of toilets; yet her lover thought Mary had never looked
+prettier than she looked that night, in her limp white cashmere gown,
+and with her brown hair brushed into a large loose knot on the top of
+her head. There had been great uneasiness about them at Fellside when
+evening began to draw in, and the expected hour of their return had gone
+by. Scouts had been sent in quest of them, but in the wrong direction.</p>
+
+<p>'I did not think you would be such idiots as to come down the north side
+of the hill in a tempest,' said Maulevrier; 'we could see the clouds
+racing over the crest of Seat Sandal, and knew it was blowing pretty
+hard up there, though it was calm enough down here.'</p>
+
+<p>'Blowing pretty hard;' echoed Hammond, 'I don't think I was ever out in
+a worse gale; and yet I have been across the Bay of Biscay when the
+waves struck the side of the steamer like battering rams, and when the
+whole surface of the sea was white with seething foam.'</p>
+
+<p>'It was a most imprudent thing to go up Helvellyn in such weather,' said
+Fr&auml;ulein M&uuml;ller, shaking her head gloomily as she ate her fish.</p>
+
+<p>Mary felt that the Fr&auml;ulein's manner boded ill. There was a storm
+brewing. A scolding was inevitable. Mary felt quite capable of doing
+battle with the Fr&auml;ulein; but her feelings were altogether different
+when she thought of facing that stern old lady upstairs, and of the
+confession she had to make. It was not that her courage faltered. So far
+as resolutions went she was as firm as a rock. But she felt that there
+was a terrible ordeal to be gone through; and it seemed a mockery to be
+sitting there and pretending to eat her dinner and take things lightly,
+with that ordeal before her.</p>
+
+<p>'We did not go up the hill in bad weather, Miss M&uuml;ller,' said Mr.
+Hammond. 'The sun was shining and the sky was blue when we started. We
+could not foresee darkness and storm at the top of the hill. That was
+the fortune of war.'</p>
+
+<p>'I am very sorry Lady Mary had not more good sense,' replied Fr&auml;ulein
+with unabated gloom; but on this Maulevrier took up the cudgels.</p>
+
+<p>'If there was any want of sense in the business, that's my look-out,
+Fr&auml;ulein,' he said, glaring angrily at the governess. 'It was I who
+advised Hammond and Lady Mary to climb the hill. And here they are, safe
+and sound after their journey. I see no reason why there should be any
+fuss about it.'</p>
+
+<p>'People have different ways of looking at things, replied Fr&auml;ulein,
+plodding steadily on with her dinner. Mary rose directly the dessert had
+been handed round, and marched out of the room: like a warrior going to
+a battle in which the chances of defeat were strong. Fr&auml;ulein M&uuml;ller
+shuffled after her.</p>
+
+<p>'Will you be kind enough to go to her ladyship's room at once, Lady
+Mary,' she said. 'She wants to speak to you.'</p>
+
+<p>'And I want to speak to her,' said Mary.</p>
+
+<p>She ran quickly upstairs and arrived in the morning room, a little out
+of breath. The room was lighted by one low moderator lamp, under a dark
+red velvet shade, and there was the glow of the wood fire, which gave a
+more cheerful light than the lamp. Lady Maulevrier was lying on her
+couch in a loose brocade tea-gown, with old Brussels collar and ruffles.
+She was as well dressed in her day of affliction and helplessness as she
+had been in her day of strength; for she knew the value of surroundings,
+and that her stateliness and power were in some manner dependent on
+details of this kind. The one hand which she could use glittered with
+diamonds, as she waved it with a little imperious gesture towards the
+chair on which she desired Lady Mary to seat herself; and Mary sat down
+meekly, knowing that this chair represented the felon's dock.</p>
+
+<p>'Mary,' began her grandmother, with freezing gravity, 'I have been
+surprised and shocked by your conduct to-day. Yes, surprised at such
+conduct even in you.'</p>
+
+<p>'I do not think I have done anything very wrong, grandmother.'</p>
+
+<p>'Not wrong! You have done nothing wrong? You have done something
+absolutely outrageous. You, my granddaughter, well born, well bred,
+reared under my roof, to go up Helvellyn and lose yourself in a fog
+alone with a young man. You could hardly have done worse if you were a
+Cockney tourist,' concluded her ladyship, with ineffable disgust.</p>
+
+<p>'I could not help the fog,' said Mary, quietly. The battle had to be
+fought, and she was not going to flinch. 'I had no intention of going up
+Helvellyn alone with Mr. Hammond. Maulevrier was to have gone with us;
+but when we got to Dolly Waggon he was tired, and would not go any
+further. He told me to go on with Mr. Hammond.'</p>
+
+<p>'<i>He</i> told you! Maulevrier!--a young man who has spent some of the best
+hours of his youth in the company of jockeys and trainers—who hasn't
+the faintest idea of the fitness of things. You allow Maulevrier to be
+your guide in a matter in which your own instinct should have guided
+you—your womanly instinct! But you have always been an unwomanly girl.
+You have put me to shame many a time by your hoydenish tricks; but I
+bore with you, believing that your madcap follies were at least
+harmless. To-day you have gone a step too far, and have been guilty of
+absolute impropriety, which I shall be very slow to pardon.'</p>
+
+<p>'Perhaps you will be still more angry when you know all, grandmother,'
+said Mary.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Maulevrier flashed her dark eyes at the girl with a look which
+would have almost killed a nervous subject; but Mary faced her
+steadfastly, very pale, but as resolute as her ladyship.</p>
+
+<p>'When I know all! What more is there for me to know?'</p>
+
+<p>'Only that while we were on the top of Helvellyn, in the fog and the
+wind, Mr. Hammond asked me to be his wife.'</p>
+
+<p>'I am not surprised to hear it,' retorted her ladyship, with a harsh
+laugh. 'A girl who could act so boldly and flirtingly was a natural mark
+for an adventurer. Mr. Hammond no doubt has been told that you will have
+a little money by-and-by, and thinks he might do worse than marry you.
+And seeing how you have flung yourself at his head, he naturally
+concludes that you will not be too proud to accept your sister's
+leavings.'</p>
+
+<p>'There is nothing gained by making cruel speeches, grandmother,' said
+Mary, firmly. 'I have promised to be John Hammond's wife, and there is
+nothing you nor anyone else can say which will make me alter my mind. I
+wish to act dutifully to you, if I can, and I hope you will be good to
+me and consent to this marriage. But if you will not consent, I shall
+marry him all the same. I shall be full of sorrow at having to disobey
+you, but I have promised, and I will keep my promise.'</p>
+
+<p>'You will act in open rebellion against me—against the kinswoman who
+has reared you, and educated you, and cared for you in all these years!'</p>
+
+<p>'But you have never loved me,' answered Mary, sadly. 'Perhaps if you had
+given me some portion of that affection which you lavished on my sister
+I might be willing to sacrifice this new deep love for your sake—to lay
+down my broken heart as a sacrifice on the altar of gratitude. But you
+never loved me. You have tolerated me, endured my presence as a
+disagreeable necessity of your life, because I am my father's daughter.
+You and Lesbia have been all the world to each other; and I have stood
+aloof, outside your charmed circle, almost a stranger to you. Can you
+wonder, grandmother, recalling this, that I am unwilling to surrender
+the love that has been given me to-day—the true heart of a brave and
+good man!'</p>
+
+<p>Lady Maulevrier looked at her for some moments in scornful wonderment;
+looked at her with a slow, deliberate smile.</p>
+
+<p>'Poor child!' she said; 'poor ignorant, inexperienced baby! For what a
+Will-o-the-wisp are you ready to sacrifice my regard, and all the
+privileges of your position as my granddaughter! No doubt this Mr.
+Hammond has said all manner of fine things to you; but can you be weak
+enough to believe that he who half a year ago was sighing and dying at
+the feet of your sister can have one spark of genuine regard for you?
+The thing is not in nature; it is an obvious absurdity. But it is easy
+enough to understand that Mr. Hammond without a penny in his pocket, and
+with his way to make in the world, would be very glad to secure Lady
+Mary Haselden and her five hundred a year, and to have Lord Maulevrier
+for his brother in-law?'</p>
+
+<p>'Have I really five hundred a year? Shall I have five hundred a year
+when I marry?' asked Mary, suddenly radiant.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes; if you marry with your brother's consent.'</p>
+
+<p>'I am so glad—for his sake. He could hardly starve if I had five
+hundred a year. He need not be obliged to emigrate.'</p>
+
+<p>'Has he been offering you the prospect of emigration as an additional
+inducement?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, no, he does not say that he is very poor, but since you say he is
+penniless I thought we might be obliged to emigrate. But as I have five
+hundred a year—'</p>
+
+<p>'You will stay at home, and set up a lodging-house, I suppose,' sneered
+Lady Maulevrier.</p>
+
+<p>'I will do anything my husband pleases. We can live in a humble way in
+some quiet part of London, while Mr. Hammond works at literature or
+politics. I am not afraid of poverty or trouble, I am willing to endure
+both for his sake.'</p>
+
+<p>'You are a fool!' said her grandmother sternly. 'And I have nothing more
+to say to you. Go away, and send Maulevrier to me.'</p>
+
+<p>Mary did not obey immediately. She went over to her grandmother's couch
+and knelt by her side, and kissed the poor maimed hand which lay on the
+velvet cushion.</p>
+
+<p>'Dear grandmother,' she said gently. 'I am very sorry to rebel against
+you. But this is a question of life or death with me. I am not like
+Lesbia. I cannot barter love and truth for worldly advantage—for pride
+of race. Do not think me so weak or so vain as to be won by a few fine
+speeches from an adventurer. Mr. Hammond is no adventurer, he has made
+no fine speeches—but, I will tell you a secret, grandmother. I have
+liked and admired him from the first time he came here. I have looked up
+to him and reverenced him; and I must be a very foolish girl if my
+judgment is so poor that I can respect a worthless man.'</p>
+
+<p>'You <i>are</i> a very foolish girl,' answered Lady Maulevrier, more kindly
+than she had spoken before, 'but you have been very good and dutiful to
+me since I have been ill, and I don't wish to forget that. I never said
+that Mr. Hammond was worthless; but I say that he is no fit husband for
+you. If you were as yielding and obedient as Lesbia it would be all the
+better for you; for then I should provide for your establishment in life
+in a becoming manner. But as you are wilful, and bent upon taking your
+own way—well—my dear, you must take the consequence; and when you are
+a struggling wife and mother, old before your time, weighed down with
+the weary burden of petty cares, do not say, &quot;My grandmother might have
+saved me from this martyrdom.&quot;'</p>
+
+<p>'I will run the risk, grandmother. I will be answerable for my own
+fate.'</p>
+
+<p>'So be it, Mary. And now send Maulevrier to me.'</p>
+
+<p>Mary went down to the billiard room, where she found her brother and her
+lover engaged in a hundred game.</p>
+
+<p>'Take my cue and beat him if you can, Molly,' said Maulevrier, when he
+had heard Mary's message. 'I'm fifteen ahead of him, for he has been
+falling asleep over his shots. I suppose I am going to get a lecture.'</p>
+
+<p>'I don't think so,' said Mary.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, my dearest, how did you fare in the encounter?' asked Hammond,
+directly Maulevrier was gone.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, it was dreadful! I made the most rebellious speeches to poor
+grandmother, and then I remembered her affliction, and I asked her to
+forgive me, and just at the last she was ever so much kinder, and I
+think that she will let me marry you, now she knows I have made up my
+mind to be your wife—in spite of Fate.'</p>
+
+<p>'My bravest and best.'</p>
+
+<p>'And do you know, Jack'—she blushed tremendously as she uttered this
+familiar name—'I have made a discovery!'</p>
+
+<p>'Indeed!'</p>
+
+<p>'I find that I am to have five hundred a year when I am married. It is
+not much. But I suppose it will help, won't it? We can't exactly starve
+if we have five hundred a year. Let me see. It is more than a pound a
+day. A sovereign ought to go a long way in a small house; and, of
+course, we shall begin in a very wee house, like De Quincey's cottage
+over there, only in London.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, dear, there are plenty of such cottages in London. In Mayfair, for
+instance, or Belgravia.'</p>
+
+<p>'Now, you are laughing at my rustic ignorance. But the five hundred
+pounds will be a help, won't it?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, dear, a great help.'</p>
+
+<p>'I'm so glad.'</p>
+
+<p>She had chalked her cue while she was talking, but after taking her aim,
+she dropped her arm irresolutely.</p>
+
+<p>'Do you know I'm afraid I can't play to-night,' she said.'Helvellyn and the fog and the wind have quite spoilt my nerve. Shall we
+go to the drawing-room, and see if Fr&auml;ulein has recovered from her
+gloomy fit?'</p>
+
+<p>'I would rather stay here, where we are free to talk; but I'll do
+whatever you like best.'</p>
+
+<p>Mary preferred the drawing-room. It was very sweet to be alone with her
+lover, but she was weighed down with confusion in his presence. The
+novelty, the wonderment of her position overpowered her. She yearned for
+the shelter of Fr&auml;ulein M&uuml;ller's wing, albeit the company of that most
+prosaic person was certain death to romance.</p>
+
+<p>Miss M&uuml;ller was in her accustomed seat by the fire, knitting her
+customary muffler. She had appropriated Lady Maulevrier's place, much to
+Mary's disgust. It irked the girl to see that stout, clumsy figure in
+the chair which had been filled by her grandmother's imperial form. The
+very room seemed vulgarised by the change.</p>
+
+<p>Fr&auml;ulein looked up with a surprised air when Mary and Hammond entered
+together, the girl smiling and happy. She had expected that Mary would
+have left her ladyship's room in tears, and would have retired to her
+own apartment to hide her swollen eyelids and humiliated aspect. But
+here she was, after the fiery ordeal of an interview with her offended
+grandmother, not in the least crestfallen.</p>
+
+<p>'Are we not to have any tea to-night?' asked Mary, looking round the
+room.</p>
+
+<p>'I think you are unconscious of the progress of time, Lady Mary,'
+answered Fr&auml;ulein, stiffly. 'The tea has been brought in and taken out
+again.'</p>
+
+<p>'Then it must be brought again, if Lady Mary wants some,' said Hammond,
+ringing the bell in the coolest manner.</p>
+
+<p>Fr&auml;ulein felt that things were coming to a pretty pass, if Maulevrier's
+humble friend was going to give orders in the house. Quiet and
+commonplace as the Hanoverian was, she had her ambition, and that was to
+grasp the household sceptre which Lady Maulevrier must needs in some
+wise resign, now that she was a prisoner to her rooms. But so far
+Fr&auml;ulein had met with but small success in this endeavour. Her
+ladyship's authority still ruled the house. Her ladyship's keen
+intellect took cognisance even of trifles: and it was only in the most
+insignificant details that Fr&auml;ulein felt herself a power.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, your ladyship, what's the row?' said Maulevrier marching into his
+grandmother's room with a free and easy air. He was prepared for a
+skirmish, and he meant to take the bull by the horns.</p>
+
+<p>'I suppose you know what has happened to-day?' said her ladyship.</p>
+
+<p>'Molly and Hammond's expedition, yes, of course. I went part of the way
+with them, but I was out of training, got pumped out after a couple of
+miles, and wasn't such a fool as to go to the top.'</p>
+
+<p>'Do you know that Mr. Hammond made Mary an offer, while they were on the
+hill, and that she accepted him?'</p>
+
+<p>'A queer place for a proposal, wasn't it? The wind blowing great guns
+all the time. I should have chosen a more tranquil spot.'</p>
+
+<p>'Maulevrier, cannot you be serious? Do you forget that this business of
+to-day must affect your sister's welfare for the rest of her life?'</p>
+
+<p>'No, I do not. I will be as serious as a judge after he has put on the
+black cap,' said Maulevrier, seating himself near his grandmother's
+couch, and altering his tone altogether. 'Seriously I am very glad that
+Hammond has asked Mary to be his wife, and still more glad that she is
+tremendously in love with him. I told you some time ago not to put your
+spoke in that wheel. There could not be a happier or a better marriage
+for Mary.'</p>
+
+<p>'You must have rather a poor opinion, of your sister's attractions,
+personal or otherwise, if you consider a penniless young man—of no
+family—good enough for her.'</p>
+
+<p>'I do not consider my sister a piece of merchandise to be sold to the
+highest bidder. Granted that Hammond is poor and a nobody. He is an
+honourable man, highly gifted, brave as a lion, and he is my dearest
+friend. Can you wonder that I rejoice at my sister's having won him for
+her adoring lover?'</p>
+
+<p>'Can he really care for her, after having loved Lesbia?'</p>
+
+<p>'That was the desire of the eye, this is the love of the heart. I know
+that he loves Mary ever so much better than he loved Lesbia. I can
+assure your ladyship that I am not such a fool as I look. I am very fond
+of my sister Mary, and I have not been blind to her interests. I tell
+you on my honour that she ought to be very happy as John Hammond's
+wife.'</p>
+
+<p>'I am obliged to believe what you say about his character,' said Lady
+Maulevrier. 'And I am willing to admit that the husband's character has
+a great deal to do with the wife's happiness, from a moral point of
+view; but still there are material questions to be considered. Has your
+friend any means of supporting a wife?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, he has means; quite sufficient means for Mary's views, which are
+very simple.'</p>
+
+<p>'You mean to say he would keep her in decent poverty? Cannot you be
+explicit, Maulevrier, and say what means the man has, whether an income
+or none? If you cannot tell me I must question Mr. Hammond himself.'</p>
+
+<p>'Pray do not do that,' exclaimed her grandson urgently. 'Do not take all
+the flavour of romance out of Molly's love story, by going into pounds,
+shillings, and pence. She is very young. You would hardly wish her to
+marry immediately?'</p>
+
+<p>'Not for the next year, at the very least.'</p>
+
+<p>'Then why enter upon this sordid question of ways and means. Make
+Hammond and Mary happy by consenting to their engagement, and trust the
+rest to Providence, and to me. Take my word for it, Hammond is not a
+beggar, and he is a man likely to make his mark in the world. If a year
+hence his income is not enough to allow of his marrying, I will double
+Mary's allowance out of my own purse. Hammond's friendship has steadied
+me, and saved me a good deal more than five hundred a year.'</p>
+
+<p>'I can quite believe that. I believe Mr. Hammond is a worthy man, and
+that his influence has been very good for you; but that does not make
+him a good match for Mary. However, you seem to have settled the
+business among you, and I suppose I must submit. You had better all
+drink tea with me to morrow afternoon; and I will receive your friend as
+Mary's future husband.'</p>
+
+<p>'That is the best and kindest of grandmothers.'</p>
+
+<p>'But I should like to know more of his antecedents and his relations.'</p>
+
+<p>'His antecedents are altogether creditable. He took honours at the
+University; he has been liked and respected everywhere. He is an orphan,
+and it is better not to talk to him of his family. He is sensitive on
+that point, like most men who stand alone in the world.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, I will hold my peace. You have taken this business into your
+hands, Maulevrier; and you must be responsible for the result.'</p>
+
+<p>Maulevrier left his grandmother soon after this, and went downstairs,
+whistling for very joyousness. Finding the billiard-room deserted he
+repaired to the drawing-room, where he found Mary playing scraps of
+melody to her lover at the shadowy end of the room, while Fr&auml;ulein sat
+by the fire weaving her web as steadily as one of the Fatal Sisters, and
+with a brow prophetic of evil.</p>
+
+<p>Maulevrier crept up to the piano, and came stealthily behind the lovers.</p>
+
+<p>'Bless you, my children,' he said, hovering over them with outspread
+hands. 'I am the dove coming back to the ark. I am the bearer of happy
+tidings. Lady Maulevrier consents to your acquiring the legal right to
+make each other miserable for the rest of your lives.'</p>
+
+<p>'God bless you, Maulevrier,' said Hammond, clasping him by the hand.</p>
+
+<p>'Only as this sister of mine is hardly out of the nursery you will have
+to wait for her at least a year. So says the dowager, whose word is like
+the law of the Medes and Persians, and altereth not.'</p>
+
+<p>'I would wait for her twice seven years, as Jacob waited, and toil for
+her, as Jacob toiled,' answered Hammond, 'but I should like to call her
+my own to-morrow, if it were possible.'</p>
+
+<p>Nothing could be happier or gayer than the tea-drinking in Lady
+Maulevrier's room on the following afternoon. Her ladyship having once
+given way upon a point knew how to make her concession gracefully. She
+extended her hand to Mr. Hammond as frankly as if he had been her own
+particular choice.</p>
+
+<p>'I cannot refuse my granddaughter to her brother's dearest friend,' she
+said, 'but I think you are two most imprudent young people.'</p>
+
+<p>'Providence takes care of imprudent lovers, just as it does of the birds
+in their nests,' answered Hammond, smiling.</p>
+
+<p>'Just as much and no more, I fear. Providence does not keep off the cat
+or the tax-gatherer.'</p>
+
+<p>'Birds must take care of their nests, and husbands must work for their
+homes,' argued Hammond. 'Heaven gives sweet air and sunlight, and a
+beautiful world to live in.'</p>
+
+<p>'I think,' said Lady Maulevrier, looking at him critically, 'you are
+just the kind of person who ought to emigrate. You have ideas that would
+do for the Bush or the Yosemite Valley, but which are too primitive for
+an over-crowded country.'</p>
+
+<p>'No, Lady Maulevrier, I am not going to steal your granddaughter. When
+she is my wife she shall live within call. I know she loves her native
+land, and I don't think either of us would care to put an ocean between
+us and rugged old Helvellyn.'</p>
+
+<p>'Of course having made idiots of yourselves up there in the fog and the
+storm you are going to worship the mountain for ever afterwards,' said
+her ladyship laughing.</p>
+
+<p>Never had she seemed gayer or brighter. Perhaps in her heart of hearts
+she rejoiced at getting Mary engaged, even to so humble a suitor as
+fortuneless John Hammond. Ever since the visit of the so-called Rajah
+she had lived as Damocles lived, with the sword of destiny—the avenging
+sword—hanging over her by the finest hair. Every time she heard
+carriage wheels in the drive—every time the hall-door bell rang a
+little louder than usual, her heart seemed to stop beating and her whole
+being to hang suspended on a thread. If the thread were to snap, there
+would come darkness and death. The blow that had paralysed one side of
+her body must needs, if repeated, bring total extinction. She who
+believed in no after life saw in her maimed and wasting arm the
+beginning of death. She who recognised only the life of the body felt
+that one half of her was already dead. But months had gone by, and Louis
+Asoph had made no sign. She began to hope that his boasted documents and
+witnesses were altogether mythical. And yet the engines of the law are
+slow to put in motion. He might be working up his case, line upon line,
+with some hard-headed London lawyer; arranging and marshalling his
+facts; preparing his witnesses; waiting for affidavits from India;
+working slowly but surely, underground like the mole; and all at once,
+in an hour, his case might be before the law courts. His story and the
+story of Lord Maulevrier's infamy might be town talk again; as it had
+been forty years ago, when the true story of that crime had been happily
+unknown.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, with the present fear of this Louis Asoph's revelations, of a new
+scandal, if not a calamity, Lady Maulevrier felt that it was a good
+thing to have her younger granddaughter's future in some measure
+secured. John Hammond had said of himself to Lesbia that he was not the
+kind of man to fail, and looking at him critically to-day Lady
+Maulevrier saw the stamp of power and dauntless courage in his
+countenance and bearing. It is the inner mind of a man which moulds the
+lines of his face and figure; and a man's character may be read in the
+way he walks and holds himself, the action of his hand, his smile, his
+frown, his general outlook, as clearly as in any phrenological
+development. John Hammond had a noble outlook: bold, without impudence
+or self-assertion; self-possessed, without vanity. Yes, assuredly a man
+to wrestle with difficulty, and to conquer fate.</p>
+
+<p>When that little tea-drinking was over and Maulevrier and his friend
+were going away to dress for dinner, Lady Maulevrier detained Mary for a
+minute or two by her couch. She took her by the hand with unaccustomed
+tenderness.</p>
+
+<p>'My child, I congratulate you,' she said. 'Last night I thought you a
+fool, but I begin to think that you are wiser than Lesbia. You have won
+the heart of a noble young man.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XXIII"></a><h2>CHAPTER XXIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>'A YOUNG LAMB'S HEART AMONG THE FULL-GROWN FLOCKS.'</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>For three most happy days Mary rejoiced in her lover's society,
+Maulevrier was with them everywhere, by brookside and fell, on the lake,
+in the gardens, in the billiard-room, playing propriety with admirable
+patience. But this could not last for ever. A man who has to win name
+and fortune and a home for his young wife cannot spend all his days in
+the primrose path. Fortunes and reputations are not made in dawdling
+beside a mountain stream, or watching the play of sunlight and shadow on
+a green hill-side; unless, indeed, one were a new Wordsworth, and even
+then fortune and renown are not quickly made.</p>
+
+<p>And again, Maulevrier, who had been a marvel of good-nature and
+contentment for the last eight weeks, was beginning to be tired of this
+lovely Lakeland. Just when Lakeland was daily developing into new
+beauty, Maulevrier began to feel an itching for London, where he had a
+comfortable nest in the Albany, and which was to his mind a metropolis
+expressly created as a centre or starting point for Newmarket, Epsom,
+Ascot and Goodwood.</p>
+
+<p>So there came a morning upon which Mary had to say good-bye to those two
+companions who had so blest and gladdened her life. It was a bright
+sunshiny morning, and all the world looked gay; which seemed very unkind
+of Nature, Mary thought. And yet, even in the sadness of this parting,
+she had much reason to be glad. As she stood with her lover in the
+library, in the three minutes of <i>tête-à-tête</i> stolen from the
+argus-eyed Fr&auml;ulein, folded in his arms, looking up at his manly face,
+it seemed to her that the mere knowledge that she belonged to him and
+was beloved by him ought to sustain and console her even in long years
+of severance. Yes, even if he were one of the knights of old, going to
+the Holy Land on a crusade full of peril and uncertainty. Even then a
+woman ought to be brave, having such a lover.</p>
+
+<p>But her parting was to be only for a few months. Maulevrier promised to
+come back to Fellside for the August sports, and Hammond was to come
+with him. Three months—or a little more—and they were to meet again.</p>
+
+<p>Yet in spite of these arguments for courage, Mary's face blanched and
+her eyes grew unutterably sad as she looked up at her lover.</p>
+
+<p>'You will take care of yourself, Jack, for my sake, won't you, dear?'
+she murmured. 'If you should be ill while you are in London! If you
+should die—'</p>
+
+<p>'Life is very uncertain, love, but I don't feel like sickness or death
+just at present,' answered Hammond cheerily. 'Indeed, I feel that the
+present is full of sweetness, and the future full of hope. Don't
+suppose, dear, that I am not grieved at this good-bye; but before we
+are a year older I hope the time will have come when there will be no
+more farewells for you and me. I shall be a very exacting husband,
+Molly. I shall want to spend all the days and hours of my life with you;
+to have not a fancy or a pursuit in which you cannot share, or with
+which you cannot sympathise. I hope you will not grow tired of me!'</p>
+
+<p>'Tired!'</p>
+
+<p>Then came silence, and a long farewell kiss, and then the voice of
+Maulevrier shouting in the hall, just in time to warn the lovers, before
+Miss M&uuml;ller opened the door and exclaimed,</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, Mr. Hammond, we have been looking for you <i>everywhere</i>. The luggage
+is all in the carriage, and Maulevrier says there is only just time to
+get to Windermere!'</p>
+
+<p>In another minute or so the carriage was driving down the hill; and Mary
+stood in the porch looking after the travellers.</p>
+
+<p>'It seems as if it is my fate to stand here and see everybody drive
+away,' she said to herself.</p>
+
+<p>And then she looked round at the lovely gardens, bright with spring
+flowers, the trees glorious with their young, fresh foliage, and the
+vast panorama of hill and dale, and felt that it was a wicked thing to
+murmur in the midst of such a world. And she remembered the great
+unhoped-for bliss that had come to her within the last four days, and
+the cloud upon her brow vanished, as she clasped her hands in child-like
+joyousness.</p>
+
+<p>'God bless you, dear old Helvellyn,' she exclaimed, looking up at the
+sombre crest of the mountain. 'Perhaps if it had not been for you he
+would have never proposed.'</p>
+
+<p>But she was obliged to dismiss this idea instantly; for to suppose John
+Hammond's avowal of his love an accident, the mere impulse of a weak
+moment, would be despair. Had he not told her how she had grown nearer
+and nearer to his heart, day by day, and hour by hour, until she had
+become part of his life? He had told her this—he, in whom she believed
+as in the very spirit of truth.</p>
+
+<p>She wandered about the gardens for an hour after the carriage had
+started for Windermere, revisiting every spot where she and her lover
+had walked together within the last three days, living over again the
+rapture of those hours, repeating to herself his words, recalling his
+looks, with the fatuity of a first girlish love. And yet amidst the
+silliness inseparable from love's young dream, there was a depth of true
+womanly feeling, thoughtful, unselfish, forecasting a future which was
+not to travel always along the primrose path of dalliance—a future in
+which the roses were not always to be thornless.</p>
+
+<p>John Hammond was going to London to work for a position in the world, to
+strive and labour among the seething mass of strugglers, all pressing
+onward for the same goal—independence, wealth, renown. Little as Mary
+know of the world by experience, she had at least heard the wiseacres
+talk; and that which she had heard was calculated to depress rather than
+to inspire industrious youth. She had heard how the professions were all
+over-crowded: how a mighty army of young men were walking the hospitals,
+all intent on feeling the pulses and picking the pockets of the rising
+generation: how at the Bar men were growing old and grey before they saw
+their first brief: how competitors were elbowing and hustling each other
+upon every road, thronging at every gate. And while masculine youth
+strove and wrestled for places in the race, aunts and sisters and
+cousins were pressing into the same arena, doing their best to crowd out
+the uncles and the brothers and the nephews.</p>
+
+<p>'Poor Jack,' sighed Mary, 'at the worst we can go to the Red River
+country and grow corn.'</p>
+
+<p>This was her favourite fancy, that she and her lover should find their
+first dwelling in the new world, live as humbly as the peasants lived
+round Grasmere, and patiently wait upon fortune. And yet that would not
+be happiness, unless Maulevrier were to come and stay with them every
+autumn. Nothing could reconcile Mary to being separated from Maulevrier
+for any lengthened period.</p>
+
+<p>There were hours in which she was more hopeful, and defied the
+wiseacres. Clever young men had succeeded in the past—clever men whose
+hair was not yet grey had come to the front in the present. Granted that
+these were the exceptional men, the fine flower of humanity. Did she not
+know that John Hammond was as far above average youth as Helvellyn was
+above yonder mound in her grandmother's shrubbery?</p>
+
+<p>Yes, he would succeed in literature, in politics, in whatever career he
+had chosen for himself. He was a man to do the thing he set himself to
+do, were it ever so difficult. To doubt his success would be to doubt
+his truth and his honesty; for he had sworn to her he would make her
+life bright and happy, and that evil days should never come to her; and
+he was not the man to promise that which he was not able to perform.</p>
+
+<p>The house seemed terribly dull now that the two young men were gone.
+There was an oppressive silence in the rooms which had lately resounded
+with Maulevrier's frank, boyish laughter, and with his friend's deep,
+manly tones—a silence broken only by the click of Fr&auml;ulein M&uuml;ller's
+needles.</p>
+
+<p>The Fr&auml;ulein was not disposed to be sympathetic or agreeable about Lady
+Mary's engagement. Firstly, she had not been consulted about it. The
+thing had been done, she considered, in an underhand manner; and Lady
+Maulevrier, who had begun by strenuously opposing the match, had been
+talked over in a way that proved the latent weakness of that great
+lady's character. Secondly, Miss M&uuml;ller, having herself for some reason
+missed such joys as are involved in being wooed and won, was disposed to
+look sourly upon all love affairs, and to take a despondent view of all
+matrimonial engagements.</p>
+
+<p>She did not say anything openly uncivil to Mary Haselden; but she let
+the damsel see that she pitied her and despised her infatuated
+condition; and this was so unpleasant that Mary was fain to fall back
+upon the society of ponies and terriers, and to take up her pilgrim's
+staff and go wandering over the hills, carrying her happy thoughts into
+solitary places, and sitting for hours in a heathery hollow, steeped in
+a sea of summer light, and trying to paint the mountain side and the
+rush of the waterfall. Her sketch-book was an excuse for hours of
+solitude, for the indulgence of an endless day-dream.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes she went among her humble friends in the Grasmere cottages, or
+in the villages of Great and Little Langdale; and she had now a new
+interest in these visits, for she had made up her mind that it was her
+solemn duty to learn housekeeping—not such housekeeping as might have
+been learnt at Fellside, supposing she had mustered the courage to ask
+the dignified upper-servants in that establishment to instruct her; but
+such domestic arts as are needed in the dwellings of the poor. The art
+of making a very little money go a great way; the art of giving grace,
+neatness, prettiness to the smallest rooms and the shabbiest furniture;
+the art of packing all the ugly appliances and baser necessities of
+daily life, the pots and kettles and brooms and pails, into the
+narrowest compass, and hiding them from the æsthetic eye. Mary thought
+that if she began by learning the homely devices of the villagers—the
+very A B C of cookery and housewifery—she might gradually enlarge upon
+this simple basis to suit an income of from five to seven hundred a
+year. The house-mothers from whom she sought information were puzzled at
+this sudden curiosity about domestic matters. They looked upon the thing
+as a freak of girlhood which drifted into eccentricity, from sheer
+idleness; yet they were not the less ready to teach Mary anything she
+desired to learn. They told her those secret arts by which coppers and
+brasses are made things of beauty, and meet adornment for an old oak
+mantelshelf. They allowed her to look on at the milking of the cow, and
+at the churning of the butter; and at bread making, and cake making, and
+pie and pudding making; and some pleasant hours were spent in the
+acquirement of this useful knowledge. Mary did not neglect the invalid
+during this new phase of her existence. Lady Maulevrier was a lover of
+routine, and she liked her granddaughter to go to her at the same hour
+every day. From eleven to twelve was the time for Mary's duty as
+amanuensis. Sometimes there were no letters to be written. Sometimes
+there were several; but her ladyship rarely allowed the task to go
+beyond the stroke of noon. At noon Mary was free, and free till five
+o'clock, when she was generally in attendance, ready to give Lady
+Maulevrier her afternoon tea, and sit and talk with her, and tell her
+any scraps of local news which she had gathered in the day.</p>
+
+<p>There were days on which her ladyship preferred to take her tea alone,
+and Mary was left free to follow her own devices till dinner-time.</p>
+
+<p>'I do not feel equal even to your society to-day, my dear,' her ladyship
+would say; 'go and enjoy yourself with your dogs and your tennis;'
+forgetting that there was very seldom anybody on the premises with whom
+Lady Mary could play tennis.</p>
+
+<p>But in these lonely days of Mary Haselden's life there was one crowning
+bliss which was almost enough to sweeten solitude, and take away the
+sting of separation; and that was the delight of expecting and receiving
+her lover's letters. Busily as Mr. Hammond must be engaged in fighting
+the battle of life, he was in no way wanting in his duty as a lover. He
+wrote to Mary every other day; but though his letters were long, they
+told her hardly anything of himself or his occupation. He wrote about
+pictures, books, music, such things as he knew must be interesting to
+her; but of his own struggles not a word.</p>
+
+<p>'Poor fellow,' thought Mary. 'He is afraid to sadden me by telling me
+how hard the struggle is.'</p>
+
+<p>Her own letters to her betrothed were simple outpourings of girlish
+love, breathing that too flattering-sweet idolatry which an innocent
+girl gives to her first lover. Mary wrote as if she herself were of the
+least possible value among created things.</p>
+
+<p>With one of Mr. Hammond's earlier letters came the engagement ring; no
+half-hoop of brilliants or sapphires, rubies or emeralds, no gorgeous
+triple circlet of red, white, and green; but only a massive band of dead
+gold, on the inside of which was engraved this posy—'For ever.'</p>
+
+<p>Mary thought it the loveliest ring she had ever seen in her life.</p>
+
+<p>May was half over and the last patch of snow had vanished from the crest
+of Helvellyn, from Eagle's Crag and Raven's Crag, and Coniston Old Man.
+Spring—slow to come along these shadowy gorges—had come in real
+earnest now, spring that was almost summer; and Lady Maulevrier's
+gardens were as lovely as dreamland. But it was an unpeopled paradise.
+Mary had the grounds all to herself, except at those stated times when
+the Fr&auml;ulein, who was growing lazier and larger day by day in her
+leisurely and placid existence, took her morning and afternoon
+constitutional on the terrace in front of the drawing-room, or solemnly
+perambulated the shrubberies.</p>
+
+<p>On fine days Mary lived in the garden, save when she was far afield
+learning the domestic arts from the cottagers. She read French and
+German, and worked conscientiously at her intellectual education, as
+well as at domestic economy. For she told herself that accomplishments
+and culture might be useful to her in her married life. She might be
+able to increase her husband's means by giving lessons abroad, or taking
+pupils at home. She was ready to do anything. She would teach the
+stupidest children, or scrub floors, or bake bread. There was no service
+she would deem degrading for his sake. She meant when she married to
+drop her courtesy title. She would not be Lady Mary Hammond, a poor
+sprig of nobility, but plain Mrs. Hammond, a working man's wife.</p>
+
+<p>Lesbia's presentation was over, and had realised all Lady Kirkbank's
+expectations. The Society papers were unanimous in pronouncing Lord
+Maulevrier's sister the prettiest <i>d&eacute;butante</i> of the season. They
+praised her classical features, the admirable poise of her head, her
+peerless complexion. They described her dress at the drawing-room; they
+described her 'frocks' in the Park and at Sandown. They expatiated on
+the impression she had made at great assemblies. They hinted at even
+Royal admiration. All this, frivolous fribble though it might be, Lady
+Maulevrier read with delight, and she was still more gratified by
+Lesbia's own account of her successes. But as the season advanced
+Lesbia's letters to her grandmother grew briefer—mere hurried scrawls
+dashed off while the carriage was at the door, or while her maid was
+brushing her hair. Lady Maulevrier divined, with the keen instinct of
+love, that she counted for very little in Lesbia's life, now that the
+whirligig of society, the fret and fever of fashion, had begun.</p>
+
+<p>One afternoon in May, at that hour when Hyde Park is fullest, and the
+carriages move slowly in triple rank along the Lady's Mile, and the
+mounted constables jog up and down with a business-like air which sets
+every one on the alert for the advent of the Princess of Wales, just at
+that hour when Lesbia sat in Lady Kirkbank's barouche, and distributed
+gracious bows and enthralling smiles to her numerous acquaintance, Mary
+rode slowly down the Fell, after a rambling ride on the safest and most
+venerable of mountain ponies. The pony was grey, and Mary was grey, for
+she wore a neat little homespun habit made by the local tailor, and a
+neat little felt hat with a ptarmigan's feather.</p>
+
+<p>All was very quiet at Fellside as she went in at the stable gate. There
+was not an underling stirring in the large old stable-yard which had
+remained almost unaltered for a century and a half; for Lady Maulevrier,
+whilst spending thousands on the new part of the house, had deemed the
+existing stables good enough for her stud. They were spacious old
+stables, built as solidly as a Norman castle, and with all the virtues
+and all the vices of their age.</p>
+
+<p>Mary looked round her with a sigh. The stillness of the place was
+oppressive, and within doors she knew there would be the same stillness,
+made still more oppressive by the society of the Fr&auml;ulein, who grew
+duller and duller every day, as it seemed to Mary.</p>
+
+<p>She took her pony into the dusky old stable, where four other ponies
+began rattling their halters in the gloom, by way of greeting. A bundle
+of purple tares lay ready in a corner for Mary to feed her favourites;
+and for the next ten minutes or so she was happily employed going from
+stall to stall, and gratifying that inordinate appetite for green meat
+which seems natural to all horses.</p>
+
+<p>Not a groom or stable-boy appeared while she was in the stable; and she
+was just going away, when her attention was caught by a flood of
+sunshine streaming into an old disused harness-room at the end of the
+stable—a room with one small window facing the Fell.</p>
+
+<p>Whence could that glow of western light come? Assuredly not from the
+low-latticed window which faced eastward, and was generally obscured by
+a screen of cobwebs. The room was only used as a storehouse for lumber,
+and it was nobody's business to clean the window.</p>
+
+<p>Mary looked in, curious to solve the riddle. A door which she had often
+noticed, but never seen opened, now stood wide open, and the old
+quadrangular garden, which was James Steadman's particular care, smiled
+at her in the golden evening light. Seen thus, this little old Dutch
+garden seemed to Mary the prettiest thing she had ever looked upon.
+There were beds of tulips and hyacinths, ranunculus, narcissus,
+tuberose, making a blaze of colour against the old box borders, a foot
+high. The crumbling old brick walls of the outbuildings, and that
+dungeon-like wall which formed the back of the new house, were clothed
+with clematis and wistaria, woodbine and magnolia. All that loving
+labour could do had been done day by day for the last forty years to
+make this confined space a thing of beauty. Mary went out of the dark
+stable into the sunny garden, and looked round her, full of admiration
+for James Steadman's work.</p>
+
+<p>'If ever Jack and I can afford to have a garden, I hope we shall be able
+to make it like this,' she thought. 'It is such a comfort to know that
+so small a garden can be pretty: for of course any garden we could
+afford must be small.'</p>
+
+<p>Lady Mary had no idea that this quadrangle was spacious as compared with
+the narrow strip allotted to many a suburban villa calling itself 'an
+eligible residence.'</p>
+
+<p>In the centre of the garden there was an old sundial, with a stone bench
+at the base, and, as she came upon an opening in the circular yew tree
+hedge which environed this sundial, and from which the flower beds
+radiated in a geometrical pattern, Lady Mary was surprised to see an old
+man—a very old man—sitting on this bench, and basking in the low light
+of the westering sun.</p>
+
+<p>His figure was shrunken and bent, and he sat with his chin resting on
+the handle of a crutched stick, and his head leaning forward. His long
+white hair fell in thin straggling locks over the collar of his coat. He
+had an old-fashioned, mummyfied aspect, and Mary thought he must be
+very, very old.</p>
+
+<p>Very, very old! In a flash there came back upon her the memory of John
+Hammond's curiosity about a hoary and withered old man whom he had met
+on the Fell in the early morning. She remembered how she had taken him
+to see old Sam Barlow, and how he had protested that Sam in no wise
+resembled the strange-looking old man of the Fell. And now here, close
+to the Fell, was a face and figure which in every detail resembled that
+ancient stranger whom Hammond had described so graphically.</p>
+
+<p>It was very strange. Could this person be the same her lover had seen
+two months ago? And, if so, had he been living at Fellside all the time;
+or was he only an occasional visitor of Steadman's?</p>
+
+<p>While she stood for a few moments meditating thus, the old man raised
+his head and looked up at her, with eyes that burned like red-hot coals
+under his shaggy white brows. The look scared her. There was something
+awful in it, like the gaze of an evil spirit, a soul in torment, and she
+began to move away, with side-long steps, her eyes riveted on that
+uncanny countenance.</p>
+
+<p>'Don't go,' said the man, with an authoritative air, rattling his bony
+fingers upon the bench. 'Sit down here by my side, and talk to me. Don't
+be frightened, child. You wouldn't, if you knew what they say of me
+indoors.' He made a motion of his head towards the windows of the old
+wing—'&quot;Harmless,&quot; they say, &quot;quite harmless. Let him alone, he's
+harmless.&quot; A tiger with his claws cut and his teeth drawn—an old,
+grey-bearded tiger, ghastly and grim, but harmless—a cobra with the
+poison-bag plucked out of his jaw! The venom grows again, child—the
+snake's venom—but youth never comes back. Old, and helpless, and
+harmless!'</p>
+
+<p>Again Mary tried to move away, but those evil eyes held her as if she
+were a bird riveted by the gaze of a serpent.</p>
+
+<p>'Why do you shrink away?' asked the old man, frowning at her. 'Sit down
+here, and let me talk to you. I am accustomed to be obeyed.'</p>
+
+<p>Old and feeble and shrunken as he was, there was a power in his tone of
+command which Mary was unable to resist. She felt very sure that he was
+imbecile or mad. She knew that madmen are apt to imagine themselves
+great personages, and to take upon themselves, with a wonderful power of
+impersonation, the dignity and authority of their imaginary rank; and
+she supposed that it must be thus with this strange old man. She
+struggled against her sense of terror. After all there could be no real
+danger, in the broad daylight, within the precincts of her own home,
+within call of the household.</p>
+
+<p>She seated herself on the bench by the unknown, willing to humour him a
+little; and he turned himself about slowly, as if every bone in his body
+were stiff with age, and looked at her with a deliberate scrutiny.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XXIV"></a><h2>CHAPTER XXIV.</h2>
+
+<h3>'NOW NOTHING LEFT TO LOVE OR HATE.'</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>The old man sat looking at Mary in silence for some moments; not a great
+space of time, perhaps, as marked by the shadow on the dial behind them,
+but to Mary that gaze was unpleasantly prolonged. He looked at her as if
+he could read every pulsation in every fibre of her brain, and knew
+exactly what it meant.</p>
+
+<p>'Who are you?' he asked, at last.</p>
+
+<p>'My name is Mary Haselden.'</p>
+
+<p>'Haselden,' he repeated musingly, 'I have heard that name before.'</p>
+
+<p>And then he resumed his former attitude, his chin resting on the handle
+of his crutch-stick, his eyes bent upon the gravel path, their unholy
+brightness hidden under the penthouse brows.</p>
+
+<p>'Haselden,' he murmured, and repeated the name over and over again,
+slowly, dreamily, with a troubled tone, like some one trying to work out
+a difficult problem. 'Haselden—when? where?'</p>
+
+<p>And then with a profound sigh he muttered, 'Harmless, quite harmless.
+You may trust him anywhere. Memory a blank, a blank, a blank, my lord!'</p>
+
+<p>His head sank lower upon his breast, and again he sighed, the sigh of a
+spirit in torment, Mary thought. Her vivid imagination was already
+interested, her quick sympathies were awakened.</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him wonderingly, compassionately. So old, so infirm, and
+with a mind astray; and yet there were indications in his speech and
+manner that told of reason struggling against madness, like the light
+behind storm-clouds. He had tones that spoke of a keen sensitiveness to
+pain, not the lunatic's imbecile placidity. She observed him intently,
+trying to make out what manner of man he was.</p>
+
+<p>He did not belong to the peasant class: of that she felt assured. The
+shrunken, tapering hand had never worked at peasant's work. The profile
+turned towards her was delicate to effeminacy. The man's clothes were
+shabby and old-fashioned, but they were a gentleman's garments, the
+cloth of a finer texture than she had ever seen worn by her brother. The
+coat, with its velvet collar, was of an old-world fashion. She
+remembered having seen just such a coat in an engraved portrait of Count
+d'Orsay, a print nearly fifty years old. No Dalesman born and bred ever
+wore such a coat; no tailor in the Dales could have made it.</p>
+
+<p>The old man looked up after a long pause, during which Mary felt afraid
+to move. He looked at her again with inquiring eyes, as if her presence
+there had only just become known to him.</p>
+
+<p>'Who are you?' he asked again.</p>
+
+<p>'I told you my name just now. I am Mary Haselden.'</p>
+
+<p>'Haselden—that is a name I knew—once. Mary? I think my mother's name
+was Mary. Yes, yes, I remember that. You have a sweet face, Mary—like
+my mother's. She had brown eyes, like yours, and auburn hair. You don't
+recollect her, perhaps?'</p>
+
+<p>'Alas! poor maniac,' thought Mary, 'you have lost all count of time.
+Fifty years to you in the confusion of your distraught brain, are but as
+yesterday.'</p>
+
+<p>'No, of course not, of course not,' he muttered; 'how should she
+recollect my mother, who died while I was a boy? Impossible. That must
+be half a century ago.'</p>
+
+<p>'Good evening to you,' said Mary, rising with a great effort, so strong
+was her feeling of being spellbound by the uncanny old man, 'I must go
+indoors now.'</p>
+
+<p>He stretched out his withered old hand, small, semi-transparent, with
+the blue veins showing darkly under the parchment-coloured skin, and
+grasped Mary's arm.</p>
+
+<p>'Don't go,' he pleaded. 'I like your face, child; I like your voice—I
+like to have you here. What do you mean by going indoors? Where do you
+live?'</p>
+
+<p>'There,' said Mary, pointing to the dead wall which faced them. 'In the
+new part of Fellside House. I suppose you are staying in the old part
+with James Steadman.'</p>
+
+<p>She had made up her mind that this crazy old man must be a relation of
+Steadman's to whom he gave hospitality either with or without her
+ladyship's consent. All powerful as Lady Maulevrier had ever been in her
+own house, it was just possible that now, when she was a prisoner in her
+own rooms, certain small liberties might be taken, even by so faithful a
+servant as Steadman.</p>
+
+<p>'Staying with James Steadman,' repeated the old man in a meditative
+tone. 'Yes, I stay with Steadman. A good servant, a worthy person. It is
+only for a little while. I shall be leaving Westmoreland next week. And
+you live in that house, do you?' pointing to the dead wall. 'Whose
+house?'</p>
+
+<p>'Lady Maulevrier's. I am Lady Maulevrier's granddaughter.'</p>
+
+<p>'Lady Mau-lev-rier.' He repeated the name in syllables. 'A good name—an
+old title—as old as the conquest. A Norman race those Maulevriers. And
+you are Lady Maulevrier's granddaughter! You should be proud. The
+Maulevriers were always a proud race.'</p>
+
+<p>'Then I am no true Maulevrier,' answered Mary gaily.</p>
+
+<p>She was beginning to feel more at her ease with the old man. He was
+evidently mad, as mad as a March hare; but his madness seemed only the
+harmless lunacy of extreme old age. He had flashes of reason, too. Mary
+began to feel a friendly interest in him. To youth in its flush of life
+and vigour there seems something so unspeakably sad and pitiable in
+feebleness and age—the brief weak remnant of life, the wreck of body
+and mind, sunning itself in the declining rays of a sun that is so soon
+to shine upon its grave.</p>
+
+<p>'What, are you not proud?' asked the old man.</p>
+
+<p>'Not at all. I have been taught to consider myself a very insignificant
+person; and I am going to marry a poor man. It would not become me to be
+proud.'</p>
+
+<p>'But you ought not to do that,' said the old man. 'You ought not to
+marry a poor man. Poverty is a bad thing, my dear. You are a pretty
+girl, and ought to marry a man with a handsome fortune. Poor men have no
+pleasure in this world—they might just as well be dead. I am poor, as
+you see. You can tell by this threadbare coat'—he looked down at the
+sleeve from which the nap was worn in places—'I am as poor as a church
+mouse.'</p>
+
+<p>'But you have kind friends, I dare say,' Mary said, soothingly. 'You are
+well taken care of, I am sure.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, I am well taken care of—very well taken care of. How long is it,
+I wonder—how many weeks, or months, or years, since they have taken
+care of me? It seems a long, long time; but it is all like a dream—a
+long dream. Once I used to try and wake myself. I used to try and
+struggle out of that weary dream. But that was ages ago. I am satisfied
+now—I am quite content now—so long as the weather is warm, and I can
+sit out here in the sun.'</p>
+
+<p>'It is growing chilly now,' said Mary, 'and I think you ought to go
+indoors. I know that I must go.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, I must go in now—I am getting shivery,' answered the old man,
+meekly. 'But I want to see you again, Mary—I like your face—and I like
+your voice. It strikes a chord here,' touching his breast, 'which has
+long been silent. Let me see you again, child. When can I see you
+again?'</p>
+
+<p>'Do you sit here every afternoon when it is fine?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, every day—all day long sometimes when the sun is warm.'</p>
+
+<p>'Then I will come here to see you.'</p>
+
+<p>'You must keep it a secret, then,' said the old man, with a crafty look.
+'If you don't they will shut me up in the house, perhaps. They don't
+like me to see people, for fear I should talk. I have heard Steadman say
+so. Yet what should I talk about, heaven help me? Steadman says my
+memory is quite gone, and that I am childish and harmless—childish and
+harmless. I have heard him say that. You'll come again, won't you, and
+you'll keep it a secret?'</p>
+
+<p>Mary deliberated for a few minutes.</p>
+
+<p>'I don't like secrets,' she said, 'there is generally something
+dishonourable in them. But this would be an innocent secret, wouldn't
+it? Well, I'll come to see you somehow, poor old man; and if Steadman
+sees me here I will make everything right with him.'</p>
+
+<p>'He mustn't see you here,' said the old man. 'If he does he will shut me
+up in my own rooms again, as he did once, years and years ago.'</p>
+
+<p>'But you have not been here long, have you?' Mary asked, wonderingly.</p>
+
+<p>'A hundred years, at least. That's what it seems to me sometimes. And
+yet there are times when it seems only a dream. Be sure you come again
+to-morrow.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, I promise you to come; good-night.'</p>
+
+<p>'Good-night.'</p>
+
+<p>Mary went back to the stable. The door was still open, but how could she
+be sure that it would be open to-morrow? There was no other access that
+she knew of to the quadrangle, except through the old part of the house,
+and that was at times inaccessible to her.</p>
+
+<p>She found a key—a big old rusty key—in the inside of the door, so she
+shut and locked it, and put the key in her pocket. The door she supposed
+had been left open by accident; at any rate this key made her mistress
+of the situation. If any question should arise as to her conduct she
+could have an explanation with Steadman; but she had pledged her word to
+the poor mad old man, and she meant to keep her promise, if possible.</p>
+
+<p>As she left the stable she saw Steadman riding towards the gate on his
+grey cob. She passed him as she went back to the house.</p>
+
+<p>Next day, and the day after that, and for many days, Mary used her key,
+and went into the quadrangle at sundown to sit for half an hour or so
+with the strange old man, who seemed to take an intense pleasure in her
+company. The weather was growing warmer as May wore on towards June, and
+this evening hour, between six and seven, was deliciously bright and
+balmy. The seat by the sundial was screened on every side by the clipped
+yew hedge, dense and tall, surrounding the circular, gravelled space, in
+the centre of which stood the old granite dial, with its octagonal
+pedestal and moss-grown steps. There, as in a closely-shaded arbour,
+Lady Mary and her old friend were alone and unobserved. The yew-tree
+boundary was at least eight feet high, and Mary and her companion could
+hardly have been seen even from the upper windows of the low, old house.</p>
+
+<p>Mary had fallen into the habit of going for her walk or her ride at five
+o'clock every day, when she was not in attendance on Lady Maulevrier,
+and after her walk or ride she slipped through the stable, and joined
+her ancient friend. Stables and courtyard were generally empty at this
+hour, the men only appearing at the sound of a big bell, which summoned
+them from their snuggery when they were wanted. Most of Lady
+Maulevrier's servants had arrived at that respectable stage of long
+service in which fidelity is counted as a substitute for hard work.</p>
+
+<p>The old man was not particularly conversational, and was apt to repeat
+the same things over and over again, with a sublime unconsciousness of
+being prosy; but he liked to hear Mary talk, and he listened with
+seeming intelligence. He questioned her about the world outside his
+cloistered life—the wars and rumours of wars—and, although the names
+of the questions and the men of the day seemed utterly strange to him,
+and he had to have them repeated to him again and again, he seemed to
+take an intelligent interest in the stirring facts of the time, and
+listened intently when Mary gave him a synopsis of her last newspaper
+reading.</p>
+
+<p>When the news was exhausted, Mary hit upon a more childish form of
+amusement, and that was to tell the story of any novel or poem she had
+been lately reading. This was so successful that in this manner Mary
+related the stories of most of Shakespeare's plays; of Byron's Bride of
+Abydos, and Corsair; of Keats's Lamia; of Tennyson's Idylls; and of a
+heterogenous collection of poetry and romance, in all of which stories
+the old man took a vivid interest.</p>
+
+<p>'You are better to me than the sunshine,' he told Mary one day when she
+was leaving him. 'The world grows darker when you leave me.'</p>
+
+<p>Once at this parting moment he took both her hands, and drew her nearer
+to him, peering into her face in the clear evening light.</p>
+
+<p>'You are like my mother,' he said. 'Yes, you are very like her. And who
+else is it that you are like? There is some one else, I know. Yes, some
+one else! I remember! It is a face in a picture—a picture at Maulevrier
+Castle.'</p>
+
+<p>'What do you know of Maulevrier Castle?' asked Mary, wonderingly.</p>
+
+<p>Maulevrier was the family seat in Herefordshire, which had not been
+occupied by the elder branch for the last forty years. Lady Maulevrier
+had let it during her son's minority to a younger branch of the family,
+a branch which had intermarried with the world of successful commerce,
+and was richer than the heads of the house. This occupation of
+Maulevrier Castle had continued to the present time, and was likely
+still to continue, Maulevrier having no desire to set up housekeeping in
+a feudal castle in the marches.</p>
+
+<p>'How came you to know Maulevrier Castle?' repeated Mary.</p>
+
+<p>'I was there once. There is a picture by Lely, a portrait of a Lady
+Maulevrier in Charles the Second's time. The face is yours, my love. I
+have heard of such hereditary faces. My mother was proud of resembling
+that portrait.'</p>
+
+<p>'What did your mother know of Maulevrier Castle?'</p>
+
+<p>The old man did not answer. He had lapsed into that dream-like
+condition into which he often sank, when his brain was not stimulated to
+attention and coherency by his interest in Mary's narrations.</p>
+
+<p>Mary concluded that this man had once been a servant in the Maulevrier
+household, perhaps at the place in Herefordshire, and that all his old
+memories ran in one groove—the house of Maulevrier.</p>
+
+<p>The freedom of her intercourse with him was undisturbed for about three
+weeks; and at the end of that time she came face to face with James
+Steadman as she emerged from the circle of greenery.</p>
+
+<p>'You here, Lady Mary?' he exclaimed with an angry look.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, I have been sitting talking to that poor old man,' Mary answered,
+cheerily, concluding that Steadman's look of vexation arose from his
+being detected in the act of harbouring a contraband relation. 'He is a
+very interesting character. A relation of yours, I suppose?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, he is a relation,' replied Steadman. 'He is very old, and his mind
+has long been gone. Her ladyship is kind enough to allow me to give him
+a home in her house. He is quite harmless, and he is in nobody's way.'</p>
+
+<p>'Of course not, poor soul. He is only a burden to himself. He talks as
+if his life had been very weary. Has he been long in that sad state?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, a long time.'</p>
+
+<p>Steadman's manner to Lady Mary was curt at the best of times. She had
+always stood somewhat in awe of him, as a person delegated with
+authority by her grandmother, a servant who was much more than a
+servant. But to-day his manner was more abrupt than usual.</p>
+
+<p>'He spoke of Maulevrier Castle just now,' said Mary, determined not to
+be put down too easily. 'Was he once in service there?'</p>
+
+<p>'He was. Pray how did you find your way into this garden, Lady Mary?'</p>
+
+<p>'I came through the stable. As it is my grandmother's garden I suppose I
+did not take an unwarrantable liberty in coming,' said Mary, drawing
+herself up, and ready for battle.</p>
+
+<p>'It is Lady Maulevrier's wish that this garden should be reserved for my
+use,' answered Steadman. 'Her ladyship knows that my uncle walks here of
+an afternoon, and that, owing to his age and infirmities, he can go
+nowhere else; and if only on that account, it is well that the garden
+should be kept private. Lunatics are rather dangerous company, Lady
+Mary, and I advise you to give them a wide berth wherever you may meet
+them.'</p>
+
+<p>'I am not afraid of your uncle,' said Mary, resolutely. 'You said
+yourself just now that he is quite harmless: and I am really interested
+in him, poor old creature. He likes me to sit with him a little of an
+afternoon and to talk to him; and if you have no objection I should like
+to do so, whenever the weather is fine enough for the poor old man to be
+out in the garden at this hour.'</p>
+
+<p>'I have a very great objection, Lady Mary, and that objection is chiefly
+in your interest,' answered Steadman, firmly. 'No one who is not
+experienced in the ways of lunatics can imagine the danger of any
+association with them—their consummate craftiness, their capacity for
+crime. Every madman is harmless up to a certain point—mild,
+inoffensive, perhaps, up to the very moment in which he commits some
+appalling crime. And then people cry out upon the want of prudence, the
+want of common-sense which allowed such an act to be possible. No, Lady
+Mary, I understand the benevolence of your motive, but I cannot permit
+you to run such a risk.'</p>
+
+<p>'I am convinced that the poor old creature is perfectly harmless,' said
+Mary, with suppressed indignation. 'I shall certainly ask Lady
+Maulevrier to speak to you on the subject. Perhaps her influence may
+induce you to be a little more considerate to your unhappy relation.'</p>
+
+<p>'Lady Mary, I beg you not to say a word to Lady Maulevrier on this
+subject. You will do me the greatest injury if you speak of that man. I
+entreat you—'</p>
+
+<p>But Mary was gone. She passed Steadman with her head held high and her
+eyes sparkling with anger. All that was generous, compassionate, womanly
+in her nature was up in arms against her grandmother's steward. Of all
+other things, Mary Haselden most detested cruelty; and she could see in
+Steadman's opposition to her wish nothing but the most cold-hearted
+cruelty to a poor dependent on his charity.</p>
+
+<p>She went in at the stable door, shut and locked it, and put the key in
+her pocket as usual. But she had little hope that this mode of access
+would be left open to her. She knew enough of James Steadman's
+character, from hearsay rather than from experience, to feel sure that
+he would not easily give way. She was not surprised, therefore, on
+returning from her ride on the following afternoon, to find the disused
+harness-room half filled with trusses of straw, and the door of
+communication completely blocked. It would be impossible for her to
+remove that barricade without assistance; and then, how could she be
+sure that the door itself was not nailed up, or secured in some way?</p>
+
+<p>It was a delicious sunny afternoon, and she could picture the lonely old
+man sitting in his circle of greenery beside the dial, which for him had
+registered so many dreary and solitary hours, waiting for the little ray
+of social sunlight which her presence shed over his monotonous life. He
+had told her that she was like the sunshine to him—better than
+sunshine—and she had promised not to forsake him. She pictured him
+waiting, with his hand clasped upon his crutch-stick, his chin resting
+upon his hands, his eyes poring on the ground, as she had seen him for
+the first time. And as the stable clock chimed the quarters he would
+begin to think himself abandoned, forgotten; if, indeed, he took any
+count of the passage of time, of which she was not sure. His mind seemed
+to have sunk into a condition which was between dreaming and waking, a
+state to which the outside world seemed only half real—a phase of being
+in which there was neither past nor future, only the insufferable
+monotony of an everlasting <i>now</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Pity is so near akin to love that Mary, in her deep compassion for this
+lonely, joyless, loveless existence, felt a regard which was almost
+affection for this strange old man, whose very name was unknown to her.
+True that there was much in his countenance and manner which was
+sinister and repellant. He was a being calculated to inspire fear rather
+than love; but the fact that he had courted her presence and looked to
+her for consolation had touched Mary's heart, and she had become
+reconciled to all that was forbidding and disagreeable in the lunatic
+physiognomy. Was he not the victim of a visitation which entitled him to
+respect as well as to pity?</p>
+
+<p>For some days Mary held her peace, remembering Steadman's vehement
+entreaty that she should not speak of this subject to her grandmother.
+She was silent, but the image of the old man haunted her at all times
+and seasons. She saw him even in her dreams—those happy dreams of the
+girl who loves and is beloved, and before whom the pathway of the future
+smiles like a vision of Paradise. She heard him calling to her with a
+piteous cry of distress, and on waking from this troubled dream she
+fancied that he must be dying, and that this sound in her dreams was one
+of those ghostly warnings which give notice of death. She was so unhappy
+about him, altogether so distressed at being compelled to break her
+word, that she could not prevent her thoughts from dwelling upon him,
+not even after she had poured out all her trouble to John Hammond in a
+long letter, in which her garden adventures and her little skirmish with
+Steadman were graphically described.</p>
+
+<p>To her intense discomfiture Hammond replied that he thoroughly approved
+of Steadman's conduct in the matter. However agreeable Mary's society
+might be to the lunatic, Mary's life was far too precious to be put
+within the possibility of peril by any such <i>tête-à-têtes</i>. If the
+person was the same old man whom Hammond had seen on the Fell, he was a
+most sinister-looking creature, of whom any evil act might be fairly
+anticipated. In a word Mr. Hammond took Steadman's view of the matter,
+and entreated his dearest Mary to be careful, and not to allow her warm
+heart to place her in circumstances of peril.</p>
+
+<p>This was most disappointing to Mary, who expected her lover to agree
+with her upon every point; and if he had been at Fellside the
+difference of opinion might have given rise to their first quarrel. But
+as she had a few hours' leisure for reflection before the post went out,
+she had time to get over her anger, and to remember that promise of
+obedience given, half in jest, half in earnest, at the little inn beyond
+Dunmail Raise. So she wrote submissively enough, only with just a touch
+of reproach at Jack's want of compassion for a poor old man who had such
+strong claims upon everybody's pity.</p>
+
+<p>The image of the poor old man was not to be banished from her thoughts,
+and on that very afternoon, when her letter was dispatched, Mary went on
+a visit of exploration to the stables, to see if by any chance Mr.
+Steadman's plans for isolating his unhappy relative might be
+circumvented.</p>
+
+<p>She went all over the stables—into loose boxes, harness and saddle
+rooms, sheds for wood, and sheds for roots, but she found no door
+opening into the quadrangle, save that door by which she had entered,
+and which was securely defended by a barricade of straw that had been
+doubled by a fresh delivery of trusses since she first saw it. But while
+she was prowling about the sweet-scented stable, much disappointed at
+the result of her investigations, she stumbled against a ladder which
+led to an open trap-door. Mary mounted the ladder, and found herself
+amidst the dusty atmosphere of a large hayloft, half in shadow, half in
+the hot bright sunlight. A large shutter was open in the sloping roof,
+the roof that sloped towards the quadrangle, an open patch admitting
+light and air. Mary, light and active as a squirrel, sprang upon a truss
+of hay, and in another moment had swung herself in the opening of the
+shutter, and was standing with her feet on the wooden ledge at the
+bottom of the massive frame, and her figure supported against the slope
+of thick thatched roof. Perched, or half suspended, thus, she was just
+high enough to look over the top of the yew-tree hedge into the circle
+round the sundial.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, there was the unhappy victim of fate, and man's inhumanity to man.
+There sat the shrunken figure, with drooping head, and melancholy
+attitude—the bent shoulders of feeble old age, the patriarchal locks so
+appealing to pity. There he sat with eyes poring upon the ground just as
+she had seen him the first time. And while she had sat with him and
+talked with him he had seemed to awaken out of that dull despondency,
+gleams of pleasure had lighted up his wrinkled face—he had grown
+animated, a sentient living instead of a corpse alive. It was very hard
+that this little interval of life, these stray gleams of gladness should
+be denied to the poor old creature, at the behest of James Steadman.</p>
+
+<p>Mary would have felt less angrily upon the subject had she believed in
+Steadman's supreme carefulness of her own safety; but in this she did
+not believe. She looked upon the house-steward's prudence as a
+hypocritical pretence, an affectation of fidelity and wisdom, by which
+he contrived to gratify the evil tendencies of his own hard and cruel
+nature. For some reasons of his own, perhaps constrained thereto by
+necessity, he had given the old man an asylum for his age and infirmity:
+but while thus giving him shelter he considered him a burden, and from
+mere perversity of mind refused him all such consolations as were
+possible to his afflicted state, mewed him up as a prisoner, cut him off
+from the companionship of his fellow-men.</p>
+
+<p>Two years ago, before Mary emerged from her Tomboyhood, she would have
+thought very little of letting herself out of the loft window and
+clambering down the side of the stable, which was well furnished with
+those projections in the way of gutters, drain-pipes, and century-old
+ivy, which make such a descent easy. Two years ago Mary's light figure
+would have swung itself down among the ivy leaves, and she would have
+gloried in the thought of circumventing James Steadman so easily. But
+now Mary was a young lady—a young lady engaged to be married, and
+impressed with the responsibilities of her position, deeply sensible of
+a new dignity, for the preservation of which she was in a manner
+answerable to her lover.</p>
+
+<p>'What would <i>he</i> think of me if I went scrambling down the ivy?' she
+asked herself; 'and after he has approved of Steadman's heartless
+restrictions, it would be rank rebellion against him if I were to do it.
+Poor old man, &quot;Thou art so near and yet so far,&quot; as Lesbia's song says.'</p>
+
+<p>She blew a kiss on the tips of her fingers towards that sad solitary
+figure, and then dropped back into the dusty duskiness of the loft. But
+although her new ideas upon the subject of 'Anstand'—or good
+behaviour—prevented her getting the better of Steadman by foul means,
+she was all the more intent upon having her own way by fair means, now
+that the impression of the old man's sadness and solitude had been
+renewed by the sight of the drooping figure by the sundial.</p>
+
+<p>She went back to the house, and walked straight to her grandmother's
+room. Lady Maulevrier's couch had been placed in front of the open
+window, from which she was watching the westward-sloping sun above the
+long line of hills, dark Helvellyn, rugged Nabb Scarr, and verdant
+Fairfield, with its two giant arms stretched out to enfold and shelter
+the smiling valley.</p>
+
+<p>'Heavens! child, what an object you are;' exclaimed her ladyship, as
+Mary drew near. 'Why, your gown is all over dust, and your hair is—why
+your hair is sprinkled with hay and clover. I thought you had learnt to
+be tidy, since your engagement. What have you been doing with yourself?'</p>
+
+<p>'I have been up in the hayloft,' answered Mary, frankly; and, intent on
+one idea, she said impetuously, 'Dear grandmother, I want you to do me a
+favour—a very great favour. There is a poor old man, a relation of
+Steadman's, who lives with him, out of his mind, but quite harmless, and
+he is so sad and lonely, so dreadfully sad, and he likes me to sit with
+him in the garden, and tell him stories, and recite verses to him, poor
+soul, just as if he were a child, don't you know, and it is such a
+pleasure to me to be a little comfort to him in his lonely wretched
+life, and James Steadman says I mustn't go near him, because he may
+change at any moment into a dangerous lunatic, and do me some kind of
+harm, and I am not a bit afraid, and I'm sure he won't do anything of
+the kind, and, please grandmother, tell Steadman, that I am to be
+allowed to go and sit with his poor old prisoner half an hour every
+afternoon.'</p>
+
+<p>Carried along the current of her own impetuous thoughts, Mary had talked
+very fast, and had not once looked at her grandmother while she was
+speaking. But now at the end of her speech her eyes sought Lady
+Maulevrier's face in gentle entreaty, and she recoiled involuntarily at
+the sight she saw there.</p>
+
+<p>The classic features were distorted almost as they had been in the worst
+period of the paralytic seizure. Lady Maulevrier was ghastly pale, and
+her eyes glared with an awful fire as they gazed at Mary. Her whole
+frame was convulsed, and she, the cripple, whose right limbs lay numbed
+and motionless upon the couch, made a struggling motion as she raised
+herself a little with the left arm, as if, by very force of angry will,
+she would have lifted herself up erect before the girl who had offended
+her.</p>
+
+<p>For a few moments her lips moved dumbly; and there was something
+unspeakably awful in those convulsed features, that livid countenance,
+and those voiceless syllables trembling upon the white dry lips.</p>
+
+<p>At last speech came.</p>
+
+<p>'Girl, you were created to torment me;' she exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>'Dear grandmother, what harm have I done?' faltered Mary.</p>
+
+<p>'What harm? You are a spy. Your very existence is a torment and a
+danger. Would to God that you were married. Yes, married to a
+chimney-sweep, even—and out of my way.'</p>
+
+<p>'If that is your only difficulty,' said Mary, haughtily, 'I dare say Mr.
+Hammond would be kind enough to marry me to-morrow, and take me out of
+your ladyship's way.'</p>
+
+<p>Lady Maulevrier's head sank back upon her pillows, those velvet and
+satin pillows, rich with delicate point lace and crewel-work adornment,
+the labour of Mary and Fr&auml;ulein, pillows which could not bring peace to
+the weary head, or deaden the tortures of memory. The pale face
+recovered its wonted calm, the heavy lips drooped over the weary eyes,
+and for a few moments there was silence in the room.</p>
+
+<p>Then Lady Maulevrier raised her eyelids, and looked at her granddaughter
+imploringly, pathetically.</p>
+
+<p>'Forgive me, Mary,' she said. 'I don't know what I was saying just now;
+but whatever it was, forgive and forget it. I am a wretched old woman,
+heart sick, heart sore, worn out by pain and weariness. There are times
+when I am beside myself; moments when I am not much saner than
+Steadman's lunatic uncle. This is one of my worst days, and you came
+bouncing in upon me, and tortured my nerves by your breathless torrent
+of words. Pray forgive me, if I said anything rude.'</p>
+
+<p>'If,' thought Mary: but she tried to be charitable, and to believe that
+Lady Maulevrier's attack upon her was a new phase of hysteria, so she
+murmured meekly, 'There is nothing for me to forgive, grandmother, and I
+am very sorry I disturbed you.'</p>
+
+<p>She was going to leave the room, thinking that her absence would be a
+relief to the invalid, when Lady Maulevrier called her back.</p>
+
+<p>'You were asking me something—something about that old man of
+Steadman's,' she said with a weary air, half indifference, half the
+lassitude natural to an invalid who sinks under the burden of monotonous
+days. 'What was it all about? I forget.'</p>
+
+<p>Mary repeated her request, but this time in measured tones.</p>
+
+<p>'My dear, I am sure that Steadman was only properly prudent.' answered
+Lady Maulevrier, 'and that it would never do for me to interfere in this
+matter. It stands to reason that he must know his old kinsman's
+temperament much better than you can, after your half-hour interviews
+with him in the garden. Pray how long have these garden scenes been
+going on, by-the-by?' asked her ladyship, with a searching look at
+Mary's downcast face.</p>
+
+<p>The girl had not altogether recovered from the rude shock of her
+grandmother's late attack.</p>
+
+<p>'About three weeks,' faltered Mary. 'But it is more than a week now
+since I was in the garden. It was quite by accident that I first went
+there. Perhaps I ought to explain.'</p>
+
+<p>And Mary, not being gainsayed, went on to describe that first afternoon
+when she had seen the old man brooding in the sun. She drew quite a
+pathetic picture of his joyless solitude, whilst all nature around and
+about him was looking so glad in the spring sunshine. There was a long
+silence, a silence of some minutes, when she had done; and Lady
+Maulevrier lay with lowered eyelids, deep in thought. Mary began to hope
+that she had touched her grandmother's heart, and that her request would
+be granted: but she was soon undeceived.</p>
+
+<p>'I am sorry to be obliged to refuse you a favour, Mary, but I must stand
+by Steadman,' said her ladyship. 'When I gave Steadman permission to
+shelter his aged kinsman in my house, I made it a condition that the old
+man should be kept in the strictest care by himself and his wife, and
+that nobody in this establishment should be troubled by him. This
+condition has been so scrupulously adhered to that the old man's
+existence is known to no one in this house except you and me; and you
+have discovered the fact only by accident. I must beg you to keep this
+secret to yourself. Steadman has particular reasons for wishing to
+conceal the fact of his uncle's residence here. The old man is not
+actually a lunatic. If he were we should be violating the law by keeping
+him here. He is only imbecile from extreme old age; the body has
+outlived the mind, that is all. But should any officious functionary
+come down upon Fellside, this imbecility might be called madness, and
+the poor old creature whom you regard so compassionately, and whose case
+you think so pitiable here, would be carried off to a pauper lunatic
+asylum, which I can assure you would be a much worse imprisonment than
+Fellside Manor.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, indeed, grandmother,' exclaimed Mary, whose vivid imagination
+conjured up a vision of padded cells, strait-waist-coats,
+murderously-inclined keepers, chains, handcuffs, and bread and water
+diet, 'now I understand why the poor old soul has been kept so
+close—why nobody knows of his existence. I beg Steadman's pardon with
+all my heart. He is a much better fellow than I thought him.'</p>
+
+<p>'Steadman is a thoroughly good fellow, and as true as steel,' said her
+ladyship. 'No one can know that so well as the mistress he has served
+faithfully for nearly half a century. I hope, Mary, you have not been
+chattering to Fr&auml;ulein or any one else about your discovery.'</p>
+
+<p>'No, grandmother, I have not said a word to a mortal, but----'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, there is a &quot;but,&quot; is there? I understand. You have not been so
+reticent in your letters to Mr. Hammond.'</p>
+
+<p>'I tell him all that happens to me. There is very little to write about
+at Fellside; yet I contrive to send him volumes. I often wonder what
+poor girls did in the days of Miss Austen's novels, when letters cost a
+shilling or eighteen pence for postage, and had to be paid for by the
+recipient. It must have been such a terrible check upon affection.'</p>
+
+<p>'And upon twaddle,' said Lady Maulevrier. 'Well you told Mr. Hammond
+about Steadman's old uncle. What did he say?'</p>
+
+<p>'He thoroughly approved Steadman's conduct in forbidding me to go and
+see him,' answered Mary. 'I couldn't help thinking it rather unkind of
+him; but, of course, I feel that he must be right,' concluded Mary, as
+much as to say that her lover was necessarily infallible.</p>
+
+<p>'I always thought Mr. Hammond a sensible young man, and I am glad to
+find that his conduct does not belie my good opinion,' said Lady
+Maulevrier. 'And now, my dear, you had better go and make yourself
+decent before dinner. I am very weary this afternoon, and even our
+little talk has exhausted me.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, dear grandmother, I am going this instant. But let me ask one
+question: What is the poor old man's name?'</p>
+
+<p>'His name!' said her ladyship, looking at Mary with a puzzled air, like
+a person whose thoughts are far away. 'His name—oh, Steadman, I
+suppose, like his nephew's; but if I ever heard the name I have
+forgotten it, and I don't know whether the kinship is on the father's or
+the mother's side. Steadman asked my permission to give shelter to a
+helpless old relative, and I gave it. That is really all I remember.'</p>
+
+<p>'Only one other question,' pleaded Mary, who was brimful of curiosity
+upon this particular subject. 'Has he been at Fellside very long?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, I really don't know; a year, or two, or three, perhaps. Life in
+this house is all of a piece. I hardly keep count of time.'</p>
+
+<p>'There is one thing that puzzles me very much,' said Mary, still
+lingering near her grandmother's couch, the balmy evening air caressing
+her as she leaned against the embrasure of the wide Tudor window, the
+sun drawing nearer to the edge of the hills, an orb of yellow flame,
+soon to change to a gigantic disk of lurid fire. 'I thought from the old
+man's talk that he, too, must be an old servant in our family. He talked
+of Maulevrier Castle, and said that I reminded him of a picture by Lely,
+a portrait of a Lady Maulevrier.</p>
+
+<p>'It is quite possible that he may have been in service there, though I
+do not remember to have heard anything about it,' answered her ladyship,
+carelessly. 'The Steadmans come from that part of the country, and
+theirs is a hereditary service. Good-night, Mary, I am utterly weary.
+Look at that glorious light yonder, that mighty world of fire and flame,
+without which our little world would be dark and dreary. I often think
+of that speech of Macbeth's, &quot;I 'gin to be aweary of the sun.&quot; There
+comes a time, Mary, when even the sun is a burden.'</p>
+
+<p>'Only for such a man as Macbeth,' said Mary, 'a man steeped in crime.
+Who can wonder that he wanted to hide himself from the sun? But, dear
+grandmother, there ought to be plenty of happiness left for you, even if
+your recovery is slow to come. You are so clever, you have such
+resources in your own mind and memory, and you have your grandchildren,
+who love you dearly,' added Mary, tenderly.</p>
+
+<p>Her nature was so full of pity that an entirely new affection had grown
+up in her mind for Lady Maulevrier since that terrible evening of the
+paralytic stroke.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, and whose love, as exemplified by Lesbia, is shown in a hurried
+scrap of a letter scrawled once a week—a bone thrown to a hungry dog,'
+said her ladyship, bitterly.</p>
+
+<p>'Lesbia is so lovely, and she is so surrounded by flatterers and
+admirers,' murmured Mary, excusingly.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, my dear, if she had a heart she would not forget me, even in the
+midst of her flatterers. Good-night again, Mary. Don't try to console
+me. For some natures consolations and soothing suggestions are like
+flowers thrown upon a granite tomb. They do just as much and just as
+little good to the heart that lies under the stone. Good-night.'</p>
+
+<p>Mary stooped to kiss her grandmother's forehead, and found it cold as
+marble. She murmured a loving good-night, and left the mistress of
+Fellside in her loneliness.</p>
+
+<p>A footman would come in and light the lamps, and draw the velvet
+curtains, presently, and shut out the later glories of sunset. And then
+the butler himself would come and arrange the little dinner table by her
+ladyship's couch, and would himself preside over the invalid's simple
+dinner, which would be served exquisitely, with all that is daintiest
+and most costly in Salviati glass and antique silver. Yet better the
+dinner of herbs, and love and peace withal, than the choicest fare or
+the most perfect service.</p>
+
+<p>Before the coming of the servants and the lamps there was a pause of
+silence and loneliness, an interval during which Lady Maulevrier lay
+gazing at the declining orb, the lower rim of which now rested on the
+edge of the hill. It seemed to grow larger and more dazzling as she
+looked at it.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly she clasped her left hand across her eyes, and said aloud—</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, what a hateful life! Almost half a century of lies and hypocricies
+and prevarications and meannesses! For what? For the glory of an empty
+name; and for a fortune that may slip from my dead hand to become the
+prey of rogues and adventurers. Who can forecast the future?'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XXV"></a><h2>CHAPTER XXV.</h2>
+
+<h3>CARTE BLANCHE.</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>Lady Kirkbank's house in Arlington Street was known to half fashionable
+London as one of the pleasantest houses in town; and it was known by
+repute only, to the other half of fashionable London, as a house whose
+threshold was not to be crossed by persons with any regard for their own
+dignity and reputation. It was not that Lady Kirkbank had ever actually
+forfeited her right to be considered an honest woman and a faithful
+wife. People who talked of the lady and her set with a contemptuous
+shrug of the shoulders and a dubious elevation of the eyebrows were
+ready, when hard pushed in argument, to admit that they knew of no
+actual harm in Lady Kirkbank, no overt bad behaviour.</p>
+
+<p>'But—well,' said the punctilious half of society, the Pejinks and
+Pernickitys, the Picksomes and Unco-Goods, 'Lady Kirkbank is—Lady
+Kirkbank; and I would not allow my girls to visit her, don't you know.'
+'Lady Kirkbank is received, certainly,' said a severe dowager. 'She
+goes to very good houses. She gets tickets for the Royal enclosure. She
+is always at private views, and privileged shows of all kinds; and she
+contrives to squeeze herself in at a State ball or a concert about once
+in two years; but any one who can consider Lady Kirkbank good style must
+have a very curious idea of what a lady ought to be.' 'Lady Kirkbank is
+a warm-hearted, nice creature,' said a diplomatist of high rank, and one
+of her particular friends, 'but her manners are decidedly—continental!'</p>
+
+<p>About Sir George, society, adverse or friendly, was without strong
+opinions. His friends, the men who shot over his Scotch moor, and filled
+the spare rooms in his villa at Cannes, and loaded his drag for Sandown
+or Epsom, and sponged upon him all the year round, talked of him as 'an
+inoffensive old party,' 'a cheery soul,' 'a genial old boy,' and in like
+terms of approval. That half of society which did not visit in Arlington
+Street, in whose nostrils the semi-aristocratic, semi-artistic,
+altogether Bohemian little dinners, the suppers after the play, the
+small hours devoted to Nap or Poker, had an odour as of sulphur, the
+reek of Tophet—even this half of the great world was fain to admit that
+Sir George was harmless. He had never had an idea beyond the realms of
+sport; he had never had a will of his own outside his stable. To shoot
+pigeons at Hurlington or Monaco, to keep half a dozen leather-platers,
+and attend every race from the Craven to the Leger, to hunt four days a
+week, when he was allowed to spend a winter in England, and to saunter
+and sleep away all the hours which could not be given to sport,
+comprised Sir George's idea of existence. He had never troubled himself
+to consider whether there might not possibly be a better way of getting
+rid of one's life. He was as God had made him, and was perfectly
+satisfied with himself and the universe; save at such times as when a
+favourite horse went lame, or his banker wrote to tell him that his
+account was overdrawn.</p>
+
+<p>Sir George had no children; he had never had a serious care in his life.
+He never thought, he never read. Lady Kirkbank declared that she had
+never seen him with a book in his hands since their marriage.</p>
+
+<p>'I don't believe he would know at which end to begin,' she said.</p>
+
+<p>What was the specific charge which the very particular people brought
+against Lady Kirkbank? Such charges rarely <i>are</i> specific. The idea that
+the lady belonged to the fast and furious section of society, the
+Bohemia of the upper ten, was an idea in the air. Everybody knew it. No
+one could quite adequately explain it.</p>
+
+<p>From thirty to fifty Lady Kirkbank had been known as a flirty matron.
+Wherever she went, a train of men went with her; men young and
+middle-aged and elderly; handsome youths from the public offices; War,
+Admiralty, Foreign Office, Somerset House young men; attractive men of
+mature years, with grey moustachios, military, diplomatic, horsey, what
+you will, but always agreeable. At home, abroad, Lady Kirkbank was never
+without her court; but the court was entirely masculine. In those days
+the fair Georgie did not scruple to say that she hated women, and that
+girls were her particular abomination. But as the years rolled on Lady
+Kirkbank began to find it very difficult to muster her little court, to
+keep her train in attendance upon her. 'The birds were wild,' Sir George
+said. Her young adorers found their official duties more oppressive than
+hitherto; her elderly swains had threatenings of gout or rheumatism
+which prevented their flocking round her as of old at race meeting or
+polo match. They were loyal enough in keeping their engagements at the
+dinner table, for Lady Kirkbank's cook was one of the best in London;
+and the invited guests were rarely missing at the little suppers after
+opera or play: but Georgia's box was no longer crowded with men who
+dropped in between the acts to see what she thought of the singer or the
+piece, and her swains were no longer contented to sit behind her chair
+all the evening, seeing an empty corner of the stage across Georgia's
+ivory shoulder, and hearing the voices of invisible actors in the brief
+pauses of Georgie's subdued babble.</p>
+
+<p>At fifty-five, Georgina Kirkbank told herself sadly enough that her day,
+as a bright particular star, all-sufficient in her own radiance, was
+gone. She could not live without her masculine circle, men who could
+bring her all the news, the gossip of the clubs; where everything seemed
+to become known as quickly as if each club had its own Asmodeus,
+unroofing all the housetops of the West End for inspection every night.
+She could not live without her courtiers; and to keep them about her she
+knew that she must make her house pleasant. It was not enough to give
+good dinners, elegant little suppers washed down by choicest wines; she
+must also provide fair faces to smile upon the feast, and bright eyes to
+sparkle in the subdued light of low shaded lamps, and many candles
+twinkling under coloured shades.</p>
+
+<p>'I am an old woman now,' Lady Kirkbank said to herself with a sigh, 'and
+my own attractions won't keep my friends about me. <i>C'est trop connu
+&ccedil;a</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>And now the house in Arlington Street in which feminine guests had been
+as one in ten, opened its doors to the young and the fair. Pretty
+widows, lively girls, young wives who were not too absurdly devoted to
+their husbands, actresses of high standing and good looks, these began
+to be welcomed effusively in Arlington Street. Lady Kirkbank began to
+hunt for beauties to adorn her rooms, as she had hitherto hunted lions
+to roar at her parties. She prided herself on being the first to
+discover this or that new beauty. That lovely girl from Scotland with
+the large eyes—that sweet young creature from Ireland with the long
+eyelashes. She was always inventing new divinities. But even this
+change of plan, this more feminine line of politics failed to reconcile
+the strict and the stern, the Queen Charlotte-ish elderly ladies, and
+the impeccable matrons, to Lady Kirkbank and her set. The girls who were
+launched by Lady Kirkbank never took high rank in society. When they
+made good marriages it was generally to be observed that they dropped
+Lady Kirkbank soon afterwards. It was not their fault, these ingrates
+pleaded piteously; but Edward, or Henry, or Theodore, as the case might
+be, had a most cruel prejudice against dear Lady Kirkbank, and the young
+wives were obliged to obey.</p>
+
+<p>Others there were, however, the loyal few, who having won the prize
+matrimonial in Lady Kirkbank's happy hunting grounds, remained true to
+their friend ever afterwards, and defended her character against every
+onslaught.</p>
+
+<p>When Lady Maulevrier told her grandson that she had entrusted Lady
+Kirkbank with the duty of introducing Lesbia to society, Maulevrier
+shrugged his shoulders and held his peace. He knew no actual harm in the
+matter. Lady Kirkbank's was rather a fast set; and had he been allowed
+to choose it was not to Lady Kirkbank that he would have delegated his
+grandmother's duty. In Maulevrier's own phrase it was 'not good enough'
+for Lesbia. But it was not in his power to interfere. He was not told of
+the plan until everything had been settled. The thing was accomplished;
+and against accomplished facts Maulevrier was the last to protest.</p>
+
+<p>His friend John Hammond had not been silent. He knew nothing of Lady
+Kirkbank personally; but he knew the position which she held in London
+society, and he urged his friend strongly to enlighten Lady Maulevrier
+as to the kind of circle into which she was about to entrust her young
+granddaughter, a girl brought up in the Arcadia of England.</p>
+
+<p>'Not for worlds would I undertake such a task,' said Maulevrier. 'Her
+ladyship never had any opinion of my wisdom, and this Lady Kirkbank is a
+friend of her own youth. She would cut up rough if I were to say a word
+against an old friend. Besides what's the odds, if you come to think of
+it? all society is fast nowadays, or at any rate all society worth
+living in. And then again, Lesbia is just one of those cool-headed girls
+who would keep herself head uppermost in a maelstrom. She knows on which
+side her bread is buttered. Look how easily she chucked you up because
+she did not think you good enough. She'll make use of this Lady
+Kirkbank, who is a good soul, I am told, and will make the best match of
+the season.'</p>
+
+<p>And now the season had begun, and Lady Lesbia Haselden was circulating
+with other aristocratic atoms in the social vortex, with her head
+apparently uppermost.</p>
+
+<p>'Old Lady K—has nobbled a real beauty, this time,' said one of the
+Arlington Street set to his friend as they lolled on the railings in the
+park, 'a long way above any of those plain-headed ones she tried to palm
+off upon us last year: the South American girl with the big eyes and a
+complexion like a toad, the Forfarshire girl with freckles and
+unsophisticated carrots. &quot;Those lovely Spanish eyes,&quot; said Lady K----,
+&quot;that Titianesque auburn hair!&quot; But it didn't answer. Both the girls
+were plain, and they have gone back to their native obscurity spinsters
+still. But this is a real thorough-bred one—blood, form, pace, all
+there.'</p>
+
+<p>'Who is she?' drawled his friend.</p>
+
+<p>'Lord Maulevrier's sister, Lady Lesbia Haselden. Has money, too, I
+believe; rich grandmother; old lady buried alive in Westmoreland; horrid
+old miser.'</p>
+
+<p>'I shouldn't mind marrying a miser's granddaughter,' said the other. 'So
+nice to know that some wretched old idiot has scraped and hoarded
+through a lifetime of deprivation and self-denial, in order that one may
+spend his money when he is under the sod.'</p>
+
+<p>Lady Lesbia was accepted everywhere, or almost everywhere, as the beauty
+of the season. There were six or seven other girls who aspired to the
+same proud position, who were asserted by their own particular friends
+to have won it; just as there are generally four or five horses which
+claim to be first favourites; but the betting was all in favour of Lady
+Lesbia.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>'What a cold-hearted creature you must be,' said Georgie. 'You don't
+seem to admire any of my favourite men.'</p>
+
+<p>'They are very nice,' Lesbia answered languidly; 'but they are all
+alike. They say the same things—wear the same clothes—sit in the same
+attitude. One would think they were all drilled in a body every morning
+before they go out. Mr. Nightshade, the actor, who came to supper the
+other night, is the only man I have seen who has a spark of
+originality.'</p>
+
+<p>'You are right,' answered Lady Kirkbank, 'there is an appalling sameness
+in men: only it is odd you should find it out so soon. I never
+discovered it till I was an old woman. How I envy Cleopatra her Cæsar
+and her Antony. No mistaking one of those for the other. Mary Stuart
+too, what marked varieties of character she had an opportunity of
+studying in Rizzio and Chastelard, Darnley and Bothwell. Ah, child, that
+is what it is to <i>live</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>'Mary is very interesting,' sighed Lesbia; 'but I fear she was not a
+correct person.'</p>
+
+<p>'My love, what correct person ever is interesting? History draws a misty
+halo round a sinner of that kind, till one almost believes her a saint.
+I think Mary Stuart, Froude's Mary, simply perfect.'</p>
+
+<p>Lesbia had begun by blushing at Lady Kirkbank's opinions; but she was
+now used to the audacity of the lady's sentiments, and the almost
+infantile candour with which she gave utterance to them. Lady Kirkbank
+liked to make her friends laugh. It was all she could do now in order to
+be admired. And there is nothing like audacity for making people laugh
+nowadays. Lady Kirkbank was a close student of all those delightful
+books of French memoirs which bring the tittle-tattle of the Regency and
+the scandals of Louis the Fifteenth's reign so vividly before us: and
+she had unconsciously founded her manners and her ways of thinking and
+talking upon that easy-going but elegant age. She did not want to seem
+better than women who had been so altogether charming. She fortified the
+frivolity of historical Parisian manners by a dash of the British
+sporting character. She drove, shot, jumped over five-barred gates,
+contrived on the verge of seventy to be as active us a young woman; and
+she flattered herself that the mixture of wit, audacity, sport, and
+good-nature was full of fascination.</p>
+
+<p>However this might be, it is certain that a good many people liked her,
+chiefly perhaps because she was good-natured, and a little on account of
+that admirable cook.</p>
+
+<p>To Lesbia, who had been weary to loathing of her old life amidst the
+hills and waterfalls of Westmoreland, this new life was one perpetual
+round of pleasure. She flung herself with all her heart and mind into
+the amusement of the moment; she knew neither weariness nor satiety. To
+ride in the park in the morning, to go to a luncheon party, a garden
+party, to drive in the park for half an hour after the garden party, to
+rush home and dress for the fourth or fifth time, and then off to a
+dinner, and from dinner to drum, and from drum to big ball, at which
+rumour said the Prince and Princess were to be present; and so, from
+eleven o'clock in the morning till four or five o'clock next morning,
+the giddy whirl went on; and every hour was so occupied by pleasure
+engagements that it was difficult to squeeze in an occasional morning
+for shopping—necessary to go to the shops sometimes, or one would not
+know how many things one really wants—or for an indispensable interview
+with the dressmaker. Those mornings at the shops were hardly the least
+agreeable of Lesbia's hours. To a girl brought up in one perpetual
+<i>tête-à-tête</i> with green hill-sides and silvery watercourses, the West
+End shops were as gardens of Eden, as Aladdin Caves, as anything,
+everything that is rapturous and intoxicating. Lesbia, the clear-headed,
+the cold-hearted, fairly lost her senses when she went into one of those
+exquisite shops, where a confusion of brocades and satins lay about in
+dazzling masses of richest colour, with here and there a bunch of
+lilies, a cluster of roses, a tortoise-shell fan, an ostrich feather, or
+a flounce of peerless Point d'Alen&ccedil;on flung carelessly athwart the sheen
+of a wine-dark velvet or golden-hued satin.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Maulevrier had said Lesbia was to have <i>carte blanche</i>; so Lesbia
+bought everything she wanted, or fancied she wanted, or that the
+shop-people thought she must want, or that Lady Kirkbank happened to
+admire. The shop-people were so obliging, and so deeply obliged by
+Lesbia's patronage. She was exactly the kind of customer they liked to
+serve. She flitted about their showrooms like a beautiful butterfly
+hovering over a flower-bed—her eye caught by every novelty. She never
+asked the price of anything; and Lady Kirkbank informed them, in
+confidence, that she was a great heiress, with a millionaire grandmother
+who indulged her every whim. Other high born young ladies, shopping upon
+fixed allowances, and sorely perplexed to make both ends meet, looked
+with eyes of envy upon this girl.</p>
+
+<p>And then came the visit to the dressmaker. It happened after all that
+Kate Kearney was not intrusted with Lady Lesbia's frocks. Miss Kearney
+was the fashion, and could pick and choose her customers; and as she was
+a young lady of good business aptitudes, she had a liking for ready
+money, or at least half-yearly settlements; and, finding that Lady
+Kirkbank was much more willing to give new orders than to pay old
+accounts, she had respectfully informed her ladyship that a pressure of
+business would prevent her executing any further demands from Arlington
+Street, while the necessity of posting her ledger obliged her to request
+the favour of an immediate cheque.</p>
+
+<p>The little skirmish—per letter—occurred while Lady Kirkbank was at
+Cannes, and Miss Kearney's conduct was stigmatised as insolent and
+ungrateful, since had not she, Lady Kirkbank by the mere fact of her
+patronage, given this young person her chief claim to fashion?</p>
+
+<p>'I shall drop her,' said Georgie, 'and go back to poor old Seraphine,
+who is worth a cartload of such Irish adventuresses.'</p>
+
+<p>So to Madame Seraphine, of Clanricarde Place, Lady Lesbia was taken as
+a lamb to the slaughter-house.</p>
+
+<p>Seraphine had made Lady Kirkbank's clothes, off and on for the last
+thirty years. Seraphine and Georgia had grown old together. Lady
+Kirkbank was always dropping Seraphine and taking her up again,
+quarrelling and making friends with her. They wrote each other little
+notes, in which Lady Kirkbank called the dressmaker her <i>cher ange</i>—her
+<i>bonne chatte</i>, her <i>chère vielle sotte</i>—and all manner of affectionate
+names—and in which Seraphine occasionally threatened the lady with the
+dire engines of the law, if money were not forthcoming before Saturday
+evening.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Kirkbank within those thirty years had paid Seraphine many
+thousands; but she had never once got herself out of the dear creature's
+debt. All her payments were payments on account. A hundred pounds; or
+fifty—or an occasional cheque for two hundred and fifty, when Sir
+George had been lucky at Newmarket and Doncaster. But the rolling
+nucleus of debt went rolling on, growing bigger every year until the
+payments on account needed to be larger or more numerous than of old to
+keep Seraphine in good humour.</p>
+
+<p>Seraphine was a woman of genius and versatility and had more than one
+art at her fingers' ends—those skinny and claw-shaped fingers, the
+nails whereof were not always clean. She took charge of her customer's
+figures, and made their corsets, and lectured them if they allowed
+nature to get the upper hand.</p>
+
+<p>'If Madame's waist gets one quarter of an inch thicker it must be that I
+renounce to make her gowns,' she would tell a ponderous matron, with
+cool insolence, and the matron would stand abashed before the little
+sallow, hooked-nosed, keen eyed Jewess, like a child before a severe
+mother.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, Seraphine, do you really think that I am stouter?' the customer
+would ask feebly, panting in her tightened corset.</p>
+
+<p>'Is it that I think so? Why that jumps to the eyes. Madame had always
+that little air of Rubens, even in the flower of her youth—but now—it
+is a Rubens of the Faubourg du Temple.'</p>
+
+<p>And horrified at the idea of her vulgarised charms the meek matron would
+consent to encase herself in one of Seraphine's severest corsets, called
+in bitterest mockery <i>à la sant&eacute;</i>—at five guineas—in order that the
+dressmaker might measure her for a forty-guinea gown.</p>
+
+<p>'A plain satin gown, my dear, with an eighteenpenny frilling round the
+neck and sleeves, and not so much trimming as would go round my little
+finger. It is positive robbery,' the matron told her friends afterwards,
+not the less proud of her skin-tight high shouldered sleeves and the
+peerless flow of her train.</p>
+
+<p>Seraphine was an artist in complexions, and it was she who provided her
+middle-aged and elderly customers with the lilies and roses of youth.
+Lady Kirkbank's town complexion was superintended by Seraphine,
+sometimes even manipulated by those harpy-like claws. The eyebrows of
+which Lesbia complained were only eyebrows <i>de province</i>—eyebrows <i>de
+voyage</i>. In London Georgie was much more particular; and Seraphine was
+often in Arlington Street with her little morocco bag of washes and
+creams, and brushes and sponges, to prepare Lady Kirkbank for some great
+party, and to instruct Lady Kirkbank's maid. At such times Georgie was
+all affection for the little dressmaker.</p>
+
+<p>'<i>Ma chatte</i>, you have made me positively adorable,' she would say,
+peering at her reflection in the ivory hand-mirror, a dazzling image of
+rouge and bismuth, carmined lips, diamonds, and frizzy yellow hair; 'I
+verily believe I look under thirty—but do not you think this gown is a
+thought too <i>décollet&eacute;e—un peu trop de peau, hein?</i>'</p>
+
+<p>'Not for you, Lady Kirkbank, with your fine shoulders. Shoulders are of
+no age—<i>les &eacute;paules sont la vraie fontaine de jouvence pour les jolies
+femmes.</i>'</p>
+
+<p>'You are such a witty creature, Seraphine, Fifine. You ought to be a
+descendant of that wicked old Madame du Deffand. Rilboche, give Madame
+some more chartreuse.'</p>
+
+<p>And Lady Kirkbank and the dressmaker would chink their liqueur glasses
+in amity before the lady gathered up her satin train and allowed her
+peerless shoulders to be muffled in a plush mantle to go down to her
+carriage, fortified by that last glass of green chartreuse.</p>
+
+<p>There were always the finest chartreuse and cura&ccedil;oa in a liqueur cabinet
+on Lady Kirkbank's dressing-table. The cabinet formed a companion to the
+dressing-case, which contained all those creamy and rose-hued cosmetics,
+powders, brushes, and medicaments, which were necessary for the
+manufacture of Georgie's complexion. The third bottle in the liqueur
+case held cognac, and this, as Rilboche the maid knew, was oftenest
+replenished. Yet nobody could accuse Lady Kirkbank of intemperate
+habits. The liqueur box only supplied the peg that was occasionally
+wanted to screw the superior mind to concert pitch.</p>
+
+<p>'One must always be at concert pitch in society, don't you know, my
+dear,' said Georgie to her young prot&eacute;g&eacute;e.</p>
+
+<p>Thus it happened that, Miss Kearney having behaved badly, Lesbia was
+carried off to dear old Seraphine, and delivered over to that modern
+witch, as a sacrifice tied to the horns of the altar.</p>
+
+<p>Clanricarde Place is a little nook of Queen Anne houses—genuine Queen
+Anne, be it understood—between Piccadilly and St. James's Palace, and
+hardly five minutes' walk from Arlington Street. It is a quiet little
+<i>cul de sac</i> in the very heart of the fashionable world; and here of an
+afternoon might be seen the carriages of Madame Seraphine's customers,
+blocking the whole of the carriage way, and choking up the narrow
+entrance to the street, which widened considerably at the inner end.</p>
+
+<p>Madame Seraphine's house was at the end, a narrow house, with tall
+old-fashioned windows curtained with amber satin. It was a small, dark
+house, and exhaled occasional odours of garlic and main sewer; but the
+staircase was a gem in old oak, and the furniture in the triple
+telescopic drawing rooms, dwindling to a closet at the end, was genuine
+Louis Seize.</p>
+
+<p>Seraphine herself was the only shabby thing in the house—a wizened
+little woman, with a wicked old Jewish face, and one shoulder higher
+than the other, dressed in a shiny black moire gown, years after moires
+had been exploded, and with a rag of old lace upon her sleek black
+hair—raven black hair, and the only good thing about her appearance.</p>
+
+<p>One ornament, and one only, had Seraphine ever been guilty of wearing,
+and that was an old-fashioned half-hoop ring of Brazilian diamonds,
+brilliants of the first water. This ring she called her yard measure;
+and she was in the habit of using it as her Standard of purity, and
+comparing it with any diamonds which her customers submitted to her
+inspection. For the clever little dressmaker had a feeling heart for a
+lady in difficulties, and was in the habit of lending money on good
+security, and on terms that were almost reasonable as compared with the
+usurious rates one reads of in the newspapers.</p>
+
+<p>Lesbia's first sensation upon having this accomplished person presented
+to her was one of shrinking and disgust. There was something sinister in
+the sallow face, the small shrewd eyes, and long hooked nose, the
+crooked figure, and claw-shaped hands. But when Madame Seraphine began
+to talk about gowns, and bade her acolytes—smartly-dressed young women
+with pleasing countenances—bring forth marvels of brocade and satin,
+embroideries, stamped velvets, bullion fringes, and ostrich feather
+flouncings, Lesbia became interested, and forgot the unholy aspect of
+the high priestess.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Kirkbank and the dressmaker discussed Lesbia's charms as calmly as
+if she had been out of the room.</p>
+
+<p>'What do you think of her figure?' asked Lady Kirkbank.</p>
+
+<p>'One cannot criticise what does not exist,' replied the dressmaker, in
+French. 'The young lady has no figure. She has evidently been brought up
+in the country.'</p>
+
+<p>And then with rapid bird-like movements, and with her head on one side,
+Seraphine measured Lesbia's waist and bust, muttering little argotic
+expressions <i>sotto voce</i> as she did so.</p>
+
+<p>'Waist three inches too large, shoulders six inches too narrow,' she
+said decisively, and she dictated some figures to one of the damsels,
+who wrote them down in an order-book.</p>
+
+<p>'What does that mean?' asked Lesbia, not at all approving of such
+cavalier treatment.</p>
+
+<p>'Only that Seraphine will make your corsets the right size,' answered
+Lady Kirkbank.</p>
+
+<p>'What? Three inches too small for my waist, and six too wide for my
+shoulders?'</p>
+
+<p>'My love, you must have a figure,' replied Lady Kirkbank, conclusively.
+'It is not what you are, but what you ought to be that has to be
+considered.'</p>
+
+<p>So Lesbia, the cool-headed, who was also the weak-minded, consented to
+have her figure adjusted to the regulation mark of absolute beauty, as
+understood by Madame Seraphine. It was only when her complexion came
+under discussion, and Seraphine ventured to suggest that she would be
+all the better for a little accentuation of her eyebrows and darkening
+of her lashes, that Lesbia made a stand.</p>
+
+<p>'What would my grandmother think of me if she heard I painted?' she
+asked, indignantly.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Kirkbank laughed at her <i>na&iuml;vet&eacute;</i>.</p>
+
+<p>'My dear child, your grandmother is just half a century behind the age,'
+she said. 'I hope you are not going to allow your life in London to be
+regulated by an oracle at Grasmere?'</p>
+
+<p>'I am not going to paint my face,' replied Lesbia, firmly.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, perhaps you are right. The eyebrows are a little weak and
+undecided, Seraphine, as you say, and the lashes would be all the better
+for your famous cosmetic; but after all there is a charm in what the
+painters call &quot;sincerity,&quot; and any little errors of detail will prove
+the genuineness of Lady Lesbia's beauty. One <i>may</i> be too artistic.'</p>
+
+<p>And Lady Kirkbank gave a complacent glance at her own image in one of
+the Marie Antoinette mirrors, pleased with the general effect of arched
+brows, darkened eyelids, and a daisy bonnet. The fair Georgie generally
+affected field-flowers and other simplicities, which would have been
+becoming to a beauty of eighteen.</p>
+
+<p>'One is obliged to smother one's self in satin and velvet for balls and
+dinners,' said Lady Kirkbank, when she discussed the great question of
+gowns; 'but I know I always look my best in my cotton frock and straw
+hat.'</p>
+
+<p>That first visit to Seraphine's den—den as terrible, did one but know
+it, as that antediluvian hyena-cave at Torquay, where the threshold is
+worn by the bodies of beasts dragged across it, and the ground paved
+with their bones—that first visit was a serious business. Later
+interviews might be mere frivolities, half-an-hour wasted in looking at
+new fashions, an order given carelessly on the spur of the moment; but
+upon this occasion Lady Kirkbank had to arm her young <i>prot&eacute;g&eacute;e</i> for the
+coming campaign, and the question was to the last degree serious.</p>
+
+<p>The chaperon and the dressmaker put their heads together, looked at
+fashion plates, talked solemnly of Worth and his compeers, of the gowns
+that were being worn by Bernhardt, and Pierson, and Croisette, and other
+stars of the Parisian stage; and then Lady Kirkbank gave her orders,
+Lesbia listening and assenting.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing was said about prices; but Lesbia had a vague idea that some of
+the things would be rather expensive, and she ventured to ask Lady
+Kirkbank if she were not ordering too many gowns.</p>
+
+<p>'My dear, Lady Maulevrier said you were to have <i>carte blanche</i>,'
+replied Georgie, solemnly. 'Your dear grandmother is as rich as Croesus,
+and she is generosity itself; and how should I ever forgive myself if I
+allowed you to appear in society in an inadequate style. You have to
+take a high place, the very highest place, Lesbia; and you must be
+dressed in accordance with that position.'</p>
+
+<p>Lesbia said no more. After all it was Lady Kirkbank's business and not
+hers. See had been entrusted to Lady Kirkbank as to a person who
+thoroughly knew the great world, and she must submit to be governed by
+the wisdom and experience of her chaperon. If the bills were heavy, that
+would be Lady Kirkbank's affair; and no doubt dear grandmother was rich
+enough to afford anything Lesbia wanted. She had been told that she was
+to take rank among heiresses.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Maulevrier had given her granddaughter some old-fashioned
+ornaments, topaz, amethysts, turquoise—jewels that had belonged to dead
+and gone Talmashes and Angersthorpes—to be reset. This entailed a visit
+to a Bond Street jeweller, and in the dazzling glass-cases on the
+counter of the Bond Street establishment Lesbia saw a good many things
+which she felt were real necessities to her new phase of existence, and
+these, with Lady Kirkbank's approval, she ordered. They were not
+important matters. Half-a-dozen gold bangles of real oriental
+workmanship, three or four jewelled arrows, flies and beetles, and
+caterpillars, to pin on her laces and flowers, a diamond clasp for her
+pearl necklace, a dear little gold hunter to wear when she rode in the
+park, a diamond butterfly to light up that old-fashioned amethyst
+<i>parure</i> which the jeweller was to reset with an artistic admixture of
+brilliants.</p>
+
+<p>'I am sure you would not like the effect without diamonds,' said the
+jeweller. 'Your amethysts are very fine, but they are dark and heavy in
+tone, and want a good deal of lighting-up, especially for the present
+fashion of half-lighted rooms. If you will allow me to use my own
+discretion, and mix in a few brilliants, I shall be able to produce a
+really artistic <i>parure</i>; otherwise I would not recommend you to touch
+them. The present setting is clumsy and inelegant; but I really do not
+know that I could improve upon it, without an admixture of brilliants.'</p>
+
+<p>'Will the diamonds add very much to the expense?' Lesbia inquired,
+timidly.</p>
+
+<p>'My dear child, you are perfectly safe in leaving the matter in Mr.
+Cabochon's hands,' interposed Lady Kirkbank, who had particular reasons
+for wishing to be on good terms with the head of the establishment. 'Your
+dear grandmother gave you the amethysts to be reset; and of course she
+would wish it to be done in an artistic manner. Otherwise, as Mr.
+Cabochon judiciously says, why have the stones reset at all? Better wear
+them in all their present hideousness.'</p>
+
+<p>Of course, after this Lesbia consented to the amethysts being dealt with
+according to Mr. Cabochon's taste.</p>
+
+<p>'Which is simply perfect,' interjected Lady Kirkbank.</p>
+
+<p>And now Lesbia's campaign began in real earnest—a life of pleasure, a
+life of utter selfishness and self-indulgence, which would go far to
+pervert the strongest mind, tarnish the purest nature. To dress and be
+admired—that was what Lesbia's life meant from morning till night. She
+had no higher or nobler aim. Even on Sunday mornings at the fashionable
+church, where the women sat on one side of the nave and the men on the
+other, where divinest music was as a pair of wings, on which the
+enraptured soul flew heavenward—even here Lesbia thought more of her
+bonnet and gloves—the <i>chic</i> or non-<i>chic</i> of her whole costume, than
+of the service. She might kneel gracefully, with her bent head, just
+revealing the ivory whiteness of a lovely throat, between the edge of
+her lace frilling and the flowers in her bonnet. She might look the
+fairest image of devotion; but how could a woman pray whose heart was a
+milliner's shop, whose highest ambition was to be prettier and better
+dressed than other women?</p>
+
+<p>The season was six weeks old. It was Ascot week, the crowning glory of
+the year, and Lesbia and her chaperon had secured tickets for the Royal
+enclosure—or it may be said rather that Lesbia had secured them—for
+the Master of the Royal Buckhounds might have omitted poor old Lady
+Kirkbank's familiar name from his list if it had not been for that
+lovely girl who went everywhere under the veteran's wing.</p>
+
+<p>Six weeks, and Lesbia's appearance in society had been one perpetual
+triumph; but as yet nothing serious had happened. She had had no offers.
+Half a dozen men had tried their hardest to propose to her—had sat out
+dances, had waylaid her in conservatories and in back drawing-rooms, in
+lobbies while she waited for her carriage—had looked at her piteously
+with tenderest declarations trembling on their lips; but she had
+contrived to keep them at bay, to strike them dumb by her coldness, or
+confound them by her coquetry; for all these were ineligibles, whom Lady
+Lesbia Haselden did not want to have the trouble of refusing.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Kirkbank was in no haste to marry her <i>prot&eacute;g&eacute;e</i>—nay, it was much
+more to her interest that Lesbia should remain single for three or four
+seasons, and that she, Lady Kirkbank, might have the advantage of close
+association with the young beauty, and the privilege of spending Lady
+Maulevrier's money. But she would have liked to be able to inform
+Lesbia's grandmother of some tremendous conquest—the subjugation of a
+worthy victim. This herd of nobodies—younger sons with courtesy titles
+and empty pockets, ruined Guardsmen, briefless barristers—what was the
+use of telling Lady Maulevrier about such barren victories? Lady
+Kirkbank therefore contented herself with expatiating upon Lesbia's
+triumphs in a general way: how graciously the Princess spoke to her and
+about her; how she had been asked to sit on the dais at the ball at
+Marlborough House, and had danced in the Royal quadrille.</p>
+
+<p>'Has Lesbia happened to meet Lord Hartfield?' Lady Maulevrier asked,
+incidentally, in one of her letters.</p>
+
+<p>No. Lord Hartfield was in London, for he had made a great speech in the
+Lords on a question of vital interest; but he was not going into
+society, or at any rate into society of a frivolous kind. He had given
+himself up to politics, as so many young men did nowadays, which was
+altogether horrid of them. His name had appeared in the list of guests
+at one or two cabinet dinners; but the world of polo matches and
+afternoon teas, dances and drums, private theatricals, and Orleans House
+suppers, knew him not. As a competitor on the fashionable race-course,
+Lord Hartfield was, in common parlance, out of the running.</p>
+
+<p>And now on this glorious June day, this Thursday of Thursdays, the Ascot
+Cup day, for the first time since Lesbia's d&eacute;but, Lady Kirkbank had
+occasion to smile upon an admirer whose pretensions were worthy of the
+highest consideration.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Smithson, of Park Lane, and Rood Hall, near Henley, and Formosa,
+Cowes, and Le Bouge, Deauville, and a good many other places too
+numerous to mention, was reputed to be one of the richest commoners in
+England. He was a man of that uncertain period of life which enemies
+call middle age, and friends call youth. That he would never see a
+five-and-thirtieth birthday again was certain; but whether he had passed
+the Rubicon of forty was open to doubt. It is possible that he was
+enjoying those few golden years between thirty-five and forty, which for
+the wealthy bachelor constitute verily the prime and summer-tide of
+life. Wisdom has come, experience has been bought, taste has been
+cultivated, the man has educated himself to the uttermost in the great
+school of daily life. He knows his world thoroughly, whatever that world
+is, and he knows how to enjoy every gift and every advantage which
+Providence has bestowed upon him.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Smithson was a great authority on the Stock Exchange, though he had
+ceased for the last three or four years to frequent the 'House,' or to
+be seen in the purlieus of Throgmorton Street. Indeed he had an air of
+hardly knowing his way to the City, of being acquainted with that part
+of London only by hearsay. He complained that his horses shied at
+passing Temple Bar. And yet a few years ago Mr. Smithson's city
+operations had been on a very extensive scale: It was in the rise and
+fall of commodities rather than of stocks and shares that Horace
+Smithson had made his money. He had exercised occult influences upon the
+trade of the great city, of the world itself, whereof that city is in a
+manner the keystone. Iron had risen or fallen at his beck. At the breath
+of his nostrils cochineal had gone up in the market at an almost magical
+rate, as if the whole civilised world had become suddenly intent upon
+dyeing its garments red, nay, as if even the naked savages of the Gold
+Coast and the tribes of Central Africa were bent on staining their dusky
+skins with the bodies of the female coccus.</p>
+
+<p>Favoured by a hint from Smithson, his particular friends followed his
+lead, and rushed into the markets to buy all the cochineal that could be
+had; to buy at any price, since the market was rising hourly. And then,
+all in a moment, as the sky clouds over on a summer day, there came a
+dulness in the cochineal market, and the female coccus was being sold at
+an enormous sacrifice. And anon it leaked out that Mr. Smithson had
+grown tired of cochineal, and had been selling for the last week or two;
+and it was noised abroad that this rise and fall in cocci had brought
+Mr. Smithson seventy thousand pounds.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Smithson was said to have commenced life in a very humble capacity.
+There were some who declared he was the very youth who stooped to pick
+up a pin in a Parisian banker's courtyard, after his services as clerk
+had just been rejected by the firm, and who was thereupon recognised as
+a youth worthy of favour and taken into the banker's office. But this
+touching incident of the pin was too ancient a tradition to fit Mr.
+Smithson, still under forty.</p>
+
+<p>Some there were who remembered him eighteen years ago as an adventurer
+in the great wilderness of London, penniless, friendless, a
+Jack-of-all-trades, living as the birds of the air live, and with as
+little certainty of future maintenance. And then Mr. Smithson
+disappeared for a space—he went under, as his friends called it; to
+re-appear fifteen years later as Smithson the millionaire. He had been
+in Peru, Mexico, California. He had traded in hides, in diamonds, in
+silver, in stocks and shares. And now he was the great Smithson, whose
+voice was the voice of an oracle, who was supposed to be able to make
+the fortunes of other men by a word, or a wink, a nod, or a little look
+across the crowd, and whom all the men and women in London
+society—short of that exclusive circle which does <i>not</i> open its ranks
+to Smithsons—were ready to cherish and admire.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Smithson had been in Petersburg, Paris, Vienna, all over civilised
+Europe during the last five weeks, whether on business or on pleasure
+bent, nobody knew. He affected to be an elegant idler; but it was said
+by the initiated that wherever Smithson went the markets rose or fell,
+and hides, iron, copper, or tin, felt the influence of his presence.</p>
+
+<p>He came back to London in time for the Cup Day, and in time to fall
+desperately in love with Lesbia, whom he met for the first time in the
+Royal enclosure.</p>
+
+<p>She was dressed in white, purest ivory white, from top to toe—radiant,
+dazzling, under an immense sunshade fringed with creamy marabouts. Her
+complexion—untouched by Seraphine—her dark and glossy hair, her large
+violet eyes, luminous, dark almost to blackness, were all set off and
+accentuated by the absence of colour in her costume. Even the cluster of
+exotics on her shoulder were of the same pure tint, gardenias and lilies
+of the valley.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Smithson was formally presented to the new beauty, and received with
+a cool contempt which riveted his chains. He was so accustomed to be run
+after by women, that it was a new sensation to meet one who was not in
+the least impressed by his superior merits.</p>
+
+<p>'I don't suppose the girl knows who I am,' he said to himself, for
+although he had a very good idea of his intrinsic worth, he knew that
+his wealth ranked first among his merits.</p>
+
+<p>But on after occasions when Lesbia had been told all that could be told
+to the advantage of Mr. Smithson, she accepted his homage with the same
+indifference, and treated him with less favour than she accorded to the
+ruined guardsmen and younger sons who were dying for her.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XXVI"></a><h2>CHAPTER XXVI.</h2>
+
+<h3>'PROUD CAN I NEVER BE OF WHAT I HATE.'</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>It was a Saturday afternoon, and even in that great world which has no
+occupation in life except to amuse itself, whose days are all holidays,
+there is a sort of exceptional flavour, a kind of extra excitement on
+Saturday afternoons, distinguished by polo matches at Hurlingham, just
+as Saturday evenings are by the production of new plays at fashionable
+theatres. There was a great military polo match for this particular
+Saturday—Lancers against Dragoons. It was a lovely June afternoon, and
+Hurlingham would be at its best. The cool greensward, the branching
+trees, the flowing river, would afford an unspeakable relief after the
+block of carriages in Bond Street and the heated air of London, where
+even the parks felt baked and arid; and to Hurlingham Lady Kirkbank
+drove directly after luncheon.</p>
+
+<p>Lesbia leaned back in the barouche listening calmly, while her chaperon
+expatiated upon the wealth and possessions of Horace Smithson. It was
+now ten days since the meeting at Ascot, and Mr. Smithson had contrived
+to see a great deal of Lesbia in that short time. He was invited almost
+everywhere, and he had haunted her at afternoon and evening parties; he
+had supped in Arlington Street after the opera; he had played cards with
+Lesbia, and had enjoyed the felicity of winning her money. His
+admiration was obvious, and there was a seriousness in his manner of
+pursuing her which showed that, in Lady Kirkbank's unromantic
+phraseology, 'the man meant business.'</p>
+
+<p>'Smithson is caught at last, and I am glad of it,' said Georgie.</p>
+
+<p>'The creature is an abominable flirt, and has broken more hearts than
+any man in London. He was all but the death of one of the dearest girls
+I know.'</p>
+
+<p>'Mr. Smithson breaks hearts!' exclaimed Lesbia, languidly. 'I should not
+have thought that was in his line. Mr. Smithson is not an Adonis, nor
+are his manners particularly fascinating.'</p>
+
+<p>'My child how fresh you are! Do you suppose it is the handsome men or
+the fascinating men for whom women break their hearts in society? It is
+the rich men they all want to marry—men like Smithson, who can give
+them diamonds, and yachts, and a hunting stud, and half a dozen fine
+houses. Those are the prizes—the blue ribbons of the matrimonial
+race-course—men like Smithson, who pretend to admire all the pretty
+women, who dangle, and dangle, and keep off other offers, and give ten
+guinea bouquets, and then at the end of the season are off to Hombourg
+or the Scotch moors, without a word. Do you think that kind of treatment
+is not hard enough to break a penniless girl's heart? She sees the
+golden prize within her grasp, as she believes; she thinks that she and
+poverty have parted company for ever; she imagines herself mistress of
+town house and country houses, yachts and stables; and then one fine
+morning the gentleman is off and away! Do not you think that is enough
+to break a girl's heart?'</p>
+
+<p>'I can imagine that a girl steeped to the lips in poverty might be willing
+to marry Mr. Smithson's houses and yachts,' answered Lesbia, in her low
+sweet voice, with a faint sneer even amidst the sweetness, 'but, I think
+it must have been a happy release for any one to be let off the
+sacrifice at the last moment.'</p>
+
+<p>'Poor Belle Trinder did not think so.'</p>
+
+<p>'Who was Belle Trinder?'</p>
+
+<p>'An Essex parson's daughter whom I took under my wing five years ago—a
+splendid girl, large and fair, and just a trifle coarse—not to be
+spoken of in the same day with you, dearest; but still a decidedly
+handsome creature. And she took remarkably well. She was a very lively
+girl, &quot;never ran mute,&quot; Sir George used to say. Sir George was very fond
+of her. She amused him, poor girl, with her rather brainless rattle.'</p>
+
+<p>'And Mr. Smithson admired her?'</p>
+
+<p>'Followed her about everywhere, sent her whole flower gardens in the way
+of bouquets and Japanese baskets, and floral <i>parures</i> for her gowns,
+and opera boxes and concert tickets. Their names were always coupled.
+People used to call them Bel and the Dragon. The poor child made up her
+mind she was to be Mrs. Smithson. She used to talk of what she would do
+for her own people—the poor old father, buried alive in a damp
+parsonage, and struggling every winter with chronic bronchitis; the four
+younger sisters pining in dulness and penury; the mother who hardly knew
+what it was to rest from the continual worries of daily life.'</p>
+
+<p>'Poor things!' sighed Lesbia, gazing admiringly at the handle of her
+last new sunshade.</p>
+
+<p>'Belle used to talk of what she would do for them all,' pursued Lady
+Kirkbank. 'Father should go every year to the villa at Monte Carlo;
+mother and the girls should have a month in Park Lane every season, and
+their autumn holiday at one of Mr. Smithson's country houses. I knew the
+world well enough to be sure that this kind of thing would never answer
+with a man like Smithson. It is only one man in a thousand—the modern
+Arthur, the modern Quixote—who will marry a whole family. I told Belle
+as much, but she laughed. She felt so secure of her power over the man.
+&quot;He will do anything I ask him,&quot; she said.'</p>
+
+<p>'Miss Trinder must be an extraordinary young person,' observed Lesbia,
+scornfully. 'The man had not proposed, had he?'</p>
+
+<p>'No; the actual proposal hung fire, but Belle thought it was a settled
+thing all the same. Everybody talked to her as if she were engaged to
+Smithson, and those poor, ignorant vicarage girls used to write her long
+letters of congratulation, envying her good fortune, speculating about
+what she would do when she was married. The girl was too open and candid
+for London society—talked too much, &quot;gave the view before she was sure
+of her fox,&quot; Sir George said. All this silly talk came to Smithson's
+ears, and one morning we read in the Post that Mr. Smithson had started
+the day before for Algiers, where he was to stay at the house of the
+English Consul, and hunt lions. We waited all day, hoping for some
+letter of explanation, some friendly farewell which would mean <i>à
+revoir</i>. But there was nothing, and then poor Belle gave way altogether.
+She shut herself up in her room, and went out of one hysterical fit into
+another. I never heard a girl sob so terribly. She was not fit to be
+seen for a week, and then she went home to her father's parsonage in the
+flat swampy country on the borders of Suffolk, and eat her heart, as
+Byron calls it. And the worst of it was that she had no actual
+justification for considering herself jilted. She had talked, and other
+people had talked, and among them they had settled the business. But
+Smithson had said hardly anything. He had only flirted to his heart's
+content, and had spent a few hundreds upon flowers, gloves, fans, and
+opera tickets, which perhaps would not have been accepted by a girl with
+a strong sense of her own dignity.'</p>
+
+<p>'I should think not, indeed,' interjected Lesbia.</p>
+
+<p>'But which poor Belle was only too delighted to get.'</p>
+
+<p>'Miss Trinder must be very bad style,' said Lesbia, with languid scorn,
+'and Mr. Smithson is an execrable person. Did she die?'</p>
+
+<p>'No, my dear, she is alive poor soul!'</p>
+
+<p>'You said she broke her heart.'</p>
+
+<p>'&quot;The heart may break, yet brokenly live on,&quot;' quoted Lady Kirkbank.
+'The disappointed young women don't all die. They take to district
+visiting, or rational dressing, or china painting, or an ambulance
+brigade. The lucky ones marry well-to-do widowers with large families,
+and so slip into a comfortable groove by the time they are
+five-and-thirty. Poor Belle is still single, still buried in the damp
+parsonage, where she paints plates and teacups, and wears out my old
+gowns, just as she is wearing out her own life, poor creature!'</p>
+
+<p>'The idea of any one wanting to marry Mr. Smithson,' said Lesbia. 'It
+seems too dreadful.'</p>
+
+<p>'A case of real destitution, you think. Wait till you have seen
+Smithson's house in Park Lane—his team, his yacht, his orchid houses in
+Berkshire.'</p>
+
+<p>Lesbia sighed. Her knowledge of London society was only seven weeks old;
+and yet already the day of disenchantment had begun! She was having her
+eyes opened to the stern realities of life. A year ago when her
+appearance in the great world was still only a dream of the future, she
+had pictured to herself the crowd of suitors who would come to woo, and
+she had resolved to choose the worthiest.</p>
+
+<p>What would he be like, that worthiest among the wooers, that King Arthur
+among her knights?</p>
+
+<p>First and foremost, he would be of rank higher than her own—a duke, a
+marquis, or one of the first and oldest among earls. Title and lofty
+lineage were indispensable. It would be a fall, a failure, a
+disappointment, were she to marry a commoner, however distinguished.</p>
+
+<p>The worthy one must be noble, therefore, and of the old nobility. He
+must be young, handsome, intellectual. He must stand out from among his
+peers by his gifts of mind and person. He must have won distinction in
+the arena of politics or diplomacy, arms or letters. He must be
+'somebody.'</p>
+
+<p>She had been seven weeks in society, and this modern Arthur had not
+appeared. So far as she had been able to discover, there was no such
+person. The dukes and marquises were mostly men of advanced years. The
+young unmarried nobility were given over to sport, play, and
+foolishness. She had heard of only one man who at all corresponded with
+her ideal, and he was Lord Hartfield. But Lord Hartfield had given
+himself up to politics, and was no doubt a prig. Lady Kirkbank spoke of
+him with contempt, as an intolerable person. But then Lord Hartfield was
+not in Lady Kirkbank's set. He belonged to that serious circle to which
+Lady Kirkbank's house appeared about as reputable a place of gathering
+as a booth on a race-course.</p>
+
+<p>And now Lady Kirkbank told Lesbia that this Mr. Smithson, a nobody with
+a great fortune, was a man whose addresses she, the sister of Lord
+Maulevrier, ought to welcome. Mr. Smithson, who claimed to be a lineal
+descendant of that Sir Michael Carrington, standard-bearer to Coeur de
+Lion in the Holy Land, whose descendants changed their name to Smith
+during the Wars of the Roses. Mr. Smithson bodily proclaimed himself a
+scion of this good old county family, and bore on his plate and his
+coach panels the elephant's head and the three demi-griffins of the
+Hertfordshire Smiths, who only smiled and shrugged their shoulders when
+they were complimented upon the splendid surroundings of their cousin.
+Who could tell? Some lateral branch of the standard-bearer's family tree
+might have borne this illustrious twig.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Kirkbank and all Lady Kirkbank's friends seemed to have conspired
+to teach Lesbia Haselden one lesson, and that lesson meant that money
+was the first prize in the great game of life. Money ranked before
+everything—before titles, before noble lineage, genius, fame, beauty,
+courage, honour. Money was Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end.
+Mr. Smithson, whose antecedents were as cloudy as those of Aphrodite,
+was a greater man than a peer whose broad acres only brought him two per
+cent., or half of whose farms were tenantless, and his fields growing
+cockle instead of barley.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, one by one, Lady Lesbia's illusions were reft from her. A year ago
+she had fancied beauty all-powerful, a gift which must ensure to its
+possessor dominion over all the kingdoms of the earth. Rank, intellect,
+fame would bow down before that magical diadem. And, behold, she had
+been shining upon London society for seven weeks, and only empty heads
+and empty pockets had bowed down—the frivolous, the ineligible,—and
+Mr. Smithson.</p>
+
+<p>Another illusion which had been dispelled was Lesbia's comfortable idea
+of her own expectations. Her grandmother had told her that she might
+take rank among heiresses; and she had held herself accordingly, deeming
+that her place was among the wealthiest. And now, since Mr. Smithson's
+appearance upon the scene, Lady Kirkbank had informed her young friend
+with noble candour that Lady Maulevrier's fortune, however large it
+might seem at Grasmere, would be a poor thing in London; and that Lady
+Maulevrier's ideas about money were as old-fashioned as her notions
+about morals.</p>
+
+<p>'Life is about six times as expensive as it was in your grandmother's
+time.' said Lady Kirkbank, as the carriage rolled softly along the
+shabby road between Knightsbridge and Fulham. 'It is the pace that
+kills. Society, which used to jog along comfortably, like the old
+Brighton stage, at ten miles an hour, now goes as fast as the Brighton
+express. In my mother's time poor Lord Byron was held up to the
+execration of respectable people as the type of cynical profligacy; in
+my own time people talked about Lord Waterford; but, my dear, the young
+men now are all Byrons and Waterfords, without the genius of the one or
+the generosity of the other. We are all going at steeplechase rate.
+Social success without money is impossible. The rich Americans, the
+successful Jews, will crowd us out unless we keep pace with them. Ah,
+Lesbia, my dear girl, there would be a great future before you if you
+could only make up your mind to accept Mr. Smithson.'</p>
+
+<p>'How do you know that he means to propose to me?' asked Lesbia,
+mockingly. 'Perhaps he is only going to behave as he did to Miss
+Trinder.'</p>
+
+<p>'Lady Lesbia Haselden is a very different person from a country parson's
+daughter,' answered her chaperon; 'Smithson told me all about it
+afterwards. He was really taken with Belle's fine figure and good
+complexion; but one of her particular friends told him of her foolish
+talk about her sisters, and how well she meant to get them married when
+she was Mrs. Smithson. This disgusted him. He went down to Essex,
+reconnoitered the parsonage, saw one of the sisters hanging out cuffs
+and collars in the orchard—another feeding the fowls—both in shabby
+gowns and country-made boots; one of them with red hair and freckles.
+The mother was bargaining for fish with a hawker at the kitchen door.
+And these were the people he was expected to import into Park Lane,
+under ceilings painted by Leighton. These were the people he was to
+exhibit on board his yacht, to cart about on his drag. &quot;I had half made
+up my mind to marry the girl, but I would sooner have hung myself than
+marry her mother and sisters so I took the first train for Dover, en
+route for Algiers,&quot; said Smithson, and upon my word I could hardly blame
+the man,' concluded Lady Kirkbank.</p>
+
+<p>They were driving up the narrow avenue to the gates of Hurlingham by
+this time. Lesbia shook out her frock and looked at her gloves,
+tan-coloured mousquetaires, reaching up to the elbow, and embroidered to
+match her frock.</p>
+
+<p>To-day she was a study in brown and gold. Brown satin petticoat
+embroidered with marsh marigolds; little bronze shoes, with marsh
+marigolds tied on the latchets; brown stockings with marsh marigold
+clocks; tunic brown foulard smothered with quillings of soft brown lace;
+Princess bonnet of brown straw, with a wreath of marsh marigold and a
+neat little buckle of brown diamonds; parasol brown satin, with an
+immense bunch of marsh marigolds on the top; fan to match parasol.</p>
+
+<p>The seats in front of the field were nearly all full when Lady Kirkbank
+and Lesbia left their carriage; but their interests had been protected
+by a gentleman who had turned down two chairs and sat between them on
+guard. This was Mr. Smithson.</p>
+
+<p>'I have been sitting here for an hour keeping your chairs,' he said, as
+he rose to greet them. 'You have no idea what work I have had, and how
+ferociously all the women have looked at me.'</p>
+
+<p>The match was going on. The Lancers were scuffling for the ball, and
+affording a fine display of hog-maned ponies and close-cropped young men
+in ideal boots. But Lesbia cared very little about the match. She was
+looking along the serried ranks of youth and beauty to see if anybody's
+frock was smarter than her own.</p>
+
+<p>No. She could see nothing she liked so well as her brown satin and
+buttercups. She sat down in a perfectly contented frame of mind, pleased
+with herself and with Seraphine—pleased even with Mr. Smithson, who had
+shown himself devoted by his patient attendance upon the empty chairs.</p>
+
+<p>After the match was over the two ladies and their attendant strolled
+about the gardens. Other men came and fluttered round Lesbia, and women
+and girls exchanged endearing smiles and pretty little words of greeting
+with her, and envied her the brown frock and buttercups and Mr. Smithson
+at her chariot wheel. And then they went to the lawn in front of the
+club-house, which was so crowded that even Mr. Smithson found it
+difficult to get a tea-table, and would hardly have succeeded so soon as
+he did if it had not been for the assistance of a couple of Lesbia's
+devoted Guardsmen, who ran to and fro and badgered the waiters.</p>
+
+<p>After much skirmishing they were seated at a rustic table, the blue
+river gleaming and glancing in the distance, the good old trees
+spreading their broad shadows over the grass, the company crowding and
+chattering and laughing—an animated picture of pretty faces, smart
+gowns, big parasols, Japanese fans.</p>
+
+<p>Lesbia poured out the tea with the prettiest air of domesticity.</p>
+
+<p>'Can you really pour out tea?' gasped a callow lieutenant, gazing upon
+her with goggling, enraptured eyes. 'I did not think you could do
+anything so earthly.'</p>
+
+<p>'I can, and drink it too,' answered Lesbia, laughing. 'I adore tea.
+Cream and sugar?'</p>
+
+<p>'I—I beg your pardon—how many?' murmured the youth, who had lost
+himself in gazing, and no longer understood plain English.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Smithson frowned at the intruder, and contrived to absorb Lesbia's
+attention for the rest of the afternoon. He had a good deal more to say
+for himself than her military admirers, and was altogether more amusing.
+He had a little cynical air which Lesbia's recent education had taught
+her to enjoy. He depreciated all her female friends—abused their gowns
+and bonnets, and gave her to understand, between the lines, as it were,
+that she was the only woman in London worth thinking about.</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him curiously, wondering how Belle Trinder had been able
+to resign herself to the idea of marrying him.</p>
+
+<p>He was not absolutely bad looking—but he was in all things unlike a
+girl's ideal lover. He was short and stout, with a pale complexion, and
+sunken faded eyes, as of a man who had spent the greater part of his
+life by candle light, and had pored much over ledgers and bank books,
+share lists and prospectuses. He dressed well, or allowed himself to be
+dressed by the most correct of tailors—the Prince's tailor—but he
+never attempted to lead the fashion in his garments. He had no
+originality. Such sublime flights as that of the man who revived
+corduroy, or of that daring genius who resuscitated the half-forgotten
+Inverness coat, were unknown to him. He could only follow the lead of
+the highest. He had small feet, of which he was intensely proud, podgy
+white hands on which he wore the most exquisite rings. He changed his
+rings every day, like a Roman Emperor; was reported to have summer and
+winter rings—onyx and the coolest looking intaglios set in filagree for
+warm weather—fiery rubies and diamonds in massive bands of dull gold
+for winter. He was said to devote half-an-hour every morning to the
+treatment of his nails, which were perfect. All the inkstains of his
+youth had been obliterated, and those nails which had once been bitten
+to the quick during the throes of financial study were now things of
+beauty.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Lesbia surveyed Mr. Smithson critically, and shuddered at the
+thought that this person was the best substitute which the season had
+yet offered her for her ideal knight. She thought of John Hammond, the
+tall, strong figure, straight and square; the head so proudly carried on
+a neck which would have graced a Greek arena. The straight, clearly-cut
+features, the flashing eyes, bright with youth and hope and the promise
+of all good things. Yes, there was indeed a man—a man in all the
+nobility of manhood, as God made him, an Adam before the Fall.</p>
+
+<p>Ah, if John Hammond had only possessed a quarter of Mr. Smithson's
+wealth how gladly would Lesbia have defied the world and married him.
+But to defy the world upon nothing a year was out of the question.</p>
+
+<p>'Why didn't he go on the Stock Exchange and make his fortune?' thought
+Lesbia, pettishly, 'instead of talking vaguely about politics and
+literature.'</p>
+
+<p>She felt angry with her rejected lover for having come to her
+empty-handed. She had seen no man in London who was, or who seemed to
+her, his equal. And yet she did not repent of having rejected him. The
+more she knew of the world and the more she knew of herself the more
+deeply was she convinced that poverty was an evil thing, and that she
+was not the right kind of person to endure it.</p>
+
+<p>She was inwardly making these comparisons as they strolled back to the
+carriage, while Mr. Smithson and Lady Kirkbank talked confidentially at
+her side.</p>
+
+<p>'Do you know that Lady Kirkbank has promised and vowed three things for
+you?' said Mr. Smithson.</p>
+
+<p>'Indeed! I thought I was past the age at which one can be compromised by
+other people's promises. Pray what are those three things?'</p>
+
+<p>'First, that you will come to breakfast in Park Lane with Lady Kirkbank
+next Wednesday morning. I say Wednesday because that will give me time
+to ask some nice people to meet you; secondly, that you will honour me
+by occupying my box at the Lyceum some evening next week; and thirdly,
+that you will allow me to drive you down to the Orleans for supper after
+the play. The drive only takes an hour, and the moonlight nights are
+delicious at this time of the year.'</p>
+
+<p>'I am in Lady Kirkbank's hands,' answered Lesbia, laughing. 'I am her
+goods, her chattels; she takes me wherever she likes.'</p>
+
+<p>'But would you refuse to do me this honour if you were a free agent?'</p>
+
+<p>'I can't tell. I hardly know what it is to be a free agent. At Grasmere
+I did whatever my grandmother told me; in London I obey Lady Kirkbank. I
+was transferred from one master to another. Why should we breakfast in
+Park Lane instead of in Arlington Street? What is the use of crossing
+Piccadilly to eat our breakfast?'</p>
+
+<p>This was a cool-headed style of treatment to which Mr. Smithson was not
+accustomed, and which charmed him accordingly. Young women usually threw
+themselves at his head, as it were; but here was a girl who talked to
+him as indifferently as if he were a tradesman offering his wares.</p>
+
+<p>'What a dreadfully practical person you are!' he exclaimed. 'What is the
+use of crossing Piccadilly? Well, in the first place, you will make me
+ineffably happy. But perhaps that doesn't count. In the second place, I
+shall be able to show you some rather good pictures of the French
+school—'</p>
+
+<p>'I hate the French school!' interjected Lesbia. 'Tricky, flashy, chalky,
+shallow, smelling of the footlights and the studio.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, sink the pictures. You will meet some very charming people,
+belonging to that artist world which is not to be met everywhere.'</p>
+
+<p>'I will go to Park Lane to meet your people, if Lady Kirkbank likes to
+take me,' said Lesbia; and with this answer Mr. Smithson was bound to be
+content.</p>
+
+<p>'My pet, if you had made it the study of your life how to treat that man
+you could not do it better,' said Lady Kirkbank, when they were driving
+along the dusty road between dusty hedges and dusty trees, past that
+last remnant of country which was daily being debased into London.
+'Upon my word, Lesbia, I begin to think you must be a genius.'</p>
+
+<p>'Did you see any gowns you liked better than mine?' asked Lesbia,
+reclining reposefully, with her little bronze shoes upon the opposite
+cushion.</p>
+
+<p>'Not one—Seraphine has surpassed herself.'</p>
+
+<p>'You are always saying that. One would suppose you were a sleeping
+partner in the firm. But I really think this brown and buttercups is
+rather nice. I saw that odious American girl just now—Miss—Miss
+Milwaukee, that mop-stick girl people raved about at Cannes. She was in
+pale blue and cream colour, a milk and water mixture, and looked
+positively plain.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XXVII"></a><h2>CHAPTER XXVII.</h2>
+
+<h3>LESBIA CROSSES PICCADILLY.</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>Lady Kirkbank and Lady Lesbia drove across Piccadilly at eleven o'clock
+on Wednesday morning to breakfast with Mr. Smithson, and although Lesbia
+had questioned whether it was worth while crossing Piccadilly to eat
+one's breakfast, she had subsequently considered it worth while ordering
+a new gown from Seraphine for the occasion; or, it may be, rather that
+the breakfast made a plausible excuse for a new gown, the pleasure of
+ordering which was one of those joys of a London life that had not yet
+lost their savour.</p>
+
+<p>The gown, devised especially for the early morning, was simplicity
+itself—rusticity, even. It was a Dresden shepherdess gown, made of a
+soft flowered stuff, with roses and forget-me-nots on a creamy ground.
+There was a great deal of creamy lace, and innumerable yards of palest
+azure and palest rose ribbon in the confection, and there was a
+coquettish little hat, the regular Dresden hat, with a wreath of
+rosebuds.</p>
+
+<p>'Dresden china incarnate!' exclaimed Smithson, as he welcomed Lady
+Lesbia on the threshold of his marble hall, under the glass marquise
+which sheltered arrivals at his door. 'Why do you make yourself so
+lovely? I shall want to keep you in one of my Louis Seize cabinets, with
+the rest of my Dresden!'</p>
+
+<p>Lady Kirkbank had considered the occasion suitable for one of her
+favourite cotton frocks and rustic hats—a Leghorn hat, with clusters of
+dog-roses and honeysuckle, and a trail of the same hedge-flowers to
+fasten her muslin fichu.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Smithson's house in Park Lane was simply perfect. It is wonderful
+what good use a <i>parvenu</i> can make of his money nowadays, and how rarely
+he disgraces himself by any marked offences against good taste. There
+are so many people at hand to teach the <i>parvenu</i> how to furnish his
+house, or how to choose his stud. If he go wrong it must be by sheer
+perversity, an arrogant insistence upon being governed by his own
+ignorant inclinations.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Smithson was too good a tactician to go wrong in this way. He had
+taken the trouble to study the market before he went out to buy his
+goods. He knew that taste and knowledge were to be bought just as easily
+as chairs and tables, and he went to the right shop. He employed a
+clever Scotchman, an artist in domestic furniture, to plan his house,
+and make drawings for the decoration and furniture of every room—and
+for six months he gave himself up to the task of furnishing.</p>
+
+<p>Money was spent like water. Painters, decorators, cabinet-makers had a
+merry time of it. Royal Academicians were impressed into the service by
+large offers, and the final result of Mr. MacWalter's taste and Mr.
+Smithson's bullion was a palace in the style of the Italian Renaissance,
+frescoed ceilings, painted panels, a staircase of sculptured marble, as
+beautiful as a dream, a conservatory as exquisite as a jewel casket by
+Benvenuto Cellini, a picture gallery which was the admiration of all
+London, and of the enlightened foreigner, and of the inquiring American.
+This was the house which Lesbia had been brought to see, and through
+which she walked with the calmly critical air of a person who had seen
+so many palaces that one more or less could make no difference.</p>
+
+<p>In vain did Mr. Smithson peruse her countenance in the hope of seeing
+that she was impressed by the splendour of his surroundings, and by the
+power of the man who commanded such splendour. Lesbia was as cold as the
+Italian sculptor's Reading Girl in an alcove of Mr. Smithson's picture
+gallery; and the stockbroker felt very much as Aladdin might have done
+if the fair Badroulbadour had shown herself indifferent to the hall of
+the jewelled windows, in that magical palace which sprang into being in
+a single night.</p>
+
+<p>Lesbia had been impressed by that story of poor Belle Trinder and by
+Lady Kirkbank's broad assertion that half the young women in London were
+running after Mr. Smithson; and she had made up her mind to treat the
+man with supreme scorn. She did not want his houses or his yachts.
+Nothing could induce her to marry such a man, she told herself; but her
+vanity fed upon the idea of his subjugation, and her pride was gratified
+by the sense of her power over him.</p>
+
+<p>The guests were few and choice. There was Mr. Meander, the poet, one of
+the leading lights in that new sect which prides itself upon the
+cultivation of abstract beauty, and occasionally touches the verge of
+concrete ugliness. There were a newspaper man—the editor of a
+fashionable journal—and a middle-aged man of letters, playwright,
+critic, humourist, a man whose society was in demand everywhere, and who
+said sharp things with the most supreme good-nature. The only ladies
+whose society Mr. Smithson had deemed worthy the occasion were a
+fashionable actress, with her younger sister, the younger a pretty copy
+of the elder, both dressed picturesquely in flowing cashmere gowns of
+faint sea-green, with old lace fichus, leghorn hats, and a general
+limpness and simplicity of style which suited their cast of feature and
+delicate colouring. Lesbia wondered to see how good an effect could be
+produced by a costume which could have cost so little. Mr. Nightshade,
+the famous tragedian, had been also asked to grace the feast, but the
+early hour made the invitation a mockery. It was not to be supposed that
+a man who went to bed at daybreak would get up again before the sun was
+in the zenith, for the sake of Mr. Smithson's society, or Mr. Smithson's
+Strasbourg pie, for the manufacture whereof a particular breed of geese
+were supposed to be set apart, like sacred birds in Egypt, while a
+particular vineyard in the Gironde was supposed to be devoted wholly and
+solely to the production of Mr. Smithson's claret. It was a cabinet
+wine, like those rare vintages of the Rhineland which are reserved
+exclusively for German princes.</p>
+
+<p>Breakfast was served in Mr. Smithson's smallest dining-room—there were
+three apartments given up to feasting, beginning with a spacious
+banqueting-room for great dinners, and dwindling down to this snuggery,
+which held about a dozen comfortably, with ample room and verge enough
+for the attendants. The walls were old gold silk, the curtains a tawny
+velvet of deeper tone, the cabinets and buffet of dark Italian walnut,
+inlaid with lapis-lazuli and amber. The fireplace was a masterpiece of
+cabinet work, with high narrow shelves, and curious recesses holding
+priceless jars of Oriental enamel. The deep hearth was filled with arum
+lilies and azalias, like a font at Easter.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Kirkbank, who pretended to adore genius, was affectionately
+effusive to Miss Fitzherbert, the popular actress, but she rather
+ignored the sister. Lesbia was less cordial, and was not enchanted at
+finding that Miss Fitzherbert shone and sparkled at the breakfast table
+by the gaiety of her spirits and the brightness of her conversation.
+There was something frank and joyous, almost to childishness, in the
+actress's manner, which was full of fascination; and Lesbia felt herself
+at a disadvantage almost for the first time since she had been in
+London.</p>
+
+<p>The editor, the wit, the poet, the actress, had a language of their own;
+and Lesbia felt herself out in the cold, unable to catch the ball as it
+glanced past her, not quick enough to follow the wit that evoked those
+ripples of silvery laughter from the two fair-haired, pale-faced girls
+in sea-green cashmere. She felt as an Englishman may feel who has made
+himself master of academical French, and who takes up one of Zola's
+novels, or goes into artistic society, and finds that there is another
+French, a complete and copious language, of which he knows not a word.</p>
+
+<p>Lesbia began to think that she had a great deal to learn. She began to
+wonder even whether, in the event of her having made rather too free use
+of Lady Maulevrier's <i>carte blanche</i>, it might not be well to make a new
+departure in the art of dressing, and to wear untrimmed cashmere gowns,
+and rags of limp lace.</p>
+
+<p>After breakfast they all went to look at Mr. Smithson's picture gallery.
+His pictures were, as he had told Lesbia, chiefly of the French school,
+and there may have been a remote period—say, in the time of good Queen
+Charlotte—when such pictures would hardly have been exhibited to young
+ladies. His pictures were Mr. Smithson's own unaided choice. Here the
+individual taste of the man stood revealed.</p>
+
+<p>There were two or three Geromes; and in the place of honour at the end
+of the gallery there was a grand Delaroche, Anne Boleyn's last letter to
+the king, the hapless girl-queen sitting at a table in her gloomy cell
+in the Tower, a shaft of golden light from the narrow window streaming
+on the fair, disordered hair, the face bleached with unutterable woe, a
+sublime image of despair and self-abandonment.</p>
+
+<p>The larger pictures were historical, classic, grand; but the smaller
+pictures—the lively little bits of colour dotted in here and
+there—were of that new school which Mr. Smithson affected. They were of
+that school which is called Impressionist, in which ballet dancers and
+jockeys, burlesque actresses, masked balls, and all the humours of the
+side scenes are represented with the sublime audacity of an art which
+disdains finish, and relies on <i>chic, fougue, chien, flou, élan</i>, the
+inspiration of the moment. Lesbia blushed as she looked at the ballet
+girls, the maskers in their scanty raiment, the <i>demi-mondaines</i> lolling
+out of their opera boxes, and half out of their gowns, with false smiles
+and frizzled hair. And then there came the works of that other school
+which lavishes the finish of a Meissonier on the most meretricious
+compositions. A woman in a velvet gown warming her dainty little feet on
+a gilded fender, in a boudoir all aglow with colour and lamplight; a
+cavalier in satin raiment buckling his sword-belt before a Venetian
+mirror; a pair of lovers kissing in a sunlit corridor; a girl in a
+hansom cab; a milliner's shop; and so on, and so on.</p>
+
+<p>Then came the classical subjects of the last new school. Weak imitations
+of Alma Tadema. Nero admiring his mother's corpse; Claudius interrupting
+Messalina's marriage with her lover Silus; Clodius disguised among the
+women of Cæsar's household; Pyrrha's grotto. Lady Kirkbank expatiated
+upon all the pictures, and generally made unlucky guesses at the
+subjects of them. Classical literature was not her strong point.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Meander, the poet, discovered that all the beautiful heads were
+like Miss Fitzherbert. 'It is the same line,' he exclaimed, 'the line of
+lilies and flowing waters—the gracious ineffable upward returning
+ripple of the true <i>retrouss&eacute;</i> nose, the divine <i>flou</i>, the loveliness
+which has lain dormant for centuries—nay, was at one period of debased
+art scorned and trampled under foot by the porcine multitude, as akin to
+the pug and the turn-up, until discovered and enshrined on the altar of
+the Beautiful by the Boticelli Revivalists.'</p>
+
+<p>Miss Fitzherbert simpered, and accepted these remarks as mere statements
+of obvious fact. She was accustomed to hear of Boticelli and the early
+Italian painters in connection with her own charms of face and figure.</p>
+
+<p>Lesbia, whose faultless features were of the aquiline type, regarded the
+bard's rhapsody as insufferable twaddle, and began to think Mr. Smithson
+almost a wit when he made fun of the bard.</p>
+
+<p>Smithson was enchanted when she laughed at his jokelets, even although
+she did not scruple to tell him that she thought his favourite pictures
+detestable, and looked with the eye of indifference on a collection of
+jade that was worth a small fortune.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Meander fell into another rhapsody over those classic cups and
+shallow little bowls of absinthe-coloured jade.</p>
+
+<p>'Here if you like, are colour and beauty,' he murmured, caressing one of
+the little cups with the roseate tips of his supple fingers. 'These,
+dearest Smithson, are worth all the rest of your collection; worth
+vanloads of your cloisonn&eacute; enamels, your dragon-jars in blood-colour and
+blue. This cloudy indefinable substance, not crudely transparent nor yet
+distinctly opaque, a something which touches the boundary line of two
+worlds—the real and the ideal. And then the colour! Great heaven, can
+anything be lovelier than this shadowy tint which is neither yellow nor
+green; faint, faint as the dawn of newly-awakened day? After the siege
+of blood-bedabbled Delhi, Baron Rothschild sent a special agent to India
+to buy him a little jade tea-pot which had been the joy of Eastern
+Kings. Only a tea-pot. Yet Rothschild deemed it worth a voyage from
+England to India. That is what the love of the beautiful means, in Jew
+or Gentile,' concluded the bard, smiling on the company, as they
+gathered round the Florentine table on which the jade specimens were set
+out, Lady Kirkbank looking at the little cups and basins as if she
+thought they were going to do something, after all this fuss had been
+made about them. It seemed hardly credible that any reasonable being
+could have given thirty guineas for one of those bits of greenish-yellow
+clouded glass, unless the thing had some peculiar property of expansion
+or contraction.</p>
+
+<p>After this breakfast in Park Lane Lady Lesbia and her admirer met daily.
+He went to all her parties; he sat out waltzes with her, in
+conservatories, and on staircases; for Horace Smithson was much too
+shrewd a man to enter himself in the race for dancing men, handicapped
+by his forty years and his fourteen stone. He contrived to amuse Lesbia
+by his conversation, which was essentially mundane, depreciating people
+whom all the rest of the world admired, or pretended to admire, telling
+her of the secret springs by which the society she saw around her was
+moved. He was judicious in his revelations of hidden evil, and careful
+to say nothing which should offend Lady Lesbia's modesty; yet he
+contrived in a very short time to teach her that the world in which she
+lived was an utterly corrupt world, whose high priest was Satan; that
+all lofty aspirations and noble sentiments were out of place in society;
+and that the worst among the people she met were the people who laid any
+claim to being better than their neighbours.</p>
+
+<p>'That's why I adore Lady Kirkbank,' he said, confidentially. 'The dear
+soul never pretends to be any better than the rest of us. She gambles,
+and we all know she gambles; she pegs, and we all know she pegs; and she
+makes rather a boast of being up to her eyes in debt. No humbug about
+dear old Georgie.'</p>
+
+<p>Lesbia had seen enough of her chaperon by this time to know that Mr.
+Smithson's description of the lady was correct, and, this being so, she
+supposed that the facts and traits of character which he told her about
+in other people were also true. She thus adopted the Smithsonian, or
+fashionable-pessimist view of society in general, and resigned herself
+to the idea that the world was a very wicked world, as well as a very
+pleasant world, that the wickedest people were generally the
+pleasantest, and that it did not much matter.</p>
+
+<p>The fact that Mr. Smithson was at Lesbia Haselden's feet was obvious to
+everybody.</p>
+
+<p>Lesbia, who had at first treated him with supreme hauteur, had grown
+more civil as she began to understand the place he held in the world,
+and how much social influence goes along with unlimited wealth. She was
+civil, but she had quite made up her mind that nothing could ever induce
+her to become Horace Smithson's wife. That offer which had hung fire in
+the case of poor Belle Trinder, was not too long delayed on this
+occasion. Mr. Smithson called in Arlington Street about ten days after
+the breakfast in Park Lane, before luncheon, and before Lady Kirkbank
+had left her room. He brought tickets for a <i>matin&eacute;e d'invitation</i> in
+Belgrave Square, at which a new and wonderful Russian pianiste was to
+make a kind of semi-official <i>d&eacute;but</i>, before an audience of critics and
+distinguished amateurs, and the elect of the musical world. They were
+tickets which money could not buy, and were thus a meet offering for
+Lady Lesbia, and a plausible excuse for an early call.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Smithson succeeded in seeing Lesbia alone, and then and there, with
+very little circumlocution, asked her to be his wife.</p>
+
+<p>Her social education had advanced considerably since that summer day in
+the pine-wood, when John Hammond had wooed her with passionate wooing.
+Mr. Smithson was a much less ardent suitor, and made his offer with the
+air of a man who expects to be accepted.</p>
+
+<p>Lesbia's beautiful head bent a little, like a lily on its stalk, and a
+faint blush deepened the pale rose tint of her complexion. Her reply was
+courteous and conventional. She was flattered, she was grateful for Mr.
+Smithson's high opinion of her; but she was deeply grieved if anything
+in her manner had given him reason to think that he was more to her than
+a friend, an old friend of dear Lady Kirkbank's, whom she was naturally
+predisposed to like, as Lady Kirkbank's friend.</p>
+
+<p>Horace Smithson turned pale as death, but if he was angry, he gave no
+utterance to his angry feelings. He only asked if Lady Lesbia's answer
+was final—and on being told that it was so, he dismissed the subject in
+the easiest manner, and with a gentlemanlike placidity which very much
+astonished the lady.</p>
+
+<p>'You say that you regard me as your friend,' he said. 'Do not withdraw
+that privilege from me because I have asked for a higher place in your
+esteem. Forget all I have said this morning. Be assured I shall never
+offend you by repeating it.'</p>
+
+<p>'You are more than good,' murmured Lesbia, who had expected a wild
+outbreak of despair or fury, rather than this friendly calm.</p>
+
+<p>'I hope that you and Lady Kirkbank will go and hear Madame Metzikoff
+this afternoon,' pursued Mr. Smithson, returning to the subject of the
+<i>matin&eacute;e</i>. 'The duchess's rooms are lovely; but no doubt you know them.'</p>
+
+<p>Lesbia blushed, and confessed that the Duchess of Lostwithiel was one of
+those select few who were not on Lady Kirkbank's visiting list.</p>
+
+<p>'There are people Lady Kirkbank cannot get on with,' she said. 'Perhaps
+she will hardly like to go to the duchess's, as she does not visit her.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, but this affair counts for nothing. We go to hear Metzikoff, not to
+bow down to the duchess. All the people in town who care for music will
+be there, and you who play so divinely must enjoy fine professional
+playing.'</p>
+
+<p>'I worship a really great player,' said Lesbia, 'and if I can drag Lady
+Kirkbank to the house of the enemy, we will be there.'</p>
+
+<p>On this Mr. Smithson discreetly murmured '<i>au revoir</i>,' took up his hat
+and cane, and departed, without, in Sir George's parlance, having turned
+a hair.</p>
+
+<p>'Refusal number one,' he said to himself, as he went downstairs, with
+his leisurely catlike pace, that velvet step by which he had gradually
+crept into society. 'We may have to go through refusal number two and
+number three; but she means to have me. She is a very clever girl for a
+countrybred one; and she knows that it is worth her while to be Lady
+Lesbia Smithson.'</p>
+
+<p>This soliloquy may be taken to prove that Horace Smithson knew Lesbia
+Haselden better than she knew herself. She had refused him in all good
+faith; but even to-day, after he had left her, she fell into a day-dream
+in which Mr. Smithson's houses and yachts, drags and hunters, formed the
+shifting pictures in a dissolving view of society; and Lesbia wondered
+if there were any other young woman in London who would refuse such an
+offer as that which she had quietly rejected half-an-hour ago.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Kirkbank surprised her while she was still absorbed in this dreamy
+review of the position. It is just possible that the fair Georgie may
+have had notice of Mr. Smithson's morning visit, and may have kept out
+of the way on purpose, for she was not a person of lazy habits, and was
+generally ready for her nine o'clock breakfast and her morning stroll in
+the park, however late she might have been out overnight.</p>
+
+<p>'Mr. Smithson has been here, I understand,' said Lady Kirkbank, settling
+herself in an arm-chair by the open window, after she had kissed her
+<i>prot&eacute;g&eacute;e</i>. 'Rilboche passed him on the stairs.'</p>
+
+<p>'Rilboche is always passing people on the stairs,' answered Lesbia
+rather pettishly. 'I think she must spend her life on the landing,
+listening for arrivals and departures.'</p>
+
+<p>'I had a kind of vague idea that Smithson would call to-day. He was so
+fussy about those tickets for the Metzikoff recital. I hate pianoforte
+recitals, and I detest that starched old duchess, but I suppose I shall
+have to take you there—or poor Smithson will be miserable,' said Lady
+Kirkbank, watching Lesbia keenly over the top of the newspaper.</p>
+
+<p>She expected Lesbia to confide in her, to announce herself blushingly as
+the betrothed of one of the richest commoners in England. But Lesbia sat
+gazing dreamily across the flowers in the balcony at the house over the
+way, and said never a word; so Lady Kirkbank's curiosity burst into
+speech.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, my dear, has he proposed? There was something in his manner last
+night when he put on your wraps that made me think the crisis was near.'</p>
+
+<p>'The crisis is come and is past, and Mr. Smithson and I are just as good
+friends as ever.'</p>
+
+<p>'What!' screamed Lady Kirkbank. 'Do you mean to tell me that you have
+refused him?'</p>
+
+<p>'Certainly. You know I never meant to do anything else. Did you think I
+was like Miss Trinder, bent upon marrying town and country houses,
+stables and diamonds?'</p>
+
+<p>'I did not think you were a fool,' cried Lady Kirkbank, almost beside
+herself with vexation, for it had been borne in upon her, as the
+Methodists sometimes say, that if Mr. Smithson should prosper in his
+wooing it would be better for her, Lady Kirkbank, who would have a claim
+upon his kindness ever after. 'What can be your motive in refusing one
+of the very best matches of the season—or of ever so many seasons? You
+think, perhaps, you will marry a duke, if you wait long enough for his
+Grace to appear; but the number of marrying dukes is rather small, Lady
+Lesbia, and I don't think any of those would care to marry Lord
+Maulevrier's granddaughter.'</p>
+
+<p>Lesbia started to her feet, pale as ashes.</p>
+
+<p>'Why do you fling my grandfather's name in my face—and with that
+diabolical sneer?' she exclaimed. 'When I have asked you about him you
+have always evaded my questions. Why should a man of the highest rank
+shrink from marrying Lord Maulevrier's granddaughter? My grandfather
+was a distinguished man—Governor of Madras. Such posts are not given to
+nobodies. How can you dare to speak as if it were a disgrace to me to
+belong to him?'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XXVIII"></a><h2>CHAPTER XXVIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>'CLUBS, DIAMONDS, HEARTS, IN WILD DISORDER SEEN.'</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>Lady Kirkbank had considerable difficulty in smoothing Lesbia's ruffled
+plumage. She did all in her power to undo the effect of her rash
+words—declared that she had been carried away by temper—she had spoken
+she knew not what—words of no meaning. Of course Lesbia's grandfather
+had been a great man—Governor of Madras; altogether an important and
+celebrated person—and Lady Kirkbank had meant nothing, could have meant
+nothing to his disparagement.</p>
+
+<p>'My dearest girl, I was beside myself, and talked sheer nonsense,' said
+Georgie. 'But you know really now, dearest, any woman of the world would
+be provoked at your foolish refusal of that dear good Smithson. Only
+think of that too lovely house in Park Lane, a palace in the style of
+the Italian Renaissance—such a house is in itself equivalent to a
+peerage—and there is no doubt Smithson will be offered a peerage before
+he is much older. I have heard it confidently asserted that when the
+present Ministry retires Smithson will be made a Peer. You have no idea
+what a useful man he is, or what henchman's service he has done the
+Ministry in financial matters. And then there is his villa at
+Deauville—you don't know Deauville—a positively perfect place, the
+villa, I mean, built by the Duke de Morny in the golden days of the
+Empire—and another at Cowes, and his palace in Berkshire, a manor, my
+love, with a glorious old Tudor manor-house; and he has a <i>pied à terre</i>
+in Paris, in the Faubourg, a ground-floor furnished in the Pompeian
+style, half-a-dozen rooms opening one out of the other, and surrounding
+a small garden, with a fountain in the middle. Some of the greatest
+people in Paris occupy the upper part of the house, and their rooms of
+course are splendid; but Smithson's ground-floor is the gem of the
+Faubourg. However, I suppose there is no use in talking any more; for
+there is the gong for luncheon.'</p>
+
+<p>Lesbia was in no humour for luncheon.</p>
+
+<p>'I would rather have a cup of tea in my own room,' she said. 'This
+Smithson business has given me an abominable headache.'</p>
+
+<p>'But you will go to hear Metzikoff?'</p>
+
+<p>'No, thanks. You detest the Duchess of Lostwithiel, and you don't care
+for pianoforte recitals. Why should I drag you there?'</p>
+
+<p>'But, my dearest Lesbia, I am not such a selfish wretch as to keep you
+at home, when I know you are passionately fond of good music. Forget all
+about your headache, and let me see how that lovely little Catherine of
+Aragon bonnet suits you. I'm so glad I happened to see it in Seraphine's
+hands yesterday, just as she was going to send it to Lady Fonvielle, who
+gives herself such intolerable airs on the strength of a pretty face,
+and always wants to get the <i>primeures</i> in bonnets and things.'</p>
+
+<p>'Another new bonnet!' replied Lesbia. 'What an infinity of things I seem
+to be having from Seraphine. I'm afraid I must owe her a good deal of
+money.'</p>
+
+<p>This was a vague way of speaking about actual facts. Lady Lesbia might
+have spoken with more certainty. Her wardrobes and old-fashioned hanging
+closets and chests of drawers in Arlington Street were crammed to
+overflowing with finery; and then there were all the things that she had
+grown tired of, or had thought unbecoming, and had given away to Kibble,
+her own maid, or to Rilboche, who had in a great measure superseded
+Kibble on all important occasions; for how could a Westmoreland girl
+know how to dress a young lady for London balls and drawing-rooms?</p>
+
+<p>'If you had only accepted Mr. Smithson it would not matter how much
+money you owed people,' said Lady Kirkbank. 'You had better come down to
+lunch. A glass of Heidseck will bring you up to concert pitch.'</p>
+
+<p>Champagne was Lady Kirkbank's idea of a universal panacea; and she had
+gradually succeeded in teaching Lesbia to believe in the sovereign power
+of Heidseck as a restorative for shattered nerves. At Fellside Lesbia
+had drunk only water; but then at Fellside she had never known that
+feeling of exhaustion and prostration which follows days and nights
+spent in society, the wear and tear of a mind forever on the alert, and
+brilliant spirits which are more often forced than real. For her chief
+stimulant Lesbia had recourse to the teapot; but there were occasions
+when she found that something more than tea was needed to maintain that
+indispensable vivacity of manner which Lady Kirkbank called concert
+pitch.</p>
+
+<p>To-day she allowed herself to be persuaded. She went down to luncheon,
+and took a couple of glasses of dry champagne with her cutlet, and, thus
+restored, was equal to putting on the new bonnet, which was so becoming
+that her spirits revived as she contemplated the effect in her glass. So
+Lady Kirkbank carried her off to the musical <i>matin&eacute;e</i>, beaming and
+radiant, having forgotten all about that dark hint of evil glancing at
+the name of her long dead grandfather.</p>
+
+<p>The duchess was not on view when Lady Kirkbank and her <i>prot&eacute;g&eacute;e</i>
+arrived, and a good many people belonging to Georgie's own particular
+set were scattered like flowers among those real music-lovers who had
+come solely to hear the new pianiste. The music-lovers were mostly dowdy
+in their attire, and seemed a race apart. Among them were several young
+women of the Blessed Damozel school, who wore flowing garments of
+sap-green or ochre, or puffed raiment of Venetian red, and among whom
+the cartwheel hat, the Elizabethan sleeve, and the Toby frill were
+conspicuous.</p>
+
+<p>There were very few men except the musical critics in this select
+assemblage, and Lesbia began to think that it was going to be very
+dreary. She had lived in such an atmosphere of masculine adulation while
+under Lady Kirkbank's wing that it was a new thing to find herself in a
+room where there were none to love and very few to praise her. She felt
+out in the cold, as it were. Those ungloved critics, with their shabby
+coats and dubious shirts, snuffy, smoky, everything they ought not to
+be, seemed to her a race of barbarians.</p>
+
+<p>Finding herself thus cold and lonely in the midst of the duchess's
+splendour of peacock-blue velvet and peacock-feather decoration, Lesbia
+was almost glad when in the middle of Madame Metzikoff's opening
+gondolied—airy, fairy music, executed with surpassing delicacy—Mr.
+Smithson crept gently into the <i>fauteuil</i> just behind hers, and leant
+over the back of the chair to whisper an inquiry as to her opinion of
+the pianist's style.</p>
+
+<p>'She is exquisite,' Lesbia murmured softly, but the whispered question
+and the murmured answer, low as they were, provoked indignant looks from
+a brace of damsels in Venetian red, who shook their Toby frills with an
+outraged air.</p>
+
+<p>Lesbia felt that Mr. Smithson's presence was hardly correct. It would
+have been 'better form' if he had stayed away; and yet she was glad to
+have him here. At the worst he was some one—nay, according to Lady
+Kirkbank, he was the only one amongst all her admirers whose offer was
+worth having. All Lesbia's other conquests had counted as barren honour;
+but if she could have brought herself to accept Mr. Smithson she would
+have secured the very best match of the season.</p>
+
+<p>To marry a plain Mr. Smithson—a man who had made his money in iron—in
+cochineal—on the Stock Exchange—had seemed to her absolute
+degradation, the surrender of all her lofty hopes, her golden dreams.
+But Lady Kirkbank had put the question in a new light when she said that
+Smithson would be offered a peerage. Smithson the peer would be
+altogether a different person from Smithson the commoner.</p>
+
+<p>But was Lady Kirkbank sure of her facts, or truthful in her statement?
+Lesbia's experience of her chaperon's somewhat loose notions of truth
+and exactitude made her doubtful upon this point.</p>
+
+<p>Be this as it might she was inclined to be civil to Smithson, albeit she
+was inwardly surprised and offended at his taking her refusal so calmly.</p>
+
+<p>'You see that I am determined not to lose the privilege of your society,
+because I have been foolish!' he said presently, in the pause after the
+first part of the recital. 'I hope you will consider me as much your
+friend to-day as I was yesterday.'</p>
+
+<p>'Quite as much,' she answered sweetly, and then they talked of Raff, and
+Rubenstein, and Henselt, and all the composers about whom it is the
+correct thing to discourse nowadays.</p>
+
+<p>Before they left Belgrave Square Lady Kirkbank had offered Mr. Smithson
+Sir George's place in her box at the Gaiety that evening, and had
+invited him to supper in Arlington Street afterwards.</p>
+
+<p>It was Sarah Bernhardt's first season in London—the
+never-to-be-forgotten season of the Com&eacute;die Fran&ccedil;aise.</p>
+
+<p>'I should love of all things to be there,' said Mr. Smithson, meekly. He
+had a couple of stalls in the third row for the whole of the season.
+'But how can I be sure that I shall not be turning Sir George out of
+doors?'</p>
+
+<p>'Sir George can never sit out a serious play. He only cares for Chaumont
+or Judie. The Demi-monde is much too prosy for him.'</p>
+
+<p>'The Demi-monde is one of the finest plays in the French language,' said
+Smithson. 'You know it, of course, Lady Lesbia?'</p>
+
+<p>'Alas! no. At Fellside I was not allowed to read French plays or novels:
+or only a novel now and then, which my grandmother selected for me.'</p>
+
+<p>'And now you read everything, I suppose,—including Zola?'</p>
+
+<p>'The books are lying about, and I dip into them sometimes while I am
+having my hair brushed,' answered Lesbia, lightly.</p>
+
+<p>'I believe that is the only time ladies devote to literature during the
+season,' said Mr. Smithson. 'Well, I envy you the delight of seeing the
+Demi-monde without knowing what it is all about beforehand.'</p>
+
+<p>'I daresay there are a good many people who would not take their girls
+to see a play by Dumas,' said Lady Kirkbank, 'but I make a point of
+letting <i>my</i> girls see everything. It widens their minds and awakens
+their intelligence.'</p>
+
+<p>'And does away with a good many silly prejudices,' replied Mr.
+Smithson.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Kirkbank and Lesbia were due at a Kensington garden-party after the
+recital, and from the garden-party, for which any hour sufficed, they
+went to show themselves in the Park, then back to Arlington Street to
+dress for the play. Then a hurried dinner, and they were in their places
+at the theatre in time for the rising of the curtain.</p>
+
+<p>'If it were an English play we would not care for being punctual,' said
+Lady Kirkbank; 'but I should hate to lose a word of Dumas. In his plays
+every speech tells.'</p>
+
+<p>There were Royalties present, and the house was good; but not so full as
+it had been on some other nights, for the English public had been told
+that Sarah Bernhardt was the person to admire, and had been flocking
+sheep-like after that golden-haired enchantress, whereby many of these
+sheep—fighting greedily for Sarah's nights, and ignoring all other
+talent—lost some of the finest acting on the French stage, notably that
+of Croizette, Delaunay and Febvre, in this very Demi-monde. Lesbia, who,
+in spite of her affectations, was still fresh enough to be charmed with
+fine acting and a powerful play, was enthralled by the stage, so wrapt
+in the scene that she was quite unaware of her brother's presence in a
+stall just below Lady Kirkbank's box. He too had a stall at the Gaiety.
+He had come in very late, when the play was half over. Lesbia was
+surprised when he presented himself at the door of the box, after the
+fourth act.</p>
+
+<p>Maulevrier and his sister had met very seldom since the young lady's
+<i>d&eacute;but</i>. The young Earl did not go to many parties, and the society he
+cultivated was chiefly masculine; and as he neither played polo nor shot
+pigeons his masculine pursuits did not bring him in his sister's way.
+Lady Kirkbank had asked him to her house with that wide and general
+invitation which is so easily evaded. He had promised to go, and he had
+not gone. And thus Lesbia and he had pursued their several ways, only
+crossing each other's paths now and then at a race meeting or in a
+theatre.</p>
+
+<p>'How d'ye do, Lady Kirkbank?—how d'ye do, Lesbia? Just caught sight of
+you from below as the curtain was going down,' said Maulevrier, shaking
+hands with the ladies and saluting Mr. Smithson with a somewhat
+supercilious nod. 'Rather surprised to see you and Lesbia here to-night,
+Lady Kirkbank. Isn't the Demi-monde rather strong meat for babes, eh?
+Not <i>exactly</i> the play one would take a young lady to see.'</p>
+
+<p>'Why should a young lady be forbidden to see a fine play, because there
+are some hard and bitter truths told in it?' asked Lady Kirkbank.
+'Lesbia sees Madame d'Ange and all her sisterhood in the Park and about
+London every day of her life. Why should not she see them on the stage,
+and hear their history, and understand how cruel their fate is, and
+learn to pity them, if she can? I really think this play is a lesson in
+Christian charity; and I should like to see that Oliver man strangled,
+though Delaunay plays the part divinely. What a voice! What a manner!
+How polished! How perfect! And they tell me he is going to leave the
+stage in a year or two. What will the world do without him?'</p>
+
+<p>Maulevrier did not attempt to suggest a solution of this difficulty. He
+was watching Mr. Smithson as he leant against the back of Lesbia's chair
+and talked to her. The two seemed very familiar, laughingly discussing
+the play and the actors. Smithson knew, or pretended to know, all about
+the latter. He told Lesbia who made Croizette's gowns—the upholsterer
+who furnished that lovely house of hers in the Bois—the sums paid for
+her horses, her pictures, her diamonds. It seemed to Lesbia, when she
+had heard all, that Croizette was a much-to-be-envied person.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Smithson had unpublished <i>bon-mots</i> of Dumas at his finger ends; he
+knew Daudet, and Sarcey, and Sardou, and seemed to be thoroughly at home
+in Parisian artistic society. Lesbia began to think that he would hardly
+be so despicable a person as she had at first supposed. No wonder he and
+his wealth had turned poor Belle Trinder's head. How could a rural
+vicar's daughter, accustomed to poverty, help being dazzled by such
+magnificence?</p>
+
+<p>Maulevrier stayed in the box only a short time, and refused Lady
+Kirkbank's invitation to supper. She did not urge the point, as she had
+surprised one or two very unfriendly glances at Mr. Smithson in
+Maulevrier's honest eyes. She did not want an antagonistic brother to
+interfere with her plans. She had made up her mind to 'run' Lesbia
+according to her own ideas, and any counter influence might be fatal.
+So, when Maulevrier said he was due at the Marlborough after the play
+she let him go.</p>
+
+<p>'I might as well be at Fellside and you in London, for anything I see of
+you,' said Lesbia.</p>
+
+<p>'You are up to your eyes in engagements, and I don't suppose you want to
+see any more of me.' Maulevrier answered, bluntly.
+'But I'll call to-morrow morning, if I am likely to find you at home.
+I've some news for you.'</p>
+
+<p>'Then I'll stay at home on purpose to see you. News is always
+delightful. Is it good news, by-the-bye?'</p>
+
+<p>'Very good; at least, I think so.'</p>
+
+<p>'What is it about?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh! that's a long story, and the curtain is just going up. The news is
+about Mary.'</p>
+
+<p>'About Mary!' exclaimed Lesbia, elevating her eyebrows. 'What news can
+there possibly be about Mary?'</p>
+
+<p>'Such news as there generally is about every nice jolly girl, at least
+once in her life.'</p>
+
+<p>'You don't mean that she is engaged—to a curate?'</p>
+
+<p>'No, not to a curate. There goes the curtain. &quot;I'll see you later,&quot; as
+the Yankee President used to say when people bothered him, and he didn't
+like to say no.'</p>
+
+<p>Engaged: Mary engaged! The idea of such an altogether unexpected event
+distracted Lesbia's mind all through the last act of the Demi-monde. She
+hardly knew what the actors were talking about. Mary, her younger
+sister! Mary, a good looking girl enough, but by no means a beauty, and
+with manners utterly unformed. That Mary should be engaged to be
+married, while she, Lesbia, was still free, seemed an obvious absurdity.</p>
+
+<p>And yet the fact was, on reflection, easily to be accounted for. These
+unattractive girls are generally the first to bind themselves with the
+vows of betrothal. Lady Kirkbank had told her of many such cases. The
+poor creatures know that their chances will be few, and therefore
+gratefully welcome the first wooer.</p>
+
+<p>'But who can the man be?' thought Lesbia. 'Mary has been kept as
+secluded as a cloistered nun. There are so few families we have ever
+been allowed to mix with. The man must be a curate, who has taken
+advantage of grandmother's illness to force his way into the family
+circle at Fellside—and who has made love to Mary in some of her lonely
+rambles over the hills, I daresay. It is really very wrong to allow a
+girl to roam about in that way.'</p>
+
+<p>Sir George and a couple of his horsey friends were waiting for supper
+when Lady Kirkbank and her party arrived in Arlington Street. The
+dining-room looked a picture of comfort. The oval table, the low lamps,
+the clusters of candles under coloured shades, the great Oriental bowl
+of wild flowers—eglantine, honeysuckle, foxglove, all the sweet hedge
+flowers of midsummer, made a central mass of colour and brightness
+against the subdued and even sombre tones of walls and curtains. The
+room was old, the furniture old. Nothing had been altered since the time
+of Sir George's great grandfather; and the whirligig of time had just
+now made the old things precious. Yes, those chairs and tables and
+sideboards and bookcases and wine-coolers against which Georgie's soul
+had revolted in the early years of her wedded life were now things of
+beauty, and Georgie's friends envied her the possession of indisputable
+Chippendale furniture.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Mostyn, a distinguished owner of race-horses, with his pretty wife,
+made up the party. The gentleman was full of his entries for Liverpool
+and Chester, and discoursed mysteriously with Sir George and the horsey
+bachelors all supper time. The lady had lately taken up science as a new
+form of excitement, not incompatible with frocks, bonnets, Hurlingham,
+the Ranelagh, and Sandown. She raved about Huxley and Tyndall, and was
+perpetually coming down upon her friends with awful facts about the sun,
+and startling propositions about latent heat, or spontaneous generation.
+She knew all about gases, and would hardly accept a glass of water
+without explaining what it was made of. Drawn by Mr. Smithson for
+Lesbia's amusement, the scientific matron was undoubtedly 'good fun.'
+The racing men were full of talk. Lesbia and Lady Kirkbank raved about
+the play they had just been seeing, and praised Delaunay with an
+enthusiasm which was calculated to make the rest of mankind burst with
+envy.</p>
+
+<p>'Do you know you are making me positively wretched by your talk about
+that man?' said Colonel Delville, one of Sir George's racing friends,
+and an ancient adorer of the fair Georgie's. 'No, I tell you there was
+never anything offered higher than five to four on the mare,'
+interjectionally, to Sir George. 'There was a day when I thought I was
+your idea of an attractive man. Yes, George, a clear case of roping,'
+again interjectionally. 'And to hear you raving about this play-acting
+fellow—it is too humiliating.'</p>
+
+<p>Lady Kirkbank simpered, and then sighed.</p>
+
+<p>'We are getting old together,' she murmured. 'I have come to an age when
+one can only admire the charm of manner in the abstract—the Beautiful
+for the sake of the Beautiful. I think if I were lying in my grave, the
+music of Delaunay's voice would thrill me, under six feet of London
+clay. Will no one take any more wine? No. Then we may as well go into
+the next room and begin our little Nap.'</p>
+
+<p>The adjoining room was Sir George's snuggery; and it was here that the
+cosy little round games after supper were always played. Sir George was
+not a studious person. He never read, and he never wrote, except an
+occasional cheque on account, for an importunate tradesman. His
+correspondence was conducted by the telegraph or telephone; and the
+room, therefore, was absorbed neither by books nor writing desks. It was
+furnished solely with a view to comfort. There was a round table in the
+centre, under a large moderator lamp which gave an exceptionally
+brilliant light. A divan covered with dark brown velvet occupied three
+sides of the room. A few choice pieces of old blue Oriental ware in the
+corners enlivened the dark brown walls. Three or four easy chairs stood
+about near the broad, old-fashioned fireplace, which had been improved
+with a modern-antique brass grate and a blue and white tiled hearth.</p>
+
+<p>'There isn't a room in my house that looks half as comfortable as this
+den of yours, George,' said Mr. Smithson, as he seated himself by
+Lesbia's side at the card table.</p>
+
+<p>They had agreed to be partners. 'Partners at cards, even if we are not
+to be partners for life,' Smithson had whispered, tenderly; and Lesbia's
+only reply had been a modest lowering of lovely eyelids, and a faint,
+faint blush. Lesbia's blushes were growing fainter every day.</p>
+
+<p>'That is because everything in your house is so confoundedly handsome
+and expensive,' retorted Sir George, who did not very much care about
+being called George, <i>tout court</i>, by a person of Mr. Smithson's obscure
+antecedents, but who had to endure the familiarity for reasons known
+only to himself and Mr. Smithson. 'No man can expect to be comfortable
+in a house in which every room has cost a small fortune. My wife
+re-arranged this den half-a-dozen years ago when we took to sittin' here
+of an evenin'. She picked up the chairs and the blue pots at Bonham's,
+had everythin' covered with brown velvet—nice subdued tone, suit old
+people—hung up that yaller curtain, just for a bit of colour, and here
+we are.'</p>
+
+<p>'It's the cosiest room in town,' said Colonel Delville, whereupon Mrs.
+Mostyn, while counters were being distributed, explained to the company
+on scientific principles <i>why</i> the room was comfortable, expatiating
+upon the effect of yellow and brown upon the retina, and some curious
+facts relating to the optic machinery of water-fleas, as lately
+discovered by a great naturalist.</p>
+
+<p>Unfortunately for science, the game had now begun, and the players were
+curiously indifferent as to the visual organs of water-fleas.</p>
+
+<p>The game went on merrily till the pearly lights of dawn began to creep
+through the chinks of Lady Kirkbank's yellow curtain. Everybody seemed
+gay, yet everybody could not be winning. Fortune had not smiled upon
+Lesbia's cards, or on those of her partner. The Smithson and Haselden
+firm had come to grief. Lesbia's little ivory purse had been emptied of
+its three or four half-sovereigns, and Mr. Smithson had been
+capitalising a losing concern for the last two hours. And the play had
+been fast and furious, although nominally for small stakes.</p>
+
+<p>'I am afraid to think of how much I must owe you,' said Lesbia, when Mr.
+Smithson bade her good night.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, nothing worth speaking of—sixteen or seventeen pounds, at most.'</p>
+
+<p>Lesbia felt cold and creepy, and hardly knew whether it was the chill of
+new-born day, or the sense of owing money to Horace Smithson. Those
+three or four half-sovereigns to-night were the end of her last
+remittance from Lady Maulevrier. She had had a great many remittances
+from that generous grandmother; and the money had all gone, somehow. It
+was gone, and yet she had paid for hardly anything. She had accounts
+with all Lady Kirkbank's tradesmen. The money had melted away—it had
+oozed out of her pockets—at cards, on the race-course, in reckless
+gifts to servants and people, at fancy fairs, for trifles bought here
+and there by the way-side, as it were, for the sake of buying. If she
+had been suddenly asked for an account of her stewardship she could not
+have told what she had done with half of the money. And now she must ask
+for twenty pounds more, and immediately, to pay Mr. Smithson.</p>
+
+<p>She went up to her room in the clear early light, and stood like a
+statue, with fixed thoughtful eyes, while Kibble took off her finery,
+the pretty pale yellow gown which set off her dark brown hair, her
+violet eyes. For the first time in her life she felt the keen pang of
+anxiety about money matters—the necessity to think of ways and means.
+She had no idea how much money she had received from her grandmother
+since she had begun her career in Scotland last autumn. The cheques had
+been sent her as she asked for them; sometimes even before she asked for
+them; and she had kept no account. She thought her grandmother was so
+rich that expenditure could not matter. She supposed that she was
+drawing upon an inexhaustible supply. And now Lady Kirkbank had told her
+that Lady Maulevrier was not rich, as the world reckons nowadays. The
+savings of a dowager countess even in forty years of seclusion could be
+but a small fund to draw upon for the expenses of life at high pressure.</p>
+
+<p>'The sums people spend nowadays are positively appalling,' said Lady
+Kirkbank. 'A man with five or six thousand a year is an absolute pauper.
+I'm sure our existence is only genteel beggary, and yet we spend over
+ten thousand.'</p>
+
+<p>Enlightened thus by the lips of the worldly-wise, Lesbia thought
+ruefully of the bills which her grandmother would have to pay for her at
+the end of the season, bills of the amount whereof she could not even
+make an approximate guess. Seraphine's charges had never been discussed
+in her hearing—but Lady Kirkbank had admitted that the creature was
+dear.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XXIX"></a><h2>CHAPTER XXIX.</h2>
+
+<h3>'SWIFT SUBTLE POST, CARRIER OF GRISLY CARE.'</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>Maulevrier called in Arlington Street before twelve o'clock next day,
+and found Lesbia just returning from her early ride, looking as fresh
+and fair as if there had been no such thing as Nap or late hours in the
+story of her life. She was reposing in a large easy chair by the open
+window, in habit and hat, just as she had come from the Row, where she
+had been laughing and chatting with Mr. Smithson, who jogged demurely by
+her side on his short-legged hunter, dropping out envenomed little jokes
+about the passers by. People who saw him riding by her side upon this
+particular morning fancied there was something more than usual in the
+gentleman's manner, and made up their minds that Lady Lesbia Haselden
+was to be mistress of the fine house in Park Lane. Mr. Smithson had
+fluttered and fluttered for the last five seasons; but this time the
+flutterer was caught.</p>
+
+<p>In her newly-awakened anxiety about money matters, Lesbia had forgotten
+Mary's engagement: but the sight of Maulevrier recalled the fact.</p>
+
+<p>'Come over here and sit down,' she said, 'and tell me this nonsense
+about Mary. I am expiring with curiosity. The thing is too absurd.'</p>
+
+<p>'Why absurd?' asked Maulevrier, sitting where she bade him, and
+studiously perusing the name in his hat, as if it were a revelation.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, for a thousand reasons,' answered Lesbia, switching the flowers in
+the balcony with her light little whip. 'First and foremost it is absurd
+to think of any one so buried alive as poor Mary is finding an admirer;
+and secondly—well—I don't want to be rude to my own sister—but Mary
+is not particularly attractive.'</p>
+
+<p>'Mary is the dearest girl in the world.'</p>
+
+<p>'Very likely. I only said that she is not particularly attractive.'</p>
+
+<p>'And do you think there is no attraction in goodness, in freshness and
+innocence, candour, generosity—?'</p>
+
+<p>'I don't know. But I think that if Mary's nose had been a thought
+longer, and if she had kept her skin free from freckles she would have
+been almost pretty.'</p>
+
+<p>'Do you really? Luckily for Mary the man who is going to marry her
+thinks her lovely.'</p>
+
+<p>'I suppose he likes freckles. I once heard a man say he did. He said
+they were so original—so much character about them. And, pray, who is
+the man?'</p>
+
+<p>'Your old adorer, and my dear friend, John Hammond.'</p>
+
+<p>Lesbia turned as pale as death—pale with rage and mortification. It was
+not jealousy, this pang which rent her shallow soul. She had ceased to
+care for John Hammond. The whirlpool of society had spun that first
+fancy out of her giddy brain. But that a man who had loved the highest,
+who had worshipped her, the peerless, the beautiful, should calmly
+transfer his affections to her younger sister, was to the last degree
+exasperating.</p>
+
+<p>'Your friend Mr. Hammond must be a fickle fool,' she exclaimed, 'who
+does not know his own mind from day to day.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, but it was more than a day after you rejected him that he engaged
+himself to Molly. It was all my doing, and I am proud of my work. I took
+the poor fellow back to Fellside last March, bruised and broken by your
+cruel treatment, heartsore and depressed. I gave him over to Molly, and
+Molly cured him. Unconsciously, innocently, she won that noble heart.
+Ah, Lesbia, you don't know what a heart it is which you so nearly
+broke.'</p>
+
+<p>'Girls in our rank of life can't afford to marry noble hearts,' said
+Lesbia, scornfully. 'Do you mean to tell me that Lady Maulevrier
+consented to the engagement?'</p>
+
+<p>'She cut up rather rough at first; but Molly held her own like a young
+lioness—and the grandmother gave way. You see she has a fixed idea that
+Molly is a very second-rate sort of person compared with you, and that a
+husband who was not nearly good enough for you might pass muster for
+Molly; and so she gave way, and there isn't a happier young woman in
+the three kingdoms than Mary Haselden.'</p>
+
+<p>'What are they to live upon?' asked Lesbia, with an incredulous air.</p>
+
+<p>'Mary will have her five hundred a year. And Hammond is a very clever
+fellow. You may be sure he will make his mark in the world.'</p>
+
+<p>'And how are they to live while he is making his mark? Five hundred a
+year won't do more than pay for Mary's frocks, if she goes into
+society.'</p>
+
+<p>'Perhaps they will live without society.'</p>
+
+<p>'In some horrid little hovel in one of those narrow streets off
+Ecclestone Square,' suggested Lesbia, shudderingly. 'It is too dreadful
+to think of—a young woman dooming herself to life-long penury, just
+because she is so foolish as to fall in love.'</p>
+
+<p>'Your days for falling in love are over, I suppose, Lesbia?' said
+Maulevrier, contemplating his sister with keen scrutiny.</p>
+
+<p>The beautiful face, so perfect in line and colour, curiously recalled
+that other face at Fellside; the dowager's face, with its look of marble
+coldness, and the half-expressed pain under that outward calm. Here was
+the face of one who had not yet known pain or passion. Here was the cold
+perfection of beauty with unawakened heart.</p>
+
+<p>'I don't know; I am too busy to think of such things.'</p>
+
+<p>'You have done with love; and you have begun to think of marriage, of
+establishing yourself properly. People tell me you are going to marry
+Mr. Smithson.'</p>
+
+<p>'People tell you more about me than I know about myself.'</p>
+
+<p>'Come now, Lesbia, I have a right to know the truth upon this point.
+Your brother—your only brother—should be the first person to be told.'</p>
+
+<p>'When I am engaged, I have no doubt you will be the first person, or the
+second person,' answered Lesbia, lightly. 'Lady Kirkbank, living on the
+premises, is likely to be the first.'</p>
+
+<p>'Then you are not engaged to Smithson?'</p>
+
+<p>'Didn't I tell you so just now? Mr. Smithson did me the honour to make
+me an offer yesterday, at about this hour; and I did myself the honour
+to reject him.'</p>
+
+<p>'And yet you were whispering together in the box last night, and you
+were riding in the Row with him this morning. I just met a fellow who
+saw you together. Do you think it is right, Lesbia, to play fast and
+loose with the man—to encourage him, if you don't mean to marry him?'</p>
+
+<p>'How can you accuse me of encouraging a person whom I flatly refused
+yesterday morning? If Mr. Smithson likes my society as a friend, must I
+needs deny him my friendship, ask Lady Kirkbank to shut her door against
+him? Mr. Smithson is very pleasant as an acquaintance; and although I
+don't want to marry him, there's no reason I should snub him.'</p>
+
+<p>'Smithson is not a man to be trifled with. You will find yourself
+entangled in a web which you won't easily break through.'</p>
+
+<p>'I am not afraid of webs. By-the-bye, is it true that Mr. Smithson is
+likely to get a peerage?'</p>
+
+<p>'I have heard people say as much. Smithson has spent no end of money on
+electioneering, and is a power in the House, though he very rarely
+speaks. His Berkshire estate gives him a good deal of influence in that
+county; at the last general election he subscribed twenty thou to the
+Conservative cause; for, like most men who have risen from nothing, your
+friend Smithson is a fine old Tory. He was specially elected at the
+Carlton six years ago, and has made himself uncommonly useful to his
+party. He is supposed to be great on financial questions, and comes out
+tremendously on colonial railways or drainage schemes, about which the
+House in general is in profound ignorance. On those occasions Smithson
+scores high. A man with immense wealth has always chances. No doubt, if
+you were to marry him, the peerage would be easily managed. Smithson's
+money, backed by the Maulevrier influence, would go a long way. My
+grandmother would move heaven and earth in a case of that kind. You had
+better take pity on Smithson.'</p>
+
+<p>Lesbia laughed. That idea of a possible peerage elevated Smithson in her
+eyes. She knew nothing of his political career, as she lived in a set
+which ignored politics altogether. Mr. Smithson had never talked to her
+of his parliamentary duties; and it was a new thing for her to hear that
+he had some kind of influence in public affairs.</p>
+
+<p>'Suppose I were inclined to accept him, would you like him as a
+brother-in-law?' she asked lightly. 'I thought from your manner last
+night that you rather disliked him.'</p>
+
+<p>'I don't quite like him or any of his breed, the newly rich, who go
+about in society swelling with the sense of their own importance,
+perspiring gold, as it were. And one has always a faint suspicion of men
+who have got rich very quickly, an idea that there must be some kind of
+juggling. Not in the case of a great contractor, perhaps, who can point
+to a viaduct and docks and railways, and say, &quot;I built that, and that,
+and that. These are the sources of my wealth.&quot; But a man who gets
+enormously rich by mere ciphering! Where can his money come from, except
+out of other people's pockets? I know nothing against your Mr. Smithson,
+but I always suspect that class of men,' concluded Maulevrier shaking
+his head significantly.</p>
+
+<p>Lesbia was not much influenced by her brother's notions, she had never
+been taught to think him an oracle. On the contrary, she had been told
+that his life hitherto had been all foolishness.</p>
+
+<p>'When are Mary and Mr. Hammond to be married?' she asked, 'Grandmother
+says they must wait a year. Mary is much too young—and so on, and so
+forth. But I see no reason for waiting.'</p>
+
+<p>'Surely there are reasons—financial reasons. Mr. Hammond cannot be in a
+position to begin housekeeping.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, they will risk all that. Molly is a daring girl. He proposed to her
+on the top of Helvellyn, in a storm of wind and rain.'</p>
+
+<p>'And she never wrote me a word about it. How very unsisterly!'</p>
+
+<p>'She is as wild as a hawk, and I daresay she was too shy to tell you
+anything about it.'</p>
+
+<p>'Pray when did it all occur?'</p>
+
+<p>'Just before I came to London.'</p>
+
+<p>'Two months ago. How absurd for me to be in ignorance all this time!
+Well, I hope Mary will be sensible, and not marry till Mr. Hammond is
+able to give her a decent home. It would be so dreadful to have a sister
+muddling in poverty, and clamouring for one's cast-off gowns.'</p>
+
+<p>Maulevrier laughed at this gloomy suggestion.</p>
+
+<p>'It is not easy to foretell the future,' he said, 'but I think I may
+venture to promise that Molly will never wear your cast-off gowns.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, you think she would be too proud. You don't know, perhaps, how
+poverty—genteel poverty—lowers one's pride. I have heard stories from
+Lady Kirkbank that would make your hair stand on end. I am beginning to
+know the world.'</p>
+
+<p>'I am glad of that. If you are to live in the world it is better that
+you should know what it is made of. But if I had a voice or a choice in
+the matter I had rather my sisters stayed at Grasmere, and remained
+ignorant of the world and all its ways.'</p>
+
+<p>'While you enjoy your life in London. That is just like the selfishness
+of a man. Under the pretence of keeping his sisters or his wife secure
+from all possible contact with evil, he buries them alive in a country
+house, while he has all the wickedness for his own share in London. Oh,
+I am beginning to understand the creatures.'</p>
+
+<p>'I am afraid you are beginning to be wise. Remember that knowledge of
+evil was the prelude to the Fall. Well, good-bye.'</p>
+
+<p>'Won't you stay to lunch?'</p>
+
+<p>'No, thanks, I never lunch—frightful waste of time. I shall drop in at
+the <i>Haute Gomme</i> and take a cup of tea later on.'</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Haute Gomme</i> was a new club in Piccadilly, which Maulevrier and
+some of his friends affected.</p>
+
+<p>Lesbia went towards the drawing-room door with her brother, and just as
+he reached the door she laid her hand caressingly upon his shoulder. He
+turned and stared at her, somewhat surprised, for he and she had never
+been given to demonstrations of affection.</p>
+
+<p>'Maulevrier, I want you to do me a favour,' she said, in a low voice,
+blushing a little, for the thing she was going to ask was a new thing
+for her to ask, and she had a deep sense of shame in making her demand.
+'I—I lost money at Nap last night. Only seventeen pounds. Mr. Smithson
+and I were partners, and he paid my losses. I want to pay him
+immediately, and----'</p>
+
+<p>'And you are too hard up to do it. I'll write you a cheque this
+instant,' said Maulevrier goodnaturedly; but while he was writing the
+cheque he took occasion to remonstrate with Lesbia on the foolishness of
+card playing.</p>
+
+<p>'I am obliged to do as Lady Kirkbank does,' she answered feebly. 'If I
+were to refuse to play it would be a kind of reproach to her.'</p>
+
+<p>'I don't think that would kill Lady Kirkbank,' replied Maulevrier, with
+a touch of scorn. 'She has had to endure a good many implied reproaches
+in her day, and they don't seem to have hurt her very much. I wish to
+heaven my grandmother had chosen any one else in London for your
+chaperon.'</p>
+
+<p>'I'm afraid Lady Kirkbank's is rather a rowdy set,' answered Lesbia,
+coolly; 'and I sometimes feel as if I had thrown myself away. We go
+almost everywhere—at least, there are only just a few houses to which
+we are not asked. But those few make all the difference. It is so
+humiliating to feel that one is not in quite the best society. However,
+Lady Kirkbank is a dear, good old thing, and I am not going to grumble
+about her.'</p>
+
+<p>'I've made the cheque for five-and-twenty. You can cash it at your
+milliner's,' said Maulevrier. 'I should not like Smithson to know that
+you had been obliged to ask me for the money.'</p>
+
+<p>'<i>Apropos</i> to Mr. Smithson, do you know if he is in quite the best
+society?' asked Lesbia.</p>
+
+<p>'I don't know what you mean by quite the best. A man of Smithson's
+wealth can generally poke his nose in anywhere, if he knows how to
+behave himself. But of course there are people with whom money and fine
+houses have no weight. The Conservatives are all civil to Smithson
+because he comes down handsomely at General Elections, and is useful to
+them in other ways. I believe that Smithson's wife, if she were a
+thorough-bred one, could go into any society she liked, and make her
+house one of the most popular in London. Perhaps that is what you really
+wanted to ask.</p>
+
+<p>'No, it wasn't,' answered Lesbia, carelessly; 'I was only talking for
+the sake of talking. A thousand thanks for the cheque, you best of
+brothers.'</p>
+
+<p>'It is not worth talking about; but, Lesbia, don't play cards any more.
+Believe me, it is not good form.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, I'll try to keep out of it in future. It is horrid to see one's
+sovereigns melting away; but there's a delightful excitement in
+winning.'</p>
+
+<p>'No doubt,' answered Maulevrier, with a remorseful sigh.</p>
+
+<p>He spoke as a reformed plunger, and with many a bitter experience of the
+race-course and the card-room. Even now, though he had steadied himself
+wonderfully, he could not get on without a little mild gambling—half-crown
+pool, whist with half-guinea points—but when he condescended to such small
+stakes he felt that he had settled down into a respectable middle-aged
+player, and had a right to rebuke the follies of youth.</p>
+
+<p>Lesbia flew to the piano and sang one of her little German ballads
+directly Maulevrier was gone. She felt as if a burden had been lifted
+from her soul, now that she was able to pay Mr. Smithson without waiting
+to ask Lady Maulevrier for the money. And as she sang she meditated upon
+Maulevrier's remarks about Smithson. He knew nothing to the man's
+discredit, except that he had grown rich in a short space of time.
+Surely no man ought to be blamed for that. And he thought that Mr.
+Smithson's wife might make her house the most popular in London. Lesbia,
+in her mind's eye, beheld an imaginary Lady Lesbia Smithson giving
+dances in that magnificent mansion, entertaining Royal personages. And
+the doorways would be festooned with roses, as she had seen them the
+other night at a ball in Grosvenor Square; but the house in Grosvenor
+Square was a hovel compared with the Smithsonian Palace.</p>
+
+<p>Lesbia was beginning to be a little tired of Lady Kirkbank and her
+surroundings. Life taken <i>prestissimo</i> is apt to pall. Lesbia sighed as
+she finished her little song. She was beginning to look upon her
+existence as a problem which had been given to her to solve, and the
+solution just at present was all dark.</p>
+
+<p>As she rose from the piano a footman came in with two letters on a
+salver—bulky letters, such packages as Lesbia had never seen before.
+She wondered what they could be. She opened the thickest envelope first.
+It was Seraphine's bill—such a bill, page after page on creamy Bath
+post, written in an elegant Italian hand by one of Seraphine's young
+women.</p>
+
+<p>Lesbia looked at it aghast with horror. The total at the foot of the
+first page was appalling, ever so much more than she could have supposed
+the whole amount of her indebtedness; but the total went on increasing
+at the foot of every page, until at sight of the final figures Lesbia
+gave a wild shriek, like a wretched creature who has received a telegram
+announcing bitterest loss.</p>
+
+<p>The final total was twelve hundred and ninety-three pounds seventeen and
+sixpence!</p>
+
+<p>Thirteen hundred pounds for clothes in eight weeks!</p>
+
+<p>No, the thing was a cheat, a mistake. They had sent her somebody else's
+bill. She had not had half these things.</p>
+
+<p>She read the first page, her heart beating violently as she pored over
+the figures, her eyes dim and clouded with the trouble of her brain.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, there was her court dress. The description was too minute to be
+mistaken; and the court dress, with feathers, and shoes, and gloves, and
+fan, came to a hundred and thirty pounds. Then followed innumerable
+items. The very simplest of her gowns cost five-and-twenty
+pounds—frocks about which Seraphine had talked so carelessly, as if two
+or three more or less could make no difference. Bonnets and hats, at
+five or seven guineas apiece, swelled the account. Parasols and fans
+were of fabulous price, as it seemed to Lesbia; and the shoes and
+stockings to match her various gowns occurred again and again between
+the more important items, like the refrain of an old ballad. All the
+useless and unnessary things which she had ordered, because she thought
+them pretty or because she was told they were fashionable, rose up
+against her in the figures of the bill, like the record of forgotten
+sins at the Day of Judgment.</p>
+
+<p>She sank into a chair, pallid with consternation, and sat with the bill
+in her lap, turning the pages listlessly, and staring at the figures.</p>
+
+<p>'It cannot be so much,' she cried to herself. 'It must be added up
+wrong;' and then she feebly tried to cast up a column; but arithmetic
+not being one of those accomplishments which Lady Maulevrier deemed
+necessary to a patrician beauty's success in life, Lesbia's education
+had been somewhat neglected upon this point, and she flung the bill from
+her in a rage, unable to hold the figures in her brain.</p>
+
+<p>She opened the second envelope, her jeweller's account. At the very
+first item she gave another scream, fainter than the first, for her mind
+was getting hardened against such shocks.</p>
+
+<p>'To re-setting a suite of amethysts, with forty-four finest Brazilian
+brilliants, three hundred and fifteen pounds.'</p>
+
+<p>Then followed the trifles she had bought at different visits to the
+shop—casual purchases, bought on the impulse of the moment. These
+swelled the account to a little over eight hundred pounds. Lesbia sat
+like a statue, numbed by despair, appalled at the idea of owing over two
+thousand pounds.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XXX"></a><h2>CHAPTER XXX.</h2>
+
+<h3>'ROSES CHOKED AMONG THORNS AND THISTLES.'</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>Lady Lesbia ate no luncheon that day. She went to her own room and had a
+cup of tea to steady her nerves, and sent to ask Lady Kirkbank to go to
+her as soon as she had finished luncheon. Lady Kirkbank's luncheon was a
+serious business, a substantial leisurely meal with which she fortified
+herself for the day's work. It enabled her to endure all the fatigues of
+visits and park, and to be airily indifferent to the charms of dinner;
+for Lady Kirkbank was not one of those matrons who with advanced years
+take to <i>gourmandise</i> as a kind of fine art. She gave good dinners,
+because she knew people would not come to Arlington Street to eat bad
+ones; but she was not a person who lived only to dine. At luncheon she
+gave her healthy appetite full scope, and ate like a ploughman.</p>
+
+<p>She found Lesbia in her white muslin dressing-gown, with cheeks as pale
+as the gown she wore. She was sitting in an easy chair, with a low
+tea-table at her side, and the two bills were in the tray among the
+tea-things.</p>
+
+<p>'Have you any idea how much I owe Seraphine and Cabochon?' she asked,
+looking up despairingly at Lady Kirkbank.</p>
+
+<p>'What, have they sent in their bills already?'</p>
+
+<p>'Already! I wish they had sent them before. I should have known how
+deeply I was getting into debt.'</p>
+
+<p>'Are they very heavy?'</p>
+
+<p>'They are dreadful! I owe over two thousand pounds. How can I tell Lady
+Maulevrier that? Two thousand one hundred pounds! It is awful.'</p>
+
+<p>'There are women in London who would think very little of owing twice as
+much,' said Lady Kirkbank, in a comforting tone, though the fact,
+seriously considered, could hardly afford comfort. 'Your grandmother
+said you were to have <i>carte blanche</i>. She may think that you have been
+just a little extravagant; but she can hardly be angry with you for
+having taken her at her word. Two thousand pounds! Yes, it certainly is
+rather stiff.'</p>
+
+<p>'Seraphine is a cheat!' exclaimed Lesbia, angrily. 'Her prices are
+positively exorbitant!'</p>
+
+<p>'My dear child, you must not say that. Seraphine is positively moderate
+in comparison with the new people.'</p>
+
+<p>'And Mr. Cabochon, too. The idea of his charging me three hundred
+guineas for re-setting those stupid old amethysts.'</p>
+
+<p>'My dear, you <i>would</i> have diamonds mixed with them,' said Lady
+Kirkbank, reproachfully.</p>
+
+<p>Lesbia turned away her head with an impatient sigh. She remembered
+perfectly that it was Lady Kirkbank who had persuaded her to order the
+diamond setting; but there was no use in talking about it now. The thing
+was done. She was two thousand pounds in debt—two thousand pounds to
+these two people only—and there were ever so many shops at which she
+had accounts—glovers, bootmakers, habit-makers, the tailor who made her
+Newmarket coats and cloth gowns, the stationer who supplied her with
+note-paper of every variety, monogrammed, floral; sporting, illuminated
+with this or that device, the follies of the passing hour, hatched by
+penniless Invention in a garret, pandering to the vanities of the idle.</p>
+
+<p>'I must write to my grandmother by this afternoon's post,' said Lesbia,
+with a heavy sigh.</p>
+
+<p>'Impossible. We have to be at the Ranelagh by four o'clock. Smithson
+and some other men are to meet us there. I have promised to drive Mrs.
+Mostyn down. You had better begin to dress.'</p>
+
+<p>'But I ought to write to-day. I had better ask for this money at once,
+and have done with it. Two thousand pounds! I feel as if I were a thief.
+You say my grandmother is not a rich woman?'</p>
+
+<p>'Not rich as the world goes nowadays. Nobody is rich now, except your
+commercial magnates, like Smithson. Great peers, unless their money is
+in London ground-rents, are great paupers. To own land is to be
+destitute. I don't suppose two thousand pounds will break your
+grandmother's bank; but of course it is a large sum to ask for at the
+end of two months; especially as she sent you a good deal of money while
+we were at Cannes. If you were engaged—about to make a really good
+match—you could ask for the money as a matter of course; but as it is,
+although you have been tremendously admired, from a practical point of
+view you are a failure.'</p>
+
+<p>A failure. It was a hard word, but Lesbia felt it was true. She, the
+reigning beauty, the cynosure of every eye, had made no conquest worth
+talking about, except Mr. Smithson.</p>
+
+<p>'Don't tell your grandmother anything about the bills for a week or
+two,' said Lady Kirkbank, soothingly. 'The creatures can wait for their
+money. Give yourself time to think.'</p>
+
+<p>'I will,' answered Lesbia, dolefully.</p>
+
+<p>'And now make haste, and get ready for the Ranelagh. My love, your eyes
+are dreadfully heavy. You <i>must</i> use a little belladonna. I'll send
+Rilboche to you.'</p>
+
+<p>And for the first time in her life, Lesbia, too depressed to argue the
+point, consented to have her eyes doctored by Rilboche.</p>
+
+<p>She was gay enough at the Ranelagh, and looked her loveliest at a dinner
+party that evening, and went to three parties after the dinner, and went
+home in the faint light of early morning, after sitting out a late waltz
+in a balcony with Mr. Smithson, a balcony banked round with hot-house
+flowers which were beginning to droop a little in the chilly morning
+air, just as beauty drooped under the searching eye of day.</p>
+
+<p>Lesbia put the bills in her desk, and gave herself time to think, as
+Lady Kirkbank advised her. But the thinking progress resulted in very
+little good. All the thought of which she was capable would not reduce
+the totals of those two dreadful accounts. And every day brought some
+fresh bill. The stationer, the bootmaker, the glover, the perfumer,
+people who had courted Lady Lesbia's custom with an air which implied
+that the honour of serving fashionable beauty was the first
+consideration, and the question of payment quite a minor point—these
+now began to ask for their money in the most prosaic way. Every straw
+added to Lesbia's burden; and her heart grew heavier with every post.</p>
+
+<p>'One can see the season is waning when these people begin to pester
+with their accounts,' said Lady Kirkbank, who always talked of tradesmen
+as if they were her natural enemies.</p>
+
+<p>Lesbia accepted this explanation of the avalanche of bills, and never
+suspected Lady Kirkbank's influence in the matter. It happened, however,
+that the chaperon, having her own reasons for wishing to bring Mr.
+Smithson's suit to a successful issue, had told Seraphine and the other
+people to send in their bills immediately. Lady Lesbia would be leaving
+London in a week or so, she informed these purveyors, and would like to
+settle everything before she went away.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Smithson appeared in Arlington Street almost every day, and was full
+of schemes for new pleasures—or pleasures as nearly new as the world of
+fashion can afford. He was particularly desirous that Sir George and
+Lady Kirkbank, with Lady Lesbia, should stay at his Berkshire place
+during the Henley week. He had a large steam launch, and the regatta was
+a kind of carnival for his intimate friends, who were not too proud to
+riot and batten upon the parvenu's luxurious hospitality, albeit they
+were apt to talk somewhat slightingly of his antecedents.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Kirkbank felt that this invitation was a turning point, and that if
+Lesbia went to stay at Rood Hall, her acceptance of Mr. Smithson was a
+certainty. She would see him at his place in Berkshire in the most
+flattering aspect; his surroundings as lord of the manor, and owner of
+one of the finest old places in the county, would lend dignity to his
+insignificance. Lesbia at first expressed a strong disinclination to go
+to Rood Hall. There would be a most unpleasant feeling in stopping at
+the house of a man whom she had refused, she told Lady Kirkbank.</p>
+
+<p>'My dear, Mr. Smithson has forgiven you,' answered her chaperon. 'He is
+the soul of good nature.'</p>
+
+<p>'One would think he was accustomed to be refused,' said Lesbia. 'I don't
+want to go to Rood Hall, but I don't want to spoil your Henley week.
+Could not I run down to Grasmere for a week, with Kibble to take care of
+me, and see dear grandmother? I could tell her about those dreadful
+bills.'</p>
+
+<p>'Bury yourself at Grasmere in the height of the season! Not to be
+thought of! Besides, Lady Maulevrier objected before to the idea of your
+travelling alone with Kibble. No! if you can't make up your mind to go
+to Rood Hall, George and I must make up our minds to stay away. But it
+will be rather hard lines; for that Henley week is quite the jolliest
+thing in the summer.'</p>
+
+<p>'Then I'll go,' said Lesbia, with a resigned air. 'Not for worlds would
+I deprive you and Sir George of a pleasure.'</p>
+
+<p>In her heart of hearts she rather wished to see Rood Hall. She was
+curious to behold the extent and magnitude of Mr. Smithson's
+possessions. She had seen his Italian villa in Park Lane, the perfection
+of modern art, modern skill, modern taste, reviving the old eternally
+beautiful forms, recreating the Pitti Palace—the homes of the
+Medici—the halls of dead and gone Doges—and now she was told that Rood
+Hall—a genuine old English manor-house, in perfect preservation—was
+even more interesting than the villa in Park Lane. At Rood Hall there
+were ideal stables and farm, hot-houses without number, rose gardens,
+lawns, the river, and a deer park.</p>
+
+<p>So the invitation was accepted, and Mr. Smithson immediately laid
+himself at Lesbia's feet, as it were, with regard to all other
+invitations for the Henley festival. Whom should he ask to meet
+her?—whom would she have?</p>
+
+<p>'You are very good,' she said, 'but I have really no wish to be
+consulted. I am not a royal personage, remember. I could not presume to
+dictate.'</p>
+
+<p>'But I wish you to dictate. I wish you to be imperious in the expression
+of your wishes.'</p>
+
+<p>'Lady Kirkbank has a better right than I, if anybody is to be
+consulted,' said Lesbia, modestly.</p>
+
+<p>'Lady Kirkbank is an old dear, who gets on delightfully with everybody.
+But you are more sensitive. Your comfort might be marred by an obnoxious
+presence. I will ask nobody whom you do not like—who is not thoroughly
+<i>simpatico</i>. Have you no particular friends of your own choosing whom
+you would like me to ask?'</p>
+
+<p>Lesbia confessed that she had no such friends. She liked everybody
+tolerably; but she had not a talent for friendship. Perhaps it was
+because in the London season one was too busy to make friends.</p>
+
+<p>'I can fancy two girls getting quite attached to each other, out of the
+season,' she said, 'but in May and June life is all a rush and a
+scramble----'</p>
+
+<p>'And one has no time to gather wayside flowers of friendship,'
+interjected Mr. Smithson. 'Still, if there are no people for whom you
+have an especial liking, there <i>must</i> be people whom you detest.'</p>
+
+<p>Lesbia owned that it was so. Detestation came of itself, naturally.</p>
+
+<p>'Then let me be sure I do not ask any of your pet aversions,' said Mr.
+Smithson. 'You met Mr. Plantagenet Parsons, the theatrical critic, at my
+house. Shall we have him?'</p>
+
+<p>'I like all amusing people.'</p>
+
+<p>'And Horace Meander, the poet. Shall we have him? He is brimful of
+conceits and affectations, but he's a tremendous joke.'</p>
+
+<p>'Mr. Meander is charming.'</p>
+
+<p>'Suppose we ask Mostyn and his wife? Her scraps of science are rather
+good fun.'</p>
+
+<p>'I haven't the faintest objection to the Mostyns,' replied Lesbia. 'But
+who are &quot;we&quot;?'</p>
+
+<p>'We are you and I, for the nonce. The invitations will be issued
+ostensibly by me, but they will really emanate from you.'</p>
+
+<p>'I am to be the shadow behind the throne,' said Lesbia. 'How
+delightful!'</p>
+
+<p>'I would rather you were the sovereign ruler, on the throne,' answered
+Smithson, tenderly. 'That throne shall be empty till you fill it.'</p>
+
+<p>'Please go on with your list of people,' said Lesbia, checking this gush
+of sentiment.</p>
+
+<p>She began to feel somehow that she was drifting from all her moorings,
+that in accepting this invitation to Rood Hall she was allowing herself
+to be ensnared into an alliance about which she was still doubtful. If
+anything better had appeared in the prospect of her life—if any
+worthier suitor had come forward, she would have whistled Mr. Smithson
+down the wind; but no worthier suitor had offered himself. It was
+Smithson or nothing. If she did not accept Smithson, she would go back
+to Fellside heavily burdened with debt, and an obvious failure. She
+would have run the gauntlet of a London season without definite result;
+and this, to a young woman so impressed with her own transcendent
+merits, was a most humiliating state of things.</p>
+
+<p>Other people's names were suggested by Mr. Smithson and approved by
+Lesbia, and a house party of about fourteen in all was made up. Mr.
+Smithson's steam launch would comfortably accommodate that number. He
+had a couple of barges for chance visitors, and kept an open table on
+board them during the regatta.</p>
+
+<p>The visit arranged, the next question was gowns. Lesbia had gowns enough
+to have stocked a draper's shop; but then, as she and Lady Kirkbank
+deplored, the difficulty was that she had worn them all, some as many as
+three or four times. They were doubtless all marked and known. Some of
+them had been described in the society papers. At Henley she would be
+expected to wear something distinctly new, to introduce some new fashion
+of gown or hat or parasol. No matter how ugly the new thing might be, so
+long as it was startling; no matter how eccentric, provided it was
+original.</p>
+
+<p>'What am I to do?' asked Lesbia, despairingly.</p>
+
+<p>'There is only one thing that can be done. We must go instantly to
+Seraphine and insist upon her inventing something. If she has no idea
+ready she must telegraph Worth and get him to send something over. Your
+old things will do very well for Rood Hall. You have no end of pretty
+gowns for morning and evening; but you must be original on the race
+days. Your gowns will be in all the papers.'</p>
+
+<p>'But I shall be only getting deeper into debt,' said Lesbia, with a
+sigh.</p>
+
+<p>'That can't be helped. If you go into society you must be properly
+dressed. We'll go to Clanricarde Place directly after luncheon, and see
+what that old harpy has to show us.'</p>
+
+<p>Lesbia had a rather uncomfortable feeling about facing the fair
+Seraphine, without being able to give her a cheque upon account of that
+dreadful bill. She had quite accepted Lady Kirkbank's idea that bills
+never need be discharged in full, and that the true system of finance
+was to give an occasional cheque on account, as a sop to Cerberus. True,
+that while Cerberus fattened on the sops the bill seemed always growing;
+and the final crash, when Cerberus grew savage and sops could be no more
+accepted, was too awful to be thought about.</p>
+
+<p>Lesbia entered Seraphine's Louis-seize drawing-room with a faint
+expectation of unpleasantness; but after a little whispering between
+Lady Kirkbank and the dressmaker, the latter came to Lesbia smiling
+graciously, and seemingly full of eagerness for new orders.</p>
+
+<p>'Miladi says you want something of the most original—<i>tant soit peu
+risqu&eacute;</i>—for 'Enley,' she said. 'Let us see now,' and she tapped her
+forehead with a gold thimble which nobody had ever seen her use, but
+which looked respectable. 'There is ze dresses that Chaumont wear in zis
+new play, <i>Une Faute dans le Pass&eacute;</i>. Yes, zere is the watare dress—a
+boating party at Bougival, a toilet of the most new, striking,
+<i>&eacute;crasant</i>, what you English call a &quot;screamer.&quot;'</p>
+
+<p>'What a genius you are, Fifine,' exclaimed Lady Kirkbank, rapturously.
+'The <i>Faute dans le Pass&eacute;</i> was only produced last week. No one will have
+thought of copying Chaumont's gowns yet awhile. The idea is an
+inspiration.'</p>
+
+<p>'What is the boating costume like?' asked Lady Lesbia, faintly.</p>
+
+<p>'An exquisite combination of simplicity with <i>élan</i>,' answered the
+dressmaker. 'A skin-tight indigo silk Jersey bodice, closely studded
+with dark blue beads, a flounced petticoat of indigo and amber foulard,
+an amber scarf drawn tightly round the hips, and a dark blue toque with
+a large bunch of amber poppies. Tan-coloured mousquetaire gloves, and
+Hessian boots of tan-coloured kid.'</p>
+
+<p>'Hessian boots!' ejaculated Lesbia.</p>
+
+<p>'But, yes, Miladi. The petticoat is somewhat short, you comprehend, to
+escape the damp of the deck, and, after all, Hessians are much less
+indelicate than silk stockings, legs <i>à cru</i>, as one may say.'</p>
+
+<p>'Lesbia, you will look enchanting in yellow Hessians,' said Lady
+Kirkbank, 'Let the dress be put in hand instantly, Seraphine.'</p>
+
+<p>Lesbia was inclined to remonstrate. She did not admire the description
+of the costume, she would rather have something less outrageous.</p>
+
+<p>'Outrageous! It is only original,' exclaimed her chaperon. 'If Chaumont
+wears it you may be sure it is perfect.'</p>
+
+<p>'But on the stage, by gaslight, in the midst of unrealities,' argued
+Lesbia. 'That makes such a difference.'</p>
+
+<p>'My dear, there is no difference nowadays between the stage and the
+drawing-room. Whatever Chaumont wears you may wear. And now let us think
+of the second day. I think as your first costume is to be nautical, and
+rather masculine, your second should be somewhat languishing and
+<i>vaporeux</i>. Creamy Indian muslin, wild flowers, a large Leghorn hat.'</p>
+
+<p>'And what will Miladi herself wear?' asked the French woman of Lady
+Kirkbank. 'She must have something of new.'</p>
+
+<p>'No, at my age, it doesn't matter. I shall wear one of my cotton frocks,
+and my Dunstable hat.'</p>
+
+<p>Lesbia shuddered, for Lady Kirkbank in her cotton frock was a spectacle
+at which youth laughed and age blushed. But after all it did not matter
+to Lesbia. She would have liked a less rowdy chaperon; but as a foil to
+her own fresh young beauty Lady Kirkbank was admirable.</p>
+
+<p>They drove down to Rood Hall early next week, Sir George conveying them
+in his drag, with a change of horses at Maidenhead. The weather was
+peerless; the country exquisite, approached from London. How different
+that river landscape looks to the eyes of the traveller returning from
+the wild West of England, the wooded gorges of Cornwall and Devon, the
+Tamar and the Dart. Then how small and poor and mean seems silvery
+Thames, gliding peacefully between his willowy bank, singing his lullaby
+to the whispering sedges; a poor little river, a flat commonplace
+landscape, says the traveller, fresh from moorland and tor, from the
+rocky shore of the Atlantic, the deep clefts of the great, red hills.</p>
+
+<p>To Lesbia's eyes the placid stream and the green pastures, breathing
+odours of meadow-sweet and clover, seemed passing lovely. She was
+pleased with her own hat and parasol too, which made her graciously
+disposed towards the landscape; and the last packet of gloves from North
+Audley Street fitted without a wrinkle. The glovemaker was beginning to
+understand her hand, which was a study for a sculptor, but which had its
+little peculiarities.</p>
+
+<p>Nor was she ill-disposed to Mr. Smithson, who had come up to town by an
+early train, in order to lunch in Arlington Street and go back by coach,
+seated just behind Lady Lesbia, who had the box seat beside Sir George.</p>
+
+<p>The drive was delightful. It was a few minutes after five when the coach
+drove past the picturesque old gate-house into Mr. Smithson's Park, and
+Rood Hall lay on the low ground in front of them, with its back to the
+river. It was an old red brick house in the Tudor style, with an
+advanced porch, and four projecting wings, three stories high, with
+picturesque spire roofs overtopping the main building. Around the house
+ran a boldly-carved stone parapet, bearing the herons and bulrushes
+which were the cognisance of the noble race for which the mansion was
+built. Numerous projecting mullioned windows broke up the line of the
+park front. Lesbia was fain to own that Rood Hall was even better than
+Park Lane. In London Mr. Smithson had created a palace; but it was a new
+palace, which still had a faint flavour of bricks and mortar, and which
+was apt to remind the spectator of that wonderful erection of Aladdin,
+the famous Parvenu of Eastern story. Here, in Berkshire, Mr. Smithson
+had dropped into a nest which had been kept warm for him for three
+centuries, aired and beautified by generations of a noble race which had
+obligingly decayed and dwindled in order to make room for Mr. Smithson.
+Here the Parvenu had bought a home mellowed by the slow growth of years,
+touched into poetic beauty by the chastening fingers of time. His artist
+friends told him that every brick in the red walls was 'precious,' a
+mystery of colour which only a painter could fitly understand and value.
+Here he had bought associations, he had bought history. He had bought
+the dust of Elizabeth's senators, the bones of her court beauties. The
+coffins in the Mausoleum yonder in the ferny depths of the Park, the
+village church just outside the gates—these had all gone with the
+property.</p>
+
+<p>Lesbia went up the grand staircase, through the long corridors, in a
+dream of wonder. Brought up at Fellside, in that new part of the
+Westmoreland house which had been built by her grandmother and had no
+history, she felt thrilled by the sober splendour of this fine old
+manorial mansion. All was sound and substantial, as if created
+yesterday, so well preserved had been the goods and chattels of the
+noble race; and yet all wore such unmistakeable marks of age. The deep
+rich colouring of the wainscot, the faded hues of the tapestry, the
+draperies of costliest velvet and brocade, were all sobered by the
+passing of years.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Smithson had shown his good taste in having kept all things as Sir
+Hubert Heronville, the last of his race, had left them; and the
+Heronvilles had been one of those grand old Tory races which change
+nothing of the past.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Lesbia's bedroom was the State chamber, which had been occupied by
+kings and queens in days of yore. That grandiose four-poster, with the
+carved ebony columns, cut velvet curtains, and plumes of ostrich
+feathers, had been built for Elizabeth, when she deigned to include Rood
+Hall in one of her royal progresses. Charles the First had rested his
+weary head upon those very pillows, before he went on to the Inn at
+Uxbridge, where he was to be lodged less luxuriously. James the Second
+had stayed there when Duke of York, with Mistress Anne Hyde, before he
+acknowledged his marriage to the multitude; and Anne's daughter had
+occupied the same room as Queen of England forty years later; and now
+the Royal Chamber, with adjacent dressing-room, and oratory, and
+spacious boudoir all in the same suite, was reserved for Lady Lesbia
+Haselden.</p>
+
+<p>'I'm afraid you are spoiling me,' she told Mr. Smithson, when he asked
+if she approved of the rooms that had been allotted to her. 'I feel
+quite ashamed of myself among the ghosts of dead and gone queens.'</p>
+
+<p>'Why so? Surely the Royalty of beauty has as divine a right as that of
+an anointed sovereign.'</p>
+
+<p>'I hope the Royal personages don't walk,' exclaimed Lady Kirkbank, in
+her girlish tone; 'this is just the house in which one would expect
+ghosts.'</p>
+
+<p>Whereupon Mrs. Mostyn hastened to enlighten the company upon the real
+causes of ghost-seeing, which she had lately studied in Carpenter's
+'Mental Physiology,' and favoured them with a diluted version of the
+views of that authority.</p>
+
+<p>This was at afternoon tea in the library, where the brass-wired
+bookcases, filled with mighty folios and handsome octavos in old
+bindings, looked as if they had not been opened for a century. The
+literature of past ages furnished the room, and made a delightful
+background. The literature of the present lay about on the tables, and
+testified that the highest intellectual flight of the inhabitants of
+Rood Hall was a dip into the <i>Contemporary</i> or the <i>Nineteenth Century</i>,
+or the perusal of the last new scandal in the shape of Reminiscences or
+Autobiography. One large round table was consecrated to Mudie, another
+to Rolandi. On the one side you had Mrs. Oliphant, on the other Zola,
+exemplifying the genius of the two nations.</p>
+
+<p>After tea Mr. Smithson's visitors, most of whom had arrived in Sir
+George's drag, explored the grounds. These were lovely beyond expression
+in the low afternoon light. Cedars of Lebanon spread their broad shadows
+on the velvet lawn, yews and Wellingtonias of mighty growth made an
+atmosphere of gloom in some parts of the grounds. One great feature was
+the Ladies' Garden, a spot apart, a great square garden surrounded with
+a laurel wall, eight feet high, containing a rose garden, where the
+choicest specimens grew and flourished, while in the centre there was a
+circular fish-pond with a fountain. There was a Lavender Walk too,
+another feature of the grounds at Rood Hall, an avenue of tall lavender
+bushes, much affected by the stately dames of old.</p>
+
+<p>Modern manners preferred the river terrace, as a pleasant place on which
+to loiter after dinner, to watch the boats flashing by in the evening
+light, or the sun going down behind a fringe of willows on the opposite
+bank. This Italian terrace, with its statues, and carved vases filled
+with roses, fuchsias, and geraniums, was the great point of rendezvous
+at Rood Hall—an ideal spot whereon to linger in the deepening twilight,
+from which to gaze upon the moonlit river later on in the night.</p>
+
+<p>The windows of the drawing-room, and music-room, and ballroom opened on
+to this terrace, and the royal wing—the tower-shaped wing now devoted
+to Lady Lesbia, looked upon the terrace and the river.</p>
+
+<p>'Lovely as your house is altogether, I think this river view is the
+best part of it,' said Lady Lesbia, as she strolled with Mr. Smithson on
+the terrace after dinner, dressed in Indian muslin which was almost as
+poetical as a vapour, and with a cloud of delicate lace wrapped round
+her head. 'I think I shall spend half of my life at my boudoir window,
+gloating over that delicious landscape.'</p>
+
+<p>Horace Meander, the poet, was discoursing to a select group upon that
+peculiar quality of willows which causes them to shiver, and quiver, and
+throw little lights and shadows on the river, and on the subtle,
+ineffable beauty of twilight, which perhaps, however utterly beautiful
+in the abstract, would have been more agreeable to him personally if he
+had not been surrounded by a cloud of gnats, which refused to be
+buffeted off his laurel-crowned head.</p>
+
+<p>While Mr. Meander poetised in his usual eloquent style, Mrs. Mostyn, as
+a still newer light, discoursed as eloquently to little a knot of women,
+imparting valuable information upon the anatomical structure and
+individual peculiarities of those various insects which are the pests of
+a summer evening.</p>
+
+<p>'You don't like gnats!' exclaimed the lady; 'how very extraordinary. Do
+you know I have spent days and weeks upon the study of their habits and
+dear little ways. They are the most interesting creatures—far superior
+to <i>us</i> in intellect. Do you know that they fight, and that they have
+tribes which are life-long enemies—like those dreadful Corsicans—and
+that they make little sepulchres in the bark of trees, and bury each
+other—alive, if they can; and they hold vestries, and have burial
+boards. They are most absorbing creatures, if you only give yourself up
+to the study of them; but it is no use to be half-hearted in a study of
+that kind. I went without so much as a cup of tea for twenty-four hours,
+watching my gnats, for fear the opening of the door should startle them.
+Another time I shall make the nursery governess watch for me.'</p>
+
+<p>'How interesting, how noble of you,' exclaimed the other ladies; and
+then they began to talk about bonnets, and about Mr. Smithson, to
+speculate how much money this house and all his other houses had cost
+him, and to wonder if he was really rich, or if he were only one of
+those great financial windbags which so often explode and leave the
+world aghast, marvelling at the ease with which it has been deluded.</p>
+
+<p>They wondered, too, whether Lady Lesbia Haselden meant to marry him.</p>
+
+<p>'Of course she does, my dear,' answered Mrs. Mostyn, decisively.</p>
+
+<p>'You don't suppose that after having studied the habits of <i>gnats</i> I
+cannot read such a poor shallow creature as a silly vain girl. Of course
+Lady Lesbia means to marry Mr. Smithson's fine houses; and she is only
+amusing herself and swelling her own importance by letting him dangle in
+a kind of suspense which is not suspense; for he knows as well as she
+does that she means to have him.'</p>
+
+<p>The next day was given up, first to seeing the house, an amusement which
+lasted very well for an hour or so after breakfast, and then to
+wandering in a desultory manner, to rowing and canoeing, and a little
+sailing, and a good deal of screaming and pretty timidity upon the blue
+bright river; to gathering wild flowers and ferns in rustic lanes, and
+to an <i>al fresco</i> luncheon in the wood at Medmenham, and then dinner,
+and then music, an evening spent half within and half without the
+music-room, cigarettes sparkling, like glowworms on the terrace, tall
+talk from Mr. Meander, long quotations from his own muse and that of
+Rossetti, a little Shelley, a little Keats, a good deal of Swinburne.
+The festivities were late on this second evening, as Mr. Smithson had
+invited a good many people from the neighbourhood, but the house party
+were not the less early on the following morning, which was the first
+Henley day.</p>
+
+<p>It was a peerless morning, and all the brasswork of Mr. Smithson's
+launch sparkled and shone in the sun, as she lay in front of the
+terrace. A wooden pier, a portable construction, was thrown out from the
+terrace steps, to enable the company to go on board the launch without
+the possibility of wet feet or damaged raiment.</p>
+
+<p>Lesbia's Chaumount costume was a success. The women praised it, the men
+stared and admired. The dark-blue silken jersey, sparkling with closely
+studded indigo beads, fitted the slim graceful figure as a serpent's
+scales fit the serpent. The coquettish little blue silk toque, the
+careless cluster of gold-coloured poppies, against the glossy brown
+hair, the large sunshade of old gold satin lined with indigo, the
+flounced petticoat of softest Indian silk, the dainty little
+tan-coloured boots with high heels and pointed toes, were all perfect
+after their fashion; and Mr. Smithson felt that the liege lady of his
+life, the woman he meant to marry willy nilly, would be the belle of the
+race-course. Nor was he disappointed. Everybody in London had heard of
+Lady Lesbia Haselden. Her photograph was in all the West-End windows,
+was enshrined in the albums of South Kensington and Clapham, Maida Vale
+and Haverstock Hill. People whose circles were far remote from Lady
+Lesbia's circle, were as familiar with her beauty as if they had known
+her from her cradle. And all these outsiders wanted to see her in the
+flesh, just as they always thirst to behold Royal personages. So when it
+became known that the beautiful Lady Lesbia Haselden was on board Mr.
+Smithson's launch, all the people in the small boats, or on neighbouring
+barges, made it their business to have a good look at her. The launch
+was almost mobbed by those inquisitive little boats in the intervals
+between the races.</p>
+
+<p>'What are the people all staring and hustling one another for?' asked
+Lesbia, innocently. She had seen the same hustling and whispering and
+staring in the hall at the opera, when she was waiting for her carriage;
+but she chose to affect unconsciousness. 'What do they all want?'</p>
+
+<p>'I think they want to see you,' said Mr. Smithson, who was sitting by
+her side. 'A very natural desire.'</p>
+
+<p>Lesbia laughed, and lowered the big yellow sunshade, so as to hide
+herself altogether from the starers.</p>
+
+<p>'How silly!' she exclaimed. 'It is all the fault of those horrid
+photographers: they vulgarise everything and everybody. I will never be
+photographed again.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh yes, you will, and in that frock. It's the prettiest thing I've seen
+for a long time. Why do you hide yourself from those poor wretches, who
+keep rowing backwards and forwards in an obviously aimless way, just to
+get a peep at you <i>en passant</i>? What happiness for us who live near you,
+and can gaze when we will, without all those absurd manoeuvres. There
+goes the signal—and now for a hard-fought race.'</p>
+
+<p>Lesbia pretended to be interested in the racing—she pretended to be
+gay, but her heart was as heavy as lead. The burden of debt, which had
+been growing ever since Seraphine sent in her bill, was weighing her
+down to the dust.</p>
+
+<p>She owed three thousand pounds. It seemed incredible that she should owe
+so much, that a girl's frivolous fancies and extravagances could amount
+to such a sum within so short a span. But thoughtless purchases,
+ignorant orders, had run on from week to week, and the main result was
+an indebtedness of close upon three thousand pounds.</p>
+
+<p>Three thousand pounds! The sum was continually sounding in her ears like
+the cry of a screech owl. The very ripple of the river flowing so
+peacefully under the blue summer sky seemed to repeat the words. Three
+thousand pounds! 'Is it much?' she wondered, having no standard of
+comparison. 'Is it very much more than my grandmother will expect me to
+have spent in the time? Will it trouble her to have to pay those bills?
+Will she be very angry?'</p>
+
+<p>These were questions which Lesbia kept asking herself, in every pause of
+her frivolous existence; in such a pause as this, for instance, while
+the people round her were standing breathless, open-mouthed, gazing
+after the boats. She did not care a straw for the boats, who won, or who
+lost the race. It was all a hollow mockery. Indeed it seemed just now
+that the only real thing in life was those accursed bills, which would
+have to be paid somehow.</p>
+
+<p>She had told Lady Maulevrier nothing about them as yet. She had allowed
+herself to be advised by Lady Kirkbank, and she had taken time to think.
+But thought had given her no help. The days were gliding onward, and
+Lady Maulevrier would have to be told.</p>
+
+<p>She meditated perplexedly about her grandmother's income. She had never
+heard the extent of it, but had taken for granted that Lady Maulevrier
+was rich. Would three thousand pounds make a great inroad on that
+income? Would it be a year's income?—half a year's? Lesbia had no idea.
+Life at Fellside was carried on in an elegant manner—with considerable
+luxury in house and garden—a luxury of flowers, a lavish expenditure of
+labour. Yet the expenditure of Lady Maulevrier's existence, spent always
+on the same spot, must be as nothing to the money spent in such a life
+as Lady Kirkbank's, which involved the keeping up of three or four
+houses, and costly journeys to and fro, and incessant change of attire.</p>
+
+<p>No doubt Lady Maulevrier had saved money; yes, she must have saved
+thousands during her long seclusion, Lesbia argued. Her grandmother had
+told her that she was to look upon herself as an heiress. This could
+only mean that Lady Maulevrier had a fortune to leave her; and this
+being so, what could it matter if she had anticipated some of her
+portion? And yet there was in her heart of hearts a terrible fear of
+that stern dowager, of the cold scorn in those splendid eyes when she
+should stand revealed in all her foolishness, her selfish, mindless,
+vain extravagances. She, who had never been reproved, shrank with a
+sickly dread from the idea of reproof. And to be told that her career as
+a fashionable beauty had been a failure! That would be the bitterest
+pang of all.</p>
+
+<p>Soon came luncheon, and Heidseck, and then an afternoon which was gayer
+than the morning had been, inasmuch as every one babbled and laughed
+more after luncheon. And then there was five o'clock tea on deck, under
+the striped Japanese awning, to the jingle of banjos, enlivened by the
+wit of black-faced minstrels, amidst wherries and canoes and gondolas,
+and ponderous houseboats, and snorting launches, crowding the sides of
+the sunlit river, in full view of the crowd yonder in front of the Red
+Lion, and here on this nearer bank, and all along either shore, fringing
+the green meadows with a gaudy border of smartly-dressed humanity.</p>
+
+<p>It was a gay scene, and Lesbia gave herself up to the amusement of the
+hour, and talked and chaffed as she had learned to talk and chaff in one
+brief season, holding her own against all comers.</p>
+
+<p>Rood Hall looked lovely when they went back to it in the gloaming, an
+Elizabethan pile crowned with towers. The four wings with their conical
+roofs, the massive projecting windows, grey stone, ruddy brickwork,
+lattices reflecting the sunlight, Italian terrace and blue river in the
+foreground, cedars and yews at the back, all made a splendid picture of
+an English ancestral home.</p>
+
+<p>'Nice old place, isn't it?' asked Mr. Smithson, seeing Lesbia's
+admiring gaze as the launch neared the terrace. They two were standing
+in the bows, apart from all the rest.</p>
+
+<p>'Nice! it is simply perfect.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh no, it isn't. There is one thing wanted yet.'</p>
+
+<p>'What is that?'</p>
+
+<p>'A wife. You are the only person who can make any house of mine perfect.
+Will you?' He took her hand, which she did not withdraw from his grasp.
+He bent his head and kissed the little hand in its soft Swedish glove.</p>
+
+<p>'Will you, Lesbia?' he repeated earnestly; and she answered softly,
+'Yes.'</p>
+
+<p>That one brief syllable was more like a sigh than a spoken word, and it
+seemed to her as if in the utterance of that syllable the three thousand
+pounds had been paid.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XXXI"></a><h2>CHAPTER XXXI.</h2>
+
+<h3>'KIND IS MY LOVE TO-DAY, TO-MORROW KIND.'</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>While Lady Lesbia was draining the cup of London folly and London care
+to the dregs, Lady Mary was leading her usual quiet life beside the
+glassy lake, where the green hill-sides and sheep walks were reflected
+in all their summer verdure under the cloudless azure of a summer sky. A
+monotonous life—passing dull as seen from the outside—and yet Mary was
+very happy, happy even in her solitude, with the grave deep joy of a
+satisfied heart, a mind at rest. All life had taken a new colour since
+her engagement to John Hammond. A sense of new duties, an awakening
+earnestness had given a graver tone to her character. Her spirits were
+less wild, yet not less joyous than of old. The joy was holier, deeper.</p>
+
+<p>Her lover's letters were the chief delight of her lonely days. To read
+them again and again, and ponder upon them, and then to pour out all her
+heart and mind in answering them. These were pleasures enough for her
+young life. Hammond's letters were such as any woman might be proud to
+receive. They were not love-letters only. He wrote as friend to friend;
+not descending from the proud pinnacle of masculine intelligence to the
+lower level of feminine silliness; not writing down to a simple country
+girl's capacity; but writing fully and fervently, as if there were no
+subject too lofty or too grave for the understanding of his betrothed.
+He wrote as one sure of being sympathised with, wrote as to his second
+self: and Mary showed herself not unworthy of the honour thus rendered
+to her intellect.</p>
+
+<p>There was one world which had newly opened to Mary since her
+engagement, and that was the world of politics. Hammond had told her
+that his ambition was to succeed as a politician—to do some good in his
+day as one of the governing body; and of late she had made it her
+business to learn how England and the world outside England were
+governed.</p>
+
+<p>She had no natural leaning to the study of political economy. Instead,
+she had always imagined any question relating to the government of her
+country to be inherently dry-as-dust and uninviting. But had John
+Hammond devoted his days to the study of Coptic manuscripts, or the
+arrow-headed inscriptions upon Assyrian tablets, she would have toiled
+her hardest in the endeavour to make herself a Coptic scholar, or an
+adept in the cuneiform characters. If he had been a student of Chinese,
+she would not have been discomfited by such a trifle as the fifty
+thousand characters in the Chinese alphabet.</p>
+
+<p>And so, as he was to make his name in the arena of public life, she set
+herself to acquire a proper understanding of the science of politics;
+and to this end she gorged herself with English history,—Hume, Hallam,
+Green, Justin McCarthy, Palgrave, Lecky, from the days of Witenagemote
+to the Reform Bill; the Repeal of the Corn Laws, the Disestablishment of
+the Irish Church, Ballot, Trade Unionism, and unreciprocated Free Trade.
+No question was deep enough to repel her; for was not her lover
+interested in the dryest thereof; and what concerned him and his welfare
+must needs be full of interest for her.</p>
+
+<p>To this end she read the debates religiously day by day; and she one day
+ventured shyly to suggest that she should read them aloud to Lady
+Maulevrier.</p>
+
+<p>'Would it not be a little rest for you if I were to read your Times
+aloud to you every afternoon, grandmother?' she asked. 'You read so many
+books, French, English, and German, and I think your eyes must get a
+little tired sometimes.'</p>
+
+<p>Mary ventured the remark with some timidity, for those falcon eyes were
+fixed upon her all the time, bright and clear and steady as the eyes of
+youth. It seemed almost an impertinence to suggest that such eyes could
+know weariness.</p>
+
+<p>'No, Mary, my sight holds out wonderfully for an old woman,' replied
+her ladyship, gently. 'The new theory of the last oculist whose book I
+dipped into—a very amusing and interesting book, by-the-bye—is that
+the sight improves and strengthens by constant use, and that an
+agricultural labourer, who hardly uses his eyes at all, has rarely in
+the decline of life so good a sight as the watchmaker or the student. I
+have read immensely all my life, and find myself no worse for that
+indulgence. But you may read the debates to me if you like, my dear, for
+if my eyes are strong, I myself am very tired. Sick to death, Mary, sick
+to death.'</p>
+
+<p>The splendid eyes turned from Mary, and looked away to the blue sky, to
+the hills in their ineffable beauty of colour and light—shifting,
+changing with every moment of the summer day. Intense weariness, a
+settled despair, were expressed in that look—tearless, yet sadder than
+all tears.</p>
+
+<p>'It must be very monotonous, very sad for you,' murmured Mary, her own
+eyes brimming over with tears. 'But it will not be always so, dear
+grandmother. I hope a time will come when you will be able to go about
+again, to resume your old life.'</p>
+
+<p>'I do not hope, Mary. No, child, I feel and know that time will never
+come. My strength is ebbing slowly day by day. If I live for another
+year, live to see Lesbia married, and you, too, perhaps—well, I shall
+die at peace. At peace, no; not----' she faltered, and the thin,
+semi-transparent hand was pressed upon her brow. 'What will be said of
+me when I am dead?'</p>
+
+<p>Mary feared that her grandmother's mind was wandering. She came and
+knelt beside the couch, laid and her head against the satin pillows,
+tenderly, caressingly.</p>
+
+<p>'Dear grandmother, pray be calm,' she murmured.</p>
+
+<p>'Mary, do not look at me like that, as if you would read my heart. There
+are hearts that must not be looked into. Mine is like a charnel-house.
+Monotonous, yes; my life has been monotonous. No conventual gloom was
+ever deeper than the gloom of Fellside. My boy did nothing to lighten it
+for me, and his son followed in his father's footsteps. You and Lesbia
+have been my only consolation. Lesbia! I was so proud of her beauty, so
+proud and fond of her, because she was like me, and recalled my own
+youth. And see how easily she forgets me. She has gone into a new world,
+in which my age and my infirmities have no part; and I am as nothing to
+her.'</p>
+
+<p>Mary changed from red to pale, so painful was her embarrassment. What
+could she say in defence of her sister? How could she deny that Lesbia
+was an ingrate, when those rare and hurried letters, so careless in
+their tone, expressing the selfishness of the writer in every syllable,
+told but too plainly of forgetfulness and ingratitude?</p>
+
+<p>'Dear grandmother, Lesbia has so much to do—her life is so full of
+engagements,' she faltered feebly.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, she goes from party to party—she gives herself up heart and mind
+and soul to pleasures which she ought to consider only as the trivial
+means to great ends; and she forgets the woman who reared her, and cared
+for her, and watched over her from her infancy, and who tried to inspire
+her with a noble ambition.—Yes, read to me, child, read. Give me new
+thoughts, if you can, for my brain is weary with grinding the old ones.
+There was a grand debate in the Lords last night, and Lord Hartfield
+spoke. Let me hear his speech. You can read what was said by the man
+before him; never mind the rest.'</p>
+
+<p>Mary read Lord Somebody's speech, which was passing dull, but which
+prepared the ground for a magnificent and exhaustive reply from Lord
+Hartfield. The question was an important one, affecting the well-being
+of the masses, and Lord Hartfield spoke with an eloquence which rose in
+force and fire as he wound himself like a serpent into the heart of his
+subject—beginning quietly, soberly, with no opening flashes of
+rhetoric, but rising gradually to the topmost heights of oratory.</p>
+
+<p>'What a speech!' cried Lady Maulevrier, delighted, her cheeks glowing,
+her eyes kindling; 'what a noble fellow the speaker must be! Oh, Mary, I
+must tell you a secret. I loved that man's father. Yes, my dear, I loved
+him fondly, dearly, truly, as you love that young man of yours; and he
+was the only man I ever really loved. Fate parted us. But I have never
+forgotten him—never, Mary, never. At this moment I have but to close my
+eyes and I can see his face—see him looking at me as he looked the last
+time we met. He was a younger son, poor, his future quite hopeless in
+those days; but it was not my fault we were parted. I would have married
+him—yes, wedded poverty, just as you are going to marry this Mr.
+Hammond; but my people would not let me; and I was too young, too
+helpless, to make a good fight. Oh, Mary, if I had only fought hard
+enough, what a happy woman I might have been, and how good a wife.'</p>
+
+<p>'You were a good wife to my grandfather, I am sure,' faltered Mary, by
+way of saying something consolatory.</p>
+
+<p>A dark frown came over Lady Maulevrier's face, which had softened to
+deepest tenderness just before.</p>
+
+<p>'A good wife to Maulevrier,' she said, in a mocking tone. Well, yes, as
+good a wife as such a husband deserved. 'I was better than Cæsar's
+wife, Mary, for no breath of suspicion ever rested upon my name. But if
+I had married Ronald Hollister, I should have been a happy woman; and
+that I have never been since I parted from him.'</p>
+
+<p>'You have never seen the present Lord Hartfield, I think?'</p>
+
+<p>'Never; but I have watched his career, I have thought of him. His father
+died while he was an infant, and he was brought up in seclusion by a
+widowed mother, who kept him tied to her apron-strings till he went to
+Oxford. She idolised him, and I am told she taught herself Latin and
+Greek, mathematics even, in order to help him in his boyish studies,
+and, later on, read Greek plays and Latin poetry with him, till she
+became an exceptional classic for a woman. She was her son's companion
+and friend, sympathised with his tastes, his pleasures, his friendships;
+devoted every hour of her life, every thought of her mind to his
+welfare, his interests, walked with him, rode with him, travelled half
+over Europe, yachted with him. Her friends all declared that the lad
+would grow up an odious milksop; but I am told that there never was a
+manlier man than Lord Hartfield. From his boyhood he was his mother's
+protector, helped to administer her affairs, acquired a premature sense
+of responsibility, and escaped almost all those vices which make young
+men detestable. His mother died within a few months of his majority. He
+was broken-hearted at losing her, and left Europe immediately after her
+death. From that time he has been a great traveller. But I suppose now
+that he has taken his seat in the House of Lords, and has spoken a good
+many times, he means to settle down and take his place among the
+foremost men of his day. I am told that he is worthy to take such a
+place.'</p>
+
+<p>'You must feel warmly interested in watching his career,' said Mary,
+sympathetically.</p>
+
+<p>'I am interested in everything that concerns him. I will tell you
+another secret, Mary. I think I am getting into my dotage, my dear, or I
+should hardly talk to you like this,' said Lady Maulevrier, with a touch
+of bitterness.</p>
+
+<p>Mary was sitting on a stool by the sofa, close to the invalid's pillow.
+She clasped her grandmother's hand and kissed it fondly.</p>
+
+<p>'Dear grandmother, I think you are talking to me like this to-day
+because you are beginning to care for me a little,' she said, tenderly.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, my dear, you are very good, very sweet and forgiving to care for me
+at all, after my neglect of you,' answered Lady Maulevrier, with a
+sigh.' I have kept you out in the cold so long, Mary. Lesbia—well,
+Lesbia has been a kind of infatuation for me, and like all infatuations
+mine has ended in disappointment and bitterness. Ambition has been the
+bane of my life, Mary; and when I could no longer be ambitious for
+myself—when my own existence had become a mere death in life, I began
+to dream and to scheme for the aggrandisement of my granddaughter.
+Lesbia's beauty, Lesbia's elegance seemed to make success certain—and
+so I dreamt my dream—which may never be fulfilled.'</p>
+
+<p>'What was your dream, grandmother? May I know all about it?'</p>
+
+<p>'That was the secret I spoke of just now. Yes, Mary, you may know, for I
+fear the dream will never be realised. I wanted my Lesbia to become Lord
+Hartfield's wife. I would have brought them together myself, could I
+have but gone to London; but, failing that, I fancied Lady Kirkbank
+would have divined my wishes without being told them, and would have
+introduced Hartfield to Lesbia; and now the London season is drawing to
+a close, and Hartfield and Lesbia have never met. He hardly goes
+anywhere, I am told. He devotes himself exclusively to politics; and he
+is not in Lady Kirkbank's set. A terrible disappointment to me, Mary!'</p>
+
+<p>'It is a pity,' said Mary. 'Lesbia is so lovely. If Lord Hartfield were
+fancy-free he ought to fall in love with her, could they but meet. I
+thought that in London all fashionable people knew each other, and were
+continually meeting.'</p>
+
+<p>'It used to be so in my day, Mary. Almack's was a common ground, even if
+there had been no other. But now there are circles and circles, I
+believe, rings that touch occasionally, but never break and mingle. I am
+afraid poor Georgie's set is not quite so nice as I could have wished.
+Yet Lesbia writes as if she were in raptures with her chaperon, and with
+all the people she meets. And then Georgie tells me that this Mr.
+Smithson whom Lesbia has refused is a very important personage, a
+millionaire, and very likely to be made a peer.'</p>
+
+<p>'A new peer,' said Mary, making a wry face. 'One would rather have an
+old commoner. I always fancy a newly-made peer must be like a
+newly-built house, glaring, and staring, and arid and uncongenial.'</p>
+
+<p>'<i>C'est selon</i>,' said Lady Maulevrier. 'One would not despise a Chatham
+or a Wellington because of the newness of his title; but a man who has
+only money to recommend him----'</p>
+
+<p>Lady Maulevrier left her sentence unfinished, save by a shrug; while
+Mary made another wry face. She had that grand contempt for sordid
+wealth which is common to young people who have never known the want of
+money.</p>
+
+<p>'I hope Lesbia will marry some one better than Mr. Smithson,' she said.</p>
+
+<p>'I hope so too, dear; and yet do you know I have an idea that Lesbia
+means to accept Mr. Smithson, or she would hardly have consented to go
+to his house for the Henley week. Here is a letter from Georgie Kirkbank
+which you will have to answer for me to-morrow—a letter full of
+raptures about Mr. Smithson's place in Berkshire, Rood Hall. I remember
+the house well. I was there nearly fifty years ago, when the Heronvilles
+owned it; and now the Heronvilles are all dead or ruined, and this city
+person is master of the fine old mansion. It is a strange world, Mary.'</p>
+
+<p>From that time forward Mary and her grandmother were on more
+confidential terms, and when, two days later, Fellside was startled into
+life by the unexpected arrival of Lord Maulevrier and Mr. Hammond, the
+dowager seemed almost as pleased as her granddaughter at the arrival of
+the young men.</p>
+
+<p>As for Mary, she was almost beside herself with joy when she heard their
+voices from the lawn, and, rushing to the shrubbery, saw them walk up
+the hill, as she had seen them on that first evening nearly a year ago,
+when John Hammond came as a stranger to Fellside.</p>
+
+<p>She tried to take her joy soberly, though her eyes were dancing with
+delight, as she went to the porch to meet them.</p>
+
+<p>'What extraordinary young men you are,' she said, as she emerged
+breathless from her lover's embrace. 'The idea of your descending upon
+us without a moment's notice. Why did you not write or telegraph, that
+your rooms might be ready?'</p>
+
+<p>'Am I to understand that all the spare rooms at Fellside are kept as
+damp as at the bottom of the lake?' asked Maulevrier.
+'I did not think any preparation was necessary; but we can go back if
+we're not wanted, can't we, Jack?'</p>
+
+<p>'You darling,' cried Mary, hanging affectionately upon her brother's
+arm. 'You <i>know</i> I was only joking, you <i>know</i> how enraptured I am to
+have you.'</p>
+
+<p>'To have <i>me</i>, only me,' said Maulevrier. 'Jack doesn't count, I
+suppose?'</p>
+
+<p>'You know how glad I am, and that I want to hide my gladness,' answered
+Mary, radiant and blushing like the rich red roses in the porch. 'You
+men are so vain. And now come and see grandmother, she will be cheered
+by your arrival. She has been so good to me just lately, so sweet.'</p>
+
+<p>'She might have been good and sweet to you all your life,' said Hammond.
+'I am not prepared to be grateful to her at a moment's notice for any
+crumbs of affection she may throw you.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh but you must be grateful, sir; and you must love her and pity her,'
+retorted Mary. 'Think how sadly she has suffered. We cannot be too kind
+to her, or too fond of her, poor dear.'</p>
+
+<p>'Mary is right,' said Hammond, half in jest and half in earnest. 'What
+wonderful instincts these young women have.'</p>
+
+<p>'Come and see her ladyship; and then you must have dinner, just as you
+had that first evening,' said Mary. 'We'll act that first evening over
+again, Jack; only you can't fall in love with Lesbia, as she isn't
+here.'</p>
+
+<p>'I don't think I surrendered that first evening, Mary. Though I thought
+your sister the loveliest girl I had ever seen.'</p>
+
+<p>'And what did you think of me, sir? Tell me that,' said Mary.</p>
+
+<p>'Shall I tell you the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the
+truth?'</p>
+
+<p>'Of course.'</p>
+
+<p>'Then I freely confess that I did not think about you at all. You were
+there—a pretty, innocent, bright young maiden, with big brown eyes and
+auburn hair; but I thought no more about you than I did about the
+Gainsborough on the wall, which you very much resemble.'</p>
+
+<p>'That is most humiliating,' said Mary, pouting a little in the midst of
+her bliss.</p>
+
+<p>'No, dearest, it is only natural,' answered Hammond. 'I believe if all
+the happy lovers in this world could be questioned, at least half of
+them would confess to having thought very little about each other at
+first meeting. They meet, and touch hands, and part again, and never
+guess the mystery of the future, which wraps them round like a cloud,
+never say of each other. There is my fate; and then they meet again, and
+again, as hazard wills, and never know that they are drifting to their
+doom.'</p>
+
+<p>Mary rang bells and gave orders, just as she had done in that summer
+gloaming a year ago. The young men had arrived just at the same hour, on
+the stroke of nine, when the eight o'clock dinner was over and done
+with; for a <i>tête-à-tête</i> meal with Fr&auml;ulein M&uuml;ller was not a feast to
+be prolonged on account of its felicity. Perhaps they had so contrived
+as to arrive exactly at this hour.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Maulevrier received them both with extreme cordiality. But the
+young men saw a change for the worse in the invalid since the spring.
+The face was thinner, the eyes too bright, the flush upon the hollow
+cheek had a hectic tinge, the voice was feebler. Hammond was reminded of
+a falcon or an eagle pining and wasting in a cage.</p>
+
+<p>'I am very glad to see you, Mr. Hammond,' said Lady Maulevrier, giving
+him her hand, and addressing him with unwonted cordiality. 'It was a
+happy thought that brought you and Maulevrier here. When an old woman is
+as near the grave as I am her relatives ought to look after her. I shall
+be glad to have a little private conversation with you to-morrow, Mr.
+Hammond, if you can spare me a few minutes.'</p>
+
+<p>'As many hours, if your ladyship pleases,' said Hammond. 'My time is
+entirely at your service.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, no, you will want to be roaming about the hills with Mary,
+discussing your plans for the future. I shall not encroach too much on
+your time. But I am very glad you are here.'</p>
+
+<p>'We shall only trespass on you for a few days,' said Maulevrier, 'just a
+flying visit.'</p>
+
+<p>'How is it that you are not both at Henley?' asked Mary. 'I thought all
+the world was at Henley.'</p>
+
+<p>'Who is Henley? what is Henley?' demanded Maulevrier, pretending
+ignorance.</p>
+
+<p>'I believe Maulevrier has lost so much money backing his college boat
+on previous occasions that he is glad to run away from the regatta this
+year,' said Hammond.</p>
+
+<p>'I have a sister there,' replied his friend. 'That's an all-sufficient
+explanation. When a fellow's women-kind take to going to races and
+regattas it is high time for <i>him</i> to stop away.'</p>
+
+<p>'Have you seen Lesbia lately?' asked his grandmother.</p>
+
+<p>'About ten days ago.'</p>
+
+<p>'And did she seem happy?'</p>
+
+<p>Maulevrier shrugged his shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>'She was vacillating between the refusal or the acceptance of a million
+of money and four or five fine houses. I don't know whether that
+condition of mind means happiness. I should call it an intermediate
+state.'</p>
+
+<p>'Why do you make silly jokes about serious questions? Do you think
+Lesbia means to accept this Mr. Smithson?'</p>
+
+<p>'All London thinks so.'</p>
+
+<p>'And is he a good man?'</p>
+
+<p>'Good for a hundred thousand pounds at half an hour's notice.'</p>
+
+<p>'Is he worthy of your sister?'</p>
+
+<p>Maulevrier paused, looked at his grandmother with a curious expression,
+and then replied—</p>
+
+<p>'I think he is—quite.'</p>
+
+<p>'Then I am content that she should marry him,' said Lady Maulevrier,
+'although he is a nobody.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, but he is a very important nobody, a nobody who can get a peerage
+next year, backed by the Maulevrier influence, which I suppose would
+count for something.'</p>
+
+<p>'Most of my friends are dead,' said Lady Maulevrier, 'but there are a
+few survivors of the past who might help me.'</p>
+
+<p>'I don't think there'll be any difficulty or doubt about the peerage.
+Smithson stumped up very handsomely at the last General Election, and
+the Conservatives are not strong enough to be ungrateful. &quot;These have
+no master.&quot;'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XXXII"></a><h2>CHAPTER XXXII.</h2>
+
+<h3>WAYS AND MEANS.</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>The three days that followed were among the happiest days of Mary
+Haselden's young life. Lady Maulevrier had become strangely indulgent. A
+softening influence of some kind had worked upon that haughty spirit,
+and it seemed as if her whole nature was changed—or it might be, Mary
+thought, that this softer side of her character had always been turned
+to Lesbia, while to Mary herself it was altogether new. Lesbia had been
+the peach on the sunny southern wall, ripening and reddening in a flood
+of sunshine; Mary had been the stunted fruit growing in a north-east
+corner, hidden among leaves, blown upon by cold winds green and hard and
+sour for lack of the warm bright light. And now Mary felt the sunshine,
+and grew glad and gay in those glowing beams.</p>
+
+<p>'Dear grandmother, I believe you are beginning to love me,' she said,
+bending over to arrange the invalid's pillows in the July morning, the
+fresh mountain air blowing in upon old and young from the great open
+window, like a caress.</p>
+
+<p>'I am beginning to know you,' answered Lady Maulevrier, gently.</p>
+
+<p>'I think it is the magic of love, Mary, that has sweetened and softened
+your nature, and endeared you to me. I think you have grown ever so much
+sweeter a girl since your engagement. Or it may be that you were the
+same always, and it was I who was blind. Lesbia was all in all to me.
+All in all—and now I am nothing to her,' she murmured, to herself
+rather than to Mary.</p>
+
+<p>'I am so proud to think that you see an improvement in me since my
+engagement,' said Mary, modestly. 'I have tried very hard to improve
+myself, so that I might be more worthy of him.'</p>
+
+<p>'You are worthy, Mary, worthy of the best and the highest: and I believe
+that, although you are making what the world calls a very bad match, you
+are marrying wisely. You are wedding yourself to a life of obscurity;
+but what does that matter, if it be a happy life? I have known what it
+is to pursue the phantom fortune, and to find youth and hope and
+happiness vanish from the pathway which I followed.'</p>
+
+<p>'Dear grandmother, I wish you had been able to marry the man of your
+choice,' answered Mary, tenderly.</p>
+
+<p>She was ready to weep over that wasted life of her grandmother's; to
+weep for that forced parting of true lovers, albeit the tragedy was half
+a century old.</p>
+
+<p>'I should have been a happier woman and a better woman if fate had been
+kind to me, Mary,' answered Lady Maulevrier, gravely; 'and now that I am
+daily drawing nearer the land of shadows, I will not stand in the way of
+faithful lovers. I have a fancy, Mary, that I have not many months to
+live.'</p>
+
+<p>'Only an invalid's fancy,' said Mary, stooping down to kiss the pale
+forehead, so full of thought and care; 'only a morbid fancy, nursed in
+the monotony of this quiet room. Maulevrier and Jack and I must find
+some way of amusing you.'</p>
+
+<p>'You will never amuse me out of that conviction, my dear. I can see the
+shadows lengthening and the sands running out. There are but a few
+grains left in the glass, Mary; and while those last I should like to
+see you and Mr. Hammond married. I should like to feel that your fate is
+settled before I go. God knows what confusion and trouble may follow my
+death.'</p>
+
+<p>This was said with a sharp ring of despair.</p>
+
+<p>'I am not going to leave you, grandmother,' said Mary.</p>
+
+<p>'Not even for the man you love? You are a good girl, Mary. Lesbia has
+forsaken me for a lesser temptation.'</p>
+
+<p>'Grandmother, that is hardly fair. It was your own wish to have Lesbia
+presented this season,' remonstrated Mary, loyal to the absent.</p>
+
+<p>'True, my dear. I saw she was very tired of her life here, and I thought
+it was better. But I'm sorely afraid London has spoiled her. No, Mary,
+you can stay with me to the end, if you like. There is room enough for
+you and your husband under this roof. I like this Mr. Hammond. His is
+the only face that ever recalled the face of the dead. Yes, I like him;
+and although I know nothing about him except what Maulevrier tells
+me—and that is of the scantiest—still I feel, somehow, that I can
+trust him. Send your lover to me, Mary. I want to have a serious talk
+with him.'</p>
+
+<p>Mary ran off to obey, fluttered, blushing, and trembling. This idea of
+marriage in the immediate future was to be the last degree startling. A
+year had seemed a very long time; and she had been told that she and her
+lover must wait a year at the very least; so that vision of marriage had
+seemed afar off in the dim shadowland of the future. She had been told
+nothing by her lover of where she was to live, or what her life was to
+be like when she was his wife. And now she was told that they were to be
+married almost immediately, that they were to live in the house where
+she had been reared, in that familiar land of hills and waters, that
+they were to roam about the dales and mountains together, they two, as
+man and wife. The whole thing was wonderful, bewildering, impossible
+almost.</p>
+
+<p>This was on the first morning after Mr. Hammond's arrival. Maulevrier
+had gone off to hunt the Rotha for otters, and was up to his waist in
+the water, no doubt, by this time. Hammond was strolling up and down the
+terrace in front of the house, looking at the green expanse of
+Fairfield, the dark bulk of Seat Sandal, the nearer crests of Helm Crag
+and Silver Howe.</p>
+
+<p>'You are to come to her ladyship directly, please,' said Mary, going up
+to him.</p>
+
+<p>He took both her hands, drew her nearer to him, smiling down at her.
+They had been sitting side by side at the breakfast table half-an-hour
+ago, he waiting upon her as she poured out the tea; yet by his tender
+greeting and the delight in his face it might have been supposed they
+had not met for weeks. Such are the sweet inanities of love.</p>
+
+<p>'What does her ladyship want with me, darling? and why are you
+blushing?' he asked.</p>
+
+<p>'I—I think she is going to talk about—our—marriage,' faltered Mary.</p>
+
+<p>'&quot;Why, I will talk to her upon this theme until mine eyelids can no
+longer wag,&quot;' quoted Hammond. 'Take me to her, Mary. I hope her ladyship
+is growing sensible.'</p>
+
+<p>'She is very kind, very sweet. She has changed so much of late.'</p>
+
+<p>Mary went with him to the door of her ladyship's sitting-room, and there
+left him to go in alone. She went to the library—that room over which a
+gloomy shadow seemed to have hung ever since that awful winter afternoon
+when Mary found Lady Maulevrier lying on the floor in the twilight. But
+it was a noble room, and in her studious hours Mary loved to sit here,
+walled round with books, and able to consult or dip into as many volumes
+as she liked. To-day, however, her mind was not attuned to study. She
+sat with a volume of Macaulay open before her: but her thoughts were not
+with the author. She was wondering what those two were saying in the
+room overhead, and finding all attempts at reading futile, she let her
+head sink back upon the cushion of her deep luxurious chair, and sat
+with her dreamy eyes fixed on the summer landscape and her thoughts with
+her lover.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Maulevrier looked very wan and tired in the bright morning light,
+when Mr. Hammond seated himself beside her sofa. The change in her
+appearance since the spring was more marked to-day than it had seemed to
+him last night in the dim lamplight. Yes, there was need here for a
+speedy settlement of all earthly matters. The traveller was nearing the
+mysterious end of the journey. The summons might come at any hour.</p>
+
+<p>'Mr. Hammond, I feel a confidence in your integrity, your goodness of
+heart, and high principle which I never thought I could feel for a man
+of whom I know so little,' began Lady Maulevrier, gravely. 'All I know
+of you or your antecedents is what my grandson has told me—and I must
+say that the information so given has been very meagre. And yet I
+believe in you—and yet I am going to trust you, wholly, blindly,
+implicitly—and I am going to give you my granddaughter, ever so much
+sooner than I intended to give her to you. Soon, very soon, if you will
+have her!'</p>
+
+<p>'I will have her to-morrow, if there is time to get a special licence,'
+exclaimed Hammond, bending down to kiss the dowager's hand, radiant with
+delight.</p>
+
+<p>'You shall marry her very soon, if you like, marry her by special
+licence, in this room. I should like to see your wedding. I have a
+strange impatience to behold one of my granddaughters happily married,
+to know that her future is secure, that come weal, come woe, she is safe
+in the protection of a brave true man. I am not scared by the idea of a
+little poverty. That is often the best education for youth. But while
+you and I are alone we may as well talk about ways and means. Perhaps
+you may hardly feel prepared to take upon yourself the burden of a wife
+this year.'</p>
+
+<p>'As well this year as next. I am not afraid.'</p>
+
+<p>'Young men are so rash. However, as long as I live your responsibilities
+will be only nominal. This house will be Mary's home, and yours whenever
+you are able to occupy it. Of course I should not like to interfere with
+your professional efforts—but if you are cultivating literature,—why
+books can be written at Fellside better than in London. This lakeland of
+ours has been the nursery of deathless writers. But I feel that my days
+are numbered—and when I am dead—well death is always a cause of change
+and trouble of some kind, and Mary will profit very little by my death.
+The bulk of my fortune is left to Lesbia. I have taught her to consider
+herself my heiress; and it would be unjust to alter my will.'</p>
+
+<p>'Pray do not dream of such a thing—there is no need—Mary will be rich
+enough,' exclaimed Hammond, hastily.</p>
+
+<p>'With five hundred a year and the fruits of your industry,' said Lady
+Maulevrier. 'Yes, yes, with modest aspirations and simple habits, people
+can live happily, honourably, on a few hundreds a year. And if you
+really mean to devote yourself to literature, and do not mind burying
+yourself alive in this lake district until you have made your name as a
+writer, why the problem of ways and means will be easily solved.'</p>
+
+<p>'Dear Lady Maulevrier, I am not afraid of ways and means. That is the
+last question which need trouble you. I told Lesbia when I offered
+myself to her nearly a year ago, that if she would trust me, if she
+would cleave to me, poverty should never touch her, sordid care should
+never come near her dwelling. But she could not believe me. She was like
+Thomas the twin. I could show her no palpable security for my
+promise—and she would not believe for the promise' sake. Mary trusted
+me; and Mary shall not regret her confidence.'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah! it was different with Lesbia,' sighed Lady Maulevrier. 'I taught
+her to be ambitious. She had been schooled to set a high price upon
+herself. I know she cared for you—very much, even. But she could not
+face poverty; or, if you like, I will say that she could not face an
+obscure existence—sacrifice her ambition, a justifiable ambition in one
+so lovely, at the bidding of her first wooer. And then, again, she was
+told that if she married you, she would for ever forfeit my regard. You
+must not blame her for obeying me.'</p>
+
+<p>'I do not blame her; for I have won the peerless pearl—the jewel above
+all price—a perfect woman. And now, dear Lady Maulevrier, give me but
+your consent, and I am off to York this afternoon, to interview the
+Archbishop, and get the special licence, which will allow me to wed my
+darling here by your couch to-morrow afternoon.'</p>
+
+<p>'I have no objection to your getting the licence immediately; but you
+must let me write a cheque before you go. A special licence is
+expensive—I believe it costs fifty pounds.'</p>
+
+<p>'If it cost a thousand I should not think it dear. But I have a notion
+that I shall be able to get the licence—cheap. You have made me wild
+with happiness.'</p>
+
+<p>'But you must not refuse my cheque.'</p>
+
+<p>'Indeed I must, Lady Maulevrier. I am not quite such a pauper as you
+think me.'</p>
+
+<p>'But fifty pounds and the expenses of the journey; an outlay altogether
+unexpected on your part. I begin to fear that you are very reckless. A
+spendthrift shall never marry my granddaughter, with my consent.'</p>
+
+<p>'I have never yet spent above half my income.'</p>
+
+<p>Lady Maulevrier looked at him in wonderment and perplexity. Had the
+young man gone suddenly out of his mind, overwhelmed by the greatness of
+his bliss?</p>
+
+<p>'But I thought you were poor,' she faltered.</p>
+
+<p>'It has pleased you to think so, dear Lady Maulevrier; but I have more
+than enough for all my wants, and I shall be able to provide a fitting
+home for my Mary, when you can spare her to preside over her own
+establishment.'</p>
+
+<p>'Establishment' seemed rather a big word, but Lady Maulevrier supposed
+that in this case it meant a cook and housemaid, with perhaps later on a
+boy in buttons, to break windows and block the pantry sink with missing
+teaspoons.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, Mr. Hammond, this is quite an agreeable surprise,' she said,
+after a brief silence. 'I really thought you were poor—as poor as a
+young man of gentlemanlike habits could be, and yet exist. Perhaps you
+will wonder why, thinking this, I brought myself to consent to your
+marriage with my granddaughter.'</p>
+
+<p>'It was a great proof of your confidence in me, or in Providence,'
+replied Hammond, smiling.</p>
+
+<p>'It was no such thing. I was governed by a sentiment—a memory. It was
+my love for the dead which softened my heart towards you, John Hammond.'</p>
+
+<p>'Indeed!' he murmured, softly.</p>
+
+<p>'There was but one man in this world I ever fondly loved—the love of my
+youth—my dearest and best, in the days when my heart was fresh and
+innocent and unambitious. That man was Ronald Hollister, afterwards Lord
+Hartfield. And yours is the only face that ever recalled his to my mind.
+It is but a vague likeness—a look now and then; but slight as that
+likeness is it has been enough to make my heart yearn towards you, as
+the heart of a mother to her son.'</p>
+
+<p>John Hammond knelt beside the sofa, and bent his handsome face over the
+pale face on the pillow, imprinting such a kiss as a son might have
+given. His eyes were full of tears.</p>
+
+<p>'Dear Lady Maulevrier, think that it is the spirit of the dead which
+blesses you for your fidelity to old memories,' he said, tenderly.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XXXIII"></a><h2>CHAPTER XXXIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>BY SPECIAL LICENCE.</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>After that interview with John Hammond all the arrangements for the
+marriage were planned by Lady Maulevrier with a calm and business-like
+capacity which seemed extraordinary in one so frail and helpless. For a
+little while after Hammond left her she remained lost in a reverie,
+deeply affected by the speech and manner of her granddaughter's lover,
+as he gave her that first kiss of duty and affection, the affection of
+one who in that act declared the allegiance of a close and holy bond.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, she told herself, this marriage, humble as it might be, was
+altogether satisfactory. Her own feeling towards the man of her
+granddaughter's choice was one of instinctive affection. Her heart had
+yearned to him from the beginning of their acquaintance; but she had
+schooled herself to hide all indications of her liking for him, she had
+made every effort to keep him at a distance, deeming his very merits a
+source of danger in a household where there were two fresh
+impressionable girls.</p>
+
+<p>And despite all her caution and care he had succeeded in winning one of
+those girls: and she was glad, very glad, that he had so succeeded in
+baffling her prudence. And now it was agreeable to discover that he was
+not quite such a pauper as she had supposed him to be.</p>
+
+<p>Her heart felt lighter than it had been for some time when she set about
+planning the wedding.</p>
+
+<p>The first step in the business was to send for James Steadman. He came
+immediately, grave and quiet as of old, and stood with his serious eyes
+bent upon the face of his mistress, awaiting her instructions.</p>
+
+<p>'Lady Mary is going to be married to Mr. Hammond, by special licence, in
+this room, to-morrow afternoon, if it can be managed so soon,' said Lady
+Maulevrier.</p>
+
+<p>'I am very glad to hear it, my lady,' answered Steadman, without the
+faintest indication of surprise.</p>
+
+<p>'Why are you so—particularly glad?' asked his mistress, looking at him
+sharply.</p>
+
+<p>'Because Lady Mary's presence in this house is a source of danger
+to—your arrangements. She is very energetic and enterprising—very
+shrewd—and—well, she is a woman—so I suppose there can be no harm in
+saying she is somewhat inquisitive. Things will be much safer here when
+Lady Mary is gone!'</p>
+
+<p>'But she will not be gone—she is not going away—except for a very
+brief honeymoon. I cannot possibly do without her. She has become
+necessary to my life, Steadman; and there is so little left of that life
+now, that there is no need for me to sacrifice the last gleams of
+sunshine. The girl is very sweet, and loving, and true. I was not half
+fond enough of her in the past; but she has made herself very dear to me
+of late. There are many things in this life, Steadman, which we only
+find out too late.'</p>
+
+<p>'But, surely, my lady, Lady Mary will leave Fellside to go to a home of
+her own after her marriage.'</p>
+
+<p>'No, I tell you, Steadman,' his mistress answered, with a touch of
+impatience; 'Lady Mary and her husband will make this house their home
+so long as I am here. It will not be long.'</p>
+
+<p>'God grant it may be very long before you cease to be mistress here,'
+answered Steadman, with real feeling; and then in a lower tone he went
+on: 'Pardon me, my lady, for the suggestion, but do you think it wise to
+have Mr. Hammond here as a resident?'</p>
+
+<p>'Why should it not be wise? Mr. Hammond is a gentleman.'</p>
+
+<p>'True, my lady; but any accident, such as that which brought Lady Mary
+into the old garden----'</p>
+
+<p>'No such accident need occur—it must not occur, Steadman,' exclaimed
+Lady Maulevrier, with kindling eyes. She who had so long ruled supreme
+was not inclined to have any desire of hers questioned. 'There must have
+been gross carelessness that day—carelessness on your part, or that
+stable door would never have been left open. The key ought to have been
+in your possession. It ought not to have been in the power of the
+stableman to open that door. As to Mr. Hammond's presence at Fellside, I
+cannot see any danger—any reason why harm should come of it, more than
+of Lord Maulevrier's presence here in the past.'</p>
+
+<p>'The two gentlemen are so different, my lady,' said Steadman, with a
+gloomy brow. 'His lordship is so light-hearted and careless, his mind
+taken up with his horses, guns, dogs, fishing, shooting, and all kinds
+of sport. He is not a gentleman to take much notice of anything out of
+his own line. But this Mr. Hammond is different—a very thoughtful
+gentleman, an inquiring mind, as one would say.'</p>
+
+<p>'Steadman, you are getting cowardly in your old age. The danger—such a
+risk as you hint at, must be growing less and less every day. After
+forty years of security----'</p>
+
+<p>'Security' echoed Steadman, with a monosyllabic laugh which expressed
+intense bitterness. 'Say forty years during which I have felt myself
+upon the edge of a precipice every day and every hour. Security! But
+perhaps you are right, my lady, I am growing old and nervous, a feebler
+man than I was a few years ago, feebler in body and mind. Let Mr.
+Hammond make his home here, if it pleases your ladyship to have him. So
+long as I am well and able to get about there can be no danger of
+anything awkward happening.'</p>
+
+<p>Lady Maulevrier looked alarmed.</p>
+
+<p>'But you have no expectation of falling ill, I hope, Steadman; you have
+no premonition of any malady?'</p>
+
+<p>'No, my lady, none—except the malady of old age. I feel that I am not
+the man I once was, that is all. My brain is getting woolly, and my
+sight is clouded now and then. And if I were to fall ill suddenly----'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, it would be terrible, it would be a dire calamity! There is your
+wife, certainly, to look after things, but----'</p>
+
+<p>'My wife would do her best, my lady. She is a faithful creature, but she
+is not—yes, without any unkindness I must say that Mrs. Steadman is not
+a genius!'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, Steadman, you must not fail me! I am horror-stricken at the mere
+idea,' exclaimed Lady Maulevrier. 'After forty years—great God! it
+would be terrible. Lesbia, Mary, Maulevrier! the great, malignant,
+babbling world outside these doors. I am hemmed round with perils. For
+God's sake preserve your strength. Take care of your health. You are my
+strong rock. If you feel that there is anything amiss with you, or that
+your strength is failing, consult Mr. Horton—neglect no precaution. The
+safety of this house, of the family honour, hangs upon you.'</p>
+
+<p>'Pray do not agitate yourself, my lady,' entreated Steadman. 'I was
+wrong to trouble you with my fears. I shall not fail you, be sure.
+Although I am getting old, I shall hold out to the end.'</p>
+
+<p>'The end cannot be very far off,' said Lady Maulevrier, gloomily.</p>
+
+<p>'I thought that forty years ago, my lady. But you are right—the end
+must be near now. Yes, it must be near. And now, my lady, your orders
+about the wedding.'</p>
+
+<p>'It will take place to-morrow, as I told you, in this room. You will go
+to the Vicar and ask him to officiate. His two daughters will no doubt
+consent to be Lady Mary's bridesmaids. You will make the request in my
+name. Perhaps the Vicar will call this afternoon and talk matters over
+with me. Lady Mary and her husband will go to Cumberland for a brief
+honeymoon—a week at most—and then they will come back to Fellside.
+Tell Mrs. Power to prepare the east wing for them. She will make one of
+the rooms into a boudoir for Lady Mary; and let everything be as bright
+and pretty as good taste can make it. She can telegraph to London for
+any new furniture that may be wanted to complete her arrangements. And
+now send Lady Mary to me.'</p>
+
+<p>Mary came, fresh from the pine-wood, where she had been walking with her
+lover; her lover of to-day, her husband to-morrow. He had told her how
+he was to start for York directly after luncheon, and to come back by
+the earliest train next day, and how they two were to be married
+to-morrow afternoon.</p>
+
+<p>'It is more wonderful than any dream that I ever dreamt.' exclaimed
+Mary. 'But how can it be? I have not even a wedding gown.'</p>
+
+<p>'A fig for wedding gowns! It is Mary I am to wed, not her gown. Were you
+clad like patient Grisel I should be content. Besides you have no end of
+pretty gowns. And you are to be dressed for travelling, remember; for I
+am going to carry you off to Lodore directly we are married, and you
+will have to clamber up the rocky bed of the waterfall to see the sun
+set behind the Borrowdale hills in your wedding gown. It had better be
+one of those neat little tailor gowns which become you so well.'</p>
+
+<p>'I will wear whatever you tell me,' answered Mary. 'I shall always dress
+to please you, and not the outside world.'</p>
+
+<p>'Will you, my Griselda. Some day you shall be dressed as Grisel was—</p>
+
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">&quot;In a cloth of gold that brighte shone,</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">With a coroune of many a riche stone.&quot;</span><br>
+
+<p>'Yes, you darling, when you are Lord Chancellor; and till that day comes
+I will wear tailor gowns, linsey-wolsey, anything you like,' cried Mary,
+laughing.</p>
+
+<p>She ran to her grandmother's room, ineffably content, without a thought
+of trousseau or finery; but then Mary Haselden was one of those few
+young women for whom life is not a question of fashionable raiment.</p>
+
+<p>'Mary, I am going to send you off upon your honeymoon to-morrow
+afternoon,' said Lady Maulevrier, smiling at the bright, happy face
+which was bent over her. 'Will you come back and nurse a fretful old
+woman when the honeymoon is over?'</p>
+
+<p>'The honeymoon will never be over,' answered Mary, joyously. 'Our wedded
+life is to be one long honeymoon. But I will come back in a very few
+days, and take care of you. I am not going to let you do without me, now
+that you have learnt to love me.'</p>
+
+<p>'And will you be content to stay with me when your husband has gone to
+London?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, but I shall try to prevent his going very often, or staying very
+long. I shall try to wind myself into his heart, so that there will be
+an aching void there when we are parted.'</p>
+
+<p>Lady Maulevrier proceeded to tell Mary all her arrangements. Three
+handsome rooms in the east wing, a bedroom, dressing-room, and boudoir,
+were to be made ready for the newly-married couple. Fr&auml;ulein M&uuml;ller was
+to be dismissed with a retiring pension, in order that Lady Mary and her
+husband might feel themselves master and mistress in the lower part of
+the house.</p>
+
+<p>'And if your husband really means to devote himself to literature, he
+can have no better workshop than the library I have put together,' said
+Lady Maulevrier.</p>
+
+<p>'And no better adviser and guide than you, dear grandmother, you who
+have read everything that has been written worth reading during the last
+half century.'</p>
+
+<p>'I have read a great deal, Mary, but I hardly know if I am any wiser on
+that account,' answered Lady Maulevrier. 'After all, however much of
+other people's wisdom we may devour, it is in ourselves that we are
+thus, or thus. Our past follies rise up against us at the end of life;
+and we see how little our book-learning has helped us to stand against
+foolish impulses, against evil passions. &quot;Be good,&quot; Mary, &quot;and let who
+will be wise,&quot; as the poet says. A faithful heart is your only anchor in
+the stormy seas of life. My dear, I am so glad you are going to be
+married.'</p>
+
+<p>'It is very sudden,' said Mary.</p>
+
+<p>'Very sudden; yet in your case that does not much matter. You have quite
+made up your mind about Mr. Hammond, I believe.'</p>
+
+<p>'Made up my mind! I began to worship him the first night he came here.'</p>
+
+<p>'Foolish child. Well, there is no need to wait for settlements. You have
+only your allowance as Lord Maulevrier's daughter—a first charge on the
+estate, which cannot be made away with or anticipated, and of which no
+husband can deprive you.'</p>
+
+<p>'He shall have every sixpence of it,' murmured Mary.</p>
+
+<p>'And Mr. Hammond, though he tells me he is better off than I supposed,
+can have nothing to settle. So there will be nothing forfeited by a
+marriage without settlements.'</p>
+
+<p>Mary could not enter upon the question. It was even of less importance
+than the wedding gown.</p>
+
+<p>The gong sounded for luncheon.</p>
+
+<p>'Steadman's dogcart is to take Mr. Hammond to the station at half-past
+two,' said Lady Maulevrier, 'so you had better go and give him his
+luncheon.'</p>
+
+<p>Mary needed no second bidding. She flew downstairs, and met her lover in
+the hall.</p>
+
+<p>What a happy luncheon it was! Fr&auml;ulein 'mounched, and mounched, and
+mounched,' like the sailor's wife eating chestnuts: but those two lovers
+lunched upon moonshine, upon each other's little words and little looks,
+upon their own ineffable bliss. They sat side by side, and helped each
+other to the nicest things on the table, but neither could eat, and
+they got considerably mixed in their way of eating, taking chutnee with
+strawberry cream, and currant jelly with asparagus. What did it matter?
+Everything tasted of bliss.</p>
+
+<p>'You have had absolutely nothing to eat,' said Mary, piteously, as the
+dogcart came grinding round upon the dry gravel.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, I have done splendidly—thanks. I have just had a macaroon and some
+of that capital gorgonzola. God bless you, dearest, and <i>à revoir, à
+revoir</i> to-morrow.'</p>
+
+<p>'And to-morrow I shall be Mary Hammond,' cried Mary, clasping her hands.
+'Isn't it capital fun?'</p>
+
+<p>They were in the porch alone. The servants were all at dinner, save the
+groom with the cart. Miss M&uuml;ller was still munching at the well-spread
+table in the dining-room.</p>
+
+<p>John Hammond folded his sweetheart in his arms for one brief embrace;
+there was no time for loitering. In another moment he was springing into
+the cart. A shake of the reins, and he was driving slowly down the steep
+avenue.</p>
+
+<p>'Life is full of partings,' Mary said to herself, as she watched the
+last glimpse of the dogcart between the trees down in the road below,
+'but this one is to be very short, thank God.'</p>
+
+<p>She wondered what she should do with herself for the rest of the
+afternoon, and finally, finding that she was not wanted by her
+grandmother until afternoon tea, she set out upon a round of visits to
+her favourite cottagers, to bid them a long farewell as a spinster.</p>
+
+<p>'You'll be away a long time, I suppose, Lady Mary?' said one of her
+humble friends; 'you'll be going to Switzerland or Italy, or some of
+those foreign parts where great ladies and gentlemen travel for their
+honeymoons?'</p>
+
+<p>But Mary declared that she would be absent a week at longest. She was
+coming back to take care of her invalid grandmother; and she was not
+going to marry a great gentleman, but a man who would have to work for
+his living.</p>
+
+<p>She went back to Fellside, and read the <i>Times</i>, and poured out Lady
+Maulevrier's tea, and sat on her low stool by the sofa, and the old and
+the young woman were as happy and confidential together as if they had
+been always the nearest and dearest to each other. Her ladyship had seen
+Miss M&uuml;ller, and had informed that excellent person that her services at
+Fellside would no longer be required after Lady Mary's marriage; but
+that her devotion to her duties during the last fourteen years should be
+rewarded by a pension which, together with her savings, would enable her
+to spend the rest of her days in repose. Miss M&uuml;ller was duly grateful,
+and owned to a tender longing for the <i>Heimath</i>, and declared herself
+ready to retire from her post whenever her ladyship pleased.</p>
+
+<p>'I shall go back to Germany directly I leave you, and I shall live and
+die there, unless I am wanted by one of my old pupils. But should Lady
+Lesbia or Lady Mary need my services for their daughters, in days to
+come, they can command me. For no one else will I abandon the
+Fatherland.'</p>
+
+<p>The Fr&auml;ulein thus easily disposed of, Lady Mary felt that matrimony
+would verily mean independence. And yet she was prepared to regard her
+husband as her master. She meant to obey him in all meekness and
+reverence of spirit.</p>
+
+<p>She spent the rest of the afternoon and the whole of the evening in her
+grandmother's sitting-room, dining <i>tête-à-tête</i> with the invalid for
+the first time since her illness. Lady Maulevrier talked much of Mary's
+future, and of Lesbia's; but it was evident that she was full of
+uneasiness upon the latter subject.</p>
+
+<p>'I don't know what Lesbia is going to do with her life,' she said, with
+a sigh. 'Her letters tell me of nothing but gowns and parties; and
+Georgina Kirkbank can only expatiate upon Mr. Smithson's wealth, and the
+grand position he is going to occupy by-and-by. I should like to see
+both my granddaughters married before I die—yes, I should like to see
+Lesbia's fate secure, if she were to be only Lady Lesbia Smithson.'</p>
+
+<p>'She cannot fail to make a good match, grandmother,' said Mary.</p>
+
+<p>'I am beginning to lose faith in her future,' answered Lady Maulevrier.
+'There seems to be a fatality about the career of particularly
+attractive girls. They are too confident of their power to succeed in
+life. They trifle with fortune, fascinate the wrong people, and keep the
+right people at arm's length. I think if I had been Lesbia's guide in
+society her first season would have counted for more than it is likely
+to count for under Lady Kirkbank's management. I should have awakened
+Lesbia from the dream of dress and dancing—the mere butterfly life of a
+girl who never looks beyond the present moment. But now go and give
+orders about your packing, Mary. It is past ten, and Clara had better
+pack your trunks early to-morrow morning.'</p>
+
+<p>Clara was a modest Easedale damsel, who had been promoted to be Lady
+Mary's personal attendant, when the more mature Kibble had gone away
+with Lady Lesbia. Mary required very little waiting upon, but she was
+not the less glad to have a neat little smiling maiden devoted to her
+service, ready to keep her rooms neat and trim, to go on errands to the
+cottagers, to arrange the flowers in the old china bowls, and to make
+herself generally useful.</p>
+
+<p>It seemed a strange thing to have to furnish a trousseau from the
+wardrobe of everyday life—a trousseau in which nothing, except
+half-a-dozen pairs of gloves, a pair of boots, and a few odds and ends
+of lace and ribbons would be actually new. Mary thought very little of
+the matter, but the position of things struck her maid as altogether
+extraordinary and unnatural.</p>
+
+<p>'You should have seen the things Miss Freeman had, Lady Mary,' exclaimed
+the damsel, 'the daughter of that cotton-spinning gentleman from
+Manchester, who lives at The Gables—you should have seen her new gowns
+and things when she was married. Mrs. Freeman's maid keeps company with
+my brother James—he's in the stables at Freeman's, you know, Lady
+Mary—and she asked me in to look at the trousseau two days before the
+wedding. I never saw such beautiful dresses—such hats—such
+bonnets—such jackets and mantles. It was like going into one of those
+grand shops at York, and having all the things in the shop pulled out
+for one to look at—such silks and satins—and trimmed—ah! how those
+dresses was trimmed. The mystery was how the young lady could ever get
+herself into them, or sit down when she'd got one of them on.'</p>
+
+<p>'Instruments of torture, Clara. I should hate such gowns, even if I were
+going to marry a rich man, as I suppose Miss Freeman was.'</p>
+
+<p>'Not a bit of it, Lady Mary. She was only going to marry a Bolton doctor
+with a small practice; but her maid told me she was determined she'd get
+all she could out of her pa, in case he should lose all his money and go
+bankrupt. They said that trousseau cost two thousand pounds.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, Clara, I'd rather have my tailor gowns, in which I can scramble
+about the ghylls and crags just as I like.' There was a pale yellow
+Indian silk, smothered with soft yellow lace, which would serve for a
+wedding gown; for indifferent as Mary was to the great clothes question,
+she wanted to look in some wise as a bride. A neat chocolate-coloured
+cloth, almost new from the tailor's hands, with a little cloth toque to
+match, would do for the wedding journey. All the details of Mary's
+wardrobe were the perfection of neatness. She had grown very neat and
+careful in her habits since her engagement, anxious to be industrious
+and frugal in all things—a really handy housewife for a hard-worked
+bread-winner. And now she was told that Mr. Hammond was not so poor as
+she had thought. She would not be obliged to stint herself, and manage,
+as she had supposed when she went about among the cottagers, taking
+lessons in household economy. It was almost a disappointment.</p>
+
+<p>She and Clara finished the packing that night, Mary being much too
+excited for the possibility of sleep. There was not much to pack, only
+one roomy American trunk—a trunk which held everything—a Gladstone bag
+for things that might possibly be wanted in a hurry, and a handsome
+dressing-bag, Maulevrier's last birthday gift to his sister.</p>
+
+<p>Mary had received no gifts from her lover, save the plain gold
+engagement ring, and a few new books sent straight from the publishers.
+Clara took care to inform her young mistress that Miss Freeman's
+sweetheart had sent her all manner of splendid presents, scent bottles,
+photograph albums, glove boxes, and other things of beauty, albeit his
+means were supposed to be <i>nil</i>. It was evident that Clara disapproved
+of Mr. Hammond's conduct in this matter, and even suspected him of
+meanness.</p>
+
+<p>'He did ought to have sent you his photograph, Lady Mary,' said Clara,
+with a reproachful air.</p>
+
+<p>'I daresay he would have done so, Clara, but he has been photographed
+only once in his life.'</p>
+
+<p>'Lawk a mercy, Lady Mary! Why most young gentlemen have themselves
+photographed in every new place they go to; and as Mr. Hammond has been
+a traveller, like his lordship, I made sure he'd have been photographed
+in knickerbockers and every other kind of attitude.'</p>
+
+<p>Mary had not refrained from asking for her lover's portrait; and he had
+told her that he had carefully abstained from having his countenance
+reproduced in any manner since his fifteenth year, when he had been
+photographed at his mother's desire.</p>
+
+<p>'The present fashion of photographs staring out of every stationer's
+window makes a man's face public property,' he told Mary. 'I don't want
+every street Arab in London to recognise me.'</p>
+
+<p>'But you are not a public man,' said Mary. 'Your photograph would not be
+in all the windows; although, in my humble opinion, you are a very
+handsome man.'</p>
+
+<p>Hammond blushed, laughed, and turned the conversation, and Mary had to
+exist without any picture of her lover.</p>
+
+<p>'Millais shall paint me in his grand Reynolds manner by-and-by,' he told
+Mary.</p>
+
+<p>'Millais! Oh, Jack! When will you and I be able to give a thousand or so
+for a portrait?'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, when, indeed? But we may as well enjoy our day-dreams, like
+Alnaschar, without smashing our basket of crockery.'</p>
+
+<p>And now Mary, who had managed to exist without the picture, was to have
+the original. He was to be all her own—her master, her lord, her love,
+after to-morrow—unto eternity, in life, and in the grave, and in the
+dim hereafter beyond the grave, they two were to be one. In heaven there
+was to be no marrying or giving in marriage, Mary was told; but her own
+heart cried aloud to her that the happily wedded must remain linked in
+heaven. God would not part the blessed souls of true lovers.</p>
+
+<p>A short sleep, broken by happy dreams, and it was morning, Mary's
+wedding morning, fairest of summer days, July in all her beauty. Mary
+went to her grandmother's room, and waited upon her at breakfast.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Maulevrier was in excellent spirits.</p>
+
+<p>'Everything is arranged, Mary. I have had a telegram from Hammond, who
+has got the licence, and will come at half-past one. At three the Vicar
+will come to marry you, his daughters, Katie and Laura, acting as your
+bridesmaids.'</p>
+
+<p>'Bridesmaids!' exclaimed Mary. 'I forgot all about bridesmaids. Am I
+really to have any?'</p>
+
+<p>'You will have two girls of your own age to bear you company, at any
+rate. I have asked dear old Horton to be present; and he, Fr&auml;ulein, and
+Maulevrier will complete the party. It will not be a brilliant wedding,
+Mary, or a costly ceremonial, except for the licence.'</p>
+
+<p>'And poor Jack will have to pay for that,' said Mary, with a long face.</p>
+
+<p>'Poor Jack refused to let me pay for it,' answered Lady Maulevrier. 'He
+is vastly independent, and I fear somewhat reckless.'</p>
+
+<p>'I like him for his independence; but he mustn't be reckless,' said
+Mary, severely.</p>
+
+<p>He was to be the master in all things! and yet she was to exercise a
+restraining influence, she was to guard him against his own weaknesses,
+his too generous impulses. Her voice was to be the voice of prudence.
+This is how Mary understood the marriage tie.</p>
+
+<p>Under ordinary conditions Mary would have been in the avenue, lying in
+wait for her lover, eager to get the very first glimpse of him when he
+arrived, to see him before he had brushed the dust of the journey from
+his raiment. But to-day she hung back. She stayed in her grandmother's
+room and sat beside the sofa, shy, and even a little downcast. This
+lover who was so soon to be transformed into a husband was a formidable
+personage. She dare not rush forth to greet him. Perhaps he had changed
+his mind by this time, and was sorry he had ever asked her to marry him.
+Perhaps he thought he was being hustled into a marriage. He had been
+told that he was to wait at least a year. And now, all in a moment, he
+was sent off to get a special licence. How could she be quite sure that
+he liked this kind of treatment?</p>
+
+<p>If there is any faith to be placed in the human countenance, Mr. Hammond
+was in no wise an unwilling bridegroom; for his face beamed with happy
+light as he came into the room presently, followed by an elderly man
+with grey hair and whiskers, and in a strictly professional frock coat,
+whom the butler announced as Mr. Dorncliffe. Lady Maulevrier looked
+startled, somewhat offended even at this intrusion, and she gave Mr.
+Dorncliffe a very haughty salutation, which was almost more crushing
+than no salutation at all.</p>
+
+<p>Mary stood up by her grandmother's sofa, and looked rather frightened.</p>
+
+<p>'Dear Lady Maulevrier,' said Hammond, 'I ventured to telegraph to my
+lawyer to meet me at York last night, and come on here with me this
+morning. He has prepared a settlement, which I should like you to hear
+him read, and which he will explain to you, if necessary, while Molly
+and I go for a stroll in the grounds.'</p>
+
+<p>He had never called her Molly before. He put his arm round her with a
+proud air of possession, even under her grandmother's eyes. And she
+nestled close up to his side, forgetting everything but the delight of
+belonging to him.</p>
+
+<p>They went downstairs, and through the billiard room to the terrace, and
+from the terrace to the tennis lawn, where John Hammond sat reading
+Heine nearly a year ago, just before he proposed to Lesbia.</p>
+
+<p>'Do you remember that day?' asked Mary, looking at him, solemnly.</p>
+
+<p>'I remember every day and every hour we have spent together since I began
+to love you,' answered Hammond.</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, but this was before you began to love me,' said Mary, with a
+piteous little grimace. 'This was while you were loving Lesbia as hard
+as ever you could. Don't you remember the day you proposed to her—a
+lovely summer day like this, the lake just as blue, the sun shining upon
+Fairfield just as it is shining now, and you sat there reading
+Heine—those sweet, sweet verses, that seemed made of sighs and tears;
+and every now and then you paused and looked up at Lesbia, and there was
+more love in your eyes than in all Heine's poetry, though that brims
+over with love.'</p>
+
+<p>'But how did you know all this, Molly? You were not here.'</p>
+
+<p>'I was not very far off. I was behind those bushes, watching and
+listening. I knew you were in love with Lesbia, and I thought you
+despised me, and I was very, very wretched; and I listened afterwards
+when you proposed to her there—behind the pine trees—and I hated her
+for refusing you, and I am afraid I hated you for proposing to her.'</p>
+
+<p>'When I ought to have been proposing to my Molly, blind fool that I
+was,' said Hammond, smiling tenderly at her, smiling, though his eyes
+were dim with tears. 'My own sweet love, it was a terrible mistake, a
+mistake that might have cost me the happiness of a lifetime. But Fate
+was very good to me, and let me have my Mary after all. And now let us
+sit down under the old red beech and talk till it is time to go and get
+ready for our wedding. I suppose one ought to brush one's hair and wash
+one's hands for that kind of thing, even when the function is not on a
+ceremonious scale.'</p>
+
+<p>Mary laughed.</p>
+
+<p>'I have a prettier gown than this to be married in, although it isn't a
+wedding gown,' she said.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, by-the-by, I have something for you,' said her lover, 'something in
+the way of ornaments, but I don't suppose you'd care to wear them
+to-day. I'll run and get them.'</p>
+
+<p>He went back to the house, leaving Mary sitting on the rustic bench
+under the fine old copper beech, a tree that had been standing long
+before Lady Maulevrier enlarged the old stone house into a stately
+villa. He returned in a few minutes, bringing a morocco bag about the
+size of those usually carried by lawyers or lawyers' clerks.</p>
+
+<p>'I don't think I have given you anything since we were engaged, Mary,'
+he said, as he seated himself by her side.</p>
+
+<p>Mary blushed, remembering how Clara, the maid, had remarked upon this
+fact.</p>
+
+<p>'You gave me my ring,' she said, looking down at the massive band of
+gold, 'and you have given me ever so many delightful books.'</p>
+
+<p>'Those were very humble gifts, Molly: but to-day I have brought you a
+wedding present.'</p>
+
+<p>He opened the bag and took out a red morocco case, and then half-a-dozen
+more red morocco cases of various shapes and sizes. The first looked
+new, but the others were old-fashioned and passing shabby, as if they
+had been knocking about brokers' shops for the last quarter of a
+century.</p>
+
+<p>'There is my wedding gift, Mary,' he said, handing her the new case.</p>
+
+<p>It contained an exquisitely painted miniature of a very beautiful woman,
+in a large oval locket set with sapphires.</p>
+
+<p>'You have asked me for my portrait, dearest,' he said. 'I give you my
+mother's rather than my own, because I loved her as I never thought to
+love again, till I knew you. I should like you to wear that locket
+sometimes, Mary, as a kind of link between the love of the past and the
+love of the present. Were my mother living, she would welcome and
+cherish my bride and my wife. She is dead, and you and she can never
+meet on earth: but I should like you to be familiar with the face which
+was once the light of my life.'</p>
+
+<p>Mary's eyes filled with tears as she gazed at the face in the miniature.
+It was the portrait of a woman of about thirty—a face of exquisite
+refinement, of calm and pensive beauty.</p>
+
+<p>'I shall treasure this picture always, above all things,' she said: but
+'why did you have it set so splendidly, Jack? No gems were needed to
+give your mother's portrait value in my eyes.'</p>
+
+<p>'I know that, dearest, but I wanted to make the locket worth wearing.
+And now for the other cases. The locket is your lover's free gift, and
+is yours to keep and to bequeath to your children. These are heirlooms,
+and yours only during your husband's lifetime.'</p>
+
+<p>He opened one of the largest cases, and on a bed of black velvet Mary
+beheld a magnificent diamond necklace, with a large pendant. He opened
+another and displayed a set of sprays for the hair. Another contained
+earrings, another bracelets, the last a tiara.</p>
+
+<p>'What are they for?' gasped Mary.</p>
+
+<p>'For my wife to wear.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, but I could never wear such things,' she exclaimed, with an idea
+that these must be stage jewellery. 'They are paste, of course—very
+beautiful for people who like that kind of thing—but I don't.'</p>
+
+<p>She felt deeply shocked at this evidence of bad taste on the part of her
+lover. How the things flashed in the sunshine—but so did the crystal
+drops in the old Venetian girandoles.</p>
+
+<p>'No, Molly, they are not paste; they are Brazilian diamonds, and, as
+Maulevrier would say, they are as good as they make them. They are
+heirlooms, Molly. My dear mother wore them in her summer-tide of wedded
+happiness. My grandmother wore them for thirty years before her; my
+great grandmother wore them at the Court of Queen Charlotte, and they
+were worn at the Court of Queen Anne. They are nearly two hundred years
+old; and those central stones in the tiara came out of a cap worn by the
+Great Mogul, and are the largest table diamonds known. They are
+historic, Mary.'</p>
+
+<p>'Why, they must be worth a fortune.'</p>
+
+<p>'They are valued at something over seventy thousand pounds.'</p>
+
+<p>'But why don't you sell them?' exclaimed Mary, opening her eyes wide
+with surprise, 'they would give you a handsome income.'</p>
+
+<p>'They are not mine to sell, Molly. Did not I tell you that they are
+heirlooms? They are the family jewels of the Countesses of Hartfield.'</p>
+
+<p>'Then what are you?'</p>
+
+<p>'Ronald Hollister, Earl of Hartfield, and your adoring lover!'</p>
+
+<p>Mary gave a cry of surprise, a cry of distress even.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, that is too dreadful!' she exclaimed; 'grandmother will be so
+unhappy. She had set her heart upon Lesbia marrying Lord Hartfield, the
+son of the man <i>she</i> loved.'</p>
+
+<p>'I got wind of her wish more than a year ago,' said Hartfield, 'from
+your brother; and he and I hatched a little plot between us. He told me
+Lesbia was not worthy of his friend's devotion—told me that she was
+vain and ambitious—that she had been educated to be so. I determined to
+come and try my fate. I would try to win her as plain John Hammond. If
+she was a true woman, I told myself, vanity and ambition would be blown
+to the four winds, provided I could win her love. I came, I saw her; and
+to see was to love her. God knows I tried honestly to win her; but I
+had sworn to myself that I would woo her as John Hammond, and I did not
+waver in my resolution—no, not when a word would have turned the scale.
+She liked me, I think, a little; but she did not like the notion of an
+obscure life as the wife of a hardworking professional man. The pomps
+and vanities of this world had it against love or liking, and she gave
+me up. I thank God that the pomps and vanities prevailed; for this happy
+chance gave me Mary, my sweet Wordsworthian damsel, found, like the
+violet or the celandine, by the wayside, in Wordsworth's own country.'</p>
+
+<p>'And you are Lord Hartfield!' exclaimed Mary, still lost in wonder, and
+with no elation at this change in the aspect of her life. 'I always knew
+you were a great man. But poor grandmother! It will be a dreadful
+disappointment to her.'</p>
+
+<p>'I think not. I think she has learned my Molly's value; rather late, as
+I learned it; and I believe she will be glad that one of her
+granddaughters should marry the son of her first lover. Let us go to
+her, love, and see if she is reconciled to the idea, and whether the
+settlement is ready for execution. Dorncliffe and his clerk were working
+at it half through the night.'</p>
+
+<p>'What is the good of a settlement?' asked Mary. 'I'm sure I don't want
+one.'</p>
+
+<p>'Lady Hartfield must not be dependent upon her husband's whim or
+pleasure for her milliner's bill or her private charities,' answered her
+lover, smiling at her eagerness to repudiate anything business-like.</p>
+
+<p>'But I would rather be dependent on your pleasure. I shall never have
+any milliner's bills; and I am sure you would never deny me money for
+charity.'</p>
+
+<p>'You shall not have to ask me for it, except when you have exceeded your
+pin-money. I hope you will do that now and then, just to afford me the
+pleasure of doing you a favour.'</p>
+
+<p>'Hartfield,' repeated Mary, to herself, as they went towards the house;
+'shall I have to call you Hartfield? I don't like the name nearly so
+well as Jack.'</p>
+
+<p>'You shall call me Jack for old sake's sake,' said Hartfield, tenderly.</p>
+
+<p>'How did you think of such a name as Jack?'</p>
+
+<p>'Rather an effort of genius, wasn't it. Well, first and foremost I was
+christened Ronald John—all the Hollisters are christened John—name of
+the founder of the race; and, secondly, Maulevrier and I were always
+plain Mr. Morland and Mr. Hammond in our travels, and always called each
+other Jack and Jim.'</p>
+
+<p>'How nice!' said Mary; 'would you very much mind our being plain Mr. and
+Mrs. Hammond, while we are on our honeymoon trip?'</p>
+
+<p>'I should like it of all things.'</p>
+
+<p>'So should I. People will not take so much notice of us, and we can do
+what we like, and go where we like.'</p>
+
+<p>'Delightful! We'll even disguise ourselves as Cook's tourists, if you
+like. I would not mind.'</p>
+
+<p>They were at the door of Lady Maulevrier's sitting room by this time.
+They went in, and were greeted with smiles.</p>
+
+<p>'Let me look at the Countess of Hartfield that is to be in half an
+hour,' said her ladyship. 'Oh, Mary, Mary, what a blind idiot I have
+been, and what a lucky girl you are! I told you once that you were wiser
+than Lesbia, but I little thought how much wiser you had been.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XXXIV"></a><h2>CHAPTER XXXIV.</h2>
+
+<h3>'OUR LOVE WAS NEW, AND THEN BUT IN THE SPRING.'</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>Henley Regatta was over. It had passed like a tale that is told; like
+Epsom and Ascot, and all the other glories of the London season. Happy
+those for whom the glory of Henley, the grace of Ascot, the fever of
+Epsom, are not as weary as a twice-told tale, bringing with them only
+bitterest memories of youth that has fled, of hopes that have withered,
+of day-dreams that have never been realised. There are some to whom that
+mad hastening from pleasure to pleasure, that rush from scene to scene
+of excitement, that eager crowding into one day and night of gaieties
+which might fairly relieve the placid monotony of a month's domesticity,
+a month's professional work—some there are to whom this Vanity Fair is
+as a treadmill or the turning of a crank, the felon's deepest
+humiliation, purposeless, unprofitable, labour.</p>
+
+<p>The regatta was over, and Lady Kirkbank and her charge hastened back to
+Arlington Street. Theirs was the very first departure; albeit Mr.
+Smithson pleaded hard for a prolongation of their visit. The weather was
+exceptionally lovely, he urged. Water picnics were delightful just
+now—the banks were alive with the colour of innumerable wild flowers,
+as beautiful and more poetical than the gorgeous flora of the Amazon or
+the Paraguay river. And Lady Lesbia had developed a genius for punting;
+and leaning against her pole, with her hair flying loose and sleeves
+rolled up above the elbow, she was a subject for canvas or marble,
+Millais or Adams Acton.</p>
+
+<p>'When we are in Italy I will have her modelled, just in that attitude,
+and that dress,' said Mr. Smithson. 'She will make a lovely companion
+for my Reading Girl: one all repose and reverie, the other all life and
+action. Dear Lady Kirkbank, you really must stay for another week at
+least. Why go back to the smoke and sultriness of town? Here we can
+almost live on the water; and I will send to London for some people to
+make music for us in the evenings, or if you miss your little game at
+&quot;Nap,&quot; we will play for an hour or so every night. It shall not be my
+fault if my house is not pleasant for you.'</p>
+
+<p>'Your house is charming, and I shall be here only too often in the days
+to come; you will have more than enough of me <i>then</i>, I promise you,'
+replied Georgie, with her girlish laugh, 'but we must not stop a day
+longer now. People would begin to talk. Besides, we have engagements for
+every hour of the week that is coming, and for a fortnight after; and
+then I suppose I ought to take Lesbia to the North to see her
+grandmother, and to discuss all the preparations and arrangements for
+this very serious event in which you and Lesbia are to be the chief
+performers.'</p>
+
+<p>'I shall be very glad to go to Grasmere myself, and to make the
+acquaintance of my future grandmother-in-law,' said Mr. Smithson.</p>
+
+<p>'You will be charmed with her. She belongs to the old school—something
+of a fossil, perhaps, but a very dignified fossil. She has grown old in
+a rustic seclusion, and knows less of <i>our</i> world than a mother abbess;
+but she has read immensely, and is wonderfully clever. I am bound to
+tell you that she has very lofty ideas about her granddaughter; and I
+believe she will only be reconciled to Lesbia's marriage with a commoner
+by the notion that you are sure of a peerage. I ventured to hint as much
+in my letter to Lady Maulevrier yesterday.'</p>
+
+<p>A shade of sullenness crept over Horace Smithson's visage.</p>
+
+<p>'I should hope that such settlements as I am in a position to make will
+convince Lady Maulevrier that I am a respectable suitor for her
+granddaughter, ex peerage,' he said, somewhat haughtily.</p>
+
+<p>'My dear Smithson, did I not tell you that poor Lady Maulevrier is a
+century behind the times,' exclaimed Lady Kirkbank, with an aggrieved
+look. 'If she were one of <i>us</i>, of course she would know that wealth is
+the paramount consideration, and that you are quite the best match of
+the season. But she is dreadfully <i>arri&eacute;r&eacute;e</i>, poor dear thing; and she
+must have amused herself with the day-dream of seeing Lesbia a duchess,
+or something of that kind. I shall tell her that Lesbia can be one of
+the queens of society without having strawberry leaves on her coach
+panels, and that my dear friend Horace Smithson is a much better match
+than a seedy duke. So don't look cross, my dear fellow; in me you have a
+friend who will never desert you.'</p>
+
+<p>'Thanks,' said Smithson, inwardly resolving that, so soon as this
+little transaction of his marriage were over, he would see as little of
+Georgie Kirkbank and her cotton frocks and schoolgirl hats as bare
+civility would allow.</p>
+
+<p>He had promised her that she should be the richer by a neat little
+bundle of fat and flourishing railway stock when his happiness was
+secured, and he was not going to break his promise. But he did not mean
+to give George and Georgie free quarters at Rood Hall, or at Cowes, or
+Deauville; and he meant to withdraw his wife altogether from Lady
+Kirkbank's pinchbeck set.</p>
+
+<p>What were Lesbia's feelings in the early morning after the last day of
+the regatta, as she slowly paced the lavender walk in the Ladies'
+Garden, alone?—for happily Mr. Smithson was not so early a riser as the
+Grasmere-bred damsel, and she had this fresh morning hour to herself. Of
+what was she thinking as she paced slowly up and down the broad gravel
+walk, between two rows of tall old bushes, on which masses of purple
+blossom stood up from the pale grey foliage, silvery where the summer
+breeze touched it?</p>
+
+<p>Well, she was thinking first what a grand old place Rood Hall was, and
+that it was in a manner hers henceforward. She was to be mistress of
+this house, and of other houses, each after its fashion as perfect as
+Rood Hall. She was to have illimitable money at her command, to spend
+and give away as she liked. She, who yesterday had been tortured by the
+idea of owing a paltry three thousand pounds, was henceforward to count
+her thousands by the hundred. Her senses reeled before that dazzling
+vision of figures with rows of ciphers after them, one cipher more or
+less meaning the difference between thousands and millions. Everybody
+had agreed in assuring her that Mr. Smithson was inordinately rich.
+Everybody had considered it his or her business to give her information
+about the gentleman's income; clearly implying thereby that in the
+opinion of society Mr. Smithson's merits as a suitor were a question of
+so much bullion.</p>
+
+<p>Could she doubt—she who had learned in one short season to know what
+the world was made of and what it most valued—could she, steeped to the
+lips in the wisdom of Lady Kirkbank's set, doubt for an instant that she
+was making a better match in the eye of society, than if she had married
+a man of the highest lineage in all England, a peer of the highest rank,
+without large means? She knew that money was power, that a man might
+begin life as a pot-boy or a greengrocer, a knacker or a dust
+contractor, and climb to the topmost pinnacles, were he only rich
+enough. She knew that society would eat such a man's dinners and dance
+at his wife's balls, and pretend to think him an altogether exceptional
+man, make believe to admire him for his own sake, to think his wife most
+brilliant among women, if he were only rich enough. And could she doubt
+that society would bow down to her as Lady Lesbia Smithson? She had
+learned a great deal in her single season, and she knew how society was
+influenced and governed, almost as well as Sir Robert Walpole knew how
+human nature could be moulded and directed at the will of a shrewd
+diplomatist. She knew that in the fashionable world every man and every
+woman, every child even, has his or her price, and may be bought and
+sold at pleasure. She had her price, she, Lesbia, the pearl of Grasmere;
+and the price having been fairly bidden she had surrendered to the
+bidder.</p>
+
+<p>'I suppose I always meant to marry him,' she thought, pausing in her
+promenade to gaze across the verdant landscape, a fertile vale, against
+a background of low hills. All the landscape, to the edge of those
+hills, belonged to Mr. Smithson. 'Yes, I must have meant to give way at
+last, or I should hardly have tolerated his attentions. It would have
+been a pity to refuse such a place as this; and, he is quite
+gentlemanlike; and as I have done with all romantic ideas, I do not see
+why I should not learn to like him very much.'</p>
+
+<p>She dismissed the idea of Smithson lightly, with this conclusion, which
+she believed very virtuous; and then as she resumed her walk her
+thoughts reverted to the Park Lane Palace.</p>
+
+<p>'I hardly know whether I like it,' she mused languidly; 'beautiful as it
+is, it is only a reproduction of bygone splendour, and it is painfully
+excruciating now. For my own part I would much rather have the shabbiest
+old house which had belonged to one's ancestors, which had come to one
+as a heritage, by divine right as it were, instead of being bought with
+newly made money. To my mind it would rank higher. Yet I doubt if
+anybody nowadays sets a pin's value upon ancestors. People ask, Who is
+he? but they only mean, How much has he? And provided a person is not
+absolutely in trade, not actually engaged in selling soap, or matches,
+or mustard, society doesn't care a straw how his money has been made.
+The only secondary question is, How long will it last? And that is of
+course important.'</p>
+
+<p>Musing thus, wordly wisdom personified, the maiden looked up and saw her
+lover entering at the light little iron gate which gave entrance to this
+feminine Eden. She went to meet him, looking all simplicity and
+freshness in her white morning gown and neat little Dunstable hat. It
+seemed to him as he gazed at her almost as if this delicate, sylph-like
+beauty were some wild white flower of the woods personified.</p>
+
+<p>She gave him her hand graciously, but he drew her to his breast and
+kissed her, with the air of a man who was exercising an indisputable
+right. She supposed that it was his right, and she submitted, but
+released herself as quickly as possible.</p>
+
+<p>'My dearest, how lovely you look in this morning light,' he exclaimed,
+'while all the other women are upstairs making up their faces to meet
+the sun, and we shall see every shade of bismuth by-and-by, from pale
+mauve to purple.'</p>
+
+<p>'It is very uncivil of you to say such a thing of your guests,'
+exclaimed Lesbia.</p>
+
+<p>'But they all indulge in bismuth—you must be quite aware of that. They
+call the stuff by different names—Blanc Rosati, Crême de l'Imperatrice,
+Milk of Beauty, Perline, Opaline, Ivorine—but it means bismuth all the
+same. Expose your fashionable beauty to the fumes of sewer-gas, and that
+dazzling whiteness would turn to a dull brown hue, or even black. Thank
+heaven, my Lesbia wears real lilies and roses. Have you been here long?'</p>
+
+<p>'About half an hour'</p>
+
+<p>'I only wish I had known. I should not have dawdled so long over my
+dressing.'</p>
+
+<p>'I am very glad you did not know,' Lesbia answered coolly.
+'Do you suppose I never want to be alone? Life in London is perpetual
+turmoil; one's eyes grow weary with ever-moving crowds, one's ears ache
+with trying to distinguish one voice among the buzz of voices.'</p>
+
+<p>'Then why go back to town? Why go back to the turmoil and the treadmill?
+It is only a kind of treadmill, after all, though we choose to call it
+pleasure. Stay here, Lesbia, and let us live upon the river, and among
+the flowers,' urged Smithson, with as romantic an air as if he had never
+heard of contango, or bulling and bearing; and yet only half an hour
+ago, while his valet was shaving him, he was debating within himself
+whether he should be bear or bull in his influence upon certain stock.</p>
+
+<p>It was supposed that he never went near the city, that he had shaken the
+dust of Lombard Street and the House off his shoes, that his fortune was
+made, and he had no further need of speculation. Yet the proverb holds
+good with the stock-jobber. 'He who has once drunk will drink again.' Of
+that fountain there is no satiety.</p>
+
+<p>'Stay and hear the last of the nightingales,' he murmured; 'we are famous
+for our nightingales.'</p>
+
+<p>'I wonder you don't order a <i>fricass&eacute;e</i> of their tongues, like that
+loathsome person in Roman history.'</p>
+
+<p>'I hope I shall never resemble any loathsome person. Why can you not
+stay?'</p>
+
+<p>'Why, because it is not etiquette, Lady Kirkbank says.'</p>
+
+<p>'Lady Kirkbank, eh? <i>la belle farce</i>, Lady Kirkbank standing out for
+etiquette.'</p>
+
+<p>'Don't laugh at my chaperon, sir. Upon what rock can a poor girl lean if
+you undermine her faith in her chaperon, sir.'</p>
+
+<p>'I hope you will have a better guardian before you are a month older. I
+mean to be a very strong rock, Lesbia. You do not know how firmly I
+shall stand between you and all the perils of society. You have been but
+poorly guarded hitherto.'</p>
+
+<p>'You talk as if you mean to be an abominable tyrant,' said Lesbia. 'If
+you don't take care I shall change my mind, and recall my promise.'</p>
+
+<p>'Not on that account, Lesbia: every woman likes a man who stands up for
+his own. It is only your invertebrate husband whose wife drifts into the
+divorce court. I mean to keep and hold the prize I have won. When is it
+to be, dearest—our wedding day?'</p>
+
+<p>'Not for ages, I hope—some time next summer, at the earliest.'</p>
+
+<p>'You would not be so cruel as to keep me waiting a year?'</p>
+
+<p>'Why not?'</p>
+
+<p>'You would not ask that if you loved me.'</p>
+
+<p>'You are asking too much,' said Lesbia, with a flash of defiance. 'There
+has been nothing said about love yet. You asked me to be your wife, and
+I said yes—meaning that at some remote period such a thing might be.'</p>
+
+<p>She knew that the man was her slave—slave to her beauty, slave to her
+superior rank—and she was determined not to lessen the weight of his
+chain by so much as a feather.</p>
+
+<p>'Did not that promise imply something like love?' he asked, earnestly.</p>
+
+<p>'Perhaps it implied a little gratitude for your devotion, which I have
+neither courted nor encouraged; a little respect for your talents, your
+perseverance—a little admiration for your wonderful success in life.
+Perhaps love may follow these sentiments, naturally, easily, if you are
+very patient; but if you talk about our being married before next year,
+you will simply make me hate you.'</p>
+
+<p>'Then I will say very little, except to remind you that there is no
+earthly reason why we should not be married next month. October and
+November are the best months for Rome, and I heard you say last night
+you were pining to see Rome.'</p>
+
+<p>'What then—cannot Lady Kirkbank take me to Rome?'</p>
+
+<p>'And introduce you to the rowdiest people in the city,' cried Mr.
+Smithson. 'Lesbia, I adore you. It is the dream of my life to be your
+husband; but if you are going to spend a winter in Italy with Lady
+Kirkbank, I renounce my right, I surrender my hope. You will not be the
+wife of my dreams after that.'</p>
+
+<p>'Do you assert a right to control my life during our engagement?'</p>
+
+<p>'Some little right; above all, the privilege of choosing your friends.
+And that is one reason why I most fervently desire our marriage should
+not be delayed. You would find it difficult, impossible perhaps, to get
+out of Lady Kirkbank's claws while you are single; but once my wife,
+that amiable old person can be made to keep her distance.'</p>
+
+<p>'Lady Kirkbank's claws! What a horrible way in which to speak of a
+friend. I thought you adored Lady Kirkbank.'</p>
+
+<p>'So I do. We all adore her, but not as a guide for youth. As a specimen
+of the elderly female of the latter half of the nineteenth century, she
+is perfect. Such gush, such juvenility, such broad views, such an utter
+absence of starch; but as a lamp for the footsteps of girlhood—no,
+<i>there</i> we must pause.'</p>
+
+<p>'You are very ungrateful. Do you know that poor Lady Kirkbank has been
+most strenuous in your behalf?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, yes, I know that.'</p>
+
+<p>'And you are not grateful?'</p>
+
+<p>'I intend to be very grateful, so grateful as to entirely satisfy Lady
+Kirkbank.'</p>
+
+<p>'You are horribly cynical. That reminds me, there was a poor girl whom
+Lady Kirkbank had under her wing one season—a Miss Trinder, to whom I
+am told you behaved shamefully.'</p>
+
+<p>'There was a parson's daughter who threw herself at my head in a most
+audacious way, and who behaved so badly, egged on by Lady Kirkbank, that
+I had to take refuge in flight. Do you suppose I am the kind of man to
+marry the first adventurous damsel who takes a fancy to my town house,
+and thinks it would be a happy hunting ground for a herd of brothers and
+sisters? Miss Trinder was shocking bad style, and her designs were
+transparent from the very beginning! I let her flirt as much as she
+liked; and when she began to be seriously sentimental I took wing for
+the East.'</p>
+
+<p>'Was she pretty?' asked Lesbia, not displeased at this contemptuous
+summing up of poor Belle Trinder's story.</p>
+
+<p>'If you admire the Flemish type, as illustrated by Rubens, she was
+lovely. A complexion of lilies and roses—cabbage roses, <i>bien entendu</i>,
+which were apt to deepen into peonies after champagne and mayonaise at
+Ascot or Sandown—a figure—oh—well—a tremendous figure—hair of an
+auburn that touched perilously on the confines of red—large,
+serviceable feet, and an appetite—the appetite of a ploughman's
+daughter reared upon short commons.'</p>
+
+<p>'You are very cruel to a girl who evidently admired you.'</p>
+
+<p>'A fig for her admiration! She wanted to live in my house and spend my
+money.'</p>
+
+<p>'There goes the gong,' exclaimed Lesbia; 'pray let us go to breakfast.
+You are hideously cynical, and I am wofully tired of you.'</p>
+
+<p>And as they strolled back to the house, by lavender walk and rose
+garden, and across the dewy lawn, Lesbia questioned herself as to
+whether she was one whit better or more dignified than Isabella Trinder.
+She wore her rue with a difference, that was all.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XXXV"></a><h2>CHAPTER XXXV.</h2>
+
+<h3>'ALL FANCY, PRIDE, AND FICKLE MAIDENHOOD.'</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>The return to Arlington Street meant a return to the ceaseless whirl of
+gaiety. Even at Rood Hall life had been as near an approach to perpetual
+motion as one could hope for in this world; but the excitement and the
+hurrying and scampering in Berkshire had a rustic flavour; there were
+moments that were almost repose, a breathing space between the blue
+river and the blue sky, in a world that seemed made of green fields and
+hanging woods, the plashing of waters, and the song of the lark. But in
+London the very atmosphere was charged with hurry and agitation; the
+freshness was gone from the verdure of the parks; the glory of the
+rhododendrons had faded; the Green Park below Lady Kirkbank's mansion
+was baked and rusty; the towers of the Houses of Parliament yonder were
+dimly seen in a mist of heat. London air tasted of smoke and dust,
+vibrated with the incessant roll of carriages, and the trampling of
+multitudinous feet.</p>
+
+<p>There are women of rank who can take the London season quietly, and live
+their own lives in the midst of the whirl and the riot—women for whom
+that squirrel-like circulation round and round the fashionable wheel has
+no charm—women who only receive people they like, only go into society
+that is congenial. But Lady Kirkbank was not one of these. The advance
+of age made her only more keen in the pursuit of pleasure. She would
+have abandoned herself to despair had the glass over the mantelpiece in
+her boudoir ceased to be choked and littered with cards—had her book of
+engagements shown a blank page. Happily there were plenty of people—if
+not all of them the best people—who wanted Sir George and Lady Kirkbank
+at their parties. The gentleman was sporting and harmless, the lady was
+good-natured, and just sufficiently eccentric to be amusing without
+degenerating into a bore. And this year she was asked almost everywhere,
+for the sake of the beauty who went under her wing. Lesbia had been as a
+pearl of price to her chaperon, from a social point of view; and now
+that she was engaged to Horace Smithson she was likely to be even more
+valuable.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Smithson had promised Lady Kirkbank, sportively as it were, and upon
+the impulse of the moment, as he would have offered to wager a dozen of
+gloves, that were he so happy as to win her <i>prot&eacute;g&eacute;e's</i> hand he would
+find her an investment for, say, a thousand, which would bring her in
+twenty per cent.; nay, more, he would also find the thousand, which
+would have been the initial difficulty on poor Georgie's part. But this
+little matter was in Georgie's mind a detail, compared with the
+advantages to accrue to her indirectly from Lesbia's union with one of
+the richest men in London.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Kirkbank had brought about many good matches, and had been too
+often rewarded with base ingratitude upon the part of her <i>prot&eacute;g&eacute;es</i>,
+after marriage; but there was a touch of Arcady in the good soul's
+nature, and she was always trustful. She told herself that Lesbia would
+not be ungrateful, would not basely kick down the ladder by which she
+had mounted to heights empyrean, would not cruelly shelve the friend who
+had pioneered her to high fortune. She counted upon making the house in
+Park Lane as her own house, upon being the prime mover of all Lesbia's
+hospitalities, the supervisor of her visiting list, the shadow behind
+the throne.</p>
+
+<p>There were balls and parties nightly, dinners, luncheons,
+garden-parties; and yet there was a sense of waning in the glory of the
+world—everybody felt that the fag-end of the season was approaching.
+All the really great entertainments were over—the Cabinet dinners, the
+Reception at the Foreign Office, the last of the State balls and
+concerts. Some of the best people had already left town; and senators
+were beginning to complain that they saw no prospect of early
+deliverance. There was Goodwood still to look forward to; and after
+Goodwood the Deluge—or rather Cowes Regatta, about which Lady
+Kirkbank's set were already talking.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Lesbia was to be at Cowes for the Regatta week. That was a settled
+thing. Mr. Smithson's schooner-yacht, the Cayman, was to be her hotel.
+It was to be Lady Kirkbank and Lady Lesbia's yacht for the nonce; and
+Mr. Smithson was to live on shore at his villa, and at that aristocratic
+club to which, by Maulevrier's influence, and on the score of his
+approaching marriage with an earl's daughter, he had been just selected.
+He would be only Lady Kirkbank's visitor on board the Cayman. The severe
+etiquette of the situation would therefore not be infringed; and yet Mr.
+Smithson would have the happiness of seeing his betrothed sole and
+sovereign mistress of his yacht, and of spending the long summer days at
+her feet. Even to Lady Lesbia this idea of the yacht was not without its
+charm. She had never been on board such a yacht as the Cayman; she was a
+good sailor, as testified by many an excursion, in hired sailing boats,
+at Tynemouth, and St. Bees; and she knew that she would be the queen of
+the hour. She accepted Mr. Smithson's invitation for the Cowes week more
+graciously than she was wont to receive his attentions, and was pleased
+to say that the whole thing would be rather enjoyable.</p>
+
+<p>'It will be simple enchantment,' exclaimed the more enthusiastic
+Georgie Kirkbank. 'There is nothing so rapturous as life on board a
+yacht; there is a flavour of adventure, a <i>sansgêne</i>, a—in short
+everything in the world that I like. I shall wear my cotton frocks, and
+give myself up to enjoyment, lie on the deck and look up at the blue
+sky, too deliciously idle even to read the last horrid thing of Zola's.'</p>
+
+<p>But the Cowes Regatta wag nearly three weeks ahead; and in the meantime
+there was Goodwood, and the ravelled threads of the London season had to
+be wound up. And by this time it was known everywhere that the affair
+between Mr. Smithson and Maulevrier's sister was really on. 'It's as
+settled a business as the entries and bets for next year's Derby,' said
+one lounger to another in the smoking-room of the Haute Gomme. 'Play or
+pay, don't you know.'</p>
+
+<p>Lady Kirkbank and Lesbia had both written to Lady Maulevrier, Lesbia
+writing somewhat coldly, very briefly, and in a half defiant tone, to
+the effect that she had accepted Mr. Smithson's offer, and that she
+hoped her grandmother would be pleased with a match which everybody
+supposed to be extremely advantageous. She was going to Grasmere
+immediately after the Cowes week to see her dear grandmother, and to be
+assured of her approval. In the meanwhile she was awfully busy; there
+were callers driving up to the door at that very moment, and her brain
+was racked by the apprehension that she might not get her new gown in
+time for the Bachelor's Ball, which was to be quite one of the nicest
+things of the year, so dearest grandmother must excuse a hurried letter,
+etc., etc., etc.</p>
+
+<p>Georgie Kirkbank was more effusive, more lengthy. She expatiated upon
+the stupendous alliance which her sweetest Lesbia was about to make; and
+took credit to herself for having guided Lesbia's footsteps in the right
+way.</p>
+
+<p>'Smithson is a most difficult person,' she wrote. 'The least error of
+taste on your dear girl's part would have <i>froiss&eacute;d</i> him. Men with that
+immense wealth are always suspicious, ready to imagine mercenary
+motives, on their guard against being trapped. But Lesbia had <i>me</i> at
+her back, and she managed him perfectly. He is positively her slave; and
+you will be able to twist him round your little finger in the matter of
+settlements. You may do what you like with him, for the ground has been
+thoroughly prepared by <i>me</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>Lady Maulevrier's reply was not enthusiastic. She had no doubt Mr.
+Smithson was a very good match, according to the modern estimate of
+matrimonial alliances, in which money seemed to be the Alpha and Omega.
+But she had cherished views of another kind. She had hoped to see her
+dear granddaughter wear one of those noble and historic names which are
+a badge of distinction for all time. She had hoped to see her enter one
+of those grand old families which are a kind of royalty. And that Lesbia
+should marry a man whose sole distinction consisted of an immense
+fortune amassed heaven knows how, was a terrible blow to her pride.</p>
+
+<p>'But it is not the first,' wrote Lady Maulevrier. 'My pride has received
+crushing blows in days past, and I ought to be humbled to the dust. But
+there is a stubborn resistance in some natures which stands firm against
+every shock. You and Lesbia will both be surprised to hear that Mary,
+from whom I expected so little, has made a really great match. She was
+married yesterday afternoon in my morning room, by special licence, to
+the Earl of Hartfield, the lover of her choice, whom we at Fellside have
+all known as plain John Hammond. He is an admirable young man, and sure
+to make a great figure in the world, as no doubt you know better than I
+do, for you are in the way of hearing all about him. His courtship of
+Mary is quite an idyll; and the happy issue of this romantic love-affair
+has cheered and comforted me more than anything that has happened since
+Lesbia left me.'</p>
+
+<p>This letter, written in Fr&auml;ulein's niggling little hand, Lady Kirkbank
+handed to Lesbia, who read it through in silence; but when she came to
+that part of the letter which told of her sister's marriage, her cheek
+grew ashy pale, her brow contracted, and she started to her feet and
+stared at Lady Kirkbank with wild, dilated eyes, as if she had been
+stung by an adder.</p>
+
+<p>'A strange mystification, wasn't it?' said Lady Kirkbank, almost
+frightened at the awful look in Lesbia's face, which was even worse than
+Belle Trinder's expression when she read the announcement of Mr.
+Smithson's flight.</p>
+
+<p>'Strange mystification! It was base treachery—a vile and wicked lie!'
+cried Lesbia, furiously. 'What right had he to come to us under false
+colours, to pretend to be poor, a nobody—with only the vaguest hope of
+making a decent position in the future?—and to offer himself under such
+impossible conditions to a girl brought up as I had been—a girl
+educated by one of the proudest and most ambitious of women—to force me
+to renounce everything except him? How could he suppose that any girl,
+so placed, could decide in his favour? If he had loved me he would have
+told me the truth—he would not have made it impossible for me to accept
+him.'</p>
+
+<p>'I believe he is a very high flown young man,' said Lady Kirkbank,
+soothingly; 'he was never in <i>my</i> set, you know, dear. And I suppose he
+had some old Minerva-press idea that he would find a girl who would
+marry him for his own sake. And your sister, no doubt, eager to marry
+<i>anybody</i>, poor child, for the sake of getting away from that very
+lovely dungeon of Lady Maulevrier's, snapped at the chance; and by a
+mere fluke she becomes a countess.'</p>
+
+<p>Lesbia ignored these consolatory remarks. She was pacing the room like
+a tigress, her delicate cambric handkerchief grasped between her two
+hands, and torn and rent by the convulsive action of her fingers. She
+could have thrown herself from the balcony on to the spikes of the area
+railings, she could have dashed herself against yonder big plate-glass
+window looking towards the Green Park, like a bird which shatters his
+little life against the glass barrier which he mistakes for the open
+sky. She could have flung herself down on the floor and grovelled, and
+torn her hair—she could have done anything mad, wicked, desperate, in
+the wild rage of this moment.</p>
+
+<p>'Loved me!' she exclaimed; 'he never loved me. If he had he would have
+told me the truth. What, when I was in his arms, my head upon his
+breast, my whole being surrendered to him, adoring him, what more could
+he want? He must have known that this meant real love. And why should he
+put it upon me to fight so hard a fight—to brave my grandmother's
+anger—to be cursed by her—to face poverty for his sake? I never
+professed to be a heroine. He knew that I was a woman, with all a
+woman's weakness, a woman's fear of trial and difficulty in the future.
+It was a cowardly thing to use me so.'</p>
+
+<p>'It was,' said Lady Kirkbank, in the same soothing tone; 'but if you
+liked this Hammond-Hartfield creature a little in those old days, I
+know you have outlived that liking long ago.'</p>
+
+<p>'Of course; but it is a hard thing to know one has been fooled, cheated,
+weighed in the balance and found wanting,' said Lesbia, scornfully.</p>
+
+<p>She was taming down a little by this time, ashamed of that outbreak of
+violent passion, feeling that she had revealed too much to Lady
+Kirkbank.</p>
+
+<p>'It was a caddish thing to do,' said Georgie; 'and this Hartfield is
+just what I always thought him—an insufferable prig. However, my
+sweetest girl, there is really nothing to lament in the matter. Your
+sister has made a good alliance, which will score high in your favour
+by-and-by, and you are going to marry a man who is three times as rich
+as Lord Hartfield.'</p>
+
+<p>'Rich, yes; and nothing but rich; while Lord Hartfield is a man of the
+very highest standing, belongs to the flower of English nobility. Rich,
+yes; Mr. Smithson is rich; but, as Lady Maulevrier says, he has made his
+money heaven knows how.'</p>
+
+<p>'Mr. Smithson has not made his money heaven knows how,' answered Lady
+Kirkbank, indignantly. 'He has made it in cochineal, in iron, in
+gunpowder, in coal, in all kinds of commodities. Everybody in the City
+knows how he has made his money, and that he has a genius for turning
+everything into gold. If the gold changes back into one of the baser
+metals, it is only when Mr. Smithson has made all he wanted to make. And
+now he has quite done with the City. The House is the only business of
+his life; and he is becoming a power in the House. You have every reason
+to be proud of your choice, Lesbia.'</p>
+
+<p>'I will try to be proud of it,' said Lesbia, resolutely. 'I will not be
+scorned and trampled upon by Mary.'</p>
+
+<p>'She seemed a harmless kind of girl,' said Lady Kirkbank, as if she had
+been talking of a housemaid.</p>
+
+<p>'She is a designing minx,' exclaimed Lesbia, 'and has set her cap at
+that man from the very beginning.'</p>
+
+<p>'But she could not have known that he was Lord Hartfield.'</p>
+
+<p>'No; but he was a man; and that was enough for her.'</p>
+
+<p>From this time forward there was a change in Lady Lesbia's style and
+manner—a change very much for the worse, as old-fashioned people
+thought; but to the taste of some among Lady Kirkbank's set, the change
+was an improvement. She was gayer than of old, gay with a reckless
+vivacity, intensely eager for action and excitement, for cards and
+racing, and all the strongest stimulants of fashionable life. Most
+people ascribed this increased vivacity, this electric manner, to the
+fact of her engagement to Horace Smithson. She was giddy with her
+triumph, dazzled by a vision of the gold which was soon to be hers.</p>
+
+<p>'Egad, if I saw myself in a fair way of being able to write cheques upon
+such an account as Smithson's I should be as wild as Lady Lesbia,' said
+one of the damsel's military admirers at the Rag. 'And I believe the
+young lady was slightly dipped.'</p>
+
+<p>'Who told you that?' asked his friend.</p>
+
+<p>'A mother of mine,' answered the youth, with an apologetic air, as if he
+hardly cared to own such a humdrum relationship. 'Seraphine, the
+dressmaker, was complaining—wanted to see the colour of Lady Lesbia
+Haselden's money—vulgar curiosity—asked my old mother if she thought
+the account was safe, and so on. That's how I came to know all about
+it.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, she'll be able to pay Seraphine next season.'</p>
+
+<p>Lord Maulevrier came back to London directly after his sister's wedding.
+The event, which came off so quietly, so happily, filled him with
+unqualified joy. He had hoped from the very first that his Molly would
+win the cup, even while Lesbia was making all the running, as he said
+afterwards. And Molly had won, and was the wife of one of the best young
+men in England. Maulevrier, albeit unused to the melting-mood, shed a
+tear or two for very joy as the sister he loved and the friend of his
+boyhood and youth stood side by side in the quiet room at Grasmere, and
+spoke the solemn words that made them one for ever.</p>
+
+<p>The first news he heard after his return to town was of Lesbia's
+engagement, which was common talk at the clubs. The visitors at Rood
+Hall had come back to London full of the event, and were proud of giving
+a detailed account of the affair to outsiders.</p>
+
+<p>They all talked patronisingly of Smithson, and seemed to think it
+rather a wonderful fact that he did not drop his aspirates or eat peas
+with a knife.</p>
+
+<p>'A man of stirling metal,' said the gossips, 'who can hold his own with
+many a fellow born in the purple.'</p>
+
+<p>Maulevrier called in Arlington Street, but Lady Kirkbank and her
+<i>prot&eacute;g&eacute;e</i> were out; and it was at a cricket match at the Orleans Club
+that the brother and sister met for the first time after Lord
+Hartfield's wedding, which by this time had been in all the papers; a
+very simple announcement:</p>
+
+<p>'On the 29th inst., at Grasmere, by the Reverend Douglass Brooke, the
+Earl of Hartfield to Mary, younger daughter of the ninth Earl of
+Maulevrier.'</p>
+
+<p>Lesbia was the centre of a rather noisy little court, in which Mr.
+Smithson was conspicuous by his superior reserve.</p>
+
+<p>He did not exert himself as a lover, paid no compliments, was not
+sentimental. The pearl was won, and he wore it very quietly; but
+wherever Lesbia went he went; she was hardly ever out of his sight.</p>
+
+<p>Maulevrier received the coolest possible greeting. Lesbia turned pale
+with anger at sight of him, for his presence reminded her of the most
+humiliating passage in her life; but the big red satin sunshade
+concealed that pale angry look, and nothing in Lesbia's manner betrayed
+emotion.</p>
+
+<p>'Where have you been hiding yourself all this time, and why were you not
+at Henley?' she asked.</p>
+
+<p>'I have been at Grasmere.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, you were a witness of that most romantic marriage. The Lady of
+Lyons reversed, the gardener's son turning out to be an earl. Was it
+excruciatingly funny?'</p>
+
+<p>'It was one of the most solemn weddings I ever saw.'</p>
+
+<p>'Solemn! what, with my Tomboy sister as bride! Impossible!'</p>
+
+<p>'Your sister ceased to be a Tomboy when she fell in love. She is a sweet
+and womanly woman, and will make an adorable wife to the finest fellow I
+know. I hear I am to congratulate you, Lesbia, upon your engagement with
+Mr. Smithson.'</p>
+
+<p>'If you think <i>I</i> am the person to be congratulated, you are at liberty
+to do so. My engagement is a fact.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, of course, Mr. Smithson is the winner. But as I hope you intend to
+be happy, I wish you joy. I am told Smithson is a really excellent
+fellow when one gets to know him; and I shall make it my business to be
+better acquainted with him.'</p>
+
+<p>Smithson was standing just out of hearing, watching the bowling.
+Maulevrier went over to him and shook hands, their acquaintance hitherto
+having been of the slightest, and very shy upon his lordship's part; but
+now Smithson could see that Maulevrier meant to be cordial.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XXXVI"></a><h2>CHAPTER XXXVI.</h2>
+
+<h3>A RASTAQUOUÈRE.</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>There was a dinner party in one of the new houses in Grosvenor Place
+that evening, to which Lady Kirkbank and Lesbia had been bidden. The new
+house belonged to a new man, who was supposed to have made millions out
+of railways, and other gigantic achievements in the engineering line;
+and the new man and his wife were friends of Mr. Smithson, and had made
+the simple Georgie's acquaintance only within the last three weeks.</p>
+
+<p>'Of course they are stupid, my dear,' she remarked, in response to some
+slighting remark of Lesbia's, 'but I am always willing to know rich
+people. One drops in for so many good things; and they never want any
+return in kind. It is quite enough for them to be allowed to spend their
+money <i>upon us.</i>'</p>
+
+<p>The house was gorgeous in all the glory of the very latest fashions in
+upholstery; hall Algerian; dining-room Pompeian; drawing-room Early
+Italian; music-room Louis Quatorze; billiard-room mediæval English. The
+dinner was as magnificent as dinner can be made. Three-fourths of the
+guests were the <i>haute gomme</i> of the financial world, and perspired
+gold. The other third belonged to a class which Mr. Smithson described
+somewhat contemptuously as the shake-back nobility. An Irish peer, a
+younger son of a ducal house that had run to seed, a political agitator,
+a grass widow whose titled husband was governor of an obscure colony, an
+ancient dowager with hair which was too luxuriant to be anything but a
+wig, and diamonds which were so large as to suggest paste.</p>
+
+<p>Lesbia sat by her affianced at the glittering table, lighted with
+clusters of wax candles, which shone upon a level <i>parterre</i> of tea
+roses, gardenias, and gloire de Malmaison carnations; from which rose at
+intervals groups of silver-gilt dolphins, supporting shallow golden
+dishes piled with peaches, grapes, and all the costliest produce of
+Covent Garden.</p>
+
+<p>Conversation was not particularly brilliant, nor had the guests an
+elated air. The thermometer was near eighty, and at this period of the
+season everybody was tired of this kind of dinner, and would gladly have
+foregone the greatest achievements of culinary art, in favour of a
+chicken and a salad, eaten under green leaves, in a garden at Wargrave
+or Henley, within sound of the rippling river.</p>
+
+<p>On Lesbia's right hand there was a portly personage of Jewish type, dark
+to swarthiness, and somewhat oily, whose every word suggested bullion.
+He and Mr. Smithson were evidently acquaintances of long standing, and
+Mr. Smithson presented him to Lesbia, whereupon he joined in their
+conversation now and then.</p>
+
+<p>His talk was of the usual standard. He had seen everything worth seeing
+in London and in Paris, between which cities he seemed to oscillate with
+such frequency that he might be said to live in both places at once. He
+had his stall at Covent Garden, and his stall at the Grand Opera. He was
+a subscriber at the Theatre Fran&ccedil;ais. He had seen all the races at
+Longchamps and Chantilly, as well as at Sandown and Ascot. But every now
+and then he and Mr. Smithson drifted from the customary talk about
+operas and races, pictures and French novels, to the wider world of
+commerce and speculation, mines, waterworks, and foreign loans—and
+Lesbia leant back in her chair, and fanned herself languidly, with
+half-closed eyelids, while two or three courses went round, she giving
+the little supercilious look at each <i>entrée</i> offered to her, to be
+observed on such occasions, as if the thing offered were particularly
+nasty.</p>
+
+<p>She wondered how long the two men were going to prose about mines and
+shares, in those subdued half-mysterious voices, telling each other
+occult facts in half-expressed phrases, utterly dark to the outside
+world; but, while she was languidly wondering, a change in her lover's
+manner startled her into keenest curiosity.</p>
+
+<p>'Montesma is in Paris,' said Mr. Sampayo, the dark gentleman; 'I dined
+last week with him at the Continental.'</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Smithson's complexion faded curiously, and a leaden darkness came
+over his countenance, as of a man whose heart and lungs suddenly refuse
+their office. But in a few moments he was smiling feebly.</p>
+
+<p>'Indeed! I thought he was played out years ago.'</p>
+
+<p>'A man of that kind is never played out. Don Gomez de Montesma is as
+clever as Satan, as handsome as Apollo, and he bears one of the oldest
+names in Castile. Such a man will always come to the front. <i>C'est un
+rastaquouère mais rastaquouère de bon genre</i>. You knew him intimately
+<i>là bas</i>, I believe?'</p>
+
+<p>'In Cuba; yes, we were pretty good friends once.'</p>
+
+<p>'And were useful to each other, no doubt,' said Mr. Sampayo, pleasantly.
+'Was that Argentiferous Copper Company in sixty-four yours or his?'</p>
+
+<p>'There were a good many people concerned in it.'</p>
+
+<p>'No doubt; it takes a good many people to work that kind of thing, but I
+fancy you and Montesma were about the only two who came out of it
+pleasantly. And he and you did a little in the shipping line, didn't
+you—African produce? However, that's an old song. You have had so many
+good things since then.'</p>
+
+<p>'Did Montesma talk of coming to London?'</p>
+
+<p>'He did not talk about it; but he would hardly go back to the tropics
+without having a look round on both sides of the Channel. He was always
+fond of society, pretty women, dancing, and amusements of all kinds. I
+have no doubt we shall see him here before the end of the season.'</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Smithson pursued the subject no further. He turned to Lesbia, who had
+been curiously interested in this little bit of conversation—interested
+first because Smithson had seemed agitated by the mention of the
+Spaniard's name; secondly, because of the description of the man, which
+had a romantic sound. The very word tropic suggested a romance. And
+Lesbia, whose mind was jaded by the monotony of a London season, the
+threadbare fabric of society conversation, kindled at any image which
+appealed to her fancy.</p>
+
+<p>Clever as Satan, handsome as Apollo, scion of an old Castilian family,
+fresh from the tropics. Her imagination dwelt upon the ideas which these
+words had conjured up.</p>
+
+<p>Three days after this she was at the opera with her chaperon, her lover
+in attendance as usual. The opera was &quot;Faust,&quot; with Nillson as
+Marguerite. After the performance they were to drive down to Twickenham
+on Mr. Smithson's drag, and to dance and sup at the Orleans. The last
+ball of the season was on this evening; and Lesbia had been persuaded
+that it was to be a particular <i>recherch&eacute;</i> ball, and that only the very
+nicest people were to be present. At any rate, the drive under the light
+of a July moon would be delicious; and if they did not like the people
+they found there they could eat their supper and come away immediately
+after, as Lady Kirkbank remarked philosophically.</p>
+
+<p>The opera was nearly over—that grand scene of Valentine's death was
+on—and Lesbia was listening breathlessly to every note, watching every
+look of the actors, when there came a modest little knock at the door of
+her box. She darted an angry glance round, and shrugged her shoulders
+vexatiously. What Goth had dared to knock during that thrilling scene?</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Smithson rose and crept to the door and quietly opened it.</p>
+
+<p>A dark, handsome man, who was a total stranger to Lesbia, glided in,
+shaking hands with Smithson as he entered.</p>
+
+<p>Till this moment Lesbia's whole being had been absorbed in the
+scene—that bitter anathema of the brother, the sister's cry of anguish
+and shame. Where else is there tragedy so human, so enthralling—grief
+that so wrings the spectator's heart? It needed a Goethe and a Gounod to
+produce this masterpiece.</p>
+
+<p>In an instant, in a flash, Lesbia's interest in the stage was gone. Her
+first glance at the stranger told her who he was. The olive tint, the
+eyes of deepest black, the grand form of the head and perfect chiselling
+of the features could belong only to that scion of an old Castilian race
+whom she had heard described the other evening—'clever as Satan,
+handsome as Apollo.'</p>
+
+<p>Yes, this must be the man, Don Gomez de Montesma. There was nothing in
+Mr. Smithson's manner to indicate that the Spaniard was an unwelcome
+guest. On the contrary, Smithson received him with a cordiality which in
+a man of naturally reserved manner seemed almost rapture. The curtain
+fell, and he presented Don Gomez to Lady Kirkbank and Lady Lesbia;
+whereupon dear Georgie began to gush, after her wont, and to ask a good
+many questions in a manner that was too girlish to seem impertinent.</p>
+
+<p>'How perfectly you speak English!' she exclaimed. 'You must have lived
+in England a good deal.'</p>
+
+<p>'On the contrary, it is my misfortune to have lived here very little,
+but I have known a good many English and Americans in Cuba and in
+Paris.'</p>
+
+<p>'In Cuba! Do you really come from Cuba? I have always fancied that Cuba
+must be an altogether charming place to live in—like Biarritz or Pau,
+don't you know, only further away. Do please tell me where it is, and
+what kind of a place.'</p>
+
+<p>Geographically, Lady Kirkbank's mind was a blank. It was quite a
+revelation to her to find that Cuba was an island.</p>
+
+<p>'It must be a lovely spot!' exclaimed the fervid creature. 'Let me see,
+now, what do we get from Cuba?—cigars—and—and tobacco. I suppose in
+Cuba everybody smokes?'</p>
+
+<p>'Men, women, and children.'</p>
+
+<p>'How delicious! Would that I were a Cuban! And the natives, are they
+nice?'</p>
+
+<p>'There are no aborigines. The Indians whom Columbus found soon perished
+off the face of the island. European civilisation generally has that
+effect. But one of our most benevolent captain-generals provided us with
+an imported population of niggers.'</p>
+
+<p>'How delightful. I have always longed to live among a slave population,
+dear submissive black things dressed in coral necklaces and feathers,
+instead of the horrid over-fed wretches we have to wait upon us. And if
+the aborigines were not wanted it was just as well for them to die out,
+don't you know,' prattled Lady Kirkbank.</p>
+
+<p>'It was very accommodating of them, no doubt. Yet we could employ half a
+million of them, if we had them, in draining our swamps. Agriculture
+suffered by the loss of Indian labour.'</p>
+
+<p>'I suppose they were like the creatures in Pizarro, poor dear yellow
+things with brass bracelets,' said Lady Kirkbank. 'I remember seeing
+Macready as Rolla when I was quite a little thing.'</p>
+
+<p>And now the curtain rose for the last act.</p>
+
+<p>'Do you care about staying for the end?' asked Mr. Smithson of Lesbia.
+'It will make us rather late at the Orleans.'</p>
+
+<p>'Never mind how late we are,' said Lesbia, imperiously. 'I have always
+been cheated out of this last act for some stupid party. Imagine losing
+Gounod and Nillson for the sake of struggling through the mob on a
+stifling staircase, and being elbowed by inane young men, with gardenias
+in their coats.'</p>
+
+<p>Lady Lesbia had a pretty little way of always opposing any suggestion of
+her sweetheart. She was resolved to treat him as badly as a future
+husband could be treated. In consenting to marry him she had done him a
+favour which was a great deal more than such a person had any right to
+expect.</p>
+
+<p>She leant forward to watch and listen, with her elbow resting on the
+velvet cushion—her head upon her hand, and she seemed absorbed in the
+scene. But this was mere outward seeming. All the enchantment of music
+and acting was over. She only heard and saw vaguely, as if it were a
+shadowy scene enacted ever so far away. Every now and then her eyes
+glanced involuntarily toward Don Gomez, who stood leaning against the
+back of the box, pale, languid, graceful, poetic, an altogether
+different type of manhood from that with which she had of late been
+satiated.</p>
+
+<p>Those deep dark eyes of his had a dreamy look. They gazed across the
+dazzling house, into space, above Lady Lesbia's head. They seemed to see
+nothing; and they certainly were not looking at her.</p>
+
+<p>Don Gomez was the first man she ever remembered to have been presented
+to her who did not favour her with a good deal of hard staring, more or
+less discreetly managed, during the first ten minutes of their
+acquaintance. On him her beauty fell flat. He evidently failed to
+recognise her supreme loveliness. It might be that she was the wrong
+type for Cuba. Every nation has its own Venus; and that far away spot
+beyond the torrid zone might have a somewhat barbarous idea of beauty.
+At any rate, Don Gomez was apparently unimpressed. And yet Lesbia
+flattered herself that she was looking her best to-night, and that her
+costume was a success. She wore a white satin gown, short in the skirt,
+for the luxury of freedom in waltzing, and made with Quaker-like
+simplicity, the bodice high to the throat, fitting her like a sheath.</p>
+
+<p>Her only ornaments were a garland of scarlet poppies wreathed from
+throat to shoulder, and a large diamond heart which Mr. Smithson had
+lately given her; 'a bullock's heart,' as Lady Kirkbank called it.</p>
+
+<p>When the curtain fell, and not till then, she rose and allowed herself
+to be clad in a brown velvet Newmarket, which completely covered her
+short satin gown. She had a little brown velvet toque to match the
+Newmarket, and thus attired she would be able to take her seat on the
+drag which was waiting on the quietest side of Covent Garden.</p>
+
+<p>'Why should not you go with us, Don Gomez?' exclaimed Lady Kirkbank, in
+a gush of hospitality. 'The drive will be charming—not equal to your
+tropical Cuba—but intensely nice. And the gardens will be something too
+sweet on such a night as this. I knew them when the dear Duc d'Aumale
+was there. Ay de mi, such a man!'</p>
+
+<p>Lady Kirkbank sighed, with the air of having known his Alt&eacute;sse Royale
+intimately.</p>
+
+<p>'I should be charmed,' said Don Gomez, 'if I thought my friend Smithson
+wanted me. Would you really like to have me, Smithson?'</p>
+
+<p>'I should be enchanted.'</p>
+
+<p>'And there is room on the drag?'</p>
+
+<p>'Room enough for half-a-dozen. I am only taking Sir George Kirkbank and
+Colonel Delville—whom we are to pick up at the Haute Gomme—and Mr. and
+Mrs. Mostyn, who are in the stalls.'</p>
+
+<p>'A nice snug little party,' exclaimed that charming optimist, Lady
+Kirkbank. 'I hate a crowd on a drag. The way some of the members of the
+Four-in-hand Club load their coaches on parade reminds me of a
+Beanfeast!'</p>
+
+<p>They found Lady Kirkbank's footman and one of Mr. Smithson's grooms
+waiting in the hall of the opera house. The groom to conduct them to the
+spot where the drag was waiting; the footman to carry wraps and take his
+mistress's final orders. There was a Bohemian flavour in the little walk
+to the great fruit garden, which was odorous of bruised peaches and
+stale salads as they passed it. Waggon-loads of cabbages and other
+garden stuff were standing about by the old church; the roadway was
+littered with the refuse of the market; and the air was faint and heavy
+with the scent of herbs and flowers.</p>
+
+<p>Lesbia mounted lightly to her place of honour on the box-seat; and Lady
+Kirkbank was hoisted up after her. Mr. and Mrs. Mostyn followed; and
+then Don Gomez took his seat by Lady Kirkbank's side and behind Lesbia,
+a vantage point from which he could talk to her as much as he liked. Mr.
+Smithson seated himself a minute afterwards, and drove off by King
+Street and Leicester Square and on to Piccadilly, steering cleverly
+through the traffic of cabs and carriages, which was at its apogee just
+now, when all the theatres were disgorging their crowds. Piccadilly was
+quieter, yet there were plenty of carriages, late people going to
+parties and early people going home, horses slipping and sliding on
+stones or wood, half the roadway up, and luminous with lanterns. They
+stopped in front of the Haute Gomme, where they picked up Sir George
+Kirkbank and Colonel Delville, a big man with a patriarchal head,
+supposed to be one of the finest whist players in London, and to make a
+handsome income by his play. He had ridden in the Balaclava charge, was
+a favourite everywhere, and, albeit no genius, was much cleverer than
+his friend and school-fellow, George Kirkbank. They had been at Eton
+together, had both made love to the lively Georgie, and had been
+inseparables for the last thirty years.</p>
+
+<p>'Couldn't get on without Delville,' said Sir George; 'dooced smart
+fellow, sir. Knows the ropes; and does all the thinking for both of us.'</p>
+
+<p>And now they were fairly started, and the team fell into a rattling
+pace, with the road pretty clear before them. Hyde Park was one
+umbrageous darkness, edged by long lines of golden light. Coolness and
+silence enfolded all things in the summer midnight, and Lesbia, not
+prone to romance, sank into a dreamy state of mind, as she leaned back
+in her seat and watched the shadowy trees glide by, the long vista of
+lamps and verdure in front of her. She was glad that no one talked to
+her, for talk of any kind must have broken the spell. Don Gomez sat like
+a statue in his place behind her. From Lady Kirkbank, the loquacious,
+came a gentle sound of snoring, a subdued, ladylike snore, breathed
+softly at intervals, like a sigh. Mr. Smithson had his team, and his own
+thoughts, too, for occupation,—thoughts which to-night were not
+altogether pleasant.</p>
+
+<p>At the back of the coach Mrs. Mostyn was descanting on the evolution of
+the nautilus, and the relationship of protoplasm and humanity, to
+Colonel Delville, who sat smiling placidly behind an immense cigar, and
+accepted the most stupendous facts and the most appalling theories with
+a friendly little nod of his handsome head.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Mostyn frankly slept, as it was his custom to do upon all convenient
+occasions. He called it recuperating.</p>
+
+<p>'Frank ought to be delightfully fresh, for he recuperated all the way
+down,' said his wife, when they alighted in the dewy garden at
+Twickenham, in front of the lamp-lit portico.</p>
+
+<p>'I wouldn't have minded his recuperating if he hadn't snored so
+abominably,' remarked Colonel Delville.</p>
+
+<p>It was nearly one o'clock, and the ball had thinned a little, which made
+it all the better for those who remained. Mr. Smithson's orders had been
+given two days ago, and the very best of the waiters had been told off
+for his especial service. The ladies went upstairs to take off their
+wrappings and mufflings, and Lesbia emerged dazzling from her brown
+velvet Newmarket, while Lady Kirkbank, bending closely over the
+looking-glass, like a witch over a caldron, repaired her complexion with
+cotton wool.</p>
+
+<p>They went through the conservatory to the octagon dining-room, where the
+supper was ready, a special supper, on a table by a window, a table
+laden with exotics and brilliant with glass and silver. The supper was,
+of course, perfect in its way. Mr. Smithson's <i>chef</i> had been down to
+see about it, and Mr. Smithson's own particular champagne and the claret
+grown in his own particular <i>clos</i> in the Gironde, had been sent down
+for the feast. No common cuisine, no common wine could be good enough;
+and yet there was a day when the cheapest gargote in Belleville or
+Montmartre was good enough for Mr. Smithson. There had been days on
+which he did not dine at all, and when the fumes of a <i>gibelotte</i>
+steaming from a workman's restaurant made his mouth water.</p>
+
+<p>The supper was all life and gaiety. Everyone was hungry and thirsty, and
+freshened by the drive, except Lesbia. She was singularly silent, ate
+hardly anything, but drank three or four glasses of champagne.</p>
+
+<p>Don Gomez was not a great talker. He had the air of a prince of the
+blood royal, who expects other people to talk and to keep him amused.
+But the little he said was to the point. He had a fine baritone, very
+low and subdued, and had a languor which was almost insolent, but not
+without its charm. There was an air of originality about the manner and
+the man.</p>
+
+<p>He was the typical <i>rastaquouère</i>, a man of finished manners, and
+unknown antecedents, a foreigner, apparently rich, obviously
+accomplished, but with that indefinable air which bespeaks the
+adventurer; and which gives society as fair a warning as if the man wore
+a placard on his shoulder with the word <i>cave</i>.</p>
+
+<p>But to Lesbia this Spaniard was the first really interesting man she had
+met since she saw John Hammond; and her interest in him was much more
+vivid than her interest in Hammond had been at the beginning of their
+acquaintance. That pale face, with its tint of old ivory, those thin,
+finely-cut lips, indicative of diabolical craft, could she but read
+aright, those unfathomable eyes, touched her fancy as it had never yet
+been touched, awoke within her that latent vein of romance,
+self-abnegation, supreme foolishness, which lurks in the nature of every
+woman, be she chaste as ice and pure as snow.</p>
+
+<p>The supper was long. It was past two o'clock, and the ballroom was
+thinly occupied, when Mr. Smithson's party went there.</p>
+
+<p>'You won't dance to-night, I suppose?' said Smithson, as Lesbia and he
+went slowly down the room arm in arm. It was in a pause between two
+waltzes. The wide window at the end was opened to the summer night, and
+the room was delightfully cool. 'You must be horribly tired?'</p>
+
+<p>'I am not in the least tired, and I mean to waltz, if anyone will ask
+me,' replied Lesbia, decisively.</p>
+
+<p>'I ought to have asked you to dance, and then it would have been the
+other way,' said Smithson, with a touch of acrimony. 'Surely you have
+dancing enough in town, and you might be obliging for once in a way,
+and come and sit with me in the garden, and listen to the nightingales.'</p>
+
+<p>'There are no nightingales after June. There is the Manola,' as the band
+struck up, 'my very favourite waltz.'</p>
+
+<p>Don Gomez was at her elbow at this moment</p>
+
+<p>'May I have the honour of this waltz with you, Lady Lesbia?' he asked;
+and then with a serio-comic glance at his stoutish friend, 'I don't
+think Smithson waltzes?'</p>
+
+<p>'I have been told that nobody can waltz who has been born on this side
+of the Pyrenees,' answered Lesbia, withdrawing her arm from her lover's,
+and slipping, it through the Spaniard's, with the air of a slave who
+obeys a master.</p>
+
+<p>Smithson looked daggers, and retired to a corner of the room glowering.
+Were a man twenty-two times millionaire, like the Parisian Rothschild,
+he could not find armour against the poisoned arrows of jealousy. Don
+Gomez possessed many of those accomplishments which make men dangerous,
+but as a dancer he was <i>hors ligne</i>; and Horace Smithson knew that there
+is no surer road to a girl's fancy than the magic circle of a waltz.</p>
+
+<p>Those two were floating round the room in the old slow legato step,
+which recalled to Smithson the picture of a still more spacious room in
+an island under the Southern Cross—the blue water of the bay shining
+yonder under the starlight of the tropics, fire-flies gleaming and
+flashing in the foliage beyond the open windows, fire-flies flashing
+amidst the gauzy draperies of the dancers, and this same Gomez revolving
+with the same slow languid grace, his arm encircling the <i>svelte</i> figure
+of a woman whose southern beauty outshone Lesbia's blonde English
+loveliness as the tropical stars outshine the lamps that light our
+colder skies. Yes, every detail of the scene flashed back into his mind,
+as if a curtain had been suddenly plucked back from a long-hidden
+picture. The Cuban's tall slim figure, the head gently bent towards his
+partner's head, as at this moment, and those dark eyes looking up at
+him, intoxicated with that nameless, indefinable fascination which it is
+the lot of some men to exercise.</p>
+
+<p>'He robbed me of <i>her</i>!' thought Smithson, gloomily. 'Will he rob me of
+this one too? Surely not! Havana is Havana—and this one is not a
+Creole. If I cannot trust that lovely piece of marble, there is no woman
+on earth to be trusted.'</p>
+
+<p>He turned his back upon the dancers, and went out into the garden. His
+soul was wrung with jealousy, yet he could watch no longer. There was
+too much pain—there were too many bitter memories of shame, and loss,
+and ignominy evoked by that infernal picture. If he had been free he
+would have asserted his authority as Lesbia's future husband; he would
+have taken her away from the Orleans; he would have told her plainly and
+frankly that Don Gomez was no fit person for her to know; and he would
+have so planned that they two should never meet again. But Horace
+Smithson was not free. He was bound hand and foot by those fetters which
+the chain of past events had forged—stern facts which the man himself
+may forget, or try to forget, but which other people never forget. There
+is generally some dark spot in the history of such men as Smithson—men
+who climb the giddiest heights of this world with that desperate
+rapidity which implies many a perilous leap from crag to crag, many a
+moraine skimmed over, and many an awful gulf spanned by a hair-breadth
+bridge. Mr. Smithson's history was not without such spots; and the
+darkest of all had relation to his career in Cuba. The story had been
+known by very few—perhaps completely known only by one man; and that
+man was Gomez de Montesma.</p>
+
+<p>For the last fifteen years the most fervent desire of Horace Smithson's
+heart had been the hope that tropical nature, in any one of her various
+disagreeable forms, would be obliging enough to make an end of Gomez.
+But the forces of nature had not worked on Mr. Smithson's side. No
+loathsome leprosy had eaten his enemy's flesh; neither cayman nor
+crocodile, neither Juba snake nor poisonous spider had marked him for
+its prey. The tropical sun had left him unsmitten. He had lived and he
+had prospered; and he was here, like a guilty conscience incarnate, to
+spoil Horace Smithson's peace.</p>
+
+<p>'I must be diplomatic,' Smithson said to himself, as he walked up and
+down an avenue of Irish yews, in a solitary part of the grounds, smoking
+his cigarette, and hearing the music swell and sink in the distance. 'I
+will give her a hint as to that man's character, and I will keep them
+apart as much as I can. But if he forces himself upon me there is no
+help for it. I cannot afford to be uncivil to him.'</p>
+
+<p>'Cannot afford' in this instance meant 'dare not,' and Horace Smithson's
+thoughts as he paced the yew-tree walk were full of gloom.</p>
+
+<p>During that long meditation he made up his mind on one point, namely,
+that, let him suffer what pangs he might, he must not betray his
+jealousy. To do that would be to lower himself in Lesbia's eyes, and to
+play into his rival's hand; for a jealous man is almost always
+contemptible in the sight of his mistress. He would carry himself as if
+he were sure of her fidelity; and this very confidence, with a woman of
+honour, a girl reared as Lesbia had been reared, would render it
+impossible for her to betray him. He would show himself high-minded,
+confident, generous, chivalrous, even; and he would trust to chance for
+the issue. Chance was Mr. Smithson's only idea of Divinity; and Chance
+had hitherto been kind to him. There had been dark hours in his life,
+but the darkness had not lasted long; and the lucky accidents of his
+career had been of a nature to beguile him into the belief that among
+the favourites of Destiny he stood first and foremost.</p>
+
+<p>While Mr. Smithson mused thus, alone and in the darkness, Montesma and
+Lady Lesbia were wandering arm in arm in another and lovelier part of
+the grounds, where golden lights were scattered like Cuban fire-flies
+among the foliage of seringa and magnolia, arbutus and rhododendron,
+while at intervals a sudden flush of rosier light was shed over garden
+and river, as if by enchantment, surprising a couple here and there in
+the midst of a flirtation which had begun in darkness.</p>
+
+<p>The grounds were lovely in the balmy atmosphere of a July night, the
+river gliding with mysterious motion under the stars, great masses of
+gloom darkening the stream with an almost awful look where the woods of
+Petersham and Ham House cast their dense shadows on the water. Don Gomez
+and his companion wandered by the river side to a spot where a group of
+magnolias sheltered them from the open lawn, and where there were some
+rustic chairs close to the balustrade which protected the parapet. In
+this spot, which was a kind of island, divided from the rest of the
+grounds by the intervening road, they found themselves quite alone, and
+in the midst of a summer stillness which was broken only by the low,
+lazy ripple of the tide running seawards. The lights of Richmond looked
+far away, and the little town with its variety of levels had an Italian
+air in the distance.</p>
+
+<p>From the ballroom, faint and fitful, came the music of a waltz.</p>
+
+<p>'I'm afraid I've brought you too far,' said Don Gomez.</p>
+
+<p>'On the contrary, it is a relief to get away from the lights and the
+people. How delicious this river is! I was brought up on the shores of a
+lake; but after all a lake is horribly tame. Its limits are always
+staring one in the face. There is no room for one's imagination to
+wander. Now a river like this suggests an infinity of possibilities,
+drifting on and on and on into undiscovered regions, by ever-varying
+shores. I feel to-night as if I should like to step into that little
+boat yonder,' pointing to a light skiff bobbing gently up and down with
+the tide, at the bottom of a flight of steps, 'and let the stream take
+me wherever it chose.'</p>
+
+<p>'If I could but go with you,' said Gomez, in that deep and musical tone
+which made the commonest words seem melody, 'I would ask for neither
+compass nor rudder. What could it matter whither the boat took me? There
+is no place under the stars which would not be a paradise—with you.'</p>
+
+<p>'Please don't make a dreamy aspiration the occasion for a compliment,'
+exclaimed Lesbia, lightly. 'What I said was so silly that I don't wonder
+you thought it right to say something just a little sillier. But
+moonlight and running water have a curious effect upon me; and I, who am
+the most prosaic among women, become ridiculously sentimental.'</p>
+
+<p>'I cannot believe that you are prosaic.'</p>
+
+<p>'I assure you it is perfectly true. I am of the earth, earthy; a woman
+of the world, in my first season, ambitious, fond of pleasure, vain,
+proud, exacting, all those things which I am told a woman ought not to
+be.'</p>
+
+<p>'You pain me when you so slander yourself; and I shall make it the
+business of my life to find out how much truth there is in that
+self-slander. For my own part I do not believe a word of it; but as it
+is rude to contradict a lady I will only say that I reserve my opinion.'</p>
+
+<p>'Are you to stay long in England?' asked Lesbia.</p>
+
+<p>She was leaning against the stone balustrade in a careless attitude, as
+of one who was weary, her elbow on the stone slab, and her head thrown
+back against her arm. The white satin gown, moulded to her figure, had a
+statuesque air, and she looked like a marble statue in the dim light,
+every line of the graceful form expressive of repose.</p>
+
+<p>'That will depend. I am not particularly fond of London. A very little
+of your English Babylon satisfies me, in a general way; but there are
+conditions which might make England enchanting. Where do you go at the
+end of the season?'</p>
+
+<p>'First to Goodwood, and then to Cowes. Mr. Smithson is so kind as to
+place his yacht at Lady Kirkbank's disposal, and I am to be her guest on
+board the Cayman, just as I am in Arlington Street.'</p>
+
+<p>'The Cayman! That name is a reminiscence of Mr. Smithson's South
+American travels.'</p>
+
+<p>'No doubt! Was he long in South America?'</p>
+
+<p>'Three or four years.'</p>
+
+<p>'But not in Cuba all that time, I suppose?'</p>
+
+<p>'He had business relations with Cuba all that time, and oscillated
+between our island and the main. He was rather fortunate in his little
+adventures with us—made almost as much money as General Tacon, of
+blessed memory. But I dare say Smithson has told you all his adventures
+in that part of the world.'</p>
+
+<p>'No, he very rarely talks about his travels: and I am not particularly
+interested in commercial speculations. There is always so much to think
+of and talk about in the business of the moment. Are you fond of Cuba?'</p>
+
+<p>'Not passionately. I always feel as if I were an exile there, and yet
+one of my ancestors was with Columbus when he discovered the island, and
+my race were among the earliest settlers. My family has given three
+Captain-generals to Cuba: but I cannot forget that I belong to an older
+world, and have forfeited that which ought to have been a brilliant
+place in Europe for the luxurious obscurity of a colony.'</p>
+
+<p>'But you must be attached to a place in which your family have lived for
+so many generations?'</p>
+
+<p>'I like the stars and the sea, the mountains and savannas, the tropical
+vegetation, and the dreamy, half-oriental life; but at best it is a kind
+of stagnation, and after a residence of a few months in the island of my
+birth I generally spread my wings for the wider world of the old
+continent or the new.'</p>
+
+<p>'You must have travelled so much,' said Lesbia, with a sigh. 'I have
+been nowhere and seen nothing. I feel like a child who has been shut up
+in a nursery all its life, and knows of no world beyond four walls.'</p>
+
+<p>'Not to travel is not to live,' said Don Gomez.</p>
+
+<p>'I am to be in Italy next November, I believe,' said Lesbia, not caring
+to own that this Italian trip was to be her honeymoon.</p>
+
+<p>'Italy!' exclaimed the Spaniard, contemptuously. 'Once the finishing
+school of the English nobility; now the happy hunting-ground of the
+Cockney tourist and the prosperous Yankee. All the poetry of Italy has
+been dried up, and the whole country vulgarised. If you want romance in
+the old world go to Spain; in the new, try Peru or Brazil, Mexico or
+California.'</p>
+
+<p>'I am afraid I am not adventurous enough to go so far.'</p>
+
+<p>'No: women cling to beaten tracks.'</p>
+
+<p>'We obey our masters,' answered Lesbia, meekly.</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, I forgot. You are to have a master—and soon. I heard as much
+before I saw you to-night.'</p>
+
+<p>Lesbia half rose, as if to leave this cool retreat above the rippling
+tide.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, it is all settled,' she said; 'and now I think I must go back.
+Lady Kirkbank will be wondering what has become of me.'</p>
+
+<p>'Let her wonder a little longer,' said Don Gomez. 'Why should we hurry
+away from this delightful spot? Why break the spell of—the river? Life
+has so few moments of perfect contentment. If this is one with you—as
+it is with me—let us make the most of it. Lady Lesbia, do you see those
+weeds yonder, drifting with the tide, drifting side by side, touching as
+they drift? They have met heaven knows how, and will part heaven knows
+where, on their way to the sea; but they let themselves go with the
+tide. We have met like those poor weeds. Don't let us part till the tide
+parts us.'</p>
+
+<p>Lesbia gave a little sigh, and submitted. She had talked of women
+obeying their masters; and the implication was that she meant to obey
+Mr. Smithson. But there is a fate in these things; and the man who was
+to be her master, whose lightest breath was to sway her, whose lightest
+look was to rule her, was here at her side in the silence of the summer
+night.</p>
+
+<p>They talked long, but of indifferent subjects; and their talk might have
+been heard by every member of the Orleans Club, and no harm done. Yet
+words and phrases count for very little in such a case. It is the tone,
+it is the melody of a voice, it is the magic of the hour that tells.</p>
+
+<p>The tide came, in the person of Mr. Smithson, and parted these two weeds
+that were drifting towards the great mysterious ocean of fate.</p>
+
+<p>'I have been hunting for you everywhere,' he said, cheerfully. 'If you
+want another waltz, Lady Lesbia, you had better take the next. I believe
+it is to be the last. At any rate our party are clamouring to be driven
+home. I found poor Lady Kirkbank fast asleep in a corner of the
+drawing-room.'</p>
+
+<p>'Will you give me that last waltz?' asked Don Gomez.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Lesbia felt that the long-suffering Smithson had endured enough.
+Womanly instinct constrained her to refuse that final waltz: but it
+seemed to her as if she were making a tremendous sacrifice in so doing.
+And yet she had waltzed to her heart's content during the season that
+was waning, and knew all the waltzes played by all the fashionable
+bands. She gave a little sigh, as she said—</p>
+
+<p>'No, I must not indulge myself. I must go and take care of Lady
+Kirkbank.'</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Smithson offered his arm, and she took it and went away with him,
+leaving Don Gomez to follow at his leisure. There would be some delay no
+doubt before the drag started. The lamps had gone out among the foliage,
+and the stars were waning a little, and there was a faint cold light
+creeping over the garden which meant the advent of morning. Don Gomez
+strolled towards the lighted house, smoking a cigarette.</p>
+
+<p>'She is very lovely, and she is—well—not quite spoiled by her
+<i>entourage</i>, and they tell me she is an heiress—sure to inherit a
+fine fortune from some ancient grandmother, buried alive in
+Westmoreland,' he mused. 'What a splendid opportunity it would be if—if
+the business could be arranged on the square. But as it is—well—as it
+is there is the chance of an adventure; and when did a Montesma ever
+avoid an adventure, although there were dagger or poison lurking in the
+background? And here there is neither poison nor steel, only a lovely
+woman, and an infatuated stockbroker, about whom I know enough to
+disgrace and ruin an archbishop. Poor Smithson! How very unlucky that I
+should happen to come across your pathway in the heyday of your latest
+love affair. We have had our little adventures in that line already, and
+we have measured swords together, metaphorically, before to-night. When
+it comes to a question of actual swords my Smithson declines. <i>Pas si
+bête.</i>'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XXXVII"></a><h2>CHAPTER XXXVII.</h2>
+
+<h3>LORD HARTFIELD REFUSES A FORTUNE.</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>A honeymoon among lakes and mountains, amidst the gorgeous confusion of
+Borrowdale, in a little world of wild, strange loveliness, shut in and
+isolated from the prosaic outer world by the vast and towering masses of
+Skiddaw and Blencathara—a world of one's own, as it were, a world
+steeped in romance and poetry, dear to the souls of poets. There are
+many such honeymoons every summer; indeed, the mountain paths, the
+waterfalls and lakes swarm with happy lovers; and this land of hills and
+waters seems to have been made expressly for honeymoon travellers; yet
+never went truer lovers wandering by lake and torrent, by hill and
+valley, than those two whose brief honeymoon was now drawing to a close.</p>
+
+<p>It was altogether a magical time for Mary, this dawn of a new life. The
+immensity of her happiness almost frightened her. She could hardly
+believe in it, or trust in its continuance.</p>
+
+<p>'Am I really, really, really your wife?' she asked on their last day,
+bending down to speak to her husband, as he led her pony up the rough
+ways of Skiddaw. 'It is all so dreadfully like a dream.'</p>
+
+<p>'Thank God, it is the very truth,' answered Lord Hartfield, looking
+fondly at the fresh young face, brightened by the summer wind, which
+faintly stirred the auburn hair under the neat little hat.</p>
+
+<p>'And am I actually a Countess? I don't care about it one little bit, you
+know, except as a stupendous joke. If you were to tell me that you had
+been only making fun of poor grandmother and me, and that those diamonds
+are glass, and you only plain John Hammond, it wouldn't make the
+faintest difference. Indeed, it would be a weight off my mind. It is an
+awfully oppressive thing to be a Countess.'</p>
+
+<p>'I'm sorry I cannot relieve you of the burden. The law of the land has
+made you Lady Hartfield; and I hope you are preparing your mind for the
+duties of your position.'</p>
+
+<p>'It is very dreadful,' sighed Mary. 'If her ladyship were as well and as
+active as she was when first you came to Fellside, she could have helped
+me; but now there will be no one, except you. And you will help me,
+won't you Jack?'</p>
+
+<p>'With all my heart.'</p>
+
+<p>'My own true Jack,' with a little fervent squeeze of his sunburnt hand.
+'In society I suppose I shall have to call you Hartfield. &quot;Hartfield,
+please ring the bell.&quot; &quot;Give me a footstool, Hartfield.&quot; How odd it
+sounds. I shall be blurting out the old dear name.'</p>
+
+<p>'I don't think it will much matter. It will pass for one of Lady
+Hartfield's little ways. Every woman is supposed to have little ways,
+don't you know. One has a little way of dropping her friends; another
+has a little way of not paying her dressmaker; another's little way is
+to take too much champagne. I hope Lady Hartfield's little way will be
+her devotion to her husband.'</p>
+
+<p>'I'm afraid I shall end by being a nuisance to you, for I shall love you
+ridiculously,' answered Mary, gaily; 'and from what you have told me
+about society, it seems to me that there can be nothing so unfashionable
+as an affectionate wife. Will you mind my being quite out of fashion,
+Jack?'</p>
+
+<p>'I should very much object to your being in the fashion.'</p>
+
+<p>'Then I am happy. I don't think it is in my nature to become a woman of
+fashion; although I have cured myself, for your sake, of being a hoyden.
+I had so schooled myself for what I thought our new life was to be; so
+trained myself to be a managing economical wife, that I feel quite at
+sea now that I am to be mistress of a house in Grosvenor Square and a
+place in Kent. Still, I will bear with it all; yes, even endure the
+weight of those diamonds for your sake.'</p>
+
+<p>She laughed, and he laughed. They were quite alone among the
+hills—hardy mountaineers both—and they could be as foolish as they
+liked. She rested her head upon his shoulder, and he and she and the
+pony made one as they climbed the hill, close together.</p>
+
+<p>'Our last day,' sighed Mary, as they went down again, after a couple of
+blissful hours in that wild world between earth and sky. 'I shall be
+glad to go back to poor grandmother, who must be sadly lonely; but it is
+so sweet to be quite alone with you.'</p>
+
+<p>They left the Lodore Hotel in an open carriage, after luncheon next day,
+and posted to Fellside, where they arrived just in time to assist at
+Lady Maulevrier's afternoon tea. She received them both with warm
+affection, and made Hartfield sit close beside her sofa; and every now
+and then, in the pauses of their talk, she laid her wasted and too
+delicate fingers upon the young man's strong brown hand, with a
+caressing gesture.</p>
+
+<p>'You can never know how sweet it is to me to be able to love you,' she
+said tenderly. 'You can never know how my heart yearned to you from the
+very first, and how hard it was to keep myself in check and not be too
+kind to you. Oh, Hartfield, you should have told me the truth. You
+should not have come here under false colours.'</p>
+
+<p>'Should I not, Lady Maulevrier? It was my only chance of being loved
+for my own sake; or, at least of knowing that I was so loved. If I had
+come with my rank and my fortune in my hand, as it were—one of the good
+matches of the year—what security could I ever have felt in the
+disinterested love of the girl who chose me? As plain John Hammond I
+wooed and was rejected; as plain John Hammond I wooed and won; and the
+prize which I so won is a pearl above price. Not for worlds, were the
+last year to be lived over again, would I have one day of my life
+altered.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, I suppose I ought to be satisfied. I wanted you for Lesbia, and I
+have got you for Mary. Best of all, I have got you for myself. Ronald
+Hollister's son is mine; he is of my kin; he belongs to me; he will not
+forsake me in life; he will be near me, God grant, when I die.'</p>
+
+<p>'Dear Lady Maulevrier, as far as in me lies, I will be to you as a son,'
+said Lord Hartfield, very solemnly, stooping to kiss her hand.</p>
+
+<p>Mary came away from her tea-table to embrace her grandmother.</p>
+
+<p>'It makes me so happy to have won a little of your regard,' she
+murmured, 'and to know that I have married a man whom you can love.'</p>
+
+<p>'Of course you have heard of Lesbia's engagement?' Lady Maulevrier said
+presently, when they were taking their tea.</p>
+
+<p>'Maulevrier wrote to us about it.'</p>
+
+<p>'To us.' How nice it sounded, thought Mary, as if they were a firm, and
+a letter written to one was written to both.</p>
+
+<p>'And do you know this Mr. Smithson?'</p>
+
+<p>'Not intimately. I have met him at the Carlton.'</p>
+
+<p>'I am told that he is very much esteemed by your party, and that he is
+very likely to get a peerage when this Ministry goes out of office.'</p>
+
+<p>'That is not improbable. Peerages are to be had if a man is rich enough;
+and Smithson is supposed to be inordinately rich.'</p>
+
+<p>'I hope he has character as well as money,' said Lady Maulevrier,
+gravely. 'But do you think a man can become inordinately rich in a short
+time, with unblemished honour?'</p>
+
+<p>'We are told that nothing is impossible,' answered Hartfield. 'Faith can
+remove a mountain; only one does not often see it done. However, I
+believe Mr. Smithson's character is fairly good as millionaires go. We
+do not inquire too closely into these things nowadays.'</p>
+
+<p>Lady Maulevrier sighed and held her peace. She remembered the day when
+she had protested vehemently, passionately, against Lesbia's marriage
+with a poor man. And now she had an unhappy feeling about Mr. Smithson's
+wealth, a doubt, a dread that all might not be well with those millions,
+that some portion of that golden tide might flow from impure sources.
+She had lived remote from the world, but she had read the papers
+diligently, and she knew how often the splendour of commercial wealth
+has been suddenly obscured behind a black cloud of obloquy. She could
+not rejoice heartily at the idea of Lesbia's engagement.</p>
+
+<p>'I am to see the man early in August,' she said, as if she were talking
+of a butler. 'I hope I may like him. Lady Kirkbank tells me it is a
+brilliant marriage, and I must take her word. What can <i>I</i> do for my
+granddaughter—a useless log—a prisoner in two rooms?'</p>
+
+<p>'It is very hard,' murmured Mary, tenderly, 'but I do not see any reason
+why Lesbia should not be happy. She likes a brilliant life; and Mr.
+Smithson can give her as much gaiety and variety as she can possibly
+desire. And, after all, yachts, and horses, and villas, and diamonds
+<i>are</i> nice things.'</p>
+
+<p>'They are the things for which half the world is ready to cheat or
+murder the other half,' said Lady Maulevrier, bitterly. She had told
+herself long ago that wealth was power, and she had sacrificed many
+things, her own peace, her own conscience among them, in order that her
+children and grandchildren should be rich; and, knowing this, she felt
+it ill became her to be scrupulous, and to inquire too closely as to
+the sources of Mr. Smithson's wealth. He was rich, and the world had no
+fault to find with him. He had attended the last <i>lev&eacute;e</i>. He went into
+reputable society. And he could give Lesbia all those things which the
+world calls good.</p>
+
+<p>Fr&auml;ulein M&uuml;ller had packed her heavy old German trunks, and had gone
+back to the <i>Heimath</i>, laden with presents of all kinds from Lady
+Maulevrier; so Mary and her husband felt as if Fellside was really their
+own. They dined with her ladyship, and left her for the night an hour
+after dinner; and then they went down to the gardens, and roamed about
+in the twilight, and talked, and talked, and talked, as only true lovers
+can talk, be they Strephon and Daphne in life's glad morning, or
+grey-haired Darby and Joan; and lastly they went down to the lake, and
+rowed about in the moonlight, and talked of King Arthur's death, and of
+that mystic sword, Excalibur, 'wrought by the lonely maiden of the
+lake.'</p>
+
+<p>They spent three happy days in wandering about the neighbourhood,
+revisiting in the delicious freedom of their wedded life those spots
+which they had seen together, when Mary was still in bondage, and the
+eye of propriety, as represented by Miss M&uuml;ller, was always upon her.
+Now they were free to go where they pleased—to linger where they
+liked—they belonged to each other, and were under no other dominion.</p>
+
+<p>The dogcart, James Steadman's dogcart, which he had rarely used during
+the last six months, was put in requisition and Lord Hartfield drove his
+wife about the country. They went to the Langdale Pikes, and to Dungeon
+Ghyll; and, standing beside the waterfall, Mary told her husband how
+miserable she had felt on that very spot a little less than a year ago,
+when she believed that he thought her plain and altogether horrid.
+Whereupon he had to console her with many kisses and sweet words, for
+the bygone pain on her part, the neglect on his.</p>
+
+<p>'I was a wretch,' he said, 'blind, besotted, imbecile.'</p>
+
+<p>'No, no, no. Lesbia is very lovely—and I could not expect you would
+care for me till she was gone away. How glad I am that she went,' added
+Mary, na&iuml;vely.</p>
+
+<p>The sky, which had been cloudless all day, began to darken as Lord
+Hartfield drove back to Fellside, and Mary drew a little closer to the
+driver's elbow, as if for shelter from an impending tempest.</p>
+
+<p>'You have your waterproof, of course,' he said, looking down at her, as
+the first big drops of a thunder shower dashed upon the splash-board.
+'No young woman in the Lake country would think of being without a
+waterproof.'</p>
+
+<p>Mary was duly provided, and with the help of the groom put herself into
+a snug little tartan Inverness, while Hartfield sent the cart spinning
+along twelve miles an hour.</p>
+
+<p>They were at Fellside before the storm developed its full power, but the
+sky was leaden, the landscape dull and blotted, the atmosphere heavy and
+stifling. The thunder grumbled hoarsely, far away yonder in the wild
+gorges of Borrowdale; and Mary and her husband made up their minds that
+the tempest would come before midnight.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Maulevrier was suffering from the condition of the atmosphere. She
+had gone to bed, prostrate with a neuralgic headache, and had given
+orders that no one but her maid should go near her. So Lord Hartfield
+and his wife dined by themselves, in the room where Mary had eaten so
+many uninteresting dinners <i>tête-à-tête</i> with Fr&auml;ulein; and in spite of
+the storm which howled, pelted, and lightened every now and then, Mary
+felt as if she were in Paradise.</p>
+
+<p>There was no chance of going out after dinner. The lake looked like a
+pool of ink, the mountains were monsters of dark and threatening aspect,
+the rain rattled against the windows, and ran from the verandah in
+miniature water-spouts. There was nothing to do but stay in doors, in
+the sultry, dusky house.</p>
+
+<p>'Let us go to my boudoir,' said Mary. 'Let me enjoy the full privilege
+of having a boudoir—my very own room. Wasn't it too good of grandmother
+to have it made so smart for me?'</p>
+
+<p>'Nothing can be too good for my Mary,' answered her husband, still in
+the doting stage, 'but it was very nice of her ladyship—and the room is
+charming.'</p>
+
+<p>Delightful as the new boudoir might be, they dawdled in the picture
+gallery, that long corridor on which all the upper rooms opened, and at
+one end of which was the door of Lady Maulevrier's bedroom, at right
+angles with that red-cloth door, which was never opened, except to give
+egress or ingress to James Steadman, who kept the key of it, as if the
+old part of Fellside House had been an enchanted castle. Lord Hartfield
+had not forgotten that summer midnight last year, when his meditations
+were disturbed by a woman's piercing cry. He thought of it this evening,
+as Mary and he lowered their voices on drawing near Lady Maulevrier's
+door. She was asleep within there now, perhaps, that strange old woman;
+and at any moment an awful shriek, as of a soul in mortal agony, might
+startle them in the midst of their bliss.</p>
+
+<p>The lamps were lighted below; but this upper part of the house was
+wrapped in the dull grey twilight of a stormy evening. A single lamp
+burned dimly at the further end of the corridor, and all the rest was
+shadow.</p>
+
+<p>Mary and her husband walked up and down, talking in subdued tones. He
+was explaining the necessity of his being in London next week, and
+promising to come back to Fellside directly his business at the House
+was over.</p>
+
+<p>'It will be delightful to read your speeches,' said Mary; 'but I am
+silly and selfish enough to wish you were a country squire, with no
+business in London. And yet I don't wish that either, for I am intensely
+proud of you.'</p>
+
+<p>'And some day, before we are much older, you will sit in your robes in
+the peeress's gallery.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, I couldn't,' cried Mary. 'I should make a fool of myself, somehow.
+I should look like a housemaid in borrowed plumes. Remember, I have no
+<i>Anstand</i>—I have been told so all my life.'</p>
+
+<p>'You will be one of the prettiest peeresses who ever sat in that
+gallery, and the purest, and truest, and dearest,' protested her
+lover-husband.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, if I am good enough for you, I am satisfied. I married <i>you</i>, and
+not the House of Lords. But I am afraid your friends will all say,
+&quot;Hartfield, why in heaven's name did you marry that uncultivated
+person?&quot; Look!'</p>
+
+<p>She stopped suddenly, with her hand on her husband's arm. It was growing
+momentarily darker in the corridor. They were at the end near the lamp,
+and that other end by Lady Maulevrier's door was in deeper darkness, yet
+not too dark for Lord Hartfield to see what it was to which Mary
+pointed.</p>
+
+<p>The red-cloth door was open, and a faint glimmer of light showed within.
+A man was standing in the corridor, a small, shrunken figure, bent and
+old.</p>
+
+<p>'It is Steadman's uncle,' said Mary. 'Do let me go and speak to him,
+poor, poor old man.'</p>
+
+<p>'The madman!' exclaimed Hartfield. 'No, Mary; go to your room at once.
+I'll get him back to his own den.'</p>
+
+<p>'But he is not mad—at any rate, he is quite harmless. Let me just say a
+few words to him. Surely I am safe with you.'</p>
+
+<p>Lord Hartfield was not inclined to dispute that argument; indeed, he
+felt himself strong enough to protect his wife from all the lunatics in
+Bedlam. He went towards the end of the corridor, keeping Mary well
+behind him; but Mary did not mean to lose the opportunity of renewing
+her acquaintance with Steadman's uncle.</p>
+
+<p>'I hope you are better, poor old soul,' she murmured, gently, lovingly
+almost, nestling at her husband's side.</p>
+
+<p>'What, is it you?' cried the old man, tremulous with joy.
+'Oh, I have been looking for you—looking—looking—waiting, waiting for
+you. I have been hoping for you every hour and every minute. Why didn't
+you come to me, cruel girl?'</p>
+
+<p>'I tried with all my might,' said Mary, 'but people blocked up the door
+in the stables, and they wouldn't let me go to you; and I have been
+rather busy for the last fortnight,' added Mary, blushing in the
+darkness, 'I—I—am married to this gentleman.'</p>
+
+<p>'Married! Ah, that is a good thing. He will take care of you, if he is
+an honest man.'</p>
+
+<p>'I thought he was an honest man, but he has turned out to be an earl,'
+answered Mary, proudly. 'My husband is Lord Hartfield.'
+'Hartfield—Hartfield,' the old man repeated, feebly. 'Surely I have
+heard that name before.'</p>
+
+<p>There was no violence in his manner, nothing but imbecility; so Lord
+Hartfield made up his mind that Mary was right, and that the old man was
+quite harmless, worthy of all compassion and kindly treatment.</p>
+
+<p>This was the same old man whom he had met on the Fell in the bleak March
+morning. There was no doubt in his mind about that, although he could
+hardly see the man's face in the shadowy corridor.</p>
+
+<p>'Come,' said the man, 'come with me, my dear. You forgot me, but I have
+not forgotten you. I mean to leave you my fortune. Come with me, and
+I'll show you your legacy. It is all for you—every rupee—every jewel.'</p>
+
+<p>This word rupee startled Lord Hartfield. It had a strange sound from the
+lips of a Westmoreland peasant.</p>
+
+<p>'Come, child, come!' said the man impatiently. 'Come and see what I have
+left you in my will. I make a new will every day, but I leave everything
+to you—every will is in your favour. But if you are married you had
+better have your legacy at once. Your husband is strong enough to take
+care of you and your fortune.'</p>
+
+<p>'Poor old man,' whispered Mary; 'pray let us humour him.'</p>
+
+<p>It was the usual madman's fancy, no doubt. Boundless wealth, exalted
+rank, sanctity, power—these things all belong to the lunatic. He is the
+lord of creation, and, fed by such fancies, he enjoys flashes of wild
+happiness in the midst of his woe.</p>
+
+<p>'Come, come, both of you,' said the old man, eagerly, breathless with
+impatience.</p>
+
+<p>He led the way across the sacred threshold, looking back, beckoning to
+them with his wasted old hand, and Mary for the first time in her life
+entered that house which had seemed to her from her very childhood as a
+temple of silence and mystery. The passage was dimly lighted by a little
+lamp on a bracket. The old man crept along stealthily, looking back,
+with a face full of cunning, till he came to a broad landing, from which
+an old staircase, with massive oak banisters, led down to the square
+hall below. The ceilings were low, the passages were narrow. All things
+in the house were curiously different from that spacious mansion which
+Lady Maulevrier had built for herself.</p>
+
+<p>A door on the landing stood ajar. The old man pushed it open and went
+in, followed by Mary and her husband.</p>
+
+<p>They both expected to see a room humble almost to poverty—an iron
+bedstead, perhaps, and such furniture as the under servants in a
+nobleman's household are privileged to enjoy. Both were alike surprised
+at the luxury of the apartment they entered, and which was evidently
+reserved exclusively for Steadman's uncle.</p>
+
+<p>It was a sitting-room. The furniture was old-fashioned, but almost as
+handsome as any in Lady Maulevrier's apartments. There was a large sofa
+of most comfortable shape, covered with dark red velvet, and furnished
+with pillows and foot rugs, which would have satisfied a Sybarite of the
+first water. Beside the sofa stood a hookah, with all appliances in the
+Oriental fashion; and half a dozen long cherry-wood pipes neatly
+arranged above the mantelpiece showed that Mr. Steadman's uncle was a
+smoker of a luxurious type.</p>
+
+<p>In the centre of the room stood a large writing table, with a case of
+pigeon-holes at the back, a table which would not have disgraced a Prime
+Minister's study. A pair of wax candles, in tall silver candlesticks,
+lighted this table, which was littered with papers, in a wild confusion
+that too plainly indicated the condition of the owner's mind. The oak
+floor was covered with Persian prayer rugs, old and faded, but of the
+richest quality. The window curtains were dark red velvet; and through
+an open doorway Mary and her husband saw a corresponding luxury in the
+arrangements of the adjoining bedroom.</p>
+
+<p>The whole thing seemed wild and strange as a fairy tale. The weird and
+wizened old man, grinning and nodding his head at them. The handsome
+room, rich with dark, subdued colour, in the dim light of four wax
+candles, two on the table, two on the mantelpiece. The perfume of
+stephanotis and tea-roses, blended faintly with the all-pervading odour
+of latakia and Turkish attar. All was alike strange, bearing in mind
+that this old man was a recipient of Lady Maulevrier's charity, a
+hanger-on upon a confidential servant, who might be supposed to be
+generously treated if he had the run of his teeth and the shelter of a
+decent garret. Verily, there was something regal in such hospitality as
+this, accorded to a pauper lunatic.</p>
+
+<p>Where was Steadman, the alert, the watchful, all this time? Mary
+wondered. They had met no one. The house was as mute as if it were under
+the spell of a magician. It was like that awful chamber in the Arabian
+story, where the young man found the magic horse, and started on his
+fatal journey. Mary felt as if here, too, there must be peril; here,
+too, fate was working.</p>
+
+<p>The old man went to the writing table, pushed aside the papers, and then
+stooped down and turned a mysterious handle or winch under the
+knee-hole, and the writing-desk moved slowly on one side, while the
+pigeon-holes sank, and a deep well full of secret drawers was laid open.</p>
+
+<p>From one of these secret drawers the old man took a bunch of keys,
+nodding, chuckling, muttering to himself as he groped for them with
+tremulous hand.</p>
+
+<p>'Steadman is uncommonly clever—thinks he knows everything—but he
+doesn't know the trick of this table. I could hide a regiment of Sepoys
+in this table, my dear. Well, well, perhaps not Sepoys—too big, too
+big—but I could hide all the State papers of the Presidency. There are
+drawers enough for that.'</p>
+
+<p>Hartfield watched him intently, with thoughtful brow. There was a
+mystery here, a mystery of the deepest dye; and it was for him—it must
+needs be his task, welcome or unwelcome, to unravel it.</p>
+
+<p>This was the Maulevrier skeleton.</p>
+
+<p>'Now, come with me,' said the old man, clutching Mary's wrist, and
+drawing her towards the half-open door leading into the bedroom.</p>
+
+<p>She had a feeling of shrinking, for there was something uncanny about
+the old man, something that might be life or death, might belong to this
+world or the next; but she had no fear. In the first place, she was
+courageous by nature, and in the second her husband was with her, a
+tower of strength, and she could know no fear while he was at her side.</p>
+
+<p>The strange old man led the way across his bedroom to an inner chamber,
+oak pannelled, with very little furniture, but holding much treasure in
+the shape of trunks, portmanteaux—all very old and dusty—and two large
+wooden cases, banded with iron.</p>
+
+<p>Before one of these cases the man knelt down, and applied a key to the
+padlock which fastened it. He gave the candle to Lord Hartfield to hold,
+and then opened the box. It seemed to be full of books, which he began
+to remove, heaping them on the floor beside him; and it was not till he
+had cleared away a layer of dingy volumes that he came to a large metal
+strong box, so heavy that he could not lift it out of the chest.</p>
+
+<p>Slowly, tremulously, and with quickened breathing, he unlocked the box
+where it was, and raised the lid.</p>
+
+<p>'Look,' he said eagerly, 'this is her legacy—this is my little girl's
+legacy.'</p>
+
+<p>Lord Hartfield bent down and looked at the old man's treasure, by the
+wavering light of the candle; Mary looking over his shoulder, breathless
+with wonder.</p>
+
+<p>The strong box was divided into compartments. One, and the largest, was
+filled with rouleaux of coin, packed as closely as possible. The others
+contained jewels, set and unset—diamonds, emeralds, rubies,
+sapphires—which flashed back the flickering flame of the candle with
+glintings of rainbow light.</p>
+
+<p>'These are all for her—all—all,' exclaimed the old man. 'They are
+worth a prince's ransom. Those rouleaux are all gold; those gems are
+priceless. They were the dowry of a princess. But they are hers
+now—yes, my dear, they are yours—because you spoke sweetly, and smiled
+prettily, and were very good to a lonely old man—and because you have
+my mother's face, dear, a smile that recalls the days of my youth. Lift
+out the box and take it away with you, if you are strong enough,—you,
+you,' he said, touching Lord Hartfield. 'Hide it somewhere—keep it from
+<i>her</i>. Let no one know—no one except your wife and you must be in the
+secret.'</p>
+
+<p>'My dear sir, it is out of the question—impossible that my wife or I
+should accept one of those coins—or the smallest of those jewels.'</p>
+
+<p>'Why not, in the devil's name?'</p>
+
+<p>'First and foremost, we do not know how you came in possession of them;
+secondly, we do not know who you are.'</p>
+
+<p>'They came to me fairly enough—bequeathed to me by one who had the
+right to leave them. Would you have had all that gold left for an
+adventurer to wallow in?'</p>
+
+<p>'You must keep your treasure, sir, however it may have come to you,'
+answered Lord Hartfield firmly. 'My wife cannot take upon herself the
+burden of a single gold coin—least of all from a stranger. Remember,
+sir, to us your possession of this wealth—nay, your whole existence—is
+a mystery.'</p>
+
+<p>'You want to know who I am?' said the old man drawing himself up, with a
+sudden <i>hauteur</i> which was not without dignity, despite his shrunken
+form and grotesque appearence. 'Well, sir. I am----'</p>
+
+<p>He checked himself abruptly, and looked round the room with a scared
+expression.</p>
+
+<p>'No, no, no,' he muttered; 'caution, caution! They have not done with me
+yet; she warned me—they are lying in wait; I mustn't walk into their
+trap.' And then turning to Lord Hartfield, he said, haughtily, 'I shall
+not condescend to tell you who I am, sir. You must know that I am a
+gentleman, and that is enough for you. There is my gift to your
+wife'—pointing to the chest—'take it or leave it.'</p>
+
+<p>'I shall leave it, sir, with all due respect.'</p>
+
+<p>A frightful change came over the old man's face at this determined
+refusal. His eyes glowered at Lord Hartfield under the heavy scowling
+brows; his bloodless lips worked convulsively.</p>
+
+<p>'Do you take me for a thief?' he exclaimed. 'Are you afraid to touch my
+gold—that gold for which men and women sell their souls, blast their
+lives with shame, and pain, and dishonour, all the world over? Do you
+stand aloof from it—refuse to touch it, as if it were infected? And
+you, too, girl! Have you no sense? Are you an idiot?'</p>
+
+<p>'I can do nothing against my husband's wish,' Mary answered, quietly;
+'and, indeed, there is no need for us to take your money. We are rich
+without it. Please leave that chest to a hospital. It will be ever so
+much better than giving it to us.'</p>
+
+<p>'You told me you were going to marry a poor man?'</p>
+
+<p>'I know. But he cheated me, and turned out to be a rich man. He was a
+horrid impostor,' said Mary, drawing closer to her husband, and smiling
+up at him.</p>
+
+<p>The old man flung down the lid of his strong box, which shut with a
+sonorous clang. He locked it, and put the key in his pocket.</p>
+
+<p>'I have done with you.' he said. 'You can go your ways, both of you.
+Fools, fools, fools! The world is peopled with rogues and fools; and, by
+heaven, I would rather have to do with the rogues!'</p>
+
+<p>He flung himself into an arm-chair, one of the few objects of furniture
+in the room, and left them to find their way back alone.</p>
+
+<p>'Good-night, sir,' said Lord Hartfield; but the old man made no reply.
+He sat frowning sullenly.</p>
+
+<p>'Good-night, sir,' said Mary, in her gentle voice, breathing infinite
+pity.</p>
+
+<p>'Good-night, child,' he growled. 'I am sorry you have married an ass.'</p>
+
+<p>This was more than Mary could stand, and she was about to reply with
+some acrimony, when her husband put his hand upon her lips and hurried
+her away.</p>
+
+<p>On the landing they met Mrs. Steadman, a stout, commonplace person, who
+always had the same half-frightened look, as of one who lived in the
+shadow of an abiding terror, obviously cowed and brow-beaten by her
+husband, according to the Fellside household.</p>
+
+<p>At sight of Lord Hartfield and his wife she looked a little more
+frightened than usual.</p>
+
+<p>'Goodness gracious, Lady Mary! how ever did you come here?' she gasped,
+not yet having quite realised the fact that Mary had been promoted.</p>
+
+<p>'We came to please Steadman's uncle—he brought us in here,' Mary
+answered, quietly.</p>
+
+<p>'But where did you find him?'</p>
+
+<p>'In the corridor—just by her ladyship's room.'</p>
+
+<p>'Then he must have taken the key out of Steadman's pocket, or Steadman
+must have left it about somewhere,' muttered Mrs. Steadman, as if
+explaining the matter to herself, rather than to Mary. 'My poor husband
+is not the man he was. And so you met him in the corridor, and he
+brought you in here. Poor old gentleman! He gets madder and madder every
+day.'</p>
+
+<p>'There is method in his madness,' said Lord Hartfield. 'He talked very
+much like sanity just now. Has your husband had the charge of him long?'</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Steadman answered somewhat confusedly.</p>
+
+<p>'A goodish time, sir. I can't quite exactly say—time passes so quiet in
+a place like this. One hardly keeps count of the years.'</p>
+
+<p>'Forty years, perhaps?'</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Steadman blenched under Lord Hartfield's steadfast look—a look
+which questioned more searchingly than his words.</p>
+
+<p>'Forty years,' she repeated, with a faint laugh. 'Oh, dear no, sir, not
+a quarter as long. It isn't so many years, after all, since Steadman's
+poor old uncle went a little queer in his head; and Steadman, having
+such a quiet home here, and plenty of spare room, made bold to ask her
+ladyship if he might give the poor old man a home, where he would be in
+nobody's way.'</p>
+
+<p>'And the poor old man seems to have a very luxurious home,' answered
+Lord Hartfield. 'Pray when and where did Mr. Steadman's uncle learn to
+smoke a hookah?'</p>
+
+<p>Simple as the question was, it proved too much for Mrs. Steadman. She
+only shook her head, and faltered some unintelligible reply.</p>
+
+<p>'Where is your husband?' asked Lord Hartfield; 'I should like to have a
+little talk with him, if he is disengaged.'</p>
+
+<p>'He is not very well, my lord,' answered Mrs. Steadman. 'He has been
+ailing off and on for the last six months, but I couldn't get him to see
+the doctor, or to tell her ladyship that he was in bad health. And about
+a week ago he broke down altogether, and fell into a kind of drowsy
+state. He keeps about, and he does his work pretty much the same as
+usual, but I can see that it's too much for him. If you like to come
+downstairs I can let you through the lower door into the hall; and if he
+should have woke up since I have left him he'll be at your lordship's
+service. But I'd rather not wake him out of his sleep.'</p>
+
+<p>'There is no occasion. What I have to say will keep till to-morrow.'</p>
+
+<p>Lord Hartfield and his wife followed Mrs. Steadman downstairs to the low
+dark hall, where an old eight-day clock ticked with hoarse and solemn
+beat, and a fine stag's head over each doorway gave evidence of some
+former Haselden's sporting tastes. The door of a small panelled parlour
+stood half-way open; and within the room Lord Hartfield saw James
+Steadman asleep in an arm-chair by the fire, which burned as brightly as
+if it had been Christmas time.</p>
+
+<p>'He was so chilly and shivery this afternoon that I was obliged to light
+a fire,' said Mrs. Steadman.</p>
+
+<p>'He seems to be sleeping heavily,' said Hartfield. 'Don't awaken him.
+I'll see him to-morrow morning before I go to London.'</p>
+
+<p>'He sleeps half the day just as heavy as that, my lord,' said the wife,
+with a troubled air. 'I don't think it can be right.'</p>
+
+<p>'I don't think so either,' answered Lord Hartfield. 'You had better call
+in the doctor.'</p>
+
+<p>'I will, my lord, to-morrow morning. James will be angry with me, I
+daresay; but I must take upon myself to do it without his leave.'</p>
+
+<p>She led the way along a passage corresponding with the one above, and
+unlocked a door opening into a lobby near the billiard-room.</p>
+
+<p>'Come, Molly, see if you can beat me at a fifty game,' said Lord
+Hartfield, with the air of a man who wants to shake off the impression
+of some dominant idea.</p>
+
+<p>'Of course you will annihilate me, but it will be a relief to play,'
+answered Mary. 'That strange old man has given me a shock. Everything
+about his surroundings is so different from what I expected. And how
+could an uncle of Steadman's come by all that money—and those
+jewels—if they were jewels, and not bits of glass which the poor old
+thing has chopped up, in order to delude himself with an imaginary
+treasure?'</p>
+
+<p>'I do not think they are bits of glass, Molly.'</p>
+
+<p>'They sparkled tremendously—almost as much as my—our—the family
+diamonds,' said Mary, puzzled how to describe that property which she
+held in right of her position as countess regnant; 'but if they are real
+jewels, and all those rouleaux real money, how could Steadman's uncle
+become possessed of such wealth?'</p>
+
+<p>'How, indeed?' said Lord Hartfield, choosing his cue</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XXXVIII"></a><h2>CHAPTER XXXVIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>ON BOARD THE 'CAYMAN.'</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>Goodwood had come and gone, a brief bright season of loss and gain, fine
+gowns, flirtation, lobster en mayonaise, champagne, sunshine, dust,
+glare, babble of many voices, successes, failures, triumphs,
+humiliations. A very pretty picture to contemplate from the outside,
+this little world in holiday clothes, framed in greenery! but just on
+the Brocken, where the nicest girl among the dancers had the unpleasant
+peculiarity of dropping a little red mouse out of her mouth—so too here
+under different forms there were red mice dropping about among the
+company. Here a hint of coming insolvency; there a whisper of a
+threatened divorce suit, staved off for a while, compromises, family
+secrets, little difficulties everywhere; betrothed couples smilingly
+accepting congratulations, who should never have been affianced were
+truth and honour the rule of life; forsaken wives pretending to think
+their husbands models of fidelity; jovial creatures with ruin staring in
+their faces; households divided and shamming union; almost everybody
+living above his or her means; and the knowledge that nobody is any
+better or any happier than his neighbour society's only fountain of
+consolation.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Lesbia's gowns and parasols had been admired, her engagement had
+furnished an infinity of gossip, and the fact of Montesma's constant
+attendance upon her had given zest to the situation, just that flavour
+of peril and fatality which the soul of society loveth.</p>
+
+<p>'Is she going to marry them both?' asked an ancient dowager of the
+ever-young type.</p>
+
+<p>'No, dear Lady Sevenoaks, she can only marry one, don't you know; but
+the other is nice to go about with; and I believe it is the other she
+really likes.'</p>
+
+<p>'It is always the other that a woman likes,' answered the dowager; 'I am
+madly in love with this Peruvian—no, I think you said Cuban—myself. I
+wish some good-natured creature would present him to me. If you know
+anybody who knows him, tell them to bring him to my next
+afternoon—Saturday. But why does—<i>chose</i>—<i>machin</i>—Smithson allow
+such a handsome hanger-on? After marriage I could understand that he
+might not be able to help himself; but before marriage a man generally
+has some kind of authority.'</p>
+
+<p>The world wondered a little, just as Lady Sevenoaks wondered, at
+Smithson's complacency in allowing a man so attractive as Montesma to be
+so much in the society of his future wife, yet even the censorious could
+but admit that the Cuban's manner offered no ground for offence. He
+came to Goodwood 'on his own hook,' as society put it: and every man who
+wears a decent coat and is not a welsher has a right to enjoy the
+prettiest race-course in England. He spent a considerable part of the
+day in Lesbia's company; but since she was the centre of a little crowd
+all the time, there could be no offence in this. He was a stranger,
+knowing very few people, and having nothing to do but to amuse himself.
+Smithson was an old and familiar friend, and was in a measure bound to
+give him hospitality.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Smithson had recognised that obligation, but in a somewhat sparing
+manner. There were a dozen unoccupied bedchambers in the Park Lane
+Renaissance villa; but Smithson did not invite his Cuban acquaintance to
+shift his quarters from the Bristol to Park Lane. He was civil to Don
+Gomez: but anyone who had taken the trouble to watch and study the
+conduct and social relations of these two men would have seen that his
+civility was a forced civility, and that he endured the Spaniard's
+society under constraint of some kind.</p>
+
+<p>And now all the world was flocking to Cowes for the regatta, and Lesbia
+and her chaperon were established on board Mr. Smithson's yacht, the
+<i>Cayman</i>; and the captain of the <i>Cayman</i> and all her crew were
+delivered over to Lesbia to be her slaves and to obey her lightest
+breath. The <i>Cayman</i> was to lie at anchor off Cowes for the regatta
+week; and then she was to sail for Hyde, and lie at anchor there for
+another regatta week; and she was to be a floating hotel for Lady Lesbia
+so long as the young lady would condescend to occupy her.</p>
+
+<p>The captain was an altogether exceptional captain, and the crew were a
+picked crew, ruddy faced, sandy whiskered for the most part, Englishmen
+all, honest, hardy fellows from between the Nore and the Wash, talking
+in an honest provincial patois, dashed with sea slang. They were the
+very pink and pattern of cleanliness, and the <i>Cayman</i> herself from stem
+to stern was dazzling and spotless to an almost painful degree.</p>
+
+<p>Not content with the existing arrangements of the yacht, which were at
+once elegant and luxurious, Mr. Smithson had sent down a Bond Street
+upholsterer to refit the saloon and Lady Lesbia's cabin. The dark velvet
+and morocco which suited a masculine occupant would not have harmonised
+with girlhood and beauty; and Mr. Smithson's saloon, as originally
+designed, had something of the air of a <i>tabagie</i>. The Bond Street man
+stripped away all the velvet and morocco, plucked up the Turkey carpet,
+draped the scuttle-ports with pale yellow cretonne garnished with orange
+pompons, subdued the glare of the skylight by a blind of oriental silk,
+covered the divans with Persian saddlebags, the floor with a delicate
+Indian matting, and furnished the saloon with all that was most feminine
+in the way of bamboo chairs and tea-tables, Japanese screens and fans
+of gorgeous colouring. Here and there against the fluted yellow drapery
+he fastened a large Rhodes plate; and the thing was done. Lady Lesbia's
+cabin was all bamboo and embroidered India muslin. An oval glass, framed
+in Dresden biscuit, adorned the side, a large white bearskin covered the
+floor. The berth was pretty enough for the cradle of a duchess's first
+baby. Even Lesbia, spoiled by much indulgence and unlimited credit, gave
+a little cry of pleasure at sight of the nest that had been made ready
+for her.</p>
+
+<p>'Really, Mr. Smithson is immensely kind!' she exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>'Smithson is always kind,' answered Lady Kirkbank, 'and you don't half
+enough appreciate him. He has given me his very own cabin—such a dear
+little den! There are his cigar boxes and everything lovely on the
+shelves, and his own particular dressing-case put open for me to
+use—all the backs of all the brushes <i>repouss&eacute;</i> silver, and all the
+scent-bottles filled expressly for me. If the yacht would only stand
+quite still, I should think it more delicious than the best house I ever
+stayed in: only I don't altogether enjoy that little way it has of
+gurgling up and down perpetually.'</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Smithson's chief butler, a German Swiss, and a treasure of
+intelligence, had come down to take the domestic arrangements of the
+yacht into his control. The Park Lane <i>chef</i> was also on board, Mr.
+Smithson's steward acting as his subordinate. This great man grumbled
+sorely at the smallness of his surroundings; for the most luxurious
+yacht was a poor substitute for the spacious kitchens and storerooms and
+stillrooms of the London mansion. There was a cabin for Lady Kirkbank's
+Rilboche and Lady Lesbia's Kibble, where the two might squabble at their
+leisure; in a word, everything had been done that forethought could do
+to make the yacht as perfect a place of sojourn as any floating
+habitation, from Noah's Ark to the Orient steamers, had ever been made.</p>
+
+<p>It was between four and five upon a delicious July afternoon that Lady
+Kirkbank and her charge came on board. The maids and the luggage had
+been sent a day in advance, so that everything might be in its place,
+and the empty boxes all stowed away, before the ladies arrived. They had
+nothing to do but walk on board and fling themselves into the low
+luxurious chairs ready for them on the deck, a little wearied by the
+heat and dust of a railway journey, and with that delicious sense of
+languid indifference to all the cares of life which seems to be in the
+very atmosphere of a perfect summer afternoon.</p>
+
+<p>A striped awning covered the deck, and great baskets of roses—pink, and
+red, and yellow—were placed about here and there. Tea was ready on a
+low table, a swinging brass kettle hissing merrily, with an air of
+supreme homeliness.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Smithson had accompanied his <i>fianc&eacute;e</i> from town, and now sat
+reading the <i>Globe</i>, and meekly waiting for his tea, while Lesbia took a
+languid survey of the shore and the flotilla of boats, little and big,
+and while Lady Kirkbank rhapsodised about the yacht, praising
+everything, and calling everything by a wrong name. He was to be their
+guest all day, and every day. They were to have enough of him, as Lesbia
+had observed to her chaperon, with a spice of discontent, not quite so
+delighted with the arrangement as her faithful swain. To him the idea
+was rapture.</p>
+
+<p>'You have contrived somehow to keep me very much at a distance
+hitherto,' he told Lesbia, 'and I feel sometimes as if we were almost
+strangers; but a yacht is the best place in the world to bring two
+people together, and a week at Cowes will make us nearer to each other
+and more to each other than three months in London;' and Lesbia had said
+nothing, inwardly revolting at the idea of becoming any nearer and
+dearer to this man whom she had pledged herself to marry. She was to be
+his wife—yes, some day—and it was his desire the some day should be
+soon: but in the interval her dearest privilege was the power to keep
+him at a distance.</p>
+
+<p>And yet she could not make up her mind to break with him, to say
+honestly, 'I never liked you much, and now we are engaged I find myself
+liking you less and less every day. Save me from the irrevocable
+wickedness of a loveless marriage. Forgive me, and let me go.' No, this
+she could not bring herself to say. She did not like Mr. Smithson, but
+she valued the position he was able to give her. She wanted to be
+mistress of that infinite wealth—she could not renounce that right to
+which she fancied she had been born, her right to be one of the Queens
+of Society: and the only man who had offered to crown her as queen, to
+find her a palace and a court, was Horace Smithson. Without Mr. Smithson
+her first season would have resulted in dire failure. She might perhaps
+have endured that failure, and been content to abide the chances of a
+second season, had it not been for Mary's triumph. But for Mary to be a
+Countess, and for Lesbia to remain Lesbia Haselden, a nobody, dependent
+upon the caprices of a grandmother whose means might after all be but
+limited—no, such a concatenation as that was not to be endured. Lesbia
+told herself that she could not go back to Fellside to remain there
+indefinitely, a spinster and a dependent. She had learnt the true value
+of money; she had found out what the world was like; and it seemed to
+her that some such person as Mr. Smithson was essential to her
+existence, just as a butler is a necessity in a house. One may not like
+the man, but the post must be filled.</p>
+
+<p>Again, if she were to throw over Mr. Smithson, and speculate upon her
+chances of next year, what hope had she of doing better in her second
+season than in her first? The horizon was blank. There was no great
+<i>parti</i> likely to offer himself for competition. She had seen all that
+the market could produce. Wealthy bachelors, high-born lovers, could not
+drop from the moon. Lesbia, schooled by Lady Kirkbank, knew her peerage
+by heart; and she knew that, having missed Lord Hartfield, there was
+really no one in the Blue Book worth waiting for. Thus, caring only for
+those things which wealth can buy, she had made up her mind that she
+could not do without Horace Smithson's money; and she must therefore
+needs resign herself to the disagreeable necessity of taking Smithson
+and his money together. The great auctioneer Fate would not divide the
+lot.</p>
+
+<p>She told herself that for her a loveless marriage was, after all, no
+prodigious sacrifice. She had found out that heart made but a small
+figure in the sum of her life. She could do without love. A year ago she
+had fancied herself in love with John Hammond. In her seclusion at St.
+Bees, in the long, dull August days, sauntering up and down by the edge
+of the sea, in the melancholy sunset hour, she thought that her heart
+was broken, that life was worthless without the man she loved. She had
+thought and felt all this, but not strongly enough to urge her to any
+great effort, not keenly enough to make her burst her chains. She had
+preferred to suffer this loss than to sacrifice her chances of future
+aggrandisement. And now she looked back and remembered those sunset
+walks by the sea, and all her thoughts and feelings in those silent
+summer hours; and she smiled at herself, half in scorn, half in pity,
+for her own weakness. How easily she had learned to do without him who
+at that hour seemed the better part of her existence. A good deal of
+gaiety and praise, a little mild flirtation at Kirkbank Castle, and lo!
+the image of her first lover began to grow dim and blurred, like a faded
+photograph. A season at Cannes, and she was cured. A week in London, and
+that first love was a thing of the past, a dream from which the dreamer
+awaketh, forgetting the things that he has dreamt.</p>
+
+<p>Remembering all this she told herself that she had no heart, that love
+or no love was a question of very little moment, and that the personal
+qualities of the man whom she chose for a husband mattered nothing to
+her, provided that his lands and houses and social status came up to her
+standard of merit. She had seen Mr. Smithson's houses and lands; and she
+was distinctly assured that he would in due course be raised to the
+peerage. She had, therefore, every reason to be satisfied.</p>
+
+<p>Having thus reasoned out the circumstances of her new life, she accepted
+her fate with a languid grace, which harmonised with her delicate and
+patrician beauty. Nobody could have for a moment supposed from her
+manner that she loved Horace Smithson; but nobody had the right to
+think that she detested him. She accepted all his attentions as a thing
+of course. The flowers which he strewed beneath her footsteps, the
+pearls which he melted in her wine—metaphorically speaking—were just
+'good enough' and no more. This afternoon, when Mr. Smithson asked her
+how she liked the arrangements of the saloon and cabin, she said she
+thought they would do very nicely. 'They would do.' Nothing more.</p>
+
+<p>'It is dreadfully small, of course,' she said, 'when one is accustomed
+to rooms: but it is rather amusing to be in a sort of doll's house, and
+on deck it is really very nice.'</p>
+
+<p>This was the most Mr. Smithson had for his pains, and he seemed to be
+content therewith. If a man will marry the prettiest girl of the year he
+must be satisfied with such scant civility as conscious perfection may
+give him. We know that Aphrodite was not altogether the most comfortable
+wife, and that Helen was a cause of trouble.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Smithson sat in a bamboo chair beside his mistress, and looked
+ineffably happy when she handed him a cup of tea. Sky and sea were one
+exquisite azure—the colours of the boats glancing in the sunshine as if
+they had been jewels; here an emerald rudder, there a gunwale painted
+with liquid rubies. White sails, white frocks, white ducks made vivid
+patches of light against the blue. The landscape yonder shone and
+sparkled as if it had been incandescent. All the world of land and sky
+and sea was steeped in sunshine. A day on which to do nothing, read
+nothing, think nothing, only to exist.</p>
+
+<p>While they sat basking in the balmy atmosphere, looking lazily at that
+bright, almost insupportable picture of blue sea under blue sky, there
+came the dip of oars, making music, and a sound of coolness with every
+plash of water.</p>
+
+<p>'How good it is of somebody to row about, just to give us that nice
+soothing sound,' murmured Lesbia.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Kirkbank, with her dear old head thrown back upon the cushion of
+her luxurious chair, and her dear little cornflower hat just a thought
+on one side, was sleeping the sleep of the just, and unconsciously
+revealing the little golden arrangements which gave variety to her front
+teeth.</p>
+
+<p>The soothing sound came nearer and nearer, close under the <i>Cayman's</i>
+quarter, and then a brown hand clasped the man-ropes, and a light slim
+figure swung itself upon deck, while the boat bobbed and splashed below.</p>
+
+<p>It was Montesma, who had not been expected till the racing, which was
+not to begin for two days. A faint, faint rose bloom flushed Lady
+Lesbia's cheek at sight of him; and Mr. Smithson gave a little look of
+vexation, just one rapid contraction of the eyebrows, which resumed
+their conventional placidity the next instant.</p>
+
+<p>'So good of you,' he murmured. 'I really did not expect you till the
+beginning of the week.'</p>
+
+<p>'London is simply insupportable in this weather—most of all for a man
+born in the Havanas. My soul thirsted for blue water. So I said to
+myself, This good Smithson is at Cowes; he will give me the run of his
+yacht and a room at his villa. Why not go to Cowes at once?'</p>
+
+<p>'The room is at your service. I have only two or three of my people at
+Formosa, but just enough to look after a bachelor friend.'</p>
+
+<p>'I want very little service, my dear fellow,' answered Montesma,
+pleasantly. 'A man who has crossed the Cordilleras and camped in the
+primeval forest on the shores of the Amazon, learns to help himself. So
+this is the <i>Cayman</i>? <i>Muy deleitoso, mi amigo</i>. A floating Paradise in
+little. If the ark had been like this, I don't think any of the
+passengers would have wanted the flood to dry up.'</p>
+
+<p>He shook hands with Lady Lesbia as he spoke, and with Lady Kirkbank, who
+looked at him as if he were part of her dream, and then he sank into the
+chair on Lesbia's left hand, with the air of being established for the
+rest of the day.</p>
+
+<p>'I have left my portmanteaux at the end of the pier,' he said lazily. 'I
+dare say one of your fellows will be good enough to take them to Formosa
+for me?'</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Smithson gave the necessary order. All the beauty had gone out of the
+sea and the sky for him, all the contentment from his mind; and yet he
+was in no position to rebel against Fate—in no position to say directly
+or indirectly, 'Don Gomez de Montesma, I don't want you here, and I must
+request you to transfer yourself elsewhither.'</p>
+
+<p>Lesbia's feelings were curiously different. The very sight of that
+nervous brown hand upon the rope just now had sent a strange thrill
+through her veins. She who believed herself heartless could scarce trust
+herself to speak for the vehement throbbing of her heart. A sense of joy
+too deep for words possessed her as she reclined in her low chair, with
+drooping eyelids, yet feeling the fire of those dark southern eyes upon
+her face, scorching her like an actual flame.</p>
+
+<p>'Lady Lesbia, may I have a cup of tea?' he asked; not because he wanted
+the tea, but only for the cruel delight of seeing if she were able to
+give it to him calmly.</p>
+
+<p>Her hands shook, fluttered, wandered helplessly, as she poured out that
+cup of tea and handed it to Montesma, a feminine office which she had
+performed placidly enough for Mr. Smithson. The Spaniard took the cup
+from her with a quiet smile, a subtle look which seemed to explore the
+inmost depth of her consciousness.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, this man was verily her master. She knew it, and he know it, as
+that look of his told her. Vain to play her part of languid
+indifference—vain to struggle against her bondage. In heart and spirit
+she was at his feet, an odalisque, recognising and bowing down to her
+sultan.</p>
+
+<p>Happily for the general peace, Mr. Smithson had been looking away
+seaward, with a somewhat troubled brow, while that little cup and saucer
+episode was being enacted. And in the next minute Lesbia had recovered
+her self-command, and resumed that graceful languor which was one of her
+charms. She was weak, but she was not altogether foolish; and she had no
+idea of succumbing to this new influence—of yielding herself up to this
+conqueror, who seemed to take her life into his hand as if it were a bit
+of thistledown. Her agitation of those first few minutes was due to the
+suddenness of his appearance—the reaction from dulness to delight. She
+had been told that he was not to be at Cowes till Monday, and lo! he was
+here at her side, just as she was thinking how empty and dreary life was
+without him.</p>
+
+<p>He dropped into his place so naturally and easily, made himself so
+thoroughly at home and so agreeable to every one, that it was almost
+impossible for Horace Smithson to resent his audacity! Mr. Smithson's
+vitals might be devoured by the gnawing of the green-eyed monster, but
+however fierce that gnawing were, he did not want to seem jealous.
+Montesma was there as the very incarnation of some experiences in Mr.
+Smithson's past career, and he dared not object to the man's presence.</p>
+
+<p>And so the summer day wore on. They had the yacht all to themselves that
+evening, for the racing yachts were fulfilling engagements in other
+waters, and the gay company of pleasure-seekers had not yet fully
+assembled. They were dropping in one by one, all the evening, and Cowes
+roads grew fuller of life with every hour of the summer night.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Smithson and his guests dined in the saloon, a snug little party of
+four, and sat long over dessert, deep into the dusk; and they talked of
+all things under heaven, things frivolous, things grave, but most of all
+about that fair, strange world in far-off southern waters, the sunny
+islands of the Caribbean Sea, and the dreamy, luxurious life of that
+tropical clime, half Spanish, half Oriental, wholly independent of
+European conventionalities. Lesbia listened, enchanted by the picture.
+What were Park Lane palaces, and Berkshire manors, the petty splendours
+of the architect and the upholsterer, weighed against a world in which
+all nature is on a grander scale? Mr. Smithson might give her fine
+houses and costly upholstery; but only the Tropic of Cancer could give
+her larger and brighter stars, a world of richer colouring, a land of
+perpetual summer, nights luminous with fire-flies, gardens in which the
+fern and the cactus were as forest trees, and where humming-birds
+flashed among the foliage like living flowers; nay, where the flowers
+themselves took the forms of the animal world and seemed instinct with
+life and motion.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes,' said Mr. Smithson, with his gentlemanlike drawl, 'Spanish America
+and the West Indies are delightful places to talk about. There are so
+many things one leaves out of the picture—thieves, niggers, jiggers,
+snakes, mosquitoes, yellow Jack, creeping, crawling creatures of all
+kinds. I always feel very glad I have been to South America.'</p>
+
+<p>'Why?'</p>
+
+<p>'In order that I may never go there again,' replied Mr. Smithson.</p>
+
+<p>'I was beginning to hope you would take me there some day,' said Lesbia.</p>
+
+<p>'Never again, no, not even for your sake. No man should ever leave
+Europe after he is five-and-thirty; indeed, I doubt if after that age he
+should venture beyond the Mediterranean. That is the sea of
+civilisation. Anything outside it means barbarism.'</p>
+
+<p>'I hope we are going to travel by-and-by,' said Lesbia; 'I have been
+mewed up in Grasmere half my life, and if you are going to confine me to
+the shores of the Mediterranean, which is, after all, only a larger
+lake, for the other half of my life, my existence will be a dull piece
+of work after all. I agree with what Don Gomez said the other night:
+&quot;Not to travel is not to live.&quot;'</p>
+
+<p>They went on deck presently and sat in the summer darkness, lighted only
+by the stars, and by the lights of the yachts, and the faintly gleaming
+windows of the lighted town, sat long and late, in a state of ineffable
+repose. Lady Kirkbank, fortified by the produce of Mr. Smithson's
+particular <i>clos</i>, and by a couple of glasses of green Chartreuse, slept
+profoundly. She had not enjoyed herself so much for the last three
+months. She had been stretched on Society's rack, and she had been
+ground in Society's mill; and neither mind nor body had been her own to
+do what she liked withal. She had toiled early and late, and had spared
+herself in no wise. And now the trouble was over for a space. Here were
+rest and respite. She had done her duty as a chaperon, had provided her
+charge with the very best thing the matrimonial market offered. She had
+paid her creditors something on account all round, and had left them
+appeased and trustful, if not content. Sir George had gone oft alone to
+drink the waters at Spa, and to fortify himself for Scotland and the
+grouse season. She was her own mistress, and she could fold her hands
+and take her rest, eat and drink and sleep and be merry, all at Mr.
+Smithson's expense.</p>
+
+<p>The yachts came flocking in next day, like a flight of white-winged sea
+birds, and Mr. Smithson had enough to do receiving visitors upon the
+<i>Cayman</i>. He was fully occupied; but Montesma had nothing to do, except
+to amuse Lady Lesbia and her chaperon, and in this onerous task he
+succeeded admirably. Lesbia found that it was too warm to be on the deck
+when there were perspiring people, whose breath must be ninety by the
+thermometer, perpetually coming on board; so she and Lady Kirkbank sat
+in the saloon, and had the more distinguished guests brought down to
+them as to a Court; and the shrewder of the guests were quick to divine
+that no company beyond that of Don Gomez de Montesma was really wanted
+in that rose-scented saloon.</p>
+
+<p>The Spaniard taught Lady Kirkbank <i>monte</i>, which delighted her, and
+which she vowed she would introduce at her supper parties in the half
+season of November, when she should be in London for a week or two, as a
+bird of passage, flitting southwards. He began to teach Lesbia Spanish,
+a language for which she had taken a sudden fancy; and it is curious
+what tender accents, what hidden meanings even a grammar can take from
+such a teacher. Spanish came easily enough to a learner who had been
+thoroughly drilled in French and Italian, and who had been taught the
+rudiments of Latin; so by the end of a lesson, which went on at
+intervals all day, the pupil was able to lisp a passage of Don Quixote
+in the sweetest Castilian, very sweet to the ear of Don Gomez—a kind of
+baby language, precious as the first half-formed syllables of infancy to
+mothers.</p>
+
+<p>Montesma had nothing to do but to amuse himself and his companions all
+day in the saloon, amidst odours of roses and peaches, in a shadowy
+coolness made by striped silken blinds; but Mr. Smithson was not so much
+his own master. That innumerable company of friends which are the
+portion of the rich man given to hospitality would not let the owner of
+the <i>Cayman</i> go scot-free.</p>
+
+<p>At a place like Cowes, on the eve of the regatta week, the freelances of
+society expect to find entertainment; and Mr. Smithson had to maintain
+his character for princely hospitalities at the sacrifice of his
+feelings as a lover. Every ripple of Lesbia's silvery laughter, every
+deep tone of Montesma's voice, from the cabin below, sent a pang to his
+jealous soul; and yet he had to smile, and to order more champagne cup,
+and to be lavish of his best cigars, albeit insisting that his friends
+should smoke their cigars in the bows well to leeward, so that no foul
+breathings of tobacco should pollute his Cleopatra galley.</p>
+
+<p>Cleopatra was very happy meanwhile, sublimely indifferent even to the
+odours of tobacco. She had her Antony at her feet, looking up at her,
+as she recited her lesson, with darkly luminous eyes, obviously
+worshipping her, obviously intent on winning her without counting the
+cost. When had a Montesma ever counted the cost to himself or
+others—the cost in gold, in honour, in human life? The records of Cuba
+in the palmy days of the slave trade would tell how lightly they held
+the last; and for honour, well, the private hells of island and main
+could tell their tale of specially printed playing cards, in which the
+swords or stars on the back of each card had a secret language of their
+own, and were as finger-posts for the initiated player.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Smithson had business on shore, and was fain to leave the yacht for
+an hour or two before dinner. He invited Don Gomez to go with him, but
+the offer was graciously declined.</p>
+
+<p>'Amigo, I don't care even to look at land in such weather. It is so
+detestably dry,' he pleaded. 'It is only the sound of the sea gurgling
+against the hull that reconciles one to existence. Go, and be happy at
+your club, and send off those occult telegrams of yours, dearest. I
+shall not leave the <i>Cayman</i> till bed-time.'</p>
+
+<p>He looked as fresh and cool as if utterly unaffected by the heat, which
+to a Cuban must have been a merely lukewarm condition of the atmosphere.
+But he affected to be prostrate, and Smithson could not insist. He had
+his cards to play in a game which required extremest caution, and there
+were no friendly indicators on the backs of his kings and aces. He was
+feeling his way in the dark, and did not know how much mischief Montesma
+was prepared to do.</p>
+
+<p>When the owner of the yacht was gone Don Gomez proposed an adjournment
+to the deck for afternoon tea, and the trio sat under the awning,
+tea-drinking and gossiping for the next hour. Lady Kirkbank told the
+steward to say not at home to everybody, just as if she had a street
+door.</p>
+
+<p>'There is a good deal of the <i>dolce far niente</i> about this,' said
+Montesma, presently; 'but don't you think we have been anchored in sight
+of that shabby little town quite long enough, and that it would be
+rather nice to spread our wings and sail round the island before the
+racing begins?'</p>
+
+<p>'It would be exquisite,' said Lesbia. 'I am very tired of inaction,
+though I dearly love learning Spanish,' she added, with a lovely smile,
+and a look that was half submissive, half mutinous. 'But I have really
+been beginning to wonder whether this boat can move.'</p>
+
+<p>'You will see that she can, and at a smart pace, too, if I sail her.
+Shall we circumnavigate the island? We can set sail after dinner.'</p>
+
+<p>'Will Mr. Smithson consent, do you think?'</p>
+
+<p>'Why does Smithson exist, except to obey you?'</p>
+
+<p>'I don't know if Lady Kirkbank would quite like it,' said Lesbia,
+looking at her chaperon, who was waving a big Japanese fan, slowly,
+unsteadily, and with a somewhat drunken air, the while she slid into
+dreamland.</p>
+
+<p>'Quite like what?' she murmured, drowsily.</p>
+
+<p>'A little sail.'</p>
+
+<p>'I should dearly love it, if it didn't make me sea-sick.'</p>
+
+<p>'Sea-sick on a glassy lake like this! Impossible,' said Montesma. 'I
+consider the thing settled. We set sail after dinner.'</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Smithson came back to the yacht just in time to dress for dinner.
+Don Gomez excused himself from putting on his dress suit. He was going
+to sail the yacht himself, and he was dressed for his work,
+picturesquely, in white duck trousers, white silk shirt, and black
+velvet shooting jacket. He dined with the permission of the ladies, in
+this costume, in which he looked so much handsomer than in the livery of
+polite life. He had a red scarf tied round his waist, and when at his
+work by-and-by, he wore a little red silk cap, just stuck lightly on his
+dark hair. The dinner to-day was all animation and even excitement, very
+different from the languorous calm of yesterday. Lesbia seemed a new
+creature. She talked and laughed and flashed and sparkled as she had
+never yet done within Mr. Smithson's experience. He contemplated the
+transformation with wonder not unmixed with suspicion. Never for him had
+she been so brilliant—never in response to his glances had her violet
+eyes thus kindled, had her smile been so entrancingly sweet. He watched
+Montesma, but in him he could find no fault. Even jealousy could hardly
+take objection to the Spaniard's manner to Lady Lesbia. There was not a
+look, not a word that hinted at a private understanding between them, or
+which seemed to convey deeper meanings than the common language of
+society. No, there was no ground for fault-finding; and yet Smithson was
+miserable. He knew this man of old, and knew his influence over women.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Smithson handed over the management of the yacht without a murmer,
+albeit he pretended to be able to sail her himself, and was in the habit
+of taking the command for a couple of hours on a sunny afternoon, much
+to the amusement of skipper and crew. But Montesma was a sailor born and
+bred—the salt keen breath of the sea had been the first breath in his
+nostrils—he had managed his light felucca before he was twelve years
+old, had sailed every inch of the Caribbean Sea, and northward to the
+furthermost of the Bahamas before he was fifteen. He had lived more on
+the water than on the land in that wild boyhood of his; a boyhood in
+which books and professors had played but small part. Montesma's school
+had been the world, and beautiful women his only professors. He had
+learnt arithmetic from the transactions of bubble companies; modern
+languages from the lips of the women who loved him. He was a crack shot,
+a perfect swordsman, a reckless horseman, and a dancer in whom dancing
+almost rose to genius. Beyond these limits he was as ignorant as dirt;
+but he had a cleverness which served as a substitute for book learning,
+and he seldom failed in impressing the people he met with the idea that
+he, Gomez de Montesma, was no ordinary man.</p>
+
+<p>Directly after dinner the preparations for an immediate start began;
+very much to the disgust of skipper and crew, who were not in the habit
+of working after dinner; but Montesma cared nothing for the short
+answers of the captain, or the black look of the men.</p>
+
+<p>Lesbia wanted to learn all about everything—the name of every sail, of
+every rope. She stood near the helmsman, a slim graceful figure in a
+white gown of some soft material, with never a jewel or a flower to
+relieve that statuesque simplicity. She wore no hat, and the rich
+chesnut hair was rolled in a loose knot at the back of the small
+Greek-looking head. Montesma came to her every now and then to explain
+what was being done; and by-and-by, when the canvas was all up, and the
+yacht was skimming over the water, like a giant swan borne by the
+current of some vast strong river, he came and stayed by her side, and
+they two sat making little baby sentences in Spanish, he as teacher and
+she as pupil, with no one near them but the sailors.</p>
+
+<p>The owner of the <i>Cayman</i> had disappeared mysteriously a quarter of an
+hour after the sails were unfurled, and Lady Kirkbank had tottered down
+to the saloon.</p>
+
+<p>'I am not going—cabin,' she faltered, when Lesbia remonstrated with
+her, 'only—going—saloon—sofa—lie down—little—Smithson take
+care—you,' not perceiving that Smithson had vanished, 'shall be—quite
+close.'</p>
+
+<p>So Lesbia and Don Gomez were alone under the summer stars, murmuring
+little bits of Spanish.</p>
+
+<p>'It is the only true way of learning a language,' he said; 'grammars are
+a delusion.'</p>
+
+<p>It was a very delightful and easy way of learning, at any rate. Lesbia
+reclined in her bamboo chair, and fanned herself indolently, and watched
+the shadowy shores of the island, cliff and hill, down and wooded crest,
+flitting past her like dream-pictures, and her lips slowly shaped the
+words of that soft lisping language—so simple, so musical—a language
+made for lovers and for song, one would think. It was wonderful what
+rapid progress Lesbia made.</p>
+
+<p>She heard a church clock on the island striking, and asked Don Gomez the
+hour.</p>
+
+<p>'Ten,' he said.</p>
+
+<p>'Ten! Surely it must be later. It was past eight before we began dinner,
+and we have been sailing for ever so long. Captain, kindly tell me the
+time,' she called to the skipper, who was lolling over the gunwale near
+the foremast smoking a meditative pipe.</p>
+
+<p>'Twelve o'clock, my lady.'</p>
+
+<p>'Heavens, can I possibly have been sitting here so long. I should like
+to stay on deck all night and watch the sailing; but I must really go
+and take care of poor Lady Kirkbank. I am afraid she is not very well.'</p>
+
+<p>'She had a somewhat distracted air when she went below, but I daresay
+she will sleep off her troubles. If I were you I should leave her to
+herself.'</p>
+
+<p>'Impossible! What can have become of Mr. Smithson?'</p>
+
+<p>'I have a shrewd suspicion that it is with Smithson as with poor Lady
+Kirkbank.'</p>
+
+<p>'Do you mean that he is ill?'</p>
+
+<p>'Precisely.'</p>
+
+<p>'What, on a calm summer night, sailing over a sea of glass. The owner of
+a yacht!'</p>
+
+<p>'Rather ignominious for poor Smithson, isn't it? But men who own yachts
+are only mortal, and are sometimes wretched sailors. Smithson is feeble
+on that point, as I know of old.'</p>
+
+<p>'Then wasn't it rather cruel of us to sail his yacht?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yachts are meant for sailing, and again, sea-sickness is supposed to be
+a wholesome exercise.'</p>
+
+<p>'Good-night.'</p>
+
+<p>'Good-night,' both good nights in Spanish, and with a touch of
+tenderness which the words could hardly have expressed in English.</p>
+
+<p>'Must you really go?' pleaded Montesma, holding her hand just a thought
+longer than he had ever held it before.</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, the little more, and how much it is,' says the poet.</p>
+
+<p>'Really and truly.'</p>
+
+<p>'I am so sorry. I wish you could have stayed on deck all night.'</p>
+
+<p>'So do I, with all my heart. This calm sea under the starlit sky is like
+a dream of heaven.'</p>
+
+<p>'It is very nice, but if you stayed I think I could promise you
+considerable variety. We shall have a tempest before morning.'</p>
+
+<p>'Of all things in the world I should love to see a thunderstorm at sea.'</p>
+
+<p>'Be on the alert then, and Captain Parkes and I will try to oblige you.'</p>
+
+<p>'At any rate you have made it impossible for me to sleep. I shall stay
+with Lady Kirkbank in the saloon. Good-night, again.'</p>
+
+<p>'Good-night.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XXXIX"></a><h2>CHAPTER XXXIX.</h2>
+
+<h3>IN STORM AND DARKNESS.</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>Lesbia found Lady Kirkbank prostrate on a low divan in the saloon,
+sleepless, and very cross. The atmosphere reeked with red lavender,
+sal-volatile, eau de Cologne, and brandy, which latter remedy poor
+Georgie had taken freely in her agonies. Kibble, the faithful Grasmere
+girl, sat by the divan, fanning the sufferer with a large Japanese fan.
+Rilboche had naturally, as a Frenchwoman, succumbed utterly to her own
+feelings, and was moaning in her berth, wailing out every now and then
+that she would never have taken service with Miladi had she suspected
+her to be capable of such cruelty as to take her to live for weeks upon
+the sea.</p>
+
+<p>If this was the state of affairs now while the ocean was only gently
+stirred, what would it be by-and-by if the tempest should really come?</p>
+
+<p>'What can you be thinking of, staying on deck all night with those men?'
+exclaimed Lady Kirkbank, peevishly. 'It is hardly respectable.'</p>
+
+<p>She would have been still more inclined to object had she known that
+Lesbia's companion had been 'that man' rather than 'those men.'</p>
+
+<p>'What do you mean by all night?' Lesbia retorted, contemptuously; 'it is
+only just twelve.'</p>
+
+<p>'Only twelve. I thought we were close upon daylight. I have suffered an
+eternity of agony.'</p>
+
+<p>'I am very sorry you should be ill; but really the sea has been so
+deliciously calm.'</p>
+
+<p>'I believe I should have suffered less if it had been diabolically
+rough. Oh, that monotonous flip-flap of the water, that slow heaving of
+the boat! Nothing could be worse.'</p>
+
+<p>'I am glad to hear you say that, for Don Gomez says we are likely to
+have a tempest.'</p>
+
+<p>'A tempest!' shrieked Georgie. 'Then let him stop the boat this instant
+and put me on shore. Tell him to land me anywhere—on the Needles even.
+I could stop at the lighthouse till morning. A storm at sea will be
+simply my death.'</p>
+
+<p>'Dear Lady Kirkbank, I was only joking,' said Lesbia, who did not want
+to be worried by her chaperon's nervous apprehensions: 'so far the night
+is lovely.'</p>
+
+<p>'Give me a spoonful more brandy, my good creature,'—to Kibble. 'Lesbia,
+you ought never to have brought me into this miserable state. I
+consented to staying on board the yacht; but I never consented to
+sailing on her.'</p>
+
+<p>'You will soon be well, dear Lady Kirkbank; and you will have such an
+appetite for breakfast to-morrow morning.'</p>
+
+<p>'Where shall we be at breakfast time?'</p>
+
+<p>'Off St. Catherine's Point, I believe—just half way round the island.'</p>
+
+<p>'If we are not at the bottom of the sea,' groaned Georgie.</p>
+
+<p>They were now in the open Channel, and the boat dipped and rose to
+larger billows than had encountered her course before. Lady Kirkbank lay
+in a state of collapse, in which life seemed only sustainable by
+occasional teaspoonfuls of cognac gently tilted down her throat by the
+patient Kibble.</p>
+
+<p>Lesbia went to her cabin, but with no intention of remaining there. She
+was firmly convinced that the storm would come, and she meant to be on
+deck while it was raging. What harm could thunder or lightning, hail or
+rain, do to her while he was by to protect her? He would be busy sailing
+the boat, perhaps, but still he would have a moment now and then in
+which to think of her and care for her.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, the storm was coming. There was a livid look upon the waters, and
+the atmosphere was heavy with heat; the sky to windward black as a
+funeral pall. Lesbia was almost fearless, yet she felt a thrill of awe
+as she looked into that dense blackness. To leeward the stars were still
+visible; but that gigantic mass of cloud came creeping slowly, solemnly
+over the sky, while the shadow flitted fast across the water, swallowing
+up that ghastly electric glare.</p>
+
+<p>Lesbia wrapped herself in a white cashmere <i>sortie de bal</i> and stole up
+the companion. Montesma was working at the ropes with his own hands,
+calling directions to the sailors to shorten and take in the canvas,
+urging them to increased efforts by working at the ropes with his own
+hands, springing up the rigging and on deck, flashing backwards and
+forwards amidst the rigging like a being of supernatural power. He had
+taken off his jacket, and was clad from top to toe in white, save for
+that streak of scarlet which tightly girdled his waist. His tall
+flexible form, perfect in line as a Greek statue of Hermes, stood out
+against the background of black night. His voice, with its tones of
+brief imperious command, the proud carriage of his head, the easy grace
+of his rapid movements, all proclaimed the man born to rule over his
+fellow-men. And it is these master spirits, these born rulers, whom
+women instinctively recognise as their sovereign lords, and for whom
+women count no sacrifice too costly.</p>
+
+<p>In the midst of his activity Montesma suddenly saw that white-robed
+figure standing at the top of the companion, and flew to her side. The
+boat was pitching heavily, dipping into the trough of the sea at an
+angle of forty-five degrees, as it seemed to Lesbia.</p>
+
+<p>'You ought not to be here,' said Montesma; 'it is much rougher than I
+expected.'</p>
+
+<p>'I am not afraid,' she answered; 'but I will go back to my cabin if I am
+in your way.'</p>
+
+<p>'In my way' (with deepest tenderness): 'yes, you are in my way, for I
+shall think of nothing else now you are here. But I believe we have done
+all that need be done to the yacht, and I can take care of you till the
+storm is over.'</p>
+
+<p>He put his arm round her as the stem dipped, and led her towards the
+stern, guiding her footsteps, supporting her as her light figure swayed
+against him with the motion of the boat. A vivid flash of lightning
+showed him her face as they stood for an instant leaning against each
+other, his arm encircling her. Ah, what deep feeling in that
+countenance, once so passionless; what a new light in those eyes. It was
+like the awakening of a long dormant soul.</p>
+
+<p>He took the helm from the captain and stood steering the vessel, and
+calling out his orders, with Lesbia close beside him, holding her with
+his disengaged arm, drawing her near him as the vessel pitched
+violently, drawing her nearer still when they shipped a sea, and a great
+fountain of spray enfolded them both in a dense cloud of salt water.</p>
+
+<p>The thunder roared and rattled, as if it began and ended close beside
+them. Forked lightnings zigzagged amidst the rigging. Sheet lightning
+enwrapped those two in a luminous atmosphere, revealing faces that were
+pale with passion, lips that trembled with emotion. There were but scant
+opportunity for speech, and neither of these two felt the need of words.
+To be together, bound nearer to each other than they had ever been yet,
+than they might ever be again, in the midst of thunder and lightning and
+dense clouds of spray. This was enough. Once when the <i>Cayman</i> pitched
+with exceptional fury, when the thunder crashed and roared loudest,
+Lesbia found her head lying on Montesma's breast and his arms round her,
+his lips upon her face. She did not wrench herself from that forbidden
+embrace. She let those lips kiss hers as never mortal man had kissed her
+before. But an instant later, when Montesma's attention was distracted
+by his duties as steersman, and he let her go, she slipped away in the
+darkness, and melted from his sight and touch like a modern Undine. He
+dared not leave the helm and follow her then. He sent one of the sailors
+below a little later, to make sure that she was safe in her cabin; but
+he saw her no more that night.</p>
+
+<p>The storm abated soon after daybreak, and the morning was lovely; but
+Don Gomez and Lady Lesbia did not meet again till the church bells on
+the island were ringing for morning service, and then the lady was safe
+under the wing of her chaperon, with her affianced husband in
+attendance upon her at the breakfast table in the saloon.</p>
+
+<p>She received Montesma with the faintest inclination of the head, and she
+carefully avoided all occasion of speech with him during the leisurely,
+long spun-out meal. She was as white as her muslin gown, and her eyes
+told of a sleepless night. She talked a little, very little to Lady
+Kirkbank and Mr. Smithson; to the Spaniard not at all. And yet Montesma
+was in no manner dashed by this appearance of deep offence. So might
+Francesca have looked the morning after that little scene over the book;
+yet she sacrificed her salvation for her lover all the same. It was a
+familiar stage upon the journey which Montesma knew by heart. Here the
+inclination of the road was so many degrees more or less; for this hill
+you are commanded to put on an extra horse; at this stage it is
+forbidden to go more than eight miles an hour, and so on, and so on.
+Montesma knew every inch of the ground. He put on a melancholy look, and
+talked very little. He had been on deck all night, and so there was an
+excuse for his being quiet.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Kirkbank related her impressions of the storm, and talked enough
+for four. She had suffered the pangs of purgatory, but her natural
+cheeriness asserted itself, and she made no moaning about past agonies
+which had exercised a really delightful influence on her appetite. Mr.
+Smithson also was cheerful. He had paid his annual tribute to Neptune,
+and might hope to go scot-free for the rest of the season.</p>
+
+<p>'If I had stayed on deck I must have had my finger in the pie; so I
+thought it better to go below and get a good night's rest in the
+steward's cabin,' he said, not caring to confess his sufferings as
+frankly as Lady Kirkbank admitted hers.</p>
+
+<p>After breakfast, which was prolonged till noon, Montesma asked Smithson
+to smoke a cigarette on deck with him.</p>
+
+<p>'I want to talk to you on a rather serious matter,' he said.</p>
+
+<p>Lesbia heard the words, and looked up with a frightened glance. Could he
+mean to attempt anything desperate? Was he going to confess the fatal
+truth to Horace Smithson, to tell her affianced lover that she was
+untrue to her bond, that she loved him, Montesma, as fondly as he loved
+her, that their two souls had mingled like two flames fanned by the same
+current, and thence had risen to a conflagration which must end in ruin,
+if she were not set free to follow where her heart had gone, free to
+belong to that man whom her spirit chose for lord and master. Her heart
+leapt at the hope that Montesma was going to do this, that he was strong
+enough to break her bonds for her, powerful and rich enough to secure
+her a brilliant future. Yet this last consideration, which hitherto had
+been paramount, seemed now of but little moment. To be with <i>him</i>, to
+belong to <i>him</i>, would be enough for bliss. Albeit that in such a
+choice she forfeited all that she had ever possessed or hoped for of
+earthly prosperity. Adventurer, beggar, whatever he might be, she chose
+him, and loved him with all the strength of a weak soul newly awakened
+to passionate feeling.</p>
+
+<p>Unhappily for Lesbia Haselden, Montesma was not at all the kind of man
+to take so direct and open a course as that which she imagined possible.</p>
+
+<p>His business with Mr. Smithson was of quite a different kind.</p>
+
+<p>'Smithson, do you know that you have an utterly incompetent crew?' he
+said, gravely, when they two were standing aft, lighting their
+cigarettes.</p>
+
+<p>'Indeed I do not. The men are all experienced sailors, and the captain
+ranks high among yachtsmen.'</p>
+
+<p>'English yachtsmen are not particularly good judges of sailors. I tell
+you your skipper is no sailor, and his men are fools. If it had not been
+for me the <i>Cayman</i> would have gone to pieces on the rocks last night,
+and if you are to cross to St. Malo, as you talked of doing, for the
+regatta there, you had better sack these men and let me get you a South
+American crew. I know of a fellow who is in London just now—the captain
+of a Rio steamer, who'll send you a crew of picked men, if you give me
+authority to telegraph to him.'</p>
+
+<p>'I don't like foreign sailors,' said Smithson, looking perplexed and
+worried; 'and I have perfect confidence in Wilkinson.'</p>
+
+<p>'Which is as much as to say that you consider me a liar! Go to the
+bottom your own way, <i>mon ami: ce n'est pas mon affaire,</i>' said
+Montesma, turning on his heel, and leaving his friend to his own
+devices.</p>
+
+<p>Had he pressed the point, Smithson would have suspected him of some evil
+motive, and would have been resolute in his resistance; but as he said
+no more about it, Smithson began to feel uncomfortable.</p>
+
+<p>He was no sailor himself, knew absolutely nothing about the navigation
+of his yacht, though he sometimes pretended to sail her; and he had no
+power to judge of his skipper's capacity or his men's seamanship. He had
+engaged the captain wholly on the strength of the man's reputation,
+guaranteed by certain certificates which seemed to mean a great deal.
+But after all such certificates might mean very little—such a
+reputation might be no real guarantee. The sailors had been engaged by
+the captain, and their ruddy faces and thoroughly British appearence,
+the exquisite cleanliness which they maintained in every detail of the
+yacht, had seemed to Mr. Smithson the perfection of seamanship.</p>
+
+<p>But it was not the less true that the cleanest of yachts, with deck of
+spotless whiteness, sails of unsullied purity, brasses shining and
+sparkling like gold fresh from the goldsmith's, might be spiked upon a
+rock, or might founder on a sand-bank, or heel over under too much
+canvas. Mr. Smithson was inclined to suspect any proposition of
+Montesma's; yet he was not the less disturbed in mind by the assertion.</p>
+
+<p>The day wore on, and the yacht sailed merrily over a summer sea. Mr.
+Smithson fidgeted about the deck uneasily, watching every movement of
+the sailors. No boat could be sailing better, as it seemed to him; but
+in such weather and over such waters any boat must needs go easily. It
+was in the blackness of night, amidst the fury of the storm, that
+Montesma's opinion had been formed. Smithson began to think that his
+friend was right. The sailors had honest countenances, but they looked
+horribly stupid. Could men with such vacuous grins, such an air of
+imbecile good-nature, be capable of acting wisely in any terrible
+crisis?—could they have nerve and readiness, quickness, decision, all
+those grand qualites which are needed by the seaman who has to contend
+with the fury of the elements?</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Smithson and his guests had breakfasted too late for the possibility
+of luncheon. They were in Cowes Roads by one o'clock. A fleet of yachts
+had arrived during their absence, and the scene was full of life and
+gaiety. Lady Lesbia held a <i>lev&eacute;e</i> at the afternoon tea, and had a crowd
+of her old admirers around her—adorers whose presence in no wise
+disturbed Horace Smithson's peace. He would have been content that his
+wife should go through life with a herd of such worshippers following in
+her footsteps. He knew the aimless innocence, the almost infantine
+simplicity of the typical Johnnie, Chappie, <i>Muscadin, Petit Creve,
+Gommeux</i>—call him by what name you will. From these he feared no evil.
+But in that one follower who gave no outward token of his worship he
+dreaded peril. It was Montesma he watched, while dragoons with
+close-cropped hair, and imbecile youths with heads rigid in four-inch
+collars, were hanging about Lady Lesbia's low bamboo chair, and
+administering obsequiously to the small necessities of the tea-table.</p>
+
+<p>It was while this tea-table business was going on that Mr. Smithson took
+the opportunity of setting his mind at rest, were it possible, as to the
+merits of Captain Wilkinson. Among his visitors this afternoon there was
+the owner of three or four racing yachts—a man renowned for his
+victories, at home and abroad.</p>
+
+<p>'I think you knew something of my captain, Wilkinson, before I engaged
+him,' said Smithson, with assumed carelessness.</p>
+
+<p>'I know every skipper on board every boat in the squadron,' answered his
+friend. 'A good fellow, Wilkinson—thoroughly honest fellow.'</p>
+
+<p>'Honest; oh yes, I know all about that. But how about his seamanship?
+His certificates were wonderfully good, but they are not everything.</p>
+
+<p>'Everything, my dear fellow,' cried the other; 'they are next to
+nothing. But I believe Wilkinson is a tolerable sailor.'</p>
+
+<p>This was not encouraging.</p>
+
+<p>'He has never been unlucky, I believe.'</p>
+
+<p>'My dear Smithson, you are a great authority in the City, but you are
+not very well up in the records of the yachting world, or you would know
+that your Captain Wilkinson was skipper on the <i>Orinoco</i> when she ran
+aground on the Chesil Bank, coming home from Cherbourg Regatta, fifteen
+lives lost, and the yacht, in less than half an hour, ground to powder.
+That was rather a bad case, I remember; for though it was a tempestuous
+night, the accident would never have happened if Wilkinson had not
+mistaken the lights. So you see his Trinity House papers didn't prevent
+his going wrong.'</p>
+
+<p>Good heavens! This was the strongest confirmation of Montesma's charge.
+The man was a stupid man, an incapable man, a man to whose intelligence
+and care human life should never be trusted. A fig for his honesty! What
+would honesty be worth in a hurricane off the Chesil Beach? What would
+honesty serve a ship spitted on the Jailors off Jersey? Montesma was
+right. If the <i>Cayman</i> was to make a trip to St. Malo she must be
+navigated by competent men. Horace Smithson hated foreign sailors,
+copper-faced ruffians, with flashing black eyes which seemed to threaten
+murder, did you but say a rough word to them; sleek, raven-haired
+scoundrels, with bowie-knives in their girdles, ready for mutiny. But,
+after all, life is worth too much to be risked for a prejudice, a
+sentiment.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps that St. Malo business might be avoided; and then there need be
+no change in captain or crew. The yacht must be safe enough lying at
+anchor in the roadstead. By-and-by, when the visitors had departed, and
+Mr. Smithson was reposefully enjoying his tea by Lady Lesbia's side, he
+approached the subject.</p>
+
+<p>'Do you really care about crossing to St. Malo after this—really prefer
+the idea to Ryde?'</p>
+
+<p>'Infinitely,' exclaimed Lesbia, quickly. 'Ryde would only be Cowes ever
+again—a lesser Cowes; and I thought when you first proposed it that the
+plan was rather stupid, though I did not want to be uncivil and say so.
+But I was delighted with Don Gomez de Montesma's amendment, substituting
+St. Malo for Ryde. In the first place the trip across will be
+delicious'—Lady Kirkbank gave a faint groan—'and in the second place I
+am dying to see Brittany.'</p>
+
+<p>'I doubt if you will highly appreciate St. Malo. It is a town of many
+and various smells.'</p>
+
+<p>'But I want to smell those foreign smells of which one hears much. At
+least it is an experience. We need not be on shore any longer than we
+like. And I want to see that fine rocky coast, and Chateaubriand's tomb
+on the what's-its-name. So nice to be buried in that way.'</p>
+
+<p>'Then you have set your heart on going to St. Malo, and would not like
+any change in our plan?'</p>
+
+<p>'Any change will be simply detestable,' answered Lesbia, all the more
+decidedly since she suspected a desire for change on the part of Mr.
+Smithson.</p>
+
+<p>She was in no amiable humour this afternoon. All her nerves seemed
+strained to their utmost tension. She was irritated, tremulous with
+nervous excitement, inclined to hate everybody, Horace Smithson most of
+all. In her cabin a little later on, when she was changing her gown for
+dinner, and Kibble was somewhat slow and clumsy in the lacing of the
+bodice, she wrenched herself from the girl's hands, flung herself into a
+chair, and burst into a flood of passionate tears.</p>
+
+<p>'O God! that I were on one of those islands in the Caribbean Sea—an
+island where Europeans never come—where I might lie down among the
+poisonous tropical flowers, and sleep the rest of my days away. I am
+sick to death of my life here; of the yacht, the people—everything.'</p>
+
+<p>'This air is too relaxing, Lady Lesbia,' the girl murmured, soothingly;
+'and you didn't have your natural rest last night. Shall I get you a
+nice strong cup of tea?'</p>
+
+<p>'Tea! no. I have been living upon tea for the last twenty-four hours. I
+have eaten nothing. My mouth is parched and burning. Oh, Kibble!'
+flinging her head upon the girl's buxom arm, and letting it rest there,
+'what a happy creature you are—not a care—not a care.'</p>
+
+<p>'I'm sure you can't have any cares, Lady Lesbia,' said Kibble, with an
+incredulous smile, trying to smooth the disordered hair, anxious to make
+haste with the unfinished toilet, for it was within a few minutes of
+eight.</p>
+
+<p>'I am full of care. I am in debt—horribly in debt—getting deeper and
+deeper every day—and I am going to sell myself to the only man who can
+pay my debts and give me fine houses, and finery like this,' plucking at
+the <i>crêpe de chine</i> gown, with its flossy fringe, its delicate lace, a
+marvel of artistic expenditure; a garment which looked simplicity
+itself, and yet was so cleverly contrived as to cost five-and-thirty
+guineas. The greatest effects in it required to be studied with a
+microscope.</p>
+
+<p>'But surely, dear Lady Lesbia, you won't marry Mr. Smithson, if you
+don't love him?'</p>
+
+<p>'Do you suppose love has anything to do with marriages in society?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, Lady Lesbia, it would be so unkind to him, so cruel to yourself.'</p>
+
+<p>'Cruel to myself. Yes, I am cruel to myself. I had the chance of
+happiness a year ago, and I lost it. I have the chance of happiness
+now—yes, of consummate bliss—and haven't the courage to snatch at it.
+Take off this horrid gown, Kibble; my head is splitting: I shan't go to
+dinner.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, Lady Lesbia, you are treading on the pearl embroidery,'
+remonstrated poor Kibble, as Lesbia kicked the new gown from under her
+feet.</p>
+
+<p>'What does it matter!' she exclaimed with a bitter little laugh. 'It has
+not been paid for—perhaps it never will be.'</p>
+
+<p>The dinner was silent and gloomy. It was as if a star had been suddenly
+blotted out of the sky. Smithson, ordinarily so hospitable, had been too
+much disturbed in mind to ask any of his friends to stay to dinner; so
+there were only Lady Kirkbank, who was too tired to be lively, and
+Montesma, who was inclined to be thoughtful. Lesbia's absence, and the
+idea that she was ill, gave the feast almost a funereal air.</p>
+
+<p>After dinner Smithson and Montesma sat on deck, smoking their cigars,
+and lazily watching the lights on sea, and the lights on shore; these
+brilliant in the foreground, those dim in the distance.</p>
+
+<p>'You can telegraph to your Rio Janeiro friend to-morrow morning, if you
+like,' said Smithson, presently, 'and tell him to send a first-rate
+skipper and crew. Lady Lesbia has made up her mind to see St. Malo
+Regatta, and with such a sacred charge I can't be too careful.'</p>
+
+<p>'I'll wire before eight o'clock to-morrow,' answered Montesma, 'You have
+decided wisely. Your respectable English Wilkinson is an excellent
+man—but nothing would surprise me less than his reducing your <i>Cayman</i>
+to matchwood in the next gale.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XL"></a><h2>CHAPTER XL.</h2>
+
+<h3>A NOTE OF ALARM.</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>That strange scene in the old house at Fellside made a profound
+impression upon Lord Hartfield. He tried to disguise his trouble, and
+did all in his power to seem gay and at perfect ease in his wife's
+company; but his mind was full of anxiety, and Mary loved him too well
+to be for a moment in doubt as to his feelings.</p>
+
+<p>'There is something wrong, Jack,' she said, while they were breakfasting
+at a table in the verandah, with the lake and the bills in front of them
+and the sweet morning air around them. 'You try to talk and to be
+lively, but there is a little perpendicular wrinkle in your forehead
+which I know as well as the letters of the alphabet, and that little
+line means worry. I used to see it in the old days, when you were
+breaking your heart for Lesbia. Why cannot you be frank and confide in
+me. It is your duty, sir, as my husband.'</p>
+
+<p>'Is it my duty to halve my burdens as well as my joys? How do I know if
+those girlish shoulders are strong enough to bear the weight of them?'</p>
+
+<p>'I can bear anything you can bear, and I won't be cheated out of my
+share in your worries. If you were obliged to have a tooth out, I would
+have one out too, for company.'</p>
+
+<p>'I hope the dentist would be too conscientious to allow that.'</p>
+
+<p>'Tell me your trouble, Hartfield,' she said, earnestly, leaning across
+the table, bringing her grave intelligent face near to him.</p>
+
+<p>They were quite alone, he and she. The servants had done their
+ministering. Behind them there was the empty dining-room, in front of
+them the sunlit panorama of lake and hill. There could not be a safer
+place for telling secrets.</p>
+
+<p>'Tell me what it is that worries you,' Mary pleaded again.</p>
+
+<p>'I will, dear. After all perfect trust is the best; nay, it is your due,
+for you are brave enough and true enough to be trusted with secrets that
+mean life and death. In a word, then, Mary, the cause of my trouble is
+that old man we saw the other night.'</p>
+
+<p>'Steadman's uncle?'</p>
+
+<p>'Do you really believe that he is Steadman's uncle?'</p>
+
+<p>'My grandmother told me so,' answered Mary, reddening to the roots of
+her hair.</p>
+
+<p>To this girl, who was the soul of truth, there was deepest shame in the
+idea that her kinswoman, the woman whom of all the world she most owed
+reverence and honour, could be deemed capable of falsehood.</p>
+
+<p>'Do you think my grandmother would tell me an untruth?'</p>
+
+<p>'I do not believe that man is a poor dependent, an old servant's
+kinsman, sheltered and cared for in this house for charity's sake.
+Forgive me, Mary, if I doubt the word of one you love; but there are
+positions in life in which a man must judge for himself. Would Mr.
+Steadman's kinsman be lodged as that old man is lodged; would he talk as
+that old man talks; and last and greatest perplexity of all, would he
+possess a treasure of gold and jewels which must be worth many
+thousands?'</p>
+
+<p>'But you cannot know for certain that those things are valuable; they
+may be rubbish that this poor old man has scraped together and hoarded
+for years, glass jewels bought at country fairs. Those rouleaux may
+contain lead or coppers.'</p>
+
+<p>'I do not think so, Mary. The stones had all the brilliancy of valuable
+gems, and then there were others in the finest filagree
+settings—goldsmith's work which bore the stamp of an Eastern world.
+Take my word for it, that treasure came from India; and it must have
+been brought to England by Lord Maulevrier. It may have existed all
+these years without your grandmother's knowledge. That is quite
+possible; but it seems to me impossible that such wealth should be
+within the knowledge and the power of a pauper lunatic.'</p>
+
+<p>'But if that unhappy old man is not a relation of Steadman's supported
+here by my grandmother's benevolence, who can he be, and why is he
+here?' asked Mary.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, Molly dear, these are two questions which I cannot answer, and
+which yet ought to be answered somehow. Since that night I have felt as
+if there were a dark cloud lowering over this house—a cloud almost as
+terrible in its menace of danger as the forshadowing of fate in a Greek
+legend. For your sake, for the honour of your race, for my own
+self-respect as your husband, I feel that this mystery ought to be
+solved, and all dark things made light before your grandmother's death.
+When she is gone the master-key to the past will be lost.'</p>
+
+<p>'But she will be spared for many years, I hope, spared to sympathise
+with my happiness, and with Lesbia's.'</p>
+
+<p>My dearest girl, we cannot hope that. The thread of her life is worn
+very thin. It may snap at any moment. You cannot look seriously in your
+grandmother's face, and yet delude yourself with the hope that she has
+years of life before her.'</p>
+
+<p>'It will be very hard to part, just as she has begun to care for me,'
+said Mary, with her eyes full of tears.</p>
+
+<p>'All such partings are hard, and your grandmother's life has been so
+lonely and joyless that the memory of it must always have a touch of
+pain. One cannot say of her as we can of the happy; she has lived her
+life—all things have been given to her, and she falls asleep at the
+close of a long and glorious day. For some reason which I cannot
+understand, Lady Maulevrier's life has been a prolonged sacrifice.'</p>
+
+<p>'She has always given us to understand that she was fond of Fellside,
+and that this secluded life suited her,' said Mary, meditatively.</p>
+
+<p>'I cannot help doubting her sincerity on that point. Lady Maulevrier is
+too clever a woman, and forgive me, dear, if I add too worldly a woman,
+to be content to live out of the world. The bird must have chafed its
+breast against the bars of the cage many and many a time when you
+thought that all was peace. Be sure, Mary, that your grandmother had a
+powerful motive for spending all her days in this place, and I can but
+think that the old man we saw the other night had some part in that
+motive. Do you remember telling me of her ladyship's vehement anger when
+she heard you had made the acquaintance of her pensioner?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, she was very angry,' Mary answered, with a troubled look. 'I
+never saw her so angry—she was almost beside herself—said the harshest
+things to me—talked as if I had done some dreadful mischief.'</p>
+
+<p>'Would she have been so moved, do you think, unless there was some fatal
+secret involved in that man's presence here?'</p>
+
+<p>'I hardly know what to think. Tell me everything. What is it that you
+fear?—what is it that you suspect?'</p>
+
+<p>'To tell you my fears and suspicions is to tell you a family secret that
+has been kept from you out of kindness all the years of your life—and I
+hardly think I could bring myself to that if I did not know what the
+world is, and how many good-natured friends Lady Hartfield will meet in
+society, by-and-by, ready to tell her, by hints and innuendoes, that her
+grandfather, the Governor of Madras, came back to England under a cloud
+of disgrace.'</p>
+
+<p>'My poor grandfather! How dreadful!' exclaimed Mary, pale with pity and
+shame. 'Did he deserve his disgrace, poor unhappy creature—or was he
+the victim of false accusation?'</p>
+
+<p>'I can hardly tell you that, Mary, any more than I can tell whether
+Warren Hastings deserved the abuse that was wreaked upon him at one
+time, or the acquittal that gave the lie to his slanderers in after
+years. The events occurred forty years ago—the story was only half
+known then, and like all such stories formed the basis for every kind of
+exaggeration and perversion.'</p>
+
+<p>'Does Maulevrier know?' faltered Mary.</p>
+
+<p>'Maulevrier knows all that is known by the general public, and no more.'</p>
+
+<p>'And you have married the granddaughter of a disgraced man,' said Mary,
+with a piteous look. 'Did you know—when you married me?'</p>
+
+<p>'As much as I know now, dear love. If you had been Jonathan Wild's
+granddaughter you would have been just as dear to me. I married <i>you</i>,
+dearest; I love <i>you</i>; I believe in <i>you</i>. All the grandfathers in
+Christendom would not shake my faith by one tittle.'</p>
+
+<p>She threw herself into his arms, and sobbed upon his breast. But sweet
+as this assurance of his love was to her, she was not the less stricken
+by shame at the thought of possible infamy in the past, a shameful
+memory for ever brooding over her name in the present.</p>
+
+<p>'Society never forgets a scandal,' she said; 'I have heard Maulevrier
+say that.'</p>
+
+<p>'Society has a long memory for other people's sins, but it only avenges
+its own wrongs. Give the wicked fairy Society a bad dinner, or leave her
+out of your invitation list for a ball, and she will twit you with the
+crimes or the misfortunes of a remote ancestor—she will go about
+talking of your grandfather the leper, or your great aunt who ran away
+with her footman. But so long as the wicked fairy gets all she wants out
+of you, she cares not a straw for the misdeeds of past generations.'</p>
+
+<p>He spoke lightly, laughingly almost, and then he ordered the dogcart to
+be brought round immediately, and he drove Mary across the hills towards
+Langdale, to bring the colour back to her blanched cheeks. He brought
+her home in time to give her grandmother an hour for letter-writing
+before luncheon, while he walked up and down the terrace below Lady
+Maulevrier's windows, meditating the course he was to take.</p>
+
+<p>He was to leave Westmoreland next day to take his place in the House of
+Lords during the last important debate of the session. He made up his
+mind that before he left he would seek an interview with Lady
+Maulevrier, and boldly ask her to explain the mystery of that old man's
+presence at Fellside. He was her kinsman by marriage, and he had sworn
+to honour her and to care for her as a son; and as a son he would urge
+her to confide in him, to unburden her conscience of any dark secret,
+and to make the crooked things straight, before she was called away.</p>
+
+<p>While he was forecasting this interview, meeting imaginary objections,
+arguing points which might have to be argued, a servant came out to him
+with an ochre envelope on a little silver tray—that unpleasant-looking
+envelope which seems always a presage of trouble, great or small.</p>
+
+<p>'Lord Maulevrier, Albany, to Lord Hartfield, Fellside, Grasmere.</p>
+
+<p>'For God's sake come to me at once. I am in great trouble; not on my own
+account, but about a relation.'</p>
+
+<p>A relation—except his grandmother and his two sisters Maulevrier had no
+relations for whom he cared a straw. This message must have relation to
+Lesbia. Was she ill—dying, the victim of some fatal accident, runaway
+horses, boat upset, train smashed? There was something; and Maulevrier
+appealed to his nearest and best friend. There was no withstanding such
+an appeal. It must be answered, and immediately.</p>
+
+<p>Lord Hartfield went into the library and wrote his reply message, which
+consisted of six words.</p>
+
+<p>'Going to you by first train.'</p>
+
+<p>The next train left Windermere at three. There was just time to get a
+fresh horse put in the dogcart, and a Gladstone bag packed.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XLI"></a><h2>CHAPTER XLI.</h2>
+
+<h3>PRIVILEGED INFORMATION.</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>Lord Hartfield did not arrive at Euston Square until near eleven o'clock
+at night. A hansom deposited him at the entrance to the Albany just as
+the clock of St. James's Church chimed the hour. He found only
+Maulevrier's valet. His lordship had waited indoors all the evening, and
+had only gone out a quarter of an hour ago. He had gone to the
+Cerberus, and begged that Lord Hartfield would be kind enough to follow
+him there.</p>
+
+<p>Lord Hartfield was not fond of the Cerberus, and indeed deemed that
+lively place of rendezvous a very dangerous sphere for his friend
+Maulevrier; but in the face of Maulevrier's telegram there was no time
+to be lost, so he walked across Piccadilly and down St. James's Street
+to the fashionable little club, where the men were dropping in after the
+theatres and dinners, and where sheafs of bank notes were being
+exchanged for those various coloured counters which represented divers
+values, from the respectable 'pony' to the modest 'chip.'</p>
+
+<p>Maulevrier was in the first room Hartfield looked into, standing behind
+some men who were playing.</p>
+
+<p>'That's something like friendship,' he exclaimed, when he saw Lord
+Hartfield, and then he hooked his arm through his friend's, and led him
+off to the dining room.</p>
+
+<p>'Come and have some supper, old fellow,' he said, 'and I can tell you my
+troubles while you are eating it. James, bring us a grill, and a
+lobster, and a bottle of Mumms, number 27, you know.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, my lord.'</p>
+
+<p>'Sorry to find you in this den, Maulevrier,' said Lord Hartfield.</p>
+
+<p>'Haven't touched a card. Haven't done half an hour's punting this
+season. But it's a kind of habit with me to wander in here now and then.
+I know so many of the members. One poor devil lost nine thousand one
+night last week. Rather rough upon him, wasn't it? All ready money at
+this shop, don't you know.'</p>
+
+<p>'Thank God, I know nothing about it. And now, Maulevrier, what is wrong,
+and with whom?'</p>
+
+<p>'Everything is wrong, and with my sister Lesbia.'</p>
+
+<p>'Good heavens! what do you mean?'</p>
+
+<p>'Only this, that there is a fellow after her whose very name means ruin
+to women—a Spanish-American adventurer—reckless, handsome, a gambler,
+seducer, duellist, dare-devil. The man she is to marry seems to have
+neither nous nor spunk to defend her. Everybody at Goodwood saw the game
+that was being played, everybody at Cowes is watching the cards, betting
+on the result. Yes, great God, the men at the Squadron Club are staking
+their money upon my sister's character—even monkeys that she bolts with
+Montesma—five to three against the marriage with Smithson ever coming
+off.'</p>
+
+<p>'Is this true?'</p>
+
+<p>'It is as true as your marriage with Molly, as true as your loyalty to
+me. I was told of it all this morning at the Haute Gomme by a man I can
+rely upon, a really good fellow, who would not leave me in the dark
+about my sister's danger when all the smoking-rooms in Pall Mall were
+sniggering about it. My first impulse was to take the train for Cowes;
+but then I knew if I went alone I should let my temper get the better of
+me. I should knock somebody down—throw somebody out of the window—make
+a devil of a scene. And this would be fatal for Lesbia. I wanted your
+counsel, your cool head, your steady common-sense. &quot;Not a step forward
+without Jack,&quot; I said to myself, so I bolted off and sent that telegram.
+It relieved my feeling a little, but I've had a wretched day.'</p>
+
+<p>'Waiter, bring me a Bradshaw, or an A B C,' said Lord Hartfield.</p>
+
+<p>He had eaten nothing but a biscuit since breakfast, but he was ready to
+go off at once, supperless, if there were a train to carry him.
+Unluckily there was no train. The mail had started. Nothing till seven
+o'clock next morning.</p>
+
+<p>'Eat your supper, old fellow,' said Maulevrier. 'After all, the danger
+may not be so desperate as I fancied this morning. Slander is the
+favourite amusement of the age we live in. We must allow a margin for
+exaggeration.'</p>
+
+<p>'A very liberal margin,' answered Hartfield. 'No doubt the man who
+warned you meant honestly, but this scandal may have grown out of the
+merest trifles. The feebleness of the Masher's brain is only exceeded by
+the foulness of the Masher's tongue. I daresay this rumour about Lady
+Lesbia has its beginning and end among the Masher species.'</p>
+
+<p>'I hope so, but—I have seen those two together—I met them at Victoria
+one evening after Goodwood. Old Kirkbank was shuffling on ahead,
+carrying Smithson with her, absorbing his attention by fussification
+about her carriage. Lesbia and that Cuban devil were in the rear. They
+looked as if they had all the world to themselves. Faust and Marguerite
+in the garden were not in it for the expression of intense absorbing
+feeling compared with those two. I'm not an intellectual party, but I
+know something of human nature, and I know when a man and woman are in
+love with each other. It is one of the things that never has been, that
+never can be hidden.'</p>
+
+<p>'And you say this Montesma is a dangerous man?'</p>
+
+<p>'Deadly.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, we must lose no time. When we are on the spot it will be easy to
+find out the truth; and it will be your duty, if there be danger, to
+warn Lesbia and her future husband.</p>
+
+<p>'I would much rather shoot the Cuban,' said Maulevrier. 'I never knew
+much good come of a warning in such a case: it generally precipitates
+matters. If I could play <i>&eacute;cart&eacute;</i> with him at the club, find him
+sporting an extra king, throw my cards in his face, and accept his
+challenge for an exchange of shots on the sands beyond Cherbourg—there
+would be something like satisfaction.'</p>
+
+<p>'You say the man is a gambler?'</p>
+
+<p>'Report says something worse of him. Report says he is a cheat.'</p>
+
+<p>'We must not be dependent upon society gossip,' replied Lord Hartfield.
+'I have an idea, Maulevrier. The more we know about this man—Montesma,
+I think you called him----'</p>
+
+<p>'Gomez de Montesma.'</p>
+
+<p>'The more fully we are acquainted with Don Gomez de Montesma's
+antecedents the better we shall be able to cope with him, if we come to
+handy-grips. It's too late to start for Cowes, but it is not too late to
+do something. Fitzpatrick, the political-economist, spent a quarter of a
+century in South America. He is a very old friend—knew my father—and I
+can venture to knock at his door after midnight—all the more as I know
+he is a night-worker. He is very likely to enlighten us about your Cuban
+hidalgo.'</p>
+
+<p>'You shall finish your supper before I let you stir. After that you may
+do what you like. I was always a child in your hands, Jack, whether it
+was climbing a mountain or crossing the Horse-shoe Fall. I consider the
+business in your hands now. I'll go with you wherever you like, and do
+what you tell me. When you want me to kick anybody, or fight anybody,
+you can give me the office and I'll do it. I know that Lesbia's
+interests are safe in your hands. You once cared very much for her. You
+are her brother-in-law now, and, next to me, you are her natural
+protector, taking into account that her future husband is a cad and
+doesn't score.'</p>
+
+<p>'Meet me at Waterloo at ten minutes to seven to-morrow morning, and
+we'll go down to Cowes together. I'm off to find Fitzpatrick. Good
+night.'</p>
+
+<p>So they parted. Lord Hartfield walked across the Park to Great George
+Street, where Mr. Fitzpatrick had chambers of a semi-official character,
+on the first floor of a solemn-looking old house, spacious, gloomy
+without and within, walls sombre with the subdued colouring of
+decorations half a century old.</p>
+
+<p>The lighted windows of those first-floor rooms told Lord Hartfield that
+he was not too late. He rang the bell, which was answered with the
+briefest delay by a sleepy-looking clerk, who had been taking shorthand
+notes for Mr. Fitzpatrick's great book upon 'Protection <i>versus</i> Free
+Trade.' The clerk looked sleepy, but his employer had as brisk an air as
+if he were just beginning the day; although he had been working without
+intermission since nine o'clock that evening, and had done a long day's
+work before dinner. He was walking up and down the spacious unluxurious
+room, half office, half library, smoking a cigar. Upon a large table in
+the centre of the room stood two powerful reading lamps with green
+shades, illuminating a chaotic mass of books and pamphlets, heaped and
+scattered all over the table, save just on that spot between the two
+lamps, which accommodated Mr. Fitzpatrick's blotting pad and inkpot, a
+pewter inkpot which held about a pint.</p>
+
+<p>'How d'ye do, Hartfield? Glad you've looked me up at last,' said the
+Irishman, as if a midnight call were the most natural thing in the
+world. 'Just come from the House?'</p>
+
+<p>'No; I've just come from Westmoreland. I thought I should find you among
+those everlasting books of yours, late as it is. Can I have a few words
+alone with you?'</p>
+
+<p>'Certainly. Morgan, you can go away for a bit.'</p>
+
+<p>'Home, sir?'</p>
+
+<p>'Home—well—yes, I suppose it's late. You look sleepy. I should have
+been glad to finish the chapter on Beetroot Sugar to-night—but it may
+stand over for the morning. Be sure you're early.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, sir,' the clerk responded with a faint sigh.</p>
+
+<p>He was paid handsomely for late hours, liberally rewarded for his
+shorthand services; and yet he wished the great Fitzpatrick had not been
+quite so industrious.</p>
+
+<p>'Now, my dear Hartfield, what can I do for you?' asked Fitzpatrick, when
+the clerk had gone. 'I can see by your face that you've something
+serious in hand. Can I help you?'</p>
+
+<p>'You can, I believe, in a very material way. You were five-and-twenty
+years in Spanish America?'</p>
+
+<p>'Rather more than less.'</p>
+
+<p>'Here, there, and everywhere?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes; there is <i>not</i> a city in South America that I have not lived
+in—for something between a day and a year.'</p>
+
+<p>'You know something about most men of any mark in that part of the
+world, I conclude?'</p>
+
+<p>'It was my business to know men of all kinds. I had my mission from the
+Spanish Government. I was engaged to examine the condition of commerce
+throughout the colony, the working of protection as against free trade,
+and so on. Strange, by-the-bye, that Cuba, the last place to foster the
+slave trade, was of all spots of the earth the first to carry free-trade
+principles into practical effect, long before they were recognised in
+any European country.'</p>
+
+<p>'Strange to me that you should speak of Cuba so soon after my coming
+in,' answered Lord Hartfield. 'I am here to ask you to help me to find
+out the antecedents of a man who hails from that island.'</p>
+
+<p>'I ought to know something about him, whoever he is,' replied Mr.
+Fitzpatrick, briskly. 'I spent six months in Cuba not very long before
+my return to England. Cuba is one of my freshest memories; and I have a
+pretty tight memory for facts, names and figures. Never could remember
+two lines of poetry in my life.'</p>
+
+<p>'Did you ever hear of, or meet with, a man called Montesma—Gomez de
+Montesma?'</p>
+
+<p>'Couldn't have stopped a month in Havana without hearing something about
+that gentleman,' answered Fitzpatrick, 'I hope he isn't a friend of
+yours, and that you have not lent him money?'</p>
+
+<p>'Neither; but I want to know all you can tell me about him.'</p>
+
+<p>'You shall have it in black and white, out of my Cuban note-book,'
+replied the other, unlocking a drawer in the official table; 'I always
+take notes of anything worth recording, on the spot. A man is a fool who
+trusts to memory, where personal character is at stake. Montesma is as
+well known at Havana as the Morro Fort or the Tacon Theatre. I have
+heard stories enough about him to fill a big volume; but all the facts
+recorded there'—striking the morocco cover of the note-book—'have been
+thoroughly sifted; I can vouch for them.'</p>
+
+<p>He looked at the index, found the page, and handed the book to Lord
+Hartfield.</p>
+
+<p>'Read for yourself,' he said, quietly.</p>
+
+<p>Lord Hartfield read three or four pages of plain statement as to various
+adventures by sea and land in which Gomez de Montesma had figured, and
+the reputation which he bore in Cuba and on the Main.</p>
+
+<p>'You can vouch for this?' he said at last, after a long silence.</p>
+
+<p>'For every syllable.'</p>
+
+<p>'The story of his marriage?'</p>
+
+<p>'Gospel truth: I knew the lady.'</p>
+
+<p>'And the rest?'</p>
+
+<p>'All true.'</p>
+
+<p>'A thousand thanks. I know now upon what ground I stand. I have to save
+an innocent, high-bred girl from the clutches of a consummate
+scoundrel.'</p>
+
+<p>'Shoot him, and shoot her, too, if there's no better way of saving her.
+It will be an act of mercy,' said Mr. Fitzpatrick, without hesitation.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XLII"></a><h2>CHAPTER XLII.</h2>
+
+<h3>'SHALL IT BE?'</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>While Lord Hartfield sat in his friend's office in Great George Street
+reading the life story of Gomez de Montesma, told with the cruel
+precision and the unvarnished language of a criminal indictment, the
+hero of that history was gliding round the spacious ballroom of the
+Cowes Club, with Lady Lesbia Haselden's dark-brown head almost reclining
+on his shoulder, her violet eyes looking up at his every now and then,
+shyly, entrancingly, as he bent his head to talk to her.</p>
+
+<p>The Squadron Ball was in full swing between midnight and the first hour
+of morning. The flowers had not lost their freshness, the odours of dust
+and feverish human breath had not yet polluted the atmosphere. The
+windows were open to the purple night, the purple sea. The stars seemed
+to be close outside the verandah, shining on purpose for the dancers;
+and these two—the man tall, pale, dark, with flashing eyes and short,
+sleek raven hair, small head, noble bearing; the girl divinely lovely in
+her marble purity of complexion, her classical grace of form—these two
+were, as every one avowed and acknowledged, the handsomest couple in the
+room.</p>
+
+<p>'We're none of us in it compared with them,' said a young naval
+commander to his partner, whereupon the young lady looked somewhat
+sourly, and replied that Lady Lesbia's features were undeniably regular
+and her complexion good, but that she was wanting in soul.</p>
+
+<p>'Is she?' asked the sailor, incredulously, 'Look at her now. What do you
+call that, if it isn't soul?'</p>
+
+<p>'I call it simply disgraceful,' answered his partner, sharply turning
+away her head.</p>
+
+<p>Lesbia was looking up at the Spaniard, her lips faintly parted, all her
+face listening eagerly as she caught some whispered word, breathed among
+the soft ripples of her hair, from lips that almost touched her brow.
+People cannot go on waltzing for ten minutes in a dead silence, like
+automatic dancers. There must be conversation. Only it is better that
+the lips should do most of the talking. When the eyes have so much to
+say society is apt to be censorious.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Smithson was smoking a cigarette on the lawn with a sporting peer. A
+man to whom tobacco is a necessity cannot be always on guard; but it is
+quite possible that in the present state of Lady Lesbia's feelings
+Smithson would have had no restraining influence had he been ever so
+watchful. To what act in the passion drama had her love come to-night as
+she floated round the room, with her head inclined towards her lover's
+breast, the strong pulsation of his heart sounding in her ear, like the
+rhythmical beat of the basses yonder in Waldteufel's last waltz? Was
+there still the uncertainty as to the <i>dénouement</i> which marks the third
+act of a good play? or was there the dread foreboding, the sense of
+impending doom which should stir the spectators with pity and terror as
+the fourth act hurries to its passionate close? Who could tell? She had
+been full of life and energy to-day on board the yacht during the
+racing, in which she seemed to take an ardent interest. The <i>Cayman</i> had
+followed the racers for three hours through a freshening sea, much to
+Lady Kirkbank's disgust, and Lesbia had been the soul of the party.
+The same yesterday. The yacht had only got back to Cowes in time for the
+ball, and all had been hurry and excitement while the ladies dressed and
+crossed to the club, the spray dashing over their opera mantles, poor
+Lady Kirkbank's complexion yellow with <i>mal de mer</i>, in spite of a
+double coating of <i>Blanc de Fedora</i>, the last fashionable cosmetic.</p>
+
+<p>To-night Lesbia was curiously silent, depressed even, as it seemed to
+those who were interested in observing her; and all the world is
+interested in a famous beauty. She was very pale, even her lips were
+colourless, and the large violet eyes and firmly pencilled brows alone
+gave colour to her face. She looked like a marble statue, the eyes and
+eyebrows accentuated with touches of colour. Those lovely eyes had a
+heavy look, as of trouble, weariness; nay, absolute distress.</p>
+
+<p>Never had she looked less brilliant than to-night; never had she looked
+more beautiful. It was the loveliness of a newly-awakened soul. The
+wonderful Pandora-casket of life, with its infinite evil, its little
+good, had given up its secret. She knew what passionate love really
+means. She knew what such love mostly means—self-sacrifice, surrender
+of the world's wealth, severance from friends, the breaking of all old
+ties. To love as she loved means the crossing of a river more fatal than
+the Rubicon, the casting of a die more desperate than that which Cæsar
+flung upon the board when he took up arms against the Republic.</p>
+
+<p>The river was not yet crossed, but her feet were on the margin, wet with
+the ripple of the stream. The fatal die was not yet cast, but the
+dice-box was in her hand ready for the throw. Lesbia and Montesma danced
+together—not too often, three waltzes out of sixteen—but when they
+were so waltzing they were the cynosure of the room. That betting of
+which Maulevrier had heard was rife to-night, and the odds upon the
+Cuban had gone up. It was nine to four now that those two would be over
+the border before the week was out.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Smithson was not neglectful of his affianced. He took her into the
+supper-room, where she drank some Moselle cup, but ate nothing. He sat
+out three or four waltzes with her on the lawn, listening to the murmer
+of the sea, and talking very little.</p>
+
+<p>'You are looking wretchedly ill to-night, Lesbia,' he said, after a
+dismal silence.</p>
+
+<p>'I am sorry that I should put you to shame by my bad looks,' she
+answered, with that keen acidity of tone which indicates irritated
+nerves.</p>
+
+<p>'You know that I don't mean anything of the kind; you are always lovely,
+always the loveliest everywhere; but I don't like to see you so ghastly
+pale.'</p>
+
+<p>'I suppose I am over-fatigued: that I have done too much in London and
+here. Life in Westmoreland was very different,' she added, with a sigh,
+and a touch of wonder that the Lesbia Haselden, whose methodical life
+had never been stirred by a ruffle of passion, could have been the same
+flesh and blood—yes, verily, the same woman, whose heart throbbed so
+vehemently to-night, whose brain seemed on fire.</p>
+
+<p>'Are you sure there is nothing the matter?' he asked, with a faint
+quiver in his voice.</p>
+
+<p>'What should there be the matter?'</p>
+
+<p>'Who can say? God knows that I know no cause for evil. I am honest
+enough, and faithful enough, Lesbia. But your face to-night is like a
+presage of calamity, like the dull, livid sky that goes before a
+thunderstorm.'</p>
+
+<p>'I hope there is no thunderbolt coming,' she answered, lightly. 'What
+very tall talk about a headache, for really that is all that ails me.
+Hark, they have begun &quot;My Queen.&quot; I am engaged for this waltz.'</p>
+
+<p>'I am sorry for that.'</p>
+
+<p>'So am I. I would ever so much rather have stayed out here.'</p>
+
+<p>Two hours later, in the steely morning light, when sea and land and sky
+had a metallic look as if lit by electricity, Lady Lesbia stood with her
+chaperon and her affianced husband on the landing stage belonging to the
+club, ready to step into the boat in which six swarthy seamen in red
+shirts and caps were to row them back to the yacht. Mr. Smithson drew
+the warm <i>sortie de bal</i>, with its gold-coloured satin lining and white
+fox border, closer round Lesbia's slender form.</p>
+
+<p>'You are shivering,' he said; 'you ought to have warmer wraps.</p>
+
+<p>'This is warm enough for St. Petersburg. I am only tired—very tired.'</p>
+
+<p>'The <i>Cayman</i> will rock you to sleep.'</p>
+
+<p>Don Gomez was standing close by, waiting for his host. The two men were
+to walk up the hill to Formosa, a village with a classic portico,
+delightfully situated above the town.</p>
+
+<p>'What time are we to come to breakfast? asked Mr. Smithson.</p>
+
+<p>'Not too early, in mercy's name. Two o'clock in the afternoon, three,
+four;—why not make it five—combine breakfast with afternoon tea,'
+exclaimed Lady Kirkbank, with a tremendous yawn. 'I never was so
+thoroughly fagged; I feel as if I had been beaten with sticks,
+basti—what's its name.'</p>
+
+<p>She was leaning all her weight upon Mr. Smithson, as he handed her down
+the steps and into the boat. Her normal weight was not a trifle, and
+this morning she was heavy with champagne and sleep. Carefully as
+Smithson supported her she gave a lurch at the bottom of the steps, and
+plunged ponderously into the boat, which dipped and careened under her,
+whereat she shrieked, and implored Mr. Smithson to save her.</p>
+
+<p>All this occupied some minutes, and gave Lesbia and the Cuban just
+time for a few words that had to be said somehow.</p>
+
+<p>'Good-night,' said Montesma, as they clasped hands; 'good-night;' and
+then in a lower voice he said, 'Well, have you decided at last? Shall it
+be?'</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him for a moment or so, pale in the starlight, and then
+murmured an almost inaudible syllable.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes.'</p>
+
+<p>He bent quickly and pressed his lips upon her gloved hand, and when Mr.
+Smithson looked round they two were standing apart, Montesma in a
+listless attitude, as if tired of waiting for his host.</p>
+
+<p>It was Smithson who handed Lesbia into the boat and arranged her wraps,
+and hung over her tenderly as he performed those small offices.</p>
+
+<p>'Now really,' he asked, just before the boat put off, 'when are we to be
+with you to-morrow?'</p>
+
+<p>'Lady Kirkbank says not till afternoon tea, but I think you may come a
+few hours earlier. I am not at all sleepy.'</p>
+
+<p>'You look as if you needed sleep badly,' answered Smithson. 'I'm afraid
+you are not half careful enough of yourself. Good-night.'</p>
+
+<p>The boat was gliding off, the oars dipping, as he spoke. How swiftly it
+shot from his ken, flashing in and out among the yachts, where the lamps
+were burning dimly in that clear radiance of new-born day.</p>
+
+<p>Montesma gave a tremendous yawn as he took out his cigar-case, and he
+and Mr. Smithson did not say twenty words between them during the walk
+to Formosa, where servants were sitting up, lamps burning, a great
+silver tray, with brandy, soda, liqueurs, coffee, in readiness.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XLIII"></a><h2>CHAPTER XLIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>'ALAS, FOR SORROW IS ALL THE END OF THIS'</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>Lady Kirkbank retired to her cabin directly she got on board the
+<i>Cayman</i>.</p>
+
+<p>'Good-night, child! I am more than half asleep,' she said; 'and I think
+if there were to be an earthquake an hour hence I should hardly hear it.
+Go to your berth directly, Lesbia; you look positively awful. I have
+seen girls look bad after balls before now, but I never saw such a
+spectre as you look this morning.'</p>
+
+<p>Poor Georgie's own complexion left something to be desired. The <i>Blanc
+de Fedora</i> had been a brilliant success for the first two hours: after
+that the warm room began to tell upon it, and there came a greasiness,
+then a streakiness, and now all that was left of an alabaster skin was a
+livid patch of purplish paint here and there, upon a crow's-foot ground.
+The eyebrows, too, had given in, and narrow lines of Vandyke brown
+meandered down Lady Kirkbank's cheeks. The frizzy hair had gone
+altogether wrong, and had a wild look, suggestive of the witches in
+Macbeth, and the scraggy neck and poor old shoulders showed every year
+of their age in the ghastly morning light.</p>
+
+<p>Lesbia waited in the saloon till Lady Kirkbank had bolted herself into
+her cabin, and then she went up to the deck wrapped in her satin-lined,
+fur-bordered cloak, and coiled herself in a bamboo arm-chair, and
+nestled her bare head into a Turkish pillow, and tried to sleep, there
+with the cool morning breeze blowing upon her burning forehead, and the
+plish-plash of seawater soothing her ear.</p>
+
+<p>There were only three or four sailors on deck, weird, almost
+diabolical-looking creatures, Lesbia thought, in striped shirts, with
+bare arms, of a shining bronze complexion, flashing black eyes, sleek
+raven hair, a sinister look. What species of men they were—Mestizoes,
+Coolies, Yucatekes—she knew not, but she felt that they were something
+wild and strange, and their presence filled her with a vague fear. <i>He</i>,
+whose influence now ruled her life, had told her that these men were
+born mariners, and that she was twenty times safer with them than when
+the yacht had been under the control of those honest, grinning
+red-whiskered English Jack Tars. But she liked the English sailors best,
+all the same; and she shrank from the faintest contact with these
+tawny-visaged strangers, plucking away the train of her gown as they
+passed her chair, lest they should brush against her drapery.</p>
+
+<p>On deck this morning, with only those dark faces near, she had a sense
+of loneliness, of helplessness, of abandonment even. Unbidden the image
+of her home at Grasmere flashed into her mind—all things so calm, so
+perfectly ordered, such a sense of safety, of home—no peril, no
+temptation, no fever—only peace: and she had grown sick to death of
+peace. She had prayed for tempest: and the tempest had come.</p>
+
+<p>There was a heavenly quiet in the air in the early summer morning, only
+the creaking of a spar, the scream of a seagull now and then. How pale
+the lamps were growing on board the yachts. Paler still, yellow, and
+dim, and blurred yonder in the town. The eastward facing windows were
+golden with the rising sun. Yes, this was morning. The yachts were
+moving away yonder, majestical, swan-like, white sails shining against
+the blue.</p>
+
+<p>She closed her eyes, and tried to sleep; but sleep would not come. She
+was always listening—listening for the dip of oars, listening for a
+snatch of melody from a mellow baritone whose every accent she knew so
+well.</p>
+
+<p>It came at last, the sound her soul longed for. She lay among her
+cushions with closed eyes, listening, drinking in those rich ripe notes
+as they came nearer and nearer, to the measure of dipping oars, <i>'La
+donna e mobile—'</i></p>
+
+<p>Nearer and nearer, until the little boat ground against the hull. She
+lifted her heavy eyelids as Montesma leapt over the gunwale, almost into
+her arms. He was at her side, kneeling by her low chair, kissing the
+little hands, chill with the freshness of morning.</p>
+
+<p>'My own, my very own,' he murmured, passionately.</p>
+
+<p>He cared no more for those copper-faced Helots yonder than if they had
+been made of wood. He had fate in his own hands now, as it seemed to
+him. He went to the skipper and gave him some orders in Spanish, and
+then the sails were unfurled, the <i>Cayman</i> spread her broad white wings,
+and moved off among those other yachts which were gliding, gliding,
+gliding out to sea, melting from Cowes Roads like a vision that fadeth
+with the broad light of morning.</p>
+
+<p>When the sails were up and the yacht was running merrily through the
+water, Montesma went back to Lady Lesbia, and they two sat side by side,
+gilded and glorified in the vivid lights of sunrise, talking as they had
+never talked before, her head upon his shoulder, a smile of ineffable
+peace upon her lips, as of a weary child that has found rest.</p>
+
+<p>They were sailing for Havre, and at Havre they were to be married by the
+English chaplain, and from Havre they were to sail for the Havana, and
+to live there ever afterwards in a fairy-tale dream of bliss, broken
+only by an annual visit to Paris, just to buy gowns and bonnets.
+Surrendered were all Lesbia's ambitious hopes—forgotten—gone; her
+desire to reign princess paramount in the kingdom of fashion—her thirst
+to be wealthiest among the wealthy—gone—forgotten. Her dreams now were
+of the <i>dolce far niente</i> of a tropical climate, a boudoir giving on the
+Caribbean sea, cigarettes, coffee, nights spent in a foreign opera
+house, the languid, reposeful existence of a Spanish dama—with him,
+with him. It was for his sake that she had modified all her ideas of
+life. To be with him she would have been content to dwell in the tents
+of the Patagonians, on the wild and snow-clad Pampas. A love which was
+strong enough to make her sacrifice duty, the world, her fair fame as a
+well-bred woman, was a love that recked but little of the paths along
+which her lover's hand was to lead. For him, to be with him, she
+renounced the world. The rest did not count.</p>
+
+<p>The summer hours glided past them. The <i>Cayman</i> was far out at sea; all
+the other yachts had vanished, and they were alone amidst the blue,
+with only a solitary three-master yonder, on the edge of the horizon.
+More than once Lesbia had talked of going below to change her ball gown
+for the attire of everyday life; but each time her lover had detained
+her a little longer, had pleaded for a few more words. Lady Kirkbank
+would be astir presently, and there would be no more solitude for them
+till they were married, and could shake her off altogether. So Lesbia
+stayed, and those two drank the cup of bliss, hushed by the monotonous
+sing-song of the sea, the rhythm of the swinging sails. But now it was
+broad morning. The hour when society, however late it may keep its
+revels overnight, is apt to awaken, were it only to call for a cup of
+strong tea and to turn again on the pillow of lassitude, after that
+refreshment, like the sluggard of Holy Writ. At ten o'clock the sun sent
+his golden arrows across the silken coverlet of her berth and awakened
+Lady Kirkbank, who opened her eyes and looked about languidly. The
+little cabin was heaving itself up and down in a curious way; Mr.
+Smithson's cigar-cases were sloping as if they were going to fall upon
+Lady Kirkbank's couch, and the looking-glass, with all its dainty
+appliances, was making an angle of forty-five degrees. There was more
+swirling and washing of water against the hull than ever Georgie
+Kirkbank had heard in Cowes Roads.</p>
+
+<p>'Mercy on me! this horrid thing must be moving,' she exclaimed to the
+empty air. 'It must have broken loose in the night.'</p>
+
+<p>She had no confidence in those savage-looking sailors, and she had a
+vision of the yacht drifting at the mercy of winds and waves, drifting
+for days, weeks, and months; drifting to the German Ocean, drifting to
+the North Pole. Mr. Smithson and Montesma on shore—no one on board to
+exercise authority over those fearful men.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps they had mutinied, and were carrying off the yacht as their
+booty, with Lesbia and her chaperon, and all their gowns.</p>
+
+<p>'I am almost glad that harpy Seraphine has my diamonds,' thought poor
+Georgie, 'or I should have had them with me on board this hateful boat.'</p>
+
+<p>And then she rapped vehemently against the panel of the cabin, and
+screamed for Rilboche, whose den was adjacent.</p>
+
+<p>Rilboche, who detested the sea, made her appearance after some delay,
+looking even greener than her mistress, who, in rising from her berth,
+already began to suffer the agonies of sea-sickness.</p>
+
+<p>'What does this mean?' exclaimed Lady Kirkbank; 'and where are we
+going?'</p>
+
+<p>'That's what I should like to know, my lady. But I daresay Lady Lesbia
+and Mr. Montesma can tell you. They are both on deck.'</p>
+
+<p>'Montesma! Why, we left him on shore!'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, my lady, but he came on board at five o'clock this morning. I
+looked at my watch when I heard him land, and he and Lady Lesbia have
+been sitting on deck ever since.'</p>
+
+<p>'And now it is ten. Five hours on deck—impossible!'</p>
+
+<p>'Time doesn't seem long when one is happy, my lady,' murmured Rilboche,
+in her own language.</p>
+
+<p>'Help me to dress this instant,' screamed her mistress: 'that dreadful
+Spaniard is eloping with us.'</p>
+
+<p>Despite the hideous depression of that malady which strikes down Kaiser
+and beggar with the same rough hand, Lady Kirkbank contrived to get
+herself dressed decently, and to stagger up the companion to that part
+of the deck where the Persian carpet was spread, and the bamboo chairs
+and tables were set out under the striped awning. Lesbia and her lover
+were sitting together, he giving her a first lesson in the art of
+smoking a cigarette. He had told her playfully that every man, woman,
+and child in Cuba was a smoker, and she had besought him to let her
+begin, and now, with infinite coquetry, was taking her first lesson.</p>
+
+<p>'You shameless minx!' exclaimed Georgie, pale with anger.</p>
+
+<p>'Where is Smithson—my poor, good Smithson?'</p>
+
+<p>'Fast asleep in his bed at Formosa, I hope, dear Lady Kirkbank,' the
+Cuban answered, with perfect <i>sang froid</i>. 'Smithson is out of it, as
+you idiomatic English say. I hope, Lady Kirkbank, you will be as kind to
+me as you have been to Smithson; and depend upon it I shall make Lady
+Lesbia as good a husband as ever Smithson could have done.'</p>
+
+<p>'You!' exclaimed the matron, contemptuously. 'You!--a foreigner, an
+adventurer, who may be as poor as Job, for anything I know about you.'</p>
+
+<p>'Job was once rather comfortably off, Lady Kirkbank; and I can answer
+for it that Montesma's wife will know none of the pangs of poverty.'</p>
+
+<p>'If you were a beggar I would not care,' said Lesbia, drawing nearer to
+him.</p>
+
+<p>They had both risen at Lady Kirkbank's approach, and were standing side
+by side, confronting her. Lesbia had shrunk from the idea of poverty
+with John Hammond; yet, for this man's sake, she was ready to face
+penury, ruin, disgrace, anything.</p>
+
+<p>'Do you mean to tell me that Lord Maulevrier's sister, a young lady
+under my charge, answerable to me for her conduct, is capable of jilting
+the man to whom she has solemnly bound herself, in order to marry you?'
+demanded Lady Kirkbank, turning to Montesma.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes; that is what I am going to do,' answered Lesbia, boldly. 'It would
+be a greater sin to keep my promise than to break it. I never liked that
+man, and you know it. You badgered me into accepting him, against my own
+better judgment. You drifted me so deeply into debt that I was willing
+to marry a man I loathed in order to get my debts paid. <i>This</i> is what
+you did for the girl placed under your charge. But, thank God, I have
+released myself from your clutches. I am going far away to a new world,
+where the memory of my old life cannot follow me. People may be angry or
+pleased! I do not care. I shall be the wife of the man I have chosen out
+of all the world for my husband—the man God made to be my master.'</p>
+
+<p>'You are----' gasped Lady Kirkbank. 'I can't say what you are. I never
+in my life felt so tempted to use improper language.'</p>
+
+<p>'Dear Lady Kirkbank, be reasonable,' pleaded Montesma; 'you can have no
+interest in seeing Lesbia married to a man she dislikes.'</p>
+
+<p>Georgia reddened a little, remembering that she was interested to the
+amount of some thousands in the Smithson and Haselden alliance; but she
+took a higher ground than mercenary considerations.</p>
+
+<p>'I am interested in doing the very best for a young lady who has been
+entrusted to my care, the granddaughter of an old friend,' she answered,
+with dignity. 'I have no objection to you in the abstract, Don Gomez.
+You have always been vastly civil, I am sure----'</p>
+
+<p>'Stand by us in our day of need, Lady Kirkbank, and you will find me the
+staunchest friend you ever had.'</p>
+
+<p>'I am bound in honour to consider Mr. Smithson, Lesbia,' said Lady
+Kirkbank. 'I wonder that a decently-brought up girl can behave so
+abominably.'</p>
+
+<p>'It would be more abominable to marry a man I detest. I have made up my
+mind, Lady Kirkbank. We shall be at Havre to-morrow morning, and we
+shall be married to-morrow—shall we not, Gomez?'</p>
+
+<p>She let her head sink upon his breast, and his arm enfold her. Thus
+sheltered, she felt safe, thus and thus only. She had thrown her cap
+over the mills; snapped her fingers at society; cared not a jot what the
+world might think or say of her. This man would she marry and no other;
+this man's fortune would she follow for good or evil. He had that kind
+of influence with women which is almost 'possession.' It smells of
+brimstone.</p>
+
+<p>'Come, my dear good soul,' said Montesma, smiling at the angry matron,
+'why not take things quietly? You have had a good many girls under your
+wing; and you must know that youth and maturity see life from a
+different standpoint. In your eyes my old friend Smithson is an
+admirable match. You measure him by his houses, his stable, his banker's
+book; but Lesbia would rather marry the man she loves, and take the
+risks of his fate. I am not a pauper, Lady Kirkbank, and the home to
+which I shall take my love is pretty enough for a princess of the blood
+royal, and for her sake I shall grow richer yet,' he added, with his
+eyes kindling; 'and if you care to pay us a visit next February in our
+Parisian apartment I will promise you as pleasant a nest as you can wish
+to occupy.'</p>
+
+<p>'How do I know that you will ever bring her back to Europe?' said Lady
+Kirkbank, piteously. 'How do I know that you will not bury her alive in
+your savage country, among blackamoors, like those horrid sailors, over
+there—kill her, perhaps, when you are tired of her?'</p>
+
+<p>At these words of Lady Kirkbank's, flung out at random, Montesma
+blanched, and his deep black eye met hers with a strangely sinister
+look.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes,' she cried, hysterically—'kill her, kill her! You look as if you
+could do it.'</p>
+
+<p>Lesbia nestled closer to her lover's heart.</p>
+
+<p>'How dare you say such things to him,' she cried, angrily. '<i>I</i> trust
+him, don't you see; trust him with my whole heart, with all my soul. I
+shall be his wife to-morrow, for good or evil.'</p>
+
+<p>'Very much for evil, I'm afraid,' said Lady Kirkbank. 'Perhaps you will
+be kind enough to come to your cabin and take off that ball gown, and
+make yourself just a little less disreputable in outward appearance,
+while I get a cup of tea.'</p>
+
+<p>Lesbia obeyed, and went down to her cabin, where Kibble was waiting with
+a fresh white muslin frock and all its belongings, laid out ready for
+her mistress, sorely perplexed at the turn which affairs were taking.
+She had never liked Horace Smithson, although he had given her tips
+which were almost a provision for her old age; but she had thought it a
+good thing that her mistress, who was frightfully extravagant, should
+marry a millionaire; and now they were sailing over the sea with a lot
+of coloured sailors, and the millionaire was left on shore.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Kirkbank went into the saloon, where breakfast was laid ready, and
+where the steward was in attendance with that air of being absolutely
+unconscious of any domestic disturbance, which is the mark of a
+well-trained servant.</p>
+
+<p>Lesbia appeared in something less than an hour, newly dressed and fresh
+looking, in her pure white gown, her brown hair bound in a coronet round
+her small Greek head. She sat down by Lady Kirkbank's side, and tried to
+coax her into good humour.</p>
+
+<p>'Why can't you take things pleasantly, dear?' she pleaded. 'Do now, like
+a good soul. You heard him say he was well off, and that he will take me
+to Paris next winter, and you can come to us there on your way from
+Cannes, and stay with us till Easter. It will be so nice when the Prince
+and all the best people are in Paris. We shall only stay in Cuba till
+the fuss about my running away is all over, and people have forgotten,
+don't you know. As for Mr. Smithson, why should I have any more
+compunction about jilting him than he had about that poor Miss Trinder?
+By-the-bye, I want you to send him back all his presents for me. They
+are almost all in Arlington Street. I brought nothing with me except my
+engagement ring,' looking down at the half-hoop of diamonds, and pulling
+it off her fingers as she talked. 'I had a kind of presentiment----'</p>
+
+<p>'You mean that you had made up your mind to throw him over.'</p>
+
+<p>'No. But I felt there were breakers ahead. It might have come to
+throwing myself into the sea. Perhaps you would have liked that better
+than what has happened.'</p>
+
+<p>'I don't know, I'm sure. The whole thing is disgraceful. London will
+ring with the scandal. What am I to say to Lady Maulevrier, to your
+brother? And pray how do you propose to get married at Havre? You cannot
+be married in a French town by merely holding up your finger. There are
+no registry offices. I am sure I have no idea how the thing is done.'</p>
+
+<p>'Don Gomez has arranged all that—everything has been thought
+of—everything has been planned. A steamer will take us to St. Thomas,
+and another steamer will take us on to Cuba.'</p>
+
+<p>'But the marriage—the licence?'</p>
+
+<p>'I tell you everything has been provided for. Please take this ring and
+send it to Mr. Smithson when you go back to England.'</p>
+
+<p>'Send it to him yourself. I will have nothing to do with it.'</p>
+
+<p>'How dreadfully disagreeable you are,' said Lesbia, pouting, 'just
+because I am marrying to please myself, instead of to please you. It is
+frightfully selfish of you.'</p>
+
+<p>Montesma came in at this moment. He, too, had dressed himself freshly,
+and was looking his handsomest, in that buccaneer style of costume which
+he wore when he sailed the yacht. He and Lesbia breakfasted at their
+ease, while Lady Kirkbank reclined in her bamboo arm-chair, feeling very
+unhappy in her mind and far from well. Neptune and she could not
+accommodate themselves.</p>
+
+<p>After a leisurely breakfast, enlivened by talk and laughter, the cabin
+windows open, the sun shining, the freshening breeze blowing in, Lesbia
+and Don Gomez went on deck, and he reclined at her feet while she read
+to him from the pages of her favourite Keats, read languidly, lazily,
+yet exquisitely, for she had been taught to read as well as to sing. The
+poetry seemed to have been written on purpose for them; and the sky and
+the atmosphere around them seemed to have been made for the poetry. And
+so, with intervals of strolling on the deck, and an hour or so dawdled
+away at luncheon, and a leisurely afternoon tea, the day wore on to
+sunset, and they went back to Keats, while Lady Kirkbank sulked and
+slept in a corner of the saloon.</p>
+
+<p>'This is the happiest day of my life,' Lesbia murmured, in a pause of
+their reading, when they had dropped Endymion's love to talk of their
+own.</p>
+
+<p>'But not of mine, my angel. I shall be happier still when we are far
+away on broader waters, beyond the reach of all who can part us.'</p>
+
+<p>'Can any one part us, Gomez, now that we have pledged ourselves to each
+other?' she asked, incredulously.</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, love, such pledges are sometimes broken. All women are not
+lion-hearted. While the sea is smooth and the ship runs fair, all is
+easy enough; but when tempest and peril come—that is the test, Lesbia.
+Will you stand by me in the tempest, love?'</p>
+
+<p>'You know that I will,' she answered, with her hand locked in his two
+hands, clasped as with a life-long clasp.</p>
+
+<p>She could not imagine any severe ordeal to be gone through. If
+Maulevrier heard of her elopement in time for pursuit, there would be a
+fuss, perhaps—an angry bother raging and fuming. But what of that? She
+was her own mistress. Maulevrier could not prevent her marrying
+whomsoever she pleased.</p>
+
+<p>'Swear that you will hold to me against all the world,' he said,
+passionately, turning his head to look across the stern of the vessel.</p>
+
+<p>'Against all the world,' she answered, softly.</p>
+
+<p>'I believe your courage will be tested before long,' he said; and then
+he cried to the skipper, 'Crowd on all sail, Tomaso. That boat is
+chasing us.'</p>
+
+<p>Lesbia sprang to her feet, looking as he looked to a spot of vivid white
+on the horizon. Montesma had snatched up a glass and was watching that
+distant spot.</p>
+
+<p>'It is a steam-yacht,' he said. 'They will catch us.'</p>
+
+<p>He was right. Although the <i>Cayman</i> strained every timber so that her
+keel cut through the water like a boomerang, wind and steam beat wind
+without steam. In less than an hour the steam-yacht was beside the
+<i>Cayman</i>, and Lord Maulevrier and Lord Hartfield had boarded Mr.
+Smithson's deck.</p>
+
+<p>'I have come to take you and Lady Kirkbank back to Cowes, Lesbia,' said
+Maulevrier. 'I'm not going to make any undue fuss about this little
+escapade of yours, provided you go back with Hartfield and me at once,
+and pledge yourself never to hold any further communication with Don
+Gomez de Montesma.'</p>
+
+<p>The Spaniard was standing close by, silent, white as death, but ready to
+make a good fight. That pallor of the clear olive skin was not from want
+of pluck; but there was the deadly knowledge of the ground he stood
+upon, the doubt that any woman, least of all such a woman as Lady Lesbia
+Haselden, could be true to him if his character and antecedents were
+revealed to her. And how much or how little these two men could tell her
+about himself or his past life was the question which the next few
+minutes would solve.</p>
+
+<p>'I am not going back with you,' answered Lesbia. 'I am going to Havre
+with Don Gomez de Montesma. We are to be married there as soon as we
+arrive.'</p>
+
+<p>'To be married—at Havre,' cried Maulevrier. 'An appropriate place. A
+sailor has a wife in every port, don't you know.'</p>
+
+<p>'We had better go down to the cabin,' said Hartfield, laying his hand
+upon his friend's shoulder. 'If Lady Lesbia will be good enough to come
+with us we can tell her all that we have to tell quietly there.'</p>
+
+<p>Lord Hartfield's tone was unmistakeable. Everything was known.</p>
+
+<p>'You can talk at your ease here,' said Montesma, facing the two men with
+a diabolical recklessness and insolence of manner. 'Not one of these
+fellows on board knows a dozen sentences of English.'</p>
+
+<p>'I would rather talk below, if it is all the same to you, Se&ntilde;or; and I
+should be glad to speak to Lady Lesbia alone.'</p>
+
+<p>'That you shall not do unless she desires it,' answered Montesma.</p>
+
+<p>'No, he shall hear all that you have to say. He shall hear how I answer
+you,' said Lesbia.</p>
+
+<p>Lord Hartfield shrugged his shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>'As you please,' he said. 'It will make the disclosure a little more
+painful than it need have been; but that cannot be helped.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XLIV"></a><h2>CHAPTER XLIV.</h2>
+
+<h3>'OH, SAD KISSED MOUTH, HOW SORROWFUL IT IS!'</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>They all went down to the saloon, where Lady Kirkbank sat, looking the
+image of despair, which changed to delighted surprise at sight of Lord
+Hartfield and his friend.</p>
+
+<p>'Did you give your consent to my sister's elopement with this man, Lady
+Kirkbank?' Maulevrier asked, brusquely.</p>
+
+<p>'I give my consent! Good gracious! no. He has eloped with me ever so
+much more than with your sister. She knew all about it, I've no doubt:
+but the wretch ran away with me in my sleep.'</p>
+
+<p>'I am glad, for your own self-respect, that you had no hand in this
+disgraceful business,' replied Maulevrier; and then turning to Lord
+Hartfield, he said, 'Hartfield, will you tell my sister who and what
+this man is? Will you make her understand what kind of pitfall she has
+escaped? Upon my soul, I cannot speak of it.'</p>
+
+<p>'I recognise no right of Lord Hartfield's to interfere with my actions,
+and I will hear nothing that he may have to say,' said Lesbia, standing
+by her lover's side, with head erect and eyes dark with anger.</p>
+
+<p>'Your sister's husband has the strongest right to control your actions,
+Lady Lesbia, when the family honour is at stake,' answered Hartfield,
+with grave authority. 'Accept me at least as a member of your family, if
+you will not accept me as your disinterested and devoted friend.'</p>
+
+<p>'Friend!' echoed Lesbia, scornfully. 'You might have been my friend
+once. Your friendship then would have been of some value to me, if you
+had told me the truth, instead of approaching me with a lie upon your
+lips. You talk of honour, Lord Hartfield; you, who came to my
+grandmother's house as an impostor, under a false name!'</p>
+
+<p>'I went there as a man standing on his own merits, assuming no rank save
+that which God gave him among his fellow-men, claiming to be possessed
+of no fortune except intellect and industry. If I could not win a wife
+with such credentials, it were better for me never to marry at all, Lady
+Lesbia. But we have no time to speak of the past. I am here as your
+brother's friend, here to save you.'</p>
+
+<p>'To part me from the man to whom I have given my heart. That you cannot
+do. Gomez, why do you not speak? Tell him, tell him!' cried Lesbia, with
+a voice strangled by sobs; 'tell him that I am to be your wife
+to-morrow, at Havre. Your wife!'</p>
+
+<p>'Dear Lady Lesbia, that cannot be,' said Lord Hartfield, sorrowfully,
+pitying her in her helplessness, as he might have pitied a young bird in
+the fowler's net. 'I am assured upon undeniable authority that Se&ntilde;or
+Montesma has a wife living at Cuba; and even were this not so—were he
+free to marry you—his character and antecedents would for ever forbid
+such a marriage.'</p>
+
+<p>'A wife! No, no, no!' shrieked Lesbia, looking wildly from one to the
+other. 'It is a lie—a lie, invented by my brother, who always hated
+me—by you, who fooled and deceived me! It is a lie, an infamous
+invention! Don Gomez, speak to them: for pity's sake answer them! Don't
+you see that they are driving me mad?'</p>
+
+<p>She flung herself into his arms, she buried her dishevelled head upon
+his breast; she clung to him with hands that writhed convulsively in her
+agony.</p>
+
+<p>Maulevrier sprang across the cabin and wrenched her from her lover's
+grasp.</p>
+
+<p>'You shall not pollute her with your touch,' he cried; 'you have
+poisoned her mind already. Scoundrel, seducer, slave-dealer! Do you
+hear, Lesbia? Shall I tell you what this man is—what trade he followed
+yonder, on his native island—this Spanish hidalgo—this
+all-accomplished gentleman—lineal descendant of the Cid—fine flower
+of Andalusian chivalry? It was not enough for him to cheat at cards, to
+float bubble companies, bogus lotteries. His profligate extravagance,
+his love of sybarite luxury, required a larger resource than the petty
+schemes which enrich smaller men. A slave ship, which could earn nearly
+twenty thousand pounds on every voyage, and which could make two runs in
+a year—that was the trade for Don Gomez de Montesma, and he carried it
+on merrily for six or seven years, till the British cruisers got too
+keen for him, and the good old game was played out. You see that scar
+upon the hidalgo's forehead, Lesbia—a token of knightly prowess, you
+think, perhaps. No, my girl, that is the mark of an English cutlass in a
+scuffle on board a slaver. A merry trade, Lesbia—the living cargo
+stowed close under hatches have rather a bad time of it now and
+then—short rations of food and water, yellow Jack. They die like rotten
+sheep sometimes—bad then for the dealer. But if he can land the bulk of
+his human wares safe and sound the profits are enormous. The
+Captain-General takes his capitation fee, the blackies are drafted off
+to the sugar plantations, and everybody is satisfied; but I think,
+Lesbia, that your British prejudices would go against marriage with a
+slave-trader, were he ever so free to make you his wife, which this
+particular dealer in blackamoors is not.'</p>
+
+<p>'Is this true, this part of their vile story?' demanded Lesbia, looking
+at her lover, who stood apart from them all now, his arms folded, his
+face deadly pale, the lower lip quivering under the grinding of his
+strong white teeth.</p>
+
+<p>'There is some truth in it,' he answered, hoarsely. 'Everybody in Cuba
+had a finger in the African trade, before your British philanthropy
+spoiled it. Mr. Smithson made sixty thousand pounds in that line. It was
+the foundation of his fortune. And yet he had his misfortunes in running
+his cargo—a ship burnt, a freight roasted alive. There are some very
+black stories in Cuba against poor Smithson. He will never go there
+again.'</p>
+
+<p>'Mr. Smithson may be a scoundrel; indeed, I believe he is a pretty bad
+specimen in that line,' said Lord Hartfield. 'But I doubt if there is
+any story that can be told of him quite so bad as the history of your
+marriage, and the events that went before it. I have been told the story
+of the beautiful Octoroon, who loved and trusted you, who shared your
+good and evil fortunes for the most desperate years of your life, was
+almost accepted as your wife, and whose strangled corpse was found in
+the harbour while the bells were ringing for your marriage with a rich
+planter's heiress—the lady who, no doubt, now patiently awaits your
+return to her native island.'</p>
+
+<p>'She will wait a long time,' said Montesma, 'or fare ill if I go back to
+her. Lesbia, his lordship's story of the Octoroon is a fable—an
+invention of my Cuban enemies, who hate us old Spaniards with a
+poisonous hatred. But this much is true. I am a married man—bound,
+fettered by a tie which I abhor. Our Havre marriage would have been
+bigamy on my part, a delusion on yours. I could not have taken you to
+Cuba. I had planned our life in a fairer, more civilised world. I am
+rich enough to have surrounded you with all that makes life worth
+living. I would have given you love as true and as deep as ever man gave
+to woman. All that would have been wanting would have been the legality
+of the tie: and as law never yet made a marriage happy which lacked the
+elements of bliss, our lawless union need not have missed happiness.
+Lesbia, you said that you would hold by me, come what might. The worst
+has come, love; but it leaves me not the less your true lover.'</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him with wild despairing eyes, and then, with a hoarse
+strange cry, rushed from the cabin, and up the companion, with a
+desperate swiftness which seemed like the flight of a bird. Montesma,
+Hartfield, Maulevrier, all followed her, heedless of everything except
+the dire necessity of arresting her flight. Each in his own mind had
+divined her purpose.</p>
+
+<p>They were not too late. It was Hartfield's strong arm that caught her,
+held her as in a vice, dragged her away from the edge of the deck, just
+where there was a space open to the waves. Another instant and she would
+have flung herself overboard. She fell back into Lord Hartfield's arms,
+with a wild choking cry: 'Let me go! Let me go!' Another moment, and a
+flood of crimson stained his shirt-front, as she lay upon his breast,
+with closed eyelids and blood-bedabbled lips, in blessed
+unconsciousness.</p>
+
+<p>They carried her on to the steam-yacht, and down to the cabin, where
+there was ample accommodation and some luxury, although not the elegance
+of Bond Street upholstery. Rilboche, Lady Kirkbank, Kibble, luggage of
+all kinds were transferred from one yacht to the other, even to the
+vellum bound Keats which lay face downwards on the deck, just where
+Lesbia had flung it when the <i>Cayman</i> was boarded. The crew of the
+steam-yacht <i>Philomel</i> helped in the transfer: there were plenty of
+hands, and the work was done quickly; while the Meztizoes, Yucatekes,
+Caribs, or whatever they were, looked on and grinned; and while Montesma
+stood leaning against the mast, with folded arms and sombre brow, a
+cigarette between his lips.</p>
+
+<p>When the women and all their belongings were on board the <i>Philomel</i>,
+Lord Hartfield addressed himself to Montesma.</p>
+
+<p>'If you consider yourself entitled to call me to account for this
+evening's work you know where to find me,' he said.</p>
+
+<p>Montesma shrugged his shoulders, and threw away his cigarette with a
+contemptuous gesture.</p>
+
+<p><i>'Ce n'est pas la peine,'</i> he said; 'I am a dead shot, and
+should be pretty sure to send a bullet through you if you gave me
+the chance; but I should not be any nearer winning her if I killed
+you: and it is she and she only that I want. You may think me an
+adventurer—swindler—gambler—slave-dealer—what you will—but I love her
+as I never thought to love a woman, and I should have been true as steel,
+if she had been plucky enough to trust me. But, as I told her an hour ago,
+women have not lion hearts. They can talk tall while the sky is clear and
+the sun shines, but at the first crack of thunder—<i>va te promener</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>'If you have killed her—' began Hartfield.</p>
+
+<p>'Killed her! No. Some small bloodvessel burst in the agitation of that
+terrible scene. She will be well in a week, and she will forget me. But
+I shall not forget her. She is the one flower that has sprung on the
+barren plain of my life. She was my Picciola.'</p>
+
+<p>He turned his back on Lord Hartfield and walked to the other end of the
+deck. Something in his face, in the vibration of his deep voice,
+convinced Hartfield of his truth. A bad man undoubtedly—steeped to the
+lips in evil—and yet so far true that he had passionately, deeply,
+devotedly loved this one woman.</p>
+
+<p>It was the dead of night when Lesbia recovered consciousness, and even
+then she lay silent, taking no heed of those around her, in a state of
+utter prostration. Kibble nursed her carefully, tenderly, all through
+the night; Maulevrier hardly left the cabin, and Lady Kirkbank, always
+more or less a victim to the agonies of sea-sickness, still found time
+to utter lamentations and wailings over the ruin of her prot&eacute;g&eacute;e's
+fortune.</p>
+
+<p>'Never had a girl such a chance,' she moaned. 'Quite the best match in
+society. The house in Park Lane alone cost a fortune. Her diamonds would
+have been the finest in London.'</p>
+
+<p>'They would have been stained with the blood of the niggers he traded in
+out yonder,' answered Maulevrier. 'Do you think I would have let my
+sister marry a slave-dealer?'</p>
+
+<p>'I don't believe a syllable of it,' protested Lady Kirkbank, dabbing her
+brow with a handkerchief steeped in eau de Cologne. 'A vile fabrication
+of Montesma's, who wanted to blacken poor Smithson's character in order
+to extenuate his own crimes.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, we won't go into that question,' said Maulevrier wearily. 'The
+Smithson match is off, anyhow; and it matters very little to us whether
+he made most money out of niggers or bubble companies, or lotteries or
+gaming hells.'</p>
+
+<p>'I am convinced that Smithson made his fortune in a thoroughly
+gentlemanlike manner,' argued Lady Kirkbank. 'Look at the people who
+visit him, and the houses he goes to. And I don't see why the match need
+be off. I'm sure, if Lesbia plays her cards properly, he will look over
+this—this—little escapade.'</p>
+
+<p>Maulevrier contemplated the worldly old face with infinite scorn.</p>
+
+<p>'Does she look like a girl who will play her cards in your fashion?' he
+asked, pointing to his sister, whose white face upon the pillow seemed
+like a mask cut out of marble. 'Upon my soul, Lady Kirkbank, I consider
+my sister's elopement with this Spanish adventurer, with whom she was
+over head and ears in love, a far more respectable act than her
+engagement to Smithson, for whom she cared not a straw.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, I hope if you so approve of her conduct you will help her to pay
+her dressmaker, and the rest of them,' retorted Lady Kirkbank. 'She has
+been plunging rather deeply, I believe, under the impression that
+Smithson would pay all her bills when she was married. Your grandmother
+may not quite like the budget.'</p>
+
+<p>'I will do all I can for her,' answered Maulevrier. 'I would do a great
+deal to save her from the degradation to which your teaching has brought
+her.'</p>
+
+<p>Lady Kirkbank looked at him for a moment or so with reproachful eyes,
+and then shrugged her shoulders contemptuously.</p>
+
+<p>'If I ever expected gratitude from people I might feel the
+injustice—the insolence—of your last remark,' she said; 'but as I
+never do expect gratitude, I am not disappointed in this case. And now I
+think if there is a cabin which I can have to myself I should like to
+retire to it,' she added. 'My cares are thrown away here.'</p>
+
+<p>There was a cabin at Lady Kirkbank's disposal. It had been already
+appropriated by Rilboche, and smelt of cognac; but Rilboche resigned her
+berth to her mistress, and laid herself meekly on the floor for the rest
+of the voyage.</p>
+
+<p>They were in Cowes Roads at eight o'clock next morning, and Lord
+Hartfield went on shore for a doctor, whom he brought back before nine,
+and who pronounced Lady Lesbia to be in a very weak and prostrate
+condition, and forbade her being moved within the next two days. Happily
+Lord Hartfield had borrowed the <i>Philomel</i> and her crew from a friend
+who had given him <i>carte blanche</i> as to the use he made of her, and who
+freely left her at his disposal so long as he and his party should need
+the accommodation. Lesbia could nowhere be better off than on the yacht,
+where she was away from the gossip and tittle-tattle of the town.</p>
+
+<p>The roadstead was quiet enough now. All the racing yachts had melted
+away like a dream, and most of the pleasure yachts were off to Ryde.
+Lady Lesbia lay in her curtained cabin, with Kibble keeping watch beside
+her bed, while Maulevrier came in every half-hour to see how she
+was—sitting by her a little now and then, and talking of indifferent
+things in a low kind voice, which was full of comfort.</p>
+
+<p>She seemed grateful for his kindness, and smiled at him once in a way,
+with a piteous little smile; but she had the air of one in whom the
+mainspring of life is broken. The pallid face and heavy violet eyes,
+the semi-transparent hands which lay so listlessly upon the crimson
+coverlet, conveyed an impression of supreme despair. Hartfield, looking
+down at her for the last time when he came to say good-bye before
+leaving for London, was reminded of the story of one whose life had been
+thus rudely broken, who had loved as foolishly and even more fondly, and
+for whom the world held nothing when that tie was severed.</p>
+
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">'She looked on many a face with vacant eye,</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">On many a token without knowing what;</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">She saw them watch her, without asking why,</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">And recked not who around her pillow sat.'</span><br>
+
+<p>But Lesbia Haselden belonged to a wider and more sophisticated world
+than that of the daughter of the Grecian Isle, and for her existence
+offered wider horizons. It might be prophesied that for her the dark
+ending of a girlish dream would not be a life-long despair. The
+passionate love had been at fever point; the passionate grief must have
+its fever too, and burn itself out.</p>
+
+<p>'Do all you can to cheer her,' said Lord Hartfield to Maulevrier, 'and
+bring her to Fellside as soon as ever she is strong enough to bear the
+journey. You and Kibble, with your own man, will be able to do all that
+is necessary.'</p>
+
+<p>'Quite able.'</p>
+
+<p>'That's right. I must be in the House for the expected division
+to-night, and I shall go back to Grasmere to-morrow morning. Poor Mary
+is horribly lonely.'</p>
+
+<p>Lord Hartfield went off in the boat to catch the Southampton steamer;
+and Maulevrier was now sole custodian of the yacht and of his sister. He
+and the doctor had agreed to keep her on board, in the fresh sea air,
+till she was equal to the fatigue of the journey to Grasmere. There was
+nothing to be gained by taking her on to the island or by carrying her
+to London. The yacht was well found, provided with all things needful
+for comfort, and Lesbia could be nowhere better off until she was safe
+in her old home:—that home she had left so gaily, in the freshness of
+her youthful inexperience, nearly a year ago, and to which she would
+return so battered and broken, so deeply degraded by the knowledge of
+evil.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Kirkbank had started for London on the previous day.</p>
+
+<p>'I am evidently not wanted <i>here</i>,' she said, with an offended air; 'and
+I must have everything at Kirkbank ready for a house full of people
+before the twelfth of August, so the sooner I get to Scotland the
+better. I shall make a <i>d&eacute;tour</i> in order to go and see Lady Maulevrier
+on my way down. It is due to myself that I should let her know that <i>I</i>
+am entirely blameless in this most uncomfortable business.'</p>
+
+<p>'You can tell her ladyship what you please,' answered Maulevrier,
+bluntly. 'I shall not gainsay you, so long as you do not slander my
+sister; but as long as I live I shall regret that I, knowing something
+of London society, did not interfere to prevent Lesbia being given over
+to your keeping.'</p>
+
+<p>'If I had known the kind of girl she is I would have had nothing to do
+with her,' retorted Lady Kirkbank with exasperation; and so they parted.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Philomel</i> had been lying off Cowes three days before Mr. Smithson
+appeared upon the scene. He had got wind somehow from a sailor, who had
+talked with one of the foreign crew, of the destination of the <i>Cayman</i>,
+and he had crossed from Southampton to Havre on the steamer <i>Wolf</i>
+during that night in which Lesbia had been carried back to Cowes on the
+<i>Philomel</i>.</p>
+
+<p>He was at Havre when the <i>Cayman</i> arrived, with Montesma and his
+tawny-visaged crew on board, no one else.</p>
+
+<p>'You may examine every corner of your ship,' Montesma cried, scornfully,
+when Smithson came on board and swore that Lesbia must be hidden
+somewhere in the vessel. 'The bird has flown: she will shelter in
+neither your nest nor in mine, Smithson. You have lost her—and so have
+I. We may as well be friends in misfortune.'</p>
+
+<p>He was haggard, livid with grief and anger. He looked ten years older
+than he had looked the other night at the ball, when his dash and
+swagger, and handsome Spanish head had been the admiration of the room.</p>
+
+<p>Smithson was very angry, but he was not a fighting man. He had enjoyed
+various opportunities for distinguishing himself in that line in the
+island of Cuba; but he had always avoided such opportunities. So now,
+after a good deal of bluster and violent language, which Montesma took
+as lightly as if it had been the whistling of the wind in the shrouds,
+poor Smithson calmed down, and allowed Gomez de Montesma to leave the
+yacht, with his portmanteaux, unharmed. He meant to take the first
+steamer for the Spanish Main, he told Smithson. He had had quite enough
+of Europe.</p>
+
+<p>'I daresay it will end in your marrying her,' he said, at the last
+moment. 'If you do, be kind to her.'</p>
+
+<p>His voice faltered, choked by a sob, at those last words. After all, it
+is possible for a man without principle, without morality, to begin to
+make love to a woman in a mere spirit of adventure, in sheer devilry,
+and to be rather hard hit at the last.</p>
+
+<p>Horace Smithson sailed his yacht back to Cowes without loss of time, and
+sent his card to Lord Maulevrier on board the <i>Philomel</i>. His lordship
+replied that he would wait upon Mr. Smithson that afternoon at four
+o'clock, and at that hour Maulevrier again boarded the <i>Cayman</i>; but
+this time very quietly, as an expected guest.</p>
+
+<p>The interview that followed was very painful. Mr. Smithson was willing
+that this unhappy episode in the life of his betrothed, this folly into
+which she had been beguiled by a man of infinite treachery, a man of
+all other men fatal to women, should be forgotten, should be as if it
+had never been.</p>
+
+<p>'It was her very innocence which made her a victim to that scoundrel,'
+said Smithson, 'her girlish simplicity and Lady Kirkbank's folly. But I
+love your sister too well to sacrifice her lightly, Lord Maulevrier; and
+if she can forget this midsummer madness, why, so can I.'</p>
+
+<p>'She cannot forget, Mr. Smithson,' answered Maulevrier, gravely. 'She
+has done you a great wrong by listening to your false friend's
+addresses; but she did you a still greater wrong when she accepted you
+as her husband without one spark of love for you. She and you are both
+happy in having escaped the degradation, the deep misery of a loveless
+union. I am glad—yes, glad even of this shameful escapade with
+Montesma—though it has dragged her good name through the gutter,—glad
+of the catastrophe that has saved her from such a marriage. You are very
+generous in your willingness to forget my sister's folly. Let your
+forgetfulness go a step further, and forget that you ever met her.'</p>
+
+<p>'That cannot be, Lord Maulevrier. She has ruined my life.'</p>
+
+<p>'Not at all. An affair of a season,' answered Maulevrier, lightly. 'Next
+year I shall hear of you as the accepted husband of some new beauty. A
+man of Mr. Smithson's wealth—and good nature—need not languish in
+single blessedness.'</p>
+
+<p>With this civil speech Lord Maulevrier went back to the <i>Philomel's</i>
+gig, and this was his last meeting with Mr. Smithson, until they met a
+year later in the beaten tracks of society.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XLV"></a><h2>CHAPTER XLV.</h2>
+
+<h3>'THAT FELL ARREST, WITHOUT ALL BAIL.'</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>It was the beginning of August before Lesbia was pronounced equal to the
+fatigue of a long journey; and even then it was but the shadow of her
+former self which returned to Fellside, the pale spectre of joys
+departed, of trust deceived.</p>
+
+<p>Maulevrier had been very good to her, patient, unselfish as a woman, in
+his ministering to the broken-hearted girl. That broken heart would be
+whole again, no doubt, in the future, as many other broken hearts have
+been; but the grief, the despair, the sense of hopelessness and
+aimlessness in life were very real in the present. If the picturesque
+seclusion of Fellside had seemed dull and joyless to Lesbia in days gone
+by, it was much duller to her now. She was shocked at the change in her
+grandmother, and she showed a good deal of feeling and affection in her
+intercourse with the invalid; but once out of her presence Lady
+Maulevrier was forgotten, and Lesbia's thoughts drifted back into the
+old current. They dwelt obstinately, unceasingly upon Montesma, the man
+whose influence had awakened the slumbering soul from its torpor, had
+stirred the deeps of a passionate nature.</p>
+
+<p>Slave-dealer, gambler, adventurer, liar—his name blackened by the
+suspicion of a still darker crime. She shuddered at the thought of the
+villain from whose snare she had been rescued: and yet, his image as he
+had been to her in the brief golden time when she believed him noble,
+and chivalrous, and true, haunted her lonely days, mixed itself with her
+troubled dreams, came between her and every other thought.</p>
+
+<p>Everybody was good to her. That pale and joyless face, that look of
+patient, hopeless suffering which she tried to disguise every now and
+then with a faint forced smile, and silvery little ripple of society
+laughter, seemed unconsciously to implore pity and pardon. Lady
+Maulevrier uttered no word of reproach. 'My dearest, Fate has not been
+kind to you,' she said, gently, after telling Lesbia of Lady Kirkbank's
+visit. 'The handsomest women are seldom the happiest. Destiny seems to
+have a grudge against them. And if things have gone amiss it is I who am
+most to blame. I ought never to have entrusted you with such a woman as
+Georgina Kirkbank. But you will be happier next season, I hope, dearest.
+You can live with Mary and Hartfield. They will take care of you.'</p>
+
+<p>Lesbia shuddered.</p>
+
+<p>'Do you think I am going back to the society treadmill?' she exclaimed.
+'No, I have done with the world. I shall end my days here, or in a
+convent.'</p>
+
+<p>'You think so now, dear, but you will change your mind by-and-by. A
+fancy that has lasted only a few weeks cannot alter your life. It will
+pass as other dreams have passed. At your age you have the future before
+you.'</p>
+
+<p>'No, it is the past that is always before me,' answered Lesbia. 'My
+future is a blank.'</p>
+
+<p>The bills came pouring in; dressmaker, milliner, glover, bootmaker,
+tailor, stationer, perfumer; awful bills which made Lady Maulevrier's
+blood run cold, so degrading was their story of selfish self-indulgence,
+of senseless extravagance. But she paid them all without a word. She
+took upon her shoulders the chief burden of Lesbia's wrongdoing. It was
+her indulgence, her weak preference which had fostered her
+granddaughter's selfishness, trained her to vanity and worldly pride.
+The result was ignominious, humiliating, bitter beyond all common
+bitterness; but the cup was of her own brewing, and she drank it without
+a murmur.</p>
+
+<p>Parliament was prorogued; the season was over; and Lord Hartfield was
+established at Fellside for the autumn—he and his wife utterly happy in
+their affection for each other, but not without care as to their
+surroundings, which were full of trouble. First there was Lesbia's
+sorrow. Granted that it was a grief which would inevitably wear itself
+out, as other such griefs have done from time immemorial; but still the
+sorrow was there, at their doors. Next, there was the state of Lady
+Maulevrier's health, which gave her old medical adviser the gravest
+fears. At Lord Hartfield's earnest desire a famous doctor was summoned
+from London; but the great man could only confirm Mr. Horton's verdict.
+The thread of life was wearing thinner every day. It might snap at any
+hour. In the meantime the only regime was repose of body and mind, an
+all-pervading calm, the avoidance of all exciting topics. One moment of
+violent agitation might prove fatal.</p>
+
+<p>Knowing this, how could Lord Hartfield call her ladyship to account for
+the presence of that mysterious old man under Steadman's charge?—how
+venture to touch upon a topic which, by Mary's showing, had exercised a
+most disturbing influence upon her ladyship's mind on that solitary
+occasion when the girl ventured to approach the subject?</p>
+
+<p>He felt that any attempt at an explanation was impossible. It was not
+for him to precipitate Lady Maulevrier's end by prying into her secrets.
+Granted that shame and dishonour of some kind were involved in the
+existence of that strange old man, he, Lord Hartfield, must endure his
+portion in that shame—must be content to leave the dark riddle
+unsolved.</p>
+
+<p>He resigned himself to this state of things, and tried to forget the
+cloud that hung over the house of Haselden; but the sense of a mystery,
+a fatal family secret, which must come to light sooner or later—since
+all such secrets are known at last—known, sifted, and bandied about
+from lip to lip, and published in a thousand different newspapers, and
+cried aloud in the streets—the sense of such a secret, the dread of
+such a revelation weighed upon him heavily.</p>
+
+<p>Maulevrier, the restless, was off to Argyleshire for the grouse shooting
+as soon as he had deposited Lady Lesbia comfortably at Fellside.</p>
+
+<p>'I should only be in your way if I stopped,' he said, 'for you and Molly
+have hardly got over the honeymoon stage yet, though you put on the airs
+of Darby and Joan. I shall be back in a week or ten days.'</p>
+
+<p>'In Lady Maulevrier's state of health I don't think you ought to stay
+away very long,' said Hartfield.</p>
+
+<p>'Poor Lady Maulevrier! She never cared much for me, don't you know. But
+I suppose it would seem unkind if I were to be out of the way when the
+end comes. The end! Good heavens! how coolly I talk of it; and a year
+ago I thought she was as immortal as Fairfield yonder.'</p>
+
+<p>He went away, his spirits dashed by that awful thought of death, and
+Lord and Lady Hartfield had the house to themselves, since Lesbia hardly
+counted. She seldom left her own rooms, except to sit with her
+grandmother for an hour. She lay on her sofa—or sat in a low arm-chair
+by the window, reading Keats or Shelley—or only dreaming—dreaming over
+the brief golden time of her life, with its fond delusions, its false
+brightness. Mr. Horton went to see her every day—felt the feeble little
+pulse which seemed hardly to have force enough to beat—urged her to
+struggle against apathy and inertia, to walk a little, to go for a long
+drive every day, to live in the open air—to which instructions she paid
+not the slightest attention. The desire for life was gone. Disappointed
+in her ambition, betrayed in her love, humiliated, duped, degraded—a
+social failure. What had she to live for? She felt as if it would have
+been a good thing, quite the best thing that could happen, if she could
+turn her face to the wall and die. All that past season, its triumphs,
+its pleasures, its varieties, was like a garish dream, a horror to look
+back upon, hateful to remember.</p>
+
+<p>In vain did Mary and Hartfield urge Lesbia to join in their simple
+pleasures, their walks and rides and drives, and boating excursions. She
+always refused.</p>
+
+<p>'You know I never cared much for roaming about these everlasting hills,'
+she told Mary. 'I never had your passion for Lakeland. It is very good
+of you to wish to have me, but it is quite impossible. I have hardly
+strength enough for a little walk in the garden.'</p>
+
+<p>'You would have more strength if you went out more,' pleaded Mary,
+almost with tears. 'Mr. Horton says sun and wind are the best doctors
+for you. Lesbia, you frighten me sometimes. You are just letting
+yourself fade away.'</p>
+
+<p>'If you knew how I hate the world and the sky, Mary, you wouldn't urge
+me to go out of doors,' Lesbia answered, moodily. 'Indoors I can read,
+and get away from my own thoughts somehow, for a little while. But out
+yonder, face to face with the hills and the lake—the scenes I have
+known all my life—I feel a heart-sickness that is worse than death. It
+maddens me to see that old, old picture of mountain and water, the same
+for ever and ever, no matter what hearts are breaking.'</p>
+
+<p>Mary crept close beside her sister's couch, put her arm round her neck,
+laid her cheek—rich in the ruddy bloom of health—against Lesbia's
+pallid and sunken cheek, and comforted her as much as she could with
+tender murmurs and loving kisses. Other comfort, she could give none.
+All the wisdom in the world will not cure a girl's heart-sickness when
+she has flung away the treasures of her love upon a worthless object.</p>
+
+<p>And so the days went by, peacefully, but sadly; for the shadow of doom
+hung heavily over the house upon the Fell. Nobody who looked upon Lady
+Maulevrier could doubt that her days were numbered, that the oil was
+waxing low in the lamp of life. The end, the awful, mysterious end, was
+drawing near; and she who was called was making no such preparations as
+the Christian makes to answer the dread summons. As she had lived, she
+meant to die—an avowed unbeliever. More than once Mary had taken
+courage, and had talked to her grandmother of the world beyond, the
+blessed hope of re-union with the friends we have lost, in a new and
+brighter life, only to be met by the sceptic's cynical smile, the
+materialist's barren creed.</p>
+
+<p>'My dearest, we know nothing except the immutable laws of material life.
+All the rest is a dream—a beautiful dream, if you like—a consolation
+to that kind of temperament which can take comfort from dreams; but for
+anyone who has read much, and thought much, and kept as far as possible
+on a level with the scientific intellect of the age—for such an one,
+Mary, these old fables are too idle. I shall die as I have lived, the
+victim of an inscrutable destiny, working blindly, evil to some, good to
+others. Ah! love, life has begun very fairly for you. May the fates be
+kind always to my gentle and loving girl!'</p>
+
+<p>There was more talk between them on this dark mystery of life and death.
+Mary brought out her poor little arguments, glorified by the light of
+perfect faith; but they were of no avail against opinions which had been
+the gradual growth of a long and joyless life. Time had attuned Lady
+Maulevrier's mind to the gospel of Schopenhauer and the Pessimists, and
+she was contented to see the mystery of life as they had seen it. She
+had no fear, but she had some anxiety as to the things that were to
+happen after she was gone. She had taken upon herself a heavy burden,
+and she had not yet come to the end of the road where her burden might
+be laid quietly down, her task accomplished. If she fell by the wayside
+under her load the consequences for the survivors might be full of
+trouble.</p>
+
+<p>Her anxieties were increased by the fact that her faithful servant and
+adviser, James Steadman, was no longer the man he had been. The change
+in him was painfully evident—memory failing, energy gone. He came to
+his mistress's room every morning, received her orders, answered her
+questions; but Lady Maulevrier felt that he went through the old duties
+in a mechanical way, and that his dull brain but half understood their
+importance.</p>
+
+<p>One evening at dusk, just as Hartfield and Mary were leaving Lady
+Maulevrier's room, after dinner, an appalling shriek ran through the
+house—a cry almost as terrible as that which Lord Hartfield heard in
+the summer midnight just a year ago. But this time the sound came from
+the old part of the house.</p>
+
+<p>'Something has happened,' exclaimed Hartfield, rushing to the door of
+communication.</p>
+
+<p>It was bolted inside. He knocked vehemently; but there was no answer. He
+ran downstairs, followed by Mary, breathless, in an agony of fear. Just
+as they approached the lower door, leading to the old house, it was
+flung open, and Steadman's wife stood before them pale with terror.</p>
+
+<p>'The doctor,' she cried; 'send for Mr. Horton, somebody, for God's sake.
+Oh, my lord,' with a sudden burst of sobbing, 'I'm afraid he's dead.'</p>
+
+<p>'Mary, despatch some one for Horton,' said Lord Hartfield. Keeping his
+wife back with one hand, he closed the door against her, and then
+followed Mrs. Steadman through the long low corridor to her husband's
+sitting-room.</p>
+
+<p>James Steadman was lying upon his back upon the hearth, near the spot
+were Lord Hartfield had seen him sleeping in his arm-chair a month ago.</p>
+
+<p>One look at the distorted face, dark with injected blood, the dreadful
+glassy glare of the eyes, the foam-stained lips, told that all was over.
+The faithful servant had died at his post. Whatever his charge had been,
+his term of service was ended. There was a vacancy in Lady Maulevrier's
+household.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="CHAPTER_XLVI"></a><h2>CHAPTER XLVI.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE DAY OF RECKONING.</h3>
+<br>
+
+<p>Lord Hartfield stayed with the frightened wife while she knelt beside
+that awful figure on the hearth, wringing her hands with piteous
+bewailings and lamentations over the unconscious clay. He had always
+been a good husband to her, she murmured; hard and stern perhaps, but a
+good man. And she had obeyed him without a question. Whatever he did or
+said she had counted right.</p>
+
+<p>'We have not had a happy life, though there are many who have envied us
+her ladyship's favour,' she said in the midst of her lamentations. 'No
+one knows where the shoe pinches but those who have to wear it. Poor
+James! Early and late, early and late, studying her ladyship's
+interests, caring and thinking, in order to keep trouble away from her.
+Always on the watch, always on the listen. That's what wore him out, poor
+fellow!'</p>
+
+<p>'My good soul, your husband was an old man,' argued Lord Hartfield, in
+a consolatory tone, 'and the end must come to all of us somehow.'</p>
+
+<p>'He might have lived to be a much older man if he had had less worry,'
+said the wife, bending her face to kiss the cold dead brow. 'His days
+were full of care. We should have been happier in the poorest cottage in
+Grasmere than we ever were in this big grand house.'</p>
+
+<p>Thus, in broken fragments of speech, Mrs. Steadman lamented over her
+dead, while the heavy pendulum of the eight-day clock in the hall
+sounded the slowly-passing moments, until the coming of the doctor broke
+upon the quiet of the house, with the noise of opening doors and
+approaching footsteps.</p>
+
+<p>James Steadman was dead. Medicine could do nothing for that lifeless
+clay, lying on the hearth by which he had sat on so many winter nights,
+for so many years of faithful unquestioning service. There was nothing
+to be done for that stiffening form, save the last offices for the dead;
+and Lord Hartfield left Mr. Horton to arrange with the weeping woman as
+to the doing of these. He was anxious to go to Lady Maulevrier, to break
+to her, as gently as might be, the news of her servant's death.</p>
+
+<p>And what of that strange old man in the upper rooms? Who was to attend
+upon him, now that the caretaker was laid low?</p>
+
+<p>While Lord Hartfield lingered on the threshold of the door that led from
+the old house to the new, pondering this question, there came the sound
+of wheels on the carriage drive, and then a loud ring at the hall door.</p>
+
+<p>It was Maulevrier, just arrived from Scotland, smelling of autumn rain
+and cool fresh air.</p>
+
+<p>'Dreadfully bored on the moors,' he said, as they shook hands. 'No
+birds—nobody to talk to—couldn't stand it any longer. How are the
+sisters? Lesbia better? Why, man alive, how queer you look! Nothing
+amiss, I hope?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, there is something very much amiss. Steadman is dead.'</p>
+
+<p>'Steadman! Her ladyship's right hand. That's rather bad. But you will
+drop into his stewardship. She'll trust your long head, I know. Much
+better that she should look to her granddaughter's husband for advice in
+all business matters than to a servant. When did it happen?'</p>
+
+<p>'Half an hour ago. I was just going to Lady Maulevrier's room when you
+rang the bell. Take off your Inverness, and come with me.'</p>
+
+<p>'The poor grandmother,' muttered Maulevrier. 'I'm afraid it will be a
+blow.'</p>
+
+<p>He had much less cause for fear than Lord Hartfield, who knew of deep
+and secret reasons why Steadman's death should be a calamity of dire
+import for his mistress. Maulevrier had been told nothing of that scene
+with the strange old man—the hidden treasures—the Anglo-Indian
+phrases—which had filled Lord Hartfield's mind with the darkest doubts.</p>
+
+<p>If that half-lunatic old man, described by Lady Maulevrier as a kinsman
+of Steadman's, were verily the person Lord Hartfield believed, his
+presence under that roof, unguarded by a trust-worthy attendant, was
+fraught with danger. It would be for Lady Maulevrier, helpless, a
+prisoner to her sofa, at death's door, to face that danger. The very
+thought of it might kill her. And yet it was imperative that the truth
+should be told her without delay.</p>
+
+<p>The two young men went to her ladyship's sitting room. She was alone, a
+volume of her favourite Schopenhauer open before her, under the light of
+the shaded reading-lamp. Sorry comfort in the hour of trouble!</p>
+
+<p>Maulevrier went over to her and kissed her; and then dropped silently
+into a chair near at hand, his face in shadow. Hartfield seated himself
+nearer the sofa, and nearer the lamp.</p>
+
+<p>'Dear Lady Maulevrier, I have come to tell you some very bad news—'</p>
+
+<p>'Lesbia?' exclaimed her ladyship, with a frightened look.</p>
+
+<p>'No, there is nothing wrong with Lesbia. It is about your old servant
+Steadman.'</p>
+
+<p>'Dead?' faltered Lady Maulevrier, ashy pale, as she looked at him in the
+lamplight.</p>
+
+<p>He bent his head affirmatively.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes. He was seized with apoplexy—fell from his chair to the hearth,
+and never spoke or stirred again.'</p>
+
+<p>Lady Maulevrier uttered no word of sorrow or surprise. She lay, looking
+straight before her into vacancy, the pale attenuated features rigid as
+if they had been marble. What was to be done—what must be told—whom
+could she trust? Those were the questions repeating themselves in her
+mind as she stared into space. And no answer came to them.</p>
+
+<p>No answer came, except the opening of the door opposite her couch. The
+handle turned slowly, hesitatingly, as if moved by feeble fingers; and
+then the door was pushed slowly open, and an old man came with shuffling
+footsteps towards the one lighted spot in the middle of the room.</p>
+
+<p>It was the old man Lord Hartfield had last seen gloating over his
+treasury of gold and jewels—the man whom Maulevrier had never
+seen—whose existence for forty years had been hidden from every
+creature in that house, except Lady Maulevrier and the Steadmans, until
+Mary found her way into the old garden.</p>
+
+<p>He came close up to the little table in front of Lady Maulevrier's
+couch, and looked down at her, a strange, uncanny being, withered and
+bent, with pale, faded eyes in which there was a glimmer of unholy
+light.</p>
+
+<p>'Good-evening to you, Lady Maulevrier,' he said in a mocking voice. 'I
+shouldn't have known you if we had met anywhere else. I think, of the
+two of us, you are more changed than I.'</p>
+
+<p>She looked up at him, her features quivering, her haughty head drawn
+back; as a bird shrinks from the gaze of a snake, recoiling, but too
+fascinated to fly. Her eyes met his with a look of unutterable horror.
+For some moments she was speechless, and then, looking at Lord
+Hartfield, she said, piteously—</p>
+
+<p>'Why did you let him come here? He ought to be taken care of—shut up.
+It is Steadman's old uncle—a lunatic—I sheltered. Why is he allowed to
+come to my room?'</p>
+
+<p>'I am Lord Maulevrier,' said the old man, drawing himself up and
+planting his crutch stick upon the floor; 'I am Lord Maulevrier, and this
+woman is my wife. Yes, I am mad sometimes, but not always. I have my bad
+fits, but not often. But I never forget who and what I am, Algernon,
+Earl of Maulevrier, Governor of Madras.'</p>
+
+<p>'Lady Maulevrier, is this horrible thing true?' cried her grandson,
+vehemently.</p>
+
+<p>'He is mad, Maulevrier. Don't you see that he is mad?' she exclaimed,
+looking from Hartfield to her grandson, and then with a look of loathing
+and horror at her accuser.</p>
+
+<p>'I tell you, young man, I am Maulevrier,' said the accuser; 'there is no
+one else who has a right to be called by that name, while I live. They
+have shut me up—she and her accomplice—denied my name—hidden me from
+the world. He is dead, and she lies there—stricken for her sins.'</p>
+
+<p>'My grandfather died at the inn at Great Langdale, faltered Maulevrier.</p>
+
+<p>'Your grandfather was brought to this house—ill—out of his wits. All
+cloud and darkness here,' said the old man, touching his forehead. 'How
+long has it been? Who can tell? A weary time—long, dark nights, full of
+ghosts. Yes, I have seen him—the Rajah, that copper-faced scoundrel,
+seen him as she told me he looked when she gave the signal to her slaves
+to strangle him, there in the hall, where the grave was dug ready for
+the traitor's carcass. She too—yes, she has haunted me, calling upon me
+to give up her treasure, to restore her son.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes,' cried the paralytic woman, suddenly lifted out of herself, as it
+were, in a paroxysm of fury, every feature convulsed, every nerve
+strained to its utmost tension; 'yes, this is Lord Maulevrier. You have
+heard the truth, and from his own lips. You, his only son's only son.
+You his granddaughter's husband. You hear him avow himself the
+instigator of a diabolical murder; you hear him confess how his
+paramour's husband was strangled at his false wife's bidding, in his own
+palace, buried under the Moorish pavement in the hall of many arches.
+You hear how he inherited the Rajah's treasures from a mistress who
+died strangely, swiftly, conveniently, as soon so he had wearied of her,
+and a new favourite had begun to exercise her influence. Such things are
+done in the East—dynasties annihilated, kingdoms overthrown, poison or
+bowstring used at will, to gratify a profligate's passion, or pay for a
+spendthrift's extravagances. Such things were done when that man was
+Governor of Madras as were never done by an Englishman in India before
+his time. He went there fettered by no prejudices—he was more Mussulman
+than the Mussulmen themselves—a deeper, darker traitor. And it was to
+hide such crimes as these—to interpose the great peacemaker Death
+between him and the Government which was resolved upon punishing him—to
+save the honour, the fortune of my son, and the children who were to
+come after him, the name of a noble race, a name that was ever stainless
+until he defiled it—it was for this great end I took steps to hide that
+feeble, useless life of his from the world he had offended; it was for
+this end that I caused a peasant to be buried in the vault of the
+Maulevriers, with all the pomp and ceremony that befits the funeral of
+one of England's oldest earls. I screened him from his enemies—I saved
+him from the ignominy of a public trial—from the execration of his
+countrymen. His only punishment was to eat his heart under this roof, in
+luxurious seclusion, his comfort studied, his whims gratified so far as
+they could be by the most faithful of servants. A light penance for the
+dark infamies of his life in India, I think. His mind was all but gone
+when he came here, but he had his rational intervals, and in these the
+burden of his lonely life may have weighed heavily upon him. But it was
+not such a heavy burden as I have borne—I, his gaoler, I who have
+devoted my existence to the one task of guarding the family honour.'</p>
+
+<p>He, whom she thus acknowledged as her husband, had sunk exhausted into a
+chair near her. He took out his gold snuff-box, and refreshed himself
+with a leisurely pinch of snuff, looking about him curiously all the
+while, with a senile grin. That flash of passion which for a few minutes
+had restored him to the full possession of his reason had burnt itself
+out, and his mind had relapsed into the condition in which it had been
+when he talked to Mary in the garden.</p>
+
+<p>'My pipe, Steadman,' he said, looking towards the door; 'bring me my
+pipe,' and then, impatiently, 'What has become of Steadman? He has been
+getting inattentive—very inattentive.'</p>
+
+<p>He got up, and moved slowly to the door, leaning on his crutch-stick,
+his head sunk upon his breast, muttering to himself as he went; and thus
+he vanished from them, like the spectre of some terrible ancestor which
+had returned from the grave to announce the coming of calamity to a
+doomed race. His grandson looked after him, with an expression of
+intense displeasure.</p>
+
+<p>'And so, Lady Maulevrier,' he exclaimed, turning to his grandmother, 'I
+have borne a title that never belonged to me, and enjoyed the possession
+of another man's estates all this time, thanks to your pretty little
+plot. A very respectable position for your grandson to occupy, upon my
+life!'</p>
+
+<p>Lord Hartfield lifted his hand with a warning gesture.</p>
+
+<p>'Spare her,' he said. 'She is in no condition to endure your
+reproaches.'</p>
+
+<p>Spare her—yes. Fate had not spared her. The beautiful face—beautiful
+even in age and decay—changed suddenly as she looked at them—the mouth
+became distorted, the eyes fixed: and then the heavy head fell back upon
+the pillow—the paralysed form, wholly paralysed now, lay like a thing
+of stone. It never moved again. Consciousness was blotted out for ever
+in that moment. The feeble pulses of heart and brain throbbed with
+gradually diminishing power for a night and a day; and in the twilight
+of that dreadful day of nothingness the last glimmer of the light died
+in the lamp, and Lady Maulevrier and the burden of her sin were beyond
+the veil.</p>
+
+<p>Viscount Haselden, <i>alias</i> Lord Maulevrier, held a long consultation
+with Lord Hartfield on the night of his grandmother's death, as to what
+steps ought to be taken in relation to the real Earl of Maulevrier: and
+it was only at the end of a serious and earnest discussion that both
+young men came to the decision that Lady Maulevrier's secret ought to be
+kept faithfully to the end. Assuredly no good purpose could be achieved
+by letting the world know of old Lord Maulevrier's existence. A
+half-lunatic octogenarian could gain nothing by being restored to rights
+and possessions which he had most justly forfeited. All that justice
+demanded was that the closing years of his life should be made as
+comfortable as care and wealth could make them; and Hartfield and
+Haselden took immediate steps to this end. But their first act was to
+send the old earl's treasure chest under safe convoy to the India House,
+with a letter explaining how this long-hidden wealth, brought from India
+by Lord Maulevrier, had been discovered among other effects in a
+lumber-room at Lady Maulevrier's country house. The money so delivered
+up might possibly have formed part of his lordship's private fortune;
+but, in the absence of any knowledge as to its origin, his grandson, the
+present Lord Maulevrier, preferred to deliver it up to the authorities
+of the India House, to be dealt with as they might think fit.</p>
+
+<p>The old earl made no further attempt to assert himself. He seemed
+content to remain in his own rooms as of old, to potter about the
+garden, where his solitude was as complete as that of a hermit's cell.
+The only moan be made was for James Steadman, whose services he missed
+sorely. Lord Hartfield replaced that devoted servant by a clever
+Austrian valet, a new importation from Vienna, who understood very
+little English, a trained attendant upon mental invalids, and who was
+quite capable of dealing with old Lord Maulevrier.</p>
+
+<p>Lord Hartfield went a step farther; and within a week of those two
+funerals of servant and mistress, which cast a gloom over the peaceful
+valley of Grasmere, he brought down a famous mad-doctor to diagnose his
+lordship's case. There was but little risk in so doing, he argued with
+his friend, and it was their duty so to do. If the old man should assert
+himself to the doctor as Lord Maulevrier, the declaration would pass as
+a symptom of his lunacy. But it happened that the physician arrived at
+Fellside on one of Lord Maulevrier's bad days, and the patient never
+emerged from the feeblest phase of imbecility.</p>
+
+<p>'Brain quite gone,' pronounced the doctor, 'bodily health very poor.
+Take him to the South of France for the winter—Hyères, or any quiet
+place. He can't last long.'</p>
+
+<p>To Hyères the old man was taken, with Mrs. Steadman as nurse, and the
+Austrian valet as body-servant and keeper. Mary, for whom, in his
+brighter hours he showed a warm affection, went with him under her
+husband's wing.</p>
+
+<p>Lord Hartfield rented a chateau on the slope of an olive-clad hill,
+where he and his young wife, whose health was somewhat delicate at this
+time, spent a winter in peaceful seclusion; while Lesbia and her brother
+travelled together in Italy. The old man's strength improved in that
+lovely climate. He lived to see the roses and orange blossoms of the
+early spring, and died in his arm-chair suddenly, without a pang, while
+Mary sat at his feet reading to him: a quiet end of an evil and troubled
+life. And now he whom the world had known as Lord Maulevrier was verily
+the earl, and could hear himself called by his title once more without a
+touch of shame.</p>
+
+<p>The secret of Lady Maulevrier's sin had been so faithfully kept by the
+two young men that neither of her granddaughters knew the true story of
+that mysterious person whom Mary had first heard of as James Steadman's
+uncle. She and Lesbia both knew that there were painful circumstances of
+some kind connected with this man's existence, his hidden life in the
+old house at Fellside; but they were both content to learn no more.
+Respect for their grandmother's memory, sorrowful affection for the
+dead, prevailed over natural curiosity.</p>
+
+<p>Early in February Maulevrier sent decorators and upholsterers into the
+old house in Curzon Street, which was ready before the middle of May to
+receive his lordship and his young wife, the girlish daughter of a
+Florentine nobleman, a gazelle-eyed Italian, with a voice whose every
+tone was music, and with the gentlest, shyest, most engaging manners of
+any girl in Florence. Lady Lesbia, strangely subdued and changed by the
+griefs and humiliations of her last campaign, had been her brother's
+counsellor and confidante throughout his wooing of his fair Italian
+bride. She was to spend the season under her brother's roof, to help to
+initiate young Lady Maulevrier in the mysterious rites of London
+society, and to warn her of those rocks and shoals which had wrecked her
+own fortunes.</p>
+
+<p>The month of May brought a son and heir to Lord Hartfield; and it was
+not till after his birth that Mary, Countess of Hartfield, was presented
+to her sovereign, and began her career as a matron of rank and standing,
+very much overpowered by the weight of her honours, and looking forward
+with delight to the end of the season and a flight to Argyleshire with
+her husband and baby.</p>
+<br>
+
+<h2>THE END.</h2>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Phantom Fortune, A Novel, by M. E. Braddon
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+     https://www.gutenberg.org/2/4/6/8/24689
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Phantom Fortune, A Novel, by M. E. Braddon
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Phantom Fortune, A Novel
+
+Author: M. E. Braddon
+
+Release Date: February 1, 2004 [EBook #10905]
+[Last updated: August 4, 2013]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PHANTOM FORTUNE, A NOVEL ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jonathan Ingram and PG Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+PHANTOM FORTUNE
+
+
+A Novel
+
+
+BY THE AUTHOR OF "LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET," "VIXEN," ETC. ETC. ETC.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+I.       PENELOPE
+II.      ULYSSES
+III.     ON THE WRONG ROAD
+IV.      THE LAST STAGE
+V.       FORTY YEARS AFTER
+VI.      MAULEVRIER'S HUMBLE FRIEND
+VII.     IN THE SUMMER MORNING
+VIII.    THERE IS ALWAYS A SKELETON
+IX.      A CRY IN THE DARKNESS
+X.       'O BITTERNESS OF THINGS TOO SWEET'
+XI.      'IF I WERE TO DO AS ISEULT DID'
+XII.     'THE GREATER CANTLE OF THE WORLD IS LOST'
+XIII.    'SINCE PAINTED OR NOT PAINTED ALL SHALL FADE'
+XIV.     'NOT YET'
+XV.      'OF ALL MEN ELSE I HAVE AVOIDED THEE'
+XVI.     'HER FACE RESIGNED TO BLISS OR BALE'
+XVII.    'AND THE SPRING COMES SLOWLY UP THIS WAY'
+XVIII.   'AND COME AGEN, BE IT BY NIGHT OR DAY'
+XIX.     THE OLD MAN ON THE FELL
+XX.      LADY MAULEVRIER'S LETTER-BAG
+XXI.     ON THE DARK BROW OF HELVELLYN
+XXII.    WISER THAN LESBIA
+XXIII.   'A YOUNG LAMB'S HEART AMONG THE FULL-GROWN FLOCKS'
+XXIV.    'NOW NOTHING LEFT TO LOVE OR HATE'
+XXV.     CARTE BLANCHE
+XXVI.    'PROUD CAN I NEVER BE OF WHAT I HATE'
+XXVII.   LESBIA CROSSES PICCADILLY
+XXVIII.  'CLUBS, DIAMONDS, HEARTS, IN WILD DISORDER SEEN'
+XXIX.    'SWIFT, SUBTLE POST, CARRIER OF GRISLY CARE'
+XXX.     'ROSES CHOKED AMONG THORNS AND THISTLES'
+XXXI.    'KIND IS MY LOVE TO-DAY, TO-MORROW KIND'
+XXXII.   WAYS AND MEANS
+XXXIII.  BY SPECIAL LICENCE
+XXXIV.   'OUR LOVE WAS NEW, AND THEN BUT IN THE SPRING'
+XXXV.    'ALL FANCY, PRIDE, AND FICKLE MAIDENHOOD'
+XXXVI.   A RASTAQUOUÈRE
+XXXVII.  LORD HARTFIELD REFUSES A FORTUNE
+XXXVIII. ON BOARD THE 'CAYMAN'
+XXXIX.   IN STORM AND DARKNESS
+XL.      A NOTE OF ALARM
+XLI.     PRIVILEGED INFORMATION
+XLII.    'SHALL IT BE?'
+XLIII.   'ALAS, FOR SORROW IS ALL THE END OF THIS'
+XLIV.    'OH, SAD KISSED MOUTH, HOW SORROWFUL IT IS!'
+XLV.     'THAT FELL ARREST WITHOUT ALL BAIL'
+XLVI.    THE DAY OF RECKONING
+
+[Illustration: H. French, del.) (T. Symmons, sc. "The old man sat looking
+at Mary in silence for some moments."--Page 171.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+PENELOPE.
+
+
+People dined earlier forty years ago than they do now. Even that salt of
+the earth, the elect of society, represented by that little great world
+which lies between the narrow circle bounded by Bryanstone Square on the
+north and by Birdcage Walk on the south, did not consider seven o'clock
+too early an hour for a dinner party which was to be followed by routs,
+drums, concerts, conversazione, as the case might be. It was seven
+o'clock on a lovely June evening, and the Park was already deserted, and
+carriages were rolling swiftly along all the Westend squares, carrying
+rank, fashion, wealth, and beauty, political influence, and intellectual
+power, to the particular circle in which each was destined to illumine
+upon that particular evening.
+
+Stateliest among London squares, Grosvenor--in some wise a wonder to the
+universe as newly lighted with gas--grave Grosvenor, with its heavy old
+Georgian houses and pompous porticoes, sparkled and shone, not alone
+with the novel splendour of gas, but with the light of many wax candles,
+clustering flower-like in silver branches and girandoles, multiplying
+their flame in numerous mirrors; and of all the houses in that stately
+square none had a more imposing aspect than Lord Denyer's dark red brick
+mansion, with stone dressings, and the massive grandeur of an Egyptian
+mausoleum.
+
+Lord Denyer was an important personage in the political and diplomatic
+world. He had been ambassador at Constantinople and at Paris, and had
+now retired on his laurels, an influence still, but no longer an active
+power in the machine of government. At his house gathered all that was
+most brilliant in London society. To be seen at Lady Denyer's evening
+parties was the guinea stamp of social distinction; to dine with Lord
+Denyer was an opening in life, almost as valuable as University honours,
+and more difficult of attainment.
+
+It was during the quarter of an hour before dinner that a group of
+persons, mostly personages, congregated round Lord Denyer's
+chimney-piece, naturally trending towards the social hearth, albeit it
+was the season for roses and lilies rather than of fires, and the hum of
+the city was floating in upon the breath of the warm June evening
+through the five tall windows which opened upon Lord Denyer's balcony.
+
+The ten or twelve persons assembled seemed only a sprinkling in the large
+lofty room, furnished sparsely with amber satin sofas, a pair of Florentine
+marble tables, and half an acre or so of looking glass. Voluminous amber
+draperies shrouded the windows, and deadened the sound of rolling wheels,
+and the voices and footfalls of western London. The drawing rooms of those
+days were neither artistic nor picturesque--neither Early English nor Low
+Dutch, nor Renaissance, nor Anglo-Japanese. A stately commonplace
+distinguished the reception rooms of the great world. Upholstery stagnated
+at a dead level of fluted legs, gilding, plate glass, and amber satin.
+
+Lady Denyer stood a little way in advance of the group on the hearthrug,
+fanning herself, with her eye on the door, while she listened languidly
+to the remarks of a youthful diplomatist, a sprig of a lordly tree, upon
+the last _début_ at Her Majesty's Theatre.
+
+'My own idea was that she screamed,' said her ladyship. 'But the new
+Rosinas generally do scream. Why do we have a new Rosina every year,
+whom nobody ever hears of afterwards? What becomes of them? Do they die,
+or do they set up as singing mistresses in second-rate watering-places?'
+hazarded her ladyship, with her eye always on the door.
+
+She was a large woman in amethyst satin, and a gauze turban with a
+diamond aigrette, a splendid jewel, which would not have misbeseemed the
+head-gear of an Indian prince. Lady Denyer was one of the last women who
+wore a turban, and that Oriental head-dress became her bold and massive
+features.
+
+Infinitely bored by the whiskerless attaché, who had entered upon a
+disquisition on the genius of Rossini as compared with this new man
+Meyerbeer, her ladyship made believe to hear, while she listened
+intently to the confidential murmurs of the group on the hearthrug, the
+little knot of personages clustered round Lord Denyer.
+
+'Indian mail in this morning,' said one--'nothing else talked of at the
+club. Very flagrant case! A good deal worse than Warren Hastings.
+Quite clear there must be a public inquiry--House of Lords--criminal
+prosecution.'
+
+'I was told on very good authority, that he has been recalled, and is
+now on his passage home,' said another man.
+
+Lord Denyer shrugged his shoulders, pursed up his lips, and looked
+ineffably wise, a way he had when he knew very little about the subject
+under discussion.
+
+'How will _she_ take it, do you think?' inquired Colonel Madison, of the
+Life Guards, a man about town, and an inveterate gossip, who knew
+everybody, and everybody's family history, down to the peccadilloes of
+people's great grandmothers.
+
+'You will have an opportunity of judging,' replied his lordship, coolly.
+'She's to be here this evening.'
+
+'But do you think she'll show?' asked the Colonel. 'The mail must have
+brought the news to her, as well as to other people--supposing she knew
+nothing about it beforehand. She must know that the storm has burst. Do
+you think she'll----'
+
+'Come out in the thunder and lightning?' interrupted Lord Denver; 'I'm
+sure she will. She has the pride of Lucifer and the courage of a lion.
+Five to one in ponies that she is here before the clock strikes seven!'
+
+'I think you are right. I knew her mother, Constance Talmash. Pluck was
+a family characteristic of the Talmashes. Wicked as devils, and brave as
+lions. Old Talmash, the grandfather, shot his valet in a paroxysm of
+_delirium tremens_,' said Colonel Madison. 'She's a splendid woman, and
+she won't flinch. I'd rather back her than bet against her.'
+
+'Lady Maulevrier!' announced the groom of the chambers; and Lady Denyer
+moved at least three paces forward to meet her guest.
+
+The lady who entered, with slow and stately movements and proudly
+balanced head, might have served for a model as Juno or the Empress
+Livia. She was still in the bloom of youth, at most seven-and-twenty,
+but she had all the calm assurance of middle-age. No dowager, hardened
+by the varied experiences of a quarter of a century in the great world,
+could have faced society with more perfect coolness and self-possession.
+She was beautiful, and she let the world see that she was conscious of
+her beauty, and the power that went along with it. She was clever, and
+she used her cleverness with unfailing tact and unscrupulous audacity.
+She had won her place in the world as an acknowledged beauty, and one of
+the leaders of fashion. Two years ago she had been the glory and delight
+of Anglo-Indian society in the city of Madras, ruling that remote and
+limited kingdom with a despotic power. Then all of a sudden she was
+ordered, or she ordered her physician to order her, an immediate
+departure from that perilous climate, and she came back to England with
+her three-year-old son, two Ayahs, and four European servants, leaving
+her husband, Lord Maulevrier, Governor of the Madras Presidency, to
+finish the term of his service in an enforced widowhood.
+
+She returned to be the delight of London society. She threw open the
+family mansion in Curzon Street to the very best people, but to those
+only. She went out a great deal, but she was never seen at a second-rate
+party. She had not a single doubtful acquaintance upon her visiting
+list. She spent half of every year at the family seat in Scotland, was a
+miracle of goodness to the poor of her parish, and taught her boy his
+alphabet.
+
+Lord Denyer came forward while his wife and Lady Maulevrier were shaking
+hands, and greeted her with more than his usual cordiality. Colonel
+Madison watched for the privilege of a recognising nod from the
+divinity. Sir Jasper Paulet, a legal luminary of the first brilliancy,
+likely to be employed for the Crown if there should be an inquiry into
+Lord Maulevrier's conduct out yonder, came to press Lady Maulevrier's
+hand and murmur a tender welcome.
+
+She accepted their friendliness as a matter of course, and not by the
+faintest extra quiver of the tremulous stars which glittered in a
+circlet above her raven hair did she betray her consciousness of the
+cloud that darkened her husband's reputation. Never had she appeared
+gayer, or more completely satisfied with herself and the world in which
+she lived. She was ready to talk about anything and everything--the
+newly-wedded queen, and the fortunate Prince, whose existence among us
+had all the charm of novelty--of Lord Melbourne's declining health--and
+Sir Robert Peel's sliding scale--mesmerism--the Oxford Tracts--the
+latest balloon ascent--the opera--Macready's last production at Drury
+lane--Bulwer's new novel--that clever little comic paper, just
+struggling into popularity--what do you call the thing--_Punch?_--yes,
+_Punch, or the London Charivari_--a much more respectable paper than its
+Parisian prototype.
+
+Seated next Lord Denyer, who was an excellent listener, Lady
+Maulevrier's vivacity never flagged throughout the dinner, happily not
+so long as a modern banquet, albeit more ponderous and not less
+expensive. From the turtle to the pines and strawberries, Lady
+Maulevrier held her host or her right-hand neighbour in interested
+conversation. She always knew the particular subjects likely to interest
+particular people, and was a good listener as well as a good talker. Her
+right-hand neighbour was Sir Jasper Paulet, who had been allotted to the
+pompous wife of a court physician, a lady who had begun her married life
+in the outer darkness of Guildford Street, Bloomsbury, with a household
+consisting of a maid-of-all-work and a boy in buttons, with an
+occasional interregnum of charwoman; and for whom all the length and
+breadth of Harley Street was now much too small.
+
+Sir Jasper was only decently civil to this haughty matron, who on the
+strength of a card for a ball or a concert at the palace once in a
+season affected to be on the most intimate terms with Royalty, and knew
+everything that happened, and every fluctuation of opinion in that
+charmed circle. The great lawyer's left ear was listening greedily for
+any word of meaning that might fall from the lips of Lady Maulevrier;
+but no such word fell. She talked delightfully, with a touch-and-go
+vivacity which is the highest form of dinner-table talk, not dwelling
+with a heavy hand upon any one subject, but glancing from theme to theme
+with airy lightness. But not one word did she say about the governor of
+Madras; and at this juncture of affairs it would have been the worst
+possible taste to inquire too closely after his lordship's welfare.
+
+So the dinner wore on to its stately close, and just as the solemn
+procession of flunkeys, long as the shadowy line of the kings in
+'Macbeth,' filed off with the empty ice-dishes, Lady Maulevrier said
+something which was as if a shell had exploded in the middle of the
+table.
+
+'Perhaps you are surprised to see me in such good spirits,' she said,
+beaming upon her host, and speaking in those clear, perfectly finished
+syllables which are heard further than the louder accents of less
+polished speakers, 'but you will not wonder when I let you into the
+secret. Maulevrier is on his way home.'
+
+'Indeed!' said Lord Denyer, with the most benignant smile he could
+command at such short notice. He felt that the muscles round his eyes
+and the corners of his mouth were betraying too much of his real
+sentiments. 'You must be very glad.'
+
+'I am gladder than I can say,' answered Lady Maulevrier, gaily. 'That
+horried climate--a sky like molten copper--an atmosphere that tastes of
+red-hot sand--that flat barren coast never suited him. His term of
+office would expire in little more than a year, but I hardly think he
+could have lived out the year. However, I am happy to say the mail that
+came in to-day--I suppose you know the mail is in?' (Lord Denyer
+bowed)--'brought me a letter from his Lordship, telling me that he has
+sent in his resignation, and taken his passage by the next big ship that
+leaves Madras. I imagine he will be home in October.'
+
+'If he have a favourable passage,' said Lord Denyer. 'Favoured by your
+good wishes the winds and the waves ought to deal gently with him.'
+
+'Ah, we have done with the old days of Greek story, when Neptune was
+open to feminine influence,' sighed her ladyship. 'My poor Ulysses has
+no goddess of wisdom to look after him.'
+
+'Perhaps not, but he has the most charming of Penelopes waiting for him
+at home.'
+
+'A Penelope who goes to dinners, and takes life pleasantly in his
+absence. That is a new order of things, is it not?' said her ladyship,
+laughingly. 'I hope my poor Ulysses will not come home thoroughly broken
+in health, but that our Sutherlandshire breezes will set him up again.'
+
+'Rather an ordeal after India, I should think,' said Lord Denyer.
+
+'It is his native air. He will revel in it.'
+
+'Delicious country, no doubt,' assented his lordship, who was no
+sportsman, and who detested Scotland, grouse moors, deer forests, salmon
+rivers included.
+
+His only idea of a winter residence was Florence or Capri, and of the
+two he preferred Capri. The island was at that time little frequented by
+Englishmen. It had hardly been fashionable since the time of Tiberius,
+but Lord Denyer went there, accompanied by his French chef, and a dozen
+other servants, and roughed it in a native hotel; while Lady Denyer
+wintered at the family seat among the hills near Bath, and gave herself
+over to Low Church devotion, and works of benevolence. She made herself
+a terror to the neighbourhood by the strictness of her ideas all through
+the autumn and winter; and in the spring she went up to London, put on
+her turban and her diamonds, and plunged into the vortex of West-End
+society, where she revolved among other jewelled matrons for the season,
+telling herself and her intimates that this sacrifice of inclination was
+due to his lordship's position. Lady Denyer was not the less
+serious-minded because she was seen at every aristocratic resort, and
+wore low gowns with very short sleeves, and a great display of mottled
+arm and dimpled elbow.
+
+Now came her ladyship's smiling signal for the withdrawal of that fairer
+half of the assembly which was supposed to be indifferent to Lord
+Denyer's famous port and Madeira. She had been throwing out her gracious
+signals unperceived for at least five minutes before Lady Maulevrier
+responded, so entirely was that lady absorbed in her conversation with
+Lord Denyer; but she caught the look at last, and rose, as if moved by
+the same machinery which impelled her hostess, and then, graceful as a
+swan sailing with the current, she drifted down the room to the distant
+door, and headed the stately procession of matronly velvet and diamonds,
+herself at once the most regal and the most graceful figure in that bevy
+of fair woman.
+
+In the drawing-room nobody could be gayer than Lady Maulevrier, as she
+marked the time of Signor Paponizzi's saltarello, exquisitely performed
+on the Signor's famed Amati violin--or talked of the latest
+scandal--always excepting that latest scandal of all which involved her
+own husband--in subdued murmurs with one of her intimates. In the
+dining-room the men drew closer together over their wine, and tore Lord
+Maulevrier's character to rags. Yea, they rent him with their teeth and
+gnawed the flesh from his bones, until there was not so much left of him
+as the dogs left of Jezebel.
+
+He had been a scamp from his cradle, a spendthrift at Eton and Oxford, a
+blackleg in his manhood. False to men, false to women. Clever? Yes,
+undoubtedly, just as Satan is clever, and as unscrupulous as that very
+Satan. This was what his friends said of him over their wine. And now he
+was rumoured to have sold the British forces in the Carnatic provinces
+to one of the native Princes. Yes, to have taken gold, gold to an amount
+which Clive in his most rapacious moments never dreamt of, for his
+countrymen's blood. Tidings of dark transactions between the Governor
+and the native Princes had reached the ears of the Government, tidings
+so vague, so incredible, that the Government might naturally be slow to
+believe, still slower to act. There were whispers of a woman's
+influence, a beautiful Ranee, a creature as fascinating and as
+unscrupulous as Cleopatra. The scandal had been growing for months past,
+but it was only in the letters received to-day that the rumour had taken
+a tangible shape, and now it was currently reported that Lord Maulevrier
+had been recalled, and would have to answer at the bar of the House of
+Lords for his misdemeanours, which were of a much darker colour than
+those acts for which Warren Hastings had been called to account fifty
+years before.
+
+Yet in the face of all this, Lady Maulevrier bore herself as proudly as
+if her husband's name were spotless, and talked of his return with all
+the ardour of a fond and trusting wife.
+
+'One of the finest bits of acting I ever saw in my life,' said the court
+physician. 'Mademoiselle Mars never did anything better.'
+
+'Do you really think it was acting?' inquired Lord Denyer, affecting a
+youthful candour and trustfulness which at his age, and with his
+experience, he could hardly be supposed to possess.
+
+'I know it,' replied the doctor. 'I watched her while she was talking of
+Maulevrier, and I saw just one bead of perspiration break out on her
+upper lip--an unmistakable sign of the mental struggle.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+ULYSSES.
+
+
+October was ending drearily with north-east winds, dust, drifting dead
+leaves, and a steel-grey sky; and the Dolphin Hotel at Southampton was
+glorified by the presence of Lady Maulevrier and suite. Her ladyship's
+suite was on this occasion limited to three servants--her French maid, a
+footman, and a kind of factotum, a man of no distinct and arbitrary
+signification in her ladyship's household, neither butler nor steward,
+but that privileged being, an old and trusted servant, and a person who
+was supposed to enjoy more of Lady Maulevrier's confidence than any
+other member of her establishment.
+
+This James Steadman had been valet to her ladyship's father, Lord
+Peverill, during the declining years of that nobleman. The narrow limits
+of a sick room had brought the master and servant into a closer
+companionship than is common to that relation. Lady Diana Angersthorpe
+was a devoted daughter, and in her attendance upon the Earl during the
+last three years of his life--a life which closed more than a year
+before her own marriage--she saw a great deal of James Steadman, and
+learned to trust him as servants are not often trusted. He was not more
+than twenty years of age at the beginning of his service, but he was a
+man of extraordinary gravity, much in advance of his years; a man of
+shrewd common-sense and clear, sharp intellect. Not a reading man, or a
+man in any way superior to his station and belongings, but a man who
+could think quickly, and understand quickly, and who always seemed to
+think rightly. Prompt in action, yet steady as a rock, and to all
+appearance recognising no earthly interest, no human tie, beyond or
+above the interests of his master. As a nurse Steadman showed himself
+invaluable. Lord Peverill left him a hundred pounds in acknowledgment of
+his services, which was something for Lord Peverill, who had very little
+ready cash wherewith to endow his only daughter. After his death the
+title and the estates went to a distant cousin; Lady Diana Angersthorpe
+was taken in hand by her aunt, the Dowager Marchioness of Carrisbrook;
+and James Steadman would have had to find employment among strangers, if
+Lady Diana had not pleaded so urgently with her aunt as to secure him a
+somewhat insignificant post in her ladyship's establishment.
+
+'If ever I have a house of my own, you shall have a better place in it,
+Steadman,' said Lady Diana.
+
+She kept her word, and on her marriage with Lord Maulevrier, which
+happened about eighteen months afterwards, Steadman passed into that
+nobleman's service. He was a member of her ladyship's bodyguard, and his
+employment seemed to consist chiefly in poking fires, cutting the leaves
+of books and newspapers, superintending the footman's attendance upon
+her ladyship's household pets, and conveying her sentiments to the other
+servants. He was in a manner Lady Maulevrier's mouthpiece, and although
+treated with a respect that verged upon awe, he was not a favourite with
+the household.
+
+And now the house in Mayfair was given over to the charge of caretakers.
+All the other servants had been despatched by coach to her ladyship's
+favourite retreat in Westmoreland, within a few miles of the Laureate's
+home at Rydal Mount, and James Steadman was charged with the whole
+responsibility of her ladyship's travelling arrangements.
+
+Penelope had come to Southampton to wait for Ulysses, whose ship had
+been due for more than a week, and whose white sails might be expected
+above the horizon at any moment. James Steadman spent a good deal of his
+time waiting about at the docks for the earliest news of Greene's ship,
+the _Hypermnestra_; while Lady Maulevrier waited patiently in her
+sitting-room at the Dolphin, whose three long French windows commanded a
+full view of the High Street, with all those various distractions
+afforded by the chief thoroughfare of a provincial town. Her ladyship
+was provided with a large box of books, from Ebers' in Bond Street, a
+basket of fancy work, and her favourite Blenheim spaniel, Lalla Rookh;
+but even these sources of amusement did not prevent the involuntary
+expression of weariness in occasional yawns, and frequent pacings up and
+down the room, where the formal hotel furniture had a comfortless and
+chilly look.
+
+Fellside, her ladyship's place in Westmoreland, was the pleasure house
+which, among all her possessions, she most valued; but it had hitherto
+been reserved for summer occupation, or for perhaps two or three weeks
+at Easter, when the spring was exceptionally fine. The sudden
+determination to spend the coming winter in the house near Grasmere was
+considered a curious freak of Lady Maulevrier's, and she was constrained
+to explain her motives to her friends.
+
+'His lordship is out of health,' she said, 'and wants perfect rest and
+retirement. Now, Fellside is the only place we have in which he is
+likely to get perfect rest. Anywhere else we should have to entertain.
+Fellside is out of the world. There is no one to be entertained.'
+
+'Except your neighbour, Wordsworth. I suppose you see him sometimes?'
+
+'Dear simple-minded old soul, he gives nobody any trouble,' said her
+ladyship.
+
+'But is not Westmoreland very cold in winter?' asked her friend.
+
+Lady Maulevrier smiled benignly, as at an inoffensive ignorance.
+
+'So sheltered,' she murmured. 'We are at the base of the Fell. Loughrigg
+rises up like a cyclopean wall between us and the wind.'
+
+'But when the wind is in the other direction?'
+
+'We have Nabb Scar. You do not know how we are girdled and defended by
+hills.'
+
+'Very pleasant,' agreed the friend; 'but for my own part I would rather
+winter in the south.'
+
+Those terrible rumours which had first come upon the world of London
+last June, had been growing darker and more defined ever since, but
+still Lady Maulevrier made believe to ignore them; and she acted her
+part of unconsciousness with such consummate skill that nobody in her
+circle could be sure where the acting began and where the ignorance left
+off. The astute Lord Denyer declared that she was a wonderful woman, and
+knew more about the real state of the case than anybody else.
+
+Meanwhile it was said by those who were supposed to be well-informed
+that a mass of evidence was accumulating against Lord Maulevrier. The
+India House, it was rumoured, was busy with the secret investigation of
+his case, prior to that public inquiry which was to come on during the
+next session. His private fortune would be made answerable for his
+misdemeanours--his life, said the alarmists, might pay the penalty of
+his treason. On all sides it was agreed that the case against Lord
+Maulevrier was black as Erebus; and still Lady Maulevrier looked society
+in the face with an unshaken courage, and was ready with smiles and
+gracious words for all comers.
+
+But now came a harder trial, which was to receive the man who had
+disgraced her, lowered her pride to the dust, degraded the name she
+bore. She had married him, not loving him--nay, plucking another love
+out of her heart in order that she might give herself to him. She had
+married him for position and fortune; and now by his follies, by his
+extravagance, and by that greed of gold which is inevitable in the
+spendthrift and profligate, he had gone near to cheat her out of both
+name and fortune. Yet she so commanded herself as to receive him with a
+friendly air when he arrived at the Dolphin, on a dull grey autumn
+afternoon, after she had waited for him nearly a fortnight.
+
+James Steadman ushered in his lordship, a frail attenuated looking
+figure, of middle height, wrapped in a furred cloak, yet shivering, a
+pale sickly face, light auburn whiskers, light blue eyes, full and
+large, but with no intellectual power in them. Lady Maulevrier was
+sitting by the fire, in a melancholy attitude, with the Blenheim spaniel
+on her lap. Her son was at Hastings with his nurses. She had nothing
+nearer and dearer than the spaniel.
+
+She rose and went over to her husband, and let him kiss her. It would
+have been too much to say that she kissed him; but she submitted her
+lips unresistingly to his, and then they sat down on opposite sides of
+the hearth.
+
+'A wretched afternoon,' said his lordship, shivering, and drawing his
+chair closer to the fire. Steadman had taken away his fur-lined cloak.
+'I had really underrated the disagreeableness of the English climate. It
+is abominable!'
+
+'To-day is not a fair sample,' answered her ladyship, trying to be
+cheerful; 'we have had some pleasant autumn days.'
+
+'I detest autumn!' exclaimed Lord Maulevrier, 'a season of dead leaves,
+damp, and dreariness. I should like to get away to Montpellier or Nice
+as soon as we can.'
+
+Her ladyship gave him a scathing look, half-scornful, half-incredulous.
+
+'You surely would not dream of leaving the country,' she said, 'under
+present circumstances. So long as you are here to answer all charges no
+one will interfere with your liberty; but if you were to cross the
+Channel--'
+
+'My slanderers might insinuate that I was running away,' interrupted
+Maulevrier, 'although the very fact of my return ought to prove to every
+one that I am able to meet and face this cabal.'
+
+'Is it a cabal?' asked her ladyship, looking at him with a gaze that
+searched his soul. 'Can you meet their charges? Can you live down this
+hideous accusation, and hold up your head as a man of honour?'
+
+The sensualist's blue eyes nervously shunned that look of earnest
+interrogation. His lips answered the wife's spoken question with a lie,
+a lie made manifest by the expression of his countenance.
+
+'I am not afraid,' he said.
+
+His wife answered not a word. She was assured that the charges were
+true, and that the battered rake who shivered over the fire had neither
+courage nor ability to face his accusers. She saw the whole fabric of
+her life in ruins, her son the penniless successor to a tarnished name.
+There was silence for some minutes. Lady Maulevrier sat with lowered
+eyelids looking at the fire, deep in painful thought. Two perpendicular
+wrinkles upon her broad white forehead--so calm, so unclouded in
+society--told of gnawing cares. Then she stole a look at her husband,
+as he reclined in his arm-chair, his head lying back against the
+cushions in listless repose, his eyes looking vacantly at the window,
+whence he could see only the rain-blurred fronts of opposite houses,
+blank, dull windows, grey slated roofs, against a leaden sky.
+
+He had been a handsome man, and he was handsome still, albeit premature
+decay, the result of an evil life, was distinctly marked in his faded
+face. The dull, yellow tint of the complexion, the tarnished dimness of
+the large blue eyes, the discontented droop of the lips, the languor of
+the attitude, the pallid transparency of the wasted hands, all told of a
+life worn threadbare, energies exhausted, chances thrown away, a mind
+abandoned to despair.
+
+'You look very ill,' said his wife, after that long blank interval,
+which marked so unnatural an apathy between husband and wife meeting
+after so long a severance.
+
+'I am very ill. I have been worried to death--surrounded by rogues and
+liars--the victim of a most infernal conspiracy.' He spoke hurriedly,
+growing whiter and more tremulous as he went on.
+
+'Don't talk about it. You agitate yourself to no purpose,' said Lady
+Maulevrier, with a tranquillity which seemed heartless yet which might
+be the result of suppressed feeling. 'If you are to face this scandal
+firmly and boldly next January, you must try to recover physical
+strength in the meanwhile. Mental energy may come with better health.'
+
+'I shall never be any better,' said Lord Maulevrier, testily; 'that
+infernal climate has shattered my constitution.'
+
+'Two or three months of perfect rest and good nursing will make a new
+man of you. I have arranged that we shall go straight from here to
+Fellside. No one can plague you there with that disguised impertinence
+called sympathy. You can give all your thoughts to the ordeal before
+you, and be ready to meet your accusers. Fortunately, you have no Burke
+against you.'
+
+'Fellside? You think of going to Fellside?'
+
+'Yes. You know how fond I am of that place. I little thought when you
+settled it upon me--a cottage in Westmoreland with fifty acres of garden
+and meadow--so utterly insignificant--that I should ever like it better
+than any of your places.'
+
+'A charming retreat in summer; but we have never wintered there? What
+put it into your head to go there at such a season as this? Why, I
+daresay the snow is on the tops of the hills already.'
+
+'It is the only place I know where you will not be watched and talked
+about,' replied Lady Maulevrier. 'You will be out of the eye of the
+world. I should think that consideration would weigh more with you than
+two or three degrees of the thermometer.'
+
+'I detest cold,' said the Earl, 'and in my weak health----'
+
+'We will take care of you,' answered her ladyship; and in the discussion
+which followed she bore herself so firmly that her husband was fain to
+give way.
+
+How could a disgraced and ruined man, broken in health and spirits,
+contest the mere details of life with a high-spirited woman ten years
+his junior?
+
+The Earl wanted to go to London, and remain there at least a week, but
+this her ladyship strenuously opposed. He must see his lawyer, he urged;
+there were steps to be taken which could be taken only under legal
+advice--counsel to be retained. If this lying invention of Satan were
+really destined to take the form of a public trial, he must be prepared
+to fight his foes on their own ground.
+
+'You can make all your preparations at Fellside,' answered his wife,
+resolutely. 'I have seen Messrs. Rigby and Rider, and your own
+particular ally, Rigby, will go to you at Fellside whenever you want
+him.'
+
+'That is not like my being on the spot,' said his lordship, nervously,
+evidently much disconcerted by her ladyship's firmness, but too feeble
+in mind and body for a prolonged contest.
+
+'I ought to be on the spot. I am not without influence; I have friends,
+men in power.'
+
+'Surely you are not going to appeal to friendship in order to vindicate
+your honour. These charges are true or false. If they are false your own
+manhood, your own rectitude, can face them and trample upon them,
+unaided by back-stairs influence. If they are true, no one can help
+you.'
+
+'I think you, at least, ought to know that they are as false as hell,'
+retorted the Earl, with an attempt to maintain his dignity.
+
+'I have acted as if I so believed,' replied his wife. 'I have lived as
+if there were no such slanders in the air. I have steadily ignored every
+report, every insinuation--have held my head as high as if I knew you
+were immaculate.'
+
+'I expected as much from you,' answered the Earl, coolly. 'If I had not
+known you were a woman of sense I should not have married you.'
+
+This was his utmost expression of gratitude. His next remarks had
+reference solely to his own comfort. Where were his rooms? at what hour
+were they to dine? And hereupon he rang for his valet, a German Swiss,
+and a servant out of a thousand.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+ON THE WRONG ROAD.
+
+
+Lord and Lady Maulevrier left Southampton next morning, posting. They
+took two servants in the rumble, Steadman and the footman. Steadman was
+to valet his lordship, the footman to be useful in all emergencies of
+the journey. The maid and the valet were to travel by heavy coach, with
+the luggage--her ladyship dispensing with all personal attendance during
+the journey.
+
+The first day took them to Rugby, whither they travelled across country
+by Wallingford and Oxford. The second day took them to Lichfield. Lord
+Maulevrier was out of health and feeble, and grumbled a good deal about
+the fatigue of the journey, the badness of the weather, which was dull
+and cold, east winds all day, and a light frost morning and night. As
+they progressed northward the sky looked grayer, the air became more
+biting. His lordship insisted upon the stages being shortened. He lay in
+bed at his hotel till noon, and was seldom ready to start till two
+o'clock. He could see no reason for haste; the winter would be long
+enough in all conscience at Fellside. He complained of mysterious aches
+and pains, described himself in the presence of hotel-keepers and
+headwaiters as a mass of maladies. He was nervous, irritable, intensely
+disagreeable. Lady Maulevrier bore his humours with unwavering patience,
+and won golden opinions from all sorts of people by her devotion to a
+husband whose blighted name was the common talk of England. Everybody,
+even in distant provincial towns, had heard of the scandal against the
+Governor of Madras; and everybody looked at the sallow, faded
+Anglo-Indian with morbid curiosity. His lordship, sensitive on all
+points touching his own ease and comfort, was keenly conscious of this
+unflattering inquisitiveness.
+
+The journey, protracted by Lord Maulevrier's languor and ill-health,
+dragged its slow length along for nearly a fortnight; until it seemed to
+Lady Maulevrier as if they had been travelling upon those dismal, flat,
+unpicturesque roads for months. Each day was so horribly like yesterday.
+The same hedgerows and flat fields, and passing glimpse of river or
+canal. The same absence of all beauty in the landscape--the same formal
+hotel rooms, and smirking landladies--and so on till they came to
+Lancaster, after which the country became more interesting--hills arose
+in the background. Even the smoky manufacturing towns through which
+they passed without stopping, were less abominable than the level
+monotony of the Midland counties.
+
+But now as they drew nearer the hills the weather grew colder, snow was
+spoken of, and when they got into Westmoreland the mountain-peaks
+gleamed whitely against a lead-coloured sky.
+
+'You ought not to have brought me here in such weather,' complained the
+Earl, shivering in his sables, as he sat in his corner of the travelling
+chariot, looking discontentedly at the gloomy landscape. 'What is to
+become of us if we are caught in a snowstorm?'
+
+'We shall have no snow worth talking about before we are safely housed
+at Fellside, and then we can defy the elements,' said Lady Maulevrier,
+coolly.
+
+They slept that night at Oxenholme, and started next morning, under a
+clean, bright sky, intending to take luncheon at Windermere, and to be
+at home by nightfall.
+
+But by the time they got to Windermere the sky had changed to a dark
+grey, and the people at the hotel prophesied a heavy fall before night,
+and urged the Earl and Countess to go no further that day. The latter
+part of the road to Fellside was rough and hilly. If there should be a
+snowstorm the horses would never be able to drag the carriage up the
+steepest bit of the way. Here, however, Lord Maulevrier's obstinacy came
+into play. He would not endure another night at an hotel so near his own
+house. He was sick to death of travelling, and wanted to be at rest
+among comfortable surroundings.
+
+'It was murder to bring me here,' he said to his wife. 'If I had gone to
+Hastings I should have been a new man by this time. As it is I am a
+great deal worse than when I landed.'
+
+Everyone at the hotel noticed his lordship's white and haggard looks. He
+had been known there as a young man in the bloom of health and strength,
+and his decay was particularly obvious to these people.
+
+'I saw death in his face,' the landlord said, afterwards.
+
+Every one, even her ladyship's firmness and good sense, gave way before
+the invalid's impatience. At three in the afternoon they left the hotel,
+with four horses, to make the remaining nineteen miles of the way in one
+stage. They had not been on the road half an hour before the snow began
+to fall thickly, whitening everything around them, except the lake,
+which showed a dark leaden surface at the bottom of the slope along the
+edge of which they were travelling. Too sullen for speech, Lord
+Maulevrier sat back in his corner, with his sable cloak drawn up to his
+chin, his travelling cap covering head and ears, his eyes contemplating
+the whitening world with a weary anger. His wife watched the landscape
+as long as she could, but the snow soon began to darken all the air,
+and she could see nothing save that blank blinding fall.
+
+Half-way to Fellside there was a point where two roads met, one leading
+towards Grasmere, the other towards the village of Great Langdale, a
+cluster of humble habitations in the heart of the hills. When the horses
+had struggled as far as this point, the snow was six inches deep on the
+road, and made a thick curtain around them as it fell. By this time the
+Earl had dozed off to sleep.
+
+He woke an hour after, let down the window, which let in a snow-laden
+gust, and tried to pierce the gloom without.
+
+'As black as Erebus!' he exclaimed, 'but we ought to be close at home by
+this time. Yes, thank God, there are the lights.'
+
+The carriage drew up a minute afterwards, and Steadman came to the door.
+
+'Very sorry, my lord. The horses must have taken a wrong turn after we
+crossed the bridge. And now the men say they can't go back to Fellside
+unless we can get fresh horses; and I'm afraid there's no chance of that
+here.'
+
+'Here!' exclaimed the Earl, 'what do you mean by here? Where the devil
+are we?'
+
+'Great Langdale, my lord.'
+
+A door opened and let out a flood of light--the red light of a wood
+fire, the pale flame of a candle--upon the snowy darkness, revealing the
+panelled hall of a neat little rustic inn: an eight-day clock ticking in
+the corner, a black and white sheep-dog coming out at his master's heels
+to investigate the travellers. To the right of the door showed the light
+of a window, sheltered by a red curtain, behind which the chiefs of the
+village were enjoying their evening.
+
+'Have you any post-horses?' asked the Earl, discontentedly, as the
+landlord stood on the threshold, shading the candle with his hand. 'No,
+sir. We don't keep post-horses.'
+
+'Of course not. I knew as much before I asked,' said the Earl.
+
+'We are fixed in this dismal hole for the night, I suppose. How far are
+we from Fellside?'
+
+'Seven miles,' answered the landlord. 'I beg your pardon, my lord; I
+didn't know it was your lordship,' he added, hurriedly. 'We're in sore
+trouble, and it makes a man daft-like; but if there's anything we can
+do----'
+
+'Is there no hope of getting on, Steadman?' asked the Earl, cutting
+short these civilities.
+
+'Not with these horses, my lord.'
+
+'And you hear we can't get any others. Is there any farmer about here
+who could lend us a pair of carriage horses?'
+
+The landlord knew of no such person.
+
+'Then we must stop here till to-morrow morning. What infernal fools
+those post-boys must be,' protested Lord Maulevrier.
+
+James Steadman apologised for the postilions, explaining that when they
+came to the critical point of their journey, where the road branched off
+to the Langdales, the snow was falling so thickly, the whole country was
+so hidden in all-pervading whiteness, that even he, who knew the way so
+well, could give no help to the drivers. He could only trust to the
+instinct of local postilions and local horses; and instinct had proved
+wrong.
+
+The travellers alighted, and were ushered into a not
+uncomfortable-looking parlour; very low as to the ceiling, very
+old-fashioned as to the furniture, but spotlessly clean, and enlivened
+by a good fire, to which his lordship drew near, shivering and muttering
+discontentedly to himself.
+
+'We might be worse off,' said her ladyship, looking round the bright
+little room, which pleased her better than many a state apartment in the
+large hotels at which they had stopped.
+
+'Hardly, unless we were out on the moor,' grumbled her husband. 'I am
+sick to death of this ill-advised, unreasonable journey. I am at a loss
+to imagine your motive in bringing me here. You must have had a motive.'
+
+'I had,' answered Lady Maulevrier, with a freezing look. 'I wanted to
+get you out of the way. I told you that plainly enough at Southampton.'
+
+'I don't see why I should be hurried away and hidden,' said Lord
+Maulevrier. 'I must face my accusers, sooner or later.'
+
+'Of course. The day of reckoning must come. But in the meantime have you
+no delicacy? Do you want to be pointed at everywhere?'
+
+'All I know is that I am very ill,' answered her husband, 'and that this
+wretched journey has made me twenty years older.'
+
+'We shall be safe at home before noon to-morrow, and you can have Horton
+to set you right again. You know you always believed in his skill.'
+
+'Horton is a clever fellow enough, as country doctors go; but at
+Hastings I could have had the best physicians in London to see me,'
+grumbled his lordship.
+
+The rustic maid-servant came in to lay the table, assisted by her
+ladyship's footman, who looked a good deal too tall for the room.
+
+'I shan't dine,' said the Earl. 'I am a great deal too ill and cold.
+Light a fire in my room, girl, and send Steadman to me'--this to the
+footman, who hastened to obey. 'You can send me up a basin of soup
+presently. I shall go to bed at once.'
+
+He left the room without another word to his wife, who sat by the hearth
+staring thoughtfully at the cheery wood fire. Presently she looked up,
+and saw that the man and maid were going on with their preparations for
+dinner.
+
+'I do not care about dining alone,' said her ladyship. 'We lunched at
+Windermere, and I have no appetite. You can clear away those things, and
+bring me some tea.'
+
+When the table furniture had been cleared, and a neat little tea-tray
+set upon the white cloth, Lady Maulevrier drew her chair to the table,
+and took out her pocket-book, from which she produced a letter. This she
+read more than once, meditating profoundly upon its contents.
+
+'I am very sorry he has come home,' wrote her correspondent, 'and yet if
+he had stayed in India there must have been an investigation on the
+spot. A public inquiry is inevitable, and the knowledge of his arrival
+in the country will precipitate matters. From all I hear I much fear
+that there is no chance of the result being favourable to him. You have
+asked me to write the unvarnished truth, to be brutal even, remember.
+His delinquencies are painfully notorious, and I apprehend that the last
+sixpence he owns will be answerable. His landed estate I am told can
+also be confiscated, in the event of an impeachment at the bar of the
+House of Lords, as in the Warren Hastings case. But as yet nobody seems
+clear as to the form which the investigation will take. In reply to your
+inquiry as to what would have happened if his lordship had died on the
+passage home, I believe I am justified in saying the scandal would have
+been allowed to die with him. He has contrived to provoke powerful
+animosities both in the Cabinet and at the India House, and there is, I
+fear, an intention to pursue the inquiry to the bitter end.'
+
+Assurances of the writer's sympathy followed these harsh truths. But to
+this polite commonplace her ladyship paid no attention. Her mind was
+intent on hard facts, the dismal probabilities of the near future.
+
+'If he had died upon the passage home!' she repeated. 'Would to God that
+he had so died, and that my son's name and fortune could be saved.'
+
+The innocent child who had never given her an hour's care; the one
+creature she loved with all the strength of her proud nature--his future
+was to be blighted by his father's misdoings--overshadowed by shame and
+dishonour in the very dawn of life. It was a wicked wish--an unnatural
+wish to find room in a woman's breast; but the wish was there. Would to
+God he had died before the ship touched an English port.
+
+But he was living, and would have to face his accusers--and she, his
+wife, must give him all the help she could.
+
+She sat long by the waning fire. She took nothing but a cup of tea,
+although the landlady had sent in substantial accompaniments to the
+tea-tray in the shape of broiled ham, new-laid eggs, and hot cakes,
+arguing that a traveller on such a night must be hungry, albeit
+disinclined for a ceremonious dinner. She had been sitting for nearly
+an hour in almost the same attitude, when there came a knock at the
+door, and, on being bidden to enter, the landlady came in, with some
+logs in her apron, under pretence of replenishing the fire.
+
+'I was afraid your fire must be getting low, and that you'd be amost
+starved, my lady,' she said, as she put on the logs, and swept up the
+ashes on the hearth. 'Such a dreadful night. So early in the year, too.
+I'm thinking we shall have a gay hard winter.'
+
+'That does not always follow,' said Lady Maulevrier. 'Has Steadman come
+downstairs?'
+
+'Yes, my lady. He told me to tell your ladyship that his lordship is
+pretty comfortable, and hopes to pass a good night.'
+
+'I am glad to hear it. You can give me another room, I suppose. It would
+be better for his lordship not to be disturbed, as he is very much out
+of health.'
+
+'There is another room, my lady, but it's very small.'
+
+'I don't mind how small, if it is clean and airy.'
+
+'Yes, my lady. I am thankful to say you won't find dirt or stuffiness
+anywhere in this house. His lordship do look mortal badly,' added the
+landlady, shaking her head dolefully; 'and I remember him such a fine
+young gentleman, when he used to come down the Rothay with the otter
+hounds, running along the bank--joomping in and out of the beck--up to
+his knees in the water--and now to see him, so white and mashiated, and
+broken-down like, in the very prime of life, all along of living out in
+a hot country, among blackamoors, which is used to it--poor, ignorant
+creatures--and never knew no better. It must be a hard trial for you, my
+lady.'
+
+'It is a hard trial.'
+
+'Ah! we all have our trials, rich and poor,' sighed the woman, who
+desired nothing better than to be allowed to unbosom her woes to the
+grand looking lady in the fur-bordered cloth pelisse, with beautiful
+dark hair piled up in clustering masses above a broad white forehead,
+and slender white hands on which diamonds flashed and glittered in the
+firelight, an unaccustomed figure by that rustic hearth.
+
+'We all have our trials--high and low.'
+
+'That reminds me,' said Lady Maulevrier, looking up at her, 'your
+husband said you were in trouble. What did that mean?'
+
+'Sickness in the house, my lady. A brother of mine that went to America
+to make his fortune, and seemed to be doing so well for the first five
+or six years, and wrote home such beautiful letters, and then left off
+writing all at once, and we made sure as he was dead, and never got a
+word from him for ten years, and just three weeks ago he drops in upon
+us as we was sitting over our tea between the lights, looking as white
+as a ghost. I gave a shriek when I saw him, for I was regular scared
+out of my senses. "Robert's ghost!" I cried; but it was Robert himself,
+come home to us to die. And he's lying upstairs now, with so little life
+in him that I expect every breath to be his last.'
+
+'What is his complaint?'
+
+'Apathy, my lady. Dear, dear, that's not it. I never do remember the
+doctor's foreign names.'
+
+'Atrophy,' perhaps.
+
+'Yes, my lady, that was it. Happen such crack-jaw words come easy to a
+scholar like your ladyship.'
+
+'Does the doctor give no hope?'
+
+'Well, no, my lady. He don't go so far as to say there's no hope, though
+Robert has been badly so long. It all depends, he says, upon the
+rallying power of the constitution. The lungs are not gone, and the
+heart is not diseased. If there's rallying power, Robert will come
+round, and if there isn't he'll sink. But the doctor says nature will
+have to make an effort. But I have my own idea about the case,' added
+the landlady, with a sigh.
+
+'What is your idea?'
+
+'That our Robert was marked for death when he came into this house, and
+that he meant what he said when he spoke of coming home to die. Things
+had gone against him for the last ten years in America. He married and
+took his wife out to a farm in the Bush, and thought to make a good
+thing out of farming with the bit of brass he'd saved at heeam. But
+America isn't Gert Langdale, you see, my lady, and his knowledge stood
+him in no stead in the Bush; and first he lost his money, and he fashed
+himself terrible about that, and then he lost a child or two, and then
+he lost his wife, and he came back to us a broken-hearted man, with no
+wish to live. The doctor may call it atrophy, but I will call it what
+the Scripture calls it, a broken and a wounded spirit.'
+
+'Who is your doctor?'
+
+'Mr. Evans, of Ambleside.'
+
+'That little half-blind old man!' exclaimed her ladyship. 'Surely you
+have no confidence in him?'
+
+'Not much, my lady. But I don't believe all the doctors in London could
+do anything for Robert. Good nursing will bring him round if anything
+can; and he gets that, I can assure your ladyship. He's my only brother,
+the only kith and kin that's left to me, and he and I were gay fond of
+each other when he was young. You may be sure I don't spare any trouble,
+and my good man thinks the best of his larder or his celler hardly good
+enough for Robert.'
+
+'I am sure you are kind good people,' replied her ladyship gently; 'but
+I should have thought Mr. Horton, of Grasmere, could have done more than
+old Evans. However, you know best. I hope his lordship is not going to
+add to your cares by being laid up here, but he looked very ill this
+evening.'
+
+'He did, my lady, mortal bad.'
+
+'However, we must hope for the best. Steadman is a splendid servant in
+illness. He nursed my father for years. Will you tell him to come to me,
+if you please? I want to hear what he thinks of his lordship, and to
+discuss the chances of our getting home early to-morrow.'
+
+The landlady retired, and summoned Mr. Steadman, who was enjoying his
+modest glass of grog in front of the kitchen fire. He had taught himself
+to dispense with the consolations of tobacco, lest he should at any time
+make himself obnoxious to her ladyship.
+
+Steadman was closeted with Lady Maulevrier for the next half-hour,
+during which his lordship's condition was gravely discussed. When he
+left the sitting-room he told the landlord to be sure and feed the
+post-horses well, and make them comfortable for the night, so that they
+might be ready for the drive to Fellside early next morning.
+
+'Do you think his lordship will be well enough to travel?' asked the
+landlord.
+
+'He has made up his mind to get home--ill or well,' answered Steadman.
+'He has wasted about a week by his dawdling ways on the road; and now
+he's in a fever to get to Fellside.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE LAST STAGE.
+
+
+The post-horses--which had been well fed, but accommodated somewhat
+poorly in stable and barn--were quite ready to go on next morning; but
+Lord Maulevrier was not able to leave his room, where her ladyship
+remained in close attendance upon him. The hills and valleys were white
+with snow, but there was none falling, and Mr. Evans, the elderly
+surgeon from Ambleside, rode over to Great Langdale on his elderly cob
+to look at Robert Haswell, and was called in to see Lord Maulevrier. Her
+ladyship had spoken lightly of his skill on the previous evening, but
+any doctor is better than none, so this feeble little personage was
+allowed to feel his lordship's pulse, and look at his lordship's tongue.
+
+His opinion, never too decidedly given, was a little more hazy than
+usual on this occasion, perhaps because of a certain awfulness, to
+unaccustomed eyes, in Lady Maulevrier's proud bearing. He said that his
+lordship was low, very low, and that the pulse was more irregular than
+he liked, but he committed himself no further than this, and went away,
+promising to send such pills and potions as were appropriate to the
+patient's condition.
+
+A boy rode the same pony over to Langdale later in the afternoon with
+the promised medicines.
+
+Throughout the short winter day, which seemed terribly long in the
+stillness and solitude of Great Langdale, Lady Maulevrier kept watch in
+the sick-room, Steadman going in and out in constant attendance upon his
+master--save for one half-hour only, which her ladyship passed in the
+parlour below, in conversation with the landlady, a very serious
+conversation, as indicated by Mrs. Smithson's grave and somewhat
+troubled looks when she left her ladyship; but a good deal of her
+trouble may have been caused by her anxiety about her brother, who was
+pronounced by the doctor to be 'much the same.'
+
+At eleven o'clock that night a mounted messenger was sent off to
+Ambleside in hot haste to fetch Mr. Evans, who came to the inn to find
+Lady Maulevrier kneeling beside her husband's bed, while Steadman stood
+with a troubled countenance at a respectful distance.
+
+The room was dimly lighted by a pair of candles burning on a table near
+the window, and at some distance from the old four-post bedstead,
+shaded by dark moreen curtains. The surgeon looked round the room, and
+then fumbled in his pockets for his spectacles, without the aid of which
+the outside world presented itself to him under a blurred and uncertain
+aspect.
+
+He put on his spectacles, and moved towards the bed; but the first
+glance in that direction showed him what had happened. The outline of
+the rigid figure under the coverlet looked like a sculptured effigy upon
+a tomb. A sheet was drawn over the face of death.
+
+'You are too late to be of any use, Mr. Evans,' murmured Steadman,
+laying his hand upon the doctor's sleeve and drawing him away towards
+the door.
+
+They went softly on to the landing, off which opened the door of that
+other sick-room where the landlady's brother was lying.
+
+'When did this happen?'
+
+'A quarter of an hour after the messenger rode off to fetch you,'
+answered Steadman. 'His lordship lay all the afternoon in a heavy sleep,
+and we thought he was going on well; but after dark there was a
+difficulty in his breathing which alarmed her ladyship, and she insisted
+upon you being sent for. The messenger had hardly been gone a quarter of
+an hour when his lordship woke suddenly, muttered to himself in a
+curious way, gave just one long drawn sigh, and--and all was over. It
+was a terrible shock for her ladyship.'
+
+'Indeed it must have been,' murmured the village doctor. 'It is a great
+surprise to me. I knew Lord Maulevrier was low, very low, the pulse
+feeble and intermittent; but I had no fear of anything of this kind. It
+is very sudden.'
+
+'Yes, it is awfully sudden,' said Steadman, and then he murmured in the
+doctor's ear, 'You will give the necessary certificate, I hope, with as
+little trouble to her ladyship as possible. This is a dreadful blow, and
+she----'
+
+'She shall not be troubled. The body will be removed to-morrow, I
+suppose.'
+
+'Yes. He must be buried from his own house. I sent a second messenger to
+Ambleside for the undertaker. He will be here very soon, no doubt, and
+if the shell is ready by noon to-morrow, the body can be removed then. I
+have arranged to get her ladyship away to-night.'
+
+'So late? After midnight?'
+
+'Why not? She cannot stay in this small house--so near the dead. There
+is a moon, and there is no snow falling, and we are within seven miles
+of Fellside.'
+
+The doctor had nothing further to say against the arrangement, although
+such a drive seemed to him a somewhat wild and reckless proceeding. Mr.
+Steadman's grave, self-possessed manner answered all doubts. Mr. Evans
+filled in the certificate for the undertaker, drank a glass of hot
+brandy and water, and remounted his nag, in nowise relishing his
+midnight ride, but consoling himself with the reflection that he would
+be handsomely paid for his trouble.
+
+An hour later Lady Maulevrier's travelling carriage stood ready in the
+stable yard, in the deep shadow of wall and gables. It was at Steadman's
+order that the carriage waited for her ladyship at an obscure side door,
+rather than in front of the inn. An east wind was blowing keenly along
+the mountain road, and the careful Steadman was anxious his mistress
+should not be exposed to that chilly blast.
+
+There was some delay, and the four horses jingled their bits
+impatiently, and then the door of the inn opened, a feeble light gleamed
+in the narrow passage within, Steadman stood ready to assist her
+ladyship, there was a bustle, a confusion of dark figures on the
+threshold, a huddled mass of cloaks and fur wraps was lifted into the
+carriage, the door was clapped to, the horses went clattering out of the
+yard, turned sharply into the snowy road, and started at a swinging pace
+towards the dark sullen bulk of Loughrigg Fell.
+
+The moon was shining upon Elterwater in the valley yonder--the mountain
+ridges, the deep gorges below those sullen heights, looked back where
+the shadow of night enfolded them, but all along the snow-white road the
+silver light shone full and clear, and the mountain way looked like a
+path through fairyland.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+FORTY YEARS AFTER.
+
+
+'What a horrid day!' said Lady Mary, throwing down her book with a yawn,
+and looking out of the deep bay window into a world of mountain and lake
+which was clouded over by a dense veil of rain and dull grey mist; such
+rain as one sees only in a lake district, a curtain of gloom which shuts
+off sky and distance, and narrows the world to one solitary dwelling,
+suspended amidst cloud and water, like another ark in a new deluge.
+
+Rain--such rain as makes out-of-door exercise impossible--was always an
+affliction to Lady Mary Haselden. Her delight was in open air and
+sunshine--fishing in the lake and rivers--sitting in some sheltered
+hollow of the hills more fitting for an eagle's nest than for the
+occupation of a young lady, trying to paint those ever-varying,
+unpaintable mountain peaks, which change their hues with every change of
+the sky--swimming, riding, roving far and wide over hill and
+heather--pleasures all more or less masculine in their nature, and which
+were a subject of regret with Lady Maulevrier.
+
+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. Grandmother
+and Lesbia adored each other. Lesbia was the one person for whom Lady
+Maulevrier's stateliness was subjugated by perfect love. To all the rest
+of the world the Countess was marble, but to Lesbia she was wax. Lesbia
+could mould her as she pleased; but happily Lesbia was not the kind of
+young person to take advantage of this privilege; she was thoroughly
+ductile or docile, and had no desire, at present, which ran counter to
+her grandmother.
+
+Lesbia was a beauty. In her nineteenth year she was a curious
+reproduction in face and figure, expression and carriage, of that Lady
+Diana Angersthorpe who five and forty years ago fluttered the dove-cots
+of St. James's and Mayfair by her brilliant beauty and her keen
+intelligence. There in the panelled drawing-room at Fellside hung
+Harlow's portrait of Lady Diana in her zenith, in a short-waisted, white
+satin frock, with large puffed gauze sleeves, through which the perfect
+arm showed dimly. Standing under that picture Lady Lesbia looked as if
+she had stepped out of the canvas. She was to be painted by Millais next
+year. Lady Maulevrier said, when she had been introduced, and society
+was beginning to talk about her: for Lady Maulevrier made up her mind
+five or six years ago that Lesbia should be the reigning beauty of her
+season. To this end she had educated and trained her, furnishing her
+with all those graces best calculated to please and astonish society.
+She was too clever a woman not to discover Lesbia's shallowness and lack
+of all great gifts, save that one peerless dower of perfect beauty. She
+knew exactly what Lesbia could be trained to do; and to this end Lesbia
+had been educated; and to this end Lady Maulevrier brought down to
+Fellside the most accomplished of Hanoverian governesses, who had
+learned French in Paris, and had toiled in the educational mill with
+profit to herself and her pupils for a quarter of a century. To this
+lady the Countess entrusted the education of her granddaughters' minds,
+while for their physical training she provided another teacher in the
+person of a clever little Parisian dancing mistress, who had set up at
+the West-End of London as a teacher of dancing and calisthenics, and had
+utterly failed to find pupils enough to pay her rent and keep her modest
+_pot-au-feu_ going. Mademoiselle Thiebart was very glad to exchange the
+uncertainties of a first floor in North Audley Street for the comfort
+and security of Fellside Manor, with a salary of one hundred and fifty
+pounds a year.
+
+Both Fräulein and Mademoiselle had been quick to discover that Lady
+Lesbia was the apple of her grandmother's eye, while Lady Mary was
+comparatively an outsider.
+
+So it came about that Mary's education was in somewise a mere picking-up
+of the crumbs which fell from Lesbia's table, and that she was allowed
+in a general way to run wild. She was much quicker at any intellectual
+exercise than Lesbia. She learned the lessons that were given her at
+railroad speed, and rattled off her exercises with a slap-dash
+penmanship which horrified the neat and niggling Fräulein, and then
+rushed off to the lake or mountain, and by this means grew browner and
+browner, and more indelibly freckled day by day, thus widening the gulf
+between herself and her beauty sister.
+
+But it is not to be supposed that because Lesbia was beautiful, Mary was
+plain. This is very far from the truth. Mary had splendid hazel eyes,
+with a dancing light in them when she smiled, ruddy auburn hair, white
+teeth, a deeply-dimpled chin, and a vivacity and archness of expression,
+which served only in her present state of tutelage for the subjugation
+of old women and shepherd boys. Mary had been taught to believe that her
+chances of future promotion were of the smallest; that nobody would ever
+talk of her, or think of her by-and-by when she in her turn would make
+her appearance in London society, and that it would be a very happy
+thing for her if she were so fortunate as to attract the attention of a
+fashionable physician, a Canon of Westminster or St. Paul's, or a
+barrister in good practice.
+
+Mary turned up her pert little nose at this humdrum lot.
+
+'I would much rather spend all my life among these dear hills than marry
+a nobody in London,' she said, fearless of that grand old lady at whose
+frown so many people shivered. 'If you don't think people will like me
+and admire me--a little--you had better save yourself the trouble of
+taking me to London. I don't want to play second fiddle to my sister.'
+
+'You are a very impertinent person, and deserve to be taken at your
+word,' replied my lady, scowling at her; 'but I have no doubt before you
+are twenty you will tell another story.'
+
+'Oh!' said Mary, now just turned seventeen, 'then I am not to come out
+till I am twenty.'
+
+'That will be soon enough,' answered the Countess. 'It will take you as
+long to get rid of those odious freckles. And no doubt by that time
+Lesbia will have made a brilliant marriage.'
+
+And now on this rainy July morning these two girls, neither of whom had
+any serious employment for her life, or any serious purpose in living,
+wasted the hours, each in her own fashion.
+
+Lesbia reclined upon a cushioned seat in the deep embrasure of a Tudor
+window, her _pose_ perfection--it was one of many such attitudes which
+Mademoiselle had taught her, and which by assiduous training had become
+a second nature. Poor Mademoiselle, having finished her mission and
+taught Lesbia all she could teach, had now departed to a new and far
+less luxurious situation in a finishing school at Passy; but Fräulein
+Müller was still retained, as watch-dog and duenna.
+
+Lesbia's pale blue morning gown harmonised exquisitely with a complexion
+of lilies and roses, violet eyes, and golden-brown hair. Her features
+were distinguished by that perfect chiselling which gave such a haughty
+grace to her grandmother's countenance, even at sixty-seven years of
+age--a loveliness which, like the sculptured marble it resembles, is
+unalterable by time. Lesbia was reading Keats. It was her habit to read
+the poets, carefully and deliberately, taking up one at a time, and duly
+laying a volume aside when she found herself mistress of its contents.
+She had no passion for poetry, but it was an elegant leisurely kind of
+reading which suited her languid temperament. Moreover, her grandmother
+had told her that an easy familiarity with the great poets is of all
+knowledge that which best qualifies a woman to shine in conversation,
+without offending the superior sex by any assumption of scholarship.
+
+Mary was a very different class of reader; capricious, omniverous,
+tearing out the hearts of books, roaming from flower to flower in the
+fields of literature, loving old and new, romance and reality, novels,
+travels, plays, poetry, and never dwelling long on any one theme.
+Perhaps if Mary had lived in the bosom of a particularly sympathetic
+family she might have been reckoned almost a genius, so much of poetry
+and originality was there in her free unconventional character; but
+hitherto it had been Mary's mission in life to be snubbed, whereby she
+had acquired a very poor opinion of her own talents.
+
+'Oh,' she cried with a desperate yawn, while Lesbia smiled her languid
+smile over Endymion, 'how I wished something would happen--anything to
+stir us out of this statuesque, sleeping-beauty state of being. I verily
+believe the spiders are all asleep in the ivy, and the mice behind the
+wainscot, and the horses in the stable.'
+
+'What could happen?' asked Lesbia, with a gentle elevation of pencilled
+brows. 'Are not these lovely lines--
+
+    "And coverlids gold-tinted like the peach,
+    Or ripe October's faded marigolds,
+    Fell sleek about him in a thousand folds."
+
+Faded marigolds! Is not that intensely sweet?'
+
+'Very well for your sleepy Keats, but I don't suppose you would have
+noticed the passage if marigolds were not in fashion,' said Mary, with a
+touch of scorn. 'What could happen? Why a hundred things--an earthquake,
+flood, or fire. What could happen, do you say, Lesbia? Why Maulevrier
+might come home unexpectedly, and charm us out of this death-in-life.'
+
+'He would occasion a good deal of unpleasantness if he did,' answered
+Lesbia, coldly. 'You know how angry he has made grandmother.'
+
+'Because he keeps race-horses which have an unlucky knack of losing,'
+said Mary, dubiously. 'I suppose if his horses won, grandmother would
+rather approve?'
+
+'Not at all. That would make hardly any difference, except that he would
+not ruin himself quite so quickly. Grandmother says that a young man
+who goes on the turf is sure to be ruined sooner or later. And then
+Maulevrier's habits are altogether wild and foolish. It is very hard
+upon grandmother, who has such noble ambition for all of us.'
+
+'Not for me,' answered Mary smiling. 'Her views about me are very
+humble. She considers that I shall be most fortunate if a doctor or a
+lawyer condescend to like me well enough to make me an offer. He might
+make me the offer without liking me, for the sake of hearing himself and
+his wife announced as Mr. and Lady Mary Snooks at dinner parties. That
+would be too horrid! But I daresay such things have happened.'
+
+'Don't talk nonsense, Mary,' said Lesbia, loftily. 'There is no reason
+why you should not make a really good marriage, if you follow
+grandmother's advice and don't affect eccentricity.'
+
+'I don't affect eccentricity, but I'm afraid I really am eccentric,'
+murmured Mary, meekly, 'for I like so many things I ought not to like,
+and detest so many things which I ought to admire.'
+
+'I daresay you will have tamed down a little before you are presented,'
+said Lesbia, carelessly.
+
+She could not even affect a profound interest in anyone but herself. She
+had a narrowness of mental vision which prevented her looking beyond the
+limited circle of her own pleasures, her own desires, her own dreams and
+hopes. She was one of those strictly correct young women who was not
+likely to do much harm in the world but who was just as unlikely to do
+any good. Mary sighed, and went back to her book, a bulky volume of
+travels, and tried to lose herself in the sandy wastes of Africa, and to
+be deeply interested in the sources of the Congo, not, in her heart of
+hearts, caring a straw whether that far-away river comes from the
+mountains of the moon, or from the moon itself. To-day she could not pin
+her mind to pages which might have interested her at another time. Her
+thoughts were with Lord Maulevrier, that fondly-loved only brother, just
+seven years her senior, who had taken to race-horses and bad ways, and
+seemed to be trying his hardest to dissipate the splendid fortune which
+his grandmother, the dowager Countess, had nursed so judiciously during
+his long minority. Maulevrier and Mary had always been what the young
+man called 'no end of chums.'
+
+He called her his own brown-eyed Molly, much to the annoyance of Lady
+Maulevrier and Lesbia; and Mary's life was all gladness when Maulevrier
+was at Fellside. She devoted herself wholly to his amusements, rode and
+drove with him, followed on her pony when he went otter hunting, and
+very often abandoned the pony to the care of some stray mountain youth
+in order to join the hunters, and go leaping from stone to stone on the
+margin of the stream, and occasionally, in moments of wild excitement,
+when the hounds were in full cry, splashing in and out of the water,
+like a naiad in a neat little hunting-habit.
+
+Mary looked after Maulevrier's stable when he was away, and had supreme
+command of a kennel of fox-terriers which cost her brother more money
+than the Countess would have cared to know; for in the wide area of Lady
+Maulevrier's ambition there was no room for two hundred guinea
+fox-terriers, were they never so perfect.
+
+Altogether Mary's life was a different life when her brother was at
+home; and in his absence the best part of her days were spent in
+thinking about him and fulfilling the duties of her position as his
+representative in stable and kennel, and among certain rustics in the
+district, chiefly of the sporting type, who were Maulevrier's chosen
+allies or _protégés_.
+
+Never, perhaps, had two girls of patrician lineage lived a more secluded
+life than Lady Maulevrier's granddaughters. They had known no pleasures
+beyond the narrow sphere of home and home friends. They had never
+travelled--they had seen hardly anything of the outside world. They had
+never been to London or Paris, or to any city larger than York; and
+their visits to that centre of dissipation had been of the briefest, a
+mere flash of mild gaiety, a horticultural show or an oratorio, and back
+by express train, closely guarded by governess and footmen, to Fellside.
+In the autumn, when the leaves were falling in the wooded grounds of
+Fellside, the young ladies were sent, still under guardianship of
+governesses and footmen, to some quiet seaside resort between Alnwick
+and Edinburgh, where Mary lived the wild free life she loved, roaming
+about the beach, boating, shrimping, seaweed-gathering, making hard work
+for the governesses and footmen who had been sent in charge of her.
+
+Lady Maulevrier never accompanied her granddaughters on these occasions.
+She was a vigorous old woman, straight as a dart, slim as a girl, active
+in her degree as any young athlete among those hills, and she declared
+that she never felt the need of change of air. The sodden shrubberies,
+the falling leaves, did her no harm. Never within the memory of this
+generation had she left Fellside. Her love of this mountain retreat was
+a kind of _culte_. She had come here broken spirited, perhaps broken
+hearted, bringing her dead husband from the little inn at Great Langdale
+forty years ago, and she had hardly left the spot since that day.
+
+In those days Fellside House was a very different kind of dwelling from
+the gracious modern Tudor mansion which now crowned and beautified the
+hill-side above Grasmere Lake. It was then an old rambling stone house,
+with queer little rooms and inconvenient passages, low ceilings,
+thatched gables, and all manner of strange nooks and corners. Lady
+Maulevrier was of too strictly conservative a temper to think of
+pulling down an old house which had been in her husband's family for
+generations. She left the original cottage undisturbed, and built her
+new house at right angles with it, connecting the two with a wide
+passage below and a handsome corridor above, so that access should be
+perfect in the event of her requiring the accommodation of the old
+quaint, low ceiled rooms for her family or her guests. During forty
+years no such necessity had ever arisen; but the old house, known as the
+south wing, was still left intact, the original furniture undisturbed,
+although the only occupants of the building were her ladyship's faithful
+old house-steward, James Steadman, and his elderly wife.
+
+The house which Lady Maulevrier had built for herself and her
+grandchildren had not been created all at once, though the nucleus
+dating forty years back was a handsome building. She had added more
+rooms as necessity or fancy dictated, now a library with bedrooms over
+it, now a music room for Lady Lesbia and her grand piano--anon a
+billiard-room, as an agreeable surprise for Maulevrier when he came home
+after a tour in America. Thus the house had grown into a long low pile
+of Tudor masonry--steep gables, heavily mullioned casements, grey stone
+walls, curtained with the rich growth of passion-flower, magnolia,
+clematis, myrtle and roses--and all those flowers which thrive and
+flourish in that mild and sheltered spot.
+
+The views from those mullioned casements were perfect. Switzerland could
+give hardly any more exquisite picture than that lake shut in by hills,
+grand and bold in their varied outlines, so rich in their colouring that
+the eye, dazzled with beauty, forgot to calculate the actual height of
+those craggy peaks and headlands, the mind forgot to despise them
+because they were not so lofty as Mont Blanc or the Matterhorn. The
+velvet sward of the hill sloped steeply downward from Lady Maulevrier's
+drawing-room windows to the road beside the lake, and this road was so
+hidden by the wooded screen which bounded her ladyship's grounds that
+the lake seemed to lie in the green heart of her gardens, a lovely,
+placid lake on summer days, reflecting the emerald hue of the
+surrounding hills, and looking like a smooth green meadow, which invited
+the foot passenger to cross it.
+
+The house was approached by a winding carriage drive that led up and up
+and up from the road beside the lake, so screened and sheltered by
+shrubberies and pine woods, that the stranger knew not whither he was
+going, till he came upon an opening in the wood, and the stately Italian
+garden in front of a massive stone porch, through which he entered a
+spacious oak-panelled hall, and anon, descending a step or two, he found
+himself in Lady Maulevrier's drawing-room, and face to face with that
+divine view of the everlasting hills, the lake shining below him,
+bathed in sunlight.
+
+Or if it were the stranger's evil fate to come in wet weather, he saw
+only a rain-blotted landscape--the blurred outlines of grey mountain
+peaks, scowling at him from the other side of a grey pool. But if the
+picture without were depressing, the picture within was always good to
+look upon, for those oak-panelled or tapestried rooms, communicating by
+richly-curtained doorways from drawing room to library, from library to
+billiard room, were as perfect as wealth and taste could make them. Lady
+Maulevrier argued that as there was but one house among all the
+possessions of her race which she cared to inhabit, she had a right to
+make that house beautiful, and she had spared nothing upon the
+beautification of Fellside; and yet she had spent much less than would
+have been squandered by any pleasure-loving dowager, restlessly roving
+from Piccadilly to the Engadine, from Pontresina to Nice or Monaco,
+winding up with Easter in Paris, and then back to Piccadilly. Her
+ladyship's friends wondered that she could care to bury herself alive in
+Westmoreland, and expatiated on the eccentricity of such a life; nay,
+those who had never seen Fellside argued that Lady Maulevrier had taken
+in her old age to hoarding, and that she pigged at a cottage in the Lake
+district, in order to swell a fortune which young Maulevrier would set
+about squandering as soon as she was in her coffin. But here they were
+wrong. It was not in Lady Maulevrier's nature to lead a sordid life in
+order to save money. Yet in these quiet years that were gone--starting
+with that golden nucleus which her husband was supposed to have brought
+home from India, obtained no one knows how, the Countess had amassed one
+of the largest fortunes possessed by any dowager in the peerage. She had
+it, and she held it, with a grasp that nothing but death could loosen;
+nay, that all-foreseeing mind of hers might contrive to cheat grim death
+itself, and to scheme a way for protecting this wealth, even when she
+who had gathered and garnered it should be mouldering in her grave. The
+entailed estates belonged to Maulevrier, were he never such a fool or
+spendthrift; but this fortune of the dowager's was her own, to dispose
+of as she pleased, and not a penny of it was likely to go to the young
+Earl.
+
+Lady Maulevrier's pride and hopes were concentrated upon her
+granddaughter Lesbia. She should be the inheritress of this noble
+fortune--she should spread and widen the power of the Maulevrier race.
+Lesbia's son should link the family name with the name of his father;
+and if by any hazard of fate the present Earl should die young and
+childless, the old Countess's interest should be strained to the
+uttermost to obtain the title for Lesbia's offspring. Why should she not
+be Countess of Maulevrier in her own right? But in order to make this
+future possible the most important factor in the sum was yet to be
+found in the person of a husband for Lady Lesbia--a husband worthy of
+peerless beauty and exceptional wealth, a husband whose own fortune
+should be so important as to make him above suspicion. That was Lady
+Maulevrier's scheme--to wed wealth to wealth--to double or quadruple the
+fortune she had built up in the long slow years of her widowhood, and
+thus to make her granddaughter one of the greatest ladies in the land;
+for it need hardly be said that the man who was to wed Lady Lesbia must
+be her equal in wealth and lineage, if not her superior.
+
+Lady Maulevrier was not a miser. She was liberal and benevolent to all
+who came within the circle of her life. Wealth for its own sake she
+valued not a jot. But she lived in an age in which wealth is power, and
+ambition was her ruling passion. As she had been ambitious for her
+husband in the days that were gone, she was now ambitious for her
+granddaughter. Time had intensified the keen eagerness of her mind. She
+had been disappointed, cruelly, bitterly, in the ambition of her youth.
+She had been made to drink the cup of shame and humiliation. But to this
+ambition of her old age she held with even greater tenacity. God help
+her if she should be disappointed here!
+
+It is not to be supposed that so astute a schemer as Lady Maulevrier had
+not surveyed the marriage market in order to discover that fortunate
+youth who should be deemed worthy to become the winner of Lesbia's hand.
+Years ago, when Lesbia was still in the nursery, the dowager had made
+herself informed of the age, weight, and colours of every likely runner
+in the matrimonial stakes; or, in plainer words, had kept herself, by
+her correspondence with a few intimate friends, and her close study of
+the fashionable newspapers, thoroughly acquainted with the characters
+and exploits, the dispositions and antecedents, of those half-dozen
+elder sons, among whom she hoped to find Lesbia's lord and master. She
+knew her peerage by heart, and she knew the family history of every
+house recorded therein; the sins and weaknesses, the follies and losses
+of bygone years; the taints, mental and physical; the lateral branches
+and intermarriages; the runaway wives and unfaithful husbands; idiot
+sons or scrofulous daughters. She knew everything that was to be known
+about that aristocratic world into which she had been born sixty-seven
+years ago; and the sum-total of her knowledge was that there was one man
+whom she desired for her granddaughter's husband--one man, and one only,
+and into whose hands, when earth and sky should fade from her glazing
+eyes, she could be content to resign the sceptre of power.
+
+There were no doubt half-a-dozen, or more, in the list of elder sons,
+who were fairly eligible. But this young man was the Achilles in the
+rank and file of chivalry, and her soul yearned to have him and no other
+for her darling.
+
+Her soul yearned to him with a tenderness which was not all on Lesbia's
+account. Forty-nine years ago she had fondly loved his father--loved him
+and had been fain to renounce him; for Ronald Hollister, afterwards Earl
+of Hartfield, was then a younger son, and the two families had agreed
+that marriage between paupers was an impudent flying in the face of
+Providence, which must be put down with an iron hand. Lord Hartfield
+sent his son to Turkey in the diplomatic service; and the old dowager
+Lady Carrisbrook whisked her niece off to London, and kept her there,
+under watch and ward, till Lord Maulevrier proposed and was accepted by
+her. There should be no foolishness, no clandestine correspondence. The
+iron hand crushed two young hearts, and secured a brilliant future for
+the bodies which survived.
+
+Fifteen years later Ronald's elder brother died unmarried. He abandoned
+that career of vagrant diplomacy which had taken him all over Europe,
+and as far as Washington, and re-appeared in London, the most elegant
+man of his era, but thoroughly _blasé_. There were rumours of an unhappy
+attachment in the Faubourg Saint Germain; of a tragedy at Petersburg.
+Society protested that Lord Hartfield would die a bachelor, as his
+brother died before him. The Hollisters are not a marrying family, said
+society. But six or seven years after his return to England Lord
+Hartfield married Lady Florence Ilmington, a beauty in her first season,
+and a very sweet but somewhat prudish young person. The marriage
+resulted in the birth of an heir, whose appearance upon this mortal
+stage was followed within a year by his father's exit. Hence the
+Hartfield property, always a fine estate, had been nursed and fattened
+during a long minority, and the present Lord Hartfield was reputed one
+of the richest young men of his time. He was also spoken of as a
+superior person, inheriting all his father's intellectual gifts, and
+having the reputation of being singularly free from the vices of
+profligate youth. He was neither prig nor pedant, and he was very
+popular in the best society; but he was not ashamed to let it be seen
+that his ambition soared higher than the fashionable world of turf and
+stable, cards and pigeon matches.
+
+Though not of the gay world, nor in it, Lady Maulevrier had contrived to
+keep herself thoroughly _en rapport_ with society. Her few chosen
+friends, with whom she corresponded on terms of perfect confidence, were
+among the best people in London--not the circulators of club-house
+canards, the pickers-up of second-hand gossip from the society papers,
+but actors in the comedy of high life, arbiters of fashion and taste,
+born and bred in the purple.
+
+Last season Lord Hartfield's absence had cast a cloud over the
+matrimonial horizon. He had been a traveller for more than a
+year--Patagonia, Peru, the Pyramids, Japan, the North Pole--society
+cared not where--the fact that he was gone was all-sufficient. Bachelors
+a shade less eligible came to the front in his absence and became first
+favourites. Lady Maulevrier, well informed in advance, had deferred
+Lesbia's presentation till next season, when she was told Lord Hartfield
+would certainly re-appear. His plans had been made for return before
+Christmas; and it would seem that his scheme of life was laid down with
+as much precision as if he had been a prince of the blood royal. Thus it
+happened, to Lesbia's intense disgust, that her _début_ was deferred
+till the verge of her twentieth birthday. It would never do, Lady
+Maulevrier told herself, for the edge to be taken off the effect which
+Lesbia's beauty was to make on society during Lord Hartfield's absence.
+He must be there, on the spot, to see this star rise gently and slowly
+above society's horizon, and to mark how everybody bowed down and
+worshipped the new light.
+
+'I shall be an old woman before I appear in society,' said Lesbia,
+petulantly; 'and I shall be like a wild woman of the woods; for I have
+seen nothing, and know nothing of the civilised world.'
+
+'You will be ever so much more attractive than the young women I hear
+of, who have seen and known a great deal too much,' answered the
+dowager; and as her granddaughter knew that Lady Maulevrier's word was a
+law that altered not, there were no more idle repinings.
+
+Her ladyship gave no reason for the postponement of Lesbia's
+presentation. She was far too diplomatic to breathe a word of her ideas
+with regard to Lord Hartfield. Anything like a matrimonial scheme would
+have been revolting to Lesbia, who had grand, but not sordid views about
+matrimony. She thought it her mission to appear and to conquer. A crowd
+of suitors would sigh around her, like the loves and graces round that
+fair Belinda whose story she had read so often; and it would be her part
+to choose the most worthy. The days are gone when a girl would so much
+as look at such a fribble as Sir Plume. Her virgin fancy demands the
+Tennysonian ideal, the grave and knightly Arthur.
+
+But when Lesbia thought of the most worthy, it was always of the
+worthiest in her own particular sphere; and he of course would be titled
+and wealthy, and altogether fitted to be her husband. He would take her
+by the hand and lead her to a higher seat on the dais, and place upon
+her head, or at least upon her letter-paper and the panels of her
+carriage, a coronet in which the strawberry leaves should stand out more
+prominently than in her brother's emblazonment. Lesbia's mind could not
+conceive an ignoble marriage, or the possibility of the most worthy
+happening to be found in a lower circle than her own.
+
+And now it was the end of July, and the season which should have been
+glorified by Lady Lesbia's _début_ was over and done with. She had read
+in the society papers of all the balls, and birthdays, and race
+meetings, and regattas, and cricket matches, and gowns, and parasols,
+and bonnets--what this beauty wore on such an occasion, and how that
+other beauty looked on another occasion--and she felt as she read like a
+spell-bound princess in a fairy tale, mewed up in a battlemented tower,
+and deprived of her legitimate share in all the pleasures of earth. She
+had no patience with Mary--that wild, unkempt, ungraceful creature, who
+could be as happy as summer days are long, racing about the hills with
+her bamboo alpenstock, rioting with a pack of fox-terriers, practising
+long losers, rowing on the lake, doing all things unbecoming Lady
+Maulevrier's granddaughter.
+
+That long rainy day dragged its slow length to a close; and then came fine
+days, in which Molly and her fox-terriers went wandering over the sunlit
+hills, skipping and dancing across the mountain streamlets--gills, as they
+were called in this particular world--almost as gaily as the shadows of
+fleecy cloudlets dancing up yonder in the windy sky. Molly spent half her
+days among the hills, stealing off from governess and grandmother and the
+stately beauty sister, and sometimes hardly being missed by them, so ill
+did her young exuberance harmonise with their calmer life.
+
+'One can tell when Mary is at home by a perpetual banging of doors,'
+said Lesbia, which was a sisterly exaggeration founded upon fact, for
+Molly was given to impetuous rushing in and out of rooms when that eager
+spirit of hers impelled the light lithe body upon some new expedition.
+Nor is the society of fox-terriers conducive to repose or stateliness of
+movement; and Maulevrier's terriers, although strictly forbidden the
+house, were for ever breaking bonds and leaping in upon Molly's
+retirement at all unreasonable hours. She and they were enchanted to get
+away from the beautiful luxurious rooms, and to go roving by hill-side
+and force, away to Easedale Tarn, to bask for hours on the grassy margin
+of the deep still water, or to row round and round the mountain lake in
+a rotten boat. It was here, or in some kindred spot, that Molly got
+through most of her reading--here that she read Shakespeare, Byron, and
+Shelley, and Wordsworth--dwelling lingeringly and lovingly upon every
+line in which that good old man spoke of her native land. Sometimes she
+climbed to higher ground, and felt herself ever so much nearer heaven
+upon the crest of Silver Howe, or upon the rugged stony steep of Dolly
+Waggon pike, half way up the dark brow of Helvellyn; sometimes she
+disappeared for hours, and climbed to the summit of the hill, and
+wandered in perilous pathways on Striding Edge, or by the dark still
+water of the Red Tarn. This had been her life ever since she had been
+old enough to have an independent existence; and the hills and the
+lakes, and the books of her own choosing, had done a great deal more in
+ripening her mind than Fräulein Müller and that admirable series of
+educational works which has been provided for the tuition of modern
+youth. Grammars and geographies, primers and elementary works of all
+kinds, were Mary's detestation; but she loved books that touched her
+heart and filled her mind with thoughts wide and deep enough to reach
+into the infinite of time and space, the mystery of mind and matter,
+life and death.
+
+Nothing occurred to break the placid monotony of life at Fellside for
+three long days after that rainy morning; and then came an event which,
+although commonplace enough in itself, marked the beginning of a new era
+in the existence of Lady Maulevrier's granddaughters.
+
+It was evening, and the two girls were dawdling about on the sloping
+lawn before the drawing-room windows, where Lady Maulevrier read the
+newspapers in her own particular chair by one of those broad Tudor
+windows, according to her infallible custom. Remote as her life had been
+from the busy world, her ladyship had never allowed her knowledge of
+public life and the bent of modern thought to fall into arrear. She took
+a keen interest in politics, in progress of all kinds. She was a staunch
+Conservative, and looked upon every Liberal politician as her personal
+enemy; but she took care to keep herself informed of everything that was
+being said or done in the enemy's camp. She had an intense respect for
+Lord Bacon's maxim: Knowledge is power. It was a kind of power secondary
+to the power of wealth, perhaps; but wealth unprotected by wisdom would
+soon dwindle into poverty.
+
+Lady Lesbia sauntered about the lawn, looking very elegant in her
+cream-coloured Indian silk gown, very listless, very tired of her lovely
+surroundings. Neither lake nor mountain possessed any charm for her. She
+had had too much of them. Mary roamed about with a swifter footstep,
+looking at the roses, plucking off a dead leaf, or a cankered bud here
+and there. Presently she tore across the lawn to the shrubbery which
+screened the lawn and flower gardens from the winding carriage drive
+sunk many feet below, and disappeared in a thicket of arbutus and Irish
+yew.
+
+'What terribly hoydenish manners!' murmured Lesbia, with a languid shrug
+of her shoulders, as she strolled back to the drawing-room.
+
+She cared very little for the newspapers, for politics not at all; but
+anything was better than everlasting contemplation of the blue still
+water, and the rugged crest of Helm Crag.
+
+'What was the matter with Mary that she rushed off like a mad woman?'
+inquired Lady Maulevrier, looking up from the _Times_.
+
+'I haven't the least idea. Mary's movements are quite beyond the limits
+of my comprehension. Perhaps she has gone after a bird's-nest.'
+
+Mary was intent upon no bird's-nest. Her quick ear had caught the sound
+of manly voices in the winding drive under the pine wood; and surely,
+yes, surely one was a clear and familiar voice, which heralded the
+coming of happiness. In such a moment she seemed to have wings. She
+became unconscious that she touched the earth; she went skimming
+bird-like over the lawn, and in and out, with fluttering muslin frock,
+among arbutus and bay, yew and laurel, till she stood poised lightly on
+the top of the wooded bank which bordered the steep ascent to Lady
+Maulevrier's gate, looking down at two figures which were sauntering up
+the drive.
+
+They were both young men, both tall, broad-shouldered, manly, walking
+with the easy swinging movement of men accustomed to active exercise.
+One, the handsomer of the two in Mary's eyes, since she thought him
+simply perfection, was fair-haired, blue-eyed, the typical Saxon. This
+was Lord Maulevrier. The other was dark, bronzed by foreign travel,
+perhaps, with black hair, cut very close to an intelligent-looking head,
+bared to the evening breeze.
+
+'Hulloa!' cried Maulevrier. 'There's Molly. How d'ye do, old girl?'
+
+The two men looked up, and Molly looked down. Delight at her brother's
+return so filled her heart and mind that there was no room left for
+embarrassment at the appearance of a stranger.
+
+'O, Maulevrier, I am so glad! I have been pining for you. Why didn't you
+write to say you were coming? It would have been something to look
+forward to.'
+
+'Couldn't. Never knew from day to day what I was going to be up to;
+besides, I knew I should find you at home.'
+
+'Of course. We are always at home,' said Mary; 'go up to the house as
+fast as ever you can. I'll go and tell grandmother.'
+
+'And tell them to get us some dinner,' said Maulevrier.
+
+Mary's fluttering figure dipped and was gone, vanishing in the dark
+labyrinth of shrubs. The two young men sauntered up to the house.
+
+'We needn't hurry,' said Maulevrier to his companion, whom he had not
+taken the trouble to introduce to his sister. 'We shall have to wait for
+our dinner.'
+
+'And we shall have to change our dusty clothes,' added the other; 'I
+hope that man will bring our portmanteaux in time.'
+
+'Oh, we needn't dress. We can spend the evening in my den, if you
+like!'
+
+Mary flew across the lawn again, and bounded up the steps of the
+verandah--a picturesque Swiss verandah which made a covered promenade in
+front of the house.
+
+'Mary, may I ask the meaning of this excitement,' inquired her ladyship,
+as the breathless girl stood before her.
+
+'Maulevrier has come home.'
+
+'At last?'
+
+'And he has brought a friend.'
+
+'Indeed! He might have done me the honour to inquire if his friend's
+visit would be agreeable. What kind of person?'
+
+'I have no idea. I didn't look at him. Maulevrier is looking so well.
+They will be here in a minute. May I order dinner for them?'
+
+'Of course, they must have dinner,' said her ladyship, resignedly, as if
+the whole thing were an infliction; and Mary ran out and interviewed the
+butler, begging that all things might be made particularly comfortable
+for the travellers. It was nine o'clock, and the servants were enjoying
+their eventide repose.
+
+Having given her orders, Mary went back to the drawing-room, impatiently
+expectant of her brother's arrival, for which event Lesbia and her
+grandmother waited with perfect tranquillity, the dowager calmly
+continuing the perusal of her _Times_, while Lesbia sat at her piano in
+a shadowy corner, and played one of Mendelssohn's softest Lieder. To
+these dreamy strains Maulevrier and his friend presently entered.
+
+'How d'ye do, grandmother? how do, Lesbia? This is my very good friend
+and Canadian travelling companion, Jack Hammond--Lady Maulevrier, Lady
+Lesbia.'
+
+'Very glad to see you, Mr. Hammond,' said the dowager, in a tone so
+purely conventional that it might mean anything. 'Hammond? I ought to
+remember your family--the Hammonds of----'
+
+'Of nowhere,' answered the stranger in the easiest tone; 'I spring from
+a race of nobodies, of whose existence your ladyship is not likely to
+have heard.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+MAULEVRIER'S HUMBLE FRIEND.
+
+
+That faint interest which Lady Lesbia had felt in the advent of a
+stranger dwindled to nothing after Mr. Hammond's frank avowal of his
+insignificance. At the very beginning of her career, with the world
+waiting to be conquered by her, a high-born beauty could not be expected
+to feel any interest in nobodies. Lesbia shook hands with her brother,
+honoured the stranger with a stately bend of her beautiful throat, and
+then withdrew herself from their society altogether as it were, and
+began to explore her basket of crewels, at a distant table, by the soft
+light of a shaded lamp, while Maulevrier answered his grandmother's
+questions, and Mary stood watching him, hanging on his words, as if
+unconscious of any other presence.
+
+Mr. Hammond went over to the window and looked out at the view. The moon
+was rising above the amphitheatre of hills, and her rays were silvering
+the placid bosom of the lake. Lights were dotted here and there about
+the valley, telling of village life. The Prince of Wales's hotel yonder
+sparkled with its many lights, like a castle in a fairy tale. The
+stranger had looked upon many a grander scene, but on none more lovely.
+Here were lake and mountain in little, without the snow-peaks and awful
+inaccessible regions of solitude and peril; homely hills that one might
+climb, placid English vales in which English poets have lived and died.
+
+'Hammond and I mean to spend a month or six weeks with you, if you can
+make us comfortable,' said Maulevrier.
+
+'I am delighted to hear that you can contemplate staying a month
+anywhere,' replied her ladyship. 'Your usual habits are as restless as
+if your life were a disease. It shall not be my fault if you and Mr.
+Hammond are uncomfortable at Fellside.'
+
+There was courtesy, but no cordiality in the reply. If Mr. Hammond was a
+sensitive man, touchily conscious of his own obscurity, he must have
+felt that he was not wanted at Fellside--that he was an excrescence,
+matter in the wrong place.
+
+Nobody had presented the stranger to Lady Mary. It never entered into
+Maulevrier's mind to be ceremonious about his sister Molly. She was so
+much a part of himself that it seemed as if anyone who knew him must
+needs know her. Molly sat a little way from the window by which Mr.
+Hammond was standing, and looked at him doubtfully, wonderingly, with
+not altogether a friendly eye, as he stood with his profile turned to
+her, and his eyes upon the landscape. She was inclined to be jealous of
+her brother's friend, who would most likely deprive her of much of that
+beloved society. Hitherto she had been Maulevrier's chosen companion, at
+Fellside--indeed, his sole companion after the dismissal of his tutor.
+Now this brown, bearded stranger would usurp her privileges--those two
+young men would go roaming over the hills, fishing, otter-hunting, going
+to distant wrestling matches and leaving her at home. It was a hard
+thing, and she was prepared to detest the interloper. Even to-night she
+would be a loser by his presence. Under ordinary circumstances she would
+have gone to the dining-room with Maulevrier, and sat by him and waited
+upon him as he ate. But she dared not intrude herself upon a meal that
+was to be shared with a stranger.
+
+She looked at John Hammond critically, eager to find fault with his
+appearence; but unluckily for her present humour there was not much room
+for fault-finding.
+
+He was tall, broad-shouldered, well-built. His enemies would hardly deny
+that he was good-looking--nay, even handsome. The massive regular
+features were irreproachable. He was more sunburnt than a gentleman
+ought to be, Mary thought. She told herself that his good looks were of
+a vulgar quality, like those of Charles Ford, the champion wrestler,
+whom she saw at the sports the other day. Why did Maulevrier pick up a
+companion who was evidently not of his own sphere? Hoydenish,
+plain-spoken, frank and affectionate as Mary Haselden was, she knew that
+she belonged to a race apart, that there were circles beneath circles,
+below her own world, circles which hers could never touch, and she
+supposed Mr. Hammond to be some waif from one of those nethermost
+worlds--a village doctor's son, perhaps, or even a tradesman's--sent to
+the University by some benevolent busybody, and placed at a disadvantage
+ever afterwards, an unfortunate anomaly, suspended between two worlds
+like Mahomet's coffin.
+
+The butler announced that his lordship's dinner was served.
+
+'Come along, Molly,' said Maulevrier; 'come and tell me about the
+terriers, while I eat my dinner.'
+
+Mary hesitated, glanced doubtfully at her grandmother, who made no sign,
+and then slipped out of the room, hanging fondly on her brother's arm,
+and almost forgetting that there was any such person as Mr. Hammond in
+existence.
+
+When these three were gone Lady Lesbia expressed herself strongly upon
+Maulevrier's folly in bringing such a person as Mr. Hammond to Fellside.
+
+'What are we to do with him, grandmother?' she said, pettishly. 'Is he
+to live with us, and be one of us, a person of whose belongings we know
+positively nothing, who owns that his people are common?'
+
+'My dear, he is your brother's friend, and we have the right to suppose
+he is a gentleman.'
+
+'Not on that account,' said Lesbia, more sharply than her wont. 'Didn't
+he make a friend, or almost a friend of Jack Howell, the huntsman, and
+of Ford, the wrestler. I have no confidence in Maulevrier's ideas of
+fitness.'
+
+'We shall find out all about this Mr. Hamleigh--no Hammond--in a day or
+two,' replied her ladyship, placidly; 'and in the meantime we must
+tolerate him, and be grateful to him if he reconcile Maulevrier to
+remaining at Fellside for the next six weeks.'
+
+Lesbia was silent. She did not consider Maulevrier's presence at
+Fellside an unmitigated advantage, or, indeed, his presence anywhere.
+Those two were not sympathetic. Maulevrier made fun of his elder
+sister's perfections, chaffed her intolerably about the great man she
+was going to captivate, in her first season, the great houses in which
+she was going to reign. Lesbia despised him for that neglect of all his
+opportunities of culture which had left him, after the most orthodox and
+costly curriculum, almost as ignorant as a ploughboy. She despised a man
+whose only delight was in horse and hound, gun and fishing-tackle. Molly
+would have cared very little for the guns or the fishing-tackle perhaps
+in the abstract; but she cared for everything that interested
+Maulevrier, even to the bagful of rats which were let loose in the
+stable-yard sometimes, for the education of a particularly game
+fox-terrier.
+
+There was plenty of talk and laughter at the dinner-table, while the
+Countess and Lady Lesbia conversed gravely and languidly in the
+dimly-lighted drawing-room. The dinner was excellent, and both
+travellers were ravenous. They had eaten nothing since breakfast, and
+had driven from Windermere on the top of the coach in the keen evening
+air. When the sharp edge of the appetite was blunted, Maulevrier began
+to talk of his adventures since he and Molly had last met. He had not
+being dissipating in London all the time--or, indeed, any great part of
+the time of his absence from Fellside; but Molly had been left in
+Cimmerian, darkness as to his proceedings. He never wrote a letter if he
+could possibly avoid doing so. If it became a vital necessity to him to
+communicate with anyone he telegraphed, or, in his own language, 'wired'
+to that person; but to sit down at a desk and labour with pen and ink
+was not within his capacities or his views of his mission in life.
+
+'If a fellow is to write letters he might as well be a clerk in an
+office,' he said, 'and sit on a high stool.'
+
+Thus it happened that when Maulevrier was away from Fellside, no fair
+_châtelaine_ of the Middle Ages could be more ignorant of the movements
+or whereabouts of her crusader knight than Mary was of her brother's
+goings on. She could but pray for him with fond and faithful prayer, and
+wait and hope for his return. And now he told her that things had gone
+badly with him at Epsom, and worse at Ascot, that he had been, as he
+expressed it, 'up a tree,' and that he had gone off to the Black Forest
+directly the Ascot week was over, and at Rippoldsau he had met his old
+friend and fellow traveller, Hammond, and they had gone for a walking
+tour together among the homely villages, the watchmakers, the timber
+cutters, the pretty peasant girls. They had danced at fairs--and shot at
+village sports--and had altogether enjoyed the thing. Hammond, who was
+something of an artist, had sketched a good deal. Maulevrier had done
+nothing but smoke his German pipe and enjoy himself.
+
+'I was glad to find myself in a world where a horse was an exception and
+not the rule,' he said.
+
+'Oh, how I should love to see the Black Forest!' cried Mary, who knew
+the first part of Faust by heart, albeit she had never been given
+permission to read it, 'the gnomes and the witches--der Freischütz--all
+that is lovely. Of course, you went up the Brocken?'
+
+'Of course,' answered Mr. Hammond; 'Mephistopheles was our _valet de
+place_, and we went up among a company of witches riding on
+broomsticks.' And then quoted,
+
+    'Seh' die Bäume hinter Bäumen,
+    Wie sie schnell vorüberrücken,
+    Und die Klippen, die sich bücken,
+    Und die langen Felsennasen,
+    Wie sie schnarchen, wie sie blasen!'
+
+This was the first time he had addressed himself directly to Mary, who
+sat close to her brother's side, and never took her eyes from his face,
+ready to pour out his wine or to change his plate, for the serving-men
+had been dismissed at the beginning of this unceremonious meal.
+
+Mary looked at the stranger almost as superciliously as Lesbia might
+have done. She was not inclined to be friendly to her brother's friend.
+
+'Do you read German?' she inquired, with a touch of surprise.
+
+'You had better ask him what language he does not read or speak,' said
+her brother. 'Hammond is an admirable Crichton, my dear--by-the-by, who
+was admirable Crichton?--knows everything, can twist your little head
+the right way upon any subject.'
+
+'Oh,' thought Mary, 'highly cultivated, is he? Very proper in a man who
+was educated on charity to have worked his hardest at the University.'
+
+She was not prepared to think very kindly of young men who had been
+successful in their college career, since poor Maulevrier had made such
+a dismal failure of his, had been gated and sent down, and ploughed, and
+had everything ignominious done to him that could be done, which
+ignominy had involved an expenditure of money that Lady Maulevrier
+bemoaned and lamented until this day. Because her brother had not been
+virtuous, Mary grudged virtuous young men their triumphs and their
+honours. Great, raw-boned fellows, who have taken their degrees at
+Scotch Universities, come to Oxford and Cambridge and sweep the board,
+Maulevrier had told her, when his own failures demanded explanation.
+Perhaps this Mr. Hammond had graduated north of the Tweed, and had come
+southward to rob the native. Mary was not any more inclined to be civil
+to him because he was a linguist. He had a pleasant manner, frank and
+easy, a good voice, a cheery laugh. But she had not yet made up her mind
+that he was a gentleman.
+
+'If some benevolent old person were to take a fancy to Charles Ford, the
+wrestler, and send him to a Scotch University, I daresay he would turn
+out just as fine a fellow,' she thought, Ford being somewhat of a
+favourite as a local hero.
+
+The two young men went off to the billiard-room after they had dined. It
+was half-past ten by this time, and, of course, Mary did not go with
+them. She bade her brother good-night at the dining-room door.
+
+'Good-night, Molly; be sure you are up early to show me the dogs,' said
+Maulevrier, after an affectionate kiss.
+
+'Good-night, Lady Mary,' said Mr. Hammond, holding out his hand, albeit
+she had no idea of shaking hands with him.
+
+She allowed her hand to rest for an instant in that strong, friendly
+grasp. She had not risen to giving a couple of fingers to a person whom
+she considered her inferior; but she was inclined to snub Mr. Hammond as
+rather a presuming young man.
+
+'Well, Jack, what do you think of my beauty sister?' asked his lordship,
+as he chose his cue from the well-filled rack.
+
+The lamps were lighted, the table uncovered and ready, Carambole in his
+place, albeit it was months since any player had entered the room.
+Everything which concerned Maulevrier's comfort or pleasure was done as
+if by magic at Fellside; and Mary was the household fairy whose
+influence secured this happy state of things.
+
+'What can any man think except that she is as lovely as the finest of
+Reynold's portraits, as that Lady Diana Beauclerk of Colonel Aldridge's,
+or the Kitty Fisher, or any example you please to name of womanly
+loveliness?'
+
+'Glad to hear it,' answered Maulevrier, chalking his cue; 'can't say I
+admire her myself--not my style, don't you know. Too much of my lady
+Di--too little of poor Kitty. But still, of course, it always pleases a
+fellow to know that his people are admired; and I know that my
+grandmother has views, grand views,' smiling down at his cue. 'Shall I
+break?' and he began with the usual miss in baulk.
+
+'Thank you,' said Mr. Hammond, beginning to play. 'Matrimonial views, of
+course. Very natural that her ladyship should expect such a lovely
+creature to make a great match. Is there no one in view? Has there been
+no family conclave--no secret treaty? Is the young lady fancy free?'
+
+'Perfectly. She has been buried alive here; except parsons and a few
+decent people whom she is allowed to meet now and then at the houses
+about here, she has seen nothing of the world. My grandmother has kept
+Lesbia as close as a nun. She is not so fond of Molly, and that young
+person has wild ways of her own, and gives everybody the slip.
+By-the-by, how do you like my little Moll?'
+
+The adjective was hardly accurate about a young lady who measured five
+feet six, but Maulevrier had not yet grown out of the ideas belonging to
+that period when Mary was really his little sister, a girl of twelve,
+with long hair and short petticoats.
+
+Mr. Hammond was slow to reply. Mary had not made a very strong
+impression upon him. Dazzled by her sister's pure and classical beauty,
+he had no eyes for Mary's homelier charms. She seemed to him a frank,
+affectionate girl, not too well-mannered; and that was all he thought of
+her.
+
+'I'm afraid Lady Mary does not like me,' he said, after his shot, which
+gave him time for reflection.
+
+'Oh, Molly is rather _farouche_ in her manners; never would train fine,
+don't you know. Her ladyship lectured till she was tired, and now Mary
+runs wild, and I suppose will be left at grass till six months before
+her presentation, and then they'll put her on the pillar-reins a bit to
+give her a better mouth. Good shot, by Jove!'
+
+John Hammond was used to his lordship's style of conversation, and
+understood his friend at all times. Maulevrier was not an intellectual
+companion, and the distance was wide between the two men; but his
+lordship's gaiety, good-nature, and acuteness made amends for all
+shortcomings in culture. And then Mr. Hammond may have been one of those
+good Conservatives who do not expect very much intellectual power in an
+hereditary legislator.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+IN THE SUMMER MORNING.
+
+
+John Hammond loved the wild freshness of morning, and was always eager
+to explore a new locality; so he was up at five o'clock next morning,
+and out of doors before six. He left the sophisticated beauty of the
+Fellside gardens below him, and climbed higher and higher up the Fell,
+till he was able to command a bird's-eye view of the lake and village,
+and just under his feet, as it were, Lady Maulevrier's favourite abode.
+He was provided with a landscape glass which he always carried in his
+rambles, and with the aid of this he could see every stone of the
+building.
+
+The house, added to at her ladyship's pleasure, and without regard to
+cost, covered a considerable extent of ground. The new part consisted of
+a straight range of about a hundred and twenty feet, facing the lake,
+and commandingly placed on the crest of a steepish slope; the old
+buildings, at right angles with the new, made a quadrangle, the third
+and fourth sides of which were formed by the dead walls of servants'
+rooms and coach-houses, which had no windows upon this inner enclosed
+side. The old buildings were low and irregular, one portion of the roof
+thatched, another tiled. In the quadrangle there was an old-fashioned
+garden, with geometrical flower-beds, a yew tree hedge, and a stone
+sun-dial in the centre. A peacock stalked about in the morning light,
+and greeted the newly risen sun with a discordant scream. Presently a
+man came out of a half glass door under a verandah which shaded one side
+of the quadrangle, and strolled about the garden, stopping here and
+there to cut a dead rose, or trim a geranium, a stoutly-built broad
+shouldered man, with gray hair and beard, the image of well-fed
+respectability.
+
+Mr. Hammond wondered a little at the man's leisurely movements as he
+sauntered about, whistling to the peacock. It was not the manner of a
+servant who had duties to perform--rather that of a gentleman living at
+ease, and hardly knowing how to get rid of his time.
+
+"Some superior functionary, I suppose," thought Hammond, "the
+house-steward, perhaps."
+
+He rambled a long way over the hill, and came back to Fellside by a path
+of his own discovering, which brought him to a wooden gate leading into
+the stable-yard, just in time to meet Maulevrier and Lady Mary emerging
+from the kennel, where his lordship had been inspecting the terriers.
+
+'Angelina is bully about the muzzle,' said Maulevrier; 'we shall have to
+give her away.'
+
+'Oh, don't,' cried Mary. 'She is a most perfect darling, and laughs so
+deliciously whenever she sees me.'
+
+Angelina was in Lady Mary's arms at this moment; a beautifully marked
+little creature, all thew and sinew, palpitating with suppressed
+emotions, and grinning to her heart's content.
+
+Lady Mary looked very fresh and bright in her neat tailor gown, kilted
+kirtle, and tight-fitting bodice, with neat little brass buttons. It was
+a gown of Maulevrier's ordering, made at his own tailor's. Her splendid
+chestnut hair was uncovered, the short crisp curls about her forehead
+dancing in the morning air. Her large, bright, brown eyes were dancing,
+too, with delight at having her brother home again.
+
+She shook hands with Mr. Hammond more graciously than last night; but
+still with a carelessness which was not complimentary, looking at him
+absently, as if she hardly knew that he was there, and hugging Angelina
+all the time.
+
+Hammond told his friend about his ramble over the hills, yonder, up
+above that homely bench called 'Rest, and be Thankful,' on the crest of
+Loughrigg Fell. He was beginning to learn the names of the hills
+already. Yonder darkling brow, rugged, gloomy looking, was Nab Scar;
+yonder green slope of sunny pasture, stretching wide its two arms as if
+to enfold the valley, was Fairfield; and here, close on the left, as he
+faced the lake, were Silver Howe and Helm Crag, with that stony
+excrescence on the summit of the latter known as the 'Lion and the
+Lamb.' Lady Maulevrier's house stood within a circle of mountain peaks
+and long fells, which walled in the deep, placid, fertile valley.
+
+'If you are not too tired to see the gardens, we might show them to you
+before breakfast,' said Maulevrier. 'We have three-quarters of an hour
+to the good.'
+
+'Half an hour for a stroll, and a quarter to make myself presentable
+after my long walk,' said Hammond, who did not wish to face the dowager
+and Lady Lesbia in disordered apparel. Lady Mary was such an obvious
+Tomboy that he might be pardoned for leaving her out of the question.
+
+They set out upon an exploration of the gardens, Mary clinging to her
+brother's arm, as if she wanted to make sure of him, and still carrying
+Angelina.
+
+The gardens were as other gardens, but passing beautiful. The sloping
+lawns and richly-timbered banks, winding shrubberies, broad terraces cut
+on the side of the hill, gave infinite variety. All that wealth and
+taste and labour could do to make those grounds beautiful had been
+done--the rarest conifers, the loveliest flowering shrubs grew and
+flourished there, and the flowers bloomed as they bloom only in
+Lakeland, where every cottage garden can show a wealth of luxurious
+bloom, unknown in more exposed and arid districts. Mary was very proud
+of those gardens. She had loved them and worked in them from her
+babyhood, trotting about on chubby legs after some chosen old gardener,
+carrying a few weeds or withered leaves in her pinafore, and fancying
+herself useful.
+
+'I help 'oo, doesn't I, Teeven?' she used to say to the gray-headed old
+gardener, who first taught her to distinguish flowers from weeds.
+
+'I shall never learn as much out of these horrid books as poor old
+Stevens taught me,' she said afterwards, when the gray head was at rest
+under the sod, and governesses, botany manuals, and hard words from the
+Greek were the order of the day.
+
+Nine o'clock was the breakfast hour at Fellside. There were no family
+prayers. Lady Maulevrier did not pretend to be pious, and she put no
+restraints of piety upon other people. She went to Church on Sunday
+mornings for the sake of example; but she read all the newest scientific
+books, subscribed to the Anthropological Society, and thought as the
+newest scientific people think. She rarely communicated her opinions
+among her own sex; but now and then, in strictly masculine and superior
+society, she had been heard to express herself freely upon the nebular
+hypothesis and the doctrine of evolution.
+
+'After all, what does it matter?' she said, finally, with her grand air;
+'I have only to marry my granddaughters creditably, and prevent my
+grandson going to the dogs, and then my mission on this insignificant
+planet will be accomplished. What new form that particular modification
+of molecules which you call Lady Maulevrier may take afterwards is
+hidden in the great mystery of material life.'
+
+There was no family prayer, therefore, at Fellside. The sisters had been
+properly educated in their religious duties, had been taught the
+Anglican faith carefully and well by their governess, Fräulein Müller,
+who had become a staunch Anglican before entering the families of the
+English nobility, and by the kind Vicar of Grasmere, who took a warm
+interest in the orphan girls. Their grandmother had given them to
+understand that they might be as religious as they liked. She would be
+no let or hindrance to their piety; but they must ask her no awkward
+questions.
+
+'I have read a great deal and thought a great deal, and my ideas are
+still in a state of transition,' she told Lesbia; and Lesbia, who was
+somewhat automatic in her piety, had no desire to know more.
+
+Lady Maulevrier seldom appeared in the forenoon. She was an early riser,
+being too vivid and highly strung a creature, even at sixty-seven years
+of age, to give way to sloth. She rose at seven, summer and winter, but
+she spent the early part of the day in her own rooms, reading, writing,
+giving orders to her housekeeper, and occasionally interviewing
+Steadman, who, without any onerous duties, was certainly the most
+influential person in the house. People in the village talked of him,
+and envied him so good a berth. He had a gentleman's house to live in,
+and to all appearance lived as a gentleman. This tranquil retirement,
+free from care or labour, was a rich reward for the faithful service of
+his youth. And it was known by the better informed among the Grasmere
+people that Mr. Steadman was saving money, and had shares in the
+North-Western Railway. These facts had oozed out, of themselves, as it
+were. He was not a communicative man, and rarely wasted half an hour at
+the snug little inn near St. Oswald's Church, amidst the cluster of
+habitations that was once called Kirktown. He was an unsociable man,
+people said, and thought himself better than Grasmere folk, the
+lodging-house keepers, and guides, and wrestlers, and the honest
+friendly souls who were the outcome of that band of Norwegian exiles
+which found a home in these peaceful vales.
+
+Miss Müller, more commonly known as Fräulein, officiated at breakfast.
+She never appeared at the board when Lady Maulevrier was present, but in
+her ladyship's absence Miss Müller was guardian of the proprieties. She
+was a stout, kindly creature, and by no means a formidable dragon. When
+the gong sounded, John Hammond went into the dining-room, where he found
+Miss Müller seated alone in front of the urn.
+
+He bowed, quick to read 'governess' or 'companion' in the lady's
+appearance; and she bowed.
+
+'I hope you have had a nice walk,' she said. 'I saw you from my bedroom
+window.'
+
+'Did you? Then I suppose yours is one of the few windows which look into
+that curious old quadrangle?'
+
+'No, there are no windows looking into the quadrangle. Those that were
+in the original plan of the house were walled up at her ladyship's
+orders, to keep out the cold winds which sweep down from the hills in
+winter and early spring, when the edge of Loughrigg Fell is white with
+snow. My window looks into the gardens, and I saw you there with his
+lordship and Lady Mary.'
+
+Lady Lesbia came in at this moment, and saluted Mr. Hammond with a
+haughty inclination of her beautiful head. She looked lovelier in her
+simple morning gown of pale blue cambric than in her more elaborate
+toilette of last evening; such purity of complexion, such lustrous eyes;
+the untarnished beauty of youth, breathing the delicate freshness of a
+newly-opened flower. She might be as scornful as she pleased, yet John
+Hammond could not withhold his admiration. He was inclined to admire a
+woman who kept him at a distance; for the general bent of young women
+now-a-days is otherwise.
+
+Maulevrier and Mary came in, and everyone sat down to breakfast. Lady
+Lesbia unbent a little presently, and smiled upon the stranger. There
+was a relief in a stranger's presence. He talked of new things, places
+and people she had never seen. She brightened and became quite friendly,
+deigned to invite the expression of Mr. Hammond's opinions upon music
+and art, and after breakfast allowed him to follow her into the
+drawing-room, and to linger there fascinated for half an hour, looking
+over her newest books, and her last batch of music, but looking most of
+all at her, while Maulevrier and Mary were loafing on the lawn outside.
+
+'What are you going to do with yourself this morning?' asked Maulevrier,
+appearing suddenly at the window.
+
+'Anything you like,' answered Hammond. 'Stay, there is one pilgrimage I
+am eager to make. I must see Wordsworth's grave, and Wordsworth's
+house.'
+
+'You shall see them both, but they are in opposite directions--one at
+your elbow, the other a four mile walk. Which will you see first? We'll
+toss for it,' taking a shilling from a pocketful of loose cash, always
+ready for moments of hesitation. 'Heads, house; tails, grave. Tails it
+is. Come and have a smoke, and see the poet's grave. The splendour of
+the monument, the exquisite neatness with which it is kept, will astound
+you, considering that we live in a period of Wordsworth worship.'
+
+Hammond hesitated, and looked at Lady Lesbia.
+
+'Aren't you coming?' called Maulevrier from the lawn. 'It was a fair
+offer. I've got my cigarette case.'
+
+'Yes, I'm coming,' answered the other, with a disappointed air.
+
+He had hoped that Lesbia would offer to show him the poet's grave. He
+could not abandon that hope without a struggle.
+
+'Will you come with us, Lady Lesbia? We'll suppress the cigarettes!'
+
+'Thanks, no,' she said, becoming suddenly frigid. 'I am going to
+practice.'
+
+'Do you never walk in the morning--on such a lovely morning as this?'
+
+'Not very often.'
+
+She had re-entered those frozen regions from which his attentions had
+lured him for a little while. She had reminded herself of the inferior
+social position of this person, in whose conversation she had allowed
+herself to be interested.
+
+'_Filons_!' cried Maulevrier from below, and they went.
+
+Mary would have very much liked to go with them, but she did not want to
+be intrusive; so she went off to the kennels to see the terriers eat
+their morning and only meal of dog biscuit.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+THERE IS ALWAYS A SKELETON.
+
+
+The two young men strolled through the village, Maulevrier pausing to
+exchange greetings with almost everyone he met, and so to the rustic
+churchyard, above the beck.
+
+The beck was swollen with late rains, and was brawling merrily over its
+stony bed; the churchyard grass was deep and cool and shadowy under the
+clustering branches. The poet's tomb was disappointing in its unlovely
+simplicity, its stern, slatey hue. The plainest granite cross would have
+satisfied Mr. Hammond, or a cross in pure white marble, with a
+sculptured lamb at the base. Surely the lamb, emblem at once pastoral
+and sacred, ought to enter into any monument to Wordsworth; but that
+gray headstone, with its catalogue of dates, those stern iron
+railings--were these fit memorials of one whose soul so loved nature's
+loveliness?
+
+After Mr. Hammond had seen the little old, old church, and the medallion
+portrait inside, had seen all that Maulevrier could show him, in fact,
+the two young men went back to the place of graves, and sat on the low
+parapet above the beck, smoking their cigarettes, and talking with that
+perfect unreserve which can only obtain between men who are old and
+tried friends. They talked, as it was only natural they should talk, of
+that household at Fellside, where all things were new to John Hammond.
+
+'You like my sister Lesbia?' said Maulevrier.
+
+'Like her! well, yes. The difficulty with most men must be not to
+worship her.'
+
+'Ah, she's not my style. And she's beastly proud.'
+
+'A little _hauteur_ gives piquancy to her beauty; I admire a grand
+woman.'
+
+'So do I in a picture. Titian's Queen of Cyprus, or any party of that
+kind; but for flesh and blood I like humility--a woman who knows she is
+human, and not infallible, and only just a little better than you or me.
+When I choose a wife, she will be no such example of cultivated
+perfection as my sister Lesbia. I want no goddess, but a nice little
+womanly woman, to jog along the rough and tumble road of life with me.'
+
+'Lady Maulevrier's influence, no doubt, has in a great measure
+determined the bent of your sister's character: and from what you have
+told me about her ladyship, I should think a fixed idea of her own
+superiority would be inevitable in any girl trained by her.'
+
+'Yes, she is a proud woman--a proud, hard woman--and she has steeped
+Lesbia's mind in all her own pet ideas and prejudices. Yet, God knows,
+we have little reason to hold our heads high,' said Maulevrier, with a
+gloomy look.
+
+John Hammond did not reply to this remark: perhaps there was some
+difficulty for a man situated as he was in finding a fit reply. He
+smoked in silence, looking down at the pure swift waters of the Rotha
+tumbling over the crags and boulders below.
+
+'Doesn't somebody say there is always a skeleton in the cupboard, and
+the nobler and more ancient the race the bigger the skeleton?' said
+Maulevrier, with a philosophical air.
+
+'Yes, your family secret is an attribute of a fine old race. The
+Pelopidæ, for instance--in their case it was not a single skeleton, but
+a whole charnel house. I don't think your skeleton need trouble you,
+Maulevrier. It belongs to the remote past.'
+
+'Those things never belong to the past,' said the young man. 'If it were
+any other kind of taint--profligacy--madness, even--the story of a duel
+that went very near murder--a runaway wife--a rebellious son--a cruel
+husband. I have heard such stories hinted at in the records of families.
+But our story means disgrace. I seldom see strangers putting their heads
+together at the club without fancying they are telling each other about
+my grandfather, and pointing me out as the grandson and heir of a
+thief.'
+
+'Why use unduly hard words?'
+
+'Why should I stoop to sophistication with you, my friend. Dishonesty
+is dishonesty all the world over; and to plunder Rajahs on a large scale
+is no less vile than to pick a pocket on Ludgate Hill.'
+
+'Nothing was ever proved against your grandfather.'
+
+'No, he died in the nick of time, and the inquiry was squashed, thanks
+to the Angersthorpe interest, and my grandmother's cleverness. But if he
+had lived a few weeks longer England would have rung with the story of
+his profligacy and dishonour. Some people say he committed suicide in
+order to escape the inquiry; but I have heard my mother emphatically
+deny this. My father told her that he had often talked with the people
+who kept the little inn where his father died, and they were clear
+enough in their assertion that the death was a natural death--the sudden
+collapse of an exhausted constitution.'
+
+'Was it on account of this scandal that your father spent the best part
+of his life away from England?' Hammond asked, feeling that it was a
+relief to Maulevrier to talk about this secret burden of his.
+
+The young Earl was light-hearted and frivolous by nature, yet even he
+had his graver moments; and upon this subject of the old Maulevrier
+scandal he was peculiarly sensitive, perhaps all the more so because his
+grandmother had never allowed him to speak to her about it, had never
+satisfied his curiosity upon any details of that painful story.
+
+'I have very little doubt it was so--though I wasn't old enough when he
+died to hear as much from his own lips. My father went straight from the
+University to Vienna, where he began his career in the diplomatic
+service, and where he soon afterwards married a dowerless English girl
+of good family. He went to Rio as first secretary, and died of fever
+within seven years of his marriage, leaving a widow and three babies,
+the youngest in long clothes. Mother and babies all came over to
+England, and were at once established at Fellside. I can remember the
+voyage--and I can remember my poor mother who never recovered the blow
+of my father's death, and who died in yonder house, after five years of
+broken health and broken spirits. We had no one but the dowager to look
+to as children--hardly another friend in the world. She did what she
+liked with us; she kept the girls as close as nuns, so _they_ have never
+heard a hint of the old history; no breach of scandal has reached
+_their_ ears. But she could not shut me up in a country house for ever,
+though she did succeed in keeping me away from a public school. The time
+came when I had to go to the University, and there I heard all that had
+been said about Lord Maulevrier. The men who told me about the old
+scandal in a friendly way pretended not to believe it; but one night,
+when I had got into a row at a wine-party with a tailor's son, he told
+me that if his father was a snip my grandfather was a thief, and so he
+thought himself the better bred of the two. I smashed his nose for him,
+but as it was a decided pug before the row began, that hardly squared
+the matter.'
+
+'Did you ever hear the exact story?'
+
+'I have heard a dozen stories; and if only a quarter of them are true my
+grandfather was a scoundrel. It seems that he was immensely popular for
+the first year or so of his government, gave more splendid
+entertainments than had been given at Madras for half a century before
+his time, lavished his wealth upon his favourites. Then arose a rumour
+that the governor was insolvent and harassed by his creditors, and then
+a new source of wealth seemed to be at his command; he was more
+reckless, more princely than ever; and then, little by little, there
+arose the suspicion that he was trafficking in English interests,
+selling his influence to petty princes, winking at those mysterious
+crimes by which rightful heirs are pushed aside to make room for
+usurpers. Lastly it became notorious that he was the slave of a wicked
+woman, false wife, suspected murderess, whose husband, a native prince,
+disappeared from the scene just when his existence became perilous to
+the governor's reputation. According to one version of the story, the
+scandal of this Rajah's mysterious disappearance, followed not long
+after by the Ranee's equally mysterious death, was the immediate cause
+of my grandfather's recall. How much, or how little of this story--or
+other dark stories of the same kind--is true, whether my grandfather was
+a consummate scoundrel, or the victim of a baseless slander,--whether he
+left India a rich man or a poor man, is known to no mortal except Lady
+Maulevrier, and compared with her the Theban Sphinx was a communicative
+individual.'
+
+'Let the dead bury their dead,' said Hammond. 'Neither you nor your
+sisters can be the worse for this ancient slander. No doubt every part
+of the story has been distorted and exaggerated in the telling; and a
+great deal of it may be pure invention, evolved from the inner
+consciousness of the slanderer. God forbid that any whisper of scandal
+should ever reach Lady Lesbia's ears.'
+
+He ignored poor Mary. It was to him as if there were no such person. Her
+feeble light was extinguished by the radiance of her sister's beauty;
+her very individuality was annihilated.
+
+'As for you, dear old fellow,' he said, with warm affection, 'no one
+will ever think the worse of you on account of your grandfather's
+peccadilloes.'
+
+'Yes, they will. Hereditary genius is one of our modern crazes. When a
+man's grandfather was a rogue, there must be a taint in his blood.
+People don't believe in spontaneous generation, moral or physical,
+now-a-days. Typhoid breeds typhoid, and typhus breeds typhus, just as
+dog breeds dog; and who will believe that a cheat and a liar can be the
+father of honest men?'
+
+'In that case, knowing what kind of man the grandson is, I will never
+believe that the grandfather was a rogue,' said Hammond, heartily.
+
+Maulevrier put out his hand without a word, and it was warmly grasped by
+his friend.
+
+'As for her ladyship, I respect and honour her as a woman who has led a
+life of self-sacrifice, and has worn her pride as an armour,' continued
+Hammond.
+
+'Yes, I believe the dowager's character is rather fine,' said
+Maulevrier; 'but she and I have never hit our horses very well together.
+She would have liked such a fellow as you for a grandson, Jack--a man
+who took high honours at Oxford, and could hold his own against all
+comers. Such a grandson would have gratified her pride, and would have
+repaid her for the trouble she had taken in nursing the Maulevrier
+estate; for however poor a property it was when her husband went to
+India there is no doubt that it is a very fine estate now, and that the
+dowager has been the making of it.'
+
+The two young men strolled up to Easedale Tarn before they went back to
+Fellside, where Lady Maulevrier received them with a stately
+graciousness, and where Lady Lesbia unbent considerably at luncheon, and
+condescended to an animated conversation with her brother's friend. It
+was such a new thing to have a stranger at the family board, a man whose
+information was well abreast with the march of progress, who could talk
+eloquently upon every subject which people care to talk about. In this
+new and animated society Lesbia seemed like an enchanted princess
+suddenly awakened from a spell-bound slumber. Molly looked at her sister
+with absolute astonishment. Never had she seen her so bright, so
+beautiful--no longer a picture or a statue, but a woman warm with the
+glow of life.
+
+'No wonder Mr. Hammond admires her,' thought poor Molly, who was quite
+acute enough to see the stranger's keen appreciation of her sister's
+charms, and positive indifference towards herself.
+
+There are some things which women find out by instinct, just as the
+needle turns towards the magnet. Shut a girl up in a tower till she is
+eighteen years old, and on the day of her release introduce her to the
+first man her eyes have ever looked upon, and she will know at a glance
+whether he admires her.
+
+After luncheon the four young people started for Rydal Mount; with
+Fräulein as chaperon and watch-dog. The girls were both good walkers.
+Lady Lesbia even, though she looked like a hot-house flower, had been
+trained to active habits, could walk and ride, and play tennis, and
+climb a hill as became a mountain-bred damsel. Molly, feeling that her
+conversational powers were not appreciated by her brother's friend, took
+half a dozen dogs for company, and with three fox-terriers, a little
+Yorkshire dog, a colley and an otter-hound, was at no loss for society
+on the road, more especially as Maulevrier gave her most of his company,
+and entertained her with an account of his Black Forest adventures, and
+all the fine things he had said to the fair-haired, blue-eyed Baden
+girls, who had sold him photographs or wild strawberries, or had
+awakened the echoes of the hills with the music of their rustic flutes.
+
+Fräulein was perfectly aware that her mission upon this particular
+afternoon was not to let Lady Lesbia out of her sight for an instant, to
+hear every word the young lady said, and every word Mr. Hammond
+addressed to her. She had received no specific instructions from Lady
+Maulevrier. They were not necessary, for the Fräulein knew her
+ladyship's intentions with regard to her elder granddaughter,--knew
+them, at least, so far as that Lesbia was intended to make a brilliant
+marriage; and she knew, therefore, that the presence of this handsome
+and altogether attractive young man was to the last degree obnoxious to
+the dowager. She was obliged to be civil to him for her nephew's sake,
+and she was too wise to let Lesbia imagine him dangerous: but the fact
+that he was dangerous was obvious, and it was Fräulein's duty to protect
+her employer's interests.
+
+Everybody knew Lord Maulevrier, so there was no difficulty about getting
+admission to Wordsworth's garden and Wordsworth's house, and after Mr.
+Hammond and his companions had explored these, they went back to the
+shores of the little lake, and climbed that rocky eminence upon which
+the poet used to sit, above the placid waters of silvery Rydal. It is a
+lovely spot, and that narrow lake, so poor a thing were magnitude the
+gauge of beauty, had a soft and pensive loveliness in the clear
+afternoon light.
+
+'Poor Wordsworth' sighed Lesbia, as she stood on the grassy crag looking
+down on the shining water, broken in the foreground by fringes of
+rushes, and the rich luxuriance of water-lilies. 'Is it not pitiable to
+think of the years he spent in this monotonous place, without any
+society worth speaking of, with only the shabbiest collection of books,
+with hardly any interest in life except the sky, and the hills, and the
+peasantry?'
+
+'I think Wordsworth's was an essentially happy life, in spite of his
+narrow range,' answered Hammond. 'You, with your ardent youth and vivid
+desire for a life of action, cannot imagine the calm blisses of reverie
+and constant communion with nature. Wordsworth had a thousand companions
+you and I would never dream of; for him every flower that grows was an
+individual existence--almost a soul.'
+
+'It was a mild kind of lunacy, an everlasting opium dream without the
+opium; but I am grateful to him for living such a life, since it has
+bequeathed us some exquisite poetry,' said Lesbia, who had been too
+carefully cultured to fleer or flout at Wordsworth.
+
+'I do believe there's an otter just under that bank,' cried Molly, who
+had been watching the obvious excitement of her bandy-legged hound; and
+she rushed down to the brink of the water, leaping lightly from stone to
+stone, and inciting the hound to business.
+
+'Let him alone, can't you?' roared Maulevrier; 'leave him in peace till
+he's wanted. If you disturb him now he'll desert his holt, and we may
+have a blank day. The hounds are to be out to-morrow.'
+
+'I may go with you?' asked Mary, eagerly.
+
+'Well, yes, I suppose you'll want to be in it.' Molly and her brother
+went on an exploring ramble along the edge of the water towards
+Ambleside, leaving John Hammond in Lesbia's company, but closely guarded
+by Miss Müller. These three went to look at Nab Cottage, where poor
+Hartley Coleridge ended his brief and clouded days; and they had gone
+some way upon their homeward walk before they were rejoined by
+Maulevrier and Mary, the damsel's kilted skirt considerably the worse
+for mud and mire.
+
+'What would grandmother say if she were to see you!' exclaimed Lesbia,
+looking contemptuously at the muddy petticoat.
+
+'I am not going to let her see me, so she will say nothing,' cried Mary,
+and then she called to the dogs, 'Ammon, Agag, Angelina;' and the three
+fox terriers flew along the road, falling over themselves in the
+swiftness of their flight, darting, and leaping, and scrambling over
+each other, and offering the spectators the most intense example of
+joyous animal life.
+
+The colley was far up on the hill-side, and the otter-hound was still
+hunting the water, but the terriers never went out of Mary's sight. They
+looked to her to take the initiative in all their sports.
+
+They were back at Fellside in time for a very late tea. Lady Maulevrier
+was waiting for them in the drawing-room.
+
+'Oh, grandmother, why did you not take your tea!' exclaimed Lesbia,
+looking really distressed. 'It is six o'clock.'
+
+'I am used to have you at home to hand me my cup,' replied the dowager,
+with a touch of reproachfulness.
+
+'I am so sorry,' said Lesbia, sitting down before the tea-table, and
+beginning her accustomed duty. 'Indeed, dear grandmother, I had no idea
+it was so late; but it was such a lovely afternoon, and Mr. Hammond is
+so interested in everything connected with Wordsworth--'
+
+She was looking her loveliest at this moment, all that was softest in
+her nature called forth by her desire to please her grandmother, whom
+she really loved. She hung over Lady Maulevrier's chair, attending to
+her small wants, and seeming scarcely to remember the existence of
+anyone else. In this phase of her character she seemed to Mr. Hammond
+the perfection of womanly grace.
+
+Mary had rushed off to her room to change her muddy gown, and came in
+presently, dressed for dinner, looking the picture of innocence.
+
+John Hammond received his tea-cup from Lesbia's hand, and lingered in
+the drawing-room talking to the dowager and her granddaughters till it
+was time to dress. Lady Maulevrier found herself favourably impressed by
+him in spite of her prejudices. It was very provoking of Maulevrier to
+have brought such a man to Fellside. His very merits were objectionable.
+She tried with exquisite art to draw him into some revealment as to his
+family and antecedents: but he evaded every attempt of that kind. It was
+too evident that he was a self-made man, whose intellect and good looks
+were his only fortune. It was criminal in Maulevrier to have brought
+such a person to Fellside. Her ladyship began to think seriously of
+sending the two girls to St. Bees or Tynemouth for change of air, in
+charge of Fräulein. But any sudden proceeding of that kind would
+inevitably awaken Lesbia's suspicions; and there is nothing so fatal to
+a woman's peace as this idea of danger. No, the peril must be faced. She
+could only hope that Maulevrier would soon tire of Fellside. A week's
+Westmoreland weather--gray skies and long rainy days, would send these
+young men away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+A CRY IN THE DARKNESS.
+
+
+The peril had to be faced, for the weather did not favour Lady
+Maulevrier's hopes. Westmoreland skies forgot to shed their accustomed
+showers. Westmoreland hills seemed to have lost their power of drawing
+down the rain. That August was a lovely month, and the young people at
+Fellside revelled in ideal weather. Maulevrier took his friend
+everywhere--by hill and stream and force and gill--to all those chosen
+spots which make the glory of the Lake country--on Windermere and
+Thirlmere, away through the bleak pass of Kirkstone to Ullswater--on
+driving excursions, and on boating excursions, and pedestrian rambles,
+which latter the homely-minded Hammond seemed to like best of all, for
+he was a splendid walker, and loved the freedom of a mountain ramble,
+the liberty to pause and loiter and waste an hour at will, without being
+accountable to anybody's coachman, or responsible for the well-being of
+anybody's horses.
+
+On some occasions the two girls and Miss Müller were of the party, and
+then it seemed to John Hammond as if nothing were needed to complete the
+glory of earth and sky. There were other days--rougher journeys--when
+the men went alone, and there were days when Lady Mary stole away from
+her books and music, and all those studies which she was supposed still
+to be pursuing--no longer closely supervised by her governess, but on
+parole, as it were--and went with her brother and his friend across the
+hills and far away. Those were happy days for Mary, for it was always
+delight to her to be with Maulevrier; yet she had a profound conviction
+of John Hammond's indifference, kind and courteous as he was in all his
+dealings with her, and a sense of her own inferiority, of her own humble
+charms and little power to please, which was so acute as to be almost
+pain. One day this keen sense of humiliation broke from her unawares in
+her talk with her brother, as they two sat on a broad heathy slope face
+to face with one of the Langdale pikes, and with a deep valley at their
+feet, while John Hammond was climbing from rock to rock in the gorge on
+their right, exploring the beauties of Dungeon Ghyll.
+
+'I wonder whether he thinks me very ugly?' said Mary, with her hands
+clasped upon her knees, her eyes fixed on Wetherlam, upon whose steep
+brow a craggy mass of brown rock clothed with crimson heather stood out
+from the velvety green of the hill-side.
+
+'Who thinks you ugly?'
+
+'Mr. Hammond. I'm sure he does. I am so sunburnt and so horrid!'
+
+'But you are not ugly. Why, Molly, what are you dreaming about?'
+
+'Oh, yes, I am ugly. I may not seem so to you, perhaps, because you are
+used to me, but I know he must think me very plain compared with Lesbia,
+whom he admires so much.'
+
+'Yes, he admires Lesbia. There is no doubt of that.'
+
+'And I know he thinks me plain,' said Molly, contemplating Wetherlam
+with sorrowful eyes, as if the sequence were inevitable.
+
+'My dearest girl, what nonsense! Plain, forsooth? Ugly, quotha? Why,
+there are not a finer pair of eyes in Westmoreland than my Molly's, or a
+prettier smile, or whiter teeth.'
+
+'But all the rest is horrid,' said Mary, intensely in earnest. 'I am
+sunburnt, freckled, and altogether odious--like a haymaker or a market
+woman. Grandmother has said so often enough, and I know it is the truth.
+I can see it in Mr. Hammond's manner.'
+
+'What! freckles and sunburn, and the haymaker, and all that?' cried
+Maulevrier, laughing. 'What an expressive manner Jack's must be, if it
+can convey all that--like Lord Burleigh's nod, by Jove. Why, what a
+goose you are, Mary. Jack thinks you a very nice girl, and a very pretty
+girl, I'll be bound; but aren't you clever enough to understand that
+when a man is over head and ears in love with one woman, he is apt to
+seem just a little indifferent to all the other women in the world? and
+there is no doubt Jack is desperately in love with Lesbia.'
+
+'You ought not to let him be in love with her,' protested Mary. 'You
+know it can only lead to his unhappiness. You must know what grandmother
+is, and how she has made up her mind that Lesbia is to marry some great
+person. You ought not to have brought Mr. Hammond here. It is like
+letting him into a trap.'
+
+'Do you think it was wrong?' asked her brother, smiling at her
+earnestness. 'I should be very sorry if poor Jack should come to grief.
+But still, if Lesbia likes him--which I think she does--we ought to be
+able to talk over the dowager.'
+
+'Never,' cried Mary. 'Grandmother would never give way. You have no idea
+how ambitious she is. Why, once when Lesbia was in a poetical mood, and
+said she would marry the man she liked best in the world, if he were a
+pauper, her ladyship flew into a terrible passion, and told her she
+would renounce her, that she would curse her, if she were to marry
+beneath her, or marry without her grandmother's consent.'
+
+'Hard lines for Hammond,' said Maulevrier, rather lightly. 'Then I
+suppose we must give up the idea of a match between him and Lesbia.'
+
+'You ought not to have brought him here,' retorted Mary. 'You had better
+invent some plan for sending him away. If he stay it will be only to
+break his heart.'
+
+'Dear child, men's hearts do not break so easily. I have fancied that
+mine was broken more than once in my life, yet it is sound enough, I
+assure you.'
+
+'Oh!' sighed Mary, 'but you are not like him; wounds do not go so deep
+with you.'
+
+The subject of their conversation came out of the rocky cleft in the
+hills as Mary spoke. She saw his hat appearing out of the gorge, and
+then the man himself emerged, a tall well-built figure, clad in brown
+tweed, coming towards them, with sketch-book and colour-box in his
+pocket. He had been making what he called memoranda of the waterfall, a
+stone or two here, a cluster of ferns there, or a tree torn up by the
+roots, and yet green and living, hanging across the torrent, a rude
+natural bridge.
+
+This round by the Langdale Pikes and Dungeon Ghyll was one of their best
+days; or, at least, Molly and her brother thought so; for to those two
+the presence of Lesbia and her chaperon was always a restraint.
+
+Mary could walk twice as far as her elder sister, and revelled in
+hill-side paths and all manner of rough places. They ordered their
+luncheon at the inn below the waterfall, and had it carried up on to the
+furzy slope in front of Wetherlam, where they could eat and drink and be
+merry to the music of the force as it came down from the hills behind
+them, while the lights and shadows came and went upon yonder rugged
+brow, now gray in the shadow, now ruddy in the sunshine.
+
+Mary was as gay as a bird during that rough and ready luncheon. No one
+would have suspected her uneasiness about John Hammond's peril or her
+own plainness. She might let her real self appear to her brother, who
+had been her trusted friend and father confessor from her babyhood; but
+she was too thorough a woman to let Mr. Hammond discover the depth of
+her sympathy, the tenderness of her compassion for his woes. Later, as
+they were walking home across the hills, by Great Langdale and Little
+Langdale, and Fox Howe and Loughrigg Fell, she fell behind a few paces
+with Maulevrier, and said to him very earnestly--
+
+'You won't tell, will you, dear?'
+
+'Tell what?' he asked, staring at her.
+
+'Don't tell Mr. Hammond what I said about his thinking me ugly. He might
+want to apologise to me, and that would be too humiliating. I was very
+childish to say such a silly thing.'
+
+'Undoubtedly you were.'
+
+'And you won't tell him?'
+
+'Tell him anything that would degrade my Mary? Assail her dignity by so
+much as a breath? Sooner would I have this tongue torn out with red-hot
+pincers.'
+
+On the next day, and the next, sunshine and summer skies still
+prevailed; but Mr. Hammond did not seem to care for rambling far afield.
+He preferred loitering about in the village, rowing on the lake, reading
+in the garden, and playing lawn tennis. He had only inclination for
+those amusements which kept him within a stone's throw of Fellside: and
+Mary knew that this disposition had arisen in his mind since Lesbia had
+withdrawn herself from all share in their excursions. Lesbia had not
+been rude to her brother or her brother's friend; she had declined their
+invitations with smiles and sweetness; but there was always some
+reason--a new song to be practised, a new book to be read, a letter to
+be written--why she should not go for drives or walks or steamboat trips
+with Maulevrier and his friend.
+
+So Mr. Hammond suddenly found out that he had seen all that was worth
+seeing in the Lake country, and that there was nothing so enjoyable as
+the placid idleness of Fellside; and at Fellside Lady Lesbia could not
+always avoid him without a too-marked intention, so he tasted the
+sweetness of her society to a much greater extent than was good for his
+peace, if the case were indeed as hopeless as Lady Mary declared. He
+strolled about the grounds with her; he drank the sweet melody of her
+voice in Heine's tenderest ballads; he read to her on the sunlit lawn in
+the lazy afternoon hours; he played billiards with her; he was her
+faithful attendant at afternoon tea; he gave himself up to the study of
+her character, which, to his charmed eyes, seemed the perfection of pure
+and placid womanhood. There might, perhaps, be some lack of passion and
+of force in this nature, a marked absence of that impulsive feeling
+which is a charm in some women: but this want was atoned for by
+sweetness of character, and Mr. Hammond argued that in these calm
+natures there is often an unsuspected depth, a latent force, a grandeur
+of soul, which only reveals itself in the great ordeals of life.
+
+So John Hammond hung about the luxurious drawing-room at Fellside in a
+manner which his friend Maulevrier ridiculed as unmanly.
+
+'I had no idea you were such a tame cat,' he said: 'if when we were
+salmon fishing in Canada anybody had told me you could loll about a
+drawing-room all day listening to a girl squalling and reading novels, I
+shouldn't have believed a word of it.'
+
+'We had plenty of roughing on the shores of the St. Lawrence,' answered
+Hammond. 'Summer idleness in a drawing-room is an agreeable variety.'
+
+It is not to be supposed that John Hammond's state of mind could long
+remain unperceived by the keen eyes of the dowager. She saw the gradual
+dawning of his love, she saw the glow of its meridian. She was pleased
+to behold this proof of Lesbia's power over the heart of man. So would
+she conquer the man foredoomed to be her husband when the coming time
+should bring them together. But agreeable as the fact of this first
+conquest might be, as an evidence of Lesbia's supremacy among women, the
+situation was not without its peril; and Lady Maulevrier felt that she
+could no longer defer the duty of warning her granddaughter. She had
+wished, if possible, to treat the thing lightly to the very last, so
+that Lesbia should never know there had been danger. She had told her, a
+few days ago, that those drives, and walks with the two young men were
+undignified, even although guarded by the Fräulein's substantial
+presence.
+
+'You are making yourself too much a companion to Maulevrier and his
+friend,' said the dowager. 'If you do not take care you will grow like
+Mary.'
+
+'I would do anything in the world to avoid _that_,' replied Lesbia. 'Our
+walks and drives have been very pleasant. Mr. Hammond is extremely
+clever, and can talk about everything.'
+
+Her colour heightened ever so little as she spoke of him, an indication
+duly observed by Lady Maulevrier.
+
+'No doubt the man is clever; all adventurers are clever; and you have
+sense enough to see that this man is an adventurer--a mere sponge and
+toady of Maulevrier's.'
+
+'There is nothing of the sponge or the toady in his manner,' protested
+Lady Lesbia, with a still deeper blush, the warm glow of angry feeling.
+
+'My dear child, what do you know of such people--or of the atmosphere in
+which they are generated? The sponge and toady of to-day is not the
+clumsy fawning wretch you have read about in old-fashioned novels. He
+can flatter adroitly, and feed upon his friends, and yet maintain a show
+of manhood and independence. I'll wager Mr. Hammond's trip to Canada did
+not cost him sixpence, and that he hardly opened his purse all the time
+he was in Germany.'
+
+'If my brother wants the company of a friend who is much poorer than
+himself, he must pay for it,' argued Lesbia. 'I think Maulevrier is
+lucky to have such a companion as Mr. Hammond.'
+
+Yet, even while she so argued, Lady Lesbia felt in some manner
+humiliated by the idea that this man who so palpably worshipped her was
+too poor to pay his own travelling expenses.
+
+Poets and philosophers may say what they will about the grandeur of
+plain living and high thinking; but a young woman thinks better of the
+plain liver who is not compelled to plainness by want of cash. The idea
+of narrow means, of dependence upon the capricious generosity of a
+wealthy friend is not without its humiliating influence. Lesbia was
+barely civil to Mr. Hammond that evening when he praised her singing;
+and she refused to join in a four game proposed by Maulevrier, albeit
+she and Mr. Hammond had beaten Mary and Maulevrier the evening before,
+with much exultant hilarity.
+
+Hammond had been at Fellside nearly a month, and Maulevrier was
+beginning to talk about a move further northward. There was a grouse
+moor in Argyleshire which the two young men talked about as belonging to
+some unnamed friend of the Earl's, which they had thought of shooting
+over before the grouse season was ended.
+
+'Lord Hartfield has property in Argyleshire,' said the dowager, when
+they talked of these shootings. 'Do you know his estate, Mr. Hammond?'
+
+'Hammond knows that there is such a place, I daresay,' replied
+Maulevrier, replying for his friend.
+
+'But you do not know Lord Hartfield, perhaps,' said her ladyship, not
+arrogantly, but still in a tone which implied her conviction that John
+Hammond would not be hand-in-glove with earls, in Scotland or elsewhere.
+
+'Oh, yes! I know him by sight--every one in Argyleshire knows him by
+sight.'
+
+'Naturally. A young man in his position must be widely known. Is he
+popular?'
+
+'Fairly so.'
+
+'His father and I were friends many years ago,' said Lady Maulevrier,
+with a faint sigh. 'Have you ever heard if he resembles his father?'
+
+'I believe not. I am told he is like his mother's family.'
+
+'Then he ought to be handsome. Lady Florence Ilmington was a famous
+beauty.'
+
+They were sitting in the drawing-room after dinner, the room dimly
+lighted by darkly-shaded lamps, the windows wide open to the summer sky
+and moonlit lake. In that subdued light Lady Maulevrier looked a woman
+in the prime of life. The classical modelling of her features and the
+delicacy of her complexion were unimpaired by time, while those traces
+of thought and care which gave age to her face in the broad light of day
+were invisible at night. John Hammond contemplated that refined and
+placid countenance with profound admiration. He remembered how her
+ladyship's grandson had compared her with the Sphinx; and it seemed to
+him to-night, as he studied her proud and tranquil beauty, that there
+was indeed something of the mysterious, the unreadable in that
+countenance, and that beneath its heroic calm there might be the ashes
+of tragic passion, the traces of a life-long struggle with fate. That
+such a woman, so beautiful, so gifted, so well fitted to shine and
+govern in the great world, should have been content to live a long life
+of absolute seclusion in this remote valley was in itself a social
+mystery which must needs set an observant young man wondering. It was
+all very well to say that Lady Maulevrier loved a country life, that she
+had made Fellside her earthly Paradise, and had no desire beyond it. The
+fact remained that it was not in Lady Maulevrier's temperament to be
+satisfied with such an existence; that falcon eye was never meant to
+gaze for ever upon one narrow range of mountain and lake; that lip was
+made to speak among the great ones of the world.
+
+Lady Maulevrier was particularly gracious to her grandson's friend this
+evening. Maulevrier spoke so decisively about a speedy migration
+northward, seemed so inclined to regret the time wasted since the
+twelfth of the month, that she thought the danger was past, and she
+could afford to be civil. She really liked the young man, had no doubt
+in her own mind that he was a gentleman in the highest and broadest
+sense of the word, but not in the sense which made him an eligible
+husband for either of her granddaughters.
+
+Lesbia was in a pensive mood this evening. She sat in the verandah,
+looking dreamily at the lake, and at Fairfield yonder, a broad green
+slope, silvered with moonlight, and seeming to stretch far away into
+unfathomable distance.
+
+If one could but take one's lover by the hand and go wandering over
+those mystic moonlit slopes into some new unreal world where it would
+not matter whether a man were rich or poor, high-born or low-born, where
+there should be no such things as rank and state to be won or lost!
+Lesbia felt to-night as if she would like to live out her life in
+dreamland. Reality was too hard, too much set round by difficulties and
+sacrifices.
+
+While Lesbia was losing herself in that dream-world, Lady Maulevrier
+unbent considerably to John Hammond, and talked to him with more
+appearance of interest in his actual self, and in his own affairs, than
+she had manifested, hitherto although she had been uniformly courteous.
+
+She asked him his plans for the future--had he chosen a profession?
+
+He told her that he had not. He meant to devote himself to literature
+and politics.
+
+'Is not that rather vague?' inquired her ladyship.
+
+'Everything is vague at first.'
+
+'But literature now--as an amusement, no doubt, it is delightful--but as
+a profession--does literature ever pay?'
+
+'There have been such cases.'
+
+'Yes, I suppose so. Walter Scott, Gibbon, Macaulay, Froude, those made
+money no doubt. But there is a suspicion of hopelessness in the idea of
+a young man starting in life intending to earn his bread by literature.
+One remembers Chatterton. I should have thought that in your case the
+law or the church would have been better. In the latter Maulevrier might
+have been useful to you. He is patron of three or four livings.'
+
+'You are too good even to think of such a thing,' said Hammond; 'but I
+have set my heart upon a political career. I must swim or sink in that
+sea.'
+
+Lady Maulevrier looked at him with a compassionate smile Poor young man!
+No doubt he thought himself a genius, and that doors which had remained
+shut to everybody else would turn on their hinges directly he knocked at
+them. She was sincerely sorry for him. Young, clever, enthusiastic, and
+doomed to bitterest disappointment.
+
+'You have parents, perhaps, who are ambitious for you--a mother who
+thinks her son a heaven-born statesman!' said her ladyship, kindly.
+
+'Alas, no! that incentive to ambition is wanting in my case. I have
+neither father nor mother living.'
+
+'That is very sad. No doubt that fact has been a bond of sympathy
+between you and Maulevrier?'
+
+'I believe it has.'
+
+'Well, I hope Providence will smile upon your path.'
+
+'Come what may, I shall never forget the happy weeks I have spent at
+Fellside,' said Hammond, 'or your ladyship's gracious hospitality.'
+
+He took up the beautiful hand, white to transparency, showing the
+delicate tracing of blue veins, and pressed his lips upon it in
+chivalrous worship of age and womanly dignity.
+
+Lady Maulevrier smiled upon him with her calm, grave smile. She would
+have liked to say, 'You shall be welcome again at Fellside,' but she
+felt that the man was dangerous. Not while Lesbia remained single could
+she court his company. If Maulevrier brought him she must tolerate his
+presence, but she would do nothing to invite that danger.
+
+There was no music that evening. Maulevrier and Mary were playing
+billiards; Fräulein Müller was sitting in her corner working at a
+high-art counterpane. Lesbia came in from the verandah presently, and
+sat on a low stool by her grandmother's arm-chair, and talked to her in
+soft, cooing accents, inaudible to John Hammond, who sat a little way
+off turning the leaves of the _Contemporary Review_: and this went on
+till eleven o'clock, the regular hour for retiring, when Mary came in
+from the billiard-room, and told Mr. Hammond that Maulevrier was waiting
+for a smoke and a talk. Then candles were lighted, and the ladies all
+departed, leaving John Hammond and his friend with the house to
+themselves.
+
+They played a fifty game, and smoked and talked till the stroke of
+midnight, by which time it seemed as if there were not another creature
+awake in the house. Maulevrier put out the lamps in the billiard-room,
+and then they went softly up the shadowy staircase, and parted in the
+gallery, the Earl going one way, and his friend the other.
+
+The house was large and roomy, spread over a good deal of ground, Lady
+Maulevrier having insisted upon there being only two stories. The
+servants' rooms were all in a side wing, corresponding with those older
+buildings which had been given over to Steadman and his wife, and among
+the villagers of Grasmere enjoyed the reputation of being haunted. A
+wide panelled corridor extended from one end of the house to the other.
+It was lighted from the roof, and served as a gallery for the display of
+a small and choice collection of modern art, which her ladyship had
+acquired during her long residence at Fellside. Here, too, in Sheraton
+cabinets, were those treasures of old English china which Lady
+Maulevrier had inherited from past generations.
+
+Her ladyship's rooms were situated at the southern end of this corridor,
+her bed-chamber being at the extreme end of the house, with windows
+commanding two magnificent views, one across the lake and the village of
+Grasmere to the green slopes of Fairfield, the other along the valley
+towards Rydal Water. This and the adjoining boudoir were the prettiest
+rooms in the house, and no one wondered that her ladyship should spend
+so much of her life in the luxurious seclusion of her own apartments.
+
+John Hammond went to his room, which was on the same side of the house
+as her ladyship's; but he was in no disposition for sleep. He opened the
+casement, and stood looking out upon the moonlit lake and the quiet
+village, where one solitary light shone like a faint star in a cottage
+window, amidst that little cluster of houses by the old church, once
+known as Kirktown. Beyond the village rose gentle slopes, crowned with
+foliage, and above those wooded crests appeared the grand outline of the
+hills, surrounding and guarding Easedale's lovely valley, as the hills
+surrounded Jerusalem of old.
+
+He looked at that delicious landscape with eyes that hardly saw its
+beauty. The image of a lovely face came between him and all the glory of
+earth and sky.
+
+'I think she likes me,' he was saying to himself. 'There was a look in
+her eyes to-night that told me the time was come when----'
+
+The thought died unfinished in his brain. Through the silent house,
+across the placid lake, there rang a wild, shrill cry that froze the
+blood in his veins, or seemed so to freeze it--a shriek of agony, and in
+a woman's voice. It rang out from an open window near his own. The sound
+seemed close to his ear.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+'O BITTERNESS OF THINGS TOO SWEET.'
+
+
+Only for an instant did John Hammond stand motionless after hearing that
+unearthly shriek. In the next moment he rushed into the corridor,
+expecting to hear the sound repeated, to find himself face to face with
+some midnight robber, whose presence had caused that wild cry of alarm.
+But in the corridor all was silent as the grave. No open door suggested
+the entrance of an intruder. The dimly-burning lamps showed only the
+long empty gallery. He stood still for a few moments listening for
+voices, footsteps, the rustle of garments: but there was nothing.
+
+Nothing? Yes, a groan, a long-drawn moaning sound, as of infinite pain.
+This time there was no doubt as to the direction from which the sound
+came. It came from Lady Maulevrier's room. The door was ajar, and he
+could see the faint light of the night-lamp within. That fearful cry had
+come from her ladyship's room. She was in peril or pain of some kind.
+
+Convinced of this one fact, Mr. Hammond had not an instant's hesitation.
+He pushed open the door without compunction, and entered the room,
+prepared to behold some terrible scene.
+
+But all was quiet as death itself. No midnight burglar had violated the
+sanctity of Lady Maulevrier's apartment. The soft, steady light of the
+night-lamp shone on the face of the sleeper. Yes, all was quiet in the
+room, but not in that sleeper's soul. The broad white brow was painfully
+contracted, the lips drawn down and distorted, the delicate hand, half
+hidden by the deep Valenciennes ruffle, clutched the coverlet with
+convulsive force. Sigh after sigh burst from the agitated breast. John
+Hammond gazed upon the sleeper in an agony of apprehension, uncertain
+what to do. Was this dreaming only; or was it some kind of seizure which
+called for medical aid? At her ladyship's age the idea of paralysis was
+not too improbable for belief. If this was a dream, then indeed the
+visions of Lady Maulevrier's head upon her bed were more terrible than
+the dreams of common mortals.
+
+In any case Mr. Hammond felt that it was his duty to send some attendant
+to Lady Maulevrier, some member of the household who was familiar with
+her ladyship's habits, her own maid if that person could be unearthed
+easily. He knew that the servants slept in a separate wing; but he
+thought it more than likely that her ladyship's personal attendant
+occupied a room near her mistress.
+
+He went back to the corridor and looked round him in doubt, for a moment
+or two.
+
+Close against her ladyship's door there was a swing door, covered with
+red cloth, which seemed to communicate with the old part of the house.
+John Hammond pushed this door, and it yielded to his hand, revealing a
+lamp-lit passage, narrow, old-fashioned, and low. He thought it likely
+that Lady Maulevrier's maid might occupy a room in this half-deserted
+wing. As he pushed open the door he saw an elderly man coming towards
+him, with a candle in his hand, and with the appearance of having
+huddled on his clothes hastily.
+
+'You heard that scream?' said Hammond.
+
+'Yes. It was her ladyship, I suppose. Nightmare. She is subject to
+nightmare.'
+
+'It is very dreadful. Her whole countenance was convulsed just now, when
+I went into her room to see what was wrong. I was almost afraid of a fit
+of some kind. Ought not her maid to go to her?'
+
+'She wants no assistance,' the man answered, coolly. 'It was only a
+dream. It is not the first time I have been awakened by a shriek like
+that. It is a kind of nightmare, no doubt; and it passes off in a few
+minutes, and leaves her sleeping calmly.'
+
+He went to her ladyship's door, pushed it open a little way, and looked
+in. 'Yes, she is sleeping as quietly as an infant,' he said, shutting
+the door softly as he spoke.
+
+'I am very glad; but surely she ought to have her maid near her at
+night, if she is subject to those attacks.'
+
+'It is no attack, I tell you. It is nothing but a dream,' answered
+Steadman impatiently.
+
+'Yet you were frightened, just as I was, or you would not have got up
+and dressed,' said Hammond, looking at the man suspiciously.
+
+He had heard of this old servant Steadman, who was supposed to enjoy
+more of her ladyship's confidence than any one else in the household;
+but he had never spoken to the man before that night.
+
+'Yes, I came. It was my duty to come, knowing her ladyship's habits. I
+am a light sleeper, and that scream woke me instantly. If her ladyship's
+maid were wanted I should call her. I am a kind of watch-dog, you see,
+sir.'
+
+'You seem to be a very faithful dog.'
+
+'I have been in her ladyship's service more than forty years. I have
+reason to be faithful. I know her ladyship's habits better than any one
+in the house. I know that she had a great deal of trouble in her early
+life, and I believe the memory of it comes back upon her sometimes in
+her dreams, and gets the better of her.'
+
+'If it was memory that wrung that agonised shriek from her just now, her
+recollections of the past must be very terrible.'
+
+'Ah, sir, there is a skeleton in every house,' answered James Steadman,
+gravely.
+
+This was exactly what Maulevrier had said under the yew trees which
+Wordsworth planted.
+
+'Good-night, sir,' said Steadman.
+
+'Good-night. You are sure that Lady Maulevrier may be left safely--that
+there is no fear of illness of any kind?'
+
+'No, sir. It was only a bad dream. Good-night, sir.'
+
+Steadman went back to his own quarters. Mr. Hammond heard him draw the
+bolts of the swing door, thus cutting off all communication with the
+corridor.
+
+The eight-day clock on the staircase struck two as Mr. Hammond returned
+to his room, even less inclined for sleep than when he left it. Strange,
+that nocturnal disturbance of a mind which seemed so tranquil in the
+day. Or was that tranquillity only a mask which her ladyship wore before
+the world: and was the bitter memory of events which happened forty
+years ago still a source of anguish to that highly strung nature?
+
+'There are some minds which cannot forget,' John Hammond said to
+himself, as he meditated upon her ladyship's character and history. 'The
+story of her husband's crime may still be fresh in her memory, though it
+is only a tradition for the outside world. His crime may have involved
+some deep wrong done to herself, some outrage against her love and faith
+as a wife. One of the stories Maulevrier spoke of the other day was of a
+wicked woman's influence upon the governor--a much more likely story
+than that of any traffic in British interests or British honour, which
+would have been almost impossible for a man in Lord Maulevrier's
+position. If the scandal was of a darker kind--a guilty wife--the
+mysterious disappearance of a husband--the horror of the thing may have
+made a deeper impression on Lady Maulevrier than even her nearest and
+dearest dream of: and that superb calm which she wears like a royal
+mantle may be maintained at the cost of struggles which tear her
+heart-strings. And then at night, when the will is dormant, when the
+nervous system is no longer ruled by the power of waking intelligence,
+the old familiar agony returns, the hated images flash back upon the
+brain, and in proportion to the fineness of the temperament is the
+intensity of the dreamer's pain.'
+
+And then he went on to reflect upon the long monotonous years spent in
+that lonely house, shut in from the world by those everlasting hills.
+Albeit the house was an ideal house, set in a landscape of infinite
+beauty, the monotony must be none the less oppressive for a mind
+burdened with dark memories, weighed down by sorrows which could seek no
+relief from sympathy, which could never become familiarised by
+discussion.
+
+'I wonder that a woman of Lady Maulevrier's intellect should not have
+better known how to treat her own malady,' thought Hammond.
+
+Mr. Hammond inquired after her ladyship's health next morning, and was
+told she was perfectly well.
+
+'Grandmother is in capital spirits,' said Lady Lesbia. 'She is pleased
+with the contents of yesterday's _Globe_. Lord Denyer, the son of one of
+her oldest friends, has been making a great speech at Liverpool in the
+Conservative interest, and her ladyship thinks we shall have a change of
+parties before long.'
+
+'A general shuffle of the cards,' said Maulevrier, looking up from his
+breakfast. 'I'm sure I hope so. I'm no politician, but I like a row.'
+
+'I hope you are a Conservative, Mr. Hammond,' said Lesbia.
+
+'I had hoped you would have known that ever so long ago, Lady Lesbia.'
+
+Lesbia blushed at his tone, which was almost a reproach.
+
+'I suppose I ought to have understood from the general tenor of your
+conversation,' she said; 'but I am terribly stupid about politics. I
+take so little interest in them. I am always hearing that we are being
+badly governed--that the men who legislate for us are stupid or wicked;
+yet the world seems to go on somehow, and we are no worse.'
+
+'It is just the same with sport,' said Maulevrier. 'Every rainy spring
+we are told that all the young birds have been drowned, or that the
+grouse-disease has decimated the fathers and mothers, and that we shall
+have nothing to shoot; but when August comes the birds are there all the
+same.'
+
+'It is the nature of mankind to complain,' said Hammond. 'Cain and Abel
+were the first farmers, and you see one of them grumbled.'
+
+They were rather lively at breakfast that morning--Maulevrier's last
+breakfast but one--for he had announced his determination of going to
+Scotland next day. Other fellows would shoot all the birds if he dawdled
+any longer. Mary was in deep despondency at the idea of his departure,
+yet she laughed and talked with the rest. And perhaps Lesbia felt a
+little moved at the thought of losing Mr. Hammond. Maulevrier would come
+back to Mary, but John Hammond was hardly likely to return. Their
+parting would be for ever.
+
+'You needn't sit quite in my pocket, Molly,' said Maulevrier to his
+younger sister.
+
+'I like to make the most of you, now you are going away,' sighed Mary.
+'Oh, dear, how dull we shall all be when you are gone.'
+
+'Not a bit of it! You will have some fox-hunting, perhaps, before the
+snow is on the hills.'
+
+At the very mention of fox-hounds Lady Mary's bright young face
+crimsoned, and Maulevrier began to laugh in a provoking way, with
+side-long glances at his younger sister.
+
+'Did you ever hear of Molly's fox-hunting, by-the-by, Hammond?' he
+asked.
+
+Mary tried to put her hand before his lips, but it was useless.
+
+'Why shouldn't I tell?' he exclaimed. 'It was quite a heroic adventure.
+You must know our fox-hunting here is rather a peculiar
+institution,--very good in its way, but strictly local. No horse could
+live among our hills, so we hunt on foot, and as the pace is good, and
+the work hard, nobody who starts with the hounds is likely to be in at
+the death, except the huntsmen. We are all mad for the sport, and off we
+go, over the hills and far away, picking up a fresh field as we go. The
+ploughman leaves his plough, and the shepherd leaves his flock, and the
+farmer leaves his thrashing, to follow us; in every field we cross we
+get fresh blood, while those who join us at the start fall off by
+degrees. Well, it happened one day late in October, when there were long
+ridges of snow on Helvellyn, and patches of white on Fairfield, Mistress
+Mary here must needs take her bamboo staff and start for the Striding
+Edge. It was just the day upon which she might have met her death easily
+on that perilous point, but happily something occurred to divert her
+juvenile fancy, for scarcely had she got to the bottom of Dolly Waggon
+Pike--you know Dolly----'
+
+'Intimately,' said Hammond, with a nod.
+
+'Scarcely had she neared the base of Dolly Waggon when she heard the
+huntsman's horn and the hounds at full cry, streaming along towards
+Dunmail Raise. Off flew Molly, all among the butcher boys, and farmers'
+men, and rosy-cheeked squireens of the district--racing over the rugged
+fields--clambering over the low stone walls--up hill, down
+hill--shouting when the others shouted--never losing sight of the waving
+sterns--winding and doubling, and still going upward and upward, till
+she stood, panting and puffing like a young grampus, on the top of Seat
+Sandal, still all among the butcher boys and the farmer's men, and the
+guides and the red-cheeked squireens, her frock torn to ribbons, her hat
+lost in a ditch, her hair streaming down her back, and every inch of
+her, from her nose downwards, splashed and spattered with mire and clay.
+What a spectacle for gods and men, guides and butcher boys. And there
+she stood with the sun going down beyond Coniston Old Man, and a
+seven-mile walk between her and Fellside.
+
+'Poor Lady Mary!' said Hammond, looking at her very kindly: but Mary did
+not see that friendly glance, which betokened sympathy rather than
+scorn. She sat silent and very red, with drooping eyelids, thinking her
+brother horribly cruel for thus publishing her foolishness.
+
+'Poor, indeed!' exclaimed Maulevrier. 'She came crawling home after
+dark, footsore and draggled, looking like a beggar girl, and as evil
+fate would have it, her ladyship, who so seldom goes out, must needs
+have been taking afternoon tea at the Vicarage upon that particular
+occasion, and was driving up the avenue as Mary crawled to the gate. The
+storm that followed may be more easily imagined than described.'
+
+'It was years and years ago,' expostulated Mary, looking very angry.
+'Grandmother needn't have made such a fuss about it.'
+
+'Ah, but in those days she still had hopes of civilising you,' answered
+Maulevrier. 'Since then she has abandoned all endeavour in that
+direction, and has given you over to your own devices--and me. Since
+then you have become a chartered libertine. You have letters of mark.'
+
+'I don't care what you call me,' said Mary. 'I only know that I am very
+happy when you are at home, and very miserable when you are away.'
+
+'It is hardly kind of you to say that, Lady Mary,' remonstrated Fräulein
+Müller, who, up to this point, had been busily engaged with muffins and
+gooseberry jam.
+
+'Oh, I don't mean that any one is unkind to me or uses me badly,' said
+Mary. 'I only mean that my life is empty when Maulevrier is away, and
+that I am always longing for him to come back again.'
+
+'I thought you adored the hills, and the lake, and the villagers, and
+your pony, and Maulevrier's dogs,' said, Lesbia faintly contemptuous.
+
+'Yes, but one wants something human to love,' answered Mary, making it
+very obvious that there was no warmth of affection between herself and
+the feminine members of her family.
+
+She had not thought of the significance of her speech. She was very
+angry with Maulevrier for having held her up to ridicule before Mr.
+Hammond, who already despised her, as she believed, and whose contempt
+was more galling than it need have been, considering that he was a mere
+casual visitor who would go away and return no more. Never till his
+coming had she felt her deficiencies; but in his presence she writhed
+under the sense of her unworthiness, and had an almost agonising
+consciousness of all those faults which her grandmother had told her
+about so often with not the slightest effect. In those days she had not
+cared what Lady Maulevrier or any one else might say of her, or think of
+her. She lived her life, and defied fortune. She was worse than her
+reputation. To-day she felt it a bitter thing that she had grown to the
+age of womanhood lacking all those graces and accomplishments which made
+her sister adorable, and which might make even a plain woman charming.
+
+Never till John Hammond's coming had she felt a pang of envy in the
+contemplation of Lesbia's beauty or Lesbia's grace; but now she had so
+keen a sense of the difference between herself and her sister that she
+began to fear that this cruel pain must indeed be that lowest of all
+vices. Even the difference in their gowns was a source of humiliation to
+her how. Lesbia was looking her loveliest this morning, in a gown that
+was all lace and soft Madras muslin, flowing, cloud-like; while Mary's
+tailor gown, with its trim tight bodice, horn buttons, and kilted skirt,
+seemed to cry aloud that it had been made for a Tomboy. And this tailor
+gown was a costume to which Mary had condemned herself by her own folly.
+Only a year ago, moved by an artistic admiration for Lesbia's delicate
+breakfast gowns, Mary had told her grandmother that she would like to
+have something of the same kind, whereupon the dowager, who did not take
+the faintest interest in Mary's toilet, but who had a stern sense of
+justice, replied--
+
+'I do not think Lesbia's frocks and your habits will agree, but you can
+have some pretty morning gowns if you like;' and the order had been
+given for a confection in muslin and lace for Lady Mary.
+
+Mary came down to breakfast one bright June morning, in the new frock,
+feeling very proud of herself, and looking very pretty.
+
+'Fine feathers make fine birds,' said Fräulein Müller. 'I should hardly
+have known you.'
+
+'I wish you would always dress like that,' said Lesbia; 'you really look
+like a young lady;' and Mary danced about on the lawn, feeling
+sylph-like, and quite in love with her own elegance, when a sudden
+uplifting of canine voices in the distance had sent her flying to see
+what was the matter with the terrier pack.
+
+In the kennel there was riot and confusion. Ahab was demolishing
+Angelina, Absalom had Agamemnon in a deadly grip. Dog-whip in hand, Mary
+rushed to the rescue, and laid about her, like the knights of old,
+utterly forgetful of her frock. She soon succeeded in restoring order,
+but the Madras muslin, the Breton lace had perished in the conflict. She
+left the kennel panting, and in rags and tatters, some of the muslin and
+lace hanging about her in strips a yard long, but the greater part
+remaining in the possession of the terriers, who had mauled and munched
+her finery to their hearts' content, while she was reading the Riot Act.
+
+She went back to the house, bowed down by shame and confusion, and
+marched straight to the dowager's morning-room.
+
+'Look what the terriers have done to me, grandmother,' she said, with a
+sob. 'It is all my own fault, of course. I ought not to have gone near
+them in that stupid muslin. Please forgive me for being so foolish. I am
+not fit to have pretty frocks.'
+
+'I think, my dear, you can now have no doubt that the tailor gowns are
+fittest for you,' answered Lady Maulevrier, with crushing placidity. 'We
+have tried the experiment of dressing you like Lesbia, and you see it
+does not answer. Tell Kibble to throw your new gown in the rag-bag, and
+please let me hear no more about it.'
+
+After this dismal failure Mary could not feel herself ill-used in
+having to wear tailor gowns all the year round. She was allowed cotton
+frocks for very warm weather, and she had pretty gowns for evening wear;
+but her usual attire was cloth or linsey woolsey, made by the local
+tailor. Sometimes Maulevrier ordered her a gown or a coat from his own
+man in Conduit Street, and then she felt herself smart and fashionable.
+And even the local tailor contrived to make her gowns prettily, having a
+great appreciation of her straight willowy figure, and deeming it a
+privilege to work for her, so that hitherto Mary had felt very well
+content with her cloth and linsey. But now that John Hammond so
+obviously admired Lesbia's delicate raiment, poor Mary began to think
+her woollen gowns odious.
+
+After breakfast Mary and Maulevrier went straight off to the kennels.
+His lordship had numerous instructions to give on this last day, and his
+lieutenant had to receive and register his orders. Lesbia went to the
+garden with her book and with Fräulein--the inevitable Fräulein as
+Hammond thought her--in close attendance.
+
+It was a lovely morning, sultry, summer-like, albeit September had just
+begun. The tennis lawn, which had been levelled on one side of the
+house, was surrounded on three sides by shrubberies planted forty years
+ago, in the beginning of Lady Maulevrier's widowhood. All loveliest
+trees grew there in perfection, sheltered by the mighty wall of the
+mountain, fed by the mists from the lake. Larch and mountain ash, and
+Lawsonian cyprus,--deodara and magnolia, arbutus, and silver broom,
+acacia and lilac, flourished here in that rich beauty which made every
+cottage garden in the happy district a little paradise; and here in a
+semi-circular recess at one end of the lawn were rustic chairs and
+tables and an umbrella tent. This was Lady Lesbia's chosen retreat on
+summer mornings, and a favourite place for afternoon tea.
+
+Mr. Hammond followed the two ladies to their bower.
+
+'This is to be my last morning,' he said, looking at Lesbia. 'Will you
+think me a great bore if I spend it with you?'
+
+'We shall think it very nice of you,' answered Lesbia, without a vestige
+of emotion; 'especially if you will read to us.'
+
+'I will do any thing to make myself useful. What shall I read?'
+
+'Anything you like. What do you say to Tennyson?'
+
+'That he is a noble poet, a teacher of all good; but too philosophical
+for my present mood. May I read you some of Heine's ballads, those songs
+which you sing so exquisitely, or rather some you do not sing, and which
+will be fresher to you. My German is far from perfect, but I am told it
+is passable, and Fräulein Müller can throw her scissors at me when my
+accent is too dreadful.'
+
+'You speak German beautifully,' said Fräulein. 'I wonder where you
+learned it?'
+
+'I have been a good deal in Germany, and I had a Hanoverian valet who
+was quite a gentleman, and spoke admirably. I think I learned more from
+him than from grammars or dictionaries. I'll go and fetch Heine.'
+
+'What a very agreeable person Mr. Hammond is,' said Fräulein, when he
+was gone. 'We shall quite miss him.'
+
+'Yes, I have no doubt we shall miss him,' said Lesbia, again without the
+faintest emotion.
+
+The governess began to think that the ordeal of an agreeable young man's
+presence at Fellside had been passed in safety, and that her pupil was
+unscathed. She had kept a close watch on the two, as in duty bound. She
+knew that Hammond was in love with Lesbia; but she thought Lesbia was
+heart-whole.
+
+Mr. Hammond came back with a shabby little book in his hand and
+established himself comfortably in one of the two Beaconsfield chairs.
+
+He opened his book at that group of short poems called Heimkehr, and
+read here and there, as fancy led him. Sometimes the strain was a
+love-song, brief, passionate as the cry of a soul in pain; sometimes the
+verses were bitter and cynical; sometimes full of tenderest simplicity,
+telling of childhood, and youth and purity; sometimes dark with hidden
+meanings, grim, awful, cold with the chilling breath of the
+charnel-house. Sometimes Lesbia's heart beat a little faster as Mr.
+Hammond read, for it seemed as if it was he who was speaking to her, and
+not the dead poet.
+
+An hour or more passed in this way. Fräulein Müller was charmed at
+hearing some of her favourite poems, asking now for this little bit, and
+anon for another, and expatiating upon the merits of German poets in
+general, and Heine in particular, in the pauses of the lecture. She was
+quite carried away by her delight in the poet, and was so entirely
+uplifted to the ideal world that, when a footman came with a message
+from Lady Maulevrier requesting her presence, she tripped gaily off at
+once, without a thought of danger in leaving those two together on the
+lawn. She had been a faithful watch-dog up to this point; but she was
+now lulled into a false sense of security by the idea that the time of
+peril was all but ended.
+
+So she left them; but could she have looked back two minutes afterwards
+she would have perceived the unwisdom of that act.
+
+No sooner had the Fräulein turned the corner of the shrubbery than
+Hammond laid aside his book and drew nearer Lesbia, who sat looking
+downward, with her eyes upon the delicate piece of fancy work which had
+occupied her fingers all the morning.
+
+'Lesbia, this is my last day at Fellside, and you and I may never have a
+minute alone together again while I am here. Will you come for a little
+walk with me on the Fell? There is something I must say to you before I
+go.'
+
+Lesbia's delicate cheek grew a shade more pale. Instinct told her what
+was coming, though never mortal man had spoken to her of love. Nor until
+now had Mr. Hammond ever addressed her by her Christian name without
+the ceremonious prefix. There was a deeper tone in his voice, a graver
+look in his eyes, than she had ever noticed before.
+
+She rose, and took up her sunshade, and went with him meekly through the
+cultivated shrubbery of ornamental timber to the rougher pathway that
+wound through a copse of Scotch fir, which formed the outer boundary of
+Lady Maulevrier's domain. Beyond the fir trees rose the grassy slope of
+the hill, on the brow of which sheep were feeding. Deep down in the
+hollow below the lawns and shrubberries of Fellside the placid bosom of
+the lake shone like an emerald floor in the sunlight, reflecting the
+verdure of the hill, and the white sheep dotted about here and there.
+
+There was not a breath in the air around them as those two sauntered
+slowly side by side in the pine wood, not a cloud in the dazzling blue
+sky above; and for a little time they too were silent, as if bound by a
+spell which neither dared to break. Then at last Hammond spoke.
+
+'Lesbia, you know that I love you,' he began, in his low, grave voice,
+tremulous with feeling. 'No words I can say to-day can tell you of my
+love more plainly than my heart has been telling you in every hour of
+this happy, happy time that you and I have spent together. I love you as
+I never hoped to love, fervently, completely, believing that the
+perfection of earthly bliss will be mine if I can but win you. Dearest,
+is there such a sweet hope for me; are you indeed my own, as I am yours,
+heart and soul, and mind and being, till the last throb of life in this
+poor clay?'
+
+He tried to take her hand, but she drew herself away from him with a
+frightened look. She was very pale, and there was infinite distress in
+the dark violet eyes, which looked entreatingly, deprecatingly at her
+lover.
+
+'I dare not answer as you would like me to answer,' she faltered, after
+a painful pause. 'I am not my own mistress. My grandmother has brought
+me up, devoted herself to me almost, and she has her own views, her own
+plans. I dare not frustrate them!'
+
+'She would like to marry you to a man of rank and fortune--a man who
+will choose you, perhaps, because other people admire you, rather than
+because he himself loves you as you ought to be loved; who will choose
+you because you are altogether the best and most perfect thing of your
+year; just as he would buy a yearling at Newmarket or Doncaster. Her
+ladyship means you to make a great alliance--coronets, not hearts, are
+the counters for her game; but, Lesbia, would you, in the bloom and
+freshness of youth--you with the pulses of youth throbbing at your
+heart--lend yourself to the calculations of age which has lived its life
+and forgotten the very meaning of love? Would you submit to be played as
+a card in the game of a dowager's ambition? Trust me, dearest, in the
+crisis of a woman's life there is one only counsellor she should listen
+to, and that counsellor is her own heart. If you love me--as I dare to
+hope you do--trust in me, hold by me, and leave the rest to Heaven. I
+know that I can make your life happy.'
+
+'You frighten me by your impetuosity,' said Lesbia. 'Surely you forget
+how short a time we have known each other.'
+
+'An age. All my life before the day I saw you is a dead, dull blank as
+compared with the magical hours I have spent with you.'
+
+'I do not even know who and what you are.'
+
+'First, I am a gentleman, or I should not be your brother's friend. A
+poor gentleman, if you like, with only my own right arm to hew my
+pathway through the wood of life to the temple of fortune; but trust me,
+only trust me, Lesbia, and I will so hew my path as to reach that
+temple. Look at me, love. Do I look like a man born to fail?'
+
+She looked up at him shyly, with eyes that were dim with tears. He
+looked like a demi-god, tall, straight as the pine trunks amongst which
+he was standing, a frame formed for strength and activity, a face
+instinct with mental power, dark eyes that glowed with the fire of
+intellect and passion. The sunlight gave an almost unearthly radiance to
+the clear dark of his complexion, the curly brown hair cut close to the
+finely shaped head, the broad brow and boldly modelled features.
+
+Lesbia felt in her heart that such a man must be destined for success,
+born to be a conqueror in all strifes, a victor upon every field.
+
+'Have I the thews and sinews of a man doomed to be beaten in the
+battle?' he asked her. 'No, dearest; Heaven meant me to succeed; and
+with you to fight for I shall not be beaten by adverse fortune. Can you
+not trust Providence and me?'
+
+'I cannot disobey my grandmother. If she will consent----'
+
+'She will not consent. You must defy Lady Maulevrier, Lesbia, if you
+mean to reward my love. But I will promise you this much, darling, that
+if you will be my wife--with your brother's consent--which I am sure of
+before I ask for it, within one year of our marriage I will find means
+of reconciling her ladyship to the match, and winning her entire
+forgiveness for you and me.'
+
+'You are talking of impossibilities,' said Lesbia, frowning. 'Why do you
+talk to me as if I were a child? I know hardly anything of the world,
+but I do know the woman who has reared and educated me. My grandmother
+would never forgive me if I married a poor man. I should be an outcast.'
+
+'We would be outcasts together--happy outcasts. Besides, we should not
+always be poor. I tell you I am predestined to conquer fate.'
+
+'But we should have to begin from the beginning.'
+
+'Yes, we should have to begin from the beginning, as Adam and Eve did
+when they left Paradise.'
+
+'We are not told in the Bible that they had any happiness after that. It
+seems to have been all trouble and weariness, and toil and death, after
+the angel with the flaming sword drove them out of Eden.'
+
+'They were together, and they must have been happy. Oh, Lesbia, if you
+do not feel that you can face poverty and the world's contempt by my
+side, and for my sake, you do not love me. Love never calculates so
+nicely; love never fears the future; and yet you do love me, Lesbia,' he
+said, trying to fold her in his arms; but again she drew herself away
+from him--this time with a look almost of horror--and stood facing him,
+clinging to one of the pine trunks, like a scared wood-nymph.
+
+'You have no right to say that,' she said.
+
+'I have the divine right of my own deep love--of heart which cries out
+to heart. Do you think there is no magnetic power in true love which can
+divine the answering love in another? Lesbia, call me an insolent
+coxcomb if you like, but I know you love me, and that you and I may be
+utterly happy together. Oh, why--why do you shrink from me, my beloved;
+why withhold yourself from my arms! Oh, love, let me hold you to my
+heart--let me seal our betrothal with a kiss!'
+
+'Betrothal--no, no; not for the world,' cried Lesbia. 'Lady Maulevrier
+would cast me off for ever; she would curse me.'
+
+'What would the curse of an ambitious woman weigh against my love? And I
+tell you that her anger would be only a passing tempest. She would
+forgive you.'
+
+'Never--you don't know her.'
+
+'I tell you she would forgive you, and all would be well with us before
+we had been married a year. Why cannot you believe me, Lesbia?'
+
+'Because I cannot believe impossibilities, even from your lips,' she
+answered sullenly.
+
+She stood before him with downcast eyes, the tears streaming down her
+pale cheeks, exquisitively lovely in her agitation and sorrow. Yes, she
+did love him; her heart was beating passionately; she was longing to
+throw herself on his breast, to be folded upon that manly heart, in
+trust in that brave, bright look which seemed to defy fortune. Yes, he
+was a man born to conquer; he was handsome, intellectual, powerful in
+all mental and physical gifts. A man of men. But he was, by his own
+admission, a very obscure and insignificant person, and he had no money.
+Life with him meant a long fight with adverse circumstances; life for
+his wife must mean patience, submission, long waiting upon destiny, and
+perhaps with old age and grey hairs the tardy turning of Fortune's
+wheel. And was she for this to resign the kingdom that had been
+promised to her, the giddy heights which she was born to scale, the
+triumphs and delights and victories of the great world? Yes, Lesbia
+loved this fortuneless knight; but she loved herself and her prospects
+of promotion still better.
+
+'Oh, Lesbia, can you not be brave for my sake--trustful for my sake? God
+will be good to us if we are true to each other.'
+
+'God will not be good to me if I disobey my grandmother. I owe her too
+much; ingratitude in me would be doubly base. I will speak to her. I
+will tell her all you have said, and if she gives me the faintest
+encouragement----'
+
+'She will not; that is a foregone conclusion. Tell her all, if you like;
+but let us be prepared for the answer. When she denies the right of your
+heart to choose its own mate, then rise up in the might of your
+womanhood and defy her. Tell her, "I love him, and be he rich or poor, I
+will share his fate;" tell her boldly, bravely, nobly, as a true woman
+should; and if she be adamant still, proclaim your right to disobey her
+worldly wisdom rather than the voice of your own heart. And then come to
+me, darling, and be my own, and the world which you and I will face
+together shall not be a bad world. I will answer for that. No trouble
+shall come near you. No humiliation shall ever touch you. Only believe
+in me.'
+
+'I can believe in you, but not in the impossible,' answered Lesbia, with
+measured accents.
+
+The voice was silver-sweet, but passing cold. Just then there was a
+rustling among the pine branches, and Lesbia looked round with a
+startled air.
+
+'Is there any one listening?' she exclaimed. 'What was that?'
+
+'Only the breath of heaven. Oh, Lesbia, if you were but a little less
+wise, a little more trustful. Do not be a dumb idol. Say that you love
+me, or do not love me. If you can look me in the face and say the last,
+I will leave you without another word. I will take my sentence and go.'
+
+But this was just what Lesbia could not do. She could not deny her love;
+and yet she could not sacrifice all things for her love. She lifted the
+heavy lids which veiled those lovely eyes, and looked up at him
+imploringly.
+
+'Give me time to breathe, time to think,' she said.
+
+'And then will you answer me plainly, truthfully, without a shadow of
+reserve, remembering that the fate of two lives hangs on your words.'
+
+'I will.'
+
+'Let it be so, then. I'll go for a ramble over the hills, and return in
+time for afternoon tea. I shall look for you on the tennis lawn at
+half-past four.'
+
+He took her in his arms, and this time she yielded herself to him, and
+the beautiful head rested for a few moments upon his breast, and the
+soft eyes looked up at him in confiding fondness. He bent and kissed her
+once only, but a kiss that meant for life and death. In the next moment
+he was gone, leaving her alone among the pine trees.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+'IF I WERE TO DO AS ISEULT DID.'
+
+
+Lady Maulevrier rarely appeared at luncheon. She took some slight
+refection in her morning-room, among her books and papers, and in the
+society of her canine favourites, whose company suited her better at
+certain hours than the noisier companionship of her grandchildren. She
+was a studious woman, loving the silent life of books better than the
+inane chatter of everyday humanity. She was a woman who thought much and
+read much, and who lived more in the past than the present. She lived
+also in the future, counting much upon the splendid career of her
+beautiful granddaughter, which should be in a manner a lengthening out,
+a renewal of her own life. She looked forward to the day when Lesbia
+should reign supreme in the great world, a famous beauty and leader of
+fashion, her every act and word inspired and directed by her
+grandmother, who would be the shadow behind the throne. It was
+possible--nay, probable--that in those days Lady Maulevrier would
+herself re-appear in society, establish her salon, and draw around her
+closing years all that is wittiest, best, and wisest in the great world.
+
+Her ladyship was reposing in her low reading-chair, with a volume of
+Tyndall on the book-stand before her, when the door was opened softly
+and Lesbia came gliding in, and seated herself without a word on the
+hassock at her grandmother's feet. Lady Maulevrier passed her hand
+caressingly over the girl's soft brown hair, without looking up from her
+book.
+
+'You are a late visitor,' she said; 'why did you not come to me after
+breakfast?'
+
+'It was such a lovely morning, we went straight from the breakfast table
+to the garden; I did not think you wanted me.'
+
+'I did not want you; but I am always glad to see my pet. What were you
+doing in the garden all the morning? I did not hear you playing tennis.'
+
+Lady Maulevrier had already interrogated the German governess upon this
+very subject, but she had her own reasons for wishing to hear Lesbia's
+account.
+
+'No, it was too warm for tennis. Fräulein and I sat and worked, and Mr.
+Hammond read to us.'
+
+'What did he read?'
+
+'Heine's ballads. He reads German beautifully.
+
+'Indeed! I daresay he was at school in Germany. There are cheap schools
+there to which middle-class people send their boys.'
+
+This was like a thrust from a rusty knife.
+
+'Mr. Hammond was at Oxford,' Lesbia said, reproachfully; and then, after
+a longish pause, she clasped her hands upon the arm of Lady Maulevrier's
+chair, and said, in a pleading voice, 'Grandmother, Mr. Hammond has
+asked me to marry him.'
+
+'Indeed! Only that? And pray, did he tell you what are his means of
+maintaining Lord Maulevrier's sister in the position to which her birth
+entitles her?' inquired the dowager, with crushing calmness.
+
+'He is not rich; indeed, I believe, he is poor; but he is brave and
+clever, and he is full of confidence in his power to conquer fortune.'
+
+'No doubt; that is your true adventurer's style. He confides implicitly
+in his own talents, and in somebody else's banker. Mr. Hammond would
+make a tremendous figure in the world, I daresay, and while he was
+making it your brother would have to keep him. Well, my dear Lesbia, I
+hope you gave this gentleman the answer his insolence deserved; or that
+you did better, and referred him to me. I should be glad to give him my
+opinion of his conduct--a person admitted to this house as your
+brother's hanger-on--tolerated only on your brother's account; such a
+person, nameless, penniless, friendless (except for Maulevrier's too
+facile patronage), to dare to lift his eyes to my granddaughter! It is
+ineffable insolence!'
+
+Lesbia crouched by her grandmother's chair, her face hidden from Lady
+Maulevrier's falcon eye. Every word uttered by her ladyship stung like
+the knotted cords of a knout. She knew not whether to be most ashamed of
+her lover or of herself--of her lover for his obscure position, his
+hopeless poverty; of herself for her folly in loving such a man. And she
+did love him, and would fain have pleaded his cause, had she not been
+cowed by the authority that had ruled her all her life.
+
+'Lesbia, if I thought you had been silly enough, degraded enough, to
+give this young man encouragement, to have justified his audacity of
+to-day by any act or word of yours, I should despise, I should detest
+you,' said Lady Maulevrier, sternly. 'What could be more contemptible,
+more hateful in a girl reared as you have been than to give
+encouragement to the first comer--to listen greedily to the first
+adventurer who had the insolence to make love to you, to be eager to
+throw yourself into the arms of the first man who asked you. That my
+granddaughter, a girl reared and taught and watched and guarded by me,
+should have no more dignity, no more modesty, or womanly feeling, than a
+barmaid at an inn!'
+
+Lesbia began to cry.
+
+'I don't see why a barmaid should not be a good woman, or why it
+should be a crime to fall in love,' she said, in a voice broken by sobs.
+'You need not speak to me so unkindly. I am not going to marry Mr.
+Hammond.'
+
+'Oh, you are not? that is very good of you. I am deeply grateful for
+such an assurance.'
+
+'But I like him better than anyone I ever saw in my life before.'
+
+'You have seen so many people. You have had such a wide area for
+choice.'
+
+'No; I know I have been kept like a nun in a convent: but I don't think
+when I go into the world I shall ever see anyone I should like better
+than Mr. Hammond.'
+
+'Wait till you have seen the world before you make up your mind about
+that. And now, Lesbia, leave off talking and thinking like a child; look
+me in the face and listen to me, for I am going to speak seriously; and
+with me, when I am in earnest, what is said once is said for ever.'
+
+Lady Maulevrier grasped her granddaughter's arm with long slender
+fingers which held it as tightly as the grasp of a vice. She drew the
+girl's slim figure round till they were face to face, looking into each
+other's eyes, the dowager's eagle countenance lit up with impassioned
+feeling, severe, awful as the face of one of the fatal sisters, the
+avengers of blood, the harbingers of doom.
+
+'Lesbia, I think I have been good to you, and kind to you,' she said.
+
+'You have been all that is kind and dear,' faltered Lesbia.
+
+'Then give me measure for measure. My life has been a hard one, child;
+hard and lonely, and loveless and joyless. My son, to whom I devoted
+myself in the vigour of youth and in the prime of life, never loved me,
+never repaid me for my love. He spent his days far away from me, when
+his presence would have gladdened my difficult life. He died in a
+strange land. Of his three children, you are the one I took into my
+heart. I did my duty to the others; I lavished my love upon you. Do not
+give me cursing instead of blessing. Do not give me a stone instead of
+bread. I have built every hope of happiness or pleasure in this world
+upon you and your obedience. Obey me, be true to me, and I will make you
+a queen, and I will sit in the shadow of your throne. I will toil for
+you, and be wise for you. You shall have only to shine, and dazzle, and
+enjoy the glory of life. My beautiful darling, for pity's sake do not
+give yourself over to folly.'
+
+'Did not you marry for love, grandmother?'
+
+'No, Lesbia. Lord Maulevrier and I got on very well together, but ours
+was no love-match.'
+
+'Does nobody in our rank ever marry for love? are all marriages a mere
+exchange and barter?'
+
+'No, there are love-matches now and then, which often turn out badly.
+But, my darling, I am not asking you to marry for rank or for money. I
+am only asking you to wait till you find your mate among the noblest in
+the land. He may be the handsomest and most accomplished of men, a man
+born to win women's hearts; and you may love him as fervently as ever a
+village girl loved her first lover. I am not going to sacrifice you, or
+to barter you, dearest. I mean to marry you to the best and noblest
+young man of his day. You shall never be asked to stoop to the unworthy,
+not even if worthlessness wore strawberry leaves in his cap, and owned
+the greatest estate in the land.'
+
+'And if--instead of waiting for this King Arthur of yours--I were to do
+as Iseult did--as Guinevere did--choose for myself----'
+
+'Iseult and Guinevere were wantons. I wonder that you can name them in
+comparison with yourself.'
+
+'If I were to marry a good and honourable man who has his place to make
+in the world, would you never forgive me?'
+
+'You mean Mr. Hammond? You may just as well speak plainly,' said Lady
+Maulevrier, freezingly. 'If you were capable of such idiocy as that,
+Lesbia, I would pluck you out of my heart like a foul weed. I would
+never look upon you, or hear your name spoken, or think of you again as
+long as I lived. My life would not last very long after that blow. Old
+age cannot bear such shocks. Oh, Lesbia, I have been father and mother
+to you; do not bring my grey hairs in sorrow to the grave.'
+
+Lesbia gave a deep sigh, and brushed the tears from her cheeks. Yes, the
+very idea of such a marriage was foolishness. Just now, in the pine
+wood, carried away by the force of her lover's passion, by her own
+softer feelings, it had seemed to her as if she could count the world
+well lost for his sake; but now, at Lady Maulevrier's feet, she became
+again true to her training, and the world was too much to lose.
+
+'What can I do, grandmother?' she asked, submissively, despairingly. 'He
+loves me, and I love him. How can I tell him that he and I can never be
+anything to each other in this world?'
+
+'Refer him to me. I will give him his answer.'
+
+'No, no; that will not do. I have promised to answer him myself. He has
+gone for a walk on the hills, and will come back at four o'clock for my
+answer.'
+
+'Sit down at that table, and write as I dictate.'
+
+'But a letter will be so formal.'
+
+'It is the only way in which you can answer him. When he comes back from
+his walk you will have left Fellside. I shall send you off to St. Bees
+with Fräulein. You must never look upon that man's face again.'
+
+Lesbia brushed away a few more tears, and obeyed. She had been too well
+trained to attempt resistance. Defiance was out of the question.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+'THE GREATER CANTLE OF THE WORLD IS LOST.'
+
+
+The sky was still cloudless when John Hammond strolled slowly up the
+leafy avenue at Fellside. He had been across the valley and up the hill
+to Easedale Tarn, and then by rough untrodden ways, across a chaos of
+rock and heather, into a second valley, long, narrow, and sterile, known
+as Far Easedale, a desolate gorge, a rugged cleft in the heart of the
+mountains. The walk had been long and laborious; but only in such
+clambering and toiling, such expenditure of muscular force and latent
+heat, could the man's restless soul endure those long hours of suspense.
+
+'How will she answer me? Oh, my God! how will she answer?' he said
+within himself, as he walked up the romantic winding road, which made so
+picturesque an approach to Lady Maulevrier's domain, 'Is my idol gold or
+clay? How will she come through the crucible? Oh, dearest, sweetest,
+loveliest, only be true to the instinct of your womanhood, and my cup
+will be full of bliss, and all my days will flow as sweetly as the
+burden of a song. But if you prove heartless, if you love the world's
+wealth better than you love me--ah! then all is over, and you and I are
+lost to each other for ever. I have made up my mind.'
+
+His face settled into an expression of indomitable determination, as of
+a man who would die rather than be false to his own purpose. There was
+no glow of hope in his heart. He had no deep faith in the girl he loved;
+indeed in his heart of hearts he knew that this being to whom he had
+trusted his hopes of bliss was no heroine. She was a lovely, loveable
+girl, nothing more. How would she greet him when they met presently on
+the tennis lawn? With tears and entreaties, and pretty little
+deprecating speeches, irresolution, timidity, vacillation, perhaps;
+hardly with heroic resolve to act and dare for his sake.
+
+There was no one on the tennis lawn when he went there, though the hour
+was close at hand at which Lesbia had promised to give him his answer.
+He sat down in one of the low chairs, glad to rest after his long ramble
+having had no refreshment but a bottle of soda-water and a biscuit at
+the cottage by Easedale Tarn. He waited, calmly as to outward seeming,
+but with a heavy heart.
+
+'If it were Mary now whom I loved, I should have little fear of the
+issue,' he thought, weighing his sweetheart's character, as he weighed
+his chances of success. 'That young termagant would defy the world for
+her lover.'
+
+He sat in the summer silence for nearly half-an-hour, and still there
+was no sign of Lady Lesbia. Her satin-lined workbasket, with the work
+thrown carelessly across it, was still on the rustic table, just as she
+had left it when they went to the pine wood. Waiting was weary work when
+the bliss of a lifetime trembled in the balance; and yet he did not want
+to be impatient. She might find it difficult to get away from her
+family, perhaps. She was closely watched and guarded, as the most
+precious thing at Fellside.
+
+At last the clock struck five, and Hammond could endure delay no longer.
+He went round by the flower garden to the terrace before the
+drawing-room windows, and through an open window to the drawing-room.
+
+Lady Maulevrier was in her accustomed seat, with her own particular
+little table, magazines, books, newspapers at her side. Lady Mary was
+pouring out the tea, a most unusual thing; and Maulevrier was sitting on
+a stool at her feet, with his knees up to his chin, very warm and dusty,
+eating pound cake.
+
+'Where the mischief have you been hiding yourself all day, Jack?' he
+called out as Hammond appeared, looking round the room as he entered,
+with eager, interrogating eyes, for that one figure which was absent.
+
+'I have been for a walk.'
+
+'You might have had the civility to announce your design, and Molly and
+I would have shared your peregrinations.'
+
+'I am sorry that I lost the privilege of your company.'
+
+'I suppose you lost your luncheon, which was of more importance,' said
+Maulevrier.
+
+'Will you have some tea?' asked Mary, who looked more womanly than usual
+in a cream-coloured surah gown--one of her Sunday gowns.
+
+She had a faint hope that by this essentially feminine apparel she might
+lessen the prejudicial effect of Maulevrier's cruel story about the
+fox-hunt.
+
+Mr. Hammond answered absently, hardly looking at Mary, and quite
+unconscious of her pretty gown.
+
+'Thanks, yes,' he said, taking the cup and saucer, and looking at the
+door by which he momently expected Lady Lesbia's entrance, and then, as
+the door did not open, he looked down at Mary, very busy with china
+teapots and a brass kettle which hissed and throbbed over a spirit lamp.
+
+'Won't you have some cake,' she asked, looking up at him gently, grieved
+at the distress and disappointment in his face. 'I am sure you must be
+dreadfully hungry.'
+
+'Not in the least, thanks. How came you to be entrusted with those
+sacred vessels, Lady Mary? What has become of Fräulein and your sister?'
+
+'They have rushed off to St. Bees. Grandmother thought Lesbia looking
+pale and out of spirits, and packed her off to the seaside at a minute's
+notice.'
+
+'What! She has left Fellside?' asked Hammond, paling suddenly, as if a
+man had struck him. 'Lady Maulevrier, do I understand that Lady Lesbia
+has gone away?'
+
+He asked the question in an authoritative tone, with the air of a man
+who had a right to be answered. The dowager wondered at his surpassing
+insolence.
+
+'My granddaughter has gone to the seaside with her governess,' she said,
+haughtily.
+
+'At a minute's notice?'
+
+'At a minute's notice. I am not in the habit of hesitating about any
+step which I consider necessary for my grandchildren's welfare.'
+
+She looked him full in the face, with those falcon eyes of hers; and he
+gave her back a look as resolute, and every whit as full of courage and
+of pride.
+
+'Well,' he said, after a very perceptible pause, 'no doubt your ladyship
+has done wisely, and I must submit to your jurisdiction. But I had asked
+Lady Lesbia a question, and I had been promised an answer.'
+
+'Your question has been answered by Lady Lesbia. She left a note for
+you,' replied Lady Maulevrier.
+
+'Thanks,' answered Mr. Hammond, briefly, and he hurried from the room
+without another word.
+
+The letter was on the table in his bedroom. He had little hope of any
+good waiting for him in a letter so written. The dowager and the world
+had triumphed over a girl's dawning love, no doubt.
+
+This was Lesbia's letter:
+
+    'Dear Mr. Hammond,--Lady Maulevrier desires me to say that the
+    proposal which you honoured me by making this morning is one which I
+    cannot possibly accept, and that any idea of an engagement between
+    you and me could result only in misery and humiliation to both. She
+    thinks it best, under these circumstances, that we should not again
+    meet, and I shall therefore have left Fellside before you receive
+    this letter.
+
+    'With all good wishes, very faithfully yours,
+
+    'LESBIA HASELDEN.'
+
+'Very faithfully mine--faithful to her false training, to the worldly
+mind that rules her; faithful to the gods of this world--Belial and
+Mammon, and the Moloch Fashion. Poor cowardly soul! She loves me, and
+owns as much, yet weakly flies from me, afraid to trust the strong arm
+and the brave heart of the man who loves her, preferring the glittering
+shams of the world to the reality of true and honest love. Well, child,
+I have weighed you in the balance and found you wanting. Would to God it
+had been otherwise! If you had been brave and bold for love's sake,
+where is that pure and perfect chrysolite for which I would have
+bartered you?'
+
+He flung himself into a chair, and sat with his head bowed upon his
+folded arms, and his eyes not innocent of tears. What would he not have
+given to find truth and courage and scorn of the world's wealth in that
+heart which he had tried to win. Did he think her altogether heartless
+because she so glibly renounced him? No, he was too just for that. He
+called her only half-hearted. She was like the cat in the adage,
+'Letting I dare not, wait upon I would.' But he told himself with one
+deep sigh of resignation that she was lost to him for ever.
+
+'I have tried her, and found her not worth the winning,' he said.
+
+The house, even the lovely landscape smiling under his windows, the
+pastoral valley, smooth lake and willowy island, seemed hateful to him.
+He felt himself hemmed round by those green hills, by yonder brown and
+rugged wall of Nabb Scar, stifled for want of breathing space. The
+landscape was lovely enough, but it was like a beautiful grave. He
+longed to get away from it.
+
+'Another man would follow her to St. Bees,' he said. 'I will not.'
+
+He flung a few things into a Gladstone bag, sat down, and wrote a brief
+note to Maulevrier, asking him to make his excuses to her ladyship. He
+had made up his mind to go to Keswick that afternoon, and would rejoin
+his friend to-morrow, at Carlisle. This done, he rang for Maulevrier's
+valet, and asked that person to look after his luggage and bring it on
+to Scotland with his master's things; and then, without a word of adieu
+to anyone, John Hammond went out of the house, with the Gladstone bag in
+his hand, and shook the dust of Fellside off his feet.
+
+He ordered a fly at the Prince of Wales's Hotel, and drove to Keswick,
+whence he went on to the Lodore. The gloom and spaciousness of
+Derwentwater, grey in the gathering dusk, suited his humour better than
+the emerald prettiness of Grasmere--the roar of the waterfall made music
+in his ear. He dined in a private room, and spent the evening roaming on
+the shores of the lake, and at eleven o'clock went back to his hotel and
+sat late into the night reading Heine, and thinking of the girl who had
+refused him.
+
+Mr. Hammond's letter was delivered to Lord Maulevrier five minutes
+before dinner, as he sat in the drawing-room with her ladyship and Mary.
+Poor Mary had put on another pretty gown for dinner, still bent upon
+effacing Mr. Hammond's image of her as a tousled, frantic creature in
+torn and muddy raiment. She sat watching the door, just as Hammond had
+watched it three hours ago.
+
+'So,' said Maulevrier, 'your ladyship has succeeded in driving my friend
+away. Hammond has left Fellside, and begs me to convey to you his
+compliments and his grateful acknowledgment of all your kindness.'
+
+'I hope I have not been uncivil to him,' answered Lady Maulevrier
+coldly. 'As you had both made up your minds to go to-morrow, it can
+matter very little that he should go to-day.'
+
+Mary looked down at the ribbon and lace on her prettiest frock, and
+thought that it mattered a great deal to her. Yet, if he had stayed,
+would he have seen her frock or her? With his bodily eyes, perhaps, but
+not with the eyes of his mind. Those eyes saw only Lesbia.
+
+'No, perhaps it hardly matters,' answered Maulevrier, with suppressed
+anger. 'The man is not worth talking about or thinking about. What is
+he? Only the best, truest, bravest fellow I ever knew.'
+
+'There are shepherds and guides in Grasmere of whom we could say almost
+as much,' said Lady Maulevrier, 'yet you would scarcely expect me to
+encourage one of them to pay his addresses to your sister? Pray spare us
+all nonsense-talk, Maulevrier. This business is very well ended. You
+ought never to have brought Mr. Hammond here.'
+
+'I am sure of that now. I am very sorry I did bring him.'
+
+'Oh, the man will not die for love. A disappointment of that kind is
+good for a young man in his position. It will preserve him from more
+vulgar entanglements, and perhaps from the folly of a too early
+marriage.'
+
+'That is a mighty philosophical way of looking at the matter.'
+
+'It is the only true way. I hope when you are my age you will have
+learnt to look at everything in a philosophical spirit.'
+
+'Well, Lady Maulevrier, you have had it all your own way,' said the
+young man, walking up and down the room in an angry mood. 'I hope you
+will never be sorry for having come between two people who loved each
+other, and might have made each other happy.'
+
+'I shall never be sorry for having saved my granddaughter from an
+imprudent marriage. Give me your arm, Maulevrier, and let me hear no
+more about Mr. Hammond. We have all had quite enough of him,' said her
+ladyship, as the butler announced dinner.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+'SINCE PAINTED OR NOT PAINTED ALL SHALL FADE.'
+
+
+Fräulein Müller and her charge returned from St. Bees after a sojourn of
+about three weeks upon that quiet shore: but Lady Lesbia did not appear
+to be improved in health or spirits by the revivifying breezes of the
+ocean.
+
+'It is a dull, horrid place, and I was bored to death there!' she said,
+when Mary asked how she had enjoyed herself. 'There was no question of
+enjoyment. Grandmother took it into her head that I was looking ill, and
+sent me to the sea; but I should have been just as well at Fellside.'
+
+This meant that between Lesbia and that distinctly inferior being, her
+younger sister, there was to be no confidence. Mary had watched the
+life-drama acted under her eyes too closely not to know all about it,
+and was not inclined to be so put off.
+
+That pale perturbed countenance of John Hammond's, those eager inquiring
+eyes looking to the door which opened not, had haunted Mary's waking
+thoughts, had even mingled with the tangled web of her dreams. Oh, how
+could any woman scorn such love? To be so loved, and by such a man,
+seemed to Mary the perfection of earthly bliss. She had never been
+educated up to those wider and loftier views of life, which teach a
+woman that houses and lands, place and power, are the supreme good.
+
+'I can't understand how you could treat that noble-minded man so badly,'
+she exclaimed one day, when she and Lesbia were alone in the library,
+and after she had sat for ever so long, staring out of the window,
+meditating upon her sister's cruelty.
+
+'Of whom are you speaking, pray?'
+
+'As if you didn't know! Of Mr. Hammond.'
+
+'And pray, how do you know that he is noble-minded, or that I treated
+him badly?'
+
+'Well, as to his being noble-minded, that jumps to the eyes, as French
+books say. As for your treatment of him, I was looking on all the time,
+and I know how unkind you were, and I heard him talking to you in the
+fir-copse that day.'
+
+'You were listening' cried Lesbia indignantly.
+
+'I was not listening! I was passing by. And if people choose to carry on
+their love affairs out of doors they must expect to be overheard. I
+heard him pleading to you, telling you how he would work for you, fight
+the battle of life for you, asking you to be trustful and brave for his
+sake. But you have a heart of stone. You and grandmother both have
+hearts of stone. I think she must have taken out your heart when you
+were little, and put a stone in its place.'
+
+'Really,' said Lesbia, trying to carry things with a high hand, albeit
+her very human heart was beating passionately all the time, 'I think you
+ought to be very grateful to me--and grandmother--for refusing Mr.
+Hammond.'
+
+'Why grateful?'
+
+'Because it leaves you a chance of getting him for yourself; and
+everybody can see that you are over head and ears in love with him. That
+jumps to the eyes, as you say.'
+
+Mary turned crimson, trembled with rage, looked at her sister as if she
+would kill her, for a moment or so, and finally burst into tears.
+
+'That is not true, and it is shameful for you to say such a thing,' she
+cried.
+
+'Why, what a virago you are, Mary. Well, I'm very glad it is not true.
+Mr. Hammond is--yes, I will be quite candid with you--he is the only man
+I am ever likely to admire for his own sake. He is good, brave, clever,
+all that you think him. But you and I do not live in a world in which
+girls are free to follow their own inclinations. I should break Lady
+Maulevrier's heart if I were to make a foolish marriage; and I owe her
+too much to set her wishes at naught, or to make her declining years
+unhappy. I must obey her, at any cost to my own feelings. Please never
+mention Mr. Hammond's name. I'm sure I've had quite enough unhappiness
+about him.'
+
+'I see,' said Mary, bitterly. 'It is your own pain you think of, not
+his. He may suffer, so long as you are not worried.'
+
+'You are an impertinent chit,' retorted Lesbia, 'and you know nothing
+about it.'
+
+After this there was no more said about Mr. Hammond; but Mary did not
+forget him. She wrote long letters to her brother, who was still in
+Scotland, shooting, deer-stalking, fishing, killing something or other
+daily, in the most approved fashion of an Englishman taking his
+pleasure. Maulevrier occasionally repaid her with a telegram; but he was
+not a good correspondent. He declared that life was too short for
+letter-writing.
+
+Summer was gone; the lake was no longer a shining emerald floor, dotted
+with the reflection of the flock upon the verdant slopes above it, but
+dull and grey of hue, and broken by white-edged wavelets. Patches of
+snow gleamed on the misty heights of Helvellyn, and the autumn winds
+howled and shrieked around Fellside in the evenings, when all the
+shutters were shut, and the outside world seemed little more than an
+idea: that mystic hour when the sheep are slumbering under the starry
+sky, and when, as the Westmoreland peasant believes, the fairies help
+the housewife at her spinning-wheel.
+
+Those October evenings were very long and weary for Lesbia and her
+sister. Lady Maulevrier read and mused in her low chair beside the fire,
+with her books piled upon her own particular table, and lighted by her
+own particular lamp. She talked very little, but she was always gracious
+to her granddaughters and their governess, and she liked them to be with
+her in the evening. Lesbia played or sang, or sat at work at her
+basket-table, which occupied the other side of the fireplace; and
+Fräulein and Mary had the rest of the room to themselves, as it were,
+those two places by the hearth being sacred, as if dedicated to
+household gods. Mary read immensely in those long evenings, devouring
+volume after volume, feeding her imagination with every kind of
+nutriment, good, bad, and indifferent. Fräulein Müller knitted a woollen
+shawl, which seemed to have neither beginning, middle, nor end, and was
+always ready for conversation, but there were times when silence brooded
+over the scene for long intervals, and when every sound of the light
+wood-ashes dropping on the tiled hearth was distinctly audible.
+
+This state of things went on for about three weeks after Lesbia's return
+from St. Bees, Lady Maulevrier watchful of her granddaughter all the
+time, though saying nothing. She saw that Lesbia was not happy, not as
+she had been in the time before the coming of John Hammond. She had
+never been particularly gay or light-hearted, never gifted with the wild
+spirits and buoyancy which make girlhood so lovely a season to some
+natures, a time of dance and song and joyousness, a morning of life
+steeped in the beauty and gladness of the universe. She had never been
+gay as young lambs and foals and fawns and kittens and puppy dogs are
+gay, by reason of the well-spring of delight within them, needing no
+stimulus from the outside world. She had been just a little inclined to
+murmur at the dulness of her life at Fellside; yet she had borne herself
+with a placid sweetness which had been Lady Maulevrier's delight. But
+now there was a marked change in her manner. She was not the less
+submissive and dutiful in her bearing to her grandmother, whom she both
+loved and feared; but there were moments of fretfulness and impatience
+which she could not conceal. She was captious and sullen in her manner
+to Mary and the Fräulein. She would not walk or drive with them, or
+share in any of their amusements. Sometimes of an evening that studious
+silence of the drawing-room was suddenly broken by Lesbia's weary sigh,
+breathed unawares as she bent over her work.
+
+Lady Maulevrier saw, too, that Lesbia's cheek was paler than of old, her
+eyes less bright. There was a heavy look that told of broken slumbers,
+there was a pinched look in that oval check. Good heavens! if her beauty
+were to pale and wane, before society had bowed down and worshipped it;
+if this fair flower were to fade untimely; if this prize rose in the
+garden of beauty were to wither and decay before it won the prize.
+
+Her ladyship was a woman of action, and no sooner did this fear shape
+itself in her mind than she took steps to prevent the evil her thoughts
+foreshadowed.
+
+Among those friends of her youth and allies of her house with whom she
+had always maintained an affectionate correspondence was Lady Kirkbank,
+the fashionable wife of a sporting baronet, owner of a castle in
+Scotland, a place in Yorkshire, a villa at Cannes, and a fine house in
+Arlington Street, with an income large enough for their enjoyment. When
+Lady Diana Angersthorpe shone forth in the West End world as the
+acknowledged belle of the season, the star of Georgina Lorimer was
+beginning to wane. She was the eldest daughter of Colonel Lorimer, a man
+of good old family, and a fine soldier, who had fought shoulder to
+shoulder with Gough and Lawrence, and who had contrived to make a figure
+in society with very small means. Georgina's sisters had all married
+well. It was a case of necessity, the Colonel told them; they must
+either marry or gravitate ultimately to the workhouse. So the Miss
+Lorimers made the best use of their youth and freshness, and 'no good
+offer refused' was the guiding rule of their young lives. Lucy married
+an East India merchant, and set up a fine house in Porchester Terrace.
+Maud married wealth personified in the person of a leading member of the
+Tallow Chandlers' Company, and had her town house and country house, and
+as fine a set of diamonds as a duchess.
+
+But Georgina, the eldest, trifled with her chances, and her
+twenty-seventh birthday beheld her pouring out her father's tea in a
+small furnished house in a street off Portland Place, which the Colonel
+had hired on his return from India, and which he declared himself unable
+to maintain another year.
+
+'Directly the season is over I shall give up housekeeping and take a
+lodging at Bath,' said Colonel Lorimer. 'If you don't like Bath all the
+year round you can stay with your sisters.'
+
+'That is the last thing I am likely to do,' answered Georgina; 'my
+sisters were barely endurable when they were single and poor. They are
+quite intolerable now they are married and rich. I would sooner live in
+the monkey-house at the Zoological than stay with either Lucy or Maud.'
+
+'That's rank envy,' retorted her father 'You can't forgive them for
+having done so much better than you.'
+
+'I can't forgive them for having married snobs. When I marry I shall
+marry a gentleman.'
+
+'When!' echoed the parent, with a sneering laugh. 'Hadn't you better say
+"if"?'
+
+At this period Georgina's waning good looks were in some measure
+counterbalanced by the cumulative effects of half a dozen seasons in
+good society, which had given style to her person, ease to her manners,
+and sharpness to her tongue. Nobody in society said sharper or more
+unpleasant things than Miss Lorimer, and by virtue of this gift she got
+invited about a great deal more than she might have done had she been
+distinguished for sweetness of speech and manner. Georgie Lorimer's
+presence at a dinner table gave just that pungent flavour which is like
+the faint suspicion of garlic in a fricassee or of tarragon in a salad.
+
+Now in this very season, when Colonel Lorimer was inclined to speak of
+his daughter, as Sainte Beuve wrote of Musset, as a young woman with a
+very brilliant past, a lucky turn of events gave Georgina a fresh start
+in life, which may be called a new departure. Lady Diana Angersthorpe,
+the belle of the season, took a fancy to her, was charmed with her sharp
+tongue and acute sense of the ridiculous. The two became fast friends,
+and were seen everywhere together. The best men all flocked round the
+beauty, and all talked to the beauty's companion: and before the season
+was over, Sir George Kirkbank, who had half made up his mind to
+propose to Lady Diana, found himself engaged to that uncommonly jolly
+girl, Lady Diana's friend. Georgina spent August and September with Lady
+Di, at the Marchioness of Carisbroke's delightful villa in the Isle of
+Wight, and Sir George kept his yacht at Cowes all the time, and was in
+constant attendance upon his fiancée. It was George and Georgie
+everywhere. In October Colonel Lorimer had the profound pleasure of
+giving away his daughter, before the altar in St. George's, Hanover
+Square, and it may be said of him that nothing in his relations with
+that young lady became him better than his manner of parting with her.
+
+So the needy Colonel's daughter became Lady Kirkbank, and in the
+following spring Diana Angersthorpe was married at the same St. George's
+to the Earl of Maulevrier. The friends were divided by distance and by
+circumstance as the years rolled on; but friendship was steadily
+maintained; and a regular correspondence with Lady Kirkbank, whose pen
+was as sharp as her tongue, was one of the means by which Lady
+Maulevrier had kept herself thoroughly posted in all those small events,
+unrecorded by newspapers, which make up the secret history of society.
+
+It was of her old friend Georgie that her ladyship thought in her
+present anxiety. Lady Kirkbank had more than once suggested that Lady
+Maulevrier's granddaughters should vary the monotony of Fellside by a
+visit to her place near Doncaster, or her castle north of Aberdeen; but
+her ladyship had evaded these friendly suggestions, being very jealous
+of any strange influence upon Lesbia's life. Now, however, there had
+come a time when Lesbia must have a complete change of scenery and
+surroundings, lest she should pine and dwindle in sullen submission to
+fate, or else defy the world and elope with John Hammond.
+
+Now, therefore, Lady Maulevrier decided to accept Lady Kirkbank's
+hospitality. She told her friend the whole story with perfect frankness,
+and her letter was immediately answered by a telegram.
+
+'I start for Scotland to-morrow, will break my journey by staying a
+night at Fellside, and will take Lady Lesbia on to Kirkbank with me next
+day, if she can be ready to go.'
+
+'She shall be ready,' said Lady Maulevrier.
+
+She told Lesbia that she had accepted an invitation for her, and that
+she was to go to Kirkbank Castle the day after to-morrow. She was
+prepared for unwillingness, resistance even; but Lesbia received the
+news with evident pleasure.
+
+'I shall be very glad to go,' she said, 'this place is so dull. Of
+course I shall be sorry to leave you, grandmother, and I wish you would
+go with me; but any change will be a relief. I think if I had to stay
+here all the winter, counting the days and the hours, I should go out of
+my mind.'
+
+The tears came into her eyes, but she wiped them away hurriedly, ashamed
+of her emotion.
+
+'My dearest child, I am so sorry for you,' murmured Lady Maulevrier.
+'But believe me the day will come when you will be very glad that you
+conquered the first foolish inclination of your girlish heart.'
+
+'Yes, I daresay, when I am eighty,' Lesbia answered, impatiently. She
+had made up her mind to submit to the inevitable. She had loved John
+Hammond--had been as near breaking her heart for him as it was in her
+nature to break her heart for anybody; but she wanted to make a great
+marriage, to be renowned and admired. She had been reared and trained
+for that; and she was not going to belie her training.
+
+A visitor from the great London world was so rare an event that there
+was naturally a little excitement in the idea of Lady Kirkbank's
+arrival. The handsomest and most spacious of the spare bedrooms was
+prepared for the occasion. The housekeeper was told that the dinner must
+be perfect. There must be nothing old-fashioned or ponderous; there must
+be mind as well as matter in everything. Rarely did Lady Maulevrier look
+at a bill of fare; but on this particular morning she went carefully
+through the menu, and corrected it with her own hand.
+
+A pair of post-horses brought Lady Kirkbank and her maid from Windermere
+station, in time for afternoon tea, and the friends who had only met
+twice within the last forty years, embraced each other on the threshold
+of Lady Maulevrier's morning-room.
+
+'My dearest Di,' cried Lady Kirkbank, 'what a delight to see you again
+after such ages; and what a too lovely spot you have chosen for your
+retreat from the world, the flesh, and the devil. If I could be a
+recluse anywhere, it would be amongst just such delicious surroundings.'
+
+Without, twilight shades were gathering; within, there was only the
+light of a fire and a shaded lamp upon the tea table; there was just
+light enough for the two women to see each other's faces, and the change
+which time had wrought there.
+
+Never did womanhood in advanced years offer a more striking contrast
+than that presented by the woman of fashion and the recluse. Lady
+Maulevrier was almost as handsome in the winter of her days as she had
+been when life was in its spring. The tall, slim figure, erect as a
+dart, the delicately chiselled features and alabaster complexion, the
+soft silvery hair, the perfect hand, whiter and more transparent than
+the hand of girlhood, the stately movements and bearing, all combined to
+make Lady Maulevrier a queen among women. Her brocade gown of a deep
+shade of red, with a border of dark sable on cuffs and collar, suggested
+a portrait by Velasquez. She wore no ornaments except the fine old
+Brazilian diamonds which flashed and sparkled upon her slender fingers.
+
+If Lady Maulevrier looked like a picture in the Escurial, Lady Kirkbank
+resembled a caricature in _La Vie Parisienne_. Everything she wore was
+in the very latest fashion of the Parisian _demi-monde_, that
+exaggerated elegance of a fashion plate which only the most exquisite of
+women could redeem from vulgarity. Plush, brocade, peacock's feathers,
+golden bangles, mousquetaire gloves, a bonnet of purple plumage set off
+by ornaments of filagree gold, an infantine little muff of lace and wild
+flowers, buttercups and daisies; and hair, eyebrows and complexion as
+artificial as the flowers on the muff.
+
+All that art could do to obliterate the traces of age had been done for
+Georgina Kirkbank. But seventy years are not to be obliterated easily,
+and the crow's feet showed through the bloom de Ninon, and the eyes
+under the painted arches were glassy and haggard, the carnation lips had
+a withered look. Age was made all the more palpable by the artifice
+which would have disguised it.
+
+Lady Maulevrier suffered an absolute shock at beholding the friend of
+her youth. She had not accustomed herself to the idea that women in
+society could raddle their cheeks, stain their lips, and play tricks
+before high heaven with their eyebrows and eyelashes. In her own youth
+painted faces had been the ghastly privilege of a class of womankind of
+which the women of society were supposed to know nothing. Persons who
+showed their ankles and rouged their cheeks were to be seen of an
+afternoon in Bond Street; but Lady Diana Angersthorpe had been taught to
+pass them by as if she saw them not, to behold without seeing these
+creatures outside the pale. And now she saw her own dearest friend, a
+person distinctly within the pale, plastered with bismuth and stained
+with carmine, and wearing hair of a colour so obviously false and
+inharmonious, that child-like faith could hardly accept it as reality.
+Forty years ago Lady Kirkbank's long ringlets had been darkest glossiest
+brown, to-day she wore a tousled fringe of bright yellow, piquantly
+contrasting with Vandyke brown eyebrows.
+
+It took Lady Maulevrier some moments to get over the shock. She drew a
+chair to the fire and established her friend in it, and then, with a
+little gasp, she said:
+
+'I am charmed to see you again, Georgie!'
+
+'You darling, I was sure you would be glad. But you must find me awfully
+changed--awfully.'
+
+For worlds Lady Maulevrier could not have denied this truth. Happily
+Lady Kirkbank did not wait for an answer.
+
+'Society is so wearing, and George and I never seem to get an interval
+of quiet. Kirkbank is to be full of men next week. Your granddaughter
+will have a good time.'
+
+'There will be a few women, of course?'
+
+'Oh, yes, there's no avoiding that; only one doesn't reckon them. Sir
+George only counts his guns. We expect a splendid season. I shall send
+you some birds of my own shooting.'
+
+'You shoot!' exclaimed Lady Maulevrier, amazed.
+
+'Shoot! I should think I do. What else is there to amuse one in
+Scotland, after the salmon fishing is over? I have never missed a season
+for the last thirty years, unless we have been abroad.'
+
+'Please, don't innoculate Lesbia with your love of sport.'
+
+'What! you wouldn't like her to shoot? Well, perhaps you are right. It
+is hardly the thing for a pretty girl with her fortune to make. It
+spoils the delicacy of the skin. But I'm afraid she'll find Kirkbank
+dull if she doesn't go out with the guns. She can meet us with the rest
+of the women at luncheon. We have some capital picnic luncheons on the
+moor, I can assure you.'
+
+'I know she will enjoy herself with you. She has been accustomed to a
+very quiet life here.'
+
+'It is a lovely spot; but I own I cannot understand how you can have
+lived here exclusively during all these years--you who used to be all
+life and fire, loving change, action, political and diplomatic society,
+to dance upon the crest of the wave, as it were. Your whole nature must
+have suffered some curious change.'
+
+Their close intimacy of the past warranted freedom of speech in the
+present.
+
+'My nature did undergo a change, and a severe one,' answered Lady
+Maulevrier, gloomily.
+
+'It was that horrid--and I daresay unfortunate scandal about his
+lordship; and then the sad shock of his death,' murmured Lady Kirkbank,
+sympathetically. 'Most women, with your youth and beauty, would have
+forgotten the scandal and the husband in a twelvemonth, and would have
+made a second marriage more brilliant than the first. But no Indian
+widow who ever performed suttee was more worthy of praise than you, or
+even that person of Ephesus, whose story I have heard somewhere. Indeed,
+I have always spoken of your life as a long suttee. But you mean to
+re-appear in society next season, I hope, when you present your
+granddaughter?'
+
+'I shall certainly go up to London to present her, and possibly I may
+spend the season in town; but I shall feel like Rip Van Winkle.'
+
+'No, no, you won't, my dear Di. You have kept yourself _au courant_, I
+know. Even my silly gossiping letters may have been of _some_ use.'
+
+'They have been most valuable. Let me give you another cup of tea,' said
+Lady Maulevrier, who had been officiating at her own exquisite
+tea-table, an arrangement of inlaid woods, antique silver, and modern
+china, which her friend pronounced a perfect poem.
+
+Indeed, the whole room was poetic, Lady Kirkbank declared, and there are
+many highly praised scenes which less deserve the epithet. The dark red
+walls and cedar dado, the stamped velvet curtains, of an indescribable
+shade between silver-grey and olive, the Sheraton furniture, the
+parqueterie floor and Persian prayer-rugs, the deep yet brilliant hues
+of crackle porcelain and Chinese cloisonné enamel, the artistic
+fireplace, with dog-stove, low brass fender, and ingle-nook recessed
+under the high mantelpiece, all combined to form a luxurious and
+harmonious whole.
+
+Lady Kirkbank admired the _tout ensemble_ in the fitful light of the
+fire, the dim grey of deepening twilight.
+
+'There never was a more delicious cell!' she exclaimed, 'but still I
+should feel it a prison, if I had to spend six weeks in the year in it.
+I never stay more than six weeks anywhere out of London; and I always
+find six weeks more than enough. The first fortnight is rapture, the
+third and fourth weeks are calm content, the fifth is weariness, the
+sixth a fever to be gone. I once tried a seventh week at Pontresina, and
+I hated the place so intensely that I dared not go back there for the
+next three years. But now tell me. Diana, have you really performed
+suttee, have you buried yourself alive in this sweet spot deliberately,
+or has the love of retirement grown upon you, and have you become a kind
+of lotus-eater?'
+
+'I believe I have become a kind of lotus-eater. My retirement here has
+been no sentimental sacrifice to Lord Maulevrier's memory.'
+
+'I am glad to hear that; for I really think the worst possible use a
+woman can make of her life is in wasting it on lamentation for a dead
+and gone husband. Life is odiously short at the best, and it is mere
+imbecility to fritter away any of our scanty portion upon the dead, who
+can never be any the better for our tears.'
+
+'My motive in living at Fellside was not reverence for the dead. And now
+let us talk of the gay world, of which you know all the secrets. Have
+you heard anything more about Lord Hartfield?'
+
+'Ah, there is a subject in which you have reason to be interested. I
+have not forgotten the romance of your youth--that first season in which
+Ronald Hollister used to haunt every place at which you appeared. Do you
+remember that wet afternoon at the Chiswick flower-show, when you and he
+and I took shelter in the orange house, and you two made love to each
+other most audaciously in an atmosphere of orange-blossoms that almost
+stifled me? Yes, those were glorious days!'
+
+'A short summer of gladness, a brief dream,' sighed Lady Maulevrier. 'Is
+young Lord Hartfield like his father?'
+
+'No, he takes after the Ilmingtons; but still there is a look of your
+old sweetheart--yes, I think there is an expression. I have not seen him
+for nearly a year. He is still abroad, roaming about somewhere in search
+of adventures. These young men who belong to the Geographical and the
+Alpine Club are hardly ever at home.'
+
+'But though they may be sometimes lost to society, they are all the
+more worthy of society's esteem when they do appear,' said Lady
+Maulevrier. 'I think there must be an ennobling influence in Alpine
+travel, or in the vast solitudes of the Dark Continent. A man finds
+himself face to face with unsophisticated nature, and with the grandest
+forces of the universe. Professor Tyndall writes delightfully of his
+Alpine experiences; his mind seems to have ripened in the solitude and
+untainted air of the Alps. And I believe Lord Hartfield is a young man
+of very high character and of considerable cultivation, is he not?'
+
+'He is a splendid young fellow. I never heard a word to his
+disparagement, even from those people who pretend to know something bad
+about everybody. What a husband he would make for one of your girls!'
+
+'Admirable! But those perfect arrangements, which seem predestined by
+heaven itself, are so rarely realised on earth,' answered the dowager,
+lightly.
+
+She was not going to show her cards, even to an old friend.
+
+'Well, it would be very sweet if they were to meet next season and fall
+in love with each other,' said Lady Kirkbank. 'He is enormously rich, and
+I daresay your girls will not be portionless.'
+
+'Lesbia may take a modest place among heiresses,' answered Lady
+Maulevrier. 'I have lived so quietly during the last forty years that I
+could hardly help saving money.'
+
+'How nice!' sighed Georgie. 'I never saved sixpence in my life, and am
+always in debt.'
+
+'The little fortune I have saved is much too small for division. Lesbia
+will therefore have all I can leave her. Mary has the usual provision as
+a daughter of the Maulevrier house.'
+
+'And I suppose Lesbia has that provision also?'
+
+'Of course.'
+
+'Lucky Lesbia. I only wish Hartfield were coming to us for the shooting.
+I would engage he should fall in love with her. Kirkbank is a splendid
+place for match-making. But the fact is I am not very intimate with him.
+He is almost always travelling, and when he is at home he is not in our
+set. And now, my dear Diana, tell me more about yourself, and your own
+life in this delicious place.'
+
+'There is so little to tell. The books I have read, the theories of
+literature and art and science which I have adopted and dismissed,
+learnt and forgotten--those are the history of my life. The ideas of the
+outside world reach me here only in books and newspapers; but you who
+have been living in the world must have so much to say. Let me be the
+listener.'
+
+Lady Kirkbank desired nothing better. She rattled on for three-quarters
+of an hour about her doings in the great world, her social triumphs, the
+wonderful things she had done for Sir George, who seemed to be as a
+puppet in her hands, the princes and princelings she had entertained,
+the songs she had composed, the comedy she had written, for private
+representation only, albeit the Haymarket manager was dying to produce
+it, the scathing witticisms with which she had withered her social
+enemies. She would have gone on much longer, but for the gong, which
+reminded her that it was time to dress for dinner.
+
+Half-an-hour later Lady Kirkbank was in the drawing-room, where Mary had
+retired to the most shadowy corner, anxious to escape the gaze of the
+fashionable visitor.
+
+But Lady Kirkbank was not inclined to take much notice of Mary. Lesbia's
+brilliant beauty, the exquisite Greek head, the faultless complexion,
+the deep, violet eyes, caught Georgina Kirkbank's eye the moment she had
+entered the room, and she saw that this girl and no other must be the
+beauty, the beloved and chosen grandchild.
+
+'How do you do, my dear?' she said, taking Lesbia's hand, and then, as
+if with a gush of warm feeling, suddenly drawing the girl towards her
+and kissing her on both cheeks. 'I am going to be desperately fond of
+you, and I hope you will soon contrive to like me--just a little.'
+
+'I feel sure that I shall like you very much,' Lesbia answered sweetly.
+'I am prepared to love you as grandmother's old friend.'
+
+'Oh, my dear, to think that I should ever be the old friend of anybody's
+grandmother!' sighed Lady Kirkbank, with unaffected regret. 'When I was
+your age I used to think all old people odious. It never occurred to me
+that I should live to be one of them.'
+
+'Then you had no dear grandmother whom you loved,' said Lesbia, 'or you
+would have liked old people for her sake.'
+
+'No, my love, I had no grandparents. I had a father, and he was
+all-sufficient--anything beyond him in the ancestral line would have
+been a burden laid upon me greater than I could bear, as the poet says.'
+
+Dinner was announced, and Mary came shyly out of her corner, blushing
+deeply.
+
+'And this is Lady Mary, I suppose?' said Lady Kirkbank, in an off-hand
+way, 'How do you do, my dear? I am going to steal your sister.'
+
+'I am very glad,' faltered Mary. 'I mean I am glad that Lesbia should
+enjoy herself.'
+
+'And some fine day, when Lesbia is married and a great lady, I shall ask
+you to come to Scotland,' said Lady Kirkbank, condescendingly, and then
+she murmured in her friend's ear, as they went to the dining-room,
+'Quite an English girl. Very fresh and frank and nice,' which was great
+praise for such a second-rate young person as Lady Mary.
+
+'What do you think of Lesbia?' asked Lady Maulevrier, in the same
+undertone.
+
+'She is simply adorable. Your letters prepared me to expect beauty, but
+not such beauty. My dear, I thought the progress of the human race was
+all in a downward line since our time; but your granddaughter is as
+handsome as you were in your first season, and that is going very far.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+'NOT YET.'
+
+
+Lady Kirkbank carried off Lesbia early next day, the girl radiant at the
+idea of seeing life under new conditions. She had a few minutes' serious
+talk with her grandmother before she went.
+
+'Lesbia, you are going into the world,' said Lady Maulevrier; 'yes, even
+a country house is the world in little. You will have many admirers
+instead of one; but I think, I believe, that you will be true to me and
+to yourself.'
+
+'You need not fear, grandmother. I have been an idiot; but--but it was
+only a passing folly, and I shall never be so weak again.'
+
+Lesbia's scornful lips and kindling eyes gave intensity to her speech.
+It was evident that she despised herself for that one touch of womanly
+softness which had made her as ready to fall in love with her first
+wooer as any peasant girl in Grasmere Vale.
+
+'I am delighted to hear you speak thus, dearest,' said Lady Maulevrier.
+'And if Mr. Hamilton--Hammond, I mean--should have the audacity to
+follow you to Kirkbank, and to intrude himself upon you there--perhaps
+to persecute you with clandestine addresses----'
+
+'I do not believe he would do anything clandestine,' said Lesbia,
+drawing herself up. 'He is quite above that.'
+
+'My dear child, we know absolutely nothing about him. He has his way to
+make in the world unaided by family or connections. He is
+clever--daring. Such a man cannot help being an adventurer; and an
+adventurer is capable of anything. I warn you to beware of him.'
+
+'I don't suppose I shall ever see his face again,' retorted Lesbia,
+irritably.
+
+She had made up her mind that her life was not to be spoiled, her
+brilliant future sacrificed, for the sake of John Hammond; but the wound
+which she had suffered in renouncing him was still fresh, her feelings
+were still sore. Any contemptuous mention of him stung her to the quick.
+
+'I hope not. And you will beware of other adventurers, Lesbia, men of a
+worse stamp than Mr. Hammond, more experienced in ruse and iniquity, men
+steeped to the lips in worldly knowledge, men who look upon women as
+mere counters in the game of life. The world thinks that I am rich, and
+you will no doubt take rank as an heiress. You will therefore be a mark
+for every spendthrift, noble or otherwise, who wants to restore his
+broken fortunes by a wealthy marriage. And now, my dearest, good-bye.
+Half my heart goes with you. Nothing could induce me to part with you,
+even for a few weeks, except the conviction that it is for your good.'
+
+'But we shall not be parted next year, I hope, grandmother,' said
+Lesbia, affectionately. 'You said something about presenting me, and
+then leaving me in Lady Kirkbank's care for the season. I should not
+like that at all. I want you to go everywhere with me, to teach me all
+the mysteries of the great world. You have always promised me that it
+should be so.'
+
+'And I have always intended that it should be so. I hope that it will be
+so,' answered her grandmother, with a sigh; 'but I am an old woman,
+Lesbia, and I am rooted to this place.'
+
+'But why should you be rooted here? What charm can keep you here, when
+you are so fitted to shine in society? You are old in nothing but years,
+and not even old in years in comparison with women whom we hear of,
+going everywhere and mixing in every fashionable amusement. You are full
+of fire and energy, and as active as a girl. Why should you not enjoy a
+London season, grandmother?' pleaded Lesbia, nestling her head lovingly
+against Lady Maulevrier's shoulder.
+
+'I should enjoy it, dearest, with you. It would be a renewal of my youth
+to see you shine and conquer. I should be as proud as if the glory were
+all my own. Yes, dear, I hope that I shall be a spectator of your
+triumphs. But do not let us plan the future. Life is so full of changes.
+Remember what Horace says----'
+
+'Horace is a bore,' said Lesbia. 'I hate a poet who is always harping
+upon change and death.'
+
+The carriage, which was to take the travellers to Windermere Station,
+was announced at this moment, and Lesbia and her grandmother gave each
+other the farewell embrace.
+
+'You like Lady Kirkbank, I hope?' said Lady Maulevrier, as they went
+towards the hall, where that lady was waiting for them, with Lady Mary
+and Fräulein Müller in attendance upon her.
+
+'She seems very kind, but I should like her better if she did not
+paint--or if she painted better.'
+
+'My dear child I'm afraid it is the fashion of the day, just as it was
+in Pope's time, and we ought to think nothing about it.'
+
+'Well, I suppose I shall get hardened in time.'
+
+'My dearest Lesbia,' shrieked Lady Kirkbank from below, 'remember we
+have to catch a train.'
+
+Lesbia hurried downstairs, followed by Lady Maulevrier, who had to bid
+her friend adieu. The luggage had been sent on in a cart, Lesbia's
+trunks and dress baskets forming no small item. She was so well
+furnished with pretty gowns of all kinds that there had been no
+difficulty in getting her ready for this sudden visit. Her maid was on
+the box beside the coachman. Lady Kirkbank's attendant, a Frenchwoman of
+five-and-thirty, who looked as if she had graduated at Mabille, was to
+occupy the back seat of the landau.
+
+Lady Mary looked after her sister longingly, as the carriage drove down
+the hill. She was going into a new world, to see all kinds of
+people--clever people--distinguished people--musical, artistic,
+political people--hunting and shooting people--while Mary was to stay at
+home all the winter among the old familiar faces. Dearly as she loved
+these hills and vales her heart sank a little at the thought of those
+long lonely months, days and evenings that would be all alike, and which
+must be spent without sympathetic companionship. And there would be
+dreary days on which the weather would keep her a prisoner in her
+luxurious gaol, when the mountains, and the rugged paths beside the
+mountain streams, would be inaccessible, when she would be restricted to
+Fräulein's phlegmatic society, that lady being stout and lazy, fond of
+her meals, and given to afternoon slumbers. Lesbia and Mary were not by
+any means sympathetic; yet, after all, blood is thicker than water; and
+Lesbia was intelligent, and could talk of the things Mary loved, which
+was better than total dumbness, even if she generally took an
+antagonistic view of them.
+
+'I shall miss her dreadfully,' thought Mary, as she strolled listlessly
+in the gardens, where the leaves where falling and the flowers fading.
+
+'I wonder if she will see Mr. Hammond at Lady Kirkbank's?' mused Mary.
+'If he were anything like a lover he would find out all about her visit,
+and seize the opportunity of her being away from grandmother. But then
+if he had been much of a lover he would have followed her to St. Bees.'
+
+Lady Maulevrier sorely missed her favourite grandchild. In a life spent
+in such profound seclusion, so remote from the busy interests of the
+world, this beloved companionship had become a necessity to her. She had
+concentrated her affections upon Lesbia, and the girl's absence made a
+fearful blank. But her ladyship's dignity was not compromised by any
+outward signs of trouble or loss.
+
+She spent her mornings in her own room, reading and writing and musing
+at her leisure; she drove or walked every fine afternoon, sometimes
+alone, sometimes attended by Mary, who hated these stately drives and
+walks. She dined _tête-à-tête_ with Mary, except on those rare occasions
+when there were visitors--the Vicar and his wife, or some wandering star
+from other worlds. Mary lived in profound awe of her grandmother, but
+was of far too frank a nature to be able to adapt her speech or her
+manners to her ladyship's idea of feminine perfection. She was silent
+and shy under those falcon eyes; but she was still the same Mary, the
+girl to whom pretence or simulation of any kind was impossible.
+
+Letters came almost every day from Kirkbank Castle, letters from Lesbia
+describing the bright gay life she was living at that hospitable abode,
+the excursions, the rides, the picnic luncheons after the morning's
+sport, the dinner parties, the dances.
+
+'It is the most delightful house you can imagine,' wrote Lesbia; 'and
+Lady Kirkbank is an admirable hostess. I have quite forgiven her for
+wearing false eyebrows; for after all, you know, one must _have_
+eyebrows; they are a necessity; but why does she not have the two arches
+alike? They are _never_ a pair, and I really think that French maid of
+hers does it on purpose.
+
+'By-the-bye, Lady Kirkbank is going to write to you to beseech you to
+let me go to Cannes and Monte Carlo with her. Sir George insists upon
+it. He says they both like young society, and will be horribly vexed if
+I refuse to go with them. And Lady Kirkbank thinks my chest is just a
+little weak--I almost broke down the other night in that lovely little
+song of Jensen's--and that a winter in the south is just what I want.
+But, of course, dear grandmother, I won't ask you to let me be away so
+long if you think you will miss me.'
+
+'If I think I shall miss her!' repeated Lady Maulevrier. 'Has the girl
+no heart, that she can ask such a question? But can I wonder at that? Of
+what account was I or my love to her father, although I sacrificed
+myself for his good name? Can I expect that she should be of a different
+clay?'
+
+And then, meditating upon the events of the summer that was gone, Lady
+Maulevrier thought--
+
+She renounced her first lover at my bidding; she renounces her love for
+me at the bidding of the world. Or was it not rather self-interest, the
+fear of making a bad marriage, which influenced her in her renunciation
+of Mr. Hammond. It was not obedience to me, it was not love for me which
+made her give him up. It was the selfishness engrained in her race.
+Well, I have heaped my love upon her, because she is fair and sweet, and
+reminds me of my own youth. I must let her go, and try to be happy in
+the knowledge that she is enjoying her life far away from me.'
+
+Lady Maulevrier wrote her consent to the extension of Lesbia's visit,
+and by return of post came a letter from Lesbia which seemed brimming
+over with love, and which comforted the grandmother's wounded heart.
+
+'Lady Kirkbank and I are both agreed, dearest, that you must join us at
+Cannes,' wrote Lesbia. 'At your age it is very wrong of you to spend a
+winter in our horrible climate. You can travel with Steadman and your
+maid. Lady Kirkbank will secure you a charming suite of rooms at the
+hotel, or she would like it still better if you would stay at her own
+villa. Do consent to this plan, dear grandmother, and then we shall not
+be parted for a long winter. Of course Mary would be quite happy at home
+running wild.'
+
+Lady Maulevrier sighed as she read this letter, sighed again, and
+heavily, as she put it back into the envelope. Alas, how many and many a
+year had gone, long, monotonous, colourless years, since she had seen
+that bright southern world which she was now urged to revisit. In fancy
+she saw it again to-day, the tideless sea of deepest sapphire blue, the
+little wavelets breaking on a yellow beach, the white triangular sails,
+the woods full of asphodel and great purple and white lilies, the
+atmosphere steeped in warmth and light and perfume, the glare of white
+houses in the sun, the red and yellow blinds, the pots of green and
+orange and crimson clay, with oleanders abloom, the wonderful glow of
+colour everywhere and upon all things. And then as the eyes of the mind
+recalled these vivid images her bodily eyes looked out upon the
+rain-blotted scene, the mountains rising in a dark and dismal circle
+round that sombre pool below, walling her in from the outer world.
+
+'I am at the bottom of a grave,' she said to herself. 'I am in a living
+tomb, from which there is no escape. Forty years! Forty years of
+patience and hope, for what? For dreams which may never be realised; for
+descendants who may never give me the price of my labours. Yes, I should
+like to go to my dear one. I should like to revisit the South of France,
+to go on to Italy. I should feel young again amidst that eternal,
+unchangeable loveliness. I should forget all I have suffered. But it
+cannot be. Not yet, not yet!'
+
+Presently with a smile of concentrated bitterness she repeated the words
+'Not yet!'
+
+'Surely at my age it must be folly to dream of the future; and yet I
+feel as if there were half a century of life in me, as if I had lost
+nothing in either mental or bodily vigour since I came here forty years
+ago.'
+
+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.
+
+Who could tell how long they might be covered; the winding tracks
+hidden; the narrow forces looking like black water or molten iron
+against that glittering whiteness? Mary could only walk along the road
+by Loughrigg to the bench called 'Rest and be thankful,' from which she
+looked with longing eyes across towards the Langdale Pikes, and to the
+sharp cone-shaped peak, known as Coniston Old Man, just visible above
+the nearer hills. Fräulein Müller suggested that it was in just such
+weather as this that a well brought up young lady, a young lady with
+_Vernunft_ and _Anstand_, should devote herself to the improvement of
+her mind.
+
+'Let us read German this _abscheulich_ afternoon,' said the Fräulein.
+'Suppose we go on with the "Sorrows of Werther."'
+
+'Werther was a fool,' cried Mary; 'any book but that.'
+
+'Will you choose your own book?'
+
+'Let me read Heine.'
+
+Fräulein looked doubtful. There were things in Heine--an all-pervading
+tone--which rendered him hardly an appropriate poet for 'the young
+person.' But Fräulein compromised the matter by letting Mary read Atta
+Troll, the exact bearing of which neither of them understood.
+
+'How beautifully Mr. Hammond read Heine that morning!' said Mary,
+breaking off suddenly from a perfectly automatic reading.
+
+'You did not hear him, did you? You were not there,' said the Fräulein.
+
+'I was not _there_, but I heard him. I--I was sitting on the bank among
+the pine trees.'
+
+'Why did you not come and sit with us? It would have been more ladylike
+than to hide yourself behind the trees.'
+
+Mary blushed crimson.
+
+'I had been in the kennels with Maulevrier; I was not fit to be seen,'
+she said.
+
+'Hardly a ladylike admission,' replied the Fräulein, who felt that with
+Lady Mary her chief duty was to reprove.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+'OF ALL MEN ELSE I HAVE AVOIDED THEE.'
+
+
+It was afternoon. The white hills yonder and all the length of the
+valley were touched here and there with gleams of wintry sunlight, and
+Lady Maulevrier was taking her solitary walk on the terrace in front of
+her house, a stately figure wrapped in a furred mantle, tall, erect,
+moving with measured pace up and down the smooth gravel path. Now and
+then at the end of the walk the dowager stopped for a minute or so, and
+stood as if in deep thought, with her eyes dreamily contemplating the
+landscape. An intense melancholy shadowed her face, as she thus gazed
+with brooding eyes on the naked monotony of those wintry hills. So had
+she looked in many and many a winter, and it seemed to her that her life
+was of a piece with those bleak hills, where in the dismal winter time
+nothing living trod. She stood gazing at the sinking sun, a fiery ball
+shining at the end of a long gallery of crag and rock, like a lamp at
+the end of a corridor; and as she gazed the red round orb dropped
+suddenly behind the edge of a crag, as if she had been an enchantress
+and had dismissed it with a wave of her wand.
+
+'O Lord, how long, how long?' she said. 'How many times have I seen that
+sun go down from this spot, in winter and summer, in spring and autumn!
+And now that the one being I loved and cared for is far away, I feel all
+the weariness and emptiness of my life.'
+
+As she turned to resume her walk she heard the muffled sound of wheels
+in the road below, that road which was completely hidden by foliage in
+summer, but which was now visible here and there between the leafless
+trees. A carriage with a pair of horses was coming along the road from
+Ambleside.
+
+Lady Maulevrier stood and watched until the carriage drew up at the
+lodge gate, and then, when the gate had been opened, slowly ascended the
+winding drive to the house.
+
+She expected no visitor; indeed, there was no one likely to come to her
+from the direction of Ambleside. Her heart began to beat heavily, with
+the apprehension of coming evil. What kind of evil she knew not. Bad
+news about her granddaughter, perhaps, or about Maulevrier. And yet that
+could hardly be. Evil tidings of that kind would have reached her by
+telegram.
+
+Perhaps it was Maulevrier himself. His movements were generally erratic.
+
+Lady Maulevrier hurried back to the house. She went through the
+conservatory, where the warm whiteness of azalia, and spirea, and arum
+lilies contrasted curiously with the cold white snow out of doors, to
+the hall, where a stranger was standing talking to the butler.
+
+He was a man of foreign appearance, wearing a cloak lined with sables,
+and a sable cap, which he removed as Lady Maulevrier approached. He was
+thin and small, with a clear olive complexion, olive inclining to pale
+bronze, sleek raven hair, and black almond-shaped eyes. At the first
+glance Lady Maulevrier knew that he was an Oriental. Her heart sank
+within her, and seemed to grow chill as death at sight of him. Anything
+associated with India was horrible to her.
+
+The stranger came forward to meet her, bowing deferentially. He had
+those lithe, gliding movements which she remembered of old, when she had
+seen princes and dignitaries of the East creeping shoeless to her
+husband's feet.
+
+'Will your ladyship do me the honour to grant me an interview?' he said
+in very good English. 'I have travelled from London expressly for that
+privilege.'
+
+'Then I fear you have wasted your time, sir, whatever your mission may
+be,' the dowager answered, haughtily. 'However, I am willing to hear
+anything you may have to say, if you will be good enough to come this
+way.'
+
+She moved towards the library, the butler preceding her to open the
+door, and the stranger followed her into the spacious room, where coals
+and logs were heaped high upon the wide dog stove, deeply recessed
+beneath the old English mantelpiece.
+
+It was one of the handsomest rooms of the house, furnished with oak
+bookcases about seven feet high, above which vases of Oriental ware and
+varied colouring stood boldly out against the dark oak wall. Richly
+bound books in infinite variety testified to the wealth and taste of the
+owner; while one side of the room was absorbed by a wide Gothic window,
+beyond which appeared the panorama of lake and mountain, beautiful in
+every season. A tawny velvet curtain divided this room from the
+drawing-room; but there was also a strong oak door behind the curtain,
+which was generally closed in cold weather.
+
+Lady Maulevrier went over to this door, and took the precaution to draw
+the bolt, before she seated herself in her arm-chair by the hearth. She
+had her own particular chair in all the rooms she occupied--a chair
+which was sacred as a throne.
+
+She drew off her sealskin gloves, and motioned with a slender white hand
+to the stranger to be seated.
+
+'To whom have I the honour of speaking?' she asked, looking; him through
+and through with an unflinching gaze, as she would have looked at Death
+himself, had the grim skeleton figure come to beckon her.
+
+He handed her a visiting card on which was engraved--
+
+'Louis Asoph, Rajah of Bisnagar.'
+
+'If my memory does not deceive me as to the history of modern India, the
+territory from which you take your title has been absorbed into the
+English dominion?' said Lady Maulevrier.
+
+'It was trafficked away forty-three years ago, stolen, filched from my
+father! but so long as I have power to think and to act I will maintain
+my claim to that land; yes, if only by the empty mockery of a name on a
+visiting card. It is a duty I owe to myself as a man, which I owe still
+more to my murdered father.'
+
+'Have you come all the way from London, and in such weather, only to
+tell me this story?'
+
+She had twisted his card between her fingers as she listened to him, and
+now, with an action at once careless and contemptuous, she flung it upon
+the burning logs. Slight as the action was it was eloquent of scorn for
+the man.
+
+'No, Lady Maulevrier, my mention of this story, with which you are no
+doubt perfectly familiar, is only a preliminary. I have come to claim my
+own, and to appeal to you as a woman of honour to do me justice. Nay, I
+will say as a woman of common honesty; since there is no nice point of
+honour in question, only the plain laws of mine and thine, which I
+believe are the same among all nations and creeds. I come to you, Lady
+Maulevrier, to ask you to restore to me the wealth which your husband
+stole from my father.'
+
+'You come to my house, to me, an old woman, helpless, defenceless, in
+the absence of my grandson, the present Earl, to insult me, and insult
+the dead,' said Lady Maulevrier, white as statuary marble, and as cold
+and calm. 'You come to rake up old lies, and to fling them in the face
+of a solitary woman, old enough to be your mother. Do you think that is
+a noble thing to do? Even in your barbarous Eastern code of morals and
+manners is _that_ the act of a gentleman?'
+
+'We are no barbarians in the East, Lady Maulevrier. I come from the
+cradle of civilisation, the original fount of learning. We were
+scholars and gentleman, priests and soldiers, two thousand years before
+your British ancestors ran wild in their woods, and sacrificed to their
+unknown gods or rocky altars reeking with human blood! I know the errand
+upon which I have come is not a pleasant one, either for you or for me;
+but I come to you strong in the right of a son to claim the heritage
+which was stolen from him by an infamous mother and her more infamous
+paramour----'
+
+'I will not hear another word!' cried Lady Maulevrier, starting to her
+feet, livid with passion. 'Do not dare to pronounce that name in my
+hearing--the name of that abominable woman who brought disgrace and
+dishonour upon my husband and his race.'
+
+'And who brought your husband the wealth of my murdered father,'
+answered the Indian, defiantly. 'Do not ignore that fact, Lady
+Maulevrier. What has become of that fortune--two hundred thousand pounds
+in money and jewels. It was known to have passed into Lord Maulevrier's
+possession after my father was put away by his paid instruments.
+
+'How dare you bring that vile charge against the dead?'
+
+'There are men living in India who know the truth of that charge: men
+who were at Bisnagar when my father, sick and heartbroken, was shut up
+in his deserted harem, hemmed in by spies and traitors, men with murder
+in their faces. There are those who know tint he was strangled by one of
+those wretches, that a grave was dug for him under the marble floor of
+his zenana, a grave in which his bones were found less than a year ago,
+in my presence, and fitly entombed at my bidding. He was said to have
+disappeared of his own free will--to have left his palace under cover of
+night, and sought refuge from possible treachery in another province;
+but there were those, and not a few, who knew the real history of his
+disappearance--who knew, and at the time were ready to testify in any
+court of justice, that he had been got rid of by the Ranee's agents, and
+at Lord Maulevrier's instigation, and that his possessions in money and
+jewels had been conveyed in the palankins that carried the Ranee and her
+women to his lordship's summer retreat near Madras. The Ranee died at
+that retreat six months after her husband's murder, not without
+suspicion of poison, and the wealth which she carried with her when she
+left Bisnagar passed into his lordship's possession. Had your husband
+lived, Lady Maulevrier, this story must have been brought to light.
+There were too many people in Madras interested in sifting the facts.
+There must have been a public inquiry. It was a happy thing for you and
+your race that Lord Maulevrier died before that inquiry had been
+instituted, and that many animosities died with him. Lucky too for you
+that I was a helpless infant at the time, and that the Mahratta
+adventurer to whom my father's territory had been transferred in the
+shuffling of cards at the end of the war was deeply concerned in hushing
+up the story.'
+
+'And pray, why have you nursed your wrath in all these years? Why do
+you intrude on me after nearly half a century, with this legend of
+rapine and murder?'
+
+'Because for nearly half a century I have been kept in profound
+ignorance of my father's fate--in ignorance of my race. Lord
+Maulevrier's jealousy banished me from my mother's arms shortly after my
+father's death. I was sent to the South of France under the care of an
+ayah. My first memories are of a monastery near Marseilles, where I was
+reared and educated by a Jesuit community, where I was baptised and
+brought up in the Roman Catholic faith. By the influence of the Jesuit
+Fathers I was placed in a house of commerce at Marseilles. Funds to
+provide for my education and establishment in life, under very modest
+conditions, were sent periodically by an agent at Madras. It was known
+that I was of East Indian birth, but little more was known about me. It
+was only when years had gone by and I was a merchant on my own account
+and could afford to go to India on a voyage of discovery--yes, as much a
+voyage of discovery as that of Vasco de Gama or of Drake--that I got
+from the Madras agent the clue which enabled me, at the cost of infinite
+patience and infinite labour, to unravel the mystery of my birth. There
+is no need to enter now upon the details of that story. I have
+overwhelming documentary evidence--a cloud of witnesses--to convince the
+most sceptical as to who and what I am. The documents are some of them
+in my valise, at your ladyship's service. Others are at my hotel in
+London, ready for the inspection of your ladyship's lawyers. I do not
+think you will desire to invite a public inquiry, or force me to recover
+my birthright in a court of justice. I believe that you will take a
+broader and nobler view of the case, and that you will restore to the
+wronged and abandoned son the fortune stolen from his murdered father.'
+
+'How dare you come to me with this tissue of lies? How dare you look me
+in the face and charge my dead husband with treachery and dishonour? I
+believe neither in your story nor in you, and I defy you to the proof of
+this vile charge against the dead!'
+
+'In other words you mean that you will keep the money and jewels which
+Lord Maulevrier stole from my father?'
+
+'I deny the fact that any such jewels or money ever passed into his
+lordship's possession. That vile woman, your mother, whose infamy cast a
+dark cloud over Lord Maulevrier's honour, may have robbed her husband,
+may have emptied the public treasury. But not a rupee or a jewel
+belonging to her ever came into my possession. I will not bear the
+burden of her crimes. Her existence spoiled my life--banished me from
+India, a widow in all but the name, and more desolate than many widows.'
+
+'Lord Maulevrier was known to leave India carrying with him two large
+chests--supposed to contain books--but actually containing treasure. A
+man who was in the Governor's confidence, and who had been the
+go-between in his intrigues, confessed on his death-bed that he had
+assisted in removing the treasure. Now, Lady Maulevrier, since your
+husband died immediately after his arrival in England, and before he
+could have had any opportunity of converting or making away with the
+valuables so appropriated, it stands to reason that those valuables must
+have passed into your possession, and it is from your honour and good
+feeling that I claim their restitution. If you deny the claim so
+advanced, there remains but one course open to me, and that is to make
+my wrongs public, and claim my right from the law of the land.'
+
+'And do you suppose that any English judge or English jury would believe
+so wild a story--or countenance so vile an accusation against the
+defenceless?' demanded Lady Maulevrier, standing up before him, tall,
+stately, with flashing eye and scornful lip, the image of proud
+defiance. 'Bring forward your claim, produce your documents, your
+witnesses, your death-bed confessions. I defy you to injure my dead
+husband or me by your wild lies, your foul charges! Go to an English
+lawyer, and see what an English law court will do for you--and your
+claim. I will hear no more of either.'
+
+She rang the bell once, twice, thrice, with passionate hand, and a
+servant flew to answer that impatient summons.
+
+'Show this gentlemen to his carriage,' she said, imperiously.
+
+The gentleman who called himself Louis Asoph bowed, and retired without
+another word.
+
+As the door closed upon him, Lady Maulevrier stood, with clenched hands
+and frowning brow, staring into vacancy. Her right arm was outstretched,
+as if she would have waved the intruder away. Suddenly, a strange
+numbness crept over that uplifted arm, and it fell to her side. From her
+shoulder down to her foot, that proud form grew cold and feelingless and
+dead, and she, who had so long carried herself as a queen among women,
+sank in a senseless heap upon the floor.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+'HER FACE RESIGNED TO BLISS OR BALE.'
+
+
+Lady Mary and the Fräulein had been sitting in the drawing-room all this
+time waiting for Lady Maulevrier to come to tea. They heard her come in
+from the garden; and then the footman told them that she was in the
+library with a stranger. Not even the muffled sound of voices penetrated
+the heavy velvet curtain and the thick oak door. It was only by the loud
+ringing of the bell and the sound of footsteps in the hall that Lady
+Mary knew of the guest's departure. She went to the door between the
+two rooms, and was surprised to find it bolted.
+
+'Grandmamma, won't you come to tea?' she asked timidly, knocking on the
+oaken panel, but there was no reply.
+
+She knocked again, and louder. Still no reply.
+
+'Perhaps her ladyship is going to take tea in her own room,' she said,
+afraid to be officious.
+
+Attendance upon her grandmother at afternoon tea had been one of
+Lesbia's particular duties; but Mary felt that she was an unwelcome
+substitute for Lesbia. She wanted to get a little nearer her
+grandmother's heart if she could; but she knew that her attentions were
+endured rather than liked.
+
+She went into the hall, where the footman on duty was staring at the
+light snowflakes dancing past the window, perhaps wishing he were a
+snowflake himself, and enjoying himself in that white whirligig.
+
+'Is her ladyship having tea in the morning-room?' asked Mary.
+
+The footman gave a little start, as if awakened out of a kind of trance.
+The sheer vacuity of his mind might naturally slide into mesmeric sleep.
+
+He told Lady Mary that her ladyship had not left the library, and Mary
+went in timidly, wondering why her grandmother had not joined them in
+the drawing-room when the stranger was gone.
+
+The sky was dark outside the wide windows, white hills and valleys
+shrouded in the shades of night. The library was only lighted by the
+glow of the logs on the hearth, and in that ruddy light the spacious
+room looked empty. Mary was turning to go away, thinking the footman had
+been mistaken, when her eye suddenly lighted upon a dark figure lying on
+the ground. And then she heard an awful stertorous breathing, and knew
+that her grandmother was lying there, stricken and helpless.
+
+Mary shrieked aloud, with a cry that pierced curtains and doors, and
+brought Fräulein and half-a-dozen servants to her help. One of the men
+brought a lamp, and among them they lifted the smitten figure. Oh, God!
+how ghastly the face looked in the lamplight!--the features drawn to one
+side, the skin livid.
+
+'Her ladyship has had a stroke,' said the butler.
+
+'Is she dying?' faltered Mary, white as ashes. 'Oh, grandmother, dear
+grandmother, don't look at us like that!'
+
+One of the servants rushed off to the stables to send for the doctor. Of
+course, being an indoor man, he no more thought of going out himself
+into the snowy night on such an errand than Noah thought of going out of
+the ark to explore the face of the waters in person.
+
+They carried Lady Maulevrier to her bed and laid her there, like a
+figure carved out of stone. She was not unconscious. Her eyes were
+open, and she moaned every now and then as if in bodily or mental pain.
+Once she tried to speak, but had no power to shape a syllable aright,
+and ended with a shuddering sigh. Once she lifted her left arm and waved
+it in the air, as if waving some one off in fear or anger. The right
+arm, indeed the whole of the right side, was lifeless, motionless as a
+stone. It was a piteous sight to see the beautiful features drawn and
+distorted, the lips so accustomed to command mouthing the broken
+syllables of an unknown tongue. Lady Mary sat beside the bed with
+clasped hands, praying dumbly, with her eyes fixed on her grandmother's
+altered face.
+
+Mr. Horton came, as soon as his stout mountain pony could bring him. He
+did not seem surprised at her ladyship's condition, and accepted the
+situation with professional calmness.
+
+'A marked case of hemiplegia,' he said, when he had observed the
+symptoms.
+
+'Will she die?' asked Mary.
+
+'Oh, dear, no! She will want great care for a little while, but we shall
+bring her round easily. A splendid constitution, a noble frame; but I
+think she has overworked her brain a little, reading Huxley and Darwin,
+and the German physiologists upon whom Huxley and Darwin have built
+themselves. Metaphysics too. Schopenhauer, and the rest of them. A
+wonderful woman! Very few brains could hold what hers has had poured
+into it in the last thirty years. The conducting nerves between the
+brain and the spinal marrow have been overworked: too much activity, too
+constant a strain. Even the rails and sleepers on the railroad wear out,
+don't you know, if there's excessive traffic.'
+
+Mr. Horton had known Mary from her childhood, had given her Gregory's
+powder, and seen her safely through measles and other infantine
+ailments, so he was quite at home with her, and at Fellside generally.
+Lady Maulevrier had given him a good deal of her confidence during those
+thirty years in which he had practised as his father's partner and
+successor at Grasmere. He used to tell people that he owed the best part
+of his education to her ladyship, who condescended to talk to him of the
+new books she read, and generally gave him a volume to put in his pocket
+when he was leaving her.
+
+'Don't be downhearted, Lady Mary,' he said; 'I shall come in two or
+three times a day and see how things are going on, and if I see the
+slightest difficulty in the case I'll telegraph for Jenner.'
+
+Mary and the Fräulein sat up with the invalid all that night. Lady
+Maulevrier's maid was also in attendance, and one of the menservants
+slept in his clothes on a couch in the corridor, ready for any
+emergency. But the night passed peacefully, the patient slept a good
+deal, and next day there was evident improvement. The stroke which had
+prostrated the body, which reduced the vigorous, active frame to an
+awful statue--like stillness--a quietude as of death of itself--had not
+overclouded the intellect. Lady Maulevrier lay on her bed in her
+luxurious room, with wide Tudor windows commanding half the circle of
+the hills, and was still the ruling spirit of the house, albeit
+powerless to move that slender hand, the lightest wave of which had been
+as potent to command in her little world as royal sign-manual or sceptre
+in the great world outside.
+
+Now there remained only one thing unimpaired by that awful shock which
+had laid the stately frame low, and that was the will and sovereign
+force of the woman's nature. Voice was altered, speech was confused and
+difficult; but the strength of will, the supreme power of mind, seemed
+undiminished.
+
+When Lady Maulevrier was asked if Lesbia should be telegraphed for, she
+replied no, not unless she was in danger of sudden death.
+
+'I should like to see her before I go,' she said, labouring to pronounce
+the words.
+
+'Dear grandmother,' said Mary, tenderly, 'Mr. Horton says there is no
+danger.'
+
+'Then do not send for her; do not even tell her what has happened; not
+yet.'
+
+'But she will miss your letters.'
+
+'True. You must write twice a week at my dictation. You must tell her
+that I have hurt my hand, that I am well but cannot use a pen. I would
+not spoil her pleasure for the world.'
+
+'Dear grandmother, how unselfish you are! And Maulevrier, shall he be
+sent for? He is not so far away,' said Mary, hoping her grandmother
+would say yes.
+
+What a relief, what an unspeakable solace Maulevrier's presence would be
+in that dreary house, smitten to a sudden and awful stillness, as if by
+the Angel of Death!
+
+'No, I do not want Maulevrier!' answered her ladyship impatiently.
+
+'May I sit here and read to you, grandmother?' Mary asked, timidly. 'Mr.
+Horton said you were to be kept very quiet, and that we were not to let
+you talk, or talk much to you, but that we might read to you if you
+like.'
+
+'I do not wish to be read to. I have my thoughts for company,' said Lady
+Maulevrier.
+
+Mary felt that this implied a wish to be alone. She bent over the
+invalid's pillow and kissed the pale cheek, feeling as if she were
+taking a liberty in venturing so much. She would hardly have done it had
+Lesbia been at home; but she had a feeling that in Lesbia's absence Lady
+Maulevrier must want somebody's love--even hers. And then she crept
+away, leaving Halcott the maid in attendance, sitting at her work at the
+window furthest from the bed.
+
+'Alone with my thoughts,' mused Lady Maulevrier, looking out at the
+panorama of wintry hills, white, ghost-like against an iron sky.
+'Pleasant thoughts, truly! Walled in by the hills--walled in and hemmed
+round for ever. This place has always felt like a grave: and now I know
+that it _is_ my grave.'
+
+Fräulein, and Lady Mary, and the maid Halcott, a sedate personage of
+forty summers, had all been instructed by the doctor that Lady
+Maulevrier was to be kept profoundly quiet. She must not talk much,
+since speech was likely to be a painful effort with her for some little
+time; she must not be talked to much by anyone, least of all must she be
+spoken to upon any agitating topic. Life must be made as smooth and easy
+for her as for a new-born infant. No rough breath from the outer world
+must come near her. She was to see no one but her maid and her
+granddaughter. Mr. Horton, a plain family man, took it for granted that
+the granddaughter was dear to her heart, and likely to exercise a
+soothing influence. Thus it happened that although Lady Maulevrier asked
+repeatedly that James Steadman should be brought to her, she was not
+allowed to see him. She whose will had been paramount in that house,
+whose word had been law, was now treated as a little child, while the
+will was still as strong, the mind as keen as ever.
+
+'She would talk to him of business,' said Mr. Horton, when he was told
+of her ladyship's desire to see Steadman, 'and that cannot be allowed,
+not for some little time at least.'
+
+'She is very angry with us for refusing to obey her,' said Lady Mary.
+
+'Naturally, but it is for her own welfare she is disobeyed. She can have
+nothing to say to Steadman which will not keep till she is better. This
+establishment goes by clockwork.'
+
+Mary wished it was a little less like clockwork. Since Lady Maulevrier
+had been lying upstairs--the voice which had once ruled over the house
+muffled almost to dumbness--the monotony of life at Fellside had seemed
+all the more oppressive. The servants crept about with stealthier tread.
+Mary dared not touch either piano or billiard balls, and was naturally
+seized with a longing to touch both. The house had a darkened look, as
+if the shadow of doom overhung it.
+
+During this regimen of perfect quiet Lady Maulevrier was not allowed to
+see the newspapers; and Mary was warned that in reading to her
+grandmother she was to avoid all exciting topics. Thus it happened that
+the account of a terrible collision between the Scotch express and a
+luggage train, a little way beyond Preston, an accident in which seven
+people were killed and about thirty seriously hurt, was not made known
+to her ladyship; and yet that fact would have been of intense interest
+and significance to her, since one of those passengers whose injuries
+were fatal bore the name of Louis Asoph.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+'AND THE SPRING COMES SLOWLY UP THIS WAY.'
+
+
+The wintry weeks glided smoothly by in a dull monotony, and now Lady
+Maulevrier, still helpless, still compelled to lie on her bed or her
+invalid couch, motionless as marble, had at least recovered her power of
+speech, was allowed to read and to talk, and to hear what was going on
+in that metropolitan world which she seemed unlikely ever to behold
+again.
+
+Lady Lesbia was still at Cannes, whence she wrote of her pleasures and
+her triumphs, of flowers and sapphire sea, and azure sky, of all things
+which were not in the grey bleak mountain world that hemmed in Fellside.
+She was meeting many of the people whom she was to meet again next
+season in the London world. She had made an informal _début_ in a very
+select circle, a circle in which everybody was more or less _chic_, or
+_chien_, or _zinc_, and she was tasting all the sweets of success. But
+in none of her letters was there any mention of Lord Hartfield. He was
+not in the little great world by the blue tideless sea.
+
+There was no talk of Lesbia's return. She was to stay till the carnival;
+she was to stay till the week before Easter. Lady Kirkbank insisted upon
+it; and both Lesbia and Lady Kirkbank upbraided Lady Maulevrier for her
+cruelty in not joining them at Cannes.
+
+So Lady Maulevrier had to resign herself to that solitude which had
+become almost the habit of her life, and to the society of Mary and the
+Fräulein. Mary was eager to be of use, to sit with her grandmother, to
+read to her, to write for her. The warm young heart was deeply moved by
+the spectacle of this stately woman stricken into helplessness, chained
+to her couch, immured within four walls. To Mary, who so loved the hills
+and the streams, the sun and the wind, this imprisonment seemed
+unspeakable woe. In her pity for such a martyrdom she would have done
+anything to give pleasure or solace to her grandmother. Unhappily there
+was very little Mary could do to increase the invalid's sum of pleasure.
+Lady Maulevrier was a woman of strong feeling, not capable of loving
+many people. She had concentrated her affection upon Lesbia: and she
+could not open her heart to Mary all at once because Lesbia was out of
+the way.
+
+'If I had a dog I loved, and he were to die, I would never have another
+in his place,' Lady Maulevrier said once; and that speech was the
+keynote of her character.
+
+She was very courteous to Mary, and seemed grateful for her attentions;
+but she did not cultivate the girl's society. Mary wrote all her letters
+in a fine bold hand, and with a rapid pen; but when the letter-writing
+was over Lady Maulevrier always dismissed her.
+
+'My dear, you want to be out in the air, riding your pony, or
+scampering about with your dogs,' she said, kindly. 'It would be a
+cruelty to keep you indoors.'
+
+'No, indeed, dear grandmother, I should like to stay. May I stop and
+read to you?'
+
+'No, thank you, Mary. I hate being read to. I like to devour a book.
+Reading aloud is such slow work.
+
+'But I am afraid you must sometimes feel lonely,' faltered Mary.
+
+'Lonely,' echoed the dowager, with a sigh. 'I have been lonely for the
+last forty years--I have been lonely all my life. Those I loved never
+gave me back love for love--never--not even your sister. See how lightly
+she cuts the link that bound her to me. How happy she is among
+strangers! Yes, there was one who loved me truly, and fate parted us.
+Does fate part all true lovers, I wonder?'
+
+'You parted Lesbia and Mr. Hammond,' said Mary, impetuously. 'I am sure
+they loved each other truly.'
+
+'The old and the worldly-wise are Fate, Mary,' answered the dowager, not
+angry at this daring reproach. 'I know your sister; and I know she is
+not the kind of woman to be happy in an ignoble life--to bear poverty
+and deprivation. If it had been you, now, whom Mr. Hammond had chosen, I
+might have taken the subject into my consideration.'
+
+Mary flamed crimson.
+
+'Mr. Hammond never gave me a thought,' she said, 'unless it was to think
+me contemptible. He is worlds too good for such a Tomboy. Maulevrier
+told him about the fox-hunt, and they both laughed at me--at least I
+have no doubt Mr. Hammond laughed, though I was too much ashamed to look
+at him.'
+
+'Poor Mary, you are beginning to find out that a young lady ought to be
+ladylike,' said Lady Maulevrier; 'and now, my dear, you may go. I was
+only joking with you. Mr. Hammond would be no match for any
+granddaughter of mine. He is nobody, and has neither friends nor
+interest. If he had gone into the church Maulevrier could have helped
+him; but I daresay his ideas are too broad for the church; and he will
+have to starve at the bar, where nobody can help him. I hope you will
+bear this in mind, Mary, if Maulevrier should ever bring him here
+again.'
+
+'He is never likely to come back again. He suffered too much; he was
+treated too badly in this house.'
+
+'Lady Mary, be good enough to remember to whom you are speaking,' said
+her ladyship, with a frown. 'And now please go, and tell some one to
+send Steadman to me.'
+
+Mary retired without a word, gave Lady Maulevrier's message to a footman
+in the corridor, slipped off to her room, put on her sealskin hat and
+jacket, took her staff and went out for a long ramble. The hills and
+valleys were still white. It had been a long, cold winter, and spring
+was still far off--February had only just begun.
+
+Lady Maulevrier's couch had been wheeled into the morning-room--that
+luxurious room which was furnished with all things needful to her quiet
+life, her books, her favourite colours, her favourite flowers, every
+detail studiously arranged for her pleasure and comfort. She was wheeled
+into this room every day at noon. When the day was bright and sunny her
+couch was placed near the window: and when the day was dull and grey the
+couch was drawn close to the low hearth, which flashed and glittered
+with brightly coloured tiles and artistic brass.
+
+To-day the sky was dull, and the velvet couch stood beside the hearth.
+Halcott sat at work in the adjoining bed-chamber, and came in every now
+and then to replenish the fire: a footman was always on duty in the
+corridor. A spring bell stood among the elegant trifles upon her
+ladyship's table; and the lightest touch of her left hand upon the bell
+brought her attendants to her side. She resolutely refused to have any
+one sitting with her all day long. Solitude was a necessity of her
+being, she told Mr. Horton, when he recommended that she should have
+some one always in attendance upon her.
+
+As the weeks wore on her features had been restored to their proud, calm
+beauty, her articulation was almost as clear as of old: yet, now and
+then, there would be a sudden faltering, the tongue and lips would
+refuse their office, or she would forget a word, or use a wrong word
+unconsciously. But there was no recovery of power or movement on that
+side of the body which had been stricken. The paralysed limbs were still
+motionless, lifeless as marble; and it was clear that Mr. Horton had
+begun to lose heart about his patient. There was nothing obscure in the
+case, but the patient's importance made the treatment a serious matter,
+and the surgeon begged to be allowed to summon Sir William Jenner.
+
+This, however, Lady Maulevrier refused.
+
+'I don't want any fuss made about me,' she said. 'I am content to trust
+myself to your skill, and I beg that no other doctor may be summoned.'
+
+Mr. Horton understood his patient's feelings on this point. She had a
+sense of humiliation in her helplessness, and, like some wounded animal
+that crawls to its covert to die, she would fain have hidden her misery
+from the eye of strangers. She had allowed no one, not even Maulevrier,
+to be informed of the nature of her illness.
+
+'It will be time enough for him to know all about me when he comes
+here,' she said. 'I shall be obliged to see him whenever he does come.'
+
+Maulevrier had spent Christmas and New Year in Paris, Mr. Hammond still
+his companion. Her ladyship commented upon this with a touch of scorn.
+
+'Mr. Hammond is like the Umbra you were reading about the other day in
+Lord Lytton's "Last Days of Pompeii,"' she said to Mary. 'It must be
+very nice for him to go about the world with a friend who franks him
+everywhere.'
+
+'But we don't know that Maulevrier franks him,' protested Mary,
+blushing. 'We have no right to suppose that Mr. Hammond does not pay his
+own expenses.'
+
+'My dear child, is it possible for a young man who has no private means
+to go gadding about the world on equal terms with a spendthrift like
+Maulevrier--to pay for Moors in Scotland and apartments at the Bristol?'
+
+'But they are not staying at the Bristol,' exclaimed Mary. 'They are
+staying at an old-established French hotel on the left side of
+the Seine. They are going about amongst the students and the workmen,
+dining at popular restaurants, hearing people talk. Maulevrier says it
+is delightfully amusing--ever so much better than the beaten track of
+life in Anglo-American Paris.'
+
+'I daresay they are leading a Bohemian life, and will get into trouble
+before they have done,' said her ladyship, gloomily. 'Maulevrier is
+as wild as a hawk.'
+
+'He is the dearest boy in the world,' exclaimed Mary.
+
+She was deeply grateful for her brother's condescension in writing her a
+letter of two pages long, letting her into the secrets of his life. She
+felt as if Mr. Hammond were ever so much nearer to her now she knew
+where he was, and how he was amusing himself.
+
+'Hammond is such a queer fellow,' wrote Maulevrier, 'the strangest
+things interest him. He sits and talks to the workmen for hours; he
+pokes his nose into all sorts of places--hospitals, workshops,
+poverty-stricken dens--and people are always civil to him. He is what
+Lesbia calls _sympatico_. Ah! what a mistake Lesbia and my grandmother
+made when they rejected Hammond! What a pearl above price they threw
+away! But, you see, neither my lady nor Lesbia could appreciate a gem,
+unless it was richly set.'
+
+And now Lady Maulevrier lay on her couch by the fire, waiting for James
+Steadman. She had seen him several times since the day of her seizure,
+but never alone. There was an idea that Steadman must necessarily talk
+to her of business matters, or cause her mind to trouble itself about
+business matters; so there had been a well-intentioned conspiracy in the
+house to keep him out of her way; but now she was much better, and her
+desire to see Steadman need no longer be thwarted.
+
+He came at her bidding, and stood a little way within the door, tall,
+erect, square-shouldered, resolute-looking, with a quiet force of
+character expressed in every feature. He was very much the same man that
+he had been forty years ago, when he went with her ladyship to
+Southampton, and accompanied his master and mistress on that tedious
+journey which was destined to be Lord Maulevrier's last earthly
+pilgrimage. Time had done little to Steadman in those forty years,
+except to whiten his hair and beard, and imprint some thoughtful lines
+upon his sagacious forehead. Time had done something for him mentally,
+insomuch as he had read a great many books and cultivated his mind in
+the monotonous quiet of Fellside. Altogether he was a superior man for
+the passage of those forty years.
+
+He had married within the time, choosing for himself the buxom daughter
+of a lodgekeeper, whose wife had long been laid at rest in Grasmere
+churchyard. The buxom girl had grown into a bulky matron, but she was a
+colourless personage, and her existence made hardly any difference in
+James Steadman's life. She had brought him no children, and their
+fireside was lonely; but Steadman seemed to be one of those
+self-contained personages to whom a solitary life is no affliction.
+
+'I hope I see you in better health, my lady,' he said, standing straight
+and square, like a soldier on parade.
+
+'I am better, thank you, Steadman; better, but a poor lifeless log
+chained to this sofa. I sent for you because the time has come when I
+must talk to you upon a matter of business. You heard, I suppose, that a
+stranger called upon me just before I had my attack?'
+
+'Yes, my lady.'
+
+'Did you hear who and what he was?'
+
+'Only that he was a foreigner, my lady.'
+
+'He is of Indian birth. He claims to be the son of the Ranee of
+Bisnagar.'
+
+'He could do you no harm, my lady, if he were twenty times her son.'
+
+'I hope not. Now, I want to ask you a question. Among those trunks and
+cases and packages of Lord Maulevrier's which were sent here by heavy
+coach, after they were landed at Southampton, do you remember two cases
+of books?'
+
+'There are two large cases among the luggage, my lady; very heavy cases,
+iron clamped. I should not be surprised if they were full of books.'
+
+'Have they never been opened?'
+
+'Not to my knowledge.'
+
+'Are they locked?'
+
+'Yes, my lady. There are two padlocks on each chest.'
+
+'And are the keys in your possession?'
+
+'No, my lady.'
+
+'Where are the cases?'
+
+'In the Oak Room, with the rest of the Indian luggage.'
+
+'Let them remain there. No doubt those cases contain the books of which
+I have been told. You have not heard that the person calling himself
+Rajah of Bisnagar has been here since my illness, have you?'
+
+'No, my lady; I am sure he has not been here.'
+
+Lady Maulevrier gave him a scrutinising look.
+
+'He might have come, and my people might have kept the knowledge from
+me, out of consideration for my infirmity,' she said. 'I should be very
+angry if it were so. I should hate to be treated like a child.'
+
+'You shall not be so treated, my lady, while I am in this house; but I
+know there is no member of the household who would presume so to treat
+you.'
+
+'They might do it out of kindness; but I should loathe such kindness,'
+said Lady Maulevrier, impatiently. 'Though I have been smitten down,
+though I lie here like a log, I have a mind to think and to plan; and I
+am not afraid to meet danger, face to face. Are you telling me the
+truth, Steadman? Have there been no visits concealed from me, no letters
+kept from me since I have been ill?'
+
+'I am telling you nothing but the truth, my lady. No letter has been
+kept from you; no visitor has been to this house whose coming you have
+not been told of.'
+
+'Then I am content,' said her ladyship, with a sigh of relief.
+
+After this there followed some conversation upon business matters. James
+Steadman was trusted with the entire management of the dowager's income,
+the investment of her savings. His honesty was above all suspicion. He
+was a man of simple habits, his wants few. He had saved money in every
+year of his service; and for a man of his station was rich enough to be
+unassailable by the tempter.
+
+He had reconciled his mind to the monotonous course of life at Fellside
+in the beginning of things; and, as the years glided smoothly by, his
+character and wants and inclinations had, as it were, moulded themselves
+to fit that life. He had easy duties, a comfortable home, supreme
+authority in the household. He was looked up to and made much of in the
+village whenever he condescended to appear there; and by the rareness of
+his visits to the Inn or the Reading-room, and his unwillingness to
+accept hospitality from the tradesmen of Grasmere and Ambleside, he
+maintained his dignity and exaggerated his importance. He had his books
+and his newspapers, his evening leisure, which no one ever dared to
+disturb. He had the old wing of the house for his exclusive occupation;
+and no one ventured to intrude upon him in his privacy. There was a bell
+in the corridor which communicated with his rooms, and by this bell he
+was always summoned. There were servants who had been ten years at
+Fellside, and who had never crossed the threshold of the red cloth door
+which was the only communication between the new house and the old one.
+Steadman's wife performed all household duties of cooking and cleaning
+in the south wing, where she and her husband took all their meals, and
+lived entirely apart from the other servants, an exclusiveness which was
+secretly resented by the establishment.
+
+'Mr. Steadman may be a very superior man,' said the butler 'and I know
+that in his own estimation the Premier isn't in it compared with him;
+but I never was fond of people who set themselves upon pinnacles, and
+I'm not fond of the Steadmans.'
+
+'Mrs. Steadman's plain and homely enough,' replied the housekeeper, 'and
+I know she'd like to be more sociable, and drop into my room for a cup
+of tea now and then; but Steadman do so keep her under his thumb: and
+because he's a misanthrope she's obliged to sit and mope alone.'
+
+If Steadman wanted to drive, there was a dogcart and horse at his
+disposal; but he did not often leave Fellside. He seemed in his humble
+way to model his life upon Lady Maulevrier's secluded habits. It was
+growing dusk when Steadman left his mistress, and she lay for some time
+looking at the landscape over which twilight shadows were stealing, and
+thinking of her own life. Over that life, too, the shadows of evening
+were creeping. She had begun to realise the fact that she was an old
+woman; that for her all personal interest in life was nearly over. She
+had never felt her age while her activity was unimpaired. She had been
+obliged to remind herself very often that the afternoon and evening of
+life had slipped away unawares in that tranquil retirement, and that the
+night was at hand.
+
+For her the close of earthly life meant actual night. No new dawn, no
+mysterious after-life shone upon her with magical gleams of an unknown
+light upon the other side of the dark river. She had accepted the
+Materialist's bitter and barren creed, and had taught herself that this
+little life was all. She had learned to scorn the idea of a great
+Artificer outside the universe, a mighty spirit riding amidst the
+clouds, and ruling the course of nature and the fate of man. She had
+schooled herself to think that the idea of a blind, unconscious Nature,
+working automatically through infinite time and space, was ever so much
+grander than the old-world notion of a personal God, a Being of infinite
+power and inexhaustible beneficence, mighty to devise and direct the
+universe, with knowledge reaching to the farthest confines of space,
+with ear to listen to the prayer of His lowest creatures. Her belief
+stopped short even of the Deist's faith in an Almighty Will. She saw in
+creation nothing but the inevitable development of material laws; and it
+seemed to her that there was quite as much hope of a heavenly world
+after death for the infusoria in the pool as for man in his pride and
+power.
+
+She read her Bible as diligently as she read her Shakespeare, and the
+words of the Royal Preacher in some measure embodied her own dreary
+creed. And now, in the darkening winter day, she watched the gloomy
+shadows creep over the rugged breast of Nabb Scar, and she thought how
+there was a time for all things, and that her day of hope and ambition
+was past.
+
+Of late years she had lived for Lesbia, looking forward to the day when
+she was to introduce this beloved grandchild to the great world of
+London; and now that hope was gone for ever.
+
+What could a helpless cripple do for a fashionable beauty? What good
+would it be for her to be conveyed to London, and to lie on a couch in
+Mayfair, while Lesbia rode in the Row and went to three or four parties
+every night with a more active chaperon?
+
+She had hoped to go everywhere with her darling, to glory in all her
+successes, to shield her from all possibility of failure. And now Lesbia
+must stand or fall alone.
+
+It was a hard thing; but perhaps the hardest part of it was that Lesbia
+seemed so very well able to get on without her. The girl wrote in the
+highest spirits; and although her letters were most affectionately
+worded, they were all about self. That note was dominant in every
+strain. Her triumphs, her admirers, her bonnets, her gowns. She had had
+more money from her grandmother, and more gowns from Paris.
+
+'You have no idea how the people dress in this place,' she wrote. 'I
+should have been quite out in the cold without my three new frocks from
+Worth. The little Princess bonnets I wear are the rage. Worth
+recommended me to adopt special flowers and colours; so I have worn
+nothing but primroses since I have been here, and my little primrose
+bonnets are to be seen everywhere, sometimes on hideous old women. Lady
+Kirkbank hopes you will be able to go to London directly after Easter.
+She says I must be presented at the May drawing-room--that is
+imperative. People have begun to talk about me; and unless I make my
+_début_ while their interest is fresh I shall be a failure. There is an
+American beauty here, and I believe she and I are considered rivals, and
+young men lay wagers about us, as to which will look best at a ball, or
+a regatta, what colours we shall wear, and so on. It is immense fun. I
+only wish you were here to enjoy it. The American girl is a most
+insolent person, but I have had the pleasure of crushing her on several
+occasions in the calmest way. In the description of the concert in last
+week's newspaper I was called _l'Anglais de marbre_. I certainly had the
+decency to hold my tongue while Faure was singing. Miss Bolsover's voice
+was heard ever so many times above the music. According to our English
+ideas she has most revolting manners, and the money she spends on her
+clothes would make your hair stand on end. Now do, dearest grandmother,
+make all your arrangements for beginning the campaign directly after
+Easter. You must take a house in the very choicest quarter--Lady
+Kirkbank suggests Grosvenor-place--and it _must_ be a large house, for
+of course you will give a ball. Lady K. says we might have Lord
+Porlock's house--poor Lady Porlock and her baby died a few weeks ago,
+and he has gone to Sweden quite broken-hearted. It is one of the new
+houses, exquisitely furnished, and Lady K. thinks you might have it for
+a song. Will you get Steadman to write to his lordship's steward, and
+see what can be done?
+
+'I hope the dear hand is better. You have never told me how you hurt
+it. It is very sweet of Mary to write me such long letters, and quite a
+pleasant surprise to find she can spell; but I want to see your own dear
+hand once more.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+'AND COME AGEN BE IT BY NIGHT OR DAY.'
+
+
+Those winter months were unutterably dreary for Lady Mary Haselden. She
+felt weighed down by a sense of death and woe near at hand. The horror
+of that dreadful moment in which she found her grandmother lying
+senseless on the ground, the terror of that distorted countenance, those
+starting eyes, that stertorous breathing, was not easily banished from a
+vivid girlish imagination; seeing how few distractions there were to
+divert Mary's thoughts, and how the sun sank and rose again upon the
+same inevitable surroundings, to the same monotonous routine.
+
+Her grandmother was kinder than she had been in days gone by, less
+inclined to find fault; but Mary knew that her society gave Lady
+Maulevrier very little pleasure, that she could do hardly anything
+towards filling the gap made by Lesbia's absence. There was no one to
+scold her, no one to quarrel with her. Fräulein Müller lectured her
+mildly from time to time; but that stout German was too lazy to put any
+force or fire into her lectures. Her reproofs were like the fall of
+waterdrops on a stone, and infinite ages would have been needed to cause
+any positive impression.
+
+February came to an end without sign or token from the outer world to
+disturb the even tenor of life at Fellside. Mary read, and read, and
+read, till she felt she was made up of the contents of books, crammed
+with other people's ideas. She read history, or natural science, or
+travels, or German poetry in the morning, and novels or English poetry
+in the evening. She had pledged herself to devote her morning indoor
+hours to instructive literature, and to accomplish some portion of study
+in every day. She was carrying on her education on parole, as before
+stated; and she was too honourable to do less than was expected from
+her.
+
+March came in with its most leonine aspect, howling and blustering;
+north-east winds shrieking along the gorges and wailing from height to
+height.
+
+'I wonder the lion and the lamb are not blown into the lake,' said Mary,
+looking at Helm Crag from the library window.
+
+She scampered about the gardens in the very teeth of those bitter
+blasts, and took her shivering terriers for runs on the green slopes of
+the Fell. The snow had gradually melted from the tides of the lowermost
+range of hills, but the mountain peaks were still white and ghostly,
+the ground was still hard and slippery in the early mornings. Mary had
+to take her walks alone in this bleak weather. Fräulein had a convenient
+bronchial affection which forbade her to venture so much as the point of
+her nose outside the house in an east wind, and which justified her in
+occasionally taking her breakfast in bed. She spent her days for the
+most part in her arm-chair, drawn close to the fireplace, which she
+still insisted upon calling the oven, knitting diligently, or reading
+the _Rundschau_. Even music, which had once been her strong point, was
+neglected in this trying weather. It was such a cold journey from the
+oven to the piano.
+
+Mary played a good deal in her desultory manner, now that she had the
+drawing-room all to herself, and no fear of Lady Maulevrier's critical
+ear or Lesbia's superior smile. The Fräulein was pleased to hear her
+pupil ramble on with her favourite bits from Raff, and Hensel, and
+Schubert, and Mendelssohn, and Mozart, and was very well content to let
+her play just what she liked, and to escape the trouble of training her
+to that exquisite perfection into which Lady Lesbia had been drilled.
+Lesbia was not a genius, and the training process had been quite as hard
+for the governess as for the pupil.
+
+Thus the slow days wore on till the first week in March, and on one
+bleak bitter afternoon, when Fräulein Müller stuck to the oven even a
+little closer than usual, Mary felt she must go out, in the face of the
+east wind, which was tossing the leafless branches in the valley below
+until the trees looked like an angry crowd, hurling its arms in the air,
+fighting, struggling, writhing. She must leave that dreary house for a
+little while, were it even to be lashed and bruised and broken by that
+fierce wind. So she told Fräulein that she really must have her
+constitutional; and after a feeble remonstrance Fräulein let her go, and
+subsided luxuriously into the pillowed depth of her arm-chair.
+
+There had been a hard frost, and all the mountain ways were perilous, so
+Mary set out upon a steady tramp along the road leading towards the
+Langdales. The wind seemed to assail her from every side, but she had
+accustomed herself to defy the elements, and she only hugged her
+sealskin jacket closer to her, and quickened her pace, chirruping and
+whistling to Ahab and Ariadne, the two fox-terriers which she had
+selected for the privilege of a walk.
+
+The terriers raced along the road, and Mary, seeing that she had the
+road all to herself, raced after them. A light snow-shower, large
+feathery flakes flying wide apart, fell from the steel-grey sky; but
+Mary minded the snow no more than she minded the wind. She raced on, the
+terriers scampering, rushing, flying before her, until, just where the
+road took a curve, she almost ran into a horse, which was stepping along
+at a tremendous pace, with a light, high dogcart behind him.
+
+'Hi!' cried the driver, 'where are you coming, young woman? Have you
+never seen a horse till to-day?'
+
+Some one beside the driver leapt out, and ran to see if Mary was hurt.
+The horse had swerved to one side, reared a little, and then spun on for
+a few yards, leaving her standing in the middle of the road.
+
+'Why, it's Molly!' cried the driver, who was no less distinguished a
+whip than Lord Maulevrier, and who had recognised the terriers.
+
+'I hope you are not hurt,' said the gentleman who had alighted,
+Maulevrier's friend and shadow, John Hammond.
+
+Mary was covered with confusion by her exploit, and could hardly answer
+Mr. Hammond's very simple question.
+
+She looked up at him piteously, trying to speak, and he took alarm at
+her scared expression.
+
+'I am sure you are hurt,' he said earnestly, 'the horse must have struck
+you, or the shaft perhaps, which was worse. Is it your shoulder that is
+hurt, or your chest? Lean on me, if you feel faint or giddy. Maulevrier,
+you had better drive your sister home, and get her looked after.'
+
+'Indeed, I am not hurt; not the least little bit,' gasped Mary, who had
+recovered her senses by this time. 'I was only frightened, and it was
+such a surprise to see you and Maulevrier.'
+
+A surprise--yes--a surprise which had set her heart throbbing so
+violently as to render her speechless. Had horse or shaft-point struck
+her ever so, she would have hardly been more tremulous than she felt at
+this moment. Never had she hoped to see him again. He had set his all
+upon one cast--loved, wooed, and lost her sister. Why should he ever
+come again? What was there at Fellside worth coming for? And then she
+remembered what her grandmother thought of him. He was a hanger-on, a
+sponge, a led captain. He was Maulevrier's Umbra, and must go where his
+patron went. It was a hard thing so to think of him, and Mary's heart
+sank at the thought that Lady Maulevrier's worldly wisdom might have
+reckoned aright.
+
+'It was very foolish of me to run into the horse,' said Mary, while Mr.
+Hammond stood waiting for her to recover herself.
+
+'It was very foolish of Maulevrier to run into you. If he didn't drive
+at such a break-neck pace it wouldn't have happened.'
+
+Umbra was very plain-spoken, at any rate.
+
+'There's rank ingratitude,' cried Maulevrier, who had turned back, and
+was looking down at them from his elevated perch. 'After my coming all
+the way round by Langdale to oblige you with a view of Elterwater.
+Molly's all safe and sound. She wouldn't have minded if I'd run over
+her. Come along, child, get up beside me, Hammond will take the back
+seat.'
+
+This was easier said than done, for the back of the dogcart was piled
+with Gladstone bags, fishing rods, and hat-boxes; but Umbra was ready
+to oblige. He handed Mary up to the seat by the driver, and clambered up
+at the back, when he hooked himself on somehow among the luggage.
+
+'Dear Maulevrier, how delicious of you to come!' said Mary, when they
+were rattling on towards Fellside; 'I hope you are going to stay for
+ages.'
+
+'Well, I dare say, if you make yourself very agreeable, I may stay till
+after Easter.'
+
+Mary's countenance fell.
+
+'Easter is in three weeks,' she said, despondingly.
+
+'And isn't three weeks an age, at such a place as Fellside? I don't know
+that I should have come at all on this side of the August sports, only
+as the grandmother was ill, I thought it a duty to come and see her. A
+fellow mayn't care much for ancestors when they're well, you know; but
+when a poor old lady is down on her luck, her people ought to look after
+her. So, here I am; and as I knew I should be moped to death here----'
+
+'Thank you for the compliment,' said Mary.
+
+'I brought Hammond along with me. Of course, I knew Lesbia was safe out
+of the way,' added Maulevrier in an undertone.
+
+'It is very obliging of Mr. Hammond always to go where you wish,'
+returned Mary, who could not help a bitter feeling when she remembered
+her grandmother's cruel suggestion. 'Has he no tastes or inclinations of
+his own?'
+
+'Yes, he has, plenty of them, and much loftier tastes than mine, I can
+tell you. But he's kind enough to let me hang on to him, and to put up
+with my frivolity. There never were two men more different than he and I
+are; and I suppose that's why we get on so well together. When we were
+in Paris he was always up to his eyes in serious work--lectures, public
+libraries, workmen's syndicates, Mary Anne, the International--heaven
+knows what, making himself master of the political situation in France;
+while I was _rigolant_ and _chaloupant_ at the Bal Bullier.'
+
+It was generous of Maulevrier to speak of his hanger-on thus; and no
+doubt the society of a well-informed earnest young man was a great good
+for Maulevrier, a good far above the price of those pounds, shillings,
+and pence which the Earl might spend for his dependent's benefit; but
+when a girl of Mary's ardent temper has made a hero of a man, it galls
+her to think that her hero's dignity should be sacrificed, his honour
+impeached, were it by the merest tittle.
+
+Maulevrier made a good many inquiries about his grandmother, and seemed
+really full of kindness and sympathy; but it was with a feeling of
+profound awe, nay, of involuntary reluctance and shrinking, that he
+presently entered her ladyship's sitting-room, ushered in by Mary, who
+had been to her grandmother beforehand to announce the grandson's
+arrival.
+
+The young man had hardly ever been in a sick room before. He half
+expected to see Lady Maulevrier in bed, with a crowd of medicine bottles
+and a cut orange on a table by her side, and a sick nurse of the
+ancient-crone species cowering over the fire. It was an infinite relief
+to him to find his grandmother lying on a sofa by the fire in her pretty
+morning room. A little tea-table was drawn close up to her sofa, and she
+was taking her afternoon tea. It was rather painful to see her lifting
+her tea-cup slowly and carefully with her left hand, but that was all.
+The dark eyes still flashed with the old eagle glance, the lines of the
+lips were as proud and firm as ever. All sign of contraction or
+distortion had passed away. In hours of calm her ladyship's beauty was
+unimpaired; but with any strong emotion there came a convulsive working
+of the features, and the face was momentarily drawn and distorted, as it
+had been at the time of the seizure.
+
+Maulevrier's presence had not an unduly agitating effect on her
+ladyship. She received him with tranquil graciousness, and thanked him
+for his coming.
+
+'I hope you have spent your winter profitably in Paris,' she said.
+'There is a great deal to be learnt there if you go into the right
+circles.'
+
+Maulevrier told her that he had found much to learn, and that he had
+gone into circles where almost everything was new to him. Whereupon his
+grandmother questioned him about certain noble families in the Faubourg
+Saint Germain who had been known to her in her own day of power, and
+whose movements she had observed from a distance since that time; but
+here she found her grandson dark. He had not happened to meet any of the
+people she spoke about: the plain truth being that he had lived
+altogether as a Bohemian, and had not used one of the letters of
+introduction that had been given to him.
+
+'Your friend Mr. Hammond is with you, I am told,' said Lady Maulevrier,
+not altogether with delight.
+
+'Yes, I made him come; but he is quite safe. He will bolt like a shot at
+the least hint of Lesbia's return. He doesn't want to meet that young
+lady again, I can assure you.'
+
+'Pray don't talk in that injured tone. Mr. Hammond is a gentlemanlike
+person, very well informed, very agreeable. I have never denied that.
+But you could not expect me to allow my granddaughter to throw herself
+away upon the first adventurer who made her an offer.'
+
+'Hammond is not an adventurer.'
+
+'Very well, I will not call him so, if the term offends you. But Mr.
+Hammond is--Mr. Hammond, and I cannot allow Lesbia to marry Mr. Hammond
+or Mr. Anybody, and I am very sorry you have brought him here again.
+There is Mary, a silly, romantic girl. I am very much afraid he has made
+an impression upon her. She colours absurdly when she talks of him, and
+flew into a passion with me the other day when I ventured to hint that
+he is not a Rothschild, and that his society must be expensive to you.'
+
+'His society does not cost me anything. Hammond is the soul of
+independence. He worked as a blacksmith in Canada for three months, just
+to see what life was like in a wild district. There never was such a
+fellow to rough it. And as for Molly, well, now, really, if he happened
+to take a fancy to her, and if she happened to like him, I wouldn't bosh
+the business, if I were you, grandmother. Take my word for it, Molly
+might do worse.'
+
+'Of course. She might marry a chimney sweep. There is no answering for a
+girl of her erratic nature. She is silly enough and romantic enough for
+anything; but I shall not countenance her if she wants to throw herself
+away on a person without prospects or connections; and I look to you,
+Maulevrier, to take care of her, now that I am a wretched log chained to
+this room.'
+
+'You may rely upon me, grandmother, Molly shall come to no harm, if I
+can help it.'
+
+'Thank you,' said her ladyship, touching her bell twice.
+
+The two clear silvery strokes were a summons for Halcott, the maid, who
+appeared immediately.
+
+'Tell Mrs. Power to get his lordship's room ready immediately, and to
+give Mr. Hammond the room he had last summer,' said Lady Maulevrier,
+with a sigh of resignation.
+
+While Maulevrier was with his grandmother John Hammond was smoking a
+solitary cigar on the terrace, contemplating the mountain landscape in
+its cold March greyness, and wondering very much to find himself again
+at Fellside. He had gone forth from that house full of passionate
+indignation, shaking off the dust from his feet, sternly resolved never
+again to cross the threshold of that fateful cave, where he had met his
+cold-hearted Circe. And now, because Circe was safe out of the way, he
+had come back to the cavern; and he was feeling all the pain that a man
+feels who beholds again the scene of a great past sorrow.
+
+Was this the old love and the old pain again, he wondered, or was it
+only the sharp thrust of a bitter memory? He had believed himself cured
+of his useless love--a great and noble love, wasted on a smaller nature
+than his own. He had thought that because his eyes were opened, and he
+understood the character of the girl he loved, his cure must needs be
+complete. Yet now, face to face with the well-remembered landscape,
+looking down upon that dull grey lake which he had seen smiling in the
+sunshine, he began to doubt the completeness of his cure. He recalled
+the lovely face, the graceful form, the sweet, low voice--the perfection
+of gracious womanhood, manner, dress, movements, tones, smiles, all
+faultless; and in the absence of that one figure, it seemed to him as if
+he had come back to a tenantless, dismantled house, where there was
+nothing that made life worth living.
+
+The red sun went down--a fierce and lurid face that seemed to scowl
+through the grey--and Mr. Hammond felt that it was time to arouse
+himself from gloomy meditation and go in and dress for dinner.
+Maulevrier's valet was to arrive by the coach with the heavier part of
+the luggage, and Maulevrier's valet did that very small portion of
+valeting which was ever required by Mr. Hammond. A man who has worked at
+a forge in the backwoods is not likely to be finicking in his ways, or
+dependent upon servants for looking after his raiment.
+
+Despite Mr. Hammond's gloomy memories of past joys and disillusions, he
+contrived to make himself very agreeable, by-and-by, at dinner, and in
+the drawing-room after dinner, and the evening was altogether gay and
+sprightly. Maulevrier was in high spirits, full of his Parisian
+experiences, and talking slang as glibly as a student of the Quartier
+Latin. He would talk nothing but French, protesting that he had almost
+forgotten his native tongue, and his French was the language of
+Larchey's Dictionary of Argot, in which nothing is called by its right
+name. Mary was enchanted with this new vocabulary, and wanted to have
+every word explained to her; but Maulevrier confessed that there was a
+good deal that was unexplainable.
+
+The evening was much livelier than those summer evenings when the
+dowager and Lady Lesbia were present. There was something less of
+refinement, perhaps, and Fräulein remonstrated now and then about some
+small violation of the unwritten laws of 'Anstand,' but there was more
+mirth. Maulevrier felt for the first time as if he were master at
+Fellside. They all went to the billiard room soon after dinner, and
+Fräulein and Mary sat by the fire looking on, while the two young men
+played. In such an evening there was no time for bitter memories: and
+John Hammond was surprised to find how little he had missed that
+enchantress whose absence had made the house seem desolate to him when
+he re-entered it.
+
+He was tired with his journey and the varying emotions of the day, for
+it was not without strong emotion that he had consented to return to
+Fellside--and he slept soundly for the earlier part of the night. But he
+had trained himself long ago to do with a very moderate portion of
+sleep, and he was up and dressed while the dawn was still slowly
+creeping along the edges of the hills. He went quietly down to the hall,
+took one of the bamboos from a collection of canes and mountain sticks,
+and set out upon a morning ramble over the snowy slopes. The snow
+showers of yesterday had only sprinkled the greensward upon the lower
+ground, but in the upper regions the winter snows still lingered, giving
+an Alpine character to the landscape.
+
+John Hammond was too experienced a mountaineer to be deterred by a
+little snow. He went up Silver Howe, and from the rugged breast of the
+mountain saw the sun leap up from amidst a chaos of hill and crag, in
+all his majesty, while the grey mists of night slowly floated up from
+the valley that had lain hidden below them, and Grasmere Lake sparkled
+and flashed in the light of the newly-risen sun.
+
+The church clock was striking eight as Hammond came at a brisk pace down
+to the valley. There was still an hour before breakfast, so he took a
+circuitous path to Fellside, and descended upon the house from the Fell,
+as he had done that summer morning when he saw James Steadman sauntering
+about in his garden.
+
+Within about a quarter of a mile of Lady Maulevrier's shrubberies Mr.
+Hammond encountered a pedestrian, who, like himself, was evidently
+taking a constitutional ramble in the morning air, but on a much less
+extended scale, for this person did not look capable of going far
+afield.
+
+He was an old man, something under middle height, but looking as if he
+had once been taller; for his shoulders were much bent, and his head was
+sunk on his chest. His whole form looked wasted and shrunken, and John
+Hammond thought he had never seen so old a man--or at any rate any man
+who was so deeply marked with all the signs of extreme age; and yet in
+the backwoods of America he had met ancient settlers who remembered
+Franklin, and who had been boys when the battle of Bunker's Hill was
+fresh in the memory of their fathers and mothers.
+
+The little old man was clad in a thick grey overcoat of some shaggy kind
+of cloth which looked like homespun. He wore a felt hat, and carried a
+thick oak stick, and there was nothing in his appearance to indicate
+that he belonged to any higher grade than that of the shepherds and
+guides with whom Hammond had made himself familiar during his previous
+visit. And yet there was something distinctive about the man, Hammond
+thought, something wild and uncanny, which made him unlike any of those
+hale and hearty-looking dalesmen on whom old age sate so lightly. No,
+John Hammond could not fancy this man, with his pallid countenance and
+pale crafty eyes, to be of the same race as those rugged and
+honest-looking descendants of the Norsemen.
+
+Perhaps it was the man's exceeding age, for John Hammond made up his
+mind that he must be a centenarian, which gave him so strange and unholy
+an air. He had the aspect of a man who had been buried and brought back
+to life again.
+
+So might look one of those Indian Fakirs who have the power to suspend life
+by some mysterious process, and to lie in the darkness of the grave for a
+given period, and then at their own will to resume the functions of the
+living. His long white hair fell upon the collar of his grey coat, and
+would have given him a patriarchal appearance had the face possessed the
+dignity of age: but it was a countenance without dignity, a face deeply
+scored with the lines of evil passions and guilty memories--the face of
+the vulture, with a touch of the ferret--altogether a most unpleasant
+face, Mr. Hammond thought.
+
+And yet there was a kind of fascination about that bent and shrunken
+figure, those feeble movements, and shuffling gait. John Hammond turned
+to look after the old man when he had passed him, and stood to watch him
+as he went slowly up the Fell, plant his crutch stick upon the ground
+before every footstep, as if it were a third leg, and more serviceable
+than either of the other two.
+
+Mr. Hammond watched him for two or three minutes, but, as the old man's
+movements had an automatic regularity, the occupation soon palled, and
+he turned and walked toward Fellside. A few yards nearer the grounds he
+met James Steadman, walking briskly, and smoking his morning pipe.
+
+'You are out early this morning,' said Hammond, by way of civility.
+
+'I am always pretty early, sir. I like a mouthful of morning air.'
+
+'So do I. By-the-bye, can you tell me anything about a queer-looking old
+man I passed just now a little higher up the Fell? Such an old, old man,
+with long white hair.'
+
+'Yes, sir. I believe I know him.'
+
+'Who is he? Does he live in Grasmere?'
+
+Steadman looked puzzled.
+
+'Well, you see, sir, your description might apply to a good many; but if
+it's the man I think you mean he lives in one of the cottages behind the
+church. Old Barlow, they call him.'
+
+'There can't be two such men--he must be at least a century old. If any
+one told me he were a hundred and twenty I shouldn't be inclined to
+doubt the fact. I never saw such a shrivelled, wrinkled visage,
+bloodless, too, as if the poor old wretch never felt your fresh mountain
+air upon his hollow cheeks. A dreadful face. It will haunt me for a
+month.'
+
+'It must be old Barlow,' replied Steadman. 'Good day, sir.'
+
+He walked on with his swinging step, and at such a pace that he was up
+the side of the Fell and close upon old Barlow's heels when Hammond
+turned to look after him five minutes later.
+
+'There's a man who shows few traces of age, at any rate,' thought
+Hammond. 'Yet her ladyship told me that he is over seventy.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+THE OLD MAN ON THE FELL.
+
+
+Having made up his mind to stay at Fellside until after Easter,
+Maulevrier settled down very quietly--for him. He rode a good deal,
+fished a little, looked after his dogs, played billiards, made a devout
+appearance in the big square pew at St. Oswald's on Sunday mornings, and
+behaved altogether as a reformed character. Even his grandmother was
+fain to admit that Maulevrier was improved, and that Mr. Hammond's
+influence upon him must be exercised for good and not for evil.
+
+'I plunged awfully last year, and the year before that,' said
+Maulevrier, sitting at tea in her ladyship's morning room one afternoon
+about a week after his return, when she had expressed her gracious
+desire that the two young men should take tea with her.
+
+Mary was in charge of the tea-pot and brass kettle, and looked as
+radiant and as fresh as a summer morning. A regular Gainsborough girl,
+Hammond called her, when he praised her to her brother; a true English
+beauty, unsophisticated, a little rustic, but full of youthful
+sweetness.
+
+'You see, I didn't know what a racing stable meant,' continued
+Maulevrier, mildly apologetic--'in fact, I thought it was an easy way
+for a nobleman to make as good a living as your City swells, with their
+soft goods or their Brummagem ware, a respectable trade for a gentleman
+to engage in. And it was only when I was half ruined that I began to
+understand the business; and as soon as I did understand it I made up my
+mind to get out of it; and I am happy to say that I sold the very last
+of my stud in February, and Tony Lumpkin is his own man again. So you
+may welcome the prodigal grandson, and order the fatted calf to be
+slain, grandmother!'
+
+Lady Maulevrier stretched out her left hand to him, and the young man
+bent over it and kissed it affectionately. He felt really touched by her
+misfortunes, and was fonder of her than he had ever been before. She had
+been somewhat hard with him in his boyhood, but she had always cared for
+his dignity and protected his interests: and, after all, she was a noble
+old woman, a grandmother of whom a man might be justly proud. He thought
+of the painted harridans, the bare-shouldered skeletons, whom some of
+his young friends were obliged to own in the same capacity, and he was
+thankful that he could reverence his father's mother.
+
+'That is the best news I have heard for a long time, Maulevrier,' said
+her ladyship graciously; 'better medicine for my nerves than any of Mr.
+Horton's preparations. If Mr. Hammond's advice has influenced you to get
+rid of your stable I am deeply grateful to Mr. Hammond.'
+
+Hammond smiled as he sipped his tea, sitting close to Mary's tray, ready
+to fly to her assistance on the instant should the brazen kettle become
+troublesome. It had a threatening way of hissing and bubbling over its
+spirit lamp.
+
+'Oh, you have no idea what a fellow Hammond is to lecture,' answered
+Maulevrier. 'He is a tremendous Radical, and he thinks that every young
+man in my position ought to be a reformer, and devote the greater part
+of his time and trouble to turning out the dirty corners of the world,
+upsetting those poor dear families who like to pig together in one room,
+ordering all the children off to school, marrying the fathers and
+mothers, thrusting himself between free labour and free beer, and
+interfering with the liberty of the subject in every direction.'
+
+'All that may sound like Radicalism, but I think it is the true
+Conservatism, and that every young man ought to do as much, if he wants
+this timeworn old country to maintain its power and prosperity,'
+answered Lady Maulevrier, with an approving glance at John Hammond's
+thoughtful face.
+
+'Right you are, grandmother,' returned Maulevrier, 'and I believe
+Hammond calls himself a Conservative, and means to vote with the
+Conservatives.'
+
+Means to vote! An idle phrase, surely, thought her ladyship, where the
+young man's chance of getting into Parliament was so remote.
+
+That afternoon tea in Lady Maulevrier's room was almost as cheerful as
+the tea-drinkings in the drawing-room, unrestrained by her ladyship's
+presence. She was pleased with her grandson's conduct, and was therefore
+inclined to be friendly to his friend. She could see an improvement in
+Mary, too. The girl was more feminine, more subdued, graver, sweeter;
+more like that ideal woman of Wordsworth's, whose image embodies all
+that is purest and fairest in womanhood.
+
+Mary had not forgotten that unlucky story about the fox-hunt, and ever
+since Hammond's return she had been as it were on her best behaviour,
+refraining from her races with the terriers, and holding herself aloof
+from Maulevrier's masculine pursuits. She sheltered herself a good deal
+under the Fräulein's substantial wing, and took care never to intrude
+herself upon the amusements of her brother and his friend. She was not
+one of those young women who think a brother's presence an excuse for a
+perpetual _tête-à-tête_ with a young man. Yet when Maulevrier came in
+quest of her, and entreated her to join them in a ramble, she was not
+too prudish to refuse the pleasure she so thoroughly enjoyed. But
+afternoon tea was her privileged hour--the time at which she wore her
+prettiest frock, and forgot to regret her inferiority to Lesbia in all
+the graces of womanhood.
+
+One afternoon, when they had all three walked to Easedale Tarn, and were
+coming back by the side of the force, picking their way among the grey
+stones and the narrow threads of silvery water, it suddenly occurred to
+Hammond to ask Mary about that queer old man he had seen on the Fell
+nearly a fortnight before. He had often thought of making the inquiry
+when he was away from Mary, but had always forgotten the thing when he
+was with her. Indeed, Mary had a wonderful knack of making him forget
+everything but herself.
+
+'You seem to know every creature in Grasmere, down to the two-year-old
+babies,' said Hammond, Mary having just stopped to converse with an
+infantine group, straggling and struggling over the boulders. 'Pray, do
+you happen to know a man called Barlow, a very old man?'
+
+'Old Sam Barlow,' exclaimed Mary; 'why, of course I know him.'
+
+She said it as if he were a near relative, and the question palpably
+absurd.
+
+'He is an old man, a hundred, at least, I should think,' said Hammond.
+
+'Poor old Sam, not much on the wrong side of eighty. I go to see him
+every week, and take him his week's tobacco, poor old dear. It is his
+only comfort.'
+
+'Is it?' asked Hammond. 'I should have doubted his having so humanising
+a taste as tobacco. He looks too evil a creature ever to have yielded to
+the softening influence of a pipe.'
+
+'An evil creature! What, old Sam? Why he is the most genial old thing,
+and as cheery--loves to hear the newspaper read to him--the murders and
+railway accidents. He doesn't care for politics. Everybody likes old Sam
+Barlow.'
+
+'I fancy the Grasmere idea of reverend and amiable age must be strictly
+local. I can only say that I never saw a more unholy countenance.'
+
+'You must have been dreaming when you saw him,' said Mary. 'Where did
+you meet him?'
+
+'On the Fell, about a quarter of a mile from the shrubbery gate.'
+
+'_Did_ you? I shouldn't have thought he could have got so far. I've a
+good mind to take you to see him, this very afternoon, before we go
+home.'
+
+'Do,' exclaimed Hammond, 'I should like it immensely. I thought him a
+hateful-looking old person; but there was something so thoroughly
+uncanny about him that he exercised an absolute fascination upon me: he
+magnetised me, I think, as the green-eyed cat magnetises the bird. I
+have been positively longing to see him again. He is a kind of human
+monster, and I hope some one will have a big bottle made ready for him
+and preserve him in spirits when he dies.'
+
+'What a horrid idea! No, sir, dear old Barlow shall lie beside the
+Rotha, under the trees Wordsworth planted. He is such a man as
+Wordsworth would have loved.'
+
+Mr. Hammond shrugged his shoulders, and said no more. Mary's little
+vehement ways, her enthusiasm, her love of that valley, which might be
+called her native place, albeit her eyes had opened upon heaven's light
+far away, her humility, were all very delightful in their way. She was
+not a perfect beauty, like Lesbia; but she was a fresh, pure-minded
+English girl, frank as the day, and if he had had a brother he would
+have recommended that brother to choose just such a girl for his wife.
+
+Mr. Samuel Barlow occupied a little old cottage, which seemed to consist
+chiefly of a gable end and a chimney stack, in that cluster of dwellings
+behind St. Oswald's church, which was once known as the Kirk Town.
+Visitors went downstairs to get to Mr. Barlow's ground-floor, for the
+influence of time and advancing civilisation had raised the pathway in
+front of Mr. Barlow's cottage until his parlour had become of a
+cellar-like aspect. Yet it was a very nice little parlour when one got
+down to it, and it enjoyed winter and summer a perpetual twilight, since
+the light that crept through the leaded casement was tempered by a
+screen of flowerpots, which were old Barlow's particular care. There
+were no finer geraniums in all Grasmere than Barlow's, no bigger
+carnations or picotees, asters or arums.
+
+It was about five o'clock in the March afternoon, when Mary ushered John
+Hammond into Mr. Barlow's dwelling, and, in the dim glow of a cheery
+little fire and the faint light that filtered through the screen of
+geranium leaves, the visitor looked for a moment or so doubtfully at the
+owner of the cottage. But only for a moment. Those bright blue eyes and
+apple cheeks, that benevolent expression, bore no likeness to the
+strange old man he had seen on the Fell. Mr. Barlow was toothless and
+nut-cracker like of outline; he was thin and shrunken, and bent with the
+burden of long years, but his healthy visage had none of those deep
+lines, those cross markings and hollows which made the pallid
+countenance of that other old man as ghastly as would be the abstract
+idea of life's last stage embodied by the bitter pencil of a Hogarth.
+
+'I have brought a gentleman from London to see you, Sam,' said Mary. 'He
+fancied he met you on the Fell the other morning.'
+
+Barlow rose and quavered a cheery welcome, but protested against the
+idea of his having got so far as the Fell.
+
+'With my blessed rheumatics, you know it isn't in me, Lady Mary. I shall
+never get no further than the churchyard; but I likes to sit on the wall
+hard by Wordsworth's tomb in a warm afternoon, and to see the folks pass
+over the bridge; and I can potter about looking after my flowers, I can.
+But it would be a dull life, now the poor old missus is gone and the
+bairns all out at service, if it wasn't for some one dropping in to have
+a chat, or read me a bit of the news sometimes. And there isn't anybody
+in Grasmere, gentle or simple, that's kinder to me than you, Lady Mary.
+Lord bless you, I do look forward to my newspaper. Any more of them
+dreadful smashes?'
+
+'No, Sam, thank Heaven, there have been no railway accidents.'
+
+'Ah, we shall have 'em in August and September,' said the old man,
+cheerily. 'They're bound to come then. There's a time for all things,
+as Solomon says. When the season comes t'smashes all coom. And no more
+of these mysterious murders, I suppose, which baffle t'police and keep
+me awake o' nights thinking of 'em.'
+
+'Surely you do not take delight in murder, Mr. Barlow?' said Hammond.
+
+'No, sir, I do not wish my fellow-creatures to mak' awa' wi' each other;
+but if there is a murder going in the papers I like to get the benefit
+of it. I like to sit in front of my fire of an evening and wonder about
+it while I smoke my pipe, and fancy I can see the murderer hiding in a
+garret in an out-of-the-way alley, or as a stowaway on board a gert
+ship, or as a miner deep down in a coalpit, and never thinking that even
+there t'police can track him. Did you ever hear tell o' Mr. de Quincey,
+sir?'
+
+'I believe I have read every line he ever wrote.'
+
+'Ah, you should have heard him talk about murders. It would have made
+you dream queer dreams, just as he did. He lived for years in the white
+cottage that Wordsworth once lived in, just behind the street yonder--a
+nice, neat, lile gentleman, in a houseful of books. I've had many a talk
+with him when I was a young man.'
+
+'And how old may you be now, Mr. Barlow?'
+
+'Getting on for eighty four, sir.'
+
+'But you are not the oldest man in Grasmere, I should say, by twenty
+years?'
+
+'I don't think there's many much older than me, sir.'
+
+'The man I saw on the Fell looked at least a hundred. I wish you could
+tell me who he is; I feel a morbid curiosity about him.'
+
+He went on to describe the old man in the grey coat, as minutely as he
+could, dwelling on every characteristic of that singular-looking old
+person; but Samuel Barlow could not identify the description with any
+one in Grasmere. Yet a man of that age, seen walking on the hill-side at
+eight in the morning, could hardly have come from far afield.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+LADY MAULEVRIER'S LETTER-BAG.
+
+
+Although Maulevrier had assured his grandmother that John Hammond would
+take flight at the first warning of Lesbia's return, Lady Maulevrier's
+dread of any meeting between her granddaughter and that ineligible lover
+determined her in making such arrangements as should banish Lesbia from
+Fellside, so long as there seemed the slightest danger of such a
+meeting. She knew that Lesbia had loved her fortuneless suitor; and she
+did not know that the wound was cured, even by a season in the
+little-great world of Cannes. Now that she, the ruler of that
+household, was a helpless captive in her own apartments, she felt that
+Lesbia at Fellside would be her own mistress, and hemmed round with the
+dangers that beset richly-dowered beauty and inexperienced youth.
+
+John Hammond might be playing a very deep game, perhaps assisted by
+Maulevrier. He might ostensibly leave Fellside before Lesbia's return,
+yet lurk in the neighbourhood, and contrive to meet her every day. If
+Maulevrier encouraged this folly, they might be married and over the
+border, before her ladyship--fettered, impotent as she was--could
+interfere.
+
+Lady Maulevrier felt that Georgie Kirkbank was her strong rock. So long
+as Lesbia was under that astute veteran's wing there could be no danger.
+In that embodied essence of worldliness and diplomacy, there was an
+ever-present defence from all temptations that spring from romance and
+youthful impulses. It was a bitter thing, perhaps, to steep a young and
+pure soul in such an atmosphere, to harden a fresh young nature in the
+fiery crucible of fashionable life; but Lady Maulevrier believed that
+the end would sanctify the means. Lesbia, once married to a worthy man,
+such a man as Lord Hartfield, for instance, would soon rise to a higher
+level than that Belgravian swamp over which the malarian vapours of
+falsehood, and slander, and self-seeking, and prurient imaginings hang
+dense and thick. She would rise to the loftier table-land of that really
+great world which governs and admonishes the ruck of mankind by examples
+of noble deeds and noble thoughts; the world of statesmen, and soldiers,
+and thinkers, and reformers; the salt wherewithal society is salted.
+
+But while Lesbia was treading the tortuous mazes of fashion, it was well
+for her to be guided and guarded by such an old campaigner as Lady
+Kirkbank, a woman who, in the language of her friends, 'knew the ropes.'
+
+Lesbia's last letter had been to the effect that she was to go back to
+London with the Kirkbanks directly after Easter, and that directly they
+arrived she would set off with her maid for Fellside, to spend a week or
+a fortnight with her dearest grandmother, before going back to Arlington
+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,
+
+    'This is a world in which our brightest day-dreams generally end in
+    mere dreaming. For years past I have cherished the hope of
+    presenting you to your sovereign, to whom I was presented six and
+    forty years ago, when she was so fair and girlish a creature that
+    she seemed to me more like a queen in a fairy tale than the actual
+    ruler of a great country. I have beguiled my monotonous days with
+    thoughts of the time when I should return to the great world, full
+    of pride and delight in showing old friends what a sweet flower I
+    had reared in my mountain home; but, alas, Lesbia, it may not be.
+
+    'Fate has willed otherwise. The maimed hand does not recover,
+    although Horton is very clever, and thoroughly understands my case.
+    I am not ill, I am not in danger; so you need feel no anxiety about
+    me; but I am a cripple; and I am likely to remain a cripple for
+    months; so the idea of a London season this year is hopeless.
+
+    'Now, as you have in a manner made your _début_ at Cannes, it would
+    never do to bury you here for another year. You complained of the
+    dullness last summer; but you would find Fellside much duller now
+    that you have tasted the elixir of life. No, my dear love, it will
+    be well for you to be presented, as Lady Kirkbank proposes, at the
+    first drawing-room after Easter; and Lady Kirkbank will have to
+    present you. She will be pleased to do this, I know, for her letters
+    are full of enthusiasm about you. And, after all, I do not think you
+    will lose by the exchange. Clever as I think myself, I fear I should
+    find myself sorely at fault in the society of to-day. All things are
+    changed: opinions, manners, creeds, morals even. Acts that were
+    crimes in my day are now venial errors--opinions that were
+    scandalous are now the mark of "advanced thought." I should be too
+    formal for this easy-going age, should be ridiculed as old-fashioned
+    and narrow-minded, should put you to the blush a dozen times a day
+    by my prejudices and opinions.
+
+    'It is very good of you to think of travelling so long a distance to
+    see me; and I should love to look at your sweet face, and hear you
+    describe your new experiences; but I could not allow you to travel
+    with only the protection of a maid; and there are many reasons why I
+    think it better to defer the meeting till the end of the season,
+    when Lady Kirkbank will bring my treasure back to me, eager to tell
+    me the history of all the hearts she has broken.'
+
+The dowager's letter to Lady Kirkbank was brief and business-like. She
+could only hope that her old friend Georgie, whose acuteness she knew of
+old, would divine her feelings and her wishes, without being explicitly
+told what they were.
+
+    'My dear Georgie,
+
+    'I am too ill to leave this house; indeed I doubt if I shall ever
+    leave it till I am taken away in my coffin; but please say nothing
+    to alarm Lesbia. Indeed, there is no ground for fear, as I am not
+    dangerously ill, and may drag out an imprisonment of long years
+    before the coffin comes to fetch me. There are reasons, which you
+    will understand, why Lesbia should not come here till after the
+    season; so please keep her in Arlington Street, and occupy her mind
+    as much as you can with the preparations for her first campaign. I
+    give you _carte blanche_. If Carson is still in business I should
+    like her to make my girl's gowns; but you must please yourself in
+    this matter, as it is quite possible that Carson is a little behind
+    the times.
+
+    'I must ask you to present my darling, and to deal with her exactly
+    as if she were a daughter of your own. I think you know all my views
+    and hopes about her; and I feel that I can trust to your friendship
+    in this my day of need. The dream of my life has been to launch her
+    myself, and direct her every step in the mazes of town life; but
+    that dream is over. I have kept age and infirmity at a distance,
+    have even forgotten that the years were going by; and now I find
+    myself an old woman all at once, and my golden dream has vanished.'
+
+Lady Kirkbank's reply came by return of post, and happily this gushing
+epistle had not to be submitted to Mary's eye.
+
+    'My dearest Di,
+
+    'My heart positively bleeds for you. What is the matter with your
+    hand, that you talk of being a life-long prisoner to your room? Pray
+    send for Paget or Erichsen, and have yourself put right at once. No
+    doubt that local simpleton is making a mess of your case. Perhaps
+    while he is dabbing with lint and lotions the real remedy is the
+    knife. I am sure amputation would be less melancholy than the
+    despondent state of feeling which you are now suffering. If any limb
+    of mine went wrong, I should say to the surgeon, "Cut it off, and
+    patch up the stump in your best style; I give you a fortnight, and
+    at the end of that time I expect to be going to parties again." Life
+    is not long enough for dawdling surgery.
+
+    'As regards Lesbia, I can only say that I adore her, and I am
+    enchanted at the idea that I am to run her myself. I intend her to
+    be _the_ beauty of the season--not _one of the loveliest
+    debutantes_, or any rot of that kind--but just the girl whom
+    everybody will be crazy about. There shall be a mob wherever she
+    appears, Di, I promise you that. There is no one in London who can
+    work a thing of that kind better than your humble servant. And when
+    once the girl is the talk of the town, all the rest is easy. She can
+    choose for herself among the very best men in society. Offers will
+    pour in as thickly as circulars from undertakers and mourning
+    warehouses after a death.
+
+    'Lesbia is so cool-headed and sensible that I have not the least
+    doubt of her success. With an impulsive or romantic girl there is
+    always the fear of a _fiasco_. But this sweet child of yours has
+    been well brought up, and knows her own value. She behaved like a
+    queen here, where I need not tell you society is just a little
+    mixed; though, of course, we only cultivate our own set. Your heart
+    would swell with pride if you could see the way she puts down men
+    who are not quite good style; and the ease with which she crushes
+    those odious American girls, with their fine complexions and loud
+    manners.
+
+    'Be assured that I shall guard her as the apple of my eye, and that
+    the detrimental who circumvents me will be a very Satan of schemers.
+
+    'I can but smile at your mention of Carson, whose gowns used to fit
+    us so well in our girlish days, and whose bills seem moderate
+    compared with the exorbitant accounts I get now.
+
+    'Carson has long been forgotten, my dear soul, gone with the snows
+    of last year. A long procession of fashionable French dressmakers
+    has passed across the stage since her time, like the phantom kings
+    in Macbeth; and now the last rage is to have our gowns made by an
+    Englishman who works for the Princess, and who gives himself most
+    insufferable airs, or an Irishwoman who is employed by all the best
+    actresses. It is to the latter, Kate Kearney, I shall entrust our
+    sweet Lesbia's toilettes.'
+
+The same post brought a loving letter from Lesbia, full of regret at not
+being allowed to go down to Fellside, and yet full of delight at the
+prospect of her first season.
+
+    'Lady Kirkbank and I have been discussing my court dress,' she wrote,
+    'and we have decided upon a white cut-velvet train, with a border of
+    ostrich feathers, over a satin petticoat embroidered with seed
+    pearl. It will be expensive, but we know you will not mind that.
+    Lady Kirkbank takes the idea from the costume Buckingham wore at the
+    Louvre the first time he met Anne of Austria. Isn't that clever of
+    her? She is not a deep thinker like you; is horribly ignorant of
+    science, metaphysics, poetry even. She asked me one day who Plato
+    was, and whether he took his name from the battle of Platoea; and
+    she says she never could understand why people make a fuss about
+    Shakespeare; but she has read all the secret histories and memoirs
+    that ever were written, and knows all the ins and outs of court life
+    and high life for the last three hundred years; and there is not a
+    person in the peerage whose family history she has not at her
+    fingers' ends, except my grandfather. When I asked her to tell me
+    all about Lord Maulevrier and his achievements as Governor of
+    Madras, she had not a word to say. So, perhaps, she draws upon her
+    invention a little in talking about other people, and felt herself
+    restrained when she came to speak of my grandfather.'
+
+This passage in Lesbia's letter affected Lady Maulevrier as if a
+scorpion had wriggled from underneath the sheet of paper. She folded the
+letter, and laid it in the satin-lined box on her table, with a deep
+sigh.
+
+'Yes, she is in the world now, and she will ask questions. I have never
+warned her against pronouncing her grandfather's name. There are some
+who will not be so kind as Georgie Kirkbank; some, perhaps, who will
+delight in humiliating her, and who will tell her the worst that can be
+told. My only hope is that she will make a great marriage, and speedily.
+Once the wife of a man with a high place in the world, worldlings will
+be too wise to wound her by telling her that her grandfather was an
+unconvicted felon.'
+
+The die was cast. Lady Maulevrier might dread the hazard of evil
+tongues, of slanderous memories; but she could not recall her consent to
+Lesbia's _début_. The girl was already launched; she had been seen and
+admired. The next stage in her career must be to be wooed and won by a
+worthy wooer.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+ON THE DARK BROW OF HELVELLYN.
+
+
+While these plans were being settled, and while Lesbia's future was the
+all-absorbing subject of Lady Maulevrier's thoughts, Mary contrived to
+be happier than she had ever been in her life before. It was happiness
+that grew and strengthened with every day; and yet there was no obvious
+reason for this deep joy. Her life ran in the same familiar groove. She
+walked and rode on the old pathways; she rowed on the lake she had known
+from babyhood; she visited her cottagers, and taught in the village
+school, just the same as of old. The change was only that she was no
+longer alone; and of late the solitude of her life, the ever-present
+consciousness that nobody shared her pleasures or sympathised with her
+upon any point, had weighed upon her like an actual burden. Now she had
+Maulevrier, who was always kind, who understood and shared almost all
+her tastes, and Maulevrier's friend, who, although not given to saying
+smooth things, seemed warmly interested in her pursuits and opinions. He
+encouraged her to talk, although he generally took the opposite side in
+every argument; and she no longer felt oppressed or irritated by the
+idea that he despised her.
+
+Indeed, although he never flattered or even praised her, Mr. Hammond let
+her see that he liked her society. She had gone out of her way to avoid
+him, very fearful lest he should think her bold or masculine; but he had
+taken pains to frustrate all her efforts in that direction; he had
+refused to go upon excursions which she could not share. 'Lady Mary must
+come with us,' he said, when they were planning a morning's ramble. Thus
+it happened that Mary was his guide and companion in all his walks, and
+roamed with him bamboo in hand, over every one of those mountainous
+paths she knew and loved so well. Distance was as nothing to
+them--sometimes a boat helped them, and they went over wintry Windermere
+to climb the picturesque heights above Bowness. Sometimes they took
+ponies, and a groom, and left their steeds to perform the wilder part of
+the way on foot. In this wise John Hammond saw all that was to be seen
+within a day's journey of Grasmere, except the top of Helvellyn.
+Maulevrier had shirked the expedition, had always put off Mary and Mr.
+Hammond when they proposed it. The season was not advanced enough--the
+rugged pathway by the Tongue Ghyll would be as slippery as glass--no
+pony could get up there in such weather.
+
+'We have not had any frost to speak of for the last fortnight,' pleaded
+Mary, who was particularly anxious to do the honours of Helvellyn, as
+the real lion of the neighbourhood.
+
+'What a simpleton you are, Molly!' cried Maulevrier. 'Do you suppose
+because there is no frost in your grandmother's garden--and if you were
+to ask Staples about his peaches he would tell you a very different
+story--that there's a tropical atmosphere on Dolly Waggon Pike? Why, I'd
+wager the ice on Grisdale Tarn is thick enough for skating. Helvellyn
+won't run away, child. You and Hammond can dance the Highland
+Schottische on Striding Edge in June, if you like.'
+
+'Mr. Hammond won't be here in June,' said Mary.
+
+'Who knows?--the train service is pretty fair between London and
+Windermere. Hammond and I would think nothing of putting ourselves in
+the mail on a Friday night, and coming down to spend Saturday and Sunday
+with you--if you are good.'
+
+There came a sunny morning soon after Easter which seemed mild enough
+for June; and when Hammond suggested that this was the very day for
+Helvellyn, Maulevrier had not a word to say against the truth of that
+proposition. The weather had been exceptionally warm for the last week,
+and they had played tennis and sat in the garden just as if it had been
+actually summer. Patches of snow might still linger on the crests of the
+hills--but the approach to those bleak heights could hardly be glacial.
+
+Mary clasped her hands delightedly.
+
+'Dear old Maulevrier!' she exclaimed, 'you are always good to me. And
+now I shall be able to show you the Red Tarn, the highest pool of water
+in England,' she said, turning to Hammond. 'And you will see Windermere
+winding like a silvery serpent between the hills, and Grasmere shining
+like a jewel in the depth of the valley, and the sea glittering like a
+line of white light between the edges of earth and heaven, and the dark
+Scotch hills like couchant lions far away to the north.'
+
+'That is to say these things are all supposed to be on view from the top
+of the mountain; but as a peculiar and altogether exceptional state of
+the atmosphere is essential to their being seen, I need not tell you
+that they are rarely visible,' said Maulevrier. 'You are talking to old
+mountaineers, Molly. Hammond has done Cotapaxi and had his little
+clamber on the equatorial Andes, and I--well, child, I have done my
+Righi, and I have always found the boasted panorama enveloped in dense
+fog.'
+
+'It won't be foggy to-day,' said Mary. 'Shall we do the whole thing on
+foot, or shall I order the ponies?'
+
+Mr. Hammond inquired the distance up and down, and being told that it
+involved only a matter of eight miles, decided upon walking.
+
+'I'll walk, and lead your pony,' he said to Mary, but Mary declared
+herself quite capable of going on foot, so the ponies were dispensed
+with as a possible encumbrance.
+
+This was planned and discussed in the garden before breakfast. Fräulein
+was told that Mary was going for a long walk with her brother and Mr.
+Hammond; a walk which might last over the usual luncheon hour; so
+Fräulein was not to wait luncheon. Mary went to her grandmother's room
+to pay her duty visit. There were no letters for her to write that
+morning, so she was perfectly free.
+
+The three pedestrians started an hour after breakfast, in light marching
+order. The two young men wore their Argyleshire shooting
+clothes--homespun knickerbockers and jackets, thick-ribbed hose knitted
+by Highland lasses in Inverness. They carried a couple of hunting flasks
+filled with claret, and a couple of sandwich boxes, and that was all.
+Mary wore her substantial tailor-gown of olive tweed, and a little toque
+to match, with a silver mounted grouse-claw for her only ornament.
+
+It was a delicious morning, the air fresh and sweet, the sun comfortably
+warm, a little too warm, perhaps, presently, when they had trodden the
+narrow path by the Tongue Ghyll, and were beginning to wind slowly
+upwards over rough boulders and last year's bracken, tough and brown and
+tangled, towards that rugged wall of earth and stone tufted with rank
+grasses, which calls itself Dolly Waggon Pike. Here they all came to a
+stand-still, and wiped the dews of honest labour from their foreheads;
+and here Maulevrier flung himself down upon a big boulder, with the
+soles of his stout shooting boots in running water, and took out his
+cigar case.
+
+'How do you like it?' he asked his friend, when he had lighted his
+cigarette. 'I hope you are enjoying yourself.'
+
+'I never was happier in my life,' answered Hammond.
+
+He was standing on higher ground, with Mary at his elbow, pointing out
+and expatiating upon the details of the prospect. There were the
+lakes--Grasmere, a disk of shining blue; Rydal, a patch of silver; and
+Windermere winding amidst a labyrinth of wooded hills.
+
+'Aren't you tired?' asked Maulevrier.
+
+'Not a whit.'
+
+'Oh, I forgot you had done Cotapaxi, or as much of Cotapaxi as living
+mortal ever has done. That makes a difference. I am going home.'
+
+'Oh, Maulevrier!' exclaimed Mary, piteously.
+
+'I am going home. You two can go to the top. You are both hardened
+mountaineers, and I am not in it with either of you. When I rashly
+consented to a pedestrian ascent of Helvellyn I had forgotten what the
+gentleman was like; and as to Dolly Waggon I had actually forgotten her
+existence. But now I see the lady--as steep as the side of a house, and
+as stony--no, naught but herself can be her parallel in stoniness. No,
+Molly, I will go no further.'
+
+'But we shall go down on the other side,' urged Mary. 'It is a little
+steeper on the Cumberland side, but not nearly so far.'
+
+'A little steeper! I Can anything be steeper than Dolly Waggon? Yes, you
+are right. It is steeper on the Cumberland side. I remember coming down
+a sheer descent, like an exaggerated sugar-loaf; but I was on a pony,
+and it was the brute's look-out. I will not go down the Cumberland side
+on my own legs. No, Molly, not even for you. But if you and Hammond want
+to go to the top, there is nothing to prevent you. He is a skilled
+mountaineer. I'll trust you with him.'
+
+Mary blushed, and made no reply. Of all things in the world she least
+wanted to abandon the expedition. Yet to climb Helvellyn alone with her
+brother's friend would no doubt be a terrible violation of those laws of
+maidenly propriety which Fräulein was always expounding. If Mary were to
+do this thing, which she longed to do, she must hazard a lecture from
+her governess, and probably a biting reproof from her grandmother.
+
+'Will you trust yourself with me, Lady Mary?' asked Hammond, looking at
+her with a gaze so earnest--so much more earnest than the occasion
+required--that her blushes deepened and her eyelids fell. 'I have done a
+good deal of climbing in my day, and I am not afraid of anything
+Helvellyn can do to me. I promise to take great care of you if you will
+come.'
+
+How could she refuse? How could she for one moment pretend that she did
+not trust him, that her heart did not yearn to go with him. She would
+have climbed the shingly steep of Cotapaxi with him--or crossed the
+great Sahara with him--and feared nothing. Her trust in him was
+infinite--as infinite as her reverence and love.
+
+'I am afraid Fräulein would make a fuss,' she faltered, after a pause.
+
+'Hang Fräulein,' cried Maulevrier, puffing at his cigarette, and kicking
+about the stones in the clear running water. 'I'll square it with
+Fräulein. I'll give her a pint of fiz with her lunch, and make her see
+everything in a rosy hue. The good soul is fond of her Heidseck. You
+will be back by afternoon tea. Why should there be any fuss about the
+matter? Hammond wants to see the Red Tarn, and you are dying to show him
+the way. Go, and joy go with you both. Climbing a stony hill is a form
+of pleasure to which I have not yet risen. I shall stroll home at my
+leisure, and spend the afternoon on the billiard-room sofa reading
+Mudie's last contribution to the comforts of home.'
+
+'What a Sybarite,' said Hammond. 'Come, Lady Mary, we mustn't loiter, if
+we are to be back at Fellside by five o'clock.'
+
+Mary looked at her brother doubtfully, and he gave her a little nod
+which seemed to say, 'Go, by all means;' so she dug the end of her staff
+into Dolly's rugged breast, and mounted cheerily, stepping lightly from
+boulder to boulder.
+
+The sun was not so warm as it had been ten minutes ago, when Maulevrier
+flung himself down to rest. The sky had clouded over a little, and a
+cooler wind was blowing across the breast of the hill. Fairfield yonder,
+that long smooth slope of verdure which a little while ago looked
+emerald green in the sunlight, now wore a soft and shadowy hue. All the
+world was greyer and dimmer in a moment, as it were, and Coniston Lake
+in its distant valley disappeared beneath a veil of mist, while the
+shimmering sea-line upon the verge of the horizon melted and vanished
+among the clouds that overhung it. The weather changes very quickly in
+this part of the world. Sharp drops of rain came spitting at Hammond and
+Mary as they climbed the crest of the Pike, and stopped, somewhat
+breathless, to look back at Maulevrier. He was trudging blithely down
+the winding way, and seemed to have done wonders while they had been
+doing very little.
+
+'How fast he is going!' said Mary.
+
+'Easy is the descent of Avernus. He is going down-hill, and we are going
+upwards. That makes all the difference in life, you see,' answered
+Hammond.
+
+Mary looked at him with divine compassion. She thought that for him the
+hill of life would be harder than Helvellyn. He was brave, honest,
+clever; but her grandmother had impressed upon her that modern
+civilisation hardly has room for a young man who wants to get on in the
+world, without either fortune or powerful connexions. He had better go
+to Australia and keep sheep, than attempt the impossible at home.
+
+The rain was a passing shower, hardly worth speaking of, but the glory
+of the day was over. The sky was grey, and there were dark clouds
+creeping up from the sea-line. Silvery Windermere had taken a leaden
+hue; and now they turned their last fond look upon the Westmoreland
+valley, and set their faces steadily towards Cumberland, and the fine
+grassy plateau on the top of the hill.
+
+All this was not done in a flash. It took them some time to scale
+Dolly's stubborn breast, and it took them another hour to reach Seat
+Sandal; and by the time they came to the iron gate in the fence, which
+at this point divides the two counties, the atmosphere had thickened
+ominously, and dark wreaths of fog were floating about and around them,
+whirled here and there by a boisterous wind which shrieked and roared at
+them with savage fury, as if it were the voice of some Titan monarch of
+the mountain protesting against this intrusion upon his domain.
+
+'I'm afraid you won't see the Scottish hills,' shouted Mary, holding on
+her little cloth hat.
+
+She was obliged to shout at the top of her voice, though she was close
+to Mr. Hammond's elbow, for that shrill screaming wind would have
+drowned the voice of a stentor.
+
+'Never mind the view,' replied Hammond in the same fortissimo, 'but I
+really wish I hadn't brought you up here. If this fog should get any
+worse, it may be dangerous.'
+
+'The fog is sure to get worse,' said Mary, in a brief lull of the
+hurly-burly, 'but there is no danger. I know every inch of the hill, and
+I am not a bit afraid. I can guide you, if you will trust me.'
+
+'My bravest of girls,' he exclaimed, looking down at her. 'Trust you!
+Yes, I would trust my life to you--my soul--my honour--secure in your
+purity and good faith.'
+
+Never had eyes of living man or woman looked down upon her with such
+tenderness, such fervent love. She looked up at him; looked with eyes
+which, at first bewildered, then grew bold, and lost themselves, as it
+were, in the dark grey depths of the eyes they met. The savage wind,
+hustling and howling, blew her nearer to him, as a reed is blown against
+a rock. Dark grey mists were rising round them like a sea; but had that
+ever-thickening, ever-darkening vapour been the sea itself, and death
+inevitable, Mary Haselden would have hardly cared. For in this moment
+the one precious gift for which her soul had long been yearning had been
+freely given to her. She knew all at once, that she was fondly loved by
+that one man whom she had chosen for her idol and her hero.
+
+What matter that he was fortuneless, a nobody, with but the poorest
+chances of success in the world? What if he must needs, only to win the
+bare means of existence, go to Australia and keep sheep, or to the Bed
+River valley and grow corn? What if he must labour, as the peasants
+laboured on the sides of this rude hill? Gladly would she go with him to
+a strange country, and keep his log cabin, and work for him, and share
+his toilsome life, rough or smooth. No loss of social rank could lessen
+her pride in him, her belief in him.
+
+They were standing side by side a little way from the edge of the sheer
+descent, below which the Bed Tarn showed black in a basin scooped out of
+the naked hill, like water held in the hollow of a giant's hand.
+
+'Look,' cried Mary, pointing downward, 'you must see the Red Tarn, the
+highest water in England?'
+
+But just at this moment there came a blast which shook even Hammond's
+strong frame, and with a cry of fear he snatched Mary in his arms and
+carried her away from the edge of the hill. He folded her in his arms
+and held her there, thirty yards away from the precipice, safely
+sheltered against his breast, while the wind raved round them, blowing
+her hair from the broad, white brow, and showing him that noble forehead
+in all its power and beauty; while the darkness deepened round them so
+that they could see hardly anything except each other's eyes.
+
+'My love, my own dear love,' he murmured fondly; 'I will trust you with
+my life. Will you accept the trust? I am hardly worthy; for less than a
+year ago I offered myself to your sister, and I thought she was the only
+woman in this wide world who could make me happy. And when she refused
+me I was in despair, Mary; and I left Fellside in the full belief that I
+had done with life and happiness. And then I came back, only to oblige
+Maulevrier, and determined to be utterly miserable at Fellside. I was
+miserable for the first two hours. Memories of dead and gone joys and
+disappointed hopes were very bitter. And I tried honestly to keep up my
+feeling of wretchedness for the first few days. But it was no use,
+Molly. There was a genial spirit in the place, a laughing fairy who
+would not let me be sad; and I found myself becoming most unromantically
+happy, eating my breakfast with a hearty appetite, thinking my cup of
+afternoon tea nectar for love of the dear hand that gave it. And so, and
+so, till the new love, the purer and better love, grew and grew into a
+mighty tree, which was as an oak to an orchid, compared with that
+passion flower of earlier growth. Mary, will you trust your life to me,
+as I trust mine to you. I say to you almost in the words I spoke last
+year to Lesbia,' and here his tone grew grave almost to solemnity,
+'trust me, and I will make your life free from the shadow of care--trust
+me, for I have a brave spirit and a strong arm to fight the battle of
+life--trust me, and I will win for you the position you have a right to
+occupy--trust me, and you shall never repent your trust.'
+
+She looked up at him with eyes which told of infinite faith, child-like,
+unquestioning faith.
+
+'I will trust you in all things, and for ever,' she said. 'I am not
+afraid to face evil fortune. I do not care how poor you are--how hard
+our lives may be--if--if you are sure you love me.'
+
+'Sure! There is not a beat of my heart or a thought of my mind that does
+not belong to you. I am yours to the very depths of my soul. My innocent
+love, my clear-eyed, clear-souled angel! I have studied you and watched
+you and thought of you, and sounded the depths of your lovely nature,
+and the result is that you are for me earth's one woman. I will have no
+other, Mary, no other love, no other wife.'
+
+'Lady Maulevrier will be dreadfully angry,' faltered Mary.
+
+'Are you afraid of her anger?'
+
+'No; I am afraid of nothing, for your sake.'
+
+He lifted her hand to his lips, and kissed it reverently, and there was
+a touch of chivalry in that reverential kiss. His eyes clouded with
+tears as he looked down into the trustful face. The fog had darkened to
+a denser blackness, and it was almost as if they were engulfed in sudden
+night.
+
+'If we are never to find our way down the hill; if this were to be the
+last hour of our lives, Mary, would you be content?'
+
+'Quite content,' she answered, simply. 'I think I have lived long
+enough, if you really love me--if you are not making fun.'
+
+'What, Molly, do you still doubt? Is it strange that I love you?'
+
+'Very strange. I am so different from Lesbia.'
+
+'Yes, very different, and the difference is your highest charm. And now,
+love, we had better go down whichever side of the hill is easiest, for
+this fog is rather appalling. I forgive the wind, because it blew you
+against my heart just now, and that is where I want you to dwell for
+ever!'
+
+'Don't be frightened,' said Mary. 'I know every step of the way.'
+
+So, leaning on her lover, and yet guiding him, slowly, step by step,
+groping their way through the darkness, Lady Mary led Mr. Hammond down
+the winding track along which the ponies and the guides travel so often
+in the summer season. And soon they began to descend out of that canopy
+of fog which enveloped the brow of Helvellyn, and to see the whole world
+smiling beneath them, a world of green pastures and sheepfolds, with a
+white homestead here and there amidst the fields, looking so human and
+so comfortable after that gloomy mountain top, round which the tempest
+howled so outrageously. Beyond those pastures stretched the dark waters
+of Thirlmere, looking like a broad river.
+
+The descent was passing steep, but Hammond's strong arm and steady
+steps made Mary's progress very easy, while she had in no wise
+exaggerated her familiarity with the windings and twistings of the
+track. Yet as they had need to travel very slowly so long as the fog
+still surrounded them, the journey downward lasted a considerable time,
+and it was past five when they arrived at the little roadside inn at the
+foot of the hill.
+
+Here Mr. Hammond insisted that Mary should rest at least long enough to
+take a cup of tea. She was very white and tired. She had been profoundly
+agitated, and looked on the point of fainting, although she protested
+that she was quite ready to walk on.
+
+'You are not going to walk another step,' said Hammond. 'While you are
+taking your tea I will get you a carriage.'
+
+'Indeed, I had rather hurry on at once,' urged Mary. 'We are so late
+already.'
+
+'You will get home all the sooner if you obey me. It is your duty to
+obey me now,' said Hammond, in a lowered voice.
+
+She smiled at him, but it was a weak, wan little smile, for that descent
+in the wind and the fog had quite exhausted her. Mr. Hammond took her
+into a snug little parlour where there was a cheerful fire, and saw her
+comfortably seated in an arm chair by the hearth, before he went to look
+after a carriage.
+
+There was no such thing as a conveyance to be had, but the Windermere
+coach would pass in about half an hour, and for this they must wait. It
+would take them back to Grasmere sooner than they could get there on
+foot, in Mary's exhausted condition.
+
+The tea-tray was brought in presently, and Hammond poured out the tea
+and waited upon Lady Mary. It was a reversal of the usual formula but it
+was very pleasant to Mary to sit with her feet on the low brass fender
+and be waited upon by her lover. That fog on the brow of Helvellyn--that
+piercing wind--had chilled her to the bone, and there was unspeakable
+comfort in the glow and warmth of the fire, in the refreshment of a good
+cup of tea.
+
+'Mary, you are my own property now, remember,' said Hammond, watching
+her tenderly as she sipped her tea.
+
+She glanced up at him shyly, now and then, with eyes full of innocent
+wonder. It was so strange to her, as strange as sweet, to know that he
+loved her; such a marvellous thing that she had pledged herself to be
+his wife.
+
+'You are my very own--mine to guard and cherish, mine to think and work
+for,' he went on, 'and you will have to trust me, sweet one, even if the
+beginning of things is not altogether free from trouble.'
+
+'I am not afraid of trouble.'
+
+'Bravely spoken! First and foremost, then, you will have to announce
+your engagement to Lady Maulevrier. She will take it ill, no doubt; will
+do her utmost to persuade you to give me up. Have you courage and
+resolution, do you think, to stand against her arguments? Can you hold
+to your purpose bravely, and cry, no surrender?'
+
+'There shall be no surrender,' answered Mary, 'I promise you that. No
+doubt grandmother will be very angry. But she has never cared for me
+very much. It will not hurt her for me to make a bad match, as it would
+have done in Lesbia's case. She has had no day-dreams--no grand ambition
+about me!'
+
+'So much the better, my wayside flower! When you have said all that is
+sweet and dutiful to her, and have let her know at the same time that
+you mean to be my wife, come weal come woe, I will see her, and will
+have my say. I will not promise her a grand career for my darling: but I
+will pledge myself that nothing of that kind which the world calls
+evil--no penury, or shabbiness of surroundings--shall ever touch Mary
+Haselden after she is Mary Hammond. I can promise at least so much as
+that.'
+
+'It is more than enough,' said Mary. 'I have told you that I would
+gladly share poverty with you.'
+
+'Sweet! it is good of you to say as much, but I would not take you at
+your word. You don't know what poverty is.'
+
+'Do you think I am a coward, or self-indulgent? You are wrong, Jack. May
+I call you Jack, as Maulevrier does?'
+
+'May you?'
+
+The question evoked such a gush of tenderness that he was fain to kneel
+beside her chair and kiss the little hand holding the cup, before he
+considered he had answered properly.
+
+'You are wrong, Jack. I do know what poverty means. I have studied the
+ways of the poor, tried to console them, and help them a little in their
+troubles; and I know there is no pain that want of money can bring which
+I would not share willingly with you. Do you suppose my happiness is
+dependent on a fine house and powdered footmen? I should like to go to
+the Red River with you, and wear cotton gowns, and tuck up my sleeves
+and clean our cottage.'
+
+'Very pretty sport, dear, for a summer day; but my Mary shall have a
+sweeter life, and shall occasionally walk in silk attire.'
+
+That tea-drinking by the fireside in the inn parlour was the most
+delicious thing within John Hammond's experience. Mary was a bewitching
+compound of earnestness and simplicity, so humble, so confiding, so
+perplexed and astounded at her own bliss.
+
+'Confess, now, in the summer, when you were in love with Lesbia, you
+thought me a horrid kind of girl,' she said, presently, when they were
+standing side by side at the window, waiting for the coach.
+
+'Never, Mary. My crime is to have thought very little about you in those
+days. I was so dazzled by Lesbia's beauty, so charmed by her
+accomplishments and girlish graces, that I forgot to take notice of
+anything else in the world. If I thought of you at all it was as
+another Maulevrier--a younger Maulevrier in petticoats, very gay, and
+good-humoured, and nice.'
+
+'But when you saw me rushing about with the terriers--I must have seemed
+utterly horrid.'
+
+'Why, dearest? There is nothing essentially horrible in terriers, or in a
+bright lively girl running races with them. You made a very pretty
+picture in the sunlight, with your hat hanging on your shoulder, and
+your curly brown hair and dancing hazel eyes. If I had not been deep in
+love with Lesbia's peerless complexion and Grecian features, I should
+have looked below the surface of that Gainsborough picture, and
+discovered what treasures of goodness, and courage, and truth and purity
+those frank brown eyes and that wide forehead betokened. I was sowing my
+wild oats last summer, Mary, and they brought me a crop of sorrow. But I
+am wiser now--wiser and happier.
+
+'But if you were to see Lesbia again would not the old love revive?'
+
+'The old love is dead, Mary. There is nothing left of it but a handful
+of ashes, which I scatter thus to the four winds,' with a wave of his
+hand towards the open casement. 'The new love absorbs and masters my
+being. If Lesbia were to re-appear at Fellside this evening, I could
+offer her my hand in all brotherly frankness, and ask her to accept me
+as a brother. Here comes the coach. We shall be at Fellside just in time
+for dinner.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+WISER THAN LESBIA.
+
+
+Lady Mary and Mr. Hammond were back at Fellside at a quarter before
+eight, by which time the stars were shining on pine woods and Fell. They
+managed to be in the drawing-room when dinner was announced, after the
+hastiest of toilets; yet her lover thought Mary had never looked
+prettier than she looked that night, in her limp white cashmere gown,
+and with her brown hair brushed into a large loose knot on the top of
+her head. There had been great uneasiness about them at Fellside when
+evening began to draw in, and the expected hour of their return had gone
+by. Scouts had been sent in quest of them, but in the wrong direction.
+
+'I did not think you would be such idiots as to come down the north side
+of the hill in a tempest,' said Maulevrier; 'we could see the clouds
+racing over the crest of Seat Sandal, and knew it was blowing pretty
+hard up there, though it was calm enough down here.'
+
+'Blowing pretty hard;' echoed Hammond, 'I don't think I was ever out in
+a worse gale; and yet I have been across the Bay of Biscay when the
+waves struck the side of the steamer like battering rams, and when the
+whole surface of the sea was white with seething foam.'
+
+'It was a most imprudent thing to go up Helvellyn in such weather,' said
+Fräulein Müller, shaking her head gloomily as she ate her fish.
+
+Mary felt that the Fräulein's manner boded ill. There was a storm
+brewing. A scolding was inevitable. Mary felt quite capable of doing
+battle with the Fräulein; but her feelings were altogether different
+when she thought of facing that stern old lady upstairs, and of the
+confession she had to make. It was not that her courage faltered. So far
+as resolutions went she was as firm as a rock. But she felt that there
+was a terrible ordeal to be gone through; and it seemed a mockery to be
+sitting there and pretending to eat her dinner and take things lightly,
+with that ordeal before her.
+
+'We did not go up the hill in bad weather, Miss Müller,' said Mr.
+Hammond. 'The sun was shining and the sky was blue when we started. We
+could not foresee darkness and storm at the top of the hill. That was
+the fortune of war.'
+
+'I am very sorry Lady Mary had not more good sense,' replied Fräulein
+with unabated gloom; but on this Maulevrier took up the cudgels.
+
+'If there was any want of sense in the business, that's my look-out,
+Fräulein,' he said, glaring angrily at the governess. 'It was I who
+advised Hammond and Lady Mary to climb the hill. And here they are, safe
+and sound after their journey. I see no reason why there should be any
+fuss about it.'
+
+'People have different ways of looking at things, replied Fräulein,
+plodding steadily on with her dinner. Mary rose directly the dessert had
+been handed round, and marched out of the room: like a warrior going to
+a battle in which the chances of defeat were strong. Fräulein Müller
+shuffled after her.
+
+'Will you be kind enough to go to her ladyship's room at once, Lady
+Mary,' she said. 'She wants to speak to you.'
+
+'And I want to speak to her,' said Mary.
+
+She ran quickly upstairs and arrived in the morning room, a little out
+of breath. The room was lighted by one low moderator lamp, under a dark
+red velvet shade, and there was the glow of the wood fire, which gave a
+more cheerful light than the lamp. Lady Maulevrier was lying on her
+couch in a loose brocade tea-gown, with old Brussels collar and ruffles.
+She was as well dressed in her day of affliction and helplessness as she
+had been in her day of strength; for she knew the value of surroundings,
+and that her stateliness and power were in some manner dependent on
+details of this kind. The one hand which she could use glittered with
+diamonds, as she waved it with a little imperious gesture towards the
+chair on which she desired Lady Mary to seat herself; and Mary sat down
+meekly, knowing that this chair represented the felon's dock.
+
+'Mary,' began her grandmother, with freezing gravity, 'I have been
+surprised and shocked by your conduct to-day. Yes, surprised at such
+conduct even in you.'
+
+'I do not think I have done anything very wrong, grandmother.'
+
+'Not wrong! You have done nothing wrong? You have done something
+absolutely outrageous. You, my granddaughter, well born, well bred,
+reared under my roof, to go up Helvellyn and lose yourself in a fog
+alone with a young man. You could hardly have done worse if you were a
+Cockney tourist,' concluded her ladyship, with ineffable disgust.
+
+'I could not help the fog,' said Mary, quietly. The battle had to be
+fought, and she was not going to flinch. 'I had no intention of going up
+Helvellyn alone with Mr. Hammond. Maulevrier was to have gone with us;
+but when we got to Dolly Waggon he was tired, and would not go any
+further. He told me to go on with Mr. Hammond.'
+
+'_He_ told you! Maulevrier!--a young man who has spent some of the best
+hours of his youth in the company of jockeys and trainers--who hasn't
+the faintest idea of the fitness of things. You allow Maulevrier to be
+your guide in a matter in which your own instinct should have guided
+you--your womanly instinct! But you have always been an unwomanly girl.
+You have put me to shame many a time by your hoydenish tricks; but I
+bore with you, believing that your madcap follies were at least
+harmless. To-day you have gone a step too far, and have been guilty of
+absolute impropriety, which I shall be very slow to pardon.'
+
+'Perhaps you will be still more angry when you know all, grandmother,'
+said Mary.
+
+Lady Maulevrier flashed her dark eyes at the girl with a look which
+would have almost killed a nervous subject; but Mary faced her
+steadfastly, very pale, but as resolute as her ladyship.
+
+'When I know all! What more is there for me to know?'
+
+'Only that while we were on the top of Helvellyn, in the fog and the
+wind, Mr. Hammond asked me to be his wife.'
+
+'I am not surprised to hear it,' retorted her ladyship, with a harsh
+laugh. 'A girl who could act so boldly and flirtingly was a natural mark
+for an adventurer. Mr. Hammond no doubt has been told that you will have
+a little money by-and-by, and thinks he might do worse than marry you.
+And seeing how you have flung yourself at his head, he naturally
+concludes that you will not be too proud to accept your sister's
+leavings.'
+
+'There is nothing gained by making cruel speeches, grandmother,' said
+Mary, firmly. 'I have promised to be John Hammond's wife, and there is
+nothing you nor anyone else can say which will make me alter my mind. I
+wish to act dutifully to you, if I can, and I hope you will be good to
+me and consent to this marriage. But if you will not consent, I shall
+marry him all the same. I shall be full of sorrow at having to disobey
+you, but I have promised, and I will keep my promise.'
+
+'You will act in open rebellion against me--against the kinswoman who
+has reared you, and educated you, and cared for you in all these years!'
+
+'But you have never loved me,' answered Mary, sadly. 'Perhaps if you had
+given me some portion of that affection which you lavished on my sister
+I might be willing to sacrifice this new deep love for your sake--to lay
+down my broken heart as a sacrifice on the altar of gratitude. But you
+never loved me. You have tolerated me, endured my presence as a
+disagreeable necessity of your life, because I am my father's daughter.
+You and Lesbia have been all the world to each other; and I have stood
+aloof, outside your charmed circle, almost a stranger to you. Can you
+wonder, grandmother, recalling this, that I am unwilling to surrender
+the love that has been given me to-day--the true heart of a brave and
+good man!'
+
+Lady Maulevrier looked at her for some moments in scornful wonderment;
+looked at her with a slow, deliberate smile.
+
+'Poor child!' she said; 'poor ignorant, inexperienced baby! For what a
+Will-o-the-wisp are you ready to sacrifice my regard, and all the
+privileges of your position as my granddaughter! No doubt this Mr.
+Hammond has said all manner of fine things to you; but can you be weak
+enough to believe that he who half a year ago was sighing and dying at
+the feet of your sister can have one spark of genuine regard for you?
+The thing is not in nature; it is an obvious absurdity. But it is easy
+enough to understand that Mr. Hammond without a penny in his pocket, and
+with his way to make in the world, would be very glad to secure Lady
+Mary Haselden and her five hundred a year, and to have Lord Maulevrier
+for his brother in-law?'
+
+'Have I really five hundred a year? Shall I have five hundred a year
+when I marry?' asked Mary, suddenly radiant.
+
+'Yes; if you marry with your brother's consent.'
+
+'I am so glad--for his sake. He could hardly starve if I had five
+hundred a year. He need not be obliged to emigrate.'
+
+'Has he been offering you the prospect of emigration as an additional
+inducement?'
+
+'Oh, no, he does not say that he is very poor, but since you say he is
+penniless I thought we might be obliged to emigrate. But as I have five
+hundred a year--'
+
+'You will stay at home, and set up a lodging-house, I suppose,' sneered
+Lady Maulevrier.
+
+'I will do anything my husband pleases. We can live in a humble way in
+some quiet part of London, while Mr. Hammond works at literature or
+politics. I am not afraid of poverty or trouble, I am willing to endure
+both for his sake.'
+
+'You are a fool!' said her grandmother sternly. 'And I have nothing more
+to say to you. Go away, and send Maulevrier to me.'
+
+Mary did not obey immediately. She went over to her grandmother's couch
+and knelt by her side, and kissed the poor maimed hand which lay on the
+velvet cushion.
+
+'Dear grandmother,' she said gently. 'I am very sorry to rebel against
+you. But this is a question of life or death with me. I am not like
+Lesbia. I cannot barter love and truth for worldly advantage--for pride
+of race. Do not think me so weak or so vain as to be won by a few fine
+speeches from an adventurer. Mr. Hammond is no adventurer, he has made
+no fine speeches--but, I will tell you a secret, grandmother. I have
+liked and admired him from the first time he came here. I have looked up
+to him and reverenced him; and I must be a very foolish girl if my
+judgment is so poor that I can respect a worthless man.'
+
+'You _are_ a very foolish girl,' answered Lady Maulevrier, more kindly
+than she had spoken before, 'but you have been very good and dutiful to
+me since I have been ill, and I don't wish to forget that. I never said
+that Mr. Hammond was worthless; but I say that he is no fit husband for
+you. If you were as yielding and obedient as Lesbia it would be all the
+better for you; for then I should provide for your establishment in life
+in a becoming manner. But as you are wilful, and bent upon taking your
+own way--well--my dear, you must take the consequence; and when you are
+a struggling wife and mother, old before your time, weighed down with
+the weary burden of petty cares, do not say, "My grandmother might have
+saved me from this martyrdom."'
+
+'I will run the risk, grandmother. I will be answerable for my own
+fate.'
+
+'So be it, Mary. And now send Maulevrier to me.'
+
+Mary went down to the billiard room, where she found her brother and her
+lover engaged in a hundred game.
+
+'Take my cue and beat him if you can, Molly,' said Maulevrier, when he
+had heard Mary's message. 'I'm fifteen ahead of him, for he has been
+falling asleep over his shots. I suppose I am going to get a lecture.'
+
+'I don't think so,' said Mary.
+
+'Well, my dearest, how did you fare in the encounter?' asked Hammond,
+directly Maulevrier was gone.
+
+'Oh, it was dreadful! I made the most rebellious speeches to poor
+grandmother, and then I remembered her affliction, and I asked her to
+forgive me, and just at the last she was ever so much kinder, and I
+think that she will let me marry you, now she knows I have made up my
+mind to be your wife--in spite of Fate.'
+
+'My bravest and best.'
+
+'And do you know, Jack'--she blushed tremendously as she uttered this
+familiar name--'I have made a discovery!'
+
+'Indeed!'
+
+'I find that I am to have five hundred a year when I am married. It is
+not much. But I suppose it will help, won't it? We can't exactly starve
+if we have five hundred a year. Let me see. It is more than a pound a
+day. A sovereign ought to go a long way in a small house; and, of
+course, we shall begin in a very wee house, like De Quincey's cottage
+over there, only in London.'
+
+'Yes, dear, there are plenty of such cottages in London. In Mayfair, for
+instance, or Belgravia.'
+
+'Now, you are laughing at my rustic ignorance. But the five hundred
+pounds will be a help, won't it?'
+
+'Yes, dear, a great help.'
+
+'I'm so glad.'
+
+She had chalked her cue while she was talking, but after taking her aim,
+she dropped her arm irresolutely.
+
+'Do you know I'm afraid I can't play to-night,' she said. 'Helvellyn
+and the fog and the wind have quite spoilt my nerve. Shall we
+go to the drawing-room, and see if Fräulein has recovered from her
+gloomy fit?'
+
+'I would rather stay here, where we are free to talk; but I'll do
+whatever you like best.'
+
+Mary preferred the drawing-room. It was very sweet to be alone with her
+lover, but she was weighed down with confusion in his presence. The
+novelty, the wonderment of her position overpowered her. She yearned for
+the shelter of Fräulein Müller's wing, albeit the company of that most
+prosaic person was certain death to romance.
+
+Miss Müller was in her accustomed seat by the fire, knitting her
+customary muffler. She had appropriated Lady Maulevrier's place, much to
+Mary's disgust. It irked the girl to see that stout, clumsy figure in
+the chair which had been filled by her grandmother's imperial form. The
+very room seemed vulgarised by the change.
+
+Fräulein looked up with a surprised air when Mary and Hammond entered
+together, the girl smiling and happy. She had expected that Mary would
+have left her ladyship's room in tears, and would have retired to her
+own apartment to hide her swollen eyelids and humiliated aspect. But
+here she was, after the fiery ordeal of an interview with her offended
+grandmother, not in the least crestfallen.
+
+'Are we not to have any tea to-night?' asked Mary, looking round the
+room.
+
+'I think you are unconscious of the progress of time, Lady Mary,'
+answered Fräulein, stiffly. 'The tea has been brought in and taken out
+again.'
+
+'Then it must be brought again, if Lady Mary wants some,' said Hammond,
+ringing the bell in the coolest manner.
+
+Fräulein felt that things were coming to a pretty pass, if Maulevrier's
+humble friend was going to give orders in the house. Quiet and
+commonplace as the Hanoverian was, she had her ambition, and that was to
+grasp the household sceptre which Lady Maulevrier must needs in some
+wise resign, now that she was a prisoner to her rooms. But so far
+Fräulein had met with but small success in this endeavour. Her
+ladyship's authority still ruled the house. Her ladyship's keen
+intellect took cognisance even of trifles: and it was only in the most
+insignificant details that Fräulein felt herself a power.
+
+'Well, your ladyship, what's the row?' said Maulevrier marching into his
+grandmother's room with a free and easy air. He was prepared for a
+skirmish, and he meant to take the bull by the horns.
+
+'I suppose you know what has happened to-day?' said her ladyship.
+
+'Molly and Hammond's expedition, yes, of course. I went part of the way
+with them, but I was out of training, got pumped out after a couple of
+miles, and wasn't such a fool as to go to the top.'
+
+'Do you know that Mr. Hammond made Mary an offer, while they were on the
+hill, and that she accepted him?'
+
+'A queer place for a proposal, wasn't it? The wind blowing great guns
+all the time. I should have chosen a more tranquil spot.'
+
+'Maulevrier, cannot you be serious? Do you forget that this business of
+to-day must affect your sister's welfare for the rest of her life?'
+
+'No, I do not. I will be as serious as a judge after he has put on the
+black cap,' said Maulevrier, seating himself near his grandmother's
+couch, and altering his tone altogether. 'Seriously I am very glad that
+Hammond has asked Mary to be his wife, and still more glad that she is
+tremendously in love with him. I told you some time ago not to put your
+spoke in that wheel. There could not be a happier or a better marriage
+for Mary.'
+
+'You must have rather a poor opinion, of your sister's attractions,
+personal or otherwise, if you consider a penniless young man--of no
+family--good enough for her.'
+
+'I do not consider my sister a piece of merchandise to be sold to the
+highest bidder. Granted that Hammond is poor and a nobody. He is an
+honourable man, highly gifted, brave as a lion, and he is my dearest
+friend. Can you wonder that I rejoice at my sister's having won him for
+her adoring lover?'
+
+'Can he really care for her, after having loved Lesbia?'
+
+'That was the desire of the eye, this is the love of the heart. I know
+that he loves Mary ever so much better than he loved Lesbia. I can
+assure your ladyship that I am not such a fool as I look. I am very fond
+of my sister Mary, and I have not been blind to her interests. I tell
+you on my honour that she ought to be very happy as John Hammond's
+wife.'
+
+'I am obliged to believe what you say about his character,' said Lady
+Maulevrier. 'And I am willing to admit that the husband's character has
+a great deal to do with the wife's happiness, from a moral point of
+view; but still there are material questions to be considered. Has your
+friend any means of supporting a wife?'
+
+'Yes, he has means; quite sufficient means for Mary's views, which are
+very simple.'
+
+'You mean to say he would keep her in decent poverty? Cannot you be
+explicit, Maulevrier, and say what means the man has, whether an income
+or none? If you cannot tell me I must question Mr. Hammond himself.'
+
+'Pray do not do that,' exclaimed her grandson urgently. 'Do not take all
+the flavour of romance out of Molly's love story, by going into pounds,
+shillings, and pence. She is very young. You would hardly wish her to
+marry immediately?'
+
+'Not for the next year, at the very least.'
+
+'Then why enter upon this sordid question of ways and means. Make
+Hammond and Mary happy by consenting to their engagement, and trust the
+rest to Providence, and to me. Take my word for it, Hammond is not a
+beggar, and he is a man likely to make his mark in the world. If a year
+hence his income is not enough to allow of his marrying, I will double
+Mary's allowance out of my own purse. Hammond's friendship has steadied
+me, and saved me a good deal more than five hundred a year.'
+
+'I can quite believe that. I believe Mr. Hammond is a worthy man, and
+that his influence has been very good for you; but that does not make
+him a good match for Mary. However, you seem to have settled the
+business among you, and I suppose I must submit. You had better all
+drink tea with me to morrow afternoon; and I will receive your friend as
+Mary's future husband.'
+
+'That is the best and kindest of grandmothers.'
+
+'But I should like to know more of his antecedents and his relations.'
+
+'His antecedents are altogether creditable. He took honours at the
+University; he has been liked and respected everywhere. He is an orphan,
+and it is better not to talk to him of his family. He is sensitive on
+that point, like most men who stand alone in the world.'
+
+'Well, I will hold my peace. You have taken this business into your
+hands, Maulevrier; and you must be responsible for the result.'
+
+Maulevrier left his grandmother soon after this, and went downstairs,
+whistling for very joyousness. Finding the billiard-room deserted he
+repaired to the drawing-room, where he found Mary playing scraps of
+melody to her lover at the shadowy end of the room, while Fräulein sat
+by the fire weaving her web as steadily as one of the Fatal Sisters, and
+with a brow prophetic of evil.
+
+Maulevrier crept up to the piano, and came stealthily behind the lovers.
+
+'Bless you, my children,' he said, hovering over them with outspread
+hands. 'I am the dove coming back to the ark. I am the bearer of happy
+tidings. Lady Maulevrier consents to your acquiring the legal right to
+make each other miserable for the rest of your lives.'
+
+'God bless you, Maulevrier,' said Hammond, clasping him by the hand.
+
+'Only as this sister of mine is hardly out of the nursery you will have
+to wait for her at least a year. So says the dowager, whose word is like
+the law of the Medes and Persians, and altereth not.'
+
+'I would wait for her twice seven years, as Jacob waited, and toil for
+her, as Jacob toiled,' answered Hammond, 'but I should like to call her
+my own to-morrow, if it were possible.'
+
+Nothing could be happier or gayer than the tea-drinking in Lady
+Maulevrier's room on the following afternoon. Her ladyship having once
+given way upon a point knew how to make her concession gracefully. She
+extended her hand to Mr. Hammond as frankly as if he had been her own
+particular choice.
+
+'I cannot refuse my granddaughter to her brother's dearest friend,' she
+said, 'but I think you are two most imprudent young people.'
+
+'Providence takes care of imprudent lovers, just as it does of the birds
+in their nests,' answered Hammond, smiling.
+
+'Just as much and no more, I fear. Providence does not keep off the cat
+or the tax-gatherer.'
+
+'Birds must take care of their nests, and husbands must work for their
+homes,' argued Hammond. 'Heaven gives sweet air and sunlight, and a
+beautiful world to live in.'
+
+'I think,' said Lady Maulevrier, looking at him critically, 'you are
+just the kind of person who ought to emigrate. You have ideas that would
+do for the Bush or the Yosemite Valley, but which are too primitive for
+an over-crowded country.'
+
+'No, Lady Maulevrier, I am not going to steal your granddaughter. When
+she is my wife she shall live within call. I know she loves her native
+land, and I don't think either of us would care to put an ocean between
+us and rugged old Helvellyn.'
+
+'Of course having made idiots of yourselves up there in the fog and the
+storm you are going to worship the mountain for ever afterwards,' said
+her ladyship laughing.
+
+Never had she seemed gayer or brighter. Perhaps in her heart of hearts
+she rejoiced at getting Mary engaged, even to so humble a suitor as
+fortuneless John Hammond. Ever since the visit of the so-called Rajah
+she had lived as Damocles lived, with the sword of destiny--the avenging
+sword--hanging over her by the finest hair. Every time she heard
+carriage wheels in the drive--every time the hall-door bell rang a
+little louder than usual, her heart seemed to stop beating and her whole
+being to hang suspended on a thread. If the thread were to snap, there
+would come darkness and death. The blow that had paralysed one side of
+her body must needs, if repeated, bring total extinction. She who
+believed in no after life saw in her maimed and wasting arm the
+beginning of death. She who recognised only the life of the body felt
+that one half of her was already dead. But months had gone by, and Louis
+Asoph had made no sign. She began to hope that his boasted documents and
+witnesses were altogether mythical. And yet the engines of the law are
+slow to put in motion. He might be working up his case, line upon line,
+with some hard-headed London lawyer; arranging and marshalling his
+facts; preparing his witnesses; waiting for affidavits from India;
+working slowly but surely, underground like the mole; and all at once,
+in an hour, his case might be before the law courts. His story and the
+story of Lord Maulevrier's infamy might be town talk again; as it had
+been forty years ago, when the true story of that crime had been happily
+unknown.
+
+Yes, with the present fear of this Louis Asoph's revelations, of a new
+scandal, if not a calamity, Lady Maulevrier felt that it was a good
+thing to have her younger granddaughter's future in some measure
+secured. John Hammond had said of himself to Lesbia that he was not the
+kind of man to fail, and looking at him critically to-day Lady
+Maulevrier saw the stamp of power and dauntless courage in his
+countenance and bearing. It is the inner mind of a man which moulds the
+lines of his face and figure; and a man's character may be read in the
+way he walks and holds himself, the action of his hand, his smile, his
+frown, his general outlook, as clearly as in any phrenological
+development. John Hammond had a noble outlook: bold, without impudence
+or self-assertion; self-possessed, without vanity. Yes, assuredly a man
+to wrestle with difficulty, and to conquer fate.
+
+When that little tea-drinking was over and Maulevrier and his friend
+were going away to dress for dinner, Lady Maulevrier detained Mary for a
+minute or two by her couch. She took her by the hand with unaccustomed
+tenderness.
+
+'My child, I congratulate you,' she said. 'Last night I thought you a
+fool, but I begin to think that you are wiser than Lesbia. You have won
+the heart of a noble young man.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+'A YOUNG LAMB'S HEART AMONG THE FULL-GROWN FLOCKS.'
+
+
+For three most happy days Mary rejoiced in her lover's society,
+Maulevrier was with them everywhere, by brookside and fell, on the lake,
+in the gardens, in the billiard-room, playing propriety with admirable
+patience. But this could not last for ever. A man who has to win name
+and fortune and a home for his young wife cannot spend all his days in
+the primrose path. Fortunes and reputations are not made in dawdling
+beside a mountain stream, or watching the play of sunlight and shadow on
+a green hill-side; unless, indeed, one were a new Wordsworth, and even
+then fortune and renown are not quickly made.
+
+And again, Maulevrier, who had been a marvel of good-nature and
+contentment for the last eight weeks, was beginning to be tired of this
+lovely Lakeland. Just when Lakeland was daily developing into new
+beauty, Maulevrier began to feel an itching for London, where he had a
+comfortable nest in the Albany, and which was to his mind a metropolis
+expressly created as a centre or starting point for Newmarket, Epsom,
+Ascot and Goodwood.
+
+So there came a morning upon which Mary had to say good-bye to those two
+companions who had so blest and gladdened her life. It was a bright
+sunshiny morning, and all the world looked gay; which seemed very unkind
+of Nature, Mary thought. And yet, even in the sadness of this parting,
+she had much reason to be glad. As she stood with her lover in the
+library, in the three minutes of _tête-à-tête_ stolen from the
+argus-eyed Fräulein, folded in his arms, looking up at his manly face,
+it seemed to her that the mere knowledge that she belonged to him and
+was beloved by him ought to sustain and console her even in long years
+of severance. Yes, even if he were one of the knights of old, going to
+the Holy Land on a crusade full of peril and uncertainty. Even then a
+woman ought to be brave, having such a lover.
+
+But her parting was to be only for a few months. Maulevrier promised to
+come back to Fellside for the August sports, and Hammond was to come
+with him. Three months--or a little more--and they were to meet again.
+
+Yet in spite of these arguments for courage, Mary's face blanched and
+her eyes grew unutterably sad as she looked up at her lover.
+
+'You will take care of yourself, Jack, for my sake, won't you, dear?'
+she murmured. 'If you should be ill while you are in London! If you
+should die--'
+
+'Life is very uncertain, love, but I don't feel like sickness or death
+just at present,' answered Hammond cheerily. 'Indeed, I feel that the
+present is full of sweetness, and the future full of hope. Don't
+suppose, dear, that I am not grieved at this good-bye; but before we
+are a year older I hope the time will have come when there will be no
+more farewells for you and me. I shall be a very exacting husband,
+Molly. I shall want to spend all the days and hours of my life with you;
+to have not a fancy or a pursuit in which you cannot share, or with
+which you cannot sympathise. I hope you will not grow tired of me!'
+
+'Tired!'
+
+Then came silence, and a long farewell kiss, and then the voice of
+Maulevrier shouting in the hall, just in time to warn the lovers, before
+Miss Müller opened the door and exclaimed,
+
+'Oh, Mr. Hammond, we have been looking for you _everywhere_. The luggage
+is all in the carriage, and Maulevrier says there is only just time to
+get to Windermere!'
+
+In another minute or so the carriage was driving down the hill; and Mary
+stood in the porch looking after the travellers.
+
+'It seems as if it is my fate to stand here and see everybody drive
+away,' she said to herself.
+
+And then she looked round at the lovely gardens, bright with spring
+flowers, the trees glorious with their young, fresh foliage, and the
+vast panorama of hill and dale, and felt that it was a wicked thing to
+murmur in the midst of such a world. And she remembered the great
+unhoped-for bliss that had come to her within the last four days, and
+the cloud upon her brow vanished, as she clasped her hands in child-like
+joyousness.
+
+'God bless you, dear old Helvellyn,' she exclaimed, looking up at the
+sombre crest of the mountain. 'Perhaps if it had not been for you he
+would have never proposed.'
+
+But she was obliged to dismiss this idea instantly; for to suppose John
+Hammond's avowal of his love an accident, the mere impulse of a weak
+moment, would be despair. Had he not told her how she had grown nearer
+and nearer to his heart, day by day, and hour by hour, until she had
+become part of his life? He had told her this--he, in whom she believed
+as in the very spirit of truth.
+
+She wandered about the gardens for an hour after the carriage had
+started for Windermere, revisiting every spot where she and her lover
+had walked together within the last three days, living over again the
+rapture of those hours, repeating to herself his words, recalling his
+looks, with the fatuity of a first girlish love. And yet amidst the
+silliness inseparable from love's young dream, there was a depth of true
+womanly feeling, thoughtful, unselfish, forecasting a future which was
+not to travel always along the primrose path of dalliance--a future in
+which the roses were not always to be thornless.
+
+John Hammond was going to London to work for a position in the world, to
+strive and labour among the seething mass of strugglers, all pressing
+onward for the same goal--independence, wealth, renown. Little as Mary
+know of the world by experience, she had at least heard the wiseacres
+talk; and that which she had heard was calculated to depress rather than
+to inspire industrious youth. She had heard how the professions were all
+over-crowded: how a mighty army of young men were walking the hospitals,
+all intent on feeling the pulses and picking the pockets of the rising
+generation: how at the Bar men were growing old and grey before they saw
+their first brief: how competitors were elbowing and hustling each other
+upon every road, thronging at every gate. And while masculine youth
+strove and wrestled for places in the race, aunts and sisters and
+cousins were pressing into the same arena, doing their best to crowd out
+the uncles and the brothers and the nephews.
+
+'Poor Jack,' sighed Mary, 'at the worst we can go to the Red River
+country and grow corn.'
+
+This was her favourite fancy, that she and her lover should find their
+first dwelling in the new world, live as humbly as the peasants lived
+round Grasmere, and patiently wait upon fortune. And yet that would not
+be happiness, unless Maulevrier were to come and stay with them every
+autumn. Nothing could reconcile Mary to being separated from Maulevrier
+for any lengthened period.
+
+There were hours in which she was more hopeful, and defied the
+wiseacres. Clever young men had succeeded in the past--clever men whose
+hair was not yet grey had come to the front in the present. Granted that
+these were the exceptional men, the fine flower of humanity. Did she not
+know that John Hammond was as far above average youth as Helvellyn was
+above yonder mound in her grandmother's shrubbery?
+
+Yes, he would succeed in literature, in politics, in whatever career he
+had chosen for himself. He was a man to do the thing he set himself to
+do, were it ever so difficult. To doubt his success would be to doubt
+his truth and his honesty; for he had sworn to her he would make her
+life bright and happy, and that evil days should never come to her; and
+he was not the man to promise that which he was not able to perform.
+
+The house seemed terribly dull now that the two young men were gone.
+There was an oppressive silence in the rooms which had lately resounded
+with Maulevrier's frank, boyish laughter, and with his friend's deep,
+manly tones--a silence broken only by the click of Fräulein Müller's
+needles.
+
+The Fräulein was not disposed to be sympathetic or agreeable about Lady
+Mary's engagement. Firstly, she had not been consulted about it. The
+thing had been done, she considered, in an underhand manner; and Lady
+Maulevrier, who had begun by strenuously opposing the match, had been
+talked over in a way that proved the latent weakness of that great
+lady's character. Secondly, Miss Müller, having herself for some reason
+missed such joys as are involved in being wooed and won, was disposed to
+look sourly upon all love affairs, and to take a despondent view of all
+matrimonial engagements.
+
+She did not say anything openly uncivil to Mary Haselden; but she let
+the damsel see that she pitied her and despised her infatuated
+condition; and this was so unpleasant that Mary was fain to fall back
+upon the society of ponies and terriers, and to take up her pilgrim's
+staff and go wandering over the hills, carrying her happy thoughts into
+solitary places, and sitting for hours in a heathery hollow, steeped in
+a sea of summer light, and trying to paint the mountain side and the
+rush of the waterfall. Her sketch-book was an excuse for hours of
+solitude, for the indulgence of an endless day-dream.
+
+Sometimes she went among her humble friends in the Grasmere cottages, or
+in the villages of Great and Little Langdale; and she had now a new
+interest in these visits, for she had made up her mind that it was her
+solemn duty to learn housekeeping--not such housekeeping as might have
+been learnt at Fellside, supposing she had mustered the courage to ask
+the dignified upper-servants in that establishment to instruct her; but
+such domestic arts as are needed in the dwellings of the poor. The art
+of making a very little money go a great way; the art of giving grace,
+neatness, prettiness to the smallest rooms and the shabbiest furniture;
+the art of packing all the ugly appliances and baser necessities of
+daily life, the pots and kettles and brooms and pails, into the
+narrowest compass, and hiding them from the æsthetic eye. Mary thought
+that if she began by learning the homely devices of the villagers--the
+very A B C of cookery and housewifery--she might gradually enlarge upon
+this simple basis to suit an income of from five to seven hundred a
+year. The house-mothers from whom she sought information were puzzled at
+this sudden curiosity about domestic matters. They looked upon the thing
+as a freak of girlhood which drifted into eccentricity, from sheer
+idleness; yet they were not the less ready to teach Mary anything she
+desired to learn. They told her those secret arts by which coppers and
+brasses are made things of beauty, and meet adornment for an old oak
+mantelshelf. They allowed her to look on at the milking of the cow, and
+at the churning of the butter; and at bread making, and cake making, and
+pie and pudding making; and some pleasant hours were spent in the
+acquirement of this useful knowledge. Mary did not neglect the invalid
+during this new phase of her existence. Lady Maulevrier was a lover of
+routine, and she liked her granddaughter to go to her at the same hour
+every day. From eleven to twelve was the time for Mary's duty as
+amanuensis. Sometimes there were no letters to be written. Sometimes
+there were several; but her ladyship rarely allowed the task to go
+beyond the stroke of noon. At noon Mary was free, and free till five
+o'clock, when she was generally in attendance, ready to give Lady
+Maulevrier her afternoon tea, and sit and talk with her, and tell her
+any scraps of local news which she had gathered in the day.
+
+There were days on which her ladyship preferred to take her tea alone,
+and Mary was left free to follow her own devices till dinner-time.
+
+'I do not feel equal even to your society to-day, my dear,' her ladyship
+would say; 'go and enjoy yourself with your dogs and your tennis;'
+forgetting that there was very seldom anybody on the premises with whom
+Lady Mary could play tennis.
+
+But in these lonely days of Mary Haselden's life there was one crowning
+bliss which was almost enough to sweeten solitude, and take away the
+sting of separation; and that was the delight of expecting and receiving
+her lover's letters. Busily as Mr. Hammond must be engaged in fighting
+the battle of life, he was in no way wanting in his duty as a lover. He
+wrote to Mary every other day; but though his letters were long, they
+told her hardly anything of himself or his occupation. He wrote about
+pictures, books, music, such things as he knew must be interesting to
+her; but of his own struggles not a word.
+
+'Poor fellow,' thought Mary. 'He is afraid to sadden me by telling me
+how hard the struggle is.'
+
+Her own letters to her betrothed were simple outpourings of girlish
+love, breathing that too flattering-sweet idolatry which an innocent
+girl gives to her first lover. Mary wrote as if she herself were of the
+least possible value among created things.
+
+With one of Mr. Hammond's earlier letters came the engagement ring; no
+half-hoop of brilliants or sapphires, rubies or emeralds, no gorgeous
+triple circlet of red, white, and green; but only a massive band of dead
+gold, on the inside of which was engraved this posy--'For ever.'
+
+Mary thought it the loveliest ring she had ever seen in her life.
+
+May was half over and the last patch of snow had vanished from the crest
+of Helvellyn, from Eagle's Crag and Raven's Crag, and Coniston Old Man.
+Spring--slow to come along these shadowy gorges--had come in real
+earnest now, spring that was almost summer; and Lady Maulevrier's
+gardens were as lovely as dreamland. But it was an unpeopled paradise.
+Mary had the grounds all to herself, except at those stated times when
+the Fräulein, who was growing lazier and larger day by day in her
+leisurely and placid existence, took her morning and afternoon
+constitutional on the terrace in front of the drawing-room, or solemnly
+perambulated the shrubberies.
+
+On fine days Mary lived in the garden, save when she was far afield
+learning the domestic arts from the cottagers. She read French and
+German, and worked conscientiously at her intellectual education, as
+well as at domestic economy. For she told herself that accomplishments
+and culture might be useful to her in her married life. She might be
+able to increase her husband's means by giving lessons abroad, or taking
+pupils at home. She was ready to do anything. She would teach the
+stupidest children, or scrub floors, or bake bread. There was no service
+she would deem degrading for his sake. She meant when she married to
+drop her courtesy title. She would not be Lady Mary Hammond, a poor
+sprig of nobility, but plain Mrs. Hammond, a working man's wife.
+
+Lesbia's presentation was over, and had realised all Lady Kirkbank's
+expectations. The Society papers were unanimous in pronouncing Lord
+Maulevrier's sister the prettiest _débutante_ of the season. They
+praised her classical features, the admirable poise of her head, her
+peerless complexion. They described her dress at the drawing-room; they
+described her 'frocks' in the Park and at Sandown. They expatiated on
+the impression she had made at great assemblies. They hinted at even
+Royal admiration. All this, frivolous fribble though it might be, Lady
+Maulevrier read with delight, and she was still more gratified by
+Lesbia's own account of her successes. But as the season advanced
+Lesbia's letters to her grandmother grew briefer--mere hurried scrawls
+dashed off while the carriage was at the door, or while her maid was
+brushing her hair. Lady Maulevrier divined, with the keen instinct of
+love, that she counted for very little in Lesbia's life, now that the
+whirligig of society, the fret and fever of fashion, had begun.
+
+One afternoon in May, at that hour when Hyde Park is fullest, and the
+carriages move slowly in triple rank along the Lady's Mile, and the
+mounted constables jog up and down with a business-like air which sets
+every one on the alert for the advent of the Princess of Wales, just at
+that hour when Lesbia sat in Lady Kirkbank's barouche, and distributed
+gracious bows and enthralling smiles to her numerous acquaintance, Mary
+rode slowly down the Fell, after a rambling ride on the safest and most
+venerable of mountain ponies. The pony was grey, and Mary was grey, for
+she wore a neat little homespun habit made by the local tailor, and a
+neat little felt hat with a ptarmigan's feather.
+
+All was very quiet at Fellside as she went in at the stable gate. There
+was not an underling stirring in the large old stable-yard which had
+remained almost unaltered for a century and a half; for Lady Maulevrier,
+whilst spending thousands on the new part of the house, had deemed the
+existing stables good enough for her stud. They were spacious old
+stables, built as solidly as a Norman castle, and with all the virtues
+and all the vices of their age.
+
+Mary looked round her with a sigh. The stillness of the place was
+oppressive, and within doors she knew there would be the same stillness,
+made still more oppressive by the society of the Fräulein, who grew
+duller and duller every day, as it seemed to Mary.
+
+She took her pony into the dusky old stable, where four other ponies
+began rattling their halters in the gloom, by way of greeting. A bundle
+of purple tares lay ready in a corner for Mary to feed her favourites;
+and for the next ten minutes or so she was happily employed going from
+stall to stall, and gratifying that inordinate appetite for green meat
+which seems natural to all horses.
+
+Not a groom or stable-boy appeared while she was in the stable; and she
+was just going away, when her attention was caught by a flood of
+sunshine streaming into an old disused harness-room at the end of the
+stable--a room with one small window facing the Fell.
+
+Whence could that glow of western light come? Assuredly not from the
+low-latticed window which faced eastward, and was generally obscured by
+a screen of cobwebs. The room was only used as a storehouse for lumber,
+and it was nobody's business to clean the window.
+
+Mary looked in, curious to solve the riddle. A door which she had often
+noticed, but never seen opened, now stood wide open, and the old
+quadrangular garden, which was James Steadman's particular care, smiled
+at her in the golden evening light. Seen thus, this little old Dutch
+garden seemed to Mary the prettiest thing she had ever looked upon.
+There were beds of tulips and hyacinths, ranunculus, narcissus,
+tuberose, making a blaze of colour against the old box borders, a foot
+high. The crumbling old brick walls of the outbuildings, and that
+dungeon-like wall which formed the back of the new house, were clothed
+with clematis and wistaria, woodbine and magnolia. All that loving
+labour could do had been done day by day for the last forty years to
+make this confined space a thing of beauty. Mary went out of the dark
+stable into the sunny garden, and looked round her, full of admiration
+for James Steadman's work.
+
+'If ever Jack and I can afford to have a garden, I hope we shall be able
+to make it like this,' she thought. 'It is such a comfort to know that
+so small a garden can be pretty: for of course any garden we could
+afford must be small.'
+
+Lady Mary had no idea that this quadrangle was spacious as compared with
+the narrow strip allotted to many a suburban villa calling itself 'an
+eligible residence.'
+
+In the centre of the garden there was an old sundial, with a stone bench
+at the base, and, as she came upon an opening in the circular yew tree
+hedge which environed this sundial, and from which the flower beds
+radiated in a geometrical pattern, Lady Mary was surprised to see an old
+man--a very old man--sitting on this bench, and basking in the low light
+of the westering sun.
+
+His figure was shrunken and bent, and he sat with his chin resting on
+the handle of a crutched stick, and his head leaning forward. His long
+white hair fell in thin straggling locks over the collar of his coat. He
+had an old-fashioned, mummyfied aspect, and Mary thought he must be
+very, very old.
+
+Very, very old! In a flash there came back upon her the memory of John
+Hammond's curiosity about a hoary and withered old man whom he had met
+on the Fell in the early morning. She remembered how she had taken him
+to see old Sam Barlow, and how he had protested that Sam in no wise
+resembled the strange-looking old man of the Fell. And now here, close
+to the Fell, was a face and figure which in every detail resembled that
+ancient stranger whom Hammond had described so graphically.
+
+It was very strange. Could this person be the same her lover had seen
+two months ago? And, if so, had he been living at Fellside all the time;
+or was he only an occasional visitor of Steadman's?
+
+While she stood for a few moments meditating thus, the old man raised
+his head and looked up at her, with eyes that burned like red-hot coals
+under his shaggy white brows. The look scared her. There was something
+awful in it, like the gaze of an evil spirit, a soul in torment, and she
+began to move away, with side-long steps, her eyes riveted on that
+uncanny countenance.
+
+'Don't go,' said the man, with an authoritative air, rattling his bony
+fingers upon the bench. 'Sit down here by my side, and talk to me. Don't
+be frightened, child. You wouldn't, if you knew what they say of me
+indoors.' He made a motion of his head towards the windows of the old
+wing--'"Harmless," they say, "quite harmless. Let him alone, he's
+harmless." A tiger with his claws cut and his teeth drawn--an old,
+grey-bearded tiger, ghastly and grim, but harmless--a cobra with the
+poison-bag plucked out of his jaw! The venom grows again, child--the
+snake's venom--but youth never comes back. Old, and helpless, and
+harmless!'
+
+Again Mary tried to move away, but those evil eyes held her as if she
+were a bird riveted by the gaze of a serpent.
+
+'Why do you shrink away?' asked the old man, frowning at her. 'Sit down
+here, and let me talk to you. I am accustomed to be obeyed.'
+
+Old and feeble and shrunken as he was, there was a power in his tone of
+command which Mary was unable to resist. She felt very sure that he was
+imbecile or mad. She knew that madmen are apt to imagine themselves
+great personages, and to take upon themselves, with a wonderful power of
+impersonation, the dignity and authority of their imaginary rank; and
+she supposed that it must be thus with this strange old man. She
+struggled against her sense of terror. After all there could be no real
+danger, in the broad daylight, within the precincts of her own home,
+within call of the household.
+
+She seated herself on the bench by the unknown, willing to humour him a
+little; and he turned himself about slowly, as if every bone in his body
+were stiff with age, and looked at her with a deliberate scrutiny.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+'NOW NOTHING LEFT TO LOVE OR HATE.'
+
+
+The old man sat looking at Mary in silence for some moments; not a great
+space of time, perhaps, as marked by the shadow on the dial behind them,
+but to Mary that gaze was unpleasantly prolonged. He looked at her as if
+he could read every pulsation in every fibre of her brain, and knew
+exactly what it meant.
+
+'Who are you?' he asked, at last.
+
+'My name is Mary Haselden.'
+
+'Haselden,' he repeated musingly, 'I have heard that name before.'
+
+And then he resumed his former attitude, his chin resting on the handle
+of his crutch-stick, his eyes bent upon the gravel path, their unholy
+brightness hidden under the penthouse brows.
+
+'Haselden,' he murmured, and repeated the name over and over again,
+slowly, dreamily, with a troubled tone, like some one trying to work out
+a difficult problem. 'Haselden--when? where?'
+
+And then with a profound sigh he muttered, 'Harmless, quite harmless.
+You may trust him anywhere. Memory a blank, a blank, a blank, my lord!'
+
+His head sank lower upon his breast, and again he sighed, the sigh of a
+spirit in torment, Mary thought. Her vivid imagination was already
+interested, her quick sympathies were awakened.
+
+She looked at him wonderingly, compassionately. So old, so infirm, and
+with a mind astray; and yet there were indications in his speech and
+manner that told of reason struggling against madness, like the light
+behind storm-clouds. He had tones that spoke of a keen sensitiveness to
+pain, not the lunatic's imbecile placidity. She observed him intently,
+trying to make out what manner of man he was.
+
+He did not belong to the peasant class: of that she felt assured. The
+shrunken, tapering hand had never worked at peasant's work. The profile
+turned towards her was delicate to effeminacy. The man's clothes were
+shabby and old-fashioned, but they were a gentleman's garments, the
+cloth of a finer texture than she had ever seen worn by her brother. The
+coat, with its velvet collar, was of an old-world fashion. She
+remembered having seen just such a coat in an engraved portrait of Count
+d'Orsay, a print nearly fifty years old. No Dalesman born and bred ever
+wore such a coat; no tailor in the Dales could have made it.
+
+The old man looked up after a long pause, during which Mary felt afraid
+to move. He looked at her again with inquiring eyes, as if her presence
+there had only just become known to him.
+
+'Who are you?' he asked again.
+
+'I told you my name just now. I am Mary Haselden.'
+
+'Haselden--that is a name I knew--once. Mary? I think my mother's name
+was Mary. Yes, yes, I remember that. You have a sweet face, Mary--like
+my mother's. She had brown eyes, like yours, and auburn hair. You don't
+recollect her, perhaps?'
+
+'Alas! poor maniac,' thought Mary, 'you have lost all count of time.
+Fifty years to you in the confusion of your distraught brain, are but as
+yesterday.'
+
+'No, of course not, of course not,' he muttered; 'how should she
+recollect my mother, who died while I was a boy? Impossible. That must
+be half a century ago.'
+
+'Good evening to you,' said Mary, rising with a great effort, so strong
+was her feeling of being spellbound by the uncanny old man, 'I must go
+indoors now.'
+
+He stretched out his withered old hand, small, semi-transparent, with
+the blue veins showing darkly under the parchment-coloured skin, and
+grasped Mary's arm.
+
+'Don't go,' he pleaded. 'I like your face, child; I like your voice--I
+like to have you here. What do you mean by going indoors? Where do you
+live?'
+
+'There,' said Mary, pointing to the dead wall which faced them. 'In the
+new part of Fellside House. I suppose you are staying in the old part
+with James Steadman.'
+
+She had made up her mind that this crazy old man must be a relation of
+Steadman's to whom he gave hospitality either with or without her
+ladyship's consent. All powerful as Lady Maulevrier had ever been in her
+own house, it was just possible that now, when she was a prisoner in her
+own rooms, certain small liberties might be taken, even by so faithful a
+servant as Steadman.
+
+'Staying with James Steadman,' repeated the old man in a meditative
+tone. 'Yes, I stay with Steadman. A good servant, a worthy person. It is
+only for a little while. I shall be leaving Westmoreland next week. And
+you live in that house, do you?' pointing to the dead wall. 'Whose
+house?'
+
+'Lady Maulevrier's. I am Lady Maulevrier's granddaughter.'
+
+'Lady Mau-lev-rier.' He repeated the name in syllables. 'A good name--an
+old title--as old as the conquest. A Norman race those Maulevriers. And
+you are Lady Maulevrier's granddaughter! You should be proud. The
+Maulevriers were always a proud race.'
+
+'Then I am no true Maulevrier,' answered Mary gaily.
+
+She was beginning to feel more at her ease with the old man. He was
+evidently mad, as mad as a March hare; but his madness seemed only the
+harmless lunacy of extreme old age. He had flashes of reason, too. Mary
+began to feel a friendly interest in him. To youth in its flush of life
+and vigour there seems something so unspeakably sad and pitiable in
+feebleness and age--the brief weak remnant of life, the wreck of body
+and mind, sunning itself in the declining rays of a sun that is so soon
+to shine upon its grave.
+
+'What, are you not proud?' asked the old man.
+
+'Not at all. I have been taught to consider myself a very insignificant
+person; and I am going to marry a poor man. It would not become me to be
+proud.'
+
+'But you ought not to do that,' said the old man. 'You ought not to
+marry a poor man. Poverty is a bad thing, my dear. You are a pretty
+girl, and ought to marry a man with a handsome fortune. Poor men have no
+pleasure in this world--they might just as well be dead. I am poor, as
+you see. You can tell by this threadbare coat'--he looked down at the
+sleeve from which the nap was worn in places--'I am as poor as a church
+mouse.'
+
+'But you have kind friends, I dare say,' Mary said, soothingly. 'You are
+well taken care of, I am sure.'
+
+'Yes, I am well taken care of--very well taken care of. How long is it,
+I wonder--how many weeks, or months, or years, since they have taken
+care of me? It seems a long, long time; but it is all like a dream--a
+long dream. Once I used to try and wake myself. I used to try and
+struggle out of that weary dream. But that was ages ago. I am satisfied
+now--I am quite content now--so long as the weather is warm, and I can
+sit out here in the sun.'
+
+'It is growing chilly now,' said Mary, 'and I think you ought to go
+indoors. I know that I must go.'
+
+'Yes, I must go in now--I am getting shivery,' answered the old man,
+meekly. 'But I want to see you again, Mary--I like your face--and I like
+your voice. It strikes a chord here,' touching his breast, 'which has
+long been silent. Let me see you again, child. When can I see you
+again?'
+
+'Do you sit here every afternoon when it is fine?'
+
+'Yes, every day--all day long sometimes when the sun is warm.'
+
+'Then I will come here to see you.'
+
+'You must keep it a secret, then,' said the old man, with a crafty look.
+'If you don't they will shut me up in the house, perhaps. They don't
+like me to see people, for fear I should talk. I have heard Steadman say
+so. Yet what should I talk about, heaven help me? Steadman says my
+memory is quite gone, and that I am childish and harmless--childish and
+harmless. I have heard him say that. You'll come again, won't you, and
+you'll keep it a secret?'
+
+Mary deliberated for a few minutes.
+
+'I don't like secrets,' she said, 'there is generally something
+dishonourable in them. But this would be an innocent secret, wouldn't
+it? Well, I'll come to see you somehow, poor old man; and if Steadman
+sees me here I will make everything right with him.'
+
+'He mustn't see you here,' said the old man. 'If he does he will shut me
+up in my own rooms again, as he did once, years and years ago.'
+
+'But you have not been here long, have you?' Mary asked, wonderingly.
+
+'A hundred years, at least. That's what it seems to me sometimes. And
+yet there are times when it seems only a dream. Be sure you come again
+to-morrow.'
+
+'Yes, I promise you to come; good-night.'
+
+'Good-night.'
+
+Mary went back to the stable. The door was still open, but how could she
+be sure that it would be open to-morrow? There was no other access that
+she knew of to the quadrangle, except through the old part of the house,
+and that was at times inaccessible to her.
+
+She found a key--a big old rusty key--in the inside of the door, so she
+shut and locked it, and put the key in her pocket. The door she supposed
+had been left open by accident; at any rate this key made her mistress
+of the situation. If any question should arise as to her conduct she
+could have an explanation with Steadman; but she had pledged her word to
+the poor mad old man, and she meant to keep her promise, if possible.
+
+As she left the stable she saw Steadman riding towards the gate on his
+grey cob. She passed him as she went back to the house.
+
+Next day, and the day after that, and for many days, Mary used her key,
+and went into the quadrangle at sundown to sit for half an hour or so
+with the strange old man, who seemed to take an intense pleasure in her
+company. The weather was growing warmer as May wore on towards June, and
+this evening hour, between six and seven, was deliciously bright and
+balmy. The seat by the sundial was screened on every side by the clipped
+yew hedge, dense and tall, surrounding the circular, gravelled space, in
+the centre of which stood the old granite dial, with its octagonal
+pedestal and moss-grown steps. There, as in a closely-shaded arbour,
+Lady Mary and her old friend were alone and unobserved. The yew-tree
+boundary was at least eight feet high, and Mary and her companion could
+hardly have been seen even from the upper windows of the low, old house.
+
+Mary had fallen into the habit of going for her walk or her ride at five
+o'clock every day, when she was not in attendance on Lady Maulevrier,
+and after her walk or ride she slipped through the stable, and joined
+her ancient friend. Stables and courtyard were generally empty at this
+hour, the men only appearing at the sound of a big bell, which summoned
+them from their snuggery when they were wanted. Most of Lady
+Maulevrier's servants had arrived at that respectable stage of long
+service in which fidelity is counted as a substitute for hard work.
+
+The old man was not particularly conversational, and was apt to repeat
+the same things over and over again, with a sublime unconsciousness of
+being prosy; but he liked to hear Mary talk, and he listened with
+seeming intelligence. He questioned her about the world outside his
+cloistered life--the wars and rumours of wars--and, although the names
+of the questions and the men of the day seemed utterly strange to him,
+and he had to have them repeated to him again and again, he seemed to
+take an intelligent interest in the stirring facts of the time, and
+listened intently when Mary gave him a synopsis of her last newspaper
+reading.
+
+When the news was exhausted, Mary hit upon a more childish form of
+amusement, and that was to tell the story of any novel or poem she had
+been lately reading. This was so successful that in this manner Mary
+related the stories of most of Shakespeare's plays; of Byron's Bride of
+Abydos, and Corsair; of Keats's Lamia; of Tennyson's Idylls; and of a
+heterogenous collection of poetry and romance, in all of which stories
+the old man took a vivid interest.
+
+'You are better to me than the sunshine,' he told Mary one day when she
+was leaving him. 'The world grows darker when you leave me.'
+
+Once at this parting moment he took both her hands, and drew her nearer
+to him, peering into her face in the clear evening light.
+
+'You are like my mother,' he said. 'Yes, you are very like her. And who
+else is it that you are like? There is some one else, I know. Yes, some
+one else! I remember! It is a face in a picture--a picture at Maulevrier
+Castle.'
+
+'What do you know of Maulevrier Castle?' asked Mary, wonderingly.
+
+Maulevrier was the family seat in Herefordshire, which had not been
+occupied by the elder branch for the last forty years. Lady Maulevrier
+had let it during her son's minority to a younger branch of the family,
+a branch which had intermarried with the world of successful commerce,
+and was richer than the heads of the house. This occupation of
+Maulevrier Castle had continued to the present time, and was likely
+still to continue, Maulevrier having no desire to set up housekeeping in
+a feudal castle in the marches.
+
+'How came you to know Maulevrier Castle?' repeated Mary.
+
+'I was there once. There is a picture by Lely, a portrait of a Lady
+Maulevrier in Charles the Second's time. The face is yours, my love. I
+have heard of such hereditary faces. My mother was proud of resembling
+that portrait.'
+
+'What did your mother know of Maulevrier Castle?'
+
+The old man did not answer. He had lapsed into that dream-like
+condition into which he often sank, when his brain was not stimulated to
+attention and coherency by his interest in Mary's narrations.
+
+Mary concluded that this man had once been a servant in the Maulevrier
+household, perhaps at the place in Herefordshire, and that all his old
+memories ran in one groove--the house of Maulevrier.
+
+The freedom of her intercourse with him was undisturbed for about three
+weeks; and at the end of that time she came face to face with James
+Steadman as she emerged from the circle of greenery.
+
+'You here, Lady Mary?' he exclaimed with an angry look.
+
+'Yes, I have been sitting talking to that poor old man,' Mary answered,
+cheerily, concluding that Steadman's look of vexation arose from his
+being detected in the act of harbouring a contraband relation. 'He is a
+very interesting character. A relation of yours, I suppose?'
+
+'Yes, he is a relation,' replied Steadman. 'He is very old, and his mind
+has long been gone. Her ladyship is kind enough to allow me to give him
+a home in her house. He is quite harmless, and he is in nobody's way.'
+
+'Of course not, poor soul. He is only a burden to himself. He talks as
+if his life had been very weary. Has he been long in that sad state?'
+
+'Yes, a long time.'
+
+Steadman's manner to Lady Mary was curt at the best of times. She had
+always stood somewhat in awe of him, as a person delegated with
+authority by her grandmother, a servant who was much more than a
+servant. But to-day his manner was more abrupt than usual.
+
+'He spoke of Maulevrier Castle just now,' said Mary, determined not to
+be put down too easily. 'Was he once in service there?'
+
+'He was. Pray how did you find your way into this garden, Lady Mary?'
+
+'I came through the stable. As it is my grandmother's garden I suppose I
+did not take an unwarrantable liberty in coming,' said Mary, drawing
+herself up, and ready for battle.
+
+'It is Lady Maulevrier's wish that this garden should be reserved for my
+use,' answered Steadman. 'Her ladyship knows that my uncle walks here of
+an afternoon, and that, owing to his age and infirmities, he can go
+nowhere else; and if only on that account, it is well that the garden
+should be kept private. Lunatics are rather dangerous company, Lady
+Mary, and I advise you to give them a wide berth wherever you may meet
+them.'
+
+'I am not afraid of your uncle,' said Mary, resolutely. 'You said
+yourself just now that he is quite harmless: and I am really interested
+in him, poor old creature. He likes me to sit with him a little of an
+afternoon and to talk to him; and if you have no objection I should like
+to do so, whenever the weather is fine enough for the poor old man to be
+out in the garden at this hour.'
+
+'I have a very great objection, Lady Mary, and that objection is chiefly
+in your interest,' answered Steadman, firmly. 'No one who is not
+experienced in the ways of lunatics can imagine the danger of any
+association with them--their consummate craftiness, their capacity for
+crime. Every madman is harmless up to a certain point--mild,
+inoffensive, perhaps, up to the very moment in which he commits some
+appalling crime. And then people cry out upon the want of prudence, the
+want of common-sense which allowed such an act to be possible. No, Lady
+Mary, I understand the benevolence of your motive, but I cannot permit
+you to run such a risk.'
+
+'I am convinced that the poor old creature is perfectly harmless,' said
+Mary, with suppressed indignation. 'I shall certainly ask Lady
+Maulevrier to speak to you on the subject. Perhaps her influence may
+induce you to be a little more considerate to your unhappy relation.'
+
+'Lady Mary, I beg you not to say a word to Lady Maulevrier on this
+subject. You will do me the greatest injury if you speak of that man. I
+entreat you--'
+
+But Mary was gone. She passed Steadman with her head held high and her
+eyes sparkling with anger. All that was generous, compassionate, womanly
+in her nature was up in arms against her grandmother's steward. Of all
+other things, Mary Haselden most detested cruelty; and she could see in
+Steadman's opposition to her wish nothing but the most cold-hearted
+cruelty to a poor dependent on his charity.
+
+She went in at the stable door, shut and locked it, and put the key in
+her pocket as usual. But she had little hope that this mode of access
+would be left open to her. She knew enough of James Steadman's
+character, from hearsay rather than from experience, to feel sure that
+he would not easily give way. She was not surprised, therefore, on
+returning from her ride on the following afternoon, to find the disused
+harness-room half filled with trusses of straw, and the door of
+communication completely blocked. It would be impossible for her to
+remove that barricade without assistance; and then, how could she be
+sure that the door itself was not nailed up, or secured in some way?
+
+It was a delicious sunny afternoon, and she could picture the lonely old
+man sitting in his circle of greenery beside the dial, which for him had
+registered so many dreary and solitary hours, waiting for the little ray
+of social sunlight which her presence shed over his monotonous life. He
+had told her that she was like the sunshine to him--better than
+sunshine--and she had promised not to forsake him. She pictured him
+waiting, with his hand clasped upon his crutch-stick, his chin resting
+upon his hands, his eyes poring on the ground, as she had seen him for
+the first time. And as the stable clock chimed the quarters he would
+begin to think himself abandoned, forgotten; if, indeed, he took any
+count of the passage of time, of which she was not sure. His mind seemed
+to have sunk into a condition which was between dreaming and waking, a
+state to which the outside world seemed only half real--a phase of being
+in which there was neither past nor future, only the insufferable
+monotony of an everlasting _now_.
+
+Pity is so near akin to love that Mary, in her deep compassion for this
+lonely, joyless, loveless existence, felt a regard which was almost
+affection for this strange old man, whose very name was unknown to her.
+True that there was much in his countenance and manner which was
+sinister and repellant. He was a being calculated to inspire fear rather
+than love; but the fact that he had courted her presence and looked to
+her for consolation had touched Mary's heart, and she had become
+reconciled to all that was forbidding and disagreeable in the lunatic
+physiognomy. Was he not the victim of a visitation which entitled him to
+respect as well as to pity?
+
+For some days Mary held her peace, remembering Steadman's vehement
+entreaty that she should not speak of this subject to her grandmother.
+She was silent, but the image of the old man haunted her at all times
+and seasons. She saw him even in her dreams--those happy dreams of the
+girl who loves and is beloved, and before whom the pathway of the future
+smiles like a vision of Paradise. She heard him calling to her with a
+piteous cry of distress, and on waking from this troubled dream she
+fancied that he must be dying, and that this sound in her dreams was one
+of those ghostly warnings which give notice of death. She was so unhappy
+about him, altogether so distressed at being compelled to break her
+word, that she could not prevent her thoughts from dwelling upon him,
+not even after she had poured out all her trouble to John Hammond in a
+long letter, in which her garden adventures and her little skirmish with
+Steadman were graphically described.
+
+To her intense discomfiture Hammond replied that he thoroughly approved
+of Steadman's conduct in the matter. However agreeable Mary's society
+might be to the lunatic, Mary's life was far too precious to be put
+within the possibility of peril by any such _tête-à-têtes_. If the
+person was the same old man whom Hammond had seen on the Fell, he was a
+most sinister-looking creature, of whom any evil act might be fairly
+anticipated. In a word Mr. Hammond took Steadman's view of the matter,
+and entreated his dearest Mary to be careful, and not to allow her warm
+heart to place her in circumstances of peril.
+
+This was most disappointing to Mary, who expected her lover to agree
+with her upon every point; and if he had been at Fellside the
+difference of opinion might have given rise to their first quarrel. But
+as she had a few hours' leisure for reflection before the post went out,
+she had time to get over her anger, and to remember that promise of
+obedience given, half in jest, half in earnest, at the little inn beyond
+Dunmail Raise. So she wrote submissively enough, only with just a touch
+of reproach at Jack's want of compassion for a poor old man who had such
+strong claims upon everybody's pity.
+
+The image of the poor old man was not to be banished from her thoughts,
+and on that very afternoon, when her letter was dispatched, Mary went on
+a visit of exploration to the stables, to see if by any chance Mr.
+Steadman's plans for isolating his unhappy relative might be
+circumvented.
+
+She went all over the stables--into loose boxes, harness and saddle
+rooms, sheds for wood, and sheds for roots, but she found no door
+opening into the quadrangle, save that door by which she had entered,
+and which was securely defended by a barricade of straw that had been
+doubled by a fresh delivery of trusses since she first saw it. But while
+she was prowling about the sweet-scented stable, much disappointed at
+the result of her investigations, she stumbled against a ladder which
+led to an open trap-door. Mary mounted the ladder, and found herself
+amidst the dusty atmosphere of a large hayloft, half in shadow, half in
+the hot bright sunlight. A large shutter was open in the sloping roof,
+the roof that sloped towards the quadrangle, an open patch admitting
+light and air. Mary, light and active as a squirrel, sprang upon a truss
+of hay, and in another moment had swung herself in the opening of the
+shutter, and was standing with her feet on the wooden ledge at the
+bottom of the massive frame, and her figure supported against the slope
+of thick thatched roof. Perched, or half suspended, thus, she was just
+high enough to look over the top of the yew-tree hedge into the circle
+round the sundial.
+
+Yes, there was the unhappy victim of fate, and man's inhumanity to man.
+There sat the shrunken figure, with drooping head, and melancholy
+attitude--the bent shoulders of feeble old age, the patriarchal locks so
+appealing to pity. There he sat with eyes poring upon the ground just as
+she had seen him the first time. And while she had sat with him and
+talked with him he had seemed to awaken out of that dull despondency,
+gleams of pleasure had lighted up his wrinkled face--he had grown
+animated, a sentient living instead of a corpse alive. It was very hard
+that this little interval of life, these stray gleams of gladness should
+be denied to the poor old creature, at the behest of James Steadman.
+
+Mary would have felt less angrily upon the subject had she believed in
+Steadman's supreme carefulness of her own safety; but in this she did
+not believe. She looked upon the house-steward's prudence as a
+hypocritical pretence, an affectation of fidelity and wisdom, by which
+he contrived to gratify the evil tendencies of his own hard and cruel
+nature. For some reasons of his own, perhaps constrained thereto by
+necessity, he had given the old man an asylum for his age and infirmity:
+but while thus giving him shelter he considered him a burden, and from
+mere perversity of mind refused him all such consolations as were
+possible to his afflicted state, mewed him up as a prisoner, cut him off
+from the companionship of his fellow-men.
+
+Two years ago, before Mary emerged from her Tomboyhood, she would have
+thought very little of letting herself out of the loft window and
+clambering down the side of the stable, which was well furnished with
+those projections in the way of gutters, drain-pipes, and century-old
+ivy, which make such a descent easy. Two years ago Mary's light figure
+would have swung itself down among the ivy leaves, and she would have
+gloried in the thought of circumventing James Steadman so easily. But
+now Mary was a young lady--a young lady engaged to be married, and
+impressed with the responsibilities of her position, deeply sensible of
+a new dignity, for the preservation of which she was in a manner
+answerable to her lover.
+
+'What would _he_ think of me if I went scrambling down the ivy?' she
+asked herself; 'and after he has approved of Steadman's heartless
+restrictions, it would be rank rebellion against him if I were to do it.
+Poor old man, "Thou art so near and yet so far," as Lesbia's song says.'
+
+She blew a kiss on the tips of her fingers towards that sad solitary
+figure, and then dropped back into the dusty duskiness of the loft. But
+although her new ideas upon the subject of 'Anstand'--or good
+behaviour--prevented her getting the better of Steadman by foul means,
+she was all the more intent upon having her own way by fair means, now
+that the impression of the old man's sadness and solitude had been
+renewed by the sight of the drooping figure by the sundial.
+
+She went back to the house, and walked straight to her grandmother's
+room. Lady Maulevrier's couch had been placed in front of the open
+window, from which she was watching the westward-sloping sun above the
+long line of hills, dark Helvellyn, rugged Nabb Scarr, and verdant
+Fairfield, with its two giant arms stretched out to enfold and shelter
+the smiling valley.
+
+'Heavens! child, what an object you are;' exclaimed her ladyship, as
+Mary drew near. 'Why, your gown is all over dust, and your hair is--why
+your hair is sprinkled with hay and clover. I thought you had learnt to
+be tidy, since your engagement. What have you been doing with yourself?'
+
+'I have been up in the hayloft,' answered Mary, frankly; and, intent on
+one idea, she said impetuously, 'Dear grandmother, I want you to do me a
+favour--a very great favour. There is a poor old man, a relation of
+Steadman's, who lives with him, out of his mind, but quite harmless, and
+he is so sad and lonely, so dreadfully sad, and he likes me to sit with
+him in the garden, and tell him stories, and recite verses to him, poor
+soul, just as if he were a child, don't you know, and it is such a
+pleasure to me to be a little comfort to him in his lonely wretched
+life, and James Steadman says I mustn't go near him, because he may
+change at any moment into a dangerous lunatic, and do me some kind of
+harm, and I am not a bit afraid, and I'm sure he won't do anything of
+the kind, and, please grandmother, tell Steadman, that I am to be
+allowed to go and sit with his poor old prisoner half an hour every
+afternoon.'
+
+Carried along the current of her own impetuous thoughts, Mary had talked
+very fast, and had not once looked at her grandmother while she was
+speaking. But now at the end of her speech her eyes sought Lady
+Maulevrier's face in gentle entreaty, and she recoiled involuntarily at
+the sight she saw there.
+
+The classic features were distorted almost as they had been in the worst
+period of the paralytic seizure. Lady Maulevrier was ghastly pale, and
+her eyes glared with an awful fire as they gazed at Mary. Her whole
+frame was convulsed, and she, the cripple, whose right limbs lay numbed
+and motionless upon the couch, made a struggling motion as she raised
+herself a little with the left arm, as if, by very force of angry will,
+she would have lifted herself up erect before the girl who had offended
+her.
+
+For a few moments her lips moved dumbly; and there was something
+unspeakably awful in those convulsed features, that livid countenance,
+and those voiceless syllables trembling upon the white dry lips.
+
+At last speech came.
+
+'Girl, you were created to torment me;' she exclaimed.
+
+'Dear grandmother, what harm have I done?' faltered Mary.
+
+'What harm? You are a spy. Your very existence is a torment and a
+danger. Would to God that you were married. Yes, married to a
+chimney-sweep, even--and out of my way.'
+
+'If that is your only difficulty,' said Mary, haughtily, 'I dare say Mr.
+Hammond would be kind enough to marry me to-morrow, and take me out of
+your ladyship's way.'
+
+Lady Maulevrier's head sank back upon her pillows, those velvet and
+satin pillows, rich with delicate point lace and crewel-work adornment,
+the labour of Mary and Fräulein, pillows which could not bring peace to
+the weary head, or deaden the tortures of memory. The pale face
+recovered its wonted calm, the heavy lips drooped over the weary eyes,
+and for a few moments there was silence in the room.
+
+Then Lady Maulevrier raised her eyelids, and looked at her granddaughter
+imploringly, pathetically.
+
+'Forgive me, Mary,' she said. 'I don't know what I was saying just now;
+but whatever it was, forgive and forget it. I am a wretched old woman,
+heart sick, heart sore, worn out by pain and weariness. There are times
+when I am beside myself; moments when I am not much saner than
+Steadman's lunatic uncle. This is one of my worst days, and you came
+bouncing in upon me, and tortured my nerves by your breathless torrent
+of words. Pray forgive me, if I said anything rude.'
+
+'If,' thought Mary: but she tried to be charitable, and to believe that
+Lady Maulevrier's attack upon her was a new phase of hysteria, so she
+murmured meekly, 'There is nothing for me to forgive, grandmother, and I
+am very sorry I disturbed you.'
+
+She was going to leave the room, thinking that her absence would be a
+relief to the invalid, when Lady Maulevrier called her back.
+
+'You were asking me something--something about that old man of
+Steadman's,' she said with a weary air, half indifference, half the
+lassitude natural to an invalid who sinks under the burden of monotonous
+days. 'What was it all about? I forget.'
+
+Mary repeated her request, but this time in measured tones.
+
+'My dear, I am sure that Steadman was only properly prudent.' answered
+Lady Maulevrier, 'and that it would never do for me to interfere in this
+matter. It stands to reason that he must know his old kinsman's
+temperament much better than you can, after your half-hour interviews
+with him in the garden. Pray how long have these garden scenes been
+going on, by-the-by?' asked her ladyship, with a searching look at
+Mary's downcast face.
+
+The girl had not altogether recovered from the rude shock of her
+grandmother's late attack.
+
+'About three weeks,' faltered Mary. 'But it is more than a week now
+since I was in the garden. It was quite by accident that I first went
+there. Perhaps I ought to explain.'
+
+And Mary, not being gainsayed, went on to describe that first afternoon
+when she had seen the old man brooding in the sun. She drew quite a
+pathetic picture of his joyless solitude, whilst all nature around and
+about him was looking so glad in the spring sunshine. There was a long
+silence, a silence of some minutes, when she had done; and Lady
+Maulevrier lay with lowered eyelids, deep in thought. Mary began to hope
+that she had touched her grandmother's heart, and that her request would
+be granted: but she was soon undeceived.
+
+'I am sorry to be obliged to refuse you a favour, Mary, but I must stand
+by Steadman,' said her ladyship. 'When I gave Steadman permission to
+shelter his aged kinsman in my house, I made it a condition that the old
+man should be kept in the strictest care by himself and his wife, and
+that nobody in this establishment should be troubled by him. This
+condition has been so scrupulously adhered to that the old man's
+existence is known to no one in this house except you and me; and you
+have discovered the fact only by accident. I must beg you to keep this
+secret to yourself. Steadman has particular reasons for wishing to
+conceal the fact of his uncle's residence here. The old man is not
+actually a lunatic. If he were we should be violating the law by keeping
+him here. He is only imbecile from extreme old age; the body has
+outlived the mind, that is all. But should any officious functionary
+come down upon Fellside, this imbecility might be called madness, and
+the poor old creature whom you regard so compassionately, and whose case
+you think so pitiable here, would be carried off to a pauper lunatic
+asylum, which I can assure you would be a much worse imprisonment than
+Fellside Manor.'
+
+'Yes, indeed, grandmother,' exclaimed Mary, whose vivid imagination
+conjured up a vision of padded cells, strait-waist-coats,
+murderously-inclined keepers, chains, handcuffs, and bread and water
+diet, 'now I understand why the poor old soul has been kept so
+close--why nobody knows of his existence. I beg Steadman's pardon with
+all my heart. He is a much better fellow than I thought him.'
+
+'Steadman is a thoroughly good fellow, and as true as steel,' said her
+ladyship. 'No one can know that so well as the mistress he has served
+faithfully for nearly half a century. I hope, Mary, you have not been
+chattering to Fräulein or any one else about your discovery.'
+
+'No, grandmother, I have not said a word to a mortal, but----'
+
+'Oh, there is a "but," is there? I understand. You have not been so
+reticent in your letters to Mr. Hammond.'
+
+'I tell him all that happens to me. There is very little to write about
+at Fellside; yet I contrive to send him volumes. I often wonder what
+poor girls did in the days of Miss Austen's novels, when letters cost a
+shilling or eighteen pence for postage, and had to be paid for by the
+recipient. It must have been such a terrible check upon affection.'
+
+'And upon twaddle,' said Lady Maulevrier. 'Well you told Mr. Hammond
+about Steadman's old uncle. What did he say?'
+
+'He thoroughly approved Steadman's conduct in forbidding me to go and
+see him,' answered Mary. 'I couldn't help thinking it rather unkind of
+him; but, of course, I feel that he must be right,' concluded Mary, as
+much as to say that her lover was necessarily infallible.
+
+'I always thought Mr. Hammond a sensible young man, and I am glad to
+find that his conduct does not belie my good opinion,' said Lady
+Maulevrier. 'And now, my dear, you had better go and make yourself
+decent before dinner. I am very weary this afternoon, and even our
+little talk has exhausted me.'
+
+'Yes, dear grandmother, I am going this instant. But let me ask one
+question: What is the poor old man's name?'
+
+'His name!' said her ladyship, looking at Mary with a puzzled air, like
+a person whose thoughts are far away. 'His name--oh, Steadman, I
+suppose, like his nephew's; but if I ever heard the name I have
+forgotten it, and I don't know whether the kinship is on the father's or
+the mother's side. Steadman asked my permission to give shelter to a
+helpless old relative, and I gave it. That is really all I remember.'
+
+'Only one other question,' pleaded Mary, who was brimful of curiosity
+upon this particular subject. 'Has he been at Fellside very long?'
+
+'Oh, I really don't know; a year, or two, or three, perhaps. Life in
+this house is all of a piece. I hardly keep count of time.'
+
+'There is one thing that puzzles me very much,' said Mary, still
+lingering near her grandmother's couch, the balmy evening air caressing
+her as she leaned against the embrasure of the wide Tudor window, the
+sun drawing nearer to the edge of the hills, an orb of yellow flame,
+soon to change to a gigantic disk of lurid fire. 'I thought from the old
+man's talk that he, too, must be an old servant in our family. He talked
+of Maulevrier Castle, and said that I reminded him of a picture by Lely,
+a portrait of a Lady Maulevrier.
+
+'It is quite possible that he may have been in service there, though I
+do not remember to have heard anything about it,' answered her ladyship,
+carelessly. 'The Steadmans come from that part of the country, and
+theirs is a hereditary service. Good-night, Mary, I am utterly weary.
+Look at that glorious light yonder, that mighty world of fire and flame,
+without which our little world would be dark and dreary. I often think
+of that speech of Macbeth's, "I 'gin to be aweary of the sun." There
+comes a time, Mary, when even the sun is a burden.'
+
+'Only for such a man as Macbeth,' said Mary, 'a man steeped in crime.
+Who can wonder that he wanted to hide himself from the sun? But, dear
+grandmother, there ought to be plenty of happiness left for you, even if
+your recovery is slow to come. You are so clever, you have such
+resources in your own mind and memory, and you have your grandchildren,
+who love you dearly,' added Mary, tenderly.
+
+Her nature was so full of pity that an entirely new affection had grown
+up in her mind for Lady Maulevrier since that terrible evening of the
+paralytic stroke.
+
+'Yes, and whose love, as exemplified by Lesbia, is shown in a hurried
+scrap of a letter scrawled once a week--a bone thrown to a hungry dog,'
+said her ladyship, bitterly.
+
+'Lesbia is so lovely, and she is so surrounded by flatterers and
+admirers,' murmured Mary, excusingly.
+
+'Oh, my dear, if she had a heart she would not forget me, even in the
+midst of her flatterers. Good-night again, Mary. Don't try to console
+me. For some natures consolations and soothing suggestions are like
+flowers thrown upon a granite tomb. They do just as much and just as
+little good to the heart that lies under the stone. Good-night.'
+
+Mary stooped to kiss her grandmother's forehead, and found it cold as
+marble. She murmured a loving good-night, and left the mistress of
+Fellside in her loneliness.
+
+A footman would come in and light the lamps, and draw the velvet
+curtains, presently, and shut out the later glories of sunset. And then
+the butler himself would come and arrange the little dinner table by her
+ladyship's couch, and would himself preside over the invalid's simple
+dinner, which would be served exquisitely, with all that is daintiest
+and most costly in Salviati glass and antique silver. Yet better the
+dinner of herbs, and love and peace withal, than the choicest fare or
+the most perfect service.
+
+Before the coming of the servants and the lamps there was a pause of
+silence and loneliness, an interval during which Lady Maulevrier lay
+gazing at the declining orb, the lower rim of which now rested on the
+edge of the hill. It seemed to grow larger and more dazzling as she
+looked at it.
+
+Suddenly she clasped her left hand across her eyes, and said aloud--
+
+'Oh, what a hateful life! Almost half a century of lies and hypocricies
+and prevarications and meannesses! For what? For the glory of an empty
+name; and for a fortune that may slip from my dead hand to become the
+prey of rogues and adventurers. Who can forecast the future?'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+CARTE BLANCHE.
+
+
+Lady Kirkbank's house in Arlington Street was known to half fashionable
+London as one of the pleasantest houses in town; and it was known by
+repute only, to the other half of fashionable London, as a house whose
+threshold was not to be crossed by persons with any regard for their own
+dignity and reputation. It was not that Lady Kirkbank had ever actually
+forfeited her right to be considered an honest woman and a faithful
+wife. People who talked of the lady and her set with a contemptuous
+shrug of the shoulders and a dubious elevation of the eyebrows were
+ready, when hard pushed in argument, to admit that they knew of no
+actual harm in Lady Kirkbank, no overt bad behaviour.
+
+'But--well,' said the punctilious half of society, the Pejinks and
+Pernickitys, the Picksomes and Unco-Goods, 'Lady Kirkbank is--Lady
+Kirkbank; and I would not allow my girls to visit her, don't you know.'
+'Lady Kirkbank is received, certainly,' said a severe dowager. 'She
+goes to very good houses. She gets tickets for the Royal enclosure. She
+is always at private views, and privileged shows of all kinds; and she
+contrives to squeeze herself in at a State ball or a concert about once
+in two years; but any one who can consider Lady Kirkbank good style must
+have a very curious idea of what a lady ought to be.' 'Lady Kirkbank is
+a warm-hearted, nice creature,' said a diplomatist of high rank, and one
+of her particular friends, 'but her manners are decidedly--continental!'
+
+About Sir George, society, adverse or friendly, was without strong
+opinions. His friends, the men who shot over his Scotch moor, and filled
+the spare rooms in his villa at Cannes, and loaded his drag for Sandown
+or Epsom, and sponged upon him all the year round, talked of him as 'an
+inoffensive old party,' 'a cheery soul,' 'a genial old boy,' and in like
+terms of approval. That half of society which did not visit in Arlington
+Street, in whose nostrils the semi-aristocratic, semi-artistic,
+altogether Bohemian little dinners, the suppers after the play, the
+small hours devoted to Nap or Poker, had an odour as of sulphur, the
+reek of Tophet--even this half of the great world was fain to admit that
+Sir George was harmless. He had never had an idea beyond the realms of
+sport; he had never had a will of his own outside his stable. To shoot
+pigeons at Hurlington or Monaco, to keep half a dozen leather-platers,
+and attend every race from the Craven to the Leger, to hunt four days a
+week, when he was allowed to spend a winter in England, and to saunter
+and sleep away all the hours which could not be given to sport,
+comprised Sir George's idea of existence. He had never troubled himself
+to consider whether there might not possibly be a better way of getting
+rid of one's life. He was as God had made him, and was perfectly
+satisfied with himself and the universe; save at such times as when a
+favourite horse went lame, or his banker wrote to tell him that his
+account was overdrawn.
+
+Sir George had no children; he had never had a serious care in his life.
+He never thought, he never read. Lady Kirkbank declared that she had
+never seen him with a book in his hands since their marriage.
+
+'I don't believe he would know at which end to begin,' she said.
+
+What was the specific charge which the very particular people brought
+against Lady Kirkbank? Such charges rarely _are_ specific. The idea that
+the lady belonged to the fast and furious section of society, the
+Bohemia of the upper ten, was an idea in the air. Everybody knew it. No
+one could quite adequately explain it.
+
+From thirty to fifty Lady Kirkbank had been known as a flirty matron.
+Wherever she went, a train of men went with her; men young and
+middle-aged and elderly; handsome youths from the public offices; War,
+Admiralty, Foreign Office, Somerset House young men; attractive men of
+mature years, with grey moustachios, military, diplomatic, horsey, what
+you will, but always agreeable. At home, abroad, Lady Kirkbank was never
+without her court; but the court was entirely masculine. In those days
+the fair Georgie did not scruple to say that she hated women, and that
+girls were her particular abomination. But as the years rolled on Lady
+Kirkbank began to find it very difficult to muster her little court, to
+keep her train in attendance upon her. 'The birds were wild,' Sir George
+said. Her young adorers found their official duties more oppressive than
+hitherto; her elderly swains had threatenings of gout or rheumatism
+which prevented their flocking round her as of old at race meeting or
+polo match. They were loyal enough in keeping their engagements at the
+dinner table, for Lady Kirkbank's cook was one of the best in London;
+and the invited guests were rarely missing at the little suppers after
+opera or play: but Georgia's box was no longer crowded with men who
+dropped in between the acts to see what she thought of the singer or the
+piece, and her swains were no longer contented to sit behind her chair
+all the evening, seeing an empty corner of the stage across Georgia's
+ivory shoulder, and hearing the voices of invisible actors in the brief
+pauses of Georgie's subdued babble.
+
+At fifty-five, Georgina Kirkbank told herself sadly enough that her day,
+as a bright particular star, all-sufficient in her own radiance, was
+gone. She could not live without her masculine circle, men who could
+bring her all the news, the gossip of the clubs; where everything seemed
+to become known as quickly as if each club had its own Asmodeus,
+unroofing all the housetops of the West End for inspection every night.
+She could not live without her courtiers; and to keep them about her she
+knew that she must make her house pleasant. It was not enough to give
+good dinners, elegant little suppers washed down by choicest wines; she
+must also provide fair faces to smile upon the feast, and bright eyes to
+sparkle in the subdued light of low shaded lamps, and many candles
+twinkling under coloured shades.
+
+'I am an old woman now,' Lady Kirkbank said to herself with a sigh, 'and
+my own attractions won't keep my friends about me. _C'est trop connu
+ça_.'
+
+And now the house in Arlington Street in which feminine guests had been
+as one in ten, opened its doors to the young and the fair. Pretty
+widows, lively girls, young wives who were not too absurdly devoted to
+their husbands, actresses of high standing and good looks, these began
+to be welcomed effusively in Arlington Street. Lady Kirkbank began to
+hunt for beauties to adorn her rooms, as she had hitherto hunted lions
+to roar at her parties. She prided herself on being the first to
+discover this or that new beauty. That lovely girl from Scotland with
+the large eyes--that sweet young creature from Ireland with the long
+eyelashes. She was always inventing new divinities. But even this
+change of plan, this more feminine line of politics failed to reconcile
+the strict and the stern, the Queen Charlotte-ish elderly ladies, and
+the impeccable matrons, to Lady Kirkbank and her set. The girls who were
+launched by Lady Kirkbank never took high rank in society. When they
+made good marriages it was generally to be observed that they dropped
+Lady Kirkbank soon afterwards. It was not their fault, these ingrates
+pleaded piteously; but Edward, or Henry, or Theodore, as the case might
+be, had a most cruel prejudice against dear Lady Kirkbank, and the young
+wives were obliged to obey.
+
+Others there were, however, the loyal few, who having won the prize
+matrimonial in Lady Kirkbank's happy hunting grounds, remained true to
+their friend ever afterwards, and defended her character against every
+onslaught.
+
+When Lady Maulevrier told her grandson that she had entrusted Lady
+Kirkbank with the duty of introducing Lesbia to society, Maulevrier
+shrugged his shoulders and held his peace. He knew no actual harm in the
+matter. Lady Kirkbank's was rather a fast set; and had he been allowed
+to choose it was not to Lady Kirkbank that he would have delegated his
+grandmother's duty. In Maulevrier's own phrase it was 'not good enough'
+for Lesbia. But it was not in his power to interfere. He was not told of
+the plan until everything had been settled. The thing was accomplished;
+and against accomplished facts Maulevrier was the last to protest.
+
+His friend John Hammond had not been silent. He knew nothing of Lady
+Kirkbank personally; but he knew the position which she held in London
+society, and he urged his friend strongly to enlighten Lady Maulevrier
+as to the kind of circle into which she was about to entrust her young
+granddaughter, a girl brought up in the Arcadia of England.
+
+'Not for worlds would I undertake such a task,' said Maulevrier. 'Her
+ladyship never had any opinion of my wisdom, and this Lady Kirkbank is a
+friend of her own youth. She would cut up rough if I were to say a word
+against an old friend. Besides what's the odds, if you come to think of
+it? all society is fast nowadays, or at any rate all society worth
+living in. And then again, Lesbia is just one of those cool-headed girls
+who would keep herself head uppermost in a maelstrom. She knows on which
+side her bread is buttered. Look how easily she chucked you up because
+she did not think you good enough. She'll make use of this Lady
+Kirkbank, who is a good soul, I am told, and will make the best match of
+the season.'
+
+And now the season had begun, and Lady Lesbia Haselden was circulating
+with other aristocratic atoms in the social vortex, with her head
+apparently uppermost.
+
+'Old Lady K--has nobbled a real beauty, this time,' said one of the
+Arlington Street set to his friend as they lolled on the railings in the
+park, 'a long way above any of those plain-headed ones she tried to palm
+off upon us last year: the South American girl with the big eyes and a
+complexion like a toad, the Forfarshire girl with freckles and
+unsophisticated carrots. "Those lovely Spanish eyes," said Lady K----,
+"that Titianesque auburn hair!" But it didn't answer. Both the girls
+were plain, and they have gone back to their native obscurity spinsters
+still. But this is a real thorough-bred one--blood, form, pace, all
+there.'
+
+'Who is she?' drawled his friend.
+
+'Lord Maulevrier's sister, Lady Lesbia Haselden. Has money, too, I
+believe; rich grandmother; old lady buried alive in Westmoreland; horrid
+old miser.'
+
+'I shouldn't mind marrying a miser's granddaughter,' said the other. 'So
+nice to know that some wretched old idiot has scraped and hoarded
+through a lifetime of deprivation and self-denial, in order that one may
+spend his money when he is under the sod.'
+
+Lady Lesbia was accepted everywhere, or almost everywhere, as the beauty
+of the season. There were six or seven other girls who aspired to the
+same proud position, who were asserted by their own particular friends
+to have won it; just as there are generally four or five horses which
+claim to be first favourites; but the betting was all in favour of Lady
+Lesbia.
+
+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.
+
+'What a cold-hearted creature you must be,' said Georgie. 'You don't
+seem to admire any of my favourite men.'
+
+'They are very nice,' Lesbia answered languidly; 'but they are all
+alike. They say the same things--wear the same clothes--sit in the same
+attitude. One would think they were all drilled in a body every morning
+before they go out. Mr. Nightshade, the actor, who came to supper the
+other night, is the only man I have seen who has a spark of
+originality.'
+
+'You are right,' answered Lady Kirkbank, 'there is an appalling sameness
+in men: only it is odd you should find it out so soon. I never
+discovered it till I was an old woman. How I envy Cleopatra her Cæsar
+and her Antony. No mistaking one of those for the other. Mary Stuart
+too, what marked varieties of character she had an opportunity of
+studying in Rizzio and Chastelard, Darnley and Bothwell. Ah, child, that
+is what it is to _live_.'
+
+'Mary is very interesting,' sighed Lesbia; 'but I fear she was not a
+correct person.'
+
+'My love, what correct person ever is interesting? History draws a misty
+halo round a sinner of that kind, till one almost believes her a saint.
+I think Mary Stuart, Froude's Mary, simply perfect.'
+
+Lesbia had begun by blushing at Lady Kirkbank's opinions; but she was
+now used to the audacity of the lady's sentiments, and the almost
+infantile candour with which she gave utterance to them. Lady Kirkbank
+liked to make her friends laugh. It was all she could do now in order to
+be admired. And there is nothing like audacity for making people laugh
+nowadays. Lady Kirkbank was a close student of all those delightful
+books of French memoirs which bring the tittle-tattle of the Regency and
+the scandals of Louis the Fifteenth's reign so vividly before us: and
+she had unconsciously founded her manners and her ways of thinking and
+talking upon that easy-going but elegant age. She did not want to seem
+better than women who had been so altogether charming. She fortified the
+frivolity of historical Parisian manners by a dash of the British
+sporting character. She drove, shot, jumped over five-barred gates,
+contrived on the verge of seventy to be as active us a young woman; and
+she flattered herself that the mixture of wit, audacity, sport, and
+good-nature was full of fascination.
+
+However this might be, it is certain that a good many people liked her,
+chiefly perhaps because she was good-natured, and a little on account of
+that admirable cook.
+
+To Lesbia, who had been weary to loathing of her old life amidst the
+hills and waterfalls of Westmoreland, this new life was one perpetual
+round of pleasure. She flung herself with all her heart and mind into
+the amusement of the moment; she knew neither weariness nor satiety. To
+ride in the park in the morning, to go to a luncheon party, a garden
+party, to drive in the park for half an hour after the garden party, to
+rush home and dress for the fourth or fifth time, and then off to a
+dinner, and from dinner to drum, and from drum to big ball, at which
+rumour said the Prince and Princess were to be present; and so, from
+eleven o'clock in the morning till four or five o'clock next morning,
+the giddy whirl went on; and every hour was so occupied by pleasure
+engagements that it was difficult to squeeze in an occasional morning
+for shopping--necessary to go to the shops sometimes, or one would not
+know how many things one really wants--or for an indispensable interview
+with the dressmaker. Those mornings at the shops were hardly the least
+agreeable of Lesbia's hours. To a girl brought up in one perpetual
+_tête-à-tête_ with green hill-sides and silvery watercourses, the West
+End shops were as gardens of Eden, as Aladdin Caves, as anything,
+everything that is rapturous and intoxicating. Lesbia, the clear-headed,
+the cold-hearted, fairly lost her senses when she went into one of those
+exquisite shops, where a confusion of brocades and satins lay about in
+dazzling masses of richest colour, with here and there a bunch of
+lilies, a cluster of roses, a tortoise-shell fan, an ostrich feather, or
+a flounce of peerless Point d'Alençon flung carelessly athwart the sheen
+of a wine-dark velvet or golden-hued satin.
+
+Lady Maulevrier had said Lesbia was to have _carte blanche_; so Lesbia
+bought everything she wanted, or fancied she wanted, or that the
+shop-people thought she must want, or that Lady Kirkbank happened to
+admire. The shop-people were so obliging, and so deeply obliged by
+Lesbia's patronage. She was exactly the kind of customer they liked to
+serve. She flitted about their showrooms like a beautiful butterfly
+hovering over a flower-bed--her eye caught by every novelty. She never
+asked the price of anything; and Lady Kirkbank informed them, in
+confidence, that she was a great heiress, with a millionaire grandmother
+who indulged her every whim. Other high born young ladies, shopping upon
+fixed allowances, and sorely perplexed to make both ends meet, looked
+with eyes of envy upon this girl.
+
+And then came the visit to the dressmaker. It happened after all that
+Kate Kearney was not intrusted with Lady Lesbia's frocks. Miss Kearney
+was the fashion, and could pick and choose her customers; and as she was
+a young lady of good business aptitudes, she had a liking for ready
+money, or at least half-yearly settlements; and, finding that Lady
+Kirkbank was much more willing to give new orders than to pay old
+accounts, she had respectfully informed her ladyship that a pressure of
+business would prevent her executing any further demands from Arlington
+Street, while the necessity of posting her ledger obliged her to request
+the favour of an immediate cheque.
+
+The little skirmish--per letter--occurred while Lady Kirkbank was at
+Cannes, and Miss Kearney's conduct was stigmatised as insolent and
+ungrateful, since had not she, Lady Kirkbank by the mere fact of her
+patronage, given this young person her chief claim to fashion?
+
+'I shall drop her,' said Georgie, 'and go back to poor old Seraphine,
+who is worth a cartload of such Irish adventuresses.'
+
+So to Madame Seraphine, of Clanricarde Place, Lady Lesbia was taken as
+a lamb to the slaughter-house.
+
+Seraphine had made Lady Kirkbank's clothes, off and on for the last
+thirty years. Seraphine and Georgia had grown old together. Lady
+Kirkbank was always dropping Seraphine and taking her up again,
+quarrelling and making friends with her. They wrote each other little
+notes, in which Lady Kirkbank called the dressmaker her _cher ange_--her
+_bonne chatte_, her _chère vielle sotte_--and all manner of affectionate
+names--and in which Seraphine occasionally threatened the lady with the
+dire engines of the law, if money were not forthcoming before Saturday
+evening.
+
+Lady Kirkbank within those thirty years had paid Seraphine many
+thousands; but she had never once got herself out of the dear creature's
+debt. All her payments were payments on account. A hundred pounds; or
+fifty--or an occasional cheque for two hundred and fifty, when Sir
+George had been lucky at Newmarket and Doncaster. But the rolling
+nucleus of debt went rolling on, growing bigger every year until the
+payments on account needed to be larger or more numerous than of old to
+keep Seraphine in good humour.
+
+Seraphine was a woman of genius and versatility and had more than one
+art at her fingers' ends--those skinny and claw-shaped fingers, the
+nails whereof were not always clean. She took charge of her customer's
+figures, and made their corsets, and lectured them if they allowed
+nature to get the upper hand.
+
+'If Madame's waist gets one quarter of an inch thicker it must be that I
+renounce to make her gowns,' she would tell a ponderous matron, with
+cool insolence, and the matron would stand abashed before the little
+sallow, hooked-nosed, keen eyed Jewess, like a child before a severe
+mother.
+
+'Oh, Seraphine, do you really think that I am stouter?' the customer
+would ask feebly, panting in her tightened corset.
+
+'Is it that I think so? Why that jumps to the eyes. Madame had always
+that little air of Rubens, even in the flower of her youth--but now--it
+is a Rubens of the Faubourg du Temple.'
+
+And horrified at the idea of her vulgarised charms the meek matron would
+consent to encase herself in one of Seraphine's severest corsets, called
+in bitterest mockery _à la santé_--at five guineas--in order that the
+dressmaker might measure her for a forty-guinea gown.
+
+'A plain satin gown, my dear, with an eighteenpenny frilling round the
+neck and sleeves, and not so much trimming as would go round my little
+finger. It is positive robbery,' the matron told her friends afterwards,
+not the less proud of her skin-tight high shouldered sleeves and the
+peerless flow of her train.
+
+Seraphine was an artist in complexions, and it was she who provided her
+middle-aged and elderly customers with the lilies and roses of youth.
+Lady Kirkbank's town complexion was superintended by Seraphine,
+sometimes even manipulated by those harpy-like claws. The eyebrows of
+which Lesbia complained were only eyebrows _de province_--eyebrows _de
+voyage_. In London Georgie was much more particular; and Seraphine was
+often in Arlington Street with her little morocco bag of washes and
+creams, and brushes and sponges, to prepare Lady Kirkbank for some great
+party, and to instruct Lady Kirkbank's maid. At such times Georgie was
+all affection for the little dressmaker.
+
+'_Ma chatte_, you have made me positively adorable,' she would say,
+peering at her reflection in the ivory hand-mirror, a dazzling image of
+rouge and bismuth, carmined lips, diamonds, and frizzy yellow hair; 'I
+verily believe I look under thirty--but do not you think this gown is a
+thought too _décolletée--un peu trop de peau, hein?_'
+
+'Not for you, Lady Kirkbank, with your fine shoulders. Shoulders are of
+no age--_les épaules sont la vraie fontaine de jouvence pour les jolies
+femmes._'
+
+'You are such a witty creature, Seraphine, Fifine. You ought to be a
+descendant of that wicked old Madame du Deffand. Rilboche, give Madame
+some more chartreuse.'
+
+And Lady Kirkbank and the dressmaker would chink their liqueur glasses
+in amity before the lady gathered up her satin train and allowed her
+peerless shoulders to be muffled in a plush mantle to go down to her
+carriage, fortified by that last glass of green chartreuse.
+
+There were always the finest chartreuse and curaçoa in a liqueur cabinet
+on Lady Kirkbank's dressing-table. The cabinet formed a companion to the
+dressing-case, which contained all those creamy and rose-hued cosmetics,
+powders, brushes, and medicaments, which were necessary for the
+manufacture of Georgie's complexion. The third bottle in the liqueur
+case held cognac, and this, as Rilboche the maid knew, was oftenest
+replenished. Yet nobody could accuse Lady Kirkbank of intemperate
+habits. The liqueur box only supplied the peg that was occasionally
+wanted to screw the superior mind to concert pitch.
+
+'One must always be at concert pitch in society, don't you know, my
+dear,' said Georgie to her young protégée.
+
+Thus it happened that, Miss Kearney having behaved badly, Lesbia was
+carried off to dear old Seraphine, and delivered over to that modern
+witch, as a sacrifice tied to the horns of the altar.
+
+Clanricarde Place is a little nook of Queen Anne houses--genuine Queen
+Anne, be it understood--between Piccadilly and St. James's Palace, and
+hardly five minutes' walk from Arlington Street. It is a quiet little
+_cul de sac_ in the very heart of the fashionable world; and here of an
+afternoon might be seen the carriages of Madame Seraphine's customers,
+blocking the whole of the carriage way, and choking up the narrow
+entrance to the street, which widened considerably at the inner end.
+
+Madame Seraphine's house was at the end, a narrow house, with tall
+old-fashioned windows curtained with amber satin. It was a small, dark
+house, and exhaled occasional odours of garlic and main sewer; but the
+staircase was a gem in old oak, and the furniture in the triple
+telescopic drawing rooms, dwindling to a closet at the end, was genuine
+Louis Seize.
+
+Seraphine herself was the only shabby thing in the house--a wizened
+little woman, with a wicked old Jewish face, and one shoulder higher
+than the other, dressed in a shiny black moire gown, years after moires
+had been exploded, and with a rag of old lace upon her sleek black
+hair--raven black hair, and the only good thing about her appearance.
+
+One ornament, and one only, had Seraphine ever been guilty of wearing,
+and that was an old-fashioned half-hoop ring of Brazilian diamonds,
+brilliants of the first water. This ring she called her yard measure;
+and she was in the habit of using it as her Standard of purity, and
+comparing it with any diamonds which her customers submitted to her
+inspection. For the clever little dressmaker had a feeling heart for a
+lady in difficulties, and was in the habit of lending money on good
+security, and on terms that were almost reasonable as compared with the
+usurious rates one reads of in the newspapers.
+
+Lesbia's first sensation upon having this accomplished person presented
+to her was one of shrinking and disgust. There was something sinister in
+the sallow face, the small shrewd eyes, and long hooked nose, the
+crooked figure, and claw-shaped hands. But when Madame Seraphine began
+to talk about gowns, and bade her acolytes--smartly-dressed young women
+with pleasing countenances--bring forth marvels of brocade and satin,
+embroideries, stamped velvets, bullion fringes, and ostrich feather
+flouncings, Lesbia became interested, and forgot the unholy aspect of
+the high priestess.
+
+Lady Kirkbank and the dressmaker discussed Lesbia's charms as calmly as
+if she had been out of the room.
+
+'What do you think of her figure?' asked Lady Kirkbank.
+
+'One cannot criticise what does not exist,' replied the dressmaker, in
+French. 'The young lady has no figure. She has evidently been brought up
+in the country.'
+
+And then with rapid bird-like movements, and with her head on one side,
+Seraphine measured Lesbia's waist and bust, muttering little argotic
+expressions _sotto voce_ as she did so.
+
+'Waist three inches too large, shoulders six inches too narrow,' she
+said decisively, and she dictated some figures to one of the damsels,
+who wrote them down in an order-book.
+
+'What does that mean?' asked Lesbia, not at all approving of such
+cavalier treatment.
+
+'Only that Seraphine will make your corsets the right size,' answered
+Lady Kirkbank.
+
+'What? Three inches too small for my waist, and six too wide for my
+shoulders?'
+
+'My love, you must have a figure,' replied Lady Kirkbank, conclusively.
+'It is not what you are, but what you ought to be that has to be
+considered.'
+
+So Lesbia, the cool-headed, who was also the weak-minded, consented to
+have her figure adjusted to the regulation mark of absolute beauty, as
+understood by Madame Seraphine. It was only when her complexion came
+under discussion, and Seraphine ventured to suggest that she would be
+all the better for a little accentuation of her eyebrows and darkening
+of her lashes, that Lesbia made a stand.
+
+'What would my grandmother think of me if she heard I painted?' she
+asked, indignantly.
+
+Lady Kirkbank laughed at her _naïveté_.
+
+'My dear child, your grandmother is just half a century behind the age,'
+she said. 'I hope you are not going to allow your life in London to be
+regulated by an oracle at Grasmere?'
+
+'I am not going to paint my face,' replied Lesbia, firmly.
+
+'Well, perhaps you are right. The eyebrows are a little weak and
+undecided, Seraphine, as you say, and the lashes would be all the better
+for your famous cosmetic; but after all there is a charm in what the
+painters call "sincerity," and any little errors of detail will prove
+the genuineness of Lady Lesbia's beauty. One _may_ be too artistic.'
+
+And Lady Kirkbank gave a complacent glance at her own image in one of
+the Marie Antoinette mirrors, pleased with the general effect of arched
+brows, darkened eyelids, and a daisy bonnet. The fair Georgie generally
+affected field-flowers and other simplicities, which would have been
+becoming to a beauty of eighteen.
+
+'One is obliged to smother one's self in satin and velvet for balls and
+dinners,' said Lady Kirkbank, when she discussed the great question of
+gowns; 'but I know I always look my best in my cotton frock and straw
+hat.'
+
+That first visit to Seraphine's den--den as terrible, did one but know
+it, as that antediluvian hyena-cave at Torquay, where the threshold is
+worn by the bodies of beasts dragged across it, and the ground paved
+with their bones--that first visit was a serious business. Later
+interviews might be mere frivolities, half-an-hour wasted in looking at
+new fashions, an order given carelessly on the spur of the moment; but
+upon this occasion Lady Kirkbank had to arm her young _protégée_ for the
+coming campaign, and the question was to the last degree serious.
+
+The chaperon and the dressmaker put their heads together, looked at
+fashion plates, talked solemnly of Worth and his compeers, of the gowns
+that were being worn by Bernhardt, and Pierson, and Croisette, and other
+stars of the Parisian stage; and then Lady Kirkbank gave her orders,
+Lesbia listening and assenting.
+
+Nothing was said about prices; but Lesbia had a vague idea that some of
+the things would be rather expensive, and she ventured to ask Lady
+Kirkbank if she were not ordering too many gowns.
+
+'My dear, Lady Maulevrier said you were to have _carte blanche_,'
+replied Georgie, solemnly. 'Your dear grandmother is as rich as Croesus,
+and she is generosity itself; and how should I ever forgive myself if I
+allowed you to appear in society in an inadequate style. You have to
+take a high place, the very highest place, Lesbia; and you must be
+dressed in accordance with that position.'
+
+Lesbia said no more. After all it was Lady Kirkbank's business and not
+hers. See had been entrusted to Lady Kirkbank as to a person who
+thoroughly knew the great world, and she must submit to be governed by
+the wisdom and experience of her chaperon. If the bills were heavy, that
+would be Lady Kirkbank's affair; and no doubt dear grandmother was rich
+enough to afford anything Lesbia wanted. She had been told that she was
+to take rank among heiresses.
+
+Lady Maulevrier had given her granddaughter some old-fashioned
+ornaments, topaz, amethysts, turquoise--jewels that had belonged to dead
+and gone Talmashes and Angersthorpes--to be reset. This entailed a visit
+to a Bond Street jeweller, and in the dazzling glass-cases on the
+counter of the Bond Street establishment Lesbia saw a good many things
+which she felt were real necessities to her new phase of existence, and
+these, with Lady Kirkbank's approval, she ordered. They were not
+important matters. Half-a-dozen gold bangles of real oriental
+workmanship, three or four jewelled arrows, flies and beetles, and
+caterpillars, to pin on her laces and flowers, a diamond clasp for her
+pearl necklace, a dear little gold hunter to wear when she rode in the
+park, a diamond butterfly to light up that old-fashioned amethyst
+_parure_ which the jeweller was to reset with an artistic admixture of
+brilliants.
+
+'I am sure you would not like the effect without diamonds,' said the
+jeweller. 'Your amethysts are very fine, but they are dark and heavy in
+tone, and want a good deal of lighting-up, especially for the present
+fashion of half-lighted rooms. If you will allow me to use my own
+discretion, and mix in a few brilliants, I shall be able to produce a
+really artistic _parure_; otherwise I would not recommend you to touch
+them. The present setting is clumsy and inelegant; but I really do not
+know that I could improve upon it, without an admixture of brilliants.'
+
+'Will the diamonds add very much to the expense?' Lesbia inquired,
+timidly.
+
+'My dear child, you are perfectly safe in leaving the matter in Mr.
+Cabochon's hands,' interposed Lady Kirkbank, who had particular reasons
+for wishing to be on good terms with the head of the establishment. 'Your
+dear grandmother gave you the amethysts to be reset; and of course she
+would wish it to be done in an artistic manner. Otherwise, as Mr.
+Cabochon judiciously says, why have the stones reset at all? Better wear
+them in all their present hideousness.'
+
+Of course, after this Lesbia consented to the amethysts being dealt with
+according to Mr. Cabochon's taste.
+
+'Which is simply perfect,' interjected Lady Kirkbank.
+
+And now Lesbia's campaign began in real earnest--a life of pleasure, a
+life of utter selfishness and self-indulgence, which would go far to
+pervert the strongest mind, tarnish the purest nature. To dress and be
+admired--that was what Lesbia's life meant from morning till night. She
+had no higher or nobler aim. Even on Sunday mornings at the fashionable
+church, where the women sat on one side of the nave and the men on the
+other, where divinest music was as a pair of wings, on which the
+enraptured soul flew heavenward--even here Lesbia thought more of her
+bonnet and gloves--the _chic_ or non-_chic_ of her whole costume, than
+of the service. She might kneel gracefully, with her bent head, just
+revealing the ivory whiteness of a lovely throat, between the edge of
+her lace frilling and the flowers in her bonnet. She might look the
+fairest image of devotion; but how could a woman pray whose heart was a
+milliner's shop, whose highest ambition was to be prettier and better
+dressed than other women?
+
+The season was six weeks old. It was Ascot week, the crowning glory of
+the year, and Lesbia and her chaperon had secured tickets for the Royal
+enclosure--or it may be said rather that Lesbia had secured them--for
+the Master of the Royal Buckhounds might have omitted poor old Lady
+Kirkbank's familiar name from his list if it had not been for that
+lovely girl who went everywhere under the veteran's wing.
+
+Six weeks, and Lesbia's appearance in society had been one perpetual
+triumph; but as yet nothing serious had happened. She had had no offers.
+Half a dozen men had tried their hardest to propose to her--had sat out
+dances, had waylaid her in conservatories and in back drawing-rooms, in
+lobbies while she waited for her carriage--had looked at her piteously
+with tenderest declarations trembling on their lips; but she had
+contrived to keep them at bay, to strike them dumb by her coldness, or
+confound them by her coquetry; for all these were ineligibles, whom Lady
+Lesbia Haselden did not want to have the trouble of refusing.
+
+Lady Kirkbank was in no haste to marry her _protégée_--nay, it was much
+more to her interest that Lesbia should remain single for three or four
+seasons, and that she, Lady Kirkbank, might have the advantage of close
+association with the young beauty, and the privilege of spending Lady
+Maulevrier's money. But she would have liked to be able to inform
+Lesbia's grandmother of some tremendous conquest--the subjugation of a
+worthy victim. This herd of nobodies--younger sons with courtesy titles
+and empty pockets, ruined Guardsmen, briefless barristers--what was the
+use of telling Lady Maulevrier about such barren victories? Lady
+Kirkbank therefore contented herself with expatiating upon Lesbia's
+triumphs in a general way: how graciously the Princess spoke to her and
+about her; how she had been asked to sit on the dais at the ball at
+Marlborough House, and had danced in the Royal quadrille.
+
+'Has Lesbia happened to meet Lord Hartfield?' Lady Maulevrier asked,
+incidentally, in one of her letters.
+
+No. Lord Hartfield was in London, for he had made a great speech in the
+Lords on a question of vital interest; but he was not going into
+society, or at any rate into society of a frivolous kind. He had given
+himself up to politics, as so many young men did nowadays, which was
+altogether horrid of them. His name had appeared in the list of guests
+at one or two cabinet dinners; but the world of polo matches and
+afternoon teas, dances and drums, private theatricals, and Orleans House
+suppers, knew him not. As a competitor on the fashionable race-course,
+Lord Hartfield was, in common parlance, out of the running.
+
+And now on this glorious June day, this Thursday of Thursdays, the Ascot
+Cup day, for the first time since Lesbia's début, Lady Kirkbank had
+occasion to smile upon an admirer whose pretensions were worthy of the
+highest consideration.
+
+Mr. Smithson, of Park Lane, and Rood Hall, near Henley, and Formosa,
+Cowes, and Le Bouge, Deauville, and a good many other places too
+numerous to mention, was reputed to be one of the richest commoners in
+England. He was a man of that uncertain period of life which enemies
+call middle age, and friends call youth. That he would never see a
+five-and-thirtieth birthday again was certain; but whether he had passed
+the Rubicon of forty was open to doubt. It is possible that he was
+enjoying those few golden years between thirty-five and forty, which for
+the wealthy bachelor constitute verily the prime and summer-tide of
+life. Wisdom has come, experience has been bought, taste has been
+cultivated, the man has educated himself to the uttermost in the great
+school of daily life. He knows his world thoroughly, whatever that world
+is, and he knows how to enjoy every gift and every advantage which
+Providence has bestowed upon him.
+
+Mr. Smithson was a great authority on the Stock Exchange, though he had
+ceased for the last three or four years to frequent the 'House,' or to
+be seen in the purlieus of Throgmorton Street. Indeed he had an air of
+hardly knowing his way to the City, of being acquainted with that part
+of London only by hearsay. He complained that his horses shied at
+passing Temple Bar. And yet a few years ago Mr. Smithson's city
+operations had been on a very extensive scale: It was in the rise and
+fall of commodities rather than of stocks and shares that Horace
+Smithson had made his money. He had exercised occult influences upon the
+trade of the great city, of the world itself, whereof that city is in a
+manner the keystone. Iron had risen or fallen at his beck. At the breath
+of his nostrils cochineal had gone up in the market at an almost magical
+rate, as if the whole civilised world had become suddenly intent upon
+dyeing its garments red, nay, as if even the naked savages of the Gold
+Coast and the tribes of Central Africa were bent on staining their dusky
+skins with the bodies of the female coccus.
+
+Favoured by a hint from Smithson, his particular friends followed his
+lead, and rushed into the markets to buy all the cochineal that could be
+had; to buy at any price, since the market was rising hourly. And then,
+all in a moment, as the sky clouds over on a summer day, there came a
+dulness in the cochineal market, and the female coccus was being sold at
+an enormous sacrifice. And anon it leaked out that Mr. Smithson had
+grown tired of cochineal, and had been selling for the last week or two;
+and it was noised abroad that this rise and fall in cocci had brought
+Mr. Smithson seventy thousand pounds.
+
+Mr. Smithson was said to have commenced life in a very humble capacity.
+There were some who declared he was the very youth who stooped to pick
+up a pin in a Parisian banker's courtyard, after his services as clerk
+had just been rejected by the firm, and who was thereupon recognised as
+a youth worthy of favour and taken into the banker's office. But this
+touching incident of the pin was too ancient a tradition to fit Mr.
+Smithson, still under forty.
+
+Some there were who remembered him eighteen years ago as an adventurer
+in the great wilderness of London, penniless, friendless, a
+Jack-of-all-trades, living as the birds of the air live, and with as
+little certainty of future maintenance. And then Mr. Smithson
+disappeared for a space--he went under, as his friends called it; to
+re-appear fifteen years later as Smithson the millionaire. He had been
+in Peru, Mexico, California. He had traded in hides, in diamonds, in
+silver, in stocks and shares. And now he was the great Smithson, whose
+voice was the voice of an oracle, who was supposed to be able to make
+the fortunes of other men by a word, or a wink, a nod, or a little look
+across the crowd, and whom all the men and women in London
+society--short of that exclusive circle which does _not_ open its ranks
+to Smithsons--were ready to cherish and admire.
+
+Mr. Smithson had been in Petersburg, Paris, Vienna, all over civilised
+Europe during the last five weeks, whether on business or on pleasure
+bent, nobody knew. He affected to be an elegant idler; but it was said
+by the initiated that wherever Smithson went the markets rose or fell,
+and hides, iron, copper, or tin, felt the influence of his presence.
+
+He came back to London in time for the Cup Day, and in time to fall
+desperately in love with Lesbia, whom he met for the first time in the
+Royal enclosure.
+
+She was dressed in white, purest ivory white, from top to toe--radiant,
+dazzling, under an immense sunshade fringed with creamy marabouts. Her
+complexion--untouched by Seraphine--her dark and glossy hair, her large
+violet eyes, luminous, dark almost to blackness, were all set off and
+accentuated by the absence of colour in her costume. Even the cluster of
+exotics on her shoulder were of the same pure tint, gardenias and lilies
+of the valley.
+
+Mr. Smithson was formally presented to the new beauty, and received with
+a cool contempt which riveted his chains. He was so accustomed to be run
+after by women, that it was a new sensation to meet one who was not in
+the least impressed by his superior merits.
+
+'I don't suppose the girl knows who I am,' he said to himself, for
+although he had a very good idea of his intrinsic worth, he knew that
+his wealth ranked first among his merits.
+
+But on after occasions when Lesbia had been told all that could be told
+to the advantage of Mr. Smithson, she accepted his homage with the same
+indifference, and treated him with less favour than she accorded to the
+ruined guardsmen and younger sons who were dying for her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+'PROUD CAN I NEVER BE OF WHAT I HATE.'
+
+
+It was a Saturday afternoon, and even in that great world which has no
+occupation in life except to amuse itself, whose days are all holidays,
+there is a sort of exceptional flavour, a kind of extra excitement on
+Saturday afternoons, distinguished by polo matches at Hurlingham, just
+as Saturday evenings are by the production of new plays at fashionable
+theatres. There was a great military polo match for this particular
+Saturday--Lancers against Dragoons. It was a lovely June afternoon, and
+Hurlingham would be at its best. The cool greensward, the branching
+trees, the flowing river, would afford an unspeakable relief after the
+block of carriages in Bond Street and the heated air of London, where
+even the parks felt baked and arid; and to Hurlingham Lady Kirkbank
+drove directly after luncheon.
+
+Lesbia leaned back in the barouche listening calmly, while her chaperon
+expatiated upon the wealth and possessions of Horace Smithson. It was
+now ten days since the meeting at Ascot, and Mr. Smithson had contrived
+to see a great deal of Lesbia in that short time. He was invited almost
+everywhere, and he had haunted her at afternoon and evening parties; he
+had supped in Arlington Street after the opera; he had played cards with
+Lesbia, and had enjoyed the felicity of winning her money. His
+admiration was obvious, and there was a seriousness in his manner of
+pursuing her which showed that, in Lady Kirkbank's unromantic
+phraseology, 'the man meant business.'
+
+'Smithson is caught at last, and I am glad of it,' said Georgie.
+
+'The creature is an abominable flirt, and has broken more hearts than
+any man in London. He was all but the death of one of the dearest girls
+I know.'
+
+'Mr. Smithson breaks hearts!' exclaimed Lesbia, languidly. 'I should not
+have thought that was in his line. Mr. Smithson is not an Adonis, nor
+are his manners particularly fascinating.'
+
+'My child how fresh you are! Do you suppose it is the handsome men or
+the fascinating men for whom women break their hearts in society? It is
+the rich men they all want to marry--men like Smithson, who can give
+them diamonds, and yachts, and a hunting stud, and half a dozen fine
+houses. Those are the prizes--the blue ribbons of the matrimonial
+race-course--men like Smithson, who pretend to admire all the pretty
+women, who dangle, and dangle, and keep off other offers, and give ten
+guinea bouquets, and then at the end of the season are off to Hombourg
+or the Scotch moors, without a word. Do you think that kind of treatment
+is not hard enough to break a penniless girl's heart? She sees the
+golden prize within her grasp, as she believes; she thinks that she and
+poverty have parted company for ever; she imagines herself mistress of
+town house and country houses, yachts and stables; and then one fine
+morning the gentleman is off and away! Do not you think that is enough
+to break a girl's heart?'
+
+'I can imagine that a girl steeped to the lips in poverty might be willing
+to marry Mr. Smithson's houses and yachts,' answered Lesbia, in her low
+sweet voice, with a faint sneer even amidst the sweetness, 'but, I think
+it must have been a happy release for any one to be let off the
+sacrifice at the last moment.'
+
+'Poor Belle Trinder did not think so.'
+
+'Who was Belle Trinder?'
+
+'An Essex parson's daughter whom I took under my wing five years ago--a
+splendid girl, large and fair, and just a trifle coarse--not to be
+spoken of in the same day with you, dearest; but still a decidedly
+handsome creature. And she took remarkably well. She was a very lively
+girl, "never ran mute," Sir George used to say. Sir George was very fond
+of her. She amused him, poor girl, with her rather brainless rattle.'
+
+'And Mr. Smithson admired her?'
+
+'Followed her about everywhere, sent her whole flower gardens in the way
+of bouquets and Japanese baskets, and floral _parures_ for her gowns,
+and opera boxes and concert tickets. Their names were always coupled.
+People used to call them Bel and the Dragon. The poor child made up her
+mind she was to be Mrs. Smithson. She used to talk of what she would do
+for her own people--the poor old father, buried alive in a damp
+parsonage, and struggling every winter with chronic bronchitis; the four
+younger sisters pining in dulness and penury; the mother who hardly knew
+what it was to rest from the continual worries of daily life.'
+
+'Poor things!' sighed Lesbia, gazing admiringly at the handle of her
+last new sunshade.
+
+'Belle used to talk of what she would do for them all,' pursued Lady
+Kirkbank. 'Father should go every year to the villa at Monte Carlo;
+mother and the girls should have a month in Park Lane every season, and
+their autumn holiday at one of Mr. Smithson's country houses. I knew the
+world well enough to be sure that this kind of thing would never answer
+with a man like Smithson. It is only one man in a thousand--the modern
+Arthur, the modern Quixote--who will marry a whole family. I told Belle
+as much, but she laughed. She felt so secure of her power over the man.
+"He will do anything I ask him," she said.'
+
+'Miss Trinder must be an extraordinary young person,' observed Lesbia,
+scornfully. 'The man had not proposed, had he?'
+
+'No; the actual proposal hung fire, but Belle thought it was a settled
+thing all the same. Everybody talked to her as if she were engaged to
+Smithson, and those poor, ignorant vicarage girls used to write her long
+letters of congratulation, envying her good fortune, speculating about
+what she would do when she was married. The girl was too open and candid
+for London society--talked too much, "gave the view before she was sure
+of her fox," Sir George said. All this silly talk came to Smithson's
+ears, and one morning we read in the Post that Mr. Smithson had started
+the day before for Algiers, where he was to stay at the house of the
+English Consul, and hunt lions. We waited all day, hoping for some
+letter of explanation, some friendly farewell which would mean _à
+revoir_. But there was nothing, and then poor Belle gave way altogether.
+She shut herself up in her room, and went out of one hysterical fit into
+another. I never heard a girl sob so terribly. She was not fit to be
+seen for a week, and then she went home to her father's parsonage in the
+flat swampy country on the borders of Suffolk, and eat her heart, as
+Byron calls it. And the worst of it was that she had no actual
+justification for considering herself jilted. She had talked, and other
+people had talked, and among them they had settled the business. But
+Smithson had said hardly anything. He had only flirted to his heart's
+content, and had spent a few hundreds upon flowers, gloves, fans, and
+opera tickets, which perhaps would not have been accepted by a girl with
+a strong sense of her own dignity.'
+
+'I should think not, indeed,' interjected Lesbia.
+
+'But which poor Belle was only too delighted to get.'
+
+'Miss Trinder must be very bad style,' said Lesbia, with languid scorn,
+'and Mr. Smithson is an execrable person. Did she die?'
+
+'No, my dear, she is alive poor soul!'
+
+'You said she broke her heart.'
+
+'"The heart may break, yet brokenly live on,"' quoted Lady Kirkbank.
+'The disappointed young women don't all die. They take to district
+visiting, or rational dressing, or china painting, or an ambulance
+brigade. The lucky ones marry well-to-do widowers with large families,
+and so slip into a comfortable groove by the time they are
+five-and-thirty. Poor Belle is still single, still buried in the damp
+parsonage, where she paints plates and teacups, and wears out my old
+gowns, just as she is wearing out her own life, poor creature!'
+
+'The idea of any one wanting to marry Mr. Smithson,' said Lesbia. 'It
+seems too dreadful.'
+
+'A case of real destitution, you think. Wait till you have seen
+Smithson's house in Park Lane--his team, his yacht, his orchid houses in
+Berkshire.'
+
+Lesbia sighed. Her knowledge of London society was only seven weeks old;
+and yet already the day of disenchantment had begun! She was having her
+eyes opened to the stern realities of life. A year ago when her
+appearance in the great world was still only a dream of the future, she
+had pictured to herself the crowd of suitors who would come to woo, and
+she had resolved to choose the worthiest.
+
+What would he be like, that worthiest among the wooers, that King Arthur
+among her knights?
+
+First and foremost, he would be of rank higher than her own--a duke, a
+marquis, or one of the first and oldest among earls. Title and lofty
+lineage were indispensable. It would be a fall, a failure, a
+disappointment, were she to marry a commoner, however distinguished.
+
+The worthy one must be noble, therefore, and of the old nobility. He
+must be young, handsome, intellectual. He must stand out from among his
+peers by his gifts of mind and person. He must have won distinction in
+the arena of politics or diplomacy, arms or letters. He must be
+'somebody.'
+
+She had been seven weeks in society, and this modern Arthur had not
+appeared. So far as she had been able to discover, there was no such
+person. The dukes and marquises were mostly men of advanced years. The
+young unmarried nobility were given over to sport, play, and
+foolishness. She had heard of only one man who at all corresponded with
+her ideal, and he was Lord Hartfield. But Lord Hartfield had given
+himself up to politics, and was no doubt a prig. Lady Kirkbank spoke of
+him with contempt, as an intolerable person. But then Lord Hartfield was
+not in Lady Kirkbank's set. He belonged to that serious circle to which
+Lady Kirkbank's house appeared about as reputable a place of gathering
+as a booth on a race-course.
+
+And now Lady Kirkbank told Lesbia that this Mr. Smithson, a nobody with
+a great fortune, was a man whose addresses she, the sister of Lord
+Maulevrier, ought to welcome. Mr. Smithson, who claimed to be a lineal
+descendant of that Sir Michael Carrington, standard-bearer to Coeur de
+Lion in the Holy Land, whose descendants changed their name to Smith
+during the Wars of the Roses. Mr. Smithson bodily proclaimed himself a
+scion of this good old county family, and bore on his plate and his
+coach panels the elephant's head and the three demi-griffins of the
+Hertfordshire Smiths, who only smiled and shrugged their shoulders when
+they were complimented upon the splendid surroundings of their cousin.
+Who could tell? Some lateral branch of the standard-bearer's family tree
+might have borne this illustrious twig.
+
+Lady Kirkbank and all Lady Kirkbank's friends seemed to have conspired
+to teach Lesbia Haselden one lesson, and that lesson meant that money
+was the first prize in the great game of life. Money ranked before
+everything--before titles, before noble lineage, genius, fame, beauty,
+courage, honour. Money was Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end.
+Mr. Smithson, whose antecedents were as cloudy as those of Aphrodite,
+was a greater man than a peer whose broad acres only brought him two per
+cent., or half of whose farms were tenantless, and his fields growing
+cockle instead of barley.
+
+Yes, one by one, Lady Lesbia's illusions were reft from her. A year ago
+she had fancied beauty all-powerful, a gift which must ensure to its
+possessor dominion over all the kingdoms of the earth. Rank, intellect,
+fame would bow down before that magical diadem. And, behold, she had
+been shining upon London society for seven weeks, and only empty heads
+and empty pockets had bowed down--the frivolous, the ineligible,--and
+Mr. Smithson.
+
+Another illusion which had been dispelled was Lesbia's comfortable idea
+of her own expectations. Her grandmother had told her that she might
+take rank among heiresses; and she had held herself accordingly, deeming
+that her place was among the wealthiest. And now, since Mr. Smithson's
+appearance upon the scene, Lady Kirkbank had informed her young friend
+with noble candour that Lady Maulevrier's fortune, however large it
+might seem at Grasmere, would be a poor thing in London; and that Lady
+Maulevrier's ideas about money were as old-fashioned as her notions
+about morals.
+
+'Life is about six times as expensive as it was in your grandmother's
+time.' said Lady Kirkbank, as the carriage rolled softly along the
+shabby road between Knightsbridge and Fulham. 'It is the pace that
+kills. Society, which used to jog along comfortably, like the old
+Brighton stage, at ten miles an hour, now goes as fast as the Brighton
+express. In my mother's time poor Lord Byron was held up to the
+execration of respectable people as the type of cynical profligacy; in
+my own time people talked about Lord Waterford; but, my dear, the young
+men now are all Byrons and Waterfords, without the genius of the one or
+the generosity of the other. We are all going at steeplechase rate.
+Social success without money is impossible. The rich Americans, the
+successful Jews, will crowd us out unless we keep pace with them. Ah,
+Lesbia, my dear girl, there would be a great future before you if you
+could only make up your mind to accept Mr. Smithson.'
+
+'How do you know that he means to propose to me?' asked Lesbia,
+mockingly. 'Perhaps he is only going to behave as he did to Miss
+Trinder.'
+
+'Lady Lesbia Haselden is a very different person from a country parson's
+daughter,' answered her chaperon; 'Smithson told me all about it
+afterwards. He was really taken with Belle's fine figure and good
+complexion; but one of her particular friends told him of her foolish
+talk about her sisters, and how well she meant to get them married when
+she was Mrs. Smithson. This disgusted him. He went down to Essex,
+reconnoitered the parsonage, saw one of the sisters hanging out cuffs
+and collars in the orchard--another feeding the fowls--both in shabby
+gowns and country-made boots; one of them with red hair and freckles.
+The mother was bargaining for fish with a hawker at the kitchen door.
+And these were the people he was expected to import into Park Lane,
+under ceilings painted by Leighton. These were the people he was to
+exhibit on board his yacht, to cart about on his drag. "I had half made
+up my mind to marry the girl, but I would sooner have hung myself than
+marry her mother and sisters so I took the first train for Dover, en
+route for Algiers," said Smithson, and upon my word I could hardly blame
+the man,' concluded Lady Kirkbank.
+
+They were driving up the narrow avenue to the gates of Hurlingham by
+this time. Lesbia shook out her frock and looked at her gloves,
+tan-coloured mousquetaires, reaching up to the elbow, and embroidered to
+match her frock.
+
+To-day she was a study in brown and gold. Brown satin petticoat
+embroidered with marsh marigolds; little bronze shoes, with marsh
+marigolds tied on the latchets; brown stockings with marsh marigold
+clocks; tunic brown foulard smothered with quillings of soft brown lace;
+Princess bonnet of brown straw, with a wreath of marsh marigold and a
+neat little buckle of brown diamonds; parasol brown satin, with an
+immense bunch of marsh marigolds on the top; fan to match parasol.
+
+The seats in front of the field were nearly all full when Lady Kirkbank
+and Lesbia left their carriage; but their interests had been protected
+by a gentleman who had turned down two chairs and sat between them on
+guard. This was Mr. Smithson.
+
+'I have been sitting here for an hour keeping your chairs,' he said, as
+he rose to greet them. 'You have no idea what work I have had, and how
+ferociously all the women have looked at me.'
+
+The match was going on. The Lancers were scuffling for the ball, and
+affording a fine display of hog-maned ponies and close-cropped young men
+in ideal boots. But Lesbia cared very little about the match. She was
+looking along the serried ranks of youth and beauty to see if anybody's
+frock was smarter than her own.
+
+No. She could see nothing she liked so well as her brown satin and
+buttercups. She sat down in a perfectly contented frame of mind, pleased
+with herself and with Seraphine--pleased even with Mr. Smithson, who had
+shown himself devoted by his patient attendance upon the empty chairs.
+
+After the match was over the two ladies and their attendant strolled
+about the gardens. Other men came and fluttered round Lesbia, and women
+and girls exchanged endearing smiles and pretty little words of greeting
+with her, and envied her the brown frock and buttercups and Mr. Smithson
+at her chariot wheel. And then they went to the lawn in front of the
+club-house, which was so crowded that even Mr. Smithson found it
+difficult to get a tea-table, and would hardly have succeeded so soon as
+he did if it had not been for the assistance of a couple of Lesbia's
+devoted Guardsmen, who ran to and fro and badgered the waiters.
+
+After much skirmishing they were seated at a rustic table, the blue
+river gleaming and glancing in the distance, the good old trees
+spreading their broad shadows over the grass, the company crowding and
+chattering and laughing--an animated picture of pretty faces, smart
+gowns, big parasols, Japanese fans.
+
+Lesbia poured out the tea with the prettiest air of domesticity.
+
+'Can you really pour out tea?' gasped a callow lieutenant, gazing upon
+her with goggling, enraptured eyes. 'I did not think you could do
+anything so earthly.'
+
+'I can, and drink it too,' answered Lesbia, laughing. 'I adore tea.
+Cream and sugar?'
+
+'I--I beg your pardon--how many?' murmured the youth, who had lost
+himself in gazing, and no longer understood plain English.
+
+Mr. Smithson frowned at the intruder, and contrived to absorb Lesbia's
+attention for the rest of the afternoon. He had a good deal more to say
+for himself than her military admirers, and was altogether more amusing.
+He had a little cynical air which Lesbia's recent education had taught
+her to enjoy. He depreciated all her female friends--abused their gowns
+and bonnets, and gave her to understand, between the lines, as it were,
+that she was the only woman in London worth thinking about.
+
+She looked at him curiously, wondering how Belle Trinder had been able
+to resign herself to the idea of marrying him.
+
+He was not absolutely bad looking--but he was in all things unlike a
+girl's ideal lover. He was short and stout, with a pale complexion, and
+sunken faded eyes, as of a man who had spent the greater part of his
+life by candle light, and had pored much over ledgers and bank books,
+share lists and prospectuses. He dressed well, or allowed himself to be
+dressed by the most correct of tailors--the Prince's tailor--but he
+never attempted to lead the fashion in his garments. He had no
+originality. Such sublime flights as that of the man who revived
+corduroy, or of that daring genius who resuscitated the half-forgotten
+Inverness coat, were unknown to him. He could only follow the lead of
+the highest. He had small feet, of which he was intensely proud, podgy
+white hands on which he wore the most exquisite rings. He changed his
+rings every day, like a Roman Emperor; was reported to have summer and
+winter rings--onyx and the coolest looking intaglios set in filagree for
+warm weather--fiery rubies and diamonds in massive bands of dull gold
+for winter. He was said to devote half-an-hour every morning to the
+treatment of his nails, which were perfect. All the inkstains of his
+youth had been obliterated, and those nails which had once been bitten
+to the quick during the throes of financial study were now things of
+beauty.
+
+Lady Lesbia surveyed Mr. Smithson critically, and shuddered at the
+thought that this person was the best substitute which the season had
+yet offered her for her ideal knight. She thought of John Hammond, the
+tall, strong figure, straight and square; the head so proudly carried on
+a neck which would have graced a Greek arena. The straight, clearly-cut
+features, the flashing eyes, bright with youth and hope and the promise
+of all good things. Yes, there was indeed a man--a man in all the
+nobility of manhood, as God made him, an Adam before the Fall.
+
+Ah, if John Hammond had only possessed a quarter of Mr. Smithson's
+wealth how gladly would Lesbia have defied the world and married him.
+But to defy the world upon nothing a year was out of the question.
+
+'Why didn't he go on the Stock Exchange and make his fortune?' thought
+Lesbia, pettishly, 'instead of talking vaguely about politics and
+literature.'
+
+She felt angry with her rejected lover for having come to her
+empty-handed. She had seen no man in London who was, or who seemed to
+her, his equal. And yet she did not repent of having rejected him. The
+more she knew of the world and the more she knew of herself the more
+deeply was she convinced that poverty was an evil thing, and that she
+was not the right kind of person to endure it.
+
+She was inwardly making these comparisons as they strolled back to the
+carriage, while Mr. Smithson and Lady Kirkbank talked confidentially at
+her side.
+
+'Do you know that Lady Kirkbank has promised and vowed three things for
+you?' said Mr. Smithson.
+
+'Indeed! I thought I was past the age at which one can be compromised by
+other people's promises. Pray what are those three things?'
+
+'First, that you will come to breakfast in Park Lane with Lady Kirkbank
+next Wednesday morning. I say Wednesday because that will give me time
+to ask some nice people to meet you; secondly, that you will honour me
+by occupying my box at the Lyceum some evening next week; and thirdly,
+that you will allow me to drive you down to the Orleans for supper after
+the play. The drive only takes an hour, and the moonlight nights are
+delicious at this time of the year.'
+
+'I am in Lady Kirkbank's hands,' answered Lesbia, laughing. 'I am her
+goods, her chattels; she takes me wherever she likes.'
+
+'But would you refuse to do me this honour if you were a free agent?'
+
+'I can't tell. I hardly know what it is to be a free agent. At Grasmere
+I did whatever my grandmother told me; in London I obey Lady Kirkbank. I
+was transferred from one master to another. Why should we breakfast in
+Park Lane instead of in Arlington Street? What is the use of crossing
+Piccadilly to eat our breakfast?'
+
+This was a cool-headed style of treatment to which Mr. Smithson was not
+accustomed, and which charmed him accordingly. Young women usually threw
+themselves at his head, as it were; but here was a girl who talked to
+him as indifferently as if he were a tradesman offering his wares.
+
+'What a dreadfully practical person you are!' he exclaimed. 'What is the
+use of crossing Piccadilly? Well, in the first place, you will make me
+ineffably happy. But perhaps that doesn't count. In the second place, I
+shall be able to show you some rather good pictures of the French
+school--'
+
+'I hate the French school!' interjected Lesbia. 'Tricky, flashy, chalky,
+shallow, smelling of the footlights and the studio.'
+
+'Well, sink the pictures. You will meet some very charming people,
+belonging to that artist world which is not to be met everywhere.'
+
+'I will go to Park Lane to meet your people, if Lady Kirkbank likes to
+take me,' said Lesbia; and with this answer Mr. Smithson was bound to be
+content.
+
+'My pet, if you had made it the study of your life how to treat that man
+you could not do it better,' said Lady Kirkbank, when they were driving
+along the dusty road between dusty hedges and dusty trees, past that
+last remnant of country which was daily being debased into London.
+'Upon my word, Lesbia, I begin to think you must be a genius.'
+
+'Did you see any gowns you liked better than mine?' asked Lesbia,
+reclining reposefully, with her little bronze shoes upon the opposite
+cushion.
+
+'Not one--Seraphine has surpassed herself.'
+
+'You are always saying that. One would suppose you were a sleeping
+partner in the firm. But I really think this brown and buttercups is
+rather nice. I saw that odious American girl just now--Miss--Miss
+Milwaukee, that mop-stick girl people raved about at Cannes. She was in
+pale blue and cream colour, a milk and water mixture, and looked
+positively plain.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+LESBIA CROSSES PICCADILLY.
+
+
+Lady Kirkbank and Lady Lesbia drove across Piccadilly at eleven o'clock
+on Wednesday morning to breakfast with Mr. Smithson, and although Lesbia
+had questioned whether it was worth while crossing Piccadilly to eat
+one's breakfast, she had subsequently considered it worth while ordering
+a new gown from Seraphine for the occasion; or, it may be, rather that
+the breakfast made a plausible excuse for a new gown, the pleasure of
+ordering which was one of those joys of a London life that had not yet
+lost their savour.
+
+The gown, devised especially for the early morning, was simplicity
+itself--rusticity, even. It was a Dresden shepherdess gown, made of a
+soft flowered stuff, with roses and forget-me-nots on a creamy ground.
+There was a great deal of creamy lace, and innumerable yards of palest
+azure and palest rose ribbon in the confection, and there was a
+coquettish little hat, the regular Dresden hat, with a wreath of
+rosebuds.
+
+'Dresden china incarnate!' exclaimed Smithson, as he welcomed Lady
+Lesbia on the threshold of his marble hall, under the glass marquise
+which sheltered arrivals at his door. 'Why do you make yourself so
+lovely? I shall want to keep you in one of my Louis Seize cabinets, with
+the rest of my Dresden!'
+
+Lady Kirkbank had considered the occasion suitable for one of her
+favourite cotton frocks and rustic hats--a Leghorn hat, with clusters of
+dog-roses and honeysuckle, and a trail of the same hedge-flowers to
+fasten her muslin fichu.
+
+Mr. Smithson's house in Park Lane was simply perfect. It is wonderful
+what good use a _parvenu_ can make of his money nowadays, and how rarely
+he disgraces himself by any marked offences against good taste. There
+are so many people at hand to teach the _parvenu_ how to furnish his
+house, or how to choose his stud. If he go wrong it must be by sheer
+perversity, an arrogant insistence upon being governed by his own
+ignorant inclinations.
+
+Mr. Smithson was too good a tactician to go wrong in this way. He had
+taken the trouble to study the market before he went out to buy his
+goods. He knew that taste and knowledge were to be bought just as easily
+as chairs and tables, and he went to the right shop. He employed a
+clever Scotchman, an artist in domestic furniture, to plan his house,
+and make drawings for the decoration and furniture of every room--and
+for six months he gave himself up to the task of furnishing.
+
+Money was spent like water. Painters, decorators, cabinet-makers had a
+merry time of it. Royal Academicians were impressed into the service by
+large offers, and the final result of Mr. MacWalter's taste and Mr.
+Smithson's bullion was a palace in the style of the Italian Renaissance,
+frescoed ceilings, painted panels, a staircase of sculptured marble, as
+beautiful as a dream, a conservatory as exquisite as a jewel casket by
+Benvenuto Cellini, a picture gallery which was the admiration of all
+London, and of the enlightened foreigner, and of the inquiring American.
+This was the house which Lesbia had been brought to see, and through
+which she walked with the calmly critical air of a person who had seen
+so many palaces that one more or less could make no difference.
+
+In vain did Mr. Smithson peruse her countenance in the hope of seeing
+that she was impressed by the splendour of his surroundings, and by the
+power of the man who commanded such splendour. Lesbia was as cold as the
+Italian sculptor's Reading Girl in an alcove of Mr. Smithson's picture
+gallery; and the stockbroker felt very much as Aladdin might have done
+if the fair Badroulbadour had shown herself indifferent to the hall of
+the jewelled windows, in that magical palace which sprang into being in
+a single night.
+
+Lesbia had been impressed by that story of poor Belle Trinder and by
+Lady Kirkbank's broad assertion that half the young women in London were
+running after Mr. Smithson; and she had made up her mind to treat the
+man with supreme scorn. She did not want his houses or his yachts.
+Nothing could induce her to marry such a man, she told herself; but her
+vanity fed upon the idea of his subjugation, and her pride was gratified
+by the sense of her power over him.
+
+The guests were few and choice. There was Mr. Meander, the poet, one of
+the leading lights in that new sect which prides itself upon the
+cultivation of abstract beauty, and occasionally touches the verge of
+concrete ugliness. There were a newspaper man--the editor of a
+fashionable journal--and a middle-aged man of letters, playwright,
+critic, humourist, a man whose society was in demand everywhere, and who
+said sharp things with the most supreme good-nature. The only ladies
+whose society Mr. Smithson had deemed worthy the occasion were a
+fashionable actress, with her younger sister, the younger a pretty copy
+of the elder, both dressed picturesquely in flowing cashmere gowns of
+faint sea-green, with old lace fichus, leghorn hats, and a general
+limpness and simplicity of style which suited their cast of feature and
+delicate colouring. Lesbia wondered to see how good an effect could be
+produced by a costume which could have cost so little. Mr. Nightshade,
+the famous tragedian, had been also asked to grace the feast, but the
+early hour made the invitation a mockery. It was not to be supposed that
+a man who went to bed at daybreak would get up again before the sun was
+in the zenith, for the sake of Mr. Smithson's society, or Mr. Smithson's
+Strasbourg pie, for the manufacture whereof a particular breed of geese
+were supposed to be set apart, like sacred birds in Egypt, while a
+particular vineyard in the Gironde was supposed to be devoted wholly and
+solely to the production of Mr. Smithson's claret. It was a cabinet
+wine, like those rare vintages of the Rhineland which are reserved
+exclusively for German princes.
+
+Breakfast was served in Mr. Smithson's smallest dining-room--there were
+three apartments given up to feasting, beginning with a spacious
+banqueting-room for great dinners, and dwindling down to this snuggery,
+which held about a dozen comfortably, with ample room and verge enough
+for the attendants. The walls were old gold silk, the curtains a tawny
+velvet of deeper tone, the cabinets and buffet of dark Italian walnut,
+inlaid with lapis-lazuli and amber. The fireplace was a masterpiece of
+cabinet work, with high narrow shelves, and curious recesses holding
+priceless jars of Oriental enamel. The deep hearth was filled with arum
+lilies and azalias, like a font at Easter.
+
+Lady Kirkbank, who pretended to adore genius, was affectionately
+effusive to Miss Fitzherbert, the popular actress, but she rather
+ignored the sister. Lesbia was less cordial, and was not enchanted at
+finding that Miss Fitzherbert shone and sparkled at the breakfast table
+by the gaiety of her spirits and the brightness of her conversation.
+There was something frank and joyous, almost to childishness, in the
+actress's manner, which was full of fascination; and Lesbia felt herself
+at a disadvantage almost for the first time since she had been in
+London.
+
+The editor, the wit, the poet, the actress, had a language of their own;
+and Lesbia felt herself out in the cold, unable to catch the ball as it
+glanced past her, not quick enough to follow the wit that evoked those
+ripples of silvery laughter from the two fair-haired, pale-faced girls
+in sea-green cashmere. She felt as an Englishman may feel who has made
+himself master of academical French, and who takes up one of Zola's
+novels, or goes into artistic society, and finds that there is another
+French, a complete and copious language, of which he knows not a word.
+
+Lesbia began to think that she had a great deal to learn. She began to
+wonder even whether, in the event of her having made rather too free use
+of Lady Maulevrier's _carte blanche_, it might not be well to make a new
+departure in the art of dressing, and to wear untrimmed cashmere gowns,
+and rags of limp lace.
+
+After breakfast they all went to look at Mr. Smithson's picture gallery.
+His pictures were, as he had told Lesbia, chiefly of the French school,
+and there may have been a remote period--say, in the time of good Queen
+Charlotte--when such pictures would hardly have been exhibited to young
+ladies. His pictures were Mr. Smithson's own unaided choice. Here the
+individual taste of the man stood revealed.
+
+There were two or three Geromes; and in the place of honour at the end
+of the gallery there was a grand Delaroche, Anne Boleyn's last letter to
+the king, the hapless girl-queen sitting at a table in her gloomy cell
+in the Tower, a shaft of golden light from the narrow window streaming
+on the fair, disordered hair, the face bleached with unutterable woe, a
+sublime image of despair and self-abandonment.
+
+The larger pictures were historical, classic, grand; but the smaller
+pictures--the lively little bits of colour dotted in here and
+there--were of that new school which Mr. Smithson affected. They were of
+that school which is called Impressionist, in which ballet dancers and
+jockeys, burlesque actresses, masked balls, and all the humours of the
+side scenes are represented with the sublime audacity of an art which
+disdains finish, and relies on _chic, fougue, chien, flou, élan_, the
+inspiration of the moment. Lesbia blushed as she looked at the ballet
+girls, the maskers in their scanty raiment, the _demi-mondaines_ lolling
+out of their opera boxes, and half out of their gowns, with false smiles
+and frizzled hair. And then there came the works of that other school
+which lavishes the finish of a Meissonier on the most meretricious
+compositions. A woman in a velvet gown warming her dainty little feet on
+a gilded fender, in a boudoir all aglow with colour and lamplight; a
+cavalier in satin raiment buckling his sword-belt before a Venetian
+mirror; a pair of lovers kissing in a sunlit corridor; a girl in a
+hansom cab; a milliner's shop; and so on, and so on.
+
+Then came the classical subjects of the last new school. Weak imitations
+of Alma Tadema. Nero admiring his mother's corpse; Claudius interrupting
+Messalina's marriage with her lover Silus; Clodius disguised among the
+women of Cæsar's household; Pyrrha's grotto. Lady Kirkbank expatiated
+upon all the pictures, and generally made unlucky guesses at the
+subjects of them. Classical literature was not her strong point.
+
+Mr. Meander, the poet, discovered that all the beautiful heads were
+like Miss Fitzherbert. 'It is the same line,' he exclaimed, 'the line of
+lilies and flowing waters--the gracious ineffable upward returning
+ripple of the true _retroussé_ nose, the divine _flou_, the loveliness
+which has lain dormant for centuries--nay, was at one period of debased
+art scorned and trampled under foot by the porcine multitude, as akin to
+the pug and the turn-up, until discovered and enshrined on the altar of
+the Beautiful by the Boticelli Revivalists.'
+
+Miss Fitzherbert simpered, and accepted these remarks as mere statements
+of obvious fact. She was accustomed to hear of Boticelli and the early
+Italian painters in connection with her own charms of face and figure.
+
+Lesbia, whose faultless features were of the aquiline type, regarded the
+bard's rhapsody as insufferable twaddle, and began to think Mr. Smithson
+almost a wit when he made fun of the bard.
+
+Smithson was enchanted when she laughed at his jokelets, even although
+she did not scruple to tell him that she thought his favourite pictures
+detestable, and looked with the eye of indifference on a collection of
+jade that was worth a small fortune.
+
+Mr. Meander fell into another rhapsody over those classic cups and
+shallow little bowls of absinthe-coloured jade.
+
+'Here if you like, are colour and beauty,' he murmured, caressing one of
+the little cups with the roseate tips of his supple fingers. 'These,
+dearest Smithson, are worth all the rest of your collection; worth
+vanloads of your cloisonné enamels, your dragon-jars in blood-colour and
+blue. This cloudy indefinable substance, not crudely transparent nor yet
+distinctly opaque, a something which touches the boundary line of two
+worlds--the real and the ideal. And then the colour! Great heaven, can
+anything be lovelier than this shadowy tint which is neither yellow nor
+green; faint, faint as the dawn of newly-awakened day? After the siege
+of blood-bedabbled Delhi, Baron Rothschild sent a special agent to India
+to buy him a little jade tea-pot which had been the joy of Eastern
+Kings. Only a tea-pot. Yet Rothschild deemed it worth a voyage from
+England to India. That is what the love of the beautiful means, in Jew
+or Gentile,' concluded the bard, smiling on the company, as they
+gathered round the Florentine table on which the jade specimens were set
+out, Lady Kirkbank looking at the little cups and basins as if she
+thought they were going to do something, after all this fuss had been
+made about them. It seemed hardly credible that any reasonable being
+could have given thirty guineas for one of those bits of greenish-yellow
+clouded glass, unless the thing had some peculiar property of expansion
+or contraction.
+
+After this breakfast in Park Lane Lady Lesbia and her admirer met daily.
+He went to all her parties; he sat out waltzes with her, in
+conservatories, and on staircases; for Horace Smithson was much too
+shrewd a man to enter himself in the race for dancing men, handicapped
+by his forty years and his fourteen stone. He contrived to amuse Lesbia
+by his conversation, which was essentially mundane, depreciating people
+whom all the rest of the world admired, or pretended to admire, telling
+her of the secret springs by which the society she saw around her was
+moved. He was judicious in his revelations of hidden evil, and careful
+to say nothing which should offend Lady Lesbia's modesty; yet he
+contrived in a very short time to teach her that the world in which she
+lived was an utterly corrupt world, whose high priest was Satan; that
+all lofty aspirations and noble sentiments were out of place in society;
+and that the worst among the people she met were the people who laid any
+claim to being better than their neighbours.
+
+'That's why I adore Lady Kirkbank,' he said, confidentially. 'The dear
+soul never pretends to be any better than the rest of us. She gambles,
+and we all know she gambles; she pegs, and we all know she pegs; and she
+makes rather a boast of being up to her eyes in debt. No humbug about
+dear old Georgie.'
+
+Lesbia had seen enough of her chaperon by this time to know that Mr.
+Smithson's description of the lady was correct, and, this being so, she
+supposed that the facts and traits of character which he told her about
+in other people were also true. She thus adopted the Smithsonian, or
+fashionable-pessimist view of society in general, and resigned herself
+to the idea that the world was a very wicked world, as well as a very
+pleasant world, that the wickedest people were generally the
+pleasantest, and that it did not much matter.
+
+The fact that Mr. Smithson was at Lesbia Haselden's feet was obvious to
+everybody.
+
+Lesbia, who had at first treated him with supreme hauteur, had grown
+more civil as she began to understand the place he held in the world,
+and how much social influence goes along with unlimited wealth. She was
+civil, but she had quite made up her mind that nothing could ever induce
+her to become Horace Smithson's wife. That offer which had hung fire in
+the case of poor Belle Trinder, was not too long delayed on this
+occasion. Mr. Smithson called in Arlington Street about ten days after
+the breakfast in Park Lane, before luncheon, and before Lady Kirkbank
+had left her room. He brought tickets for a _matinée d'invitation_ in
+Belgrave Square, at which a new and wonderful Russian pianiste was to
+make a kind of semi-official _début_, before an audience of critics and
+distinguished amateurs, and the elect of the musical world. They were
+tickets which money could not buy, and were thus a meet offering for
+Lady Lesbia, and a plausible excuse for an early call.
+
+Mr. Smithson succeeded in seeing Lesbia alone, and then and there, with
+very little circumlocution, asked her to be his wife.
+
+Her social education had advanced considerably since that summer day in
+the pine-wood, when John Hammond had wooed her with passionate wooing.
+Mr. Smithson was a much less ardent suitor, and made his offer with the
+air of a man who expects to be accepted.
+
+Lesbia's beautiful head bent a little, like a lily on its stalk, and a
+faint blush deepened the pale rose tint of her complexion. Her reply was
+courteous and conventional. She was flattered, she was grateful for Mr.
+Smithson's high opinion of her; but she was deeply grieved if anything
+in her manner had given him reason to think that he was more to her than
+a friend, an old friend of dear Lady Kirkbank's, whom she was naturally
+predisposed to like, as Lady Kirkbank's friend.
+
+Horace Smithson turned pale as death, but if he was angry, he gave no
+utterance to his angry feelings. He only asked if Lady Lesbia's answer
+was final--and on being told that it was so, he dismissed the subject in
+the easiest manner, and with a gentlemanlike placidity which very much
+astonished the lady.
+
+'You say that you regard me as your friend,' he said. 'Do not withdraw
+that privilege from me because I have asked for a higher place in your
+esteem. Forget all I have said this morning. Be assured I shall never
+offend you by repeating it.'
+
+'You are more than good,' murmured Lesbia, who had expected a wild
+outbreak of despair or fury, rather than this friendly calm.
+
+'I hope that you and Lady Kirkbank will go and hear Madame Metzikoff
+this afternoon,' pursued Mr. Smithson, returning to the subject of the
+_matinée_. 'The duchess's rooms are lovely; but no doubt you know them.'
+
+Lesbia blushed, and confessed that the Duchess of Lostwithiel was one of
+those select few who were not on Lady Kirkbank's visiting list.
+
+'There are people Lady Kirkbank cannot get on with,' she said. 'Perhaps
+she will hardly like to go to the duchess's, as she does not visit her.'
+
+'Oh, but this affair counts for nothing. We go to hear Metzikoff, not to
+bow down to the duchess. All the people in town who care for music will
+be there, and you who play so divinely must enjoy fine professional
+playing.'
+
+'I worship a really great player,' said Lesbia, 'and if I can drag Lady
+Kirkbank to the house of the enemy, we will be there.'
+
+On this Mr. Smithson discreetly murmured '_au revoir_,' took up his hat
+and cane, and departed, without, in Sir George's parlance, having turned
+a hair.
+
+'Refusal number one,' he said to himself, as he went downstairs, with
+his leisurely catlike pace, that velvet step by which he had gradually
+crept into society. 'We may have to go through refusal number two and
+number three; but she means to have me. She is a very clever girl for a
+countrybred one; and she knows that it is worth her while to be Lady
+Lesbia Smithson.'
+
+This soliloquy may be taken to prove that Horace Smithson knew Lesbia
+Haselden better than she knew herself. She had refused him in all good
+faith; but even to-day, after he had left her, she fell into a day-dream
+in which Mr. Smithson's houses and yachts, drags and hunters, formed the
+shifting pictures in a dissolving view of society; and Lesbia wondered
+if there were any other young woman in London who would refuse such an
+offer as that which she had quietly rejected half-an-hour ago.
+
+Lady Kirkbank surprised her while she was still absorbed in this dreamy
+review of the position. It is just possible that the fair Georgie may
+have had notice of Mr. Smithson's morning visit, and may have kept out
+of the way on purpose, for she was not a person of lazy habits, and was
+generally ready for her nine o'clock breakfast and her morning stroll in
+the park, however late she might have been out overnight.
+
+'Mr. Smithson has been here, I understand,' said Lady Kirkbank, settling
+herself in an arm-chair by the open window, after she had kissed her
+_protégée_. 'Rilboche passed him on the stairs.'
+
+'Rilboche is always passing people on the stairs,' answered Lesbia
+rather pettishly. 'I think she must spend her life on the landing,
+listening for arrivals and departures.'
+
+'I had a kind of vague idea that Smithson would call to-day. He was so
+fussy about those tickets for the Metzikoff recital. I hate pianoforte
+recitals, and I detest that starched old duchess, but I suppose I shall
+have to take you there--or poor Smithson will be miserable,' said Lady
+Kirkbank, watching Lesbia keenly over the top of the newspaper.
+
+She expected Lesbia to confide in her, to announce herself blushingly as
+the betrothed of one of the richest commoners in England. But Lesbia sat
+gazing dreamily across the flowers in the balcony at the house over the
+way, and said never a word; so Lady Kirkbank's curiosity burst into
+speech.
+
+'Well, my dear, has he proposed? There was something in his manner last
+night when he put on your wraps that made me think the crisis was near.'
+
+'The crisis is come and is past, and Mr. Smithson and I are just as good
+friends as ever.'
+
+'What!' screamed Lady Kirkbank. 'Do you mean to tell me that you have
+refused him?'
+
+'Certainly. You know I never meant to do anything else. Did you think I
+was like Miss Trinder, bent upon marrying town and country houses,
+stables and diamonds?'
+
+'I did not think you were a fool,' cried Lady Kirkbank, almost beside
+herself with vexation, for it had been borne in upon her, as the
+Methodists sometimes say, that if Mr. Smithson should prosper in his
+wooing it would be better for her, Lady Kirkbank, who would have a claim
+upon his kindness ever after. 'What can be your motive in refusing one
+of the very best matches of the season--or of ever so many seasons? You
+think, perhaps, you will marry a duke, if you wait long enough for his
+Grace to appear; but the number of marrying dukes is rather small, Lady
+Lesbia, and I don't think any of those would care to marry Lord
+Maulevrier's granddaughter.'
+
+Lesbia started to her feet, pale as ashes.
+
+'Why do you fling my grandfather's name in my face--and with that
+diabolical sneer?' she exclaimed. 'When I have asked you about him you
+have always evaded my questions. Why should a man of the highest rank
+shrink from marrying Lord Maulevrier's granddaughter? My grandfather
+was a distinguished man--Governor of Madras. Such posts are not given to
+nobodies. How can you dare to speak as if it were a disgrace to me to
+belong to him?'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+'CLUBS, DIAMONDS, HEARTS, IN WILD DISORDER SEEN.'
+
+
+Lady Kirkbank had considerable difficulty in smoothing Lesbia's ruffled
+plumage. She did all in her power to undo the effect of her rash
+words--declared that she had been carried away by temper--she had spoken
+she knew not what--words of no meaning. Of course Lesbia's grandfather
+had been a great man--Governor of Madras; altogether an important and
+celebrated person--and Lady Kirkbank had meant nothing, could have meant
+nothing to his disparagement.
+
+'My dearest girl, I was beside myself, and talked sheer nonsense,' said
+Georgie. 'But you know really now, dearest, any woman of the world would
+be provoked at your foolish refusal of that dear good Smithson. Only
+think of that too lovely house in Park Lane, a palace in the style of
+the Italian Renaissance--such a house is in itself equivalent to a
+peerage--and there is no doubt Smithson will be offered a peerage before
+he is much older. I have heard it confidently asserted that when the
+present Ministry retires Smithson will be made a Peer. You have no idea
+what a useful man he is, or what henchman's service he has done the
+Ministry in financial matters. And then there is his villa at
+Deauville--you don't know Deauville--a positively perfect place, the
+villa, I mean, built by the Duke de Morny in the golden days of the
+Empire--and another at Cowes, and his palace in Berkshire, a manor, my
+love, with a glorious old Tudor manor-house; and he has a _pied à terre_
+in Paris, in the Faubourg, a ground-floor furnished in the Pompeian
+style, half-a-dozen rooms opening one out of the other, and surrounding
+a small garden, with a fountain in the middle. Some of the greatest
+people in Paris occupy the upper part of the house, and their rooms of
+course are splendid; but Smithson's ground-floor is the gem of the
+Faubourg. However, I suppose there is no use in talking any more; for
+there is the gong for luncheon.'
+
+Lesbia was in no humour for luncheon.
+
+'I would rather have a cup of tea in my own room,' she said. 'This
+Smithson business has given me an abominable headache.'
+
+'But you will go to hear Metzikoff?'
+
+'No, thanks. You detest the Duchess of Lostwithiel, and you don't care
+for pianoforte recitals. Why should I drag you there?'
+
+'But, my dearest Lesbia, I am not such a selfish wretch as to keep you
+at home, when I know you are passionately fond of good music. Forget all
+about your headache, and let me see how that lovely little Catherine of
+Aragon bonnet suits you. I'm so glad I happened to see it in Seraphine's
+hands yesterday, just as she was going to send it to Lady Fonvielle, who
+gives herself such intolerable airs on the strength of a pretty face,
+and always wants to get the _primeures_ in bonnets and things.'
+
+'Another new bonnet!' replied Lesbia. 'What an infinity of things I seem
+to be having from Seraphine. I'm afraid I must owe her a good deal of
+money.'
+
+This was a vague way of speaking about actual facts. Lady Lesbia might
+have spoken with more certainty. Her wardrobes and old-fashioned hanging
+closets and chests of drawers in Arlington Street were crammed to
+overflowing with finery; and then there were all the things that she had
+grown tired of, or had thought unbecoming, and had given away to Kibble,
+her own maid, or to Rilboche, who had in a great measure superseded
+Kibble on all important occasions; for how could a Westmoreland girl
+know how to dress a young lady for London balls and drawing-rooms?
+
+'If you had only accepted Mr. Smithson it would not matter how much
+money you owed people,' said Lady Kirkbank. 'You had better come down to
+lunch. A glass of Heidseck will bring you up to concert pitch.'
+
+Champagne was Lady Kirkbank's idea of a universal panacea; and she had
+gradually succeeded in teaching Lesbia to believe in the sovereign power
+of Heidseck as a restorative for shattered nerves. At Fellside Lesbia
+had drunk only water; but then at Fellside she had never known that
+feeling of exhaustion and prostration which follows days and nights
+spent in society, the wear and tear of a mind forever on the alert, and
+brilliant spirits which are more often forced than real. For her chief
+stimulant Lesbia had recourse to the teapot; but there were occasions
+when she found that something more than tea was needed to maintain that
+indispensable vivacity of manner which Lady Kirkbank called concert
+pitch.
+
+To-day she allowed herself to be persuaded. She went down to luncheon,
+and took a couple of glasses of dry champagne with her cutlet, and, thus
+restored, was equal to putting on the new bonnet, which was so becoming
+that her spirits revived as she contemplated the effect in her glass. So
+Lady Kirkbank carried her off to the musical _matinée_, beaming and
+radiant, having forgotten all about that dark hint of evil glancing at
+the name of her long dead grandfather.
+
+The duchess was not on view when Lady Kirkbank and her _protégée_
+arrived, and a good many people belonging to Georgie's own particular
+set were scattered like flowers among those real music-lovers who had
+come solely to hear the new pianiste. The music-lovers were mostly dowdy
+in their attire, and seemed a race apart. Among them were several young
+women of the Blessed Damozel school, who wore flowing garments of
+sap-green or ochre, or puffed raiment of Venetian red, and among whom
+the cartwheel hat, the Elizabethan sleeve, and the Toby frill were
+conspicuous.
+
+There were very few men except the musical critics in this select
+assemblage, and Lesbia began to think that it was going to be very
+dreary. She had lived in such an atmosphere of masculine adulation while
+under Lady Kirkbank's wing that it was a new thing to find herself in a
+room where there were none to love and very few to praise her. She felt
+out in the cold, as it were. Those ungloved critics, with their shabby
+coats and dubious shirts, snuffy, smoky, everything they ought not to
+be, seemed to her a race of barbarians.
+
+Finding herself thus cold and lonely in the midst of the duchess's
+splendour of peacock-blue velvet and peacock-feather decoration, Lesbia
+was almost glad when in the middle of Madame Metzikoff's opening
+gondolied--airy, fairy music, executed with surpassing delicacy--Mr.
+Smithson crept gently into the _fauteuil_ just behind hers, and leant
+over the back of the chair to whisper an inquiry as to her opinion of
+the pianist's style.
+
+'She is exquisite,' Lesbia murmured softly, but the whispered question
+and the murmured answer, low as they were, provoked indignant looks from
+a brace of damsels in Venetian red, who shook their Toby frills with an
+outraged air.
+
+Lesbia felt that Mr. Smithson's presence was hardly correct. It would
+have been 'better form' if he had stayed away; and yet she was glad to
+have him here. At the worst he was some one--nay, according to Lady
+Kirkbank, he was the only one amongst all her admirers whose offer was
+worth having. All Lesbia's other conquests had counted as barren honour;
+but if she could have brought herself to accept Mr. Smithson she would
+have secured the very best match of the season.
+
+To marry a plain Mr. Smithson--a man who had made his money in iron--in
+cochineal--on the Stock Exchange--had seemed to her absolute
+degradation, the surrender of all her lofty hopes, her golden dreams.
+But Lady Kirkbank had put the question in a new light when she said that
+Smithson would be offered a peerage. Smithson the peer would be
+altogether a different person from Smithson the commoner.
+
+But was Lady Kirkbank sure of her facts, or truthful in her statement?
+Lesbia's experience of her chaperon's somewhat loose notions of truth
+and exactitude made her doubtful upon this point.
+
+Be this as it might she was inclined to be civil to Smithson, albeit she
+was inwardly surprised and offended at his taking her refusal so calmly.
+
+'You see that I am determined not to lose the privilege of your society,
+because I have been foolish!' he said presently, in the pause after the
+first part of the recital. 'I hope you will consider me as much your
+friend to-day as I was yesterday.'
+
+'Quite as much,' she answered sweetly, and then they talked of Raff, and
+Rubenstein, and Henselt, and all the composers about whom it is the
+correct thing to discourse nowadays.
+
+Before they left Belgrave Square Lady Kirkbank had offered Mr. Smithson
+Sir George's place in her box at the Gaiety that evening, and had
+invited him to supper in Arlington Street afterwards.
+
+It was Sarah Bernhardt's first season in London--the
+never-to-be-forgotten season of the Comédie Française.
+
+'I should love of all things to be there,' said Mr. Smithson, meekly. He
+had a couple of stalls in the third row for the whole of the season.
+'But how can I be sure that I shall not be turning Sir George out of
+doors?'
+
+'Sir George can never sit out a serious play. He only cares for Chaumont
+or Judie. The Demi-monde is much too prosy for him.'
+
+'The Demi-monde is one of the finest plays in the French language,' said
+Smithson. 'You know it, of course, Lady Lesbia?'
+
+'Alas! no. At Fellside I was not allowed to read French plays or novels:
+or only a novel now and then, which my grandmother selected for me.'
+
+'And now you read everything, I suppose,--including Zola?'
+
+'The books are lying about, and I dip into them sometimes while I am
+having my hair brushed,' answered Lesbia, lightly.
+
+'I believe that is the only time ladies devote to literature during the
+season,' said Mr. Smithson. 'Well, I envy you the delight of seeing the
+Demi-monde without knowing what it is all about beforehand.'
+
+'I daresay there are a good many people who would not take their girls
+to see a play by Dumas,' said Lady Kirkbank, 'but I make a point of
+letting _my_ girls see everything. It widens their minds and awakens
+their intelligence.'
+
+'And does away with a good many silly prejudices,' replied Mr.
+Smithson.
+
+Lady Kirkbank and Lesbia were due at a Kensington garden-party after the
+recital, and from the garden-party, for which any hour sufficed, they
+went to show themselves in the Park, then back to Arlington Street to
+dress for the play. Then a hurried dinner, and they were in their places
+at the theatre in time for the rising of the curtain.
+
+'If it were an English play we would not care for being punctual,' said
+Lady Kirkbank; 'but I should hate to lose a word of Dumas. In his plays
+every speech tells.'
+
+There were Royalties present, and the house was good; but not so full as
+it had been on some other nights, for the English public had been told
+that Sarah Bernhardt was the person to admire, and had been flocking
+sheep-like after that golden-haired enchantress, whereby many of these
+sheep--fighting greedily for Sarah's nights, and ignoring all other
+talent--lost some of the finest acting on the French stage, notably that
+of Croizette, Delaunay and Febvre, in this very Demi-monde. Lesbia, who,
+in spite of her affectations, was still fresh enough to be charmed with
+fine acting and a powerful play, was enthralled by the stage, so wrapt
+in the scene that she was quite unaware of her brother's presence in a
+stall just below Lady Kirkbank's box. He too had a stall at the Gaiety.
+He had come in very late, when the play was half over. Lesbia was
+surprised when he presented himself at the door of the box, after the
+fourth act.
+
+Maulevrier and his sister had met very seldom since the young lady's
+_début_. The young Earl did not go to many parties, and the society he
+cultivated was chiefly masculine; and as he neither played polo nor shot
+pigeons his masculine pursuits did not bring him in his sister's way.
+Lady Kirkbank had asked him to her house with that wide and general
+invitation which is so easily evaded. He had promised to go, and he had
+not gone. And thus Lesbia and he had pursued their several ways, only
+crossing each other's paths now and then at a race meeting or in a
+theatre.
+
+'How d'ye do, Lady Kirkbank?--how d'ye do, Lesbia? Just caught sight of
+you from below as the curtain was going down,' said Maulevrier, shaking
+hands with the ladies and saluting Mr. Smithson with a somewhat
+supercilious nod. 'Rather surprised to see you and Lesbia here to-night,
+Lady Kirkbank. Isn't the Demi-monde rather strong meat for babes, eh?
+Not _exactly_ the play one would take a young lady to see.'
+
+'Why should a young lady be forbidden to see a fine play, because there
+are some hard and bitter truths told in it?' asked Lady Kirkbank.
+'Lesbia sees Madame d'Ange and all her sisterhood in the Park and about
+London every day of her life. Why should not she see them on the stage,
+and hear their history, and understand how cruel their fate is, and
+learn to pity them, if she can? I really think this play is a lesson in
+Christian charity; and I should like to see that Oliver man strangled,
+though Delaunay plays the part divinely. What a voice! What a manner!
+How polished! How perfect! And they tell me he is going to leave the
+stage in a year or two. What will the world do without him?'
+
+Maulevrier did not attempt to suggest a solution of this difficulty. He
+was watching Mr. Smithson as he leant against the back of Lesbia's chair
+and talked to her. The two seemed very familiar, laughingly discussing
+the play and the actors. Smithson knew, or pretended to know, all about
+the latter. He told Lesbia who made Croizette's gowns--the upholsterer
+who furnished that lovely house of hers in the Bois--the sums paid for
+her horses, her pictures, her diamonds. It seemed to Lesbia, when she
+had heard all, that Croizette was a much-to-be-envied person.
+
+Mr. Smithson had unpublished _bon-mots_ of Dumas at his finger ends; he
+knew Daudet, and Sarcey, and Sardou, and seemed to be thoroughly at home
+in Parisian artistic society. Lesbia began to think that he would hardly
+be so despicable a person as she had at first supposed. No wonder he and
+his wealth had turned poor Belle Trinder's head. How could a rural
+vicar's daughter, accustomed to poverty, help being dazzled by such
+magnificence?
+
+Maulevrier stayed in the box only a short time, and refused Lady
+Kirkbank's invitation to supper. She did not urge the point, as she had
+surprised one or two very unfriendly glances at Mr. Smithson in
+Maulevrier's honest eyes. She did not want an antagonistic brother to
+interfere with her plans. She had made up her mind to 'run' Lesbia
+according to her own ideas, and any counter influence might be fatal.
+So, when Maulevrier said he was due at the Marlborough after the play
+she let him go.
+
+'I might as well be at Fellside and you in London, for anything I see of
+you,' said Lesbia.
+
+'You are up to your eyes in engagements, and I don't suppose you want to
+see any more of me.' Maulevrier answered, bluntly. 'But I'll call to-morrow
+morning, if I am likely to find you at home. I've some news for you.'
+
+'Then I'll stay at home on purpose to see you. News is always
+delightful. Is it good news, by-the-bye?'
+
+'Very good; at least, I think so.'
+
+'What is it about?'
+
+'Oh! that's a long story, and the curtain is just going up. The news is
+about Mary.'
+
+'About Mary!' exclaimed Lesbia, elevating her eyebrows. 'What news can
+there possibly be about Mary?'
+
+'Such news as there generally is about every nice jolly girl, at least
+once in her life.'
+
+'You don't mean that she is engaged--to a curate?'
+
+'No, not to a curate. There goes the curtain. "I'll see you later," as
+the Yankee President used to say when people bothered him, and he didn't
+like to say no.'
+
+Engaged: Mary engaged! The idea of such an altogether unexpected event
+distracted Lesbia's mind all through the last act of the Demi-monde. She
+hardly knew what the actors were talking about. Mary, her younger
+sister! Mary, a good looking girl enough, but by no means a beauty, and
+with manners utterly unformed. That Mary should be engaged to be
+married, while she, Lesbia, was still free, seemed an obvious absurdity.
+
+And yet the fact was, on reflection, easily to be accounted for. These
+unattractive girls are generally the first to bind themselves with the
+vows of betrothal. Lady Kirkbank had told her of many such cases. The
+poor creatures know that their chances will be few, and therefore
+gratefully welcome the first wooer.
+
+'But who can the man be?' thought Lesbia. 'Mary has been kept as
+secluded as a cloistered nun. There are so few families we have ever
+been allowed to mix with. The man must be a curate, who has taken
+advantage of grandmother's illness to force his way into the family
+circle at Fellside--and who has made love to Mary in some of her lonely
+rambles over the hills, I daresay. It is really very wrong to allow a
+girl to roam about in that way.'
+
+Sir George and a couple of his horsey friends were waiting for supper
+when Lady Kirkbank and her party arrived in Arlington Street. The
+dining-room looked a picture of comfort. The oval table, the low lamps,
+the clusters of candles under coloured shades, the great Oriental bowl
+of wild flowers--eglantine, honeysuckle, foxglove, all the sweet hedge
+flowers of midsummer, made a central mass of colour and brightness
+against the subdued and even sombre tones of walls and curtains. The
+room was old, the furniture old. Nothing had been altered since the time
+of Sir George's great grandfather; and the whirligig of time had just
+now made the old things precious. Yes, those chairs and tables and
+sideboards and bookcases and wine-coolers against which Georgie's soul
+had revolted in the early years of her wedded life were now things of
+beauty, and Georgie's friends envied her the possession of indisputable
+Chippendale furniture.
+
+Mr. Mostyn, a distinguished owner of race-horses, with his pretty wife,
+made up the party. The gentleman was full of his entries for Liverpool
+and Chester, and discoursed mysteriously with Sir George and the horsey
+bachelors all supper time. The lady had lately taken up science as a new
+form of excitement, not incompatible with frocks, bonnets, Hurlingham,
+the Ranelagh, and Sandown. She raved about Huxley and Tyndall, and was
+perpetually coming down upon her friends with awful facts about the sun,
+and startling propositions about latent heat, or spontaneous generation.
+She knew all about gases, and would hardly accept a glass of water
+without explaining what it was made of. Drawn by Mr. Smithson for
+Lesbia's amusement, the scientific matron was undoubtedly 'good fun.'
+The racing men were full of talk. Lesbia and Lady Kirkbank raved about
+the play they had just been seeing, and praised Delaunay with an
+enthusiasm which was calculated to make the rest of mankind burst with
+envy.
+
+'Do you know you are making me positively wretched by your talk about
+that man?' said Colonel Delville, one of Sir George's racing friends,
+and an ancient adorer of the fair Georgie's. 'No, I tell you there was
+never anything offered higher than five to four on the mare,'
+interjectionally, to Sir George. 'There was a day when I thought I was
+your idea of an attractive man. Yes, George, a clear case of roping,'
+again interjectionally. 'And to hear you raving about this play-acting
+fellow--it is too humiliating.'
+
+Lady Kirkbank simpered, and then sighed.
+
+'We are getting old together,' she murmured. 'I have come to an age when
+one can only admire the charm of manner in the abstract--the Beautiful
+for the sake of the Beautiful. I think if I were lying in my grave, the
+music of Delaunay's voice would thrill me, under six feet of London
+clay. Will no one take any more wine? No. Then we may as well go into
+the next room and begin our little Nap.'
+
+The adjoining room was Sir George's snuggery; and it was here that the
+cosy little round games after supper were always played. Sir George was
+not a studious person. He never read, and he never wrote, except an
+occasional cheque on account, for an importunate tradesman. His
+correspondence was conducted by the telegraph or telephone; and the
+room, therefore, was absorbed neither by books nor writing desks. It was
+furnished solely with a view to comfort. There was a round table in the
+centre, under a large moderator lamp which gave an exceptionally
+brilliant light. A divan covered with dark brown velvet occupied three
+sides of the room. A few choice pieces of old blue Oriental ware in the
+corners enlivened the dark brown walls. Three or four easy chairs stood
+about near the broad, old-fashioned fireplace, which had been improved
+with a modern-antique brass grate and a blue and white tiled hearth.
+
+'There isn't a room in my house that looks half as comfortable as this
+den of yours, George,' said Mr. Smithson, as he seated himself by
+Lesbia's side at the card table.
+
+They had agreed to be partners. 'Partners at cards, even if we are not
+to be partners for life,' Smithson had whispered, tenderly; and Lesbia's
+only reply had been a modest lowering of lovely eyelids, and a faint,
+faint blush. Lesbia's blushes were growing fainter every day.
+
+'That is because everything in your house is so confoundedly handsome
+and expensive,' retorted Sir George, who did not very much care about
+being called George, _tout court_, by a person of Mr. Smithson's obscure
+antecedents, but who had to endure the familiarity for reasons known
+only to himself and Mr. Smithson. 'No man can expect to be comfortable
+in a house in which every room has cost a small fortune. My wife
+re-arranged this den half-a-dozen years ago when we took to sittin' here
+of an evenin'. She picked up the chairs and the blue pots at Bonham's,
+had everythin' covered with brown velvet--nice subdued tone, suit old
+people--hung up that yaller curtain, just for a bit of colour, and here
+we are.'
+
+'It's the cosiest room in town,' said Colonel Delville, whereupon Mrs.
+Mostyn, while counters were being distributed, explained to the company
+on scientific principles _why_ the room was comfortable, expatiating
+upon the effect of yellow and brown upon the retina, and some curious
+facts relating to the optic machinery of water-fleas, as lately
+discovered by a great naturalist.
+
+Unfortunately for science, the game had now begun, and the players were
+curiously indifferent as to the visual organs of water-fleas.
+
+The game went on merrily till the pearly lights of dawn began to creep
+through the chinks of Lady Kirkbank's yellow curtain. Everybody seemed
+gay, yet everybody could not be winning. Fortune had not smiled upon
+Lesbia's cards, or on those of her partner. The Smithson and Haselden
+firm had come to grief. Lesbia's little ivory purse had been emptied of
+its three or four half-sovereigns, and Mr. Smithson had been
+capitalising a losing concern for the last two hours. And the play had
+been fast and furious, although nominally for small stakes.
+
+'I am afraid to think of how much I must owe you,' said Lesbia, when Mr.
+Smithson bade her good night.
+
+'Oh, nothing worth speaking of--sixteen or seventeen pounds, at most.'
+
+Lesbia felt cold and creepy, and hardly knew whether it was the chill of
+new-born day, or the sense of owing money to Horace Smithson. Those
+three or four half-sovereigns to-night were the end of her last
+remittance from Lady Maulevrier. She had had a great many remittances
+from that generous grandmother; and the money had all gone, somehow. It
+was gone, and yet she had paid for hardly anything. She had accounts
+with all Lady Kirkbank's tradesmen. The money had melted away--it had
+oozed out of her pockets--at cards, on the race-course, in reckless
+gifts to servants and people, at fancy fairs, for trifles bought here
+and there by the way-side, as it were, for the sake of buying. If she
+had been suddenly asked for an account of her stewardship she could not
+have told what she had done with half of the money. And now she must ask
+for twenty pounds more, and immediately, to pay Mr. Smithson.
+
+She went up to her room in the clear early light, and stood like a
+statue, with fixed thoughtful eyes, while Kibble took off her finery,
+the pretty pale yellow gown which set off her dark brown hair, her
+violet eyes. For the first time in her life she felt the keen pang of
+anxiety about money matters--the necessity to think of ways and means.
+She had no idea how much money she had received from her grandmother
+since she had begun her career in Scotland last autumn. The cheques had
+been sent her as she asked for them; sometimes even before she asked for
+them; and she had kept no account. She thought her grandmother was so
+rich that expenditure could not matter. She supposed that she was
+drawing upon an inexhaustible supply. And now Lady Kirkbank had told her
+that Lady Maulevrier was not rich, as the world reckons nowadays. The
+savings of a dowager countess even in forty years of seclusion could be
+but a small fund to draw upon for the expenses of life at high pressure.
+
+'The sums people spend nowadays are positively appalling,' said Lady
+Kirkbank. 'A man with five or six thousand a year is an absolute pauper.
+I'm sure our existence is only genteel beggary, and yet we spend over
+ten thousand.'
+
+Enlightened thus by the lips of the worldly-wise, Lesbia thought
+ruefully of the bills which her grandmother would have to pay for her at
+the end of the season, bills of the amount whereof she could not even
+make an approximate guess. Seraphine's charges had never been discussed
+in her hearing--but Lady Kirkbank had admitted that the creature was
+dear.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+'SWIFT SUBTLE POST, CARRIER OF GRISLY CARE.'
+
+
+Maulevrier called in Arlington Street before twelve o'clock next day,
+and found Lesbia just returning from her early ride, looking as fresh
+and fair as if there had been no such thing as Nap or late hours in the
+story of her life. She was reposing in a large easy chair by the open
+window, in habit and hat, just as she had come from the Row, where she
+had been laughing and chatting with Mr. Smithson, who jogged demurely by
+her side on his short-legged hunter, dropping out envenomed little jokes
+about the passers by. People who saw him riding by her side upon this
+particular morning fancied there was something more than usual in the
+gentleman's manner, and made up their minds that Lady Lesbia Haselden
+was to be mistress of the fine house in Park Lane. Mr. Smithson had
+fluttered and fluttered for the last five seasons; but this time the
+flutterer was caught.
+
+In her newly-awakened anxiety about money matters, Lesbia had forgotten
+Mary's engagement: but the sight of Maulevrier recalled the fact.
+
+'Come over here and sit down,' she said, 'and tell me this nonsense
+about Mary. I am expiring with curiosity. The thing is too absurd.'
+
+'Why absurd?' asked Maulevrier, sitting where she bade him, and
+studiously perusing the name in his hat, as if it were a revelation.
+
+'Oh, for a thousand reasons,' answered Lesbia, switching the flowers in
+the balcony with her light little whip. 'First and foremost it is absurd
+to think of any one so buried alive as poor Mary is finding an admirer;
+and secondly--well--I don't want to be rude to my own sister--but Mary
+is not particularly attractive.'
+
+'Mary is the dearest girl in the world.'
+
+'Very likely. I only said that she is not particularly attractive.'
+
+'And do you think there is no attraction in goodness, in freshness and
+innocence, candour, generosity--?'
+
+'I don't know. But I think that if Mary's nose had been a thought
+longer, and if she had kept her skin free from freckles she would have
+been almost pretty.'
+
+'Do you really? Luckily for Mary the man who is going to marry her
+thinks her lovely.'
+
+'I suppose he likes freckles. I once heard a man say he did. He said
+they were so original--so much character about them. And, pray, who is
+the man?'
+
+'Your old adorer, and my dear friend, John Hammond.'
+
+Lesbia turned as pale as death--pale with rage and mortification. It was
+not jealousy, this pang which rent her shallow soul. She had ceased to
+care for John Hammond. The whirlpool of society had spun that first
+fancy out of her giddy brain. But that a man who had loved the highest,
+who had worshipped her, the peerless, the beautiful, should calmly
+transfer his affections to her younger sister, was to the last degree
+exasperating.
+
+'Your friend Mr. Hammond must be a fickle fool,' she exclaimed, 'who
+does not know his own mind from day to day.'
+
+'Oh, but it was more than a day after you rejected him that he engaged
+himself to Molly. It was all my doing, and I am proud of my work. I took
+the poor fellow back to Fellside last March, bruised and broken by your
+cruel treatment, heartsore and depressed. I gave him over to Molly, and
+Molly cured him. Unconsciously, innocently, she won that noble heart.
+Ah, Lesbia, you don't know what a heart it is which you so nearly
+broke.'
+
+'Girls in our rank of life can't afford to marry noble hearts,' said
+Lesbia, scornfully. 'Do you mean to tell me that Lady Maulevrier
+consented to the engagement?'
+
+'She cut up rather rough at first; but Molly held her own like a young
+lioness--and the grandmother gave way. You see she has a fixed idea that
+Molly is a very second-rate sort of person compared with you, and that a
+husband who was not nearly good enough for you might pass muster for
+Molly; and so she gave way, and there isn't a happier young woman in
+the three kingdoms than Mary Haselden.'
+
+'What are they to live upon?' asked Lesbia, with an incredulous air.
+
+'Mary will have her five hundred a year. And Hammond is a very clever
+fellow. You may be sure he will make his mark in the world.'
+
+'And how are they to live while he is making his mark? Five hundred a
+year won't do more than pay for Mary's frocks, if she goes into
+society.'
+
+'Perhaps they will live without society.'
+
+'In some horrid little hovel in one of those narrow streets off
+Ecclestone Square,' suggested Lesbia, shudderingly. 'It is too dreadful
+to think of--a young woman dooming herself to life-long penury, just
+because she is so foolish as to fall in love.'
+
+'Your days for falling in love are over, I suppose, Lesbia?' said
+Maulevrier, contemplating his sister with keen scrutiny.
+
+The beautiful face, so perfect in line and colour, curiously recalled
+that other face at Fellside; the dowager's face, with its look of marble
+coldness, and the half-expressed pain under that outward calm. Here was
+the face of one who had not yet known pain or passion. Here was the cold
+perfection of beauty with unawakened heart.
+
+'I don't know; I am too busy to think of such things.'
+
+'You have done with love; and you have begun to think of marriage, of
+establishing yourself properly. People tell me you are going to marry
+Mr. Smithson.'
+
+'People tell you more about me than I know about myself.'
+
+'Come now, Lesbia, I have a right to know the truth upon this point.
+Your brother--your only brother--should be the first person to be told.'
+
+'When I am engaged, I have no doubt you will be the first person, or the
+second person,' answered Lesbia, lightly. 'Lady Kirkbank, living on the
+premises, is likely to be the first.'
+
+'Then you are not engaged to Smithson?'
+
+'Didn't I tell you so just now? Mr. Smithson did me the honour to make
+me an offer yesterday, at about this hour; and I did myself the honour
+to reject him.'
+
+'And yet you were whispering together in the box last night, and you
+were riding in the Row with him this morning. I just met a fellow who
+saw you together. Do you think it is right, Lesbia, to play fast and
+loose with the man--to encourage him, if you don't mean to marry him?'
+
+'How can you accuse me of encouraging a person whom I flatly refused
+yesterday morning? If Mr. Smithson likes my society as a friend, must I
+needs deny him my friendship, ask Lady Kirkbank to shut her door against
+him? Mr. Smithson is very pleasant as an acquaintance; and although I
+don't want to marry him, there's no reason I should snub him.'
+
+'Smithson is not a man to be trifled with. You will find yourself
+entangled in a web which you won't easily break through.'
+
+'I am not afraid of webs. By-the-bye, is it true that Mr. Smithson is
+likely to get a peerage?'
+
+'I have heard people say as much. Smithson has spent no end of money on
+electioneering, and is a power in the House, though he very rarely
+speaks. His Berkshire estate gives him a good deal of influence in that
+county; at the last general election he subscribed twenty thou to the
+Conservative cause; for, like most men who have risen from nothing, your
+friend Smithson is a fine old Tory. He was specially elected at the
+Carlton six years ago, and has made himself uncommonly useful to his
+party. He is supposed to be great on financial questions, and comes out
+tremendously on colonial railways or drainage schemes, about which the
+House in general is in profound ignorance. On those occasions Smithson
+scores high. A man with immense wealth has always chances. No doubt, if
+you were to marry him, the peerage would be easily managed. Smithson's
+money, backed by the Maulevrier influence, would go a long way. My
+grandmother would move heaven and earth in a case of that kind. You had
+better take pity on Smithson.'
+
+Lesbia laughed. That idea of a possible peerage elevated Smithson in her
+eyes. She knew nothing of his political career, as she lived in a set
+which ignored politics altogether. Mr. Smithson had never talked to her
+of his parliamentary duties; and it was a new thing for her to hear that
+he had some kind of influence in public affairs.
+
+'Suppose I were inclined to accept him, would you like him as a
+brother-in-law?' she asked lightly. 'I thought from your manner last
+night that you rather disliked him.'
+
+'I don't quite like him or any of his breed, the newly rich, who go
+about in society swelling with the sense of their own importance,
+perspiring gold, as it were. And one has always a faint suspicion of men
+who have got rich very quickly, an idea that there must be some kind of
+juggling. Not in the case of a great contractor, perhaps, who can point
+to a viaduct and docks and railways, and say, "I built that, and that,
+and that. These are the sources of my wealth." But a man who gets
+enormously rich by mere ciphering! Where can his money come from, except
+out of other people's pockets? I know nothing against your Mr. Smithson,
+but I always suspect that class of men,' concluded Maulevrier shaking
+his head significantly.
+
+Lesbia was not much influenced by her brother's notions, she had never
+been taught to think him an oracle. On the contrary, she had been told
+that his life hitherto had been all foolishness.
+
+'When are Mary and Mr. Hammond to be married?' she asked, 'Grandmother
+says they must wait a year. Mary is much too young--and so on, and so
+forth. But I see no reason for waiting.'
+
+'Surely there are reasons--financial reasons. Mr. Hammond cannot be in a
+position to begin housekeeping.'
+
+'Oh, they will risk all that. Molly is a daring girl. He proposed to her
+on the top of Helvellyn, in a storm of wind and rain.'
+
+'And she never wrote me a word about it. How very unsisterly!'
+
+'She is as wild as a hawk, and I daresay she was too shy to tell you
+anything about it.'
+
+'Pray when did it all occur?'
+
+'Just before I came to London.'
+
+'Two months ago. How absurd for me to be in ignorance all this time!
+Well, I hope Mary will be sensible, and not marry till Mr. Hammond is
+able to give her a decent home. It would be so dreadful to have a sister
+muddling in poverty, and clamouring for one's cast-off gowns.'
+
+Maulevrier laughed at this gloomy suggestion.
+
+'It is not easy to foretell the future,' he said, 'but I think I may
+venture to promise that Molly will never wear your cast-off gowns.'
+
+'Oh, you think she would be too proud. You don't know, perhaps, how
+poverty--genteel poverty--lowers one's pride. I have heard stories from
+Lady Kirkbank that would make your hair stand on end. I am beginning to
+know the world.'
+
+'I am glad of that. If you are to live in the world it is better that
+you should know what it is made of. But if I had a voice or a choice in
+the matter I had rather my sisters stayed at Grasmere, and remained
+ignorant of the world and all its ways.'
+
+'While you enjoy your life in London. That is just like the selfishness
+of a man. Under the pretence of keeping his sisters or his wife secure
+from all possible contact with evil, he buries them alive in a country
+house, while he has all the wickedness for his own share in London. Oh,
+I am beginning to understand the creatures.'
+
+'I am afraid you are beginning to be wise. Remember that knowledge of
+evil was the prelude to the Fall. Well, good-bye.'
+
+'Won't you stay to lunch?'
+
+'No, thanks, I never lunch--frightful waste of time. I shall drop in at
+the _Haute Gomme_ and take a cup of tea later on.'
+
+The _Haute Gomme_ was a new club in Piccadilly, which Maulevrier and
+some of his friends affected.
+
+Lesbia went towards the drawing-room door with her brother, and just as
+he reached the door she laid her hand caressingly upon his shoulder. He
+turned and stared at her, somewhat surprised, for he and she had never
+been given to demonstrations of affection.
+
+'Maulevrier, I want you to do me a favour,' she said, in a low voice,
+blushing a little, for the thing she was going to ask was a new thing
+for her to ask, and she had a deep sense of shame in making her demand.
+'I--I lost money at Nap last night. Only seventeen pounds. Mr. Smithson
+and I were partners, and he paid my losses. I want to pay him
+immediately, and----'
+
+'And you are too hard up to do it. I'll write you a cheque this
+instant,' said Maulevrier goodnaturedly; but while he was writing the
+cheque he took occasion to remonstrate with Lesbia on the foolishness of
+card playing.
+
+'I am obliged to do as Lady Kirkbank does,' she answered feebly. 'If I
+were to refuse to play it would be a kind of reproach to her.'
+
+'I don't think that would kill Lady Kirkbank,' replied Maulevrier, with
+a touch of scorn. 'She has had to endure a good many implied reproaches
+in her day, and they don't seem to have hurt her very much. I wish to
+heaven my grandmother had chosen any one else in London for your
+chaperon.'
+
+'I'm afraid Lady Kirkbank's is rather a rowdy set,' answered Lesbia,
+coolly; 'and I sometimes feel as if I had thrown myself away. We go
+almost everywhere--at least, there are only just a few houses to which
+we are not asked. But those few make all the difference. It is so
+humiliating to feel that one is not in quite the best society. However,
+Lady Kirkbank is a dear, good old thing, and I am not going to grumble
+about her.'
+
+'I've made the cheque for five-and-twenty. You can cash it at your
+milliner's,' said Maulevrier. 'I should not like Smithson to know that
+you had been obliged to ask me for the money.'
+
+'_Apropos_ to Mr. Smithson, do you know if he is in quite the best
+society?' asked Lesbia.
+
+'I don't know what you mean by quite the best. A man of Smithson's
+wealth can generally poke his nose in anywhere, if he knows how to
+behave himself. But of course there are people with whom money and fine
+houses have no weight. The Conservatives are all civil to Smithson
+because he comes down handsomely at General Elections, and is useful to
+them in other ways. I believe that Smithson's wife, if she were a
+thorough-bred one, could go into any society she liked, and make her
+house one of the most popular in London. Perhaps that is what you really
+wanted to ask.
+
+'No, it wasn't,' answered Lesbia, carelessly; 'I was only talking for
+the sake of talking. A thousand thanks for the cheque, you best of
+brothers.'
+
+'It is not worth talking about; but, Lesbia, don't play cards any more.
+Believe me, it is not good form.'
+
+'Well, I'll try to keep out of it in future. It is horrid to see one's
+sovereigns melting away; but there's a delightful excitement in
+winning.'
+
+'No doubt,' answered Maulevrier, with a remorseful sigh.
+
+He spoke as a reformed plunger, and with many a bitter experience of the
+race-course and the card-room. Even now, though he had steadied himself
+wonderfully, he could not get on without a little mild gambling--half-crown
+pool, whist with half-guinea points--but when he condescended to such small
+stakes he felt that he had settled down into a respectable middle-aged
+player, and had a right to rebuke the follies of youth.
+
+Lesbia flew to the piano and sang one of her little German ballads
+directly Maulevrier was gone. She felt as if a burden had been lifted
+from her soul, now that she was able to pay Mr. Smithson without waiting
+to ask Lady Maulevrier for the money. And as she sang she meditated upon
+Maulevrier's remarks about Smithson. He knew nothing to the man's
+discredit, except that he had grown rich in a short space of time.
+Surely no man ought to be blamed for that. And he thought that Mr.
+Smithson's wife might make her house the most popular in London. Lesbia,
+in her mind's eye, beheld an imaginary Lady Lesbia Smithson giving
+dances in that magnificent mansion, entertaining Royal personages. And
+the doorways would be festooned with roses, as she had seen them the
+other night at a ball in Grosvenor Square; but the house in Grosvenor
+Square was a hovel compared with the Smithsonian Palace.
+
+Lesbia was beginning to be a little tired of Lady Kirkbank and her
+surroundings. Life taken _prestissimo_ is apt to pall. Lesbia sighed as
+she finished her little song. She was beginning to look upon her
+existence as a problem which had been given to her to solve, and the
+solution just at present was all dark.
+
+As she rose from the piano a footman came in with two letters on a
+salver--bulky letters, such packages as Lesbia had never seen before.
+She wondered what they could be. She opened the thickest envelope first.
+It was Seraphine's bill--such a bill, page after page on creamy Bath
+post, written in an elegant Italian hand by one of Seraphine's young
+women.
+
+Lesbia looked at it aghast with horror. The total at the foot of the
+first page was appalling, ever so much more than she could have supposed
+the whole amount of her indebtedness; but the total went on increasing
+at the foot of every page, until at sight of the final figures Lesbia
+gave a wild shriek, like a wretched creature who has received a telegram
+announcing bitterest loss.
+
+The final total was twelve hundred and ninety-three pounds seventeen and
+sixpence!
+
+Thirteen hundred pounds for clothes in eight weeks!
+
+No, the thing was a cheat, a mistake. They had sent her somebody else's
+bill. She had not had half these things.
+
+She read the first page, her heart beating violently as she pored over
+the figures, her eyes dim and clouded with the trouble of her brain.
+
+Yes, there was her court dress. The description was too minute to be
+mistaken; and the court dress, with feathers, and shoes, and gloves, and
+fan, came to a hundred and thirty pounds. Then followed innumerable
+items. The very simplest of her gowns cost five-and-twenty
+pounds--frocks about which Seraphine had talked so carelessly, as if two
+or three more or less could make no difference. Bonnets and hats, at
+five or seven guineas apiece, swelled the account. Parasols and fans
+were of fabulous price, as it seemed to Lesbia; and the shoes and
+stockings to match her various gowns occurred again and again between
+the more important items, like the refrain of an old ballad. All the
+useless and unnessary things which she had ordered, because she thought
+them pretty or because she was told they were fashionable, rose up
+against her in the figures of the bill, like the record of forgotten
+sins at the Day of Judgment.
+
+She sank into a chair, pallid with consternation, and sat with the bill
+in her lap, turning the pages listlessly, and staring at the figures.
+
+'It cannot be so much,' she cried to herself. 'It must be added up
+wrong;' and then she feebly tried to cast up a column; but arithmetic
+not being one of those accomplishments which Lady Maulevrier deemed
+necessary to a patrician beauty's success in life, Lesbia's education
+had been somewhat neglected upon this point, and she flung the bill from
+her in a rage, unable to hold the figures in her brain.
+
+She opened the second envelope, her jeweller's account. At the very
+first item she gave another scream, fainter than the first, for her mind
+was getting hardened against such shocks.
+
+'To re-setting a suite of amethysts, with forty-four finest Brazilian
+brilliants, three hundred and fifteen pounds.'
+
+Then followed the trifles she had bought at different visits to the
+shop--casual purchases, bought on the impulse of the moment. These
+swelled the account to a little over eight hundred pounds. Lesbia sat
+like a statue, numbed by despair, appalled at the idea of owing over two
+thousand pounds.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+
+'ROSES CHOKED AMONG THORNS AND THISTLES.'
+
+
+Lady Lesbia ate no luncheon that day. She went to her own room and had a
+cup of tea to steady her nerves, and sent to ask Lady Kirkbank to go to
+her as soon as she had finished luncheon. Lady Kirkbank's luncheon was a
+serious business, a substantial leisurely meal with which she fortified
+herself for the day's work. It enabled her to endure all the fatigues of
+visits and park, and to be airily indifferent to the charms of dinner;
+for Lady Kirkbank was not one of those matrons who with advanced years
+take to _gourmandise_ as a kind of fine art. She gave good dinners,
+because she knew people would not come to Arlington Street to eat bad
+ones; but she was not a person who lived only to dine. At luncheon she
+gave her healthy appetite full scope, and ate like a ploughman.
+
+She found Lesbia in her white muslin dressing-gown, with cheeks as pale
+as the gown she wore. She was sitting in an easy chair, with a low
+tea-table at her side, and the two bills were in the tray among the
+tea-things.
+
+'Have you any idea how much I owe Seraphine and Cabochon?' she asked,
+looking up despairingly at Lady Kirkbank.
+
+'What, have they sent in their bills already?'
+
+'Already! I wish they had sent them before. I should have known how
+deeply I was getting into debt.'
+
+'Are they very heavy?'
+
+'They are dreadful! I owe over two thousand pounds. How can I tell Lady
+Maulevrier that? Two thousand one hundred pounds! It is awful.'
+
+'There are women in London who would think very little of owing twice as
+much,' said Lady Kirkbank, in a comforting tone, though the fact,
+seriously considered, could hardly afford comfort. 'Your grandmother
+said you were to have _carte blanche_. She may think that you have been
+just a little extravagant; but she can hardly be angry with you for
+having taken her at her word. Two thousand pounds! Yes, it certainly is
+rather stiff.'
+
+'Seraphine is a cheat!' exclaimed Lesbia, angrily. 'Her prices are
+positively exorbitant!'
+
+'My dear child, you must not say that. Seraphine is positively moderate
+in comparison with the new people.'
+
+'And Mr. Cabochon, too. The idea of his charging me three hundred
+guineas for re-setting those stupid old amethysts.'
+
+'My dear, you _would_ have diamonds mixed with them,' said Lady
+Kirkbank, reproachfully.
+
+Lesbia turned away her head with an impatient sigh. She remembered
+perfectly that it was Lady Kirkbank who had persuaded her to order the
+diamond setting; but there was no use in talking about it now. The thing
+was done. She was two thousand pounds in debt--two thousand pounds to
+these two people only--and there were ever so many shops at which she
+had accounts--glovers, bootmakers, habit-makers, the tailor who made her
+Newmarket coats and cloth gowns, the stationer who supplied her with
+note-paper of every variety, monogrammed, floral; sporting, illuminated
+with this or that device, the follies of the passing hour, hatched by
+penniless Invention in a garret, pandering to the vanities of the idle.
+
+'I must write to my grandmother by this afternoon's post,' said Lesbia,
+with a heavy sigh.
+
+'Impossible. We have to be at the Ranelagh by four o'clock. Smithson
+and some other men are to meet us there. I have promised to drive Mrs.
+Mostyn down. You had better begin to dress.'
+
+'But I ought to write to-day. I had better ask for this money at once,
+and have done with it. Two thousand pounds! I feel as if I were a thief.
+You say my grandmother is not a rich woman?'
+
+'Not rich as the world goes nowadays. Nobody is rich now, except your
+commercial magnates, like Smithson. Great peers, unless their money is
+in London ground-rents, are great paupers. To own land is to be
+destitute. I don't suppose two thousand pounds will break your
+grandmother's bank; but of course it is a large sum to ask for at the
+end of two months; especially as she sent you a good deal of money while
+we were at Cannes. If you were engaged--about to make a really good
+match--you could ask for the money as a matter of course; but as it is,
+although you have been tremendously admired, from a practical point of
+view you are a failure.'
+
+A failure. It was a hard word, but Lesbia felt it was true. She, the
+reigning beauty, the cynosure of every eye, had made no conquest worth
+talking about, except Mr. Smithson.
+
+'Don't tell your grandmother anything about the bills for a week or
+two,' said Lady Kirkbank, soothingly. 'The creatures can wait for their
+money. Give yourself time to think.'
+
+'I will,' answered Lesbia, dolefully.
+
+'And now make haste, and get ready for the Ranelagh. My love, your eyes
+are dreadfully heavy. You _must_ use a little belladonna. I'll send
+Rilboche to you.'
+
+And for the first time in her life, Lesbia, too depressed to argue the
+point, consented to have her eyes doctored by Rilboche.
+
+She was gay enough at the Ranelagh, and looked her loveliest at a dinner
+party that evening, and went to three parties after the dinner, and went
+home in the faint light of early morning, after sitting out a late waltz
+in a balcony with Mr. Smithson, a balcony banked round with hot-house
+flowers which were beginning to droop a little in the chilly morning
+air, just as beauty drooped under the searching eye of day.
+
+Lesbia put the bills in her desk, and gave herself time to think, as
+Lady Kirkbank advised her. But the thinking progress resulted in very
+little good. All the thought of which she was capable would not reduce
+the totals of those two dreadful accounts. And every day brought some
+fresh bill. The stationer, the bootmaker, the glover, the perfumer,
+people who had courted Lady Lesbia's custom with an air which implied
+that the honour of serving fashionable beauty was the first
+consideration, and the question of payment quite a minor point--these
+now began to ask for their money in the most prosaic way. Every straw
+added to Lesbia's burden; and her heart grew heavier with every post.
+
+'One can see the season is waning when these people begin to pester
+with their accounts,' said Lady Kirkbank, who always talked of tradesmen
+as if they were her natural enemies.
+
+Lesbia accepted this explanation of the avalanche of bills, and never
+suspected Lady Kirkbank's influence in the matter. It happened, however,
+that the chaperon, having her own reasons for wishing to bring Mr.
+Smithson's suit to a successful issue, had told Seraphine and the other
+people to send in their bills immediately. Lady Lesbia would be leaving
+London in a week or so, she informed these purveyors, and would like to
+settle everything before she went away.
+
+Mr. Smithson appeared in Arlington Street almost every day, and was full
+of schemes for new pleasures--or pleasures as nearly new as the world of
+fashion can afford. He was particularly desirous that Sir George and
+Lady Kirkbank, with Lady Lesbia, should stay at his Berkshire place
+during the Henley week. He had a large steam launch, and the regatta was
+a kind of carnival for his intimate friends, who were not too proud to
+riot and batten upon the parvenu's luxurious hospitality, albeit they
+were apt to talk somewhat slightingly of his antecedents.
+
+Lady Kirkbank felt that this invitation was a turning point, and that if
+Lesbia went to stay at Rood Hall, her acceptance of Mr. Smithson was a
+certainty. She would see him at his place in Berkshire in the most
+flattering aspect; his surroundings as lord of the manor, and owner of
+one of the finest old places in the county, would lend dignity to his
+insignificance. Lesbia at first expressed a strong disinclination to go
+to Rood Hall. There would be a most unpleasant feeling in stopping at
+the house of a man whom she had refused, she told Lady Kirkbank.
+
+'My dear, Mr. Smithson has forgiven you,' answered her chaperon. 'He is
+the soul of good nature.'
+
+'One would think he was accustomed to be refused,' said Lesbia. 'I don't
+want to go to Rood Hall, but I don't want to spoil your Henley week.
+Could not I run down to Grasmere for a week, with Kibble to take care of
+me, and see dear grandmother? I could tell her about those dreadful
+bills.'
+
+'Bury yourself at Grasmere in the height of the season! Not to be
+thought of! Besides, Lady Maulevrier objected before to the idea of your
+travelling alone with Kibble. No! if you can't make up your mind to go
+to Rood Hall, George and I must make up our minds to stay away. But it
+will be rather hard lines; for that Henley week is quite the jolliest
+thing in the summer.'
+
+'Then I'll go,' said Lesbia, with a resigned air. 'Not for worlds would
+I deprive you and Sir George of a pleasure.'
+
+In her heart of hearts she rather wished to see Rood Hall. She was
+curious to behold the extent and magnitude of Mr. Smithson's
+possessions. She had seen his Italian villa in Park Lane, the perfection
+of modern art, modern skill, modern taste, reviving the old eternally
+beautiful forms, recreating the Pitti Palace--the homes of the
+Medici--the halls of dead and gone Doges--and now she was told that Rood
+Hall--a genuine old English manor-house, in perfect preservation--was
+even more interesting than the villa in Park Lane. At Rood Hall there
+were ideal stables and farm, hot-houses without number, rose gardens,
+lawns, the river, and a deer park.
+
+So the invitation was accepted, and Mr. Smithson immediately laid
+himself at Lesbia's feet, as it were, with regard to all other
+invitations for the Henley festival. Whom should he ask to meet
+her?--whom would she have?
+
+'You are very good,' she said, 'but I have really no wish to be
+consulted. I am not a royal personage, remember. I could not presume to
+dictate.'
+
+'But I wish you to dictate. I wish you to be imperious in the expression
+of your wishes.'
+
+'Lady Kirkbank has a better right than I, if anybody is to be
+consulted,' said Lesbia, modestly.
+
+'Lady Kirkbank is an old dear, who gets on delightfully with everybody.
+But you are more sensitive. Your comfort might be marred by an obnoxious
+presence. I will ask nobody whom you do not like--who is not thoroughly
+_simpatico_. Have you no particular friends of your own choosing whom
+you would like me to ask?'
+
+Lesbia confessed that she had no such friends. She liked everybody
+tolerably; but she had not a talent for friendship. Perhaps it was
+because in the London season one was too busy to make friends.
+
+'I can fancy two girls getting quite attached to each other, out of the
+season,' she said, 'but in May and June life is all a rush and a
+scramble----'
+
+'And one has no time to gather wayside flowers of friendship,'
+interjected Mr. Smithson. 'Still, if there are no people for whom you
+have an especial liking, there _must_ be people whom you detest.'
+
+Lesbia owned that it was so. Detestation came of itself, naturally.
+
+'Then let me be sure I do not ask any of your pet aversions,' said Mr.
+Smithson. 'You met Mr. Plantagenet Parsons, the theatrical critic, at my
+house. Shall we have him?'
+
+'I like all amusing people.'
+
+'And Horace Meander, the poet. Shall we have him? He is brimful of
+conceits and affectations, but he's a tremendous joke.'
+
+'Mr. Meander is charming.'
+
+'Suppose we ask Mostyn and his wife? Her scraps of science are rather
+good fun.'
+
+'I haven't the faintest objection to the Mostyns,' replied Lesbia. 'But
+who are "we"?'
+
+'We are you and I, for the nonce. The invitations will be issued
+ostensibly by me, but they will really emanate from you.'
+
+'I am to be the shadow behind the throne,' said Lesbia. 'How
+delightful!'
+
+'I would rather you were the sovereign ruler, on the throne,' answered
+Smithson, tenderly. 'That throne shall be empty till you fill it.'
+
+'Please go on with your list of people,' said Lesbia, checking this gush
+of sentiment.
+
+She began to feel somehow that she was drifting from all her moorings,
+that in accepting this invitation to Rood Hall she was allowing herself
+to be ensnared into an alliance about which she was still doubtful. If
+anything better had appeared in the prospect of her life--if any
+worthier suitor had come forward, she would have whistled Mr. Smithson
+down the wind; but no worthier suitor had offered himself. It was
+Smithson or nothing. If she did not accept Smithson, she would go back
+to Fellside heavily burdened with debt, and an obvious failure. She
+would have run the gauntlet of a London season without definite result;
+and this, to a young woman so impressed with her own transcendent
+merits, was a most humiliating state of things.
+
+Other people's names were suggested by Mr. Smithson and approved by
+Lesbia, and a house party of about fourteen in all was made up. Mr.
+Smithson's steam launch would comfortably accommodate that number. He
+had a couple of barges for chance visitors, and kept an open table on
+board them during the regatta.
+
+The visit arranged, the next question was gowns. Lesbia had gowns enough
+to have stocked a draper's shop; but then, as she and Lady Kirkbank
+deplored, the difficulty was that she had worn them all, some as many as
+three or four times. They were doubtless all marked and known. Some of
+them had been described in the society papers. At Henley she would be
+expected to wear something distinctly new, to introduce some new fashion
+of gown or hat or parasol. No matter how ugly the new thing might be, so
+long as it was startling; no matter how eccentric, provided it was
+original.
+
+'What am I to do?' asked Lesbia, despairingly.
+
+'There is only one thing that can be done. We must go instantly to
+Seraphine and insist upon her inventing something. If she has no idea
+ready she must telegraph Worth and get him to send something over. Your
+old things will do very well for Rood Hall. You have no end of pretty
+gowns for morning and evening; but you must be original on the race
+days. Your gowns will be in all the papers.'
+
+'But I shall be only getting deeper into debt,' said Lesbia, with a
+sigh.
+
+'That can't be helped. If you go into society you must be properly
+dressed. We'll go to Clanricarde Place directly after luncheon, and see
+what that old harpy has to show us.'
+
+Lesbia had a rather uncomfortable feeling about facing the fair
+Seraphine, without being able to give her a cheque upon account of that
+dreadful bill. She had quite accepted Lady Kirkbank's idea that bills
+never need be discharged in full, and that the true system of finance
+was to give an occasional cheque on account, as a sop to Cerberus. True,
+that while Cerberus fattened on the sops the bill seemed always growing;
+and the final crash, when Cerberus grew savage and sops could be no more
+accepted, was too awful to be thought about.
+
+Lesbia entered Seraphine's Louis-seize drawing-room with a faint
+expectation of unpleasantness; but after a little whispering between
+Lady Kirkbank and the dressmaker, the latter came to Lesbia smiling
+graciously, and seemingly full of eagerness for new orders.
+
+'Miladi says you want something of the most original--_tant soit peu
+risqué_--for 'Enley,' she said. 'Let us see now,' and she tapped her
+forehead with a gold thimble which nobody had ever seen her use, but
+which looked respectable. 'There is ze dresses that Chaumont wear in zis
+new play, _Une Faute dans le Passé_. Yes, zere is the watare dress--a
+boating party at Bougival, a toilet of the most new, striking,
+_écrasant_, what you English call a "screamer."'
+
+'What a genius you are, Fifine,' exclaimed Lady Kirkbank, rapturously.
+'The _Faute dans le Passé_ was only produced last week. No one will have
+thought of copying Chaumont's gowns yet awhile. The idea is an
+inspiration.'
+
+'What is the boating costume like?' asked Lady Lesbia, faintly.
+
+'An exquisite combination of simplicity with _élan_,' answered the
+dressmaker. 'A skin-tight indigo silk Jersey bodice, closely studded
+with dark blue beads, a flounced petticoat of indigo and amber foulard,
+an amber scarf drawn tightly round the hips, and a dark blue toque with
+a large bunch of amber poppies. Tan-coloured mousquetaire gloves, and
+Hessian boots of tan-coloured kid.'
+
+'Hessian boots!' ejaculated Lesbia.
+
+'But, yes, Miladi. The petticoat is somewhat short, you comprehend, to
+escape the damp of the deck, and, after all, Hessians are much less
+indelicate than silk stockings, legs _à cru_, as one may say.'
+
+'Lesbia, you will look enchanting in yellow Hessians,' said Lady
+Kirkbank, 'Let the dress be put in hand instantly, Seraphine.'
+
+Lesbia was inclined to remonstrate. She did not admire the description
+of the costume, she would rather have something less outrageous.
+
+'Outrageous! It is only original,' exclaimed her chaperon. 'If Chaumont
+wears it you may be sure it is perfect.'
+
+'But on the stage, by gaslight, in the midst of unrealities,' argued
+Lesbia. 'That makes such a difference.'
+
+'My dear, there is no difference nowadays between the stage and the
+drawing-room. Whatever Chaumont wears you may wear. And now let us think
+of the second day. I think as your first costume is to be nautical, and
+rather masculine, your second should be somewhat languishing and
+_vaporeux_. Creamy Indian muslin, wild flowers, a large Leghorn hat.'
+
+'And what will Miladi herself wear?' asked the French woman of Lady
+Kirkbank. 'She must have something of new.'
+
+'No, at my age, it doesn't matter. I shall wear one of my cotton frocks,
+and my Dunstable hat.'
+
+Lesbia shuddered, for Lady Kirkbank in her cotton frock was a spectacle
+at which youth laughed and age blushed. But after all it did not matter
+to Lesbia. She would have liked a less rowdy chaperon; but as a foil to
+her own fresh young beauty Lady Kirkbank was admirable.
+
+They drove down to Rood Hall early next week, Sir George conveying them
+in his drag, with a change of horses at Maidenhead. The weather was
+peerless; the country exquisite, approached from London. How different
+that river landscape looks to the eyes of the traveller returning from
+the wild West of England, the wooded gorges of Cornwall and Devon, the
+Tamar and the Dart. Then how small and poor and mean seems silvery
+Thames, gliding peacefully between his willowy bank, singing his lullaby
+to the whispering sedges; a poor little river, a flat commonplace
+landscape, says the traveller, fresh from moorland and tor, from the
+rocky shore of the Atlantic, the deep clefts of the great, red hills.
+
+To Lesbia's eyes the placid stream and the green pastures, breathing
+odours of meadow-sweet and clover, seemed passing lovely. She was
+pleased with her own hat and parasol too, which made her graciously
+disposed towards the landscape; and the last packet of gloves from North
+Audley Street fitted without a wrinkle. The glovemaker was beginning to
+understand her hand, which was a study for a sculptor, but which had its
+little peculiarities.
+
+Nor was she ill-disposed to Mr. Smithson, who had come up to town by an
+early train, in order to lunch in Arlington Street and go back by coach,
+seated just behind Lady Lesbia, who had the box seat beside Sir George.
+
+The drive was delightful. It was a few minutes after five when the coach
+drove past the picturesque old gate-house into Mr. Smithson's Park, and
+Rood Hall lay on the low ground in front of them, with its back to the
+river. It was an old red brick house in the Tudor style, with an
+advanced porch, and four projecting wings, three stories high, with
+picturesque spire roofs overtopping the main building. Around the house
+ran a boldly-carved stone parapet, bearing the herons and bulrushes
+which were the cognisance of the noble race for which the mansion was
+built. Numerous projecting mullioned windows broke up the line of the
+park front. Lesbia was fain to own that Rood Hall was even better than
+Park Lane. In London Mr. Smithson had created a palace; but it was a new
+palace, which still had a faint flavour of bricks and mortar, and which
+was apt to remind the spectator of that wonderful erection of Aladdin,
+the famous Parvenu of Eastern story. Here, in Berkshire, Mr. Smithson
+had dropped into a nest which had been kept warm for him for three
+centuries, aired and beautified by generations of a noble race which had
+obligingly decayed and dwindled in order to make room for Mr. Smithson.
+Here the Parvenu had bought a home mellowed by the slow growth of years,
+touched into poetic beauty by the chastening fingers of time. His artist
+friends told him that every brick in the red walls was 'precious,' a
+mystery of colour which only a painter could fitly understand and value.
+Here he had bought associations, he had bought history. He had bought
+the dust of Elizabeth's senators, the bones of her court beauties. The
+coffins in the Mausoleum yonder in the ferny depths of the Park, the
+village church just outside the gates--these had all gone with the
+property.
+
+Lesbia went up the grand staircase, through the long corridors, in a
+dream of wonder. Brought up at Fellside, in that new part of the
+Westmoreland house which had been built by her grandmother and had no
+history, she felt thrilled by the sober splendour of this fine old
+manorial mansion. All was sound and substantial, as if created
+yesterday, so well preserved had been the goods and chattels of the
+noble race; and yet all wore such unmistakeable marks of age. The deep
+rich colouring of the wainscot, the faded hues of the tapestry, the
+draperies of costliest velvet and brocade, were all sobered by the
+passing of years.
+
+Mr. Smithson had shown his good taste in having kept all things as Sir
+Hubert Heronville, the last of his race, had left them; and the
+Heronvilles had been one of those grand old Tory races which change
+nothing of the past.
+
+Lady Lesbia's bedroom was the State chamber, which had been occupied by
+kings and queens in days of yore. That grandiose four-poster, with the
+carved ebony columns, cut velvet curtains, and plumes of ostrich
+feathers, had been built for Elizabeth, when she deigned to include Rood
+Hall in one of her royal progresses. Charles the First had rested his
+weary head upon those very pillows, before he went on to the Inn at
+Uxbridge, where he was to be lodged less luxuriously. James the Second
+had stayed there when Duke of York, with Mistress Anne Hyde, before he
+acknowledged his marriage to the multitude; and Anne's daughter had
+occupied the same room as Queen of England forty years later; and now
+the Royal Chamber, with adjacent dressing-room, and oratory, and
+spacious boudoir all in the same suite, was reserved for Lady Lesbia
+Haselden.
+
+'I'm afraid you are spoiling me,' she told Mr. Smithson, when he asked
+if she approved of the rooms that had been allotted to her. 'I feel
+quite ashamed of myself among the ghosts of dead and gone queens.'
+
+'Why so? Surely the Royalty of beauty has as divine a right as that of
+an anointed sovereign.'
+
+'I hope the Royal personages don't walk,' exclaimed Lady Kirkbank, in
+her girlish tone; 'this is just the house in which one would expect
+ghosts.'
+
+Whereupon Mrs. Mostyn hastened to enlighten the company upon the real
+causes of ghost-seeing, which she had lately studied in Carpenter's
+'Mental Physiology,' and favoured them with a diluted version of the
+views of that authority.
+
+This was at afternoon tea in the library, where the brass-wired
+bookcases, filled with mighty folios and handsome octavos in old
+bindings, looked as if they had not been opened for a century. The
+literature of past ages furnished the room, and made a delightful
+background. The literature of the present lay about on the tables, and
+testified that the highest intellectual flight of the inhabitants of
+Rood Hall was a dip into the _Contemporary_ or the _Nineteenth Century_,
+or the perusal of the last new scandal in the shape of Reminiscences or
+Autobiography. One large round table was consecrated to Mudie, another
+to Rolandi. On the one side you had Mrs. Oliphant, on the other Zola,
+exemplifying the genius of the two nations.
+
+After tea Mr. Smithson's visitors, most of whom had arrived in Sir
+George's drag, explored the grounds. These were lovely beyond expression
+in the low afternoon light. Cedars of Lebanon spread their broad shadows
+on the velvet lawn, yews and Wellingtonias of mighty growth made an
+atmosphere of gloom in some parts of the grounds. One great feature was
+the Ladies' Garden, a spot apart, a great square garden surrounded with
+a laurel wall, eight feet high, containing a rose garden, where the
+choicest specimens grew and flourished, while in the centre there was a
+circular fish-pond with a fountain. There was a Lavender Walk too,
+another feature of the grounds at Rood Hall, an avenue of tall lavender
+bushes, much affected by the stately dames of old.
+
+Modern manners preferred the river terrace, as a pleasant place on which
+to loiter after dinner, to watch the boats flashing by in the evening
+light, or the sun going down behind a fringe of willows on the opposite
+bank. This Italian terrace, with its statues, and carved vases filled
+with roses, fuchsias, and geraniums, was the great point of rendezvous
+at Rood Hall--an ideal spot whereon to linger in the deepening twilight,
+from which to gaze upon the moonlit river later on in the night.
+
+The windows of the drawing-room, and music-room, and ballroom opened on
+to this terrace, and the royal wing--the tower-shaped wing now devoted
+to Lady Lesbia, looked upon the terrace and the river.
+
+'Lovely as your house is altogether, I think this river view is the
+best part of it,' said Lady Lesbia, as she strolled with Mr. Smithson on
+the terrace after dinner, dressed in Indian muslin which was almost as
+poetical as a vapour, and with a cloud of delicate lace wrapped round
+her head. 'I think I shall spend half of my life at my boudoir window,
+gloating over that delicious landscape.'
+
+Horace Meander, the poet, was discoursing to a select group upon that
+peculiar quality of willows which causes them to shiver, and quiver, and
+throw little lights and shadows on the river, and on the subtle,
+ineffable beauty of twilight, which perhaps, however utterly beautiful
+in the abstract, would have been more agreeable to him personally if he
+had not been surrounded by a cloud of gnats, which refused to be
+buffeted off his laurel-crowned head.
+
+While Mr. Meander poetised in his usual eloquent style, Mrs. Mostyn, as
+a still newer light, discoursed as eloquently to little a knot of women,
+imparting valuable information upon the anatomical structure and
+individual peculiarities of those various insects which are the pests of
+a summer evening.
+
+'You don't like gnats!' exclaimed the lady; 'how very extraordinary. Do
+you know I have spent days and weeks upon the study of their habits and
+dear little ways. They are the most interesting creatures--far superior
+to _us_ in intellect. Do you know that they fight, and that they have
+tribes which are life-long enemies--like those dreadful Corsicans--and
+that they make little sepulchres in the bark of trees, and bury each
+other--alive, if they can; and they hold vestries, and have burial
+boards. They are most absorbing creatures, if you only give yourself up
+to the study of them; but it is no use to be half-hearted in a study of
+that kind. I went without so much as a cup of tea for twenty-four hours,
+watching my gnats, for fear the opening of the door should startle them.
+Another time I shall make the nursery governess watch for me.'
+
+'How interesting, how noble of you,' exclaimed the other ladies; and
+then they began to talk about bonnets, and about Mr. Smithson, to
+speculate how much money this house and all his other houses had cost
+him, and to wonder if he was really rich, or if he were only one of
+those great financial windbags which so often explode and leave the
+world aghast, marvelling at the ease with which it has been deluded.
+
+They wondered, too, whether Lady Lesbia Haselden meant to marry him.
+
+'Of course she does, my dear,' answered Mrs. Mostyn, decisively.
+
+'You don't suppose that after having studied the habits of _gnats_ I
+cannot read such a poor shallow creature as a silly vain girl. Of course
+Lady Lesbia means to marry Mr. Smithson's fine houses; and she is only
+amusing herself and swelling her own importance by letting him dangle in
+a kind of suspense which is not suspense; for he knows as well as she
+does that she means to have him.'
+
+The next day was given up, first to seeing the house, an amusement which
+lasted very well for an hour or so after breakfast, and then to
+wandering in a desultory manner, to rowing and canoeing, and a little
+sailing, and a good deal of screaming and pretty timidity upon the blue
+bright river; to gathering wild flowers and ferns in rustic lanes, and
+to an _al fresco_ luncheon in the wood at Medmenham, and then dinner,
+and then music, an evening spent half within and half without the
+music-room, cigarettes sparkling, like glowworms on the terrace, tall
+talk from Mr. Meander, long quotations from his own muse and that of
+Rossetti, a little Shelley, a little Keats, a good deal of Swinburne.
+The festivities were late on this second evening, as Mr. Smithson had
+invited a good many people from the neighbourhood, but the house party
+were not the less early on the following morning, which was the first
+Henley day.
+
+It was a peerless morning, and all the brasswork of Mr. Smithson's
+launch sparkled and shone in the sun, as she lay in front of the
+terrace. A wooden pier, a portable construction, was thrown out from the
+terrace steps, to enable the company to go on board the launch without
+the possibility of wet feet or damaged raiment.
+
+Lesbia's Chaumount costume was a success. The women praised it, the men
+stared and admired. The dark-blue silken jersey, sparkling with closely
+studded indigo beads, fitted the slim graceful figure as a serpent's
+scales fit the serpent. The coquettish little blue silk toque, the
+careless cluster of gold-coloured poppies, against the glossy brown
+hair, the large sunshade of old gold satin lined with indigo, the
+flounced petticoat of softest Indian silk, the dainty little
+tan-coloured boots with high heels and pointed toes, were all perfect
+after their fashion; and Mr. Smithson felt that the liege lady of his
+life, the woman he meant to marry willy nilly, would be the belle of the
+race-course. Nor was he disappointed. Everybody in London had heard of
+Lady Lesbia Haselden. Her photograph was in all the West-End windows,
+was enshrined in the albums of South Kensington and Clapham, Maida Vale
+and Haverstock Hill. People whose circles were far remote from Lady
+Lesbia's circle, were as familiar with her beauty as if they had known
+her from her cradle. And all these outsiders wanted to see her in the
+flesh, just as they always thirst to behold Royal personages. So when it
+became known that the beautiful Lady Lesbia Haselden was on board Mr.
+Smithson's launch, all the people in the small boats, or on neighbouring
+barges, made it their business to have a good look at her. The launch
+was almost mobbed by those inquisitive little boats in the intervals
+between the races.
+
+'What are the people all staring and hustling one another for?' asked
+Lesbia, innocently. She had seen the same hustling and whispering and
+staring in the hall at the opera, when she was waiting for her carriage;
+but she chose to affect unconsciousness. 'What do they all want?'
+
+'I think they want to see you,' said Mr. Smithson, who was sitting by
+her side. 'A very natural desire.'
+
+Lesbia laughed, and lowered the big yellow sunshade, so as to hide
+herself altogether from the starers.
+
+'How silly!' she exclaimed. 'It is all the fault of those horrid
+photographers: they vulgarise everything and everybody. I will never be
+photographed again.'
+
+'Oh yes, you will, and in that frock. It's the prettiest thing I've seen
+for a long time. Why do you hide yourself from those poor wretches, who
+keep rowing backwards and forwards in an obviously aimless way, just to
+get a peep at you _en passant_? What happiness for us who live near you,
+and can gaze when we will, without all those absurd manoeuvres. There
+goes the signal--and now for a hard-fought race.'
+
+Lesbia pretended to be interested in the racing--she pretended to be
+gay, but her heart was as heavy as lead. The burden of debt, which had
+been growing ever since Seraphine sent in her bill, was weighing her
+down to the dust.
+
+She owed three thousand pounds. It seemed incredible that she should owe
+so much, that a girl's frivolous fancies and extravagances could amount
+to such a sum within so short a span. But thoughtless purchases,
+ignorant orders, had run on from week to week, and the main result was
+an indebtedness of close upon three thousand pounds.
+
+Three thousand pounds! The sum was continually sounding in her ears like
+the cry of a screech owl. The very ripple of the river flowing so
+peacefully under the blue summer sky seemed to repeat the words. Three
+thousand pounds! 'Is it much?' she wondered, having no standard of
+comparison. 'Is it very much more than my grandmother will expect me to
+have spent in the time? Will it trouble her to have to pay those bills?
+Will she be very angry?'
+
+These were questions which Lesbia kept asking herself, in every pause of
+her frivolous existence; in such a pause as this, for instance, while
+the people round her were standing breathless, open-mouthed, gazing
+after the boats. She did not care a straw for the boats, who won, or who
+lost the race. It was all a hollow mockery. Indeed it seemed just now
+that the only real thing in life was those accursed bills, which would
+have to be paid somehow.
+
+She had told Lady Maulevrier nothing about them as yet. She had allowed
+herself to be advised by Lady Kirkbank, and she had taken time to think.
+But thought had given her no help. The days were gliding onward, and
+Lady Maulevrier would have to be told.
+
+She meditated perplexedly about her grandmother's income. She had never
+heard the extent of it, but had taken for granted that Lady Maulevrier
+was rich. Would three thousand pounds make a great inroad on that
+income? Would it be a year's income?--half a year's? Lesbia had no idea.
+Life at Fellside was carried on in an elegant manner--with considerable
+luxury in house and garden--a luxury of flowers, a lavish expenditure of
+labour. Yet the expenditure of Lady Maulevrier's existence, spent always
+on the same spot, must be as nothing to the money spent in such a life
+as Lady Kirkbank's, which involved the keeping up of three or four
+houses, and costly journeys to and fro, and incessant change of attire.
+
+No doubt Lady Maulevrier had saved money; yes, she must have saved
+thousands during her long seclusion, Lesbia argued. Her grandmother had
+told her that she was to look upon herself as an heiress. This could
+only mean that Lady Maulevrier had a fortune to leave her; and this
+being so, what could it matter if she had anticipated some of her
+portion? And yet there was in her heart of hearts a terrible fear of
+that stern dowager, of the cold scorn in those splendid eyes when she
+should stand revealed in all her foolishness, her selfish, mindless,
+vain extravagances. She, who had never been reproved, shrank with a
+sickly dread from the idea of reproof. And to be told that her career as
+a fashionable beauty had been a failure! That would be the bitterest
+pang of all.
+
+Soon came luncheon, and Heidseck, and then an afternoon which was gayer
+than the morning had been, inasmuch as every one babbled and laughed
+more after luncheon. And then there was five o'clock tea on deck, under
+the striped Japanese awning, to the jingle of banjos, enlivened by the
+wit of black-faced minstrels, amidst wherries and canoes and gondolas,
+and ponderous houseboats, and snorting launches, crowding the sides of
+the sunlit river, in full view of the crowd yonder in front of the Red
+Lion, and here on this nearer bank, and all along either shore, fringing
+the green meadows with a gaudy border of smartly-dressed humanity.
+
+It was a gay scene, and Lesbia gave herself up to the amusement of the
+hour, and talked and chaffed as she had learned to talk and chaff in one
+brief season, holding her own against all comers.
+
+Rood Hall looked lovely when they went back to it in the gloaming, an
+Elizabethan pile crowned with towers. The four wings with their conical
+roofs, the massive projecting windows, grey stone, ruddy brickwork,
+lattices reflecting the sunlight, Italian terrace and blue river in the
+foreground, cedars and yews at the back, all made a splendid picture of
+an English ancestral home.
+
+'Nice old place, isn't it?' asked Mr. Smithson, seeing Lesbia's
+admiring gaze as the launch neared the terrace. They two were standing
+in the bows, apart from all the rest.
+
+'Nice! it is simply perfect.'
+
+'Oh no, it isn't. There is one thing wanted yet.'
+
+'What is that?'
+
+'A wife. You are the only person who can make any house of mine perfect.
+Will you?' He took her hand, which she did not withdraw from his grasp.
+He bent his head and kissed the little hand in its soft Swedish glove.
+
+'Will you, Lesbia?' he repeated earnestly; and she answered softly,
+'Yes.'
+
+That one brief syllable was more like a sigh than a spoken word, and it
+seemed to her as if in the utterance of that syllable the three thousand
+pounds had been paid.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+'KIND IS MY LOVE TO-DAY, TO-MORROW KIND.'
+
+
+While Lady Lesbia was draining the cup of London folly and London care
+to the dregs, Lady Mary was leading her usual quiet life beside the
+glassy lake, where the green hill-sides and sheep walks were reflected
+in all their summer verdure under the cloudless azure of a summer sky. A
+monotonous life--passing dull as seen from the outside--and yet Mary was
+very happy, happy even in her solitude, with the grave deep joy of a
+satisfied heart, a mind at rest. All life had taken a new colour since
+her engagement to John Hammond. A sense of new duties, an awakening
+earnestness had given a graver tone to her character. Her spirits were
+less wild, yet not less joyous than of old. The joy was holier, deeper.
+
+Her lover's letters were the chief delight of her lonely days. To read
+them again and again, and ponder upon them, and then to pour out all her
+heart and mind in answering them. These were pleasures enough for her
+young life. Hammond's letters were such as any woman might be proud to
+receive. They were not love-letters only. He wrote as friend to friend;
+not descending from the proud pinnacle of masculine intelligence to the
+lower level of feminine silliness; not writing down to a simple country
+girl's capacity; but writing fully and fervently, as if there were no
+subject too lofty or too grave for the understanding of his betrothed.
+He wrote as one sure of being sympathised with, wrote as to his second
+self: and Mary showed herself not unworthy of the honour thus rendered
+to her intellect.
+
+There was one world which had newly opened to Mary since her
+engagement, and that was the world of politics. Hammond had told her
+that his ambition was to succeed as a politician--to do some good in his
+day as one of the governing body; and of late she had made it her
+business to learn how England and the world outside England were
+governed.
+
+She had no natural leaning to the study of political economy. Instead,
+she had always imagined any question relating to the government of her
+country to be inherently dry-as-dust and uninviting. But had John
+Hammond devoted his days to the study of Coptic manuscripts, or the
+arrow-headed inscriptions upon Assyrian tablets, she would have toiled
+her hardest in the endeavour to make herself a Coptic scholar, or an
+adept in the cuneiform characters. If he had been a student of Chinese,
+she would not have been discomfited by such a trifle as the fifty
+thousand characters in the Chinese alphabet.
+
+And so, as he was to make his name in the arena of public life, she set
+herself to acquire a proper understanding of the science of politics;
+and to this end she gorged herself with English history,--Hume, Hallam,
+Green, Justin McCarthy, Palgrave, Lecky, from the days of Witenagemote
+to the Reform Bill; the Repeal of the Corn Laws, the Disestablishment of
+the Irish Church, Ballot, Trade Unionism, and unreciprocated Free Trade.
+No question was deep enough to repel her; for was not her lover
+interested in the dryest thereof; and what concerned him and his welfare
+must needs be full of interest for her.
+
+To this end she read the debates religiously day by day; and she one day
+ventured shyly to suggest that she should read them aloud to Lady
+Maulevrier.
+
+'Would it not be a little rest for you if I were to read your Times
+aloud to you every afternoon, grandmother?' she asked. 'You read so many
+books, French, English, and German, and I think your eyes must get a
+little tired sometimes.'
+
+Mary ventured the remark with some timidity, for those falcon eyes were
+fixed upon her all the time, bright and clear and steady as the eyes of
+youth. It seemed almost an impertinence to suggest that such eyes could
+know weariness.
+
+'No, Mary, my sight holds out wonderfully for an old woman,' replied
+her ladyship, gently. 'The new theory of the last oculist whose book I
+dipped into--a very amusing and interesting book, by-the-bye--is that
+the sight improves and strengthens by constant use, and that an
+agricultural labourer, who hardly uses his eyes at all, has rarely in
+the decline of life so good a sight as the watchmaker or the student. I
+have read immensely all my life, and find myself no worse for that
+indulgence. But you may read the debates to me if you like, my dear, for
+if my eyes are strong, I myself am very tired. Sick to death, Mary, sick
+to death.'
+
+The splendid eyes turned from Mary, and looked away to the blue sky, to
+the hills in their ineffable beauty of colour and light--shifting,
+changing with every moment of the summer day. Intense weariness, a
+settled despair, were expressed in that look--tearless, yet sadder than
+all tears.
+
+'It must be very monotonous, very sad for you,' murmured Mary, her own
+eyes brimming over with tears. 'But it will not be always so, dear
+grandmother. I hope a time will come when you will be able to go about
+again, to resume your old life.'
+
+'I do not hope, Mary. No, child, I feel and know that time will never
+come. My strength is ebbing slowly day by day. If I live for another
+year, live to see Lesbia married, and you, too, perhaps--well, I shall
+die at peace. At peace, no; not----' she faltered, and the thin,
+semi-transparent hand was pressed upon her brow. 'What will be said of
+me when I am dead?'
+
+Mary feared that her grandmother's mind was wandering. She came and
+knelt beside the couch, laid and her head against the satin pillows,
+tenderly, caressingly.
+
+'Dear grandmother, pray be calm,' she murmured.
+
+'Mary, do not look at me like that, as if you would read my heart. There
+are hearts that must not be looked into. Mine is like a charnel-house.
+Monotonous, yes; my life has been monotonous. No conventual gloom was
+ever deeper than the gloom of Fellside. My boy did nothing to lighten it
+for me, and his son followed in his father's footsteps. You and Lesbia
+have been my only consolation. Lesbia! I was so proud of her beauty, so
+proud and fond of her, because she was like me, and recalled my own
+youth. And see how easily she forgets me. She has gone into a new world,
+in which my age and my infirmities have no part; and I am as nothing to
+her.'
+
+Mary changed from red to pale, so painful was her embarrassment. What
+could she say in defence of her sister? How could she deny that Lesbia
+was an ingrate, when those rare and hurried letters, so careless in
+their tone, expressing the selfishness of the writer in every syllable,
+told but too plainly of forgetfulness and ingratitude?
+
+'Dear grandmother, Lesbia has so much to do--her life is so full of
+engagements,' she faltered feebly.
+
+'Yes, she goes from party to party--she gives herself up heart and mind
+and soul to pleasures which she ought to consider only as the trivial
+means to great ends; and she forgets the woman who reared her, and cared
+for her, and watched over her from her infancy, and who tried to inspire
+her with a noble ambition.--Yes, read to me, child, read. Give me new
+thoughts, if you can, for my brain is weary with grinding the old ones.
+There was a grand debate in the Lords last night, and Lord Hartfield
+spoke. Let me hear his speech. You can read what was said by the man
+before him; never mind the rest.'
+
+Mary read Lord Somebody's speech, which was passing dull, but which
+prepared the ground for a magnificent and exhaustive reply from Lord
+Hartfield. The question was an important one, affecting the well-being
+of the masses, and Lord Hartfield spoke with an eloquence which rose in
+force and fire as he wound himself like a serpent into the heart of his
+subject--beginning quietly, soberly, with no opening flashes of
+rhetoric, but rising gradually to the topmost heights of oratory.
+
+'What a speech!' cried Lady Maulevrier, delighted, her cheeks glowing,
+her eyes kindling; 'what a noble fellow the speaker must be! Oh, Mary, I
+must tell you a secret. I loved that man's father. Yes, my dear, I loved
+him fondly, dearly, truly, as you love that young man of yours; and he
+was the only man I ever really loved. Fate parted us. But I have never
+forgotten him--never, Mary, never. At this moment I have but to close my
+eyes and I can see his face--see him looking at me as he looked the last
+time we met. He was a younger son, poor, his future quite hopeless in
+those days; but it was not my fault we were parted. I would have married
+him--yes, wedded poverty, just as you are going to marry this Mr.
+Hammond; but my people would not let me; and I was too young, too
+helpless, to make a good fight. Oh, Mary, if I had only fought hard
+enough, what a happy woman I might have been, and how good a wife.'
+
+'You were a good wife to my grandfather, I am sure,' faltered Mary, by
+way of saying something consolatory.
+
+A dark frown came over Lady Maulevrier's face, which had softened to
+deepest tenderness just before.
+
+'A good wife to Maulevrier,' she said, in a mocking tone. Well, yes, as
+good a wife as such a husband deserved. 'I was better than Cæsar's
+wife, Mary, for no breath of suspicion ever rested upon my name. But if
+I had married Ronald Hollister, I should have been a happy woman; and
+that I have never been since I parted from him.'
+
+'You have never seen the present Lord Hartfield, I think?'
+
+'Never; but I have watched his career, I have thought of him. His father
+died while he was an infant, and he was brought up in seclusion by a
+widowed mother, who kept him tied to her apron-strings till he went to
+Oxford. She idolised him, and I am told she taught herself Latin and
+Greek, mathematics even, in order to help him in his boyish studies,
+and, later on, read Greek plays and Latin poetry with him, till she
+became an exceptional classic for a woman. She was her son's companion
+and friend, sympathised with his tastes, his pleasures, his friendships;
+devoted every hour of her life, every thought of her mind to his
+welfare, his interests, walked with him, rode with him, travelled half
+over Europe, yachted with him. Her friends all declared that the lad
+would grow up an odious milksop; but I am told that there never was a
+manlier man than Lord Hartfield. From his boyhood he was his mother's
+protector, helped to administer her affairs, acquired a premature sense
+of responsibility, and escaped almost all those vices which make young
+men detestable. His mother died within a few months of his majority. He
+was broken-hearted at losing her, and left Europe immediately after her
+death. From that time he has been a great traveller. But I suppose now
+that he has taken his seat in the House of Lords, and has spoken a good
+many times, he means to settle down and take his place among the
+foremost men of his day. I am told that he is worthy to take such a
+place.'
+
+'You must feel warmly interested in watching his career,' said Mary,
+sympathetically.
+
+'I am interested in everything that concerns him. I will tell you
+another secret, Mary. I think I am getting into my dotage, my dear, or I
+should hardly talk to you like this,' said Lady Maulevrier, with a touch
+of bitterness.
+
+Mary was sitting on a stool by the sofa, close to the invalid's pillow.
+She clasped her grandmother's hand and kissed it fondly.
+
+'Dear grandmother, I think you are talking to me like this to-day
+because you are beginning to care for me a little,' she said, tenderly.
+
+'Oh, my dear, you are very good, very sweet and forgiving to care for me
+at all, after my neglect of you,' answered Lady Maulevrier, with a
+sigh. 'I have kept you out in the cold so long, Mary. Lesbia--well,
+Lesbia has been a kind of infatuation for me, and like all infatuations
+mine has ended in disappointment and bitterness. Ambition has been the
+bane of my life, Mary; and when I could no longer be ambitious for
+myself--when my own existence had become a mere death in life, I began
+to dream and to scheme for the aggrandisement of my granddaughter.
+Lesbia's beauty, Lesbia's elegance seemed to make success certain--and
+so I dreamt my dream--which may never be fulfilled.'
+
+'What was your dream, grandmother? May I know all about it?'
+
+'That was the secret I spoke of just now. Yes, Mary, you may know, for I
+fear the dream will never be realised. I wanted my Lesbia to become Lord
+Hartfield's wife. I would have brought them together myself, could I
+have but gone to London; but, failing that, I fancied Lady Kirkbank
+would have divined my wishes without being told them, and would have
+introduced Hartfield to Lesbia; and now the London season is drawing to
+a close, and Hartfield and Lesbia have never met. He hardly goes
+anywhere, I am told. He devotes himself exclusively to politics; and he
+is not in Lady Kirkbank's set. A terrible disappointment to me, Mary!'
+
+'It is a pity,' said Mary. 'Lesbia is so lovely. If Lord Hartfield were
+fancy-free he ought to fall in love with her, could they but meet. I
+thought that in London all fashionable people knew each other, and were
+continually meeting.'
+
+'It used to be so in my day, Mary. Almack's was a common ground, even if
+there had been no other. But now there are circles and circles, I
+believe, rings that touch occasionally, but never break and mingle. I am
+afraid poor Georgie's set is not quite so nice as I could have wished.
+Yet Lesbia writes as if she were in raptures with her chaperon, and with
+all the people she meets. And then Georgie tells me that this Mr.
+Smithson whom Lesbia has refused is a very important personage, a
+millionaire, and very likely to be made a peer.'
+
+'A new peer,' said Mary, making a wry face. 'One would rather have an
+old commoner. I always fancy a newly-made peer must be like a
+newly-built house, glaring, and staring, and arid and uncongenial.'
+
+'_C'est selon_,' said Lady Maulevrier. 'One would not despise a Chatham
+or a Wellington because of the newness of his title; but a man who has
+only money to recommend him----'
+
+Lady Maulevrier left her sentence unfinished, save by a shrug; while
+Mary made another wry face. She had that grand contempt for sordid
+wealth which is common to young people who have never known the want of
+money.
+
+'I hope Lesbia will marry some one better than Mr. Smithson,' she said.
+
+'I hope so too, dear; and yet do you know I have an idea that Lesbia
+means to accept Mr. Smithson, or she would hardly have consented to go
+to his house for the Henley week. Here is a letter from Georgie Kirkbank
+which you will have to answer for me to-morrow--a letter full of
+raptures about Mr. Smithson's place in Berkshire, Rood Hall. I remember
+the house well. I was there nearly fifty years ago, when the Heronvilles
+owned it; and now the Heronvilles are all dead or ruined, and this city
+person is master of the fine old mansion. It is a strange world, Mary.'
+
+From that time forward Mary and her grandmother were on more
+confidential terms, and when, two days later, Fellside was startled into
+life by the unexpected arrival of Lord Maulevrier and Mr. Hammond, the
+dowager seemed almost as pleased as her granddaughter at the arrival of
+the young men.
+
+As for Mary, she was almost beside herself with joy when she heard their
+voices from the lawn, and, rushing to the shrubbery, saw them walk up
+the hill, as she had seen them on that first evening nearly a year ago,
+when John Hammond came as a stranger to Fellside.
+
+She tried to take her joy soberly, though her eyes were dancing with
+delight, as she went to the porch to meet them.
+
+'What extraordinary young men you are,' she said, as she emerged
+breathless from her lover's embrace. 'The idea of your descending upon
+us without a moment's notice. Why did you not write or telegraph, that
+your rooms might be ready?'
+
+'Am I to understand that all the spare rooms at Fellside are kept as
+damp as at the bottom of the lake?' asked Maulevrier. 'I did not
+think any preparation was necessary; but we can go back if we're
+not wanted, can't we, Jack?'
+
+'You darling,' cried Mary, hanging affectionately upon her brother's
+arm. 'You _know_ I was only joking, you _know_ how enraptured I am to
+have you.'
+
+'To have _me_, only me,' said Maulevrier. 'Jack doesn't count, I
+suppose?'
+
+'You know how glad I am, and that I want to hide my gladness,' answered
+Mary, radiant and blushing like the rich red roses in the porch. 'You
+men are so vain. And now come and see grandmother, she will be cheered
+by your arrival. She has been so good to me just lately, so sweet.'
+
+'She might have been good and sweet to you all your life,' said Hammond.
+'I am not prepared to be grateful to her at a moment's notice for any
+crumbs of affection she may throw you.'
+
+'Oh but you must be grateful, sir; and you must love her and pity her,'
+retorted Mary. 'Think how sadly she has suffered. We cannot be too kind
+to her, or too fond of her, poor dear.'
+
+'Mary is right,' said Hammond, half in jest and half in earnest. 'What
+wonderful instincts these young women have.'
+
+'Come and see her ladyship; and then you must have dinner, just as you
+had that first evening,' said Mary. 'We'll act that first evening over
+again, Jack; only you can't fall in love with Lesbia, as she isn't
+here.'
+
+'I don't think I surrendered that first evening, Mary. Though I thought
+your sister the loveliest girl I had ever seen.'
+
+'And what did you think of me, sir? Tell me that,' said Mary.
+
+'Shall I tell you the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the
+truth?'
+
+'Of course.'
+
+'Then I freely confess that I did not think about you at all. You were
+there--a pretty, innocent, bright young maiden, with big brown eyes and
+auburn hair; but I thought no more about you than I did about the
+Gainsborough on the wall, which you very much resemble.'
+
+'That is most humiliating,' said Mary, pouting a little in the midst of
+her bliss.
+
+'No, dearest, it is only natural,' answered Hammond. 'I believe if all
+the happy lovers in this world could be questioned, at least half of
+them would confess to having thought very little about each other at
+first meeting. They meet, and touch hands, and part again, and never
+guess the mystery of the future, which wraps them round like a cloud,
+never say of each other. There is my fate; and then they meet again, and
+again, as hazard wills, and never know that they are drifting to their
+doom.'
+
+Mary rang bells and gave orders, just as she had done in that summer
+gloaming a year ago. The young men had arrived just at the same hour, on
+the stroke of nine, when the eight o'clock dinner was over and done
+with; for a _tête-à-tête_ meal with Fräulein Müller was not a feast to
+be prolonged on account of its felicity. Perhaps they had so contrived
+as to arrive exactly at this hour.
+
+Lady Maulevrier received them both with extreme cordiality. But the
+young men saw a change for the worse in the invalid since the spring.
+The face was thinner, the eyes too bright, the flush upon the hollow
+cheek had a hectic tinge, the voice was feebler. Hammond was reminded of
+a falcon or an eagle pining and wasting in a cage.
+
+'I am very glad to see you, Mr. Hammond,' said Lady Maulevrier, giving
+him her hand, and addressing him with unwonted cordiality. 'It was a
+happy thought that brought you and Maulevrier here. When an old woman is
+as near the grave as I am her relatives ought to look after her. I shall
+be glad to have a little private conversation with you to-morrow, Mr.
+Hammond, if you can spare me a few minutes.'
+
+'As many hours, if your ladyship pleases,' said Hammond. 'My time is
+entirely at your service.'
+
+'Oh, no, you will want to be roaming about the hills with Mary,
+discussing your plans for the future. I shall not encroach too much on
+your time. But I am very glad you are here.'
+
+'We shall only trespass on you for a few days,' said Maulevrier, 'just a
+flying visit.'
+
+'How is it that you are not both at Henley?' asked Mary. 'I thought all
+the world was at Henley.'
+
+'Who is Henley? what is Henley?' demanded Maulevrier, pretending
+ignorance.
+
+'I believe Maulevrier has lost so much money backing his college boat
+on previous occasions that he is glad to run away from the regatta this
+year,' said Hammond.
+
+'I have a sister there,' replied his friend. 'That's an all-sufficient
+explanation. When a fellow's women-kind take to going to races and
+regattas it is high time for _him_ to stop away.'
+
+'Have you seen Lesbia lately?' asked his grandmother.
+
+'About ten days ago.'
+
+'And did she seem happy?'
+
+Maulevrier shrugged his shoulders.
+
+'She was vacillating between the refusal or the acceptance of a million
+of money and four or five fine houses. I don't know whether that
+condition of mind means happiness. I should call it an intermediate
+state.'
+
+'Why do you make silly jokes about serious questions? Do you think
+Lesbia means to accept this Mr. Smithson?'
+
+'All London thinks so.'
+
+'And is he a good man?'
+
+'Good for a hundred thousand pounds at half an hour's notice.'
+
+'Is he worthy of your sister?'
+
+Maulevrier paused, looked at his grandmother with a curious expression,
+and then replied--
+
+'I think he is--quite.'
+
+'Then I am content that she should marry him,' said Lady Maulevrier,
+'although he is a nobody.'
+
+'Oh, but he is a very important nobody, a nobody who can get a peerage
+next year, backed by the Maulevrier influence, which I suppose would
+count for something.'
+
+'Most of my friends are dead,' said Lady Maulevrier, 'but there are a
+few survivors of the past who might help me.'
+
+'I don't think there'll be any difficulty or doubt about the peerage.
+Smithson stumped up very handsomely at the last General Election, and
+the Conservatives are not strong enough to be ungrateful. "These have
+no master."'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII.
+
+WAYS AND MEANS.
+
+
+The three days that followed were among the happiest days of Mary
+Haselden's young life. Lady Maulevrier had become strangely indulgent. A
+softening influence of some kind had worked upon that haughty spirit,
+and it seemed as if her whole nature was changed--or it might be, Mary
+thought, that this softer side of her character had always been turned
+to Lesbia, while to Mary herself it was altogether new. Lesbia had been
+the peach on the sunny southern wall, ripening and reddening in a flood
+of sunshine; Mary had been the stunted fruit growing in a north-east
+corner, hidden among leaves, blown upon by cold winds green and hard and
+sour for lack of the warm bright light. And now Mary felt the sunshine,
+and grew glad and gay in those glowing beams.
+
+'Dear grandmother, I believe you are beginning to love me,' she said,
+bending over to arrange the invalid's pillows in the July morning, the
+fresh mountain air blowing in upon old and young from the great open
+window, like a caress.
+
+'I am beginning to know you,' answered Lady Maulevrier, gently.
+
+'I think it is the magic of love, Mary, that has sweetened and softened
+your nature, and endeared you to me. I think you have grown ever so much
+sweeter a girl since your engagement. Or it may be that you were the
+same always, and it was I who was blind. Lesbia was all in all to me.
+All in all--and now I am nothing to her,' she murmured, to herself
+rather than to Mary.
+
+'I am so proud to think that you see an improvement in me since my
+engagement,' said Mary, modestly. 'I have tried very hard to improve
+myself, so that I might be more worthy of him.'
+
+'You are worthy, Mary, worthy of the best and the highest: and I believe
+that, although you are making what the world calls a very bad match, you
+are marrying wisely. You are wedding yourself to a life of obscurity;
+but what does that matter, if it be a happy life? I have known what it
+is to pursue the phantom fortune, and to find youth and hope and
+happiness vanish from the pathway which I followed.'
+
+'Dear grandmother, I wish you had been able to marry the man of your
+choice,' answered Mary, tenderly.
+
+She was ready to weep over that wasted life of her grandmother's; to
+weep for that forced parting of true lovers, albeit the tragedy was half
+a century old.
+
+'I should have been a happier woman and a better woman if fate had been
+kind to me, Mary,' answered Lady Maulevrier, gravely; 'and now that I am
+daily drawing nearer the land of shadows, I will not stand in the way of
+faithful lovers. I have a fancy, Mary, that I have not many months to
+live.'
+
+'Only an invalid's fancy,' said Mary, stooping down to kiss the pale
+forehead, so full of thought and care; 'only a morbid fancy, nursed in
+the monotony of this quiet room. Maulevrier and Jack and I must find
+some way of amusing you.'
+
+'You will never amuse me out of that conviction, my dear. I can see the
+shadows lengthening and the sands running out. There are but a few
+grains left in the glass, Mary; and while those last I should like to
+see you and Mr. Hammond married. I should like to feel that your fate is
+settled before I go. God knows what confusion and trouble may follow my
+death.'
+
+This was said with a sharp ring of despair.
+
+'I am not going to leave you, grandmother,' said Mary.
+
+'Not even for the man you love? You are a good girl, Mary. Lesbia has
+forsaken me for a lesser temptation.'
+
+'Grandmother, that is hardly fair. It was your own wish to have Lesbia
+presented this season,' remonstrated Mary, loyal to the absent.
+
+'True, my dear. I saw she was very tired of her life here, and I thought
+it was better. But I'm sorely afraid London has spoiled her. No, Mary,
+you can stay with me to the end, if you like. There is room enough for
+you and your husband under this roof. I like this Mr. Hammond. His is
+the only face that ever recalled the face of the dead. Yes, I like him;
+and although I know nothing about him except what Maulevrier tells
+me--and that is of the scantiest--still I feel, somehow, that I can
+trust him. Send your lover to me, Mary. I want to have a serious talk
+with him.'
+
+Mary ran off to obey, fluttered, blushing, and trembling. This idea of
+marriage in the immediate future was to be the last degree startling. A
+year had seemed a very long time; and she had been told that she and her
+lover must wait a year at the very least; so that vision of marriage had
+seemed afar off in the dim shadowland of the future. She had been told
+nothing by her lover of where she was to live, or what her life was to
+be like when she was his wife. And now she was told that they were to be
+married almost immediately, that they were to live in the house where
+she had been reared, in that familiar land of hills and waters, that
+they were to roam about the dales and mountains together, they two, as
+man and wife. The whole thing was wonderful, bewildering, impossible
+almost.
+
+This was on the first morning after Mr. Hammond's arrival. Maulevrier
+had gone off to hunt the Rotha for otters, and was up to his waist in
+the water, no doubt, by this time. Hammond was strolling up and down the
+terrace in front of the house, looking at the green expanse of
+Fairfield, the dark bulk of Seat Sandal, the nearer crests of Helm Crag
+and Silver Howe.
+
+'You are to come to her ladyship directly, please,' said Mary, going up
+to him.
+
+He took both her hands, drew her nearer to him, smiling down at her.
+They had been sitting side by side at the breakfast table half-an-hour
+ago, he waiting upon her as she poured out the tea; yet by his tender
+greeting and the delight in his face it might have been supposed they
+had not met for weeks. Such are the sweet inanities of love.
+
+'What does her ladyship want with me, darling? and why are you
+blushing?' he asked.
+
+'I--I think she is going to talk about--our--marriage,' faltered Mary.
+
+'"Why, I will talk to her upon this theme until mine eyelids can no
+longer wag,"' quoted Hammond. 'Take me to her, Mary. I hope her ladyship
+is growing sensible.'
+
+'She is very kind, very sweet. She has changed so much of late.'
+
+Mary went with him to the door of her ladyship's sitting-room, and there
+left him to go in alone. She went to the library--that room over which a
+gloomy shadow seemed to have hung ever since that awful winter afternoon
+when Mary found Lady Maulevrier lying on the floor in the twilight. But
+it was a noble room, and in her studious hours Mary loved to sit here,
+walled round with books, and able to consult or dip into as many volumes
+as she liked. To-day, however, her mind was not attuned to study. She
+sat with a volume of Macaulay open before her: but her thoughts were not
+with the author. She was wondering what those two were saying in the
+room overhead, and finding all attempts at reading futile, she let her
+head sink back upon the cushion of her deep luxurious chair, and sat
+with her dreamy eyes fixed on the summer landscape and her thoughts with
+her lover.
+
+Lady Maulevrier looked very wan and tired in the bright morning light,
+when Mr. Hammond seated himself beside her sofa. The change in her
+appearance since the spring was more marked to-day than it had seemed to
+him last night in the dim lamplight. Yes, there was need here for a
+speedy settlement of all earthly matters. The traveller was nearing the
+mysterious end of the journey. The summons might come at any hour.
+
+'Mr. Hammond, I feel a confidence in your integrity, your goodness of
+heart, and high principle which I never thought I could feel for a man
+of whom I know so little,' began Lady Maulevrier, gravely. 'All I know
+of you or your antecedents is what my grandson has told me--and I must
+say that the information so given has been very meagre. And yet I
+believe in you--and yet I am going to trust you, wholly, blindly,
+implicitly--and I am going to give you my granddaughter, ever so much
+sooner than I intended to give her to you. Soon, very soon, if you will
+have her!'
+
+'I will have her to-morrow, if there is time to get a special licence,'
+exclaimed Hammond, bending down to kiss the dowager's hand, radiant with
+delight.
+
+'You shall marry her very soon, if you like, marry her by special
+licence, in this room. I should like to see your wedding. I have a
+strange impatience to behold one of my granddaughters happily married,
+to know that her future is secure, that come weal, come woe, she is safe
+in the protection of a brave true man. I am not scared by the idea of a
+little poverty. That is often the best education for youth. But while
+you and I are alone we may as well talk about ways and means. Perhaps
+you may hardly feel prepared to take upon yourself the burden of a wife
+this year.'
+
+'As well this year as next. I am not afraid.'
+
+'Young men are so rash. However, as long as I live your responsibilities
+will be only nominal. This house will be Mary's home, and yours whenever
+you are able to occupy it. Of course I should not like to interfere with
+your professional efforts--but if you are cultivating literature,--why
+books can be written at Fellside better than in London. This lakeland of
+ours has been the nursery of deathless writers. But I feel that my days
+are numbered--and when I am dead--well death is always a cause of change
+and trouble of some kind, and Mary will profit very little by my death.
+The bulk of my fortune is left to Lesbia. I have taught her to consider
+herself my heiress; and it would be unjust to alter my will.'
+
+'Pray do not dream of such a thing--there is no need--Mary will be rich
+enough,' exclaimed Hammond, hastily.
+
+'With five hundred a year and the fruits of your industry,' said Lady
+Maulevrier. 'Yes, yes, with modest aspirations and simple habits, people
+can live happily, honourably, on a few hundreds a year. And if you
+really mean to devote yourself to literature, and do not mind burying
+yourself alive in this lake district until you have made your name as a
+writer, why the problem of ways and means will be easily solved.'
+
+'Dear Lady Maulevrier, I am not afraid of ways and means. That is the
+last question which need trouble you. I told Lesbia when I offered
+myself to her nearly a year ago, that if she would trust me, if she
+would cleave to me, poverty should never touch her, sordid care should
+never come near her dwelling. But she could not believe me. She was like
+Thomas the twin. I could show her no palpable security for my
+promise--and she would not believe for the promise' sake. Mary trusted
+me; and Mary shall not regret her confidence.'
+
+'Ah! it was different with Lesbia,' sighed Lady Maulevrier. 'I taught
+her to be ambitious. She had been schooled to set a high price upon
+herself. I know she cared for you--very much, even. But she could not
+face poverty; or, if you like, I will say that she could not face an
+obscure existence--sacrifice her ambition, a justifiable ambition in one
+so lovely, at the bidding of her first wooer. And then, again, she was
+told that if she married you, she would for ever forfeit my regard. You
+must not blame her for obeying me.'
+
+'I do not blame her; for I have won the peerless pearl--the jewel above
+all price--a perfect woman. And now, dear Lady Maulevrier, give me but
+your consent, and I am off to York this afternoon, to interview the
+Archbishop, and get the special licence, which will allow me to wed my
+darling here by your couch to-morrow afternoon.'
+
+'I have no objection to your getting the licence immediately; but you
+must let me write a cheque before you go. A special licence is
+expensive--I believe it costs fifty pounds.'
+
+'If it cost a thousand I should not think it dear. But I have a notion
+that I shall be able to get the licence--cheap. You have made me wild
+with happiness.'
+
+'But you must not refuse my cheque.'
+
+'Indeed I must, Lady Maulevrier. I am not quite such a pauper as you
+think me.'
+
+'But fifty pounds and the expenses of the journey; an outlay altogether
+unexpected on your part. I begin to fear that you are very reckless. A
+spendthrift shall never marry my granddaughter, with my consent.'
+
+'I have never yet spent above half my income.'
+
+Lady Maulevrier looked at him in wonderment and perplexity. Had the
+young man gone suddenly out of his mind, overwhelmed by the greatness of
+his bliss?
+
+'But I thought you were poor,' she faltered.
+
+'It has pleased you to think so, dear Lady Maulevrier; but I have more
+than enough for all my wants, and I shall be able to provide a fitting
+home for my Mary, when you can spare her to preside over her own
+establishment.'
+
+'Establishment' seemed rather a big word, but Lady Maulevrier supposed
+that in this case it meant a cook and housemaid, with perhaps later on a
+boy in buttons, to break windows and block the pantry sink with missing
+teaspoons.
+
+'Well, Mr. Hammond, this is quite an agreeable surprise,' she said,
+after a brief silence. 'I really thought you were poor--as poor as a
+young man of gentlemanlike habits could be, and yet exist. Perhaps you
+will wonder why, thinking this, I brought myself to consent to your
+marriage with my granddaughter.'
+
+'It was a great proof of your confidence in me, or in Providence,'
+replied Hammond, smiling.
+
+'It was no such thing. I was governed by a sentiment--a memory. It was
+my love for the dead which softened my heart towards you, John Hammond.'
+
+'Indeed!' he murmured, softly.
+
+'There was but one man in this world I ever fondly loved--the love of my
+youth--my dearest and best, in the days when my heart was fresh and
+innocent and unambitious. That man was Ronald Hollister, afterwards Lord
+Hartfield. And yours is the only face that ever recalled his to my mind.
+It is but a vague likeness--a look now and then; but slight as that
+likeness is it has been enough to make my heart yearn towards you, as
+the heart of a mother to her son.'
+
+John Hammond knelt beside the sofa, and bent his handsome face over the
+pale face on the pillow, imprinting such a kiss as a son might have
+given. His eyes were full of tears.
+
+'Dear Lady Maulevrier, think that it is the spirit of the dead which
+blesses you for your fidelity to old memories,' he said, tenderly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII.
+
+BY SPECIAL LICENCE.
+
+
+After that interview with John Hammond all the arrangements for the
+marriage were planned by Lady Maulevrier with a calm and business-like
+capacity which seemed extraordinary in one so frail and helpless. For a
+little while after Hammond left her she remained lost in a reverie,
+deeply affected by the speech and manner of her granddaughter's lover,
+as he gave her that first kiss of duty and affection, the affection of
+one who in that act declared the allegiance of a close and holy bond.
+
+Yes, she told herself, this marriage, humble as it might be, was
+altogether satisfactory. Her own feeling towards the man of her
+granddaughter's choice was one of instinctive affection. Her heart had
+yearned to him from the beginning of their acquaintance; but she had
+schooled herself to hide all indications of her liking for him, she had
+made every effort to keep him at a distance, deeming his very merits a
+source of danger in a household where there were two fresh
+impressionable girls.
+
+And despite all her caution and care he had succeeded in winning one of
+those girls: and she was glad, very glad, that he had so succeeded in
+baffling her prudence. And now it was agreeable to discover that he was
+not quite such a pauper as she had supposed him to be.
+
+Her heart felt lighter than it had been for some time when she set about
+planning the wedding.
+
+The first step in the business was to send for James Steadman. He came
+immediately, grave and quiet as of old, and stood with his serious eyes
+bent upon the face of his mistress, awaiting her instructions.
+
+'Lady Mary is going to be married to Mr. Hammond, by special licence, in
+this room, to-morrow afternoon, if it can be managed so soon,' said Lady
+Maulevrier.
+
+'I am very glad to hear it, my lady,' answered Steadman, without the
+faintest indication of surprise.
+
+'Why are you so--particularly glad?' asked his mistress, looking at him
+sharply.
+
+'Because Lady Mary's presence in this house is a source of danger
+to--your arrangements. She is very energetic and enterprising--very
+shrewd--and--well, she is a woman--so I suppose there can be no harm in
+saying she is somewhat inquisitive. Things will be much safer here when
+Lady Mary is gone!'
+
+'But she will not be gone--she is not going away--except for a very
+brief honeymoon. I cannot possibly do without her. She has become
+necessary to my life, Steadman; and there is so little left of that life
+now, that there is no need for me to sacrifice the last gleams of
+sunshine. The girl is very sweet, and loving, and true. I was not half
+fond enough of her in the past; but she has made herself very dear to me
+of late. There are many things in this life, Steadman, which we only
+find out too late.'
+
+'But, surely, my lady, Lady Mary will leave Fellside to go to a home of
+her own after her marriage.'
+
+'No, I tell you, Steadman,' his mistress answered, with a touch of
+impatience; 'Lady Mary and her husband will make this house their home
+so long as I am here. It will not be long.'
+
+'God grant it may be very long before you cease to be mistress here,'
+answered Steadman, with real feeling; and then in a lower tone he went
+on: 'Pardon me, my lady, for the suggestion, but do you think it wise to
+have Mr. Hammond here as a resident?'
+
+'Why should it not be wise? Mr. Hammond is a gentleman.'
+
+'True, my lady; but any accident, such as that which brought Lady Mary
+into the old garden----'
+
+'No such accident need occur--it must not occur, Steadman,' exclaimed
+Lady Maulevrier, with kindling eyes. She who had so long ruled supreme
+was not inclined to have any desire of hers questioned. 'There must have
+been gross carelessness that day--carelessness on your part, or that
+stable door would never have been left open. The key ought to have been
+in your possession. It ought not to have been in the power of the
+stableman to open that door. As to Mr. Hammond's presence at Fellside, I
+cannot see any danger--any reason why harm should come of it, more than
+of Lord Maulevrier's presence here in the past.'
+
+'The two gentlemen are so different, my lady,' said Steadman, with a
+gloomy brow. 'His lordship is so light-hearted and careless, his mind
+taken up with his horses, guns, dogs, fishing, shooting, and all kinds
+of sport. He is not a gentleman to take much notice of anything out of
+his own line. But this Mr. Hammond is different--a very thoughtful
+gentleman, an inquiring mind, as one would say.'
+
+'Steadman, you are getting cowardly in your old age. The danger--such a
+risk as you hint at, must be growing less and less every day. After
+forty years of security----'
+
+'Security' echoed Steadman, with a monosyllabic laugh which expressed
+intense bitterness. 'Say forty years during which I have felt myself
+upon the edge of a precipice every day and every hour. Security! But
+perhaps you are right, my lady, I am growing old and nervous, a feebler
+man than I was a few years ago, feebler in body and mind. Let Mr.
+Hammond make his home here, if it pleases your ladyship to have him. So
+long as I am well and able to get about there can be no danger of
+anything awkward happening.'
+
+Lady Maulevrier looked alarmed.
+
+'But you have no expectation of falling ill, I hope, Steadman; you have
+no premonition of any malady?'
+
+'No, my lady, none--except the malady of old age. I feel that I am not
+the man I once was, that is all. My brain is getting woolly, and my
+sight is clouded now and then. And if I were to fall ill suddenly----'
+
+'Oh, it would be terrible, it would be a dire calamity! There is your
+wife, certainly, to look after things, but----'
+
+'My wife would do her best, my lady. She is a faithful creature, but she
+is not--yes, without any unkindness I must say that Mrs. Steadman is not
+a genius!'
+
+'Oh, Steadman, you must not fail me! I am horror-stricken at the mere
+idea,' exclaimed Lady Maulevrier. 'After forty years--great God! it
+would be terrible. Lesbia, Mary, Maulevrier! the great, malignant,
+babbling world outside these doors. I am hemmed round with perils. For
+God's sake preserve your strength. Take care of your health. You are my
+strong rock. If you feel that there is anything amiss with you, or that
+your strength is failing, consult Mr. Horton--neglect no precaution. The
+safety of this house, of the family honour, hangs upon you.'
+
+'Pray do not agitate yourself, my lady,' entreated Steadman. 'I was
+wrong to trouble you with my fears. I shall not fail you, be sure.
+Although I am getting old, I shall hold out to the end.'
+
+'The end cannot be very far off,' said Lady Maulevrier, gloomily.
+
+'I thought that forty years ago, my lady. But you are right--the end
+must be near now. Yes, it must be near. And now, my lady, your orders
+about the wedding.'
+
+'It will take place to-morrow, as I told you, in this room. You will go
+to the Vicar and ask him to officiate. His two daughters will no doubt
+consent to be Lady Mary's bridesmaids. You will make the request in my
+name. Perhaps the Vicar will call this afternoon and talk matters over
+with me. Lady Mary and her husband will go to Cumberland for a brief
+honeymoon--a week at most--and then they will come back to Fellside.
+Tell Mrs. Power to prepare the east wing for them. She will make one of
+the rooms into a boudoir for Lady Mary; and let everything be as bright
+and pretty as good taste can make it. She can telegraph to London for
+any new furniture that may be wanted to complete her arrangements. And
+now send Lady Mary to me.'
+
+Mary came, fresh from the pine-wood, where she had been walking with her
+lover; her lover of to-day, her husband to-morrow. He had told her how
+he was to start for York directly after luncheon, and to come back by
+the earliest train next day, and how they two were to be married
+to-morrow afternoon.
+
+'It is more wonderful than any dream that I ever dreamt.' exclaimed
+Mary. 'But how can it be? I have not even a wedding gown.'
+
+'A fig for wedding gowns! It is Mary I am to wed, not her gown. Were you
+clad like patient Grisel I should be content. Besides you have no end of
+pretty gowns. And you are to be dressed for travelling, remember; for I
+am going to carry you off to Lodore directly we are married, and you
+will have to clamber up the rocky bed of the waterfall to see the sun
+set behind the Borrowdale hills in your wedding gown. It had better be
+one of those neat little tailor gowns which become you so well.'
+
+'I will wear whatever you tell me,' answered Mary. 'I shall always dress
+to please you, and not the outside world.'
+
+'Will you, my Griselda. Some day you shall be dressed as Grisel was--
+
+    "In a cloth of gold that brighte shone,
+    With a coroune of many a riche stone."
+
+'Yes, you darling, when you are Lord Chancellor; and till that day comes
+I will wear tailor gowns, linsey-wolsey, anything you like,' cried Mary,
+laughing.
+
+She ran to her grandmother's room, ineffably content, without a thought
+of trousseau or finery; but then Mary Haselden was one of those few
+young women for whom life is not a question of fashionable raiment.
+
+'Mary, I am going to send you off upon your honeymoon to-morrow
+afternoon,' said Lady Maulevrier, smiling at the bright, happy face
+which was bent over her. 'Will you come back and nurse a fretful old
+woman when the honeymoon is over?'
+
+'The honeymoon will never be over,' answered Mary, joyously. 'Our wedded
+life is to be one long honeymoon. But I will come back in a very few
+days, and take care of you. I am not going to let you do without me, now
+that you have learnt to love me.'
+
+'And will you be content to stay with me when your husband has gone to
+London?'
+
+'Yes, but I shall try to prevent his going very often, or staying very
+long. I shall try to wind myself into his heart, so that there will be
+an aching void there when we are parted.'
+
+Lady Maulevrier proceeded to tell Mary all her arrangements. Three
+handsome rooms in the east wing, a bedroom, dressing-room, and boudoir,
+were to be made ready for the newly-married couple. Fräulein Müller was
+to be dismissed with a retiring pension, in order that Lady Mary and her
+husband might feel themselves master and mistress in the lower part of
+the house.
+
+'And if your husband really means to devote himself to literature, he
+can have no better workshop than the library I have put together,' said
+Lady Maulevrier.
+
+'And no better adviser and guide than you, dear grandmother, you who
+have read everything that has been written worth reading during the last
+half century.'
+
+'I have read a great deal, Mary, but I hardly know if I am any wiser on
+that account,' answered Lady Maulevrier. 'After all, however much of
+other people's wisdom we may devour, it is in ourselves that we are
+thus, or thus. Our past follies rise up against us at the end of life;
+and we see how little our book-learning has helped us to stand against
+foolish impulses, against evil passions. "Be good," Mary, "and let who
+will be wise," as the poet says. A faithful heart is your only anchor in
+the stormy seas of life. My dear, I am so glad you are going to be
+married.'
+
+'It is very sudden,' said Mary.
+
+'Very sudden; yet in your case that does not much matter. You have quite
+made up your mind about Mr. Hammond, I believe.'
+
+'Made up my mind! I began to worship him the first night he came here.'
+
+'Foolish child. Well, there is no need to wait for settlements. You have
+only your allowance as Lord Maulevrier's daughter--a first charge on the
+estate, which cannot be made away with or anticipated, and of which no
+husband can deprive you.'
+
+'He shall have every sixpence of it,' murmured Mary.
+
+'And Mr. Hammond, though he tells me he is better off than I supposed,
+can have nothing to settle. So there will be nothing forfeited by a
+marriage without settlements.'
+
+Mary could not enter upon the question. It was even of less importance
+than the wedding gown.
+
+The gong sounded for luncheon.
+
+'Steadman's dogcart is to take Mr. Hammond to the station at half-past
+two,' said Lady Maulevrier, 'so you had better go and give him his
+luncheon.'
+
+Mary needed no second bidding. She flew downstairs, and met her lover in
+the hall.
+
+What a happy luncheon it was! Fräulein 'mounched, and mounched, and
+mounched,' like the sailor's wife eating chestnuts: but those two lovers
+lunched upon moonshine, upon each other's little words and little looks,
+upon their own ineffable bliss. They sat side by side, and helped each
+other to the nicest things on the table, but neither could eat, and
+they got considerably mixed in their way of eating, taking chutnee with
+strawberry cream, and currant jelly with asparagus. What did it matter?
+Everything tasted of bliss.
+
+'You have had absolutely nothing to eat,' said Mary, piteously, as the
+dogcart came grinding round upon the dry gravel.
+
+'Oh, I have done splendidly--thanks. I have just had a macaroon and some
+of that capital gorgonzola. God bless you, dearest, and _à revoir, à
+revoir_ to-morrow.'
+
+'And to-morrow I shall be Mary Hammond,' cried Mary, clasping her hands.
+'Isn't it capital fun?'
+
+They were in the porch alone. The servants were all at dinner, save the
+groom with the cart. Miss Müller was still munching at the well-spread
+table in the dining-room.
+
+John Hammond folded his sweetheart in his arms for one brief embrace;
+there was no time for loitering. In another moment he was springing into
+the cart. A shake of the reins, and he was driving slowly down the steep
+avenue.
+
+'Life is full of partings,' Mary said to herself, as she watched the
+last glimpse of the dogcart between the trees down in the road below,
+'but this one is to be very short, thank God.'
+
+She wondered what she should do with herself for the rest of the
+afternoon, and finally, finding that she was not wanted by her
+grandmother until afternoon tea, she set out upon a round of visits to
+her favourite cottagers, to bid them a long farewell as a spinster.
+
+'You'll be away a long time, I suppose, Lady Mary?' said one of her
+humble friends; 'you'll be going to Switzerland or Italy, or some of
+those foreign parts where great ladies and gentlemen travel for their
+honeymoons?'
+
+But Mary declared that she would be absent a week at longest. She was
+coming back to take care of her invalid grandmother; and she was not
+going to marry a great gentleman, but a man who would have to work for
+his living.
+
+She went back to Fellside, and read the _Times_, and poured out Lady
+Maulevrier's tea, and sat on her low stool by the sofa, and the old and
+the young woman were as happy and confidential together as if they had
+been always the nearest and dearest to each other. Her ladyship had seen
+Miss Müller, and had informed that excellent person that her services at
+Fellside would no longer be required after Lady Mary's marriage; but
+that her devotion to her duties during the last fourteen years should be
+rewarded by a pension which, together with her savings, would enable her
+to spend the rest of her days in repose. Miss Müller was duly grateful,
+and owned to a tender longing for the _Heimath_, and declared herself
+ready to retire from her post whenever her ladyship pleased.
+
+'I shall go back to Germany directly I leave you, and I shall live and
+die there, unless I am wanted by one of my old pupils. But should Lady
+Lesbia or Lady Mary need my services for their daughters, in days to
+come, they can command me. For no one else will I abandon the
+Fatherland.'
+
+The Fräulein thus easily disposed of, Lady Mary felt that matrimony
+would verily mean independence. And yet she was prepared to regard her
+husband as her master. She meant to obey him in all meekness and
+reverence of spirit.
+
+She spent the rest of the afternoon and the whole of the evening in her
+grandmother's sitting-room, dining _tête-à-tête_ with the invalid for
+the first time since her illness. Lady Maulevrier talked much of Mary's
+future, and of Lesbia's; but it was evident that she was full of
+uneasiness upon the latter subject.
+
+'I don't know what Lesbia is going to do with her life,' she said, with
+a sigh. 'Her letters tell me of nothing but gowns and parties; and
+Georgina Kirkbank can only expatiate upon Mr. Smithson's wealth, and the
+grand position he is going to occupy by-and-by. I should like to see
+both my granddaughters married before I die--yes, I should like to see
+Lesbia's fate secure, if she were to be only Lady Lesbia Smithson.'
+
+'She cannot fail to make a good match, grandmother,' said Mary.
+
+'I am beginning to lose faith in her future,' answered Lady Maulevrier.
+'There seems to be a fatality about the career of particularly
+attractive girls. They are too confident of their power to succeed in
+life. They trifle with fortune, fascinate the wrong people, and keep the
+right people at arm's length. I think if I had been Lesbia's guide in
+society her first season would have counted for more than it is likely
+to count for under Lady Kirkbank's management. I should have awakened
+Lesbia from the dream of dress and dancing--the mere butterfly life of a
+girl who never looks beyond the present moment. But now go and give
+orders about your packing, Mary. It is past ten, and Clara had better
+pack your trunks early to-morrow morning.'
+
+Clara was a modest Easedale damsel, who had been promoted to be Lady
+Mary's personal attendant, when the more mature Kibble had gone away
+with Lady Lesbia. Mary required very little waiting upon, but she was
+not the less glad to have a neat little smiling maiden devoted to her
+service, ready to keep her rooms neat and trim, to go on errands to the
+cottagers, to arrange the flowers in the old china bowls, and to make
+herself generally useful.
+
+It seemed a strange thing to have to furnish a trousseau from the
+wardrobe of everyday life--a trousseau in which nothing, except
+half-a-dozen pairs of gloves, a pair of boots, and a few odds and ends
+of lace and ribbons would be actually new. Mary thought very little of
+the matter, but the position of things struck her maid as altogether
+extraordinary and unnatural.
+
+'You should have seen the things Miss Freeman had, Lady Mary,' exclaimed
+the damsel, 'the daughter of that cotton-spinning gentleman from
+Manchester, who lives at The Gables--you should have seen her new gowns
+and things when she was married. Mrs. Freeman's maid keeps company with
+my brother James--he's in the stables at Freeman's, you know, Lady
+Mary--and she asked me in to look at the trousseau two days before the
+wedding. I never saw such beautiful dresses--such hats--such
+bonnets--such jackets and mantles. It was like going into one of those
+grand shops at York, and having all the things in the shop pulled out
+for one to look at--such silks and satins--and trimmed--ah! how those
+dresses was trimmed. The mystery was how the young lady could ever get
+herself into them, or sit down when she'd got one of them on.'
+
+'Instruments of torture, Clara. I should hate such gowns, even if I were
+going to marry a rich man, as I suppose Miss Freeman was.'
+
+'Not a bit of it, Lady Mary. She was only going to marry a Bolton doctor
+with a small practice; but her maid told me she was determined she'd get
+all she could out of her pa, in case he should lose all his money and go
+bankrupt. They said that trousseau cost two thousand pounds.'
+
+'Well, Clara, I'd rather have my tailor gowns, in which I can scramble
+about the ghylls and crags just as I like.' There was a pale yellow
+Indian silk, smothered with soft yellow lace, which would serve for a
+wedding gown; for indifferent as Mary was to the great clothes question,
+she wanted to look in some wise as a bride. A neat chocolate-coloured
+cloth, almost new from the tailor's hands, with a little cloth toque to
+match, would do for the wedding journey. All the details of Mary's
+wardrobe were the perfection of neatness. She had grown very neat and
+careful in her habits since her engagement, anxious to be industrious
+and frugal in all things--a really handy housewife for a hard-worked
+bread-winner. And now she was told that Mr. Hammond was not so poor as
+she had thought. She would not be obliged to stint herself, and manage,
+as she had supposed when she went about among the cottagers, taking
+lessons in household economy. It was almost a disappointment.
+
+She and Clara finished the packing that night, Mary being much too
+excited for the possibility of sleep. There was not much to pack, only
+one roomy American trunk--a trunk which held everything--a Gladstone bag
+for things that might possibly be wanted in a hurry, and a handsome
+dressing-bag, Maulevrier's last birthday gift to his sister.
+
+Mary had received no gifts from her lover, save the plain gold
+engagement ring, and a few new books sent straight from the publishers.
+Clara took care to inform her young mistress that Miss Freeman's
+sweetheart had sent her all manner of splendid presents, scent bottles,
+photograph albums, glove boxes, and other things of beauty, albeit his
+means were supposed to be _nil_. It was evident that Clara disapproved
+of Mr. Hammond's conduct in this matter, and even suspected him of
+meanness.
+
+'He did ought to have sent you his photograph, Lady Mary,' said Clara,
+with a reproachful air.
+
+'I daresay he would have done so, Clara, but he has been photographed
+only once in his life.'
+
+'Lawk a mercy, Lady Mary! Why most young gentlemen have themselves
+photographed in every new place they go to; and as Mr. Hammond has been
+a traveller, like his lordship, I made sure he'd have been photographed
+in knickerbockers and every other kind of attitude.'
+
+Mary had not refrained from asking for her lover's portrait; and he had
+told her that he had carefully abstained from having his countenance
+reproduced in any manner since his fifteenth year, when he had been
+photographed at his mother's desire.
+
+'The present fashion of photographs staring out of every stationer's
+window makes a man's face public property,' he told Mary. 'I don't want
+every street Arab in London to recognise me.'
+
+'But you are not a public man,' said Mary. 'Your photograph would not be
+in all the windows; although, in my humble opinion, you are a very
+handsome man.'
+
+Hammond blushed, laughed, and turned the conversation, and Mary had to
+exist without any picture of her lover.
+
+'Millais shall paint me in his grand Reynolds manner by-and-by,' he told
+Mary.
+
+'Millais! Oh, Jack! When will you and I be able to give a thousand or so
+for a portrait?'
+
+'Ah, when, indeed? But we may as well enjoy our day-dreams, like
+Alnaschar, without smashing our basket of crockery.'
+
+And now Mary, who had managed to exist without the picture, was to have
+the original. He was to be all her own--her master, her lord, her love,
+after to-morrow--unto eternity, in life, and in the grave, and in the
+dim hereafter beyond the grave, they two were to be one. In heaven there
+was to be no marrying or giving in marriage, Mary was told; but her own
+heart cried aloud to her that the happily wedded must remain linked in
+heaven. God would not part the blessed souls of true lovers.
+
+A short sleep, broken by happy dreams, and it was morning, Mary's
+wedding morning, fairest of summer days, July in all her beauty. Mary
+went to her grandmother's room, and waited upon her at breakfast.
+
+Lady Maulevrier was in excellent spirits.
+
+'Everything is arranged, Mary. I have had a telegram from Hammond, who
+has got the licence, and will come at half-past one. At three the Vicar
+will come to marry you, his daughters, Katie and Laura, acting as your
+bridesmaids.'
+
+'Bridesmaids!' exclaimed Mary. 'I forgot all about bridesmaids. Am I
+really to have any?'
+
+'You will have two girls of your own age to bear you company, at any
+rate. I have asked dear old Horton to be present; and he, Fräulein, and
+Maulevrier will complete the party. It will not be a brilliant wedding,
+Mary, or a costly ceremonial, except for the licence.'
+
+'And poor Jack will have to pay for that,' said Mary, with a long face.
+
+'Poor Jack refused to let me pay for it,' answered Lady Maulevrier. 'He
+is vastly independent, and I fear somewhat reckless.'
+
+'I like him for his independence; but he mustn't be reckless,' said
+Mary, severely.
+
+He was to be the master in all things! and yet she was to exercise a
+restraining influence, she was to guard him against his own weaknesses,
+his too generous impulses. Her voice was to be the voice of prudence.
+This is how Mary understood the marriage tie.
+
+Under ordinary conditions Mary would have been in the avenue, lying in
+wait for her lover, eager to get the very first glimpse of him when he
+arrived, to see him before he had brushed the dust of the journey from
+his raiment. But to-day she hung back. She stayed in her grandmother's
+room and sat beside the sofa, shy, and even a little downcast. This
+lover who was so soon to be transformed into a husband was a formidable
+personage. She dare not rush forth to greet him. Perhaps he had changed
+his mind by this time, and was sorry he had ever asked her to marry him.
+Perhaps he thought he was being hustled into a marriage. He had been
+told that he was to wait at least a year. And now, all in a moment, he
+was sent off to get a special licence. How could she be quite sure that
+he liked this kind of treatment?
+
+If there is any faith to be placed in the human countenance, Mr. Hammond
+was in no wise an unwilling bridegroom; for his face beamed with happy
+light as he came into the room presently, followed by an elderly man
+with grey hair and whiskers, and in a strictly professional frock coat,
+whom the butler announced as Mr. Dorncliffe. Lady Maulevrier looked
+startled, somewhat offended even at this intrusion, and she gave Mr.
+Dorncliffe a very haughty salutation, which was almost more crushing
+than no salutation at all.
+
+Mary stood up by her grandmother's sofa, and looked rather frightened.
+
+'Dear Lady Maulevrier,' said Hammond, 'I ventured to telegraph to my
+lawyer to meet me at York last night, and come on here with me this
+morning. He has prepared a settlement, which I should like you to hear
+him read, and which he will explain to you, if necessary, while Molly
+and I go for a stroll in the grounds.'
+
+He had never called her Molly before. He put his arm round her with a
+proud air of possession, even under her grandmother's eyes. And she
+nestled close up to his side, forgetting everything but the delight of
+belonging to him.
+
+They went downstairs, and through the billiard room to the terrace, and
+from the terrace to the tennis lawn, where John Hammond sat reading
+Heine nearly a year ago, just before he proposed to Lesbia.
+
+'Do you remember that day?' asked Mary, looking at him, solemnly.
+
+'I remember every day and every hour we have spent together since I began
+to love you,' answered Hammond.
+
+'Ah, but this was before you began to love me,' said Mary, with a
+piteous little grimace. 'This was while you were loving Lesbia as hard
+as ever you could. Don't you remember the day you proposed to her--a
+lovely summer day like this, the lake just as blue, the sun shining upon
+Fairfield just as it is shining now, and you sat there reading
+Heine--those sweet, sweet verses, that seemed made of sighs and tears;
+and every now and then you paused and looked up at Lesbia, and there was
+more love in your eyes than in all Heine's poetry, though that brims
+over with love.'
+
+'But how did you know all this, Molly? You were not here.'
+
+'I was not very far off. I was behind those bushes, watching and
+listening. I knew you were in love with Lesbia, and I thought you
+despised me, and I was very, very wretched; and I listened afterwards
+when you proposed to her there--behind the pine trees--and I hated her
+for refusing you, and I am afraid I hated you for proposing to her.'
+
+'When I ought to have been proposing to my Molly, blind fool that I
+was,' said Hammond, smiling tenderly at her, smiling, though his eyes
+were dim with tears. 'My own sweet love, it was a terrible mistake, a
+mistake that might have cost me the happiness of a lifetime. But Fate
+was very good to me, and let me have my Mary after all. And now let us
+sit down under the old red beech and talk till it is time to go and get
+ready for our wedding. I suppose one ought to brush one's hair and wash
+one's hands for that kind of thing, even when the function is not on a
+ceremonious scale.'
+
+Mary laughed.
+
+'I have a prettier gown than this to be married in, although it isn't a
+wedding gown,' she said.
+
+'Oh, by-the-by, I have something for you,' said her lover, 'something in
+the way of ornaments, but I don't suppose you'd care to wear them
+to-day. I'll run and get them.'
+
+He went back to the house, leaving Mary sitting on the rustic bench
+under the fine old copper beech, a tree that had been standing long
+before Lady Maulevrier enlarged the old stone house into a stately
+villa. He returned in a few minutes, bringing a morocco bag about the
+size of those usually carried by lawyers or lawyers' clerks.
+
+'I don't think I have given you anything since we were engaged, Mary,'
+he said, as he seated himself by her side.
+
+Mary blushed, remembering how Clara, the maid, had remarked upon this
+fact.
+
+'You gave me my ring,' she said, looking down at the massive band of
+gold, 'and you have given me ever so many delightful books.'
+
+'Those were very humble gifts, Molly: but to-day I have brought you a
+wedding present.'
+
+He opened the bag and took out a red morocco case, and then half-a-dozen
+more red morocco cases of various shapes and sizes. The first looked
+new, but the others were old-fashioned and passing shabby, as if they
+had been knocking about brokers' shops for the last quarter of a
+century.
+
+'There is my wedding gift, Mary,' he said, handing her the new case.
+
+It contained an exquisitely painted miniature of a very beautiful woman,
+in a large oval locket set with sapphires.
+
+'You have asked me for my portrait, dearest,' he said. 'I give you my
+mother's rather than my own, because I loved her as I never thought to
+love again, till I knew you. I should like you to wear that locket
+sometimes, Mary, as a kind of link between the love of the past and the
+love of the present. Were my mother living, she would welcome and
+cherish my bride and my wife. She is dead, and you and she can never
+meet on earth: but I should like you to be familiar with the face which
+was once the light of my life.'
+
+Mary's eyes filled with tears as she gazed at the face in the miniature.
+It was the portrait of a woman of about thirty--a face of exquisite
+refinement, of calm and pensive beauty.
+
+'I shall treasure this picture always, above all things,' she said: but
+'why did you have it set so splendidly, Jack? No gems were needed to
+give your mother's portrait value in my eyes.'
+
+'I know that, dearest, but I wanted to make the locket worth wearing.
+And now for the other cases. The locket is your lover's free gift, and
+is yours to keep and to bequeath to your children. These are heirlooms,
+and yours only during your husband's lifetime.'
+
+He opened one of the largest cases, and on a bed of black velvet Mary
+beheld a magnificent diamond necklace, with a large pendant. He opened
+another and displayed a set of sprays for the hair. Another contained
+earrings, another bracelets, the last a tiara.
+
+'What are they for?' gasped Mary.
+
+'For my wife to wear.'
+
+'Oh, but I could never wear such things,' she exclaimed, with an idea
+that these must be stage jewellery. 'They are paste, of course--very
+beautiful for people who like that kind of thing--but I don't.'
+
+She felt deeply shocked at this evidence of bad taste on the part of her
+lover. How the things flashed in the sunshine--but so did the crystal
+drops in the old Venetian girandoles.
+
+'No, Molly, they are not paste; they are Brazilian diamonds, and, as
+Maulevrier would say, they are as good as they make them. They are
+heirlooms, Molly. My dear mother wore them in her summer-tide of wedded
+happiness. My grandmother wore them for thirty years before her; my
+great grandmother wore them at the Court of Queen Charlotte, and they
+were worn at the Court of Queen Anne. They are nearly two hundred years
+old; and those central stones in the tiara came out of a cap worn by the
+Great Mogul, and are the largest table diamonds known. They are
+historic, Mary.'
+
+'Why, they must be worth a fortune.'
+
+'They are valued at something over seventy thousand pounds.'
+
+'But why don't you sell them?' exclaimed Mary, opening her eyes wide
+with surprise, 'they would give you a handsome income.'
+
+'They are not mine to sell, Molly. Did not I tell you that they are
+heirlooms? They are the family jewels of the Countesses of Hartfield.'
+
+'Then what are you?'
+
+'Ronald Hollister, Earl of Hartfield, and your adoring lover!'
+
+Mary gave a cry of surprise, a cry of distress even.
+
+'Oh, that is too dreadful!' she exclaimed; 'grandmother will be so
+unhappy. She had set her heart upon Lesbia marrying Lord Hartfield, the
+son of the man _she_ loved.'
+
+'I got wind of her wish more than a year ago,' said Hartfield, 'from
+your brother; and he and I hatched a little plot between us. He told me
+Lesbia was not worthy of his friend's devotion--told me that she was
+vain and ambitious--that she had been educated to be so. I determined to
+come and try my fate. I would try to win her as plain John Hammond. If
+she was a true woman, I told myself, vanity and ambition would be blown
+to the four winds, provided I could win her love. I came, I saw her; and
+to see was to love her. God knows I tried honestly to win her; but I
+had sworn to myself that I would woo her as John Hammond, and I did not
+waver in my resolution--no, not when a word would have turned the scale.
+She liked me, I think, a little; but she did not like the notion of an
+obscure life as the wife of a hardworking professional man. The pomps
+and vanities of this world had it against love or liking, and she gave
+me up. I thank God that the pomps and vanities prevailed; for this happy
+chance gave me Mary, my sweet Wordsworthian damsel, found, like the
+violet or the celandine, by the wayside, in Wordsworth's own country.'
+
+'And you are Lord Hartfield!' exclaimed Mary, still lost in wonder, and
+with no elation at this change in the aspect of her life. 'I always knew
+you were a great man. But poor grandmother! It will be a dreadful
+disappointment to her.'
+
+'I think not. I think she has learned my Molly's value; rather late, as
+I learned it; and I believe she will be glad that one of her
+granddaughters should marry the son of her first lover. Let us go to
+her, love, and see if she is reconciled to the idea, and whether the
+settlement is ready for execution. Dorncliffe and his clerk were working
+at it half through the night.'
+
+'What is the good of a settlement?' asked Mary. 'I'm sure I don't want
+one.'
+
+'Lady Hartfield must not be dependent upon her husband's whim or
+pleasure for her milliner's bill or her private charities,' answered her
+lover, smiling at her eagerness to repudiate anything business-like.
+
+'But I would rather be dependent on your pleasure. I shall never have
+any milliner's bills; and I am sure you would never deny me money for
+charity.'
+
+'You shall not have to ask me for it, except when you have exceeded your
+pin-money. I hope you will do that now and then, just to afford me the
+pleasure of doing you a favour.'
+
+'Hartfield,' repeated Mary, to herself, as they went towards the house;
+'shall I have to call you Hartfield? I don't like the name nearly so
+well as Jack.'
+
+'You shall call me Jack for old sake's sake,' said Hartfield, tenderly.
+
+'How did you think of such a name as Jack?'
+
+'Rather an effort of genius, wasn't it. Well, first and foremost I was
+christened Ronald John--all the Hollisters are christened John--name of
+the founder of the race; and, secondly, Maulevrier and I were always
+plain Mr. Morland and Mr. Hammond in our travels, and always called each
+other Jack and Jim.'
+
+'How nice!' said Mary; 'would you very much mind our being plain Mr. and
+Mrs. Hammond, while we are on our honeymoon trip?'
+
+'I should like it of all things.'
+
+'So should I. People will not take so much notice of us, and we can do
+what we like, and go where we like.'
+
+'Delightful! We'll even disguise ourselves as Cook's tourists, if you
+like. I would not mind.'
+
+They were at the door of Lady Maulevrier's sitting room by this time.
+They went in, and were greeted with smiles.
+
+'Let me look at the Countess of Hartfield that is to be in half an
+hour,' said her ladyship. 'Oh, Mary, Mary, what a blind idiot I have
+been, and what a lucky girl you are! I told you once that you were wiser
+than Lesbia, but I little thought how much wiser you had been.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV.
+
+'OUR LOVE WAS NEW, AND THEN BUT IN THE SPRING.'
+
+
+Henley Regatta was over. It had passed like a tale that is told; like
+Epsom and Ascot, and all the other glories of the London season. Happy
+those for whom the glory of Henley, the grace of Ascot, the fever of
+Epsom, are not as weary as a twice-told tale, bringing with them only
+bitterest memories of youth that has fled, of hopes that have withered,
+of day-dreams that have never been realised. There are some to whom that
+mad hastening from pleasure to pleasure, that rush from scene to scene
+of excitement, that eager crowding into one day and night of gaieties
+which might fairly relieve the placid monotony of a month's domesticity,
+a month's professional work--some there are to whom this Vanity Fair is
+as a treadmill or the turning of a crank, the felon's deepest
+humiliation, purposeless, unprofitable, labour.
+
+The regatta was over, and Lady Kirkbank and her charge hastened back to
+Arlington Street. Theirs was the very first departure; albeit Mr.
+Smithson pleaded hard for a prolongation of their visit. The weather was
+exceptionally lovely, he urged. Water picnics were delightful just
+now--the banks were alive with the colour of innumerable wild flowers,
+as beautiful and more poetical than the gorgeous flora of the Amazon or
+the Paraguay river. And Lady Lesbia had developed a genius for punting;
+and leaning against her pole, with her hair flying loose and sleeves
+rolled up above the elbow, she was a subject for canvas or marble,
+Millais or Adams Acton.
+
+'When we are in Italy I will have her modelled, just in that attitude,
+and that dress,' said Mr. Smithson. 'She will make a lovely companion
+for my Reading Girl: one all repose and reverie, the other all life and
+action. Dear Lady Kirkbank, you really must stay for another week at
+least. Why go back to the smoke and sultriness of town? Here we can
+almost live on the water; and I will send to London for some people to
+make music for us in the evenings, or if you miss your little game at
+"Nap," we will play for an hour or so every night. It shall not be my
+fault if my house is not pleasant for you.'
+
+'Your house is charming, and I shall be here only too often in the days
+to come; you will have more than enough of me _then_, I promise you,'
+replied Georgie, with her girlish laugh, 'but we must not stop a day
+longer now. People would begin to talk. Besides, we have engagements for
+every hour of the week that is coming, and for a fortnight after; and
+then I suppose I ought to take Lesbia to the North to see her
+grandmother, and to discuss all the preparations and arrangements for
+this very serious event in which you and Lesbia are to be the chief
+performers.'
+
+'I shall be very glad to go to Grasmere myself, and to make the
+acquaintance of my future grandmother-in-law,' said Mr. Smithson.
+
+'You will be charmed with her. She belongs to the old school--something
+of a fossil, perhaps, but a very dignified fossil. She has grown old in
+a rustic seclusion, and knows less of _our_ world than a mother abbess;
+but she has read immensely, and is wonderfully clever. I am bound to
+tell you that she has very lofty ideas about her granddaughter; and I
+believe she will only be reconciled to Lesbia's marriage with a commoner
+by the notion that you are sure of a peerage. I ventured to hint as much
+in my letter to Lady Maulevrier yesterday.'
+
+A shade of sullenness crept over Horace Smithson's visage.
+
+'I should hope that such settlements as I am in a position to make will
+convince Lady Maulevrier that I am a respectable suitor for her
+granddaughter, ex peerage,' he said, somewhat haughtily.
+
+'My dear Smithson, did I not tell you that poor Lady Maulevrier is a
+century behind the times,' exclaimed Lady Kirkbank, with an aggrieved
+look. 'If she were one of _us_, of course she would know that wealth is
+the paramount consideration, and that you are quite the best match of
+the season. But she is dreadfully _arriérée_, poor dear thing; and she
+must have amused herself with the day-dream of seeing Lesbia a duchess,
+or something of that kind. I shall tell her that Lesbia can be one of
+the queens of society without having strawberry leaves on her coach
+panels, and that my dear friend Horace Smithson is a much better match
+than a seedy duke. So don't look cross, my dear fellow; in me you have a
+friend who will never desert you.'
+
+'Thanks,' said Smithson, inwardly resolving that, so soon as this
+little transaction of his marriage were over, he would see as little of
+Georgie Kirkbank and her cotton frocks and schoolgirl hats as bare
+civility would allow.
+
+He had promised her that she should be the richer by a neat little
+bundle of fat and flourishing railway stock when his happiness was
+secured, and he was not going to break his promise. But he did not mean
+to give George and Georgie free quarters at Rood Hall, or at Cowes, or
+Deauville; and he meant to withdraw his wife altogether from Lady
+Kirkbank's pinchbeck set.
+
+What were Lesbia's feelings in the early morning after the last day of
+the regatta, as she slowly paced the lavender walk in the Ladies'
+Garden, alone?--for happily Mr. Smithson was not so early a riser as the
+Grasmere-bred damsel, and she had this fresh morning hour to herself. Of
+what was she thinking as she paced slowly up and down the broad gravel
+walk, between two rows of tall old bushes, on which masses of purple
+blossom stood up from the pale grey foliage, silvery where the summer
+breeze touched it?
+
+Well, she was thinking first what a grand old place Rood Hall was, and
+that it was in a manner hers henceforward. She was to be mistress of
+this house, and of other houses, each after its fashion as perfect as
+Rood Hall. She was to have illimitable money at her command, to spend
+and give away as she liked. She, who yesterday had been tortured by the
+idea of owing a paltry three thousand pounds, was henceforward to count
+her thousands by the hundred. Her senses reeled before that dazzling
+vision of figures with rows of ciphers after them, one cipher more or
+less meaning the difference between thousands and millions. Everybody
+had agreed in assuring her that Mr. Smithson was inordinately rich.
+Everybody had considered it his or her business to give her information
+about the gentleman's income; clearly implying thereby that in the
+opinion of society Mr. Smithson's merits as a suitor were a question of
+so much bullion.
+
+Could she doubt--she who had learned in one short season to know what
+the world was made of and what it most valued--could she, steeped to the
+lips in the wisdom of Lady Kirkbank's set, doubt for an instant that she
+was making a better match in the eye of society, than if she had married
+a man of the highest lineage in all England, a peer of the highest rank,
+without large means? She knew that money was power, that a man might
+begin life as a pot-boy or a greengrocer, a knacker or a dust
+contractor, and climb to the topmost pinnacles, were he only rich
+enough. She knew that society would eat such a man's dinners and dance
+at his wife's balls, and pretend to think him an altogether exceptional
+man, make believe to admire him for his own sake, to think his wife most
+brilliant among women, if he were only rich enough. And could she doubt
+that society would bow down to her as Lady Lesbia Smithson? She had
+learned a great deal in her single season, and she knew how society was
+influenced and governed, almost as well as Sir Robert Walpole knew how
+human nature could be moulded and directed at the will of a shrewd
+diplomatist. She knew that in the fashionable world every man and every
+woman, every child even, has his or her price, and may be bought and
+sold at pleasure. She had her price, she, Lesbia, the pearl of Grasmere;
+and the price having been fairly bidden she had surrendered to the
+bidder.
+
+'I suppose I always meant to marry him,' she thought, pausing in her
+promenade to gaze across the verdant landscape, a fertile vale, against
+a background of low hills. All the landscape, to the edge of those
+hills, belonged to Mr. Smithson. 'Yes, I must have meant to give way at
+last, or I should hardly have tolerated his attentions. It would have
+been a pity to refuse such a place as this; and, he is quite
+gentlemanlike; and as I have done with all romantic ideas, I do not see
+why I should not learn to like him very much.'
+
+She dismissed the idea of Smithson lightly, with this conclusion, which
+she believed very virtuous; and then as she resumed her walk her
+thoughts reverted to the Park Lane Palace.
+
+'I hardly know whether I like it,' she mused languidly; 'beautiful as it
+is, it is only a reproduction of bygone splendour, and it is painfully
+excruciating now. For my own part I would much rather have the shabbiest
+old house which had belonged to one's ancestors, which had come to one
+as a heritage, by divine right as it were, instead of being bought with
+newly made money. To my mind it would rank higher. Yet I doubt if
+anybody nowadays sets a pin's value upon ancestors. People ask, Who is
+he? but they only mean, How much has he? And provided a person is not
+absolutely in trade, not actually engaged in selling soap, or matches,
+or mustard, society doesn't care a straw how his money has been made.
+The only secondary question is, How long will it last? And that is of
+course important.'
+
+Musing thus, wordly wisdom personified, the maiden looked up and saw her
+lover entering at the light little iron gate which gave entrance to this
+feminine Eden. She went to meet him, looking all simplicity and
+freshness in her white morning gown and neat little Dunstable hat. It
+seemed to him as he gazed at her almost as if this delicate, sylph-like
+beauty were some wild white flower of the woods personified.
+
+She gave him her hand graciously, but he drew her to his breast and
+kissed her, with the air of a man who was exercising an indisputable
+right. She supposed that it was his right, and she submitted, but
+released herself as quickly as possible.
+
+'My dearest, how lovely you look in this morning light,' he exclaimed,
+'while all the other women are upstairs making up their faces to meet
+the sun, and we shall see every shade of bismuth by-and-by, from pale
+mauve to purple.'
+
+'It is very uncivil of you to say such a thing of your guests,'
+exclaimed Lesbia.
+
+'But they all indulge in bismuth--you must be quite aware of that. They
+call the stuff by different names--Blanc Rosati, Crême de l'Imperatrice,
+Milk of Beauty, Perline, Opaline, Ivorine--but it means bismuth all the
+same. Expose your fashionable beauty to the fumes of sewer-gas, and that
+dazzling whiteness would turn to a dull brown hue, or even black. Thank
+heaven, my Lesbia wears real lilies and roses. Have you been here long?'
+
+'About half an hour'
+
+'I only wish I had known. I should not have dawdled so long over my
+dressing.'
+
+'I am very glad you did not know,' Lesbia answered coolly. 'Do you
+suppose I never want to be alone? Life in London is perpetual turmoil;
+one's eyes grow weary with ever-moving crowds, one's ears ache
+with trying to distinguish one voice among the buzz of voices.'
+
+'Then why go back to town? Why go back to the turmoil and the treadmill?
+It is only a kind of treadmill, after all, though we choose to call it
+pleasure. Stay here, Lesbia, and let us live upon the river, and among
+the flowers,' urged Smithson, with as romantic an air as if he had never
+heard of contango, or bulling and bearing; and yet only half an hour
+ago, while his valet was shaving him, he was debating within himself
+whether he should be bear or bull in his influence upon certain stock.
+
+It was supposed that he never went near the city, that he had shaken the
+dust of Lombard Street and the House off his shoes, that his fortune was
+made, and he had no further need of speculation. Yet the proverb holds
+good with the stock-jobber. 'He who has once drunk will drink again.' Of
+that fountain there is no satiety.
+
+'Stay and hear the last of the nightingales,' he murmured; 'we are famous
+for our nightingales.'
+
+'I wonder you don't order a _fricassée_ of their tongues, like that
+loathsome person in Roman history.'
+
+'I hope I shall never resemble any loathsome person. Why can you not
+stay?'
+
+'Why, because it is not etiquette, Lady Kirkbank says.'
+
+'Lady Kirkbank, eh? _la belle farce_, Lady Kirkbank standing out for
+etiquette.'
+
+'Don't laugh at my chaperon, sir. Upon what rock can a poor girl lean if
+you undermine her faith in her chaperon, sir.'
+
+'I hope you will have a better guardian before you are a month older. I
+mean to be a very strong rock, Lesbia. You do not know how firmly I
+shall stand between you and all the perils of society. You have been but
+poorly guarded hitherto.'
+
+'You talk as if you mean to be an abominable tyrant,' said Lesbia. 'If
+you don't take care I shall change my mind, and recall my promise.'
+
+'Not on that account, Lesbia: every woman likes a man who stands up for
+his own. It is only your invertebrate husband whose wife drifts into the
+divorce court. I mean to keep and hold the prize I have won. When is it
+to be, dearest--our wedding day?'
+
+'Not for ages, I hope--some time next summer, at the earliest.'
+
+'You would not be so cruel as to keep me waiting a year?'
+
+'Why not?'
+
+'You would not ask that if you loved me.'
+
+'You are asking too much,' said Lesbia, with a flash of defiance. 'There
+has been nothing said about love yet. You asked me to be your wife, and
+I said yes--meaning that at some remote period such a thing might be.'
+
+She knew that the man was her slave--slave to her beauty, slave to her
+superior rank--and she was determined not to lessen the weight of his
+chain by so much as a feather.
+
+'Did not that promise imply something like love?' he asked, earnestly.
+
+'Perhaps it implied a little gratitude for your devotion, which I have
+neither courted nor encouraged; a little respect for your talents, your
+perseverance--a little admiration for your wonderful success in life.
+Perhaps love may follow these sentiments, naturally, easily, if you are
+very patient; but if you talk about our being married before next year,
+you will simply make me hate you.'
+
+'Then I will say very little, except to remind you that there is no
+earthly reason why we should not be married next month. October and
+November are the best months for Rome, and I heard you say last night
+you were pining to see Rome.'
+
+'What then--cannot Lady Kirkbank take me to Rome?'
+
+'And introduce you to the rowdiest people in the city,' cried Mr.
+Smithson. 'Lesbia, I adore you. It is the dream of my life to be your
+husband; but if you are going to spend a winter in Italy with Lady
+Kirkbank, I renounce my right, I surrender my hope. You will not be the
+wife of my dreams after that.'
+
+'Do you assert a right to control my life during our engagement?'
+
+'Some little right; above all, the privilege of choosing your friends.
+And that is one reason why I most fervently desire our marriage should
+not be delayed. You would find it difficult, impossible perhaps, to get
+out of Lady Kirkbank's claws while you are single; but once my wife,
+that amiable old person can be made to keep her distance.'
+
+'Lady Kirkbank's claws! What a horrible way in which to speak of a
+friend. I thought you adored Lady Kirkbank.'
+
+'So I do. We all adore her, but not as a guide for youth. As a specimen
+of the elderly female of the latter half of the nineteenth century, she
+is perfect. Such gush, such juvenility, such broad views, such an utter
+absence of starch; but as a lamp for the footsteps of girlhood--no,
+_there_ we must pause.'
+
+'You are very ungrateful. Do you know that poor Lady Kirkbank has been
+most strenuous in your behalf?'
+
+'Oh, yes, I know that.'
+
+'And you are not grateful?'
+
+'I intend to be very grateful, so grateful as to entirely satisfy Lady
+Kirkbank.'
+
+'You are horribly cynical. That reminds me, there was a poor girl whom
+Lady Kirkbank had under her wing one season--a Miss Trinder, to whom I
+am told you behaved shamefully.'
+
+'There was a parson's daughter who threw herself at my head in a most
+audacious way, and who behaved so badly, egged on by Lady Kirkbank, that
+I had to take refuge in flight. Do you suppose I am the kind of man to
+marry the first adventurous damsel who takes a fancy to my town house,
+and thinks it would be a happy hunting ground for a herd of brothers and
+sisters? Miss Trinder was shocking bad style, and her designs were
+transparent from the very beginning! I let her flirt as much as she
+liked; and when she began to be seriously sentimental I took wing for
+the East.'
+
+'Was she pretty?' asked Lesbia, not displeased at this contemptuous
+summing up of poor Belle Trinder's story.
+
+'If you admire the Flemish type, as illustrated by Rubens, she was
+lovely. A complexion of lilies and roses--cabbage roses, _bien entendu_,
+which were apt to deepen into peonies after champagne and mayonaise at
+Ascot or Sandown--a figure--oh--well--a tremendous figure--hair of an
+auburn that touched perilously on the confines of red--large,
+serviceable feet, and an appetite--the appetite of a ploughman's
+daughter reared upon short commons.'
+
+'You are very cruel to a girl who evidently admired you.'
+
+'A fig for her admiration! She wanted to live in my house and spend my
+money.'
+
+'There goes the gong,' exclaimed Lesbia; 'pray let us go to breakfast.
+You are hideously cynical, and I am wofully tired of you.'
+
+And as they strolled back to the house, by lavender walk and rose
+garden, and across the dewy lawn, Lesbia questioned herself as to
+whether she was one whit better or more dignified than Isabella Trinder.
+She wore her rue with a difference, that was all.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV.
+
+'ALL FANCY, PRIDE, AND FICKLE MAIDENHOOD.'
+
+
+The return to Arlington Street meant a return to the ceaseless whirl of
+gaiety. Even at Rood Hall life had been as near an approach to perpetual
+motion as one could hope for in this world; but the excitement and the
+hurrying and scampering in Berkshire had a rustic flavour; there were
+moments that were almost repose, a breathing space between the blue
+river and the blue sky, in a world that seemed made of green fields and
+hanging woods, the plashing of waters, and the song of the lark. But in
+London the very atmosphere was charged with hurry and agitation; the
+freshness was gone from the verdure of the parks; the glory of the
+rhododendrons had faded; the Green Park below Lady Kirkbank's mansion
+was baked and rusty; the towers of the Houses of Parliament yonder were
+dimly seen in a mist of heat. London air tasted of smoke and dust,
+vibrated with the incessant roll of carriages, and the trampling of
+multitudinous feet.
+
+There are women of rank who can take the London season quietly, and live
+their own lives in the midst of the whirl and the riot--women for whom
+that squirrel-like circulation round and round the fashionable wheel has
+no charm--women who only receive people they like, only go into society
+that is congenial. But Lady Kirkbank was not one of these. The advance
+of age made her only more keen in the pursuit of pleasure. She would
+have abandoned herself to despair had the glass over the mantelpiece in
+her boudoir ceased to be choked and littered with cards--had her book of
+engagements shown a blank page. Happily there were plenty of people--if
+not all of them the best people--who wanted Sir George and Lady Kirkbank
+at their parties. The gentleman was sporting and harmless, the lady was
+good-natured, and just sufficiently eccentric to be amusing without
+degenerating into a bore. And this year she was asked almost everywhere,
+for the sake of the beauty who went under her wing. Lesbia had been as a
+pearl of price to her chaperon, from a social point of view; and now
+that she was engaged to Horace Smithson she was likely to be even more
+valuable.
+
+Mr. Smithson had promised Lady Kirkbank, sportively as it were, and upon
+the impulse of the moment, as he would have offered to wager a dozen of
+gloves, that were he so happy as to win her _protégée's_ hand he would
+find her an investment for, say, a thousand, which would bring her in
+twenty per cent.; nay, more, he would also find the thousand, which
+would have been the initial difficulty on poor Georgie's part. But this
+little matter was in Georgie's mind a detail, compared with the
+advantages to accrue to her indirectly from Lesbia's union with one of
+the richest men in London.
+
+Lady Kirkbank had brought about many good matches, and had been too
+often rewarded with base ingratitude upon the part of her _protégées_,
+after marriage; but there was a touch of Arcady in the good soul's
+nature, and she was always trustful. She told herself that Lesbia would
+not be ungrateful, would not basely kick down the ladder by which she
+had mounted to heights empyrean, would not cruelly shelve the friend who
+had pioneered her to high fortune. She counted upon making the house in
+Park Lane as her own house, upon being the prime mover of all Lesbia's
+hospitalities, the supervisor of her visiting list, the shadow behind
+the throne.
+
+There were balls and parties nightly, dinners, luncheons,
+garden-parties; and yet there was a sense of waning in the glory of the
+world--everybody felt that the fag-end of the season was approaching.
+All the really great entertainments were over--the Cabinet dinners, the
+Reception at the Foreign Office, the last of the State balls and
+concerts. Some of the best people had already left town; and senators
+were beginning to complain that they saw no prospect of early
+deliverance. There was Goodwood still to look forward to; and after
+Goodwood the Deluge--or rather Cowes Regatta, about which Lady
+Kirkbank's set were already talking.
+
+Lady Lesbia was to be at Cowes for the Regatta week. That was a settled
+thing. Mr. Smithson's schooner-yacht, the Cayman, was to be her hotel.
+It was to be Lady Kirkbank and Lady Lesbia's yacht for the nonce; and
+Mr. Smithson was to live on shore at his villa, and at that aristocratic
+club to which, by Maulevrier's influence, and on the score of his
+approaching marriage with an earl's daughter, he had been just selected.
+He would be only Lady Kirkbank's visitor on board the Cayman. The severe
+etiquette of the situation would therefore not be infringed; and yet Mr.
+Smithson would have the happiness of seeing his betrothed sole and
+sovereign mistress of his yacht, and of spending the long summer days at
+her feet. Even to Lady Lesbia this idea of the yacht was not without its
+charm. She had never been on board such a yacht as the Cayman; she was a
+good sailor, as testified by many an excursion, in hired sailing boats,
+at Tynemouth, and St. Bees; and she knew that she would be the queen of
+the hour. She accepted Mr. Smithson's invitation for the Cowes week more
+graciously than she was wont to receive his attentions, and was pleased
+to say that the whole thing would be rather enjoyable.
+
+'It will be simple enchantment,' exclaimed the more enthusiastic
+Georgie Kirkbank. 'There is nothing so rapturous as life on board a
+yacht; there is a flavour of adventure, a _sansgêne_, a--in short
+everything in the world that I like. I shall wear my cotton frocks, and
+give myself up to enjoyment, lie on the deck and look up at the blue
+sky, too deliciously idle even to read the last horrid thing of Zola's.'
+
+But the Cowes Regatta was nearly three weeks ahead; and in the meantime
+there was Goodwood, and the ravelled threads of the London season had to
+be wound up. And by this time it was known everywhere that the affair
+between Mr. Smithson and Maulevrier's sister was really on. 'It's as
+settled a business as the entries and bets for next year's Derby,' said
+one lounger to another in the smoking-room of the Haute Gomme. 'Play or
+pay, don't you know.'
+
+Lady Kirkbank and Lesbia had both written to Lady Maulevrier, Lesbia
+writing somewhat coldly, very briefly, and in a half defiant tone, to
+the effect that she had accepted Mr. Smithson's offer, and that she
+hoped her grandmother would be pleased with a match which everybody
+supposed to be extremely advantageous. She was going to Grasmere
+immediately after the Cowes week to see her dear grandmother, and to be
+assured of her approval. In the meanwhile she was awfully busy; there
+were callers driving up to the door at that very moment, and her brain
+was racked by the apprehension that she might not get her new gown in
+time for the Bachelor's Ball, which was to be quite one of the nicest
+things of the year, so dearest grandmother must excuse a hurried letter,
+etc., etc., etc.
+
+Georgie Kirkbank was more effusive, more lengthy. She expatiated upon
+the stupendous alliance which her sweetest Lesbia was about to make; and
+took credit to herself for having guided Lesbia's footsteps in the right
+way.
+
+'Smithson is a most difficult person,' she wrote. 'The least error of
+taste on your dear girl's part would have _froisséd_ him. Men with that
+immense wealth are always suspicious, ready to imagine mercenary
+motives, on their guard against being trapped. But Lesbia had _me_ at
+her back, and she managed him perfectly. He is positively her slave; and
+you will be able to twist him round your little finger in the matter of
+settlements. You may do what you like with him, for the ground has been
+thoroughly prepared by _me_.'
+
+Lady Maulevrier's reply was not enthusiastic. She had no doubt Mr.
+Smithson was a very good match, according to the modern estimate of
+matrimonial alliances, in which money seemed to be the Alpha and Omega.
+But she had cherished views of another kind. She had hoped to see her
+dear granddaughter wear one of those noble and historic names which are
+a badge of distinction for all time. She had hoped to see her enter one
+of those grand old families which are a kind of royalty. And that Lesbia
+should marry a man whose sole distinction consisted of an immense
+fortune amassed heaven knows how, was a terrible blow to her pride.
+
+'But it is not the first,' wrote Lady Maulevrier. 'My pride has received
+crushing blows in days past, and I ought to be humbled to the dust. But
+there is a stubborn resistance in some natures which stands firm against
+every shock. You and Lesbia will both be surprised to hear that Mary,
+from whom I expected so little, has made a really great match. She was
+married yesterday afternoon in my morning room, by special licence, to
+the Earl of Hartfield, the lover of her choice, whom we at Fellside have
+all known as plain John Hammond. He is an admirable young man, and sure
+to make a great figure in the world, as no doubt you know better than I
+do, for you are in the way of hearing all about him. His courtship of
+Mary is quite an idyll; and the happy issue of this romantic love-affair
+has cheered and comforted me more than anything that has happened since
+Lesbia left me.'
+
+This letter, written in Fräulein's niggling little hand, Lady Kirkbank
+handed to Lesbia, who read it through in silence; but when she came to
+that part of the letter which told of her sister's marriage, her cheek
+grew ashy pale, her brow contracted, and she started to her feet and
+stared at Lady Kirkbank with wild, dilated eyes, as if she had been
+stung by an adder.
+
+'A strange mystification, wasn't it?' said Lady Kirkbank, almost
+frightened at the awful look in Lesbia's face, which was even worse than
+Belle Trinder's expression when she read the announcement of Mr.
+Smithson's flight.
+
+'Strange mystification! It was base treachery--a vile and wicked lie!'
+cried Lesbia, furiously. 'What right had he to come to us under false
+colours, to pretend to be poor, a nobody--with only the vaguest hope of
+making a decent position in the future?--and to offer himself under such
+impossible conditions to a girl brought up as I had been--a girl
+educated by one of the proudest and most ambitious of women--to force me
+to renounce everything except him? How could he suppose that any girl,
+so placed, could decide in his favour? If he had loved me he would have
+told me the truth--he would not have made it impossible for me to accept
+him.'
+
+'I believe he is a very high flown young man,' said Lady Kirkbank,
+soothingly; 'he was never in _my_ set, you know, dear. And I suppose he
+had some old Minerva-press idea that he would find a girl who would
+marry him for his own sake. And your sister, no doubt, eager to marry
+_anybody_, poor child, for the sake of getting away from that very
+lovely dungeon of Lady Maulevrier's, snapped at the chance; and by a
+mere fluke she becomes a countess.'
+
+Lesbia ignored these consolatory remarks. She was pacing the room like
+a tigress, her delicate cambric handkerchief grasped between her two
+hands, and torn and rent by the convulsive action of her fingers. She
+could have thrown herself from the balcony on to the spikes of the area
+railings, she could have dashed herself against yonder big plate-glass
+window looking towards the Green Park, like a bird which shatters his
+little life against the glass barrier which he mistakes for the open
+sky. She could have flung herself down on the floor and grovelled, and
+torn her hair--she could have done anything mad, wicked, desperate, in
+the wild rage of this moment.
+
+'Loved me!' she exclaimed; 'he never loved me. If he had he would have
+told me the truth. What, when I was in his arms, my head upon his
+breast, my whole being surrendered to him, adoring him, what more could
+he want? He must have known that this meant real love. And why should he
+put it upon me to fight so hard a fight--to brave my grandmother's
+anger--to be cursed by her--to face poverty for his sake? I never
+professed to be a heroine. He knew that I was a woman, with all a
+woman's weakness, a woman's fear of trial and difficulty in the future.
+It was a cowardly thing to use me so.'
+
+'It was,' said Lady Kirkbank, in the same soothing tone; 'but if you
+liked this Hammond-Hartfield creature a little in those old days, I
+know you have outlived that liking long ago.'
+
+'Of course; but it is a hard thing to know one has been fooled, cheated,
+weighed in the balance and found wanting,' said Lesbia, scornfully.
+
+She was taming down a little by this time, ashamed of that outbreak of
+violent passion, feeling that she had revealed too much to Lady
+Kirkbank.
+
+'It was a caddish thing to do,' said Georgie; 'and this Hartfield is
+just what I always thought him--an insufferable prig. However, my
+sweetest girl, there is really nothing to lament in the matter. Your
+sister has made a good alliance, which will score high in your favour
+by-and-by, and you are going to marry a man who is three times as rich
+as Lord Hartfield.'
+
+'Rich, yes; and nothing but rich; while Lord Hartfield is a man of the
+very highest standing, belongs to the flower of English nobility. Rich,
+yes; Mr. Smithson is rich; but, as Lady Maulevrier says, he has made his
+money heaven knows how.'
+
+'Mr. Smithson has not made his money heaven knows how,' answered Lady
+Kirkbank, indignantly. 'He has made it in cochineal, in iron, in
+gunpowder, in coal, in all kinds of commodities. Everybody in the City
+knows how he has made his money, and that he has a genius for turning
+everything into gold. If the gold changes back into one of the baser
+metals, it is only when Mr. Smithson has made all he wanted to make. And
+now he has quite done with the City. The House is the only business of
+his life; and he is becoming a power in the House. You have every reason
+to be proud of your choice, Lesbia.'
+
+'I will try to be proud of it,' said Lesbia, resolutely. 'I will not be
+scorned and trampled upon by Mary.'
+
+'She seemed a harmless kind of girl,' said Lady Kirkbank, as if she had
+been talking of a housemaid.
+
+'She is a designing minx,' exclaimed Lesbia, 'and has set her cap at
+that man from the very beginning.'
+
+'But she could not have known that he was Lord Hartfield.'
+
+'No; but he was a man; and that was enough for her.'
+
+From this time forward there was a change in Lady Lesbia's style and
+manner--a change very much for the worse, as old-fashioned people
+thought; but to the taste of some among Lady Kirkbank's set, the change
+was an improvement. She was gayer than of old, gay with a reckless
+vivacity, intensely eager for action and excitement, for cards and
+racing, and all the strongest stimulants of fashionable life. Most
+people ascribed this increased vivacity, this electric manner, to the
+fact of her engagement to Horace Smithson. She was giddy with her
+triumph, dazzled by a vision of the gold which was soon to be hers.
+
+'Egad, if I saw myself in a fair way of being able to write cheques upon
+such an account as Smithson's I should be as wild as Lady Lesbia,' said
+one of the damsel's military admirers at the Rag. 'And I believe the
+young lady was slightly dipped.'
+
+'Who told you that?' asked his friend.
+
+'A mother of mine,' answered the youth, with an apologetic air, as if he
+hardly cared to own such a humdrum relationship. 'Seraphine, the
+dressmaker, was complaining--wanted to see the colour of Lady Lesbia
+Haselden's money--vulgar curiosity--asked my old mother if she thought
+the account was safe, and so on. That's how I came to know all about
+it.'
+
+'Well, she'll be able to pay Seraphine next season.'
+
+Lord Maulevrier came back to London directly after his sister's wedding.
+The event, which came off so quietly, so happily, filled him with
+unqualified joy. He had hoped from the very first that his Molly would
+win the cup, even while Lesbia was making all the running, as he said
+afterwards. And Molly had won, and was the wife of one of the best young
+men in England. Maulevrier, albeit unused to the melting-mood, shed a
+tear or two for very joy as the sister he loved and the friend of his
+boyhood and youth stood side by side in the quiet room at Grasmere, and
+spoke the solemn words that made them one for ever.
+
+The first news he heard after his return to town was of Lesbia's
+engagement, which was common talk at the clubs. The visitors at Rood
+Hall had come back to London full of the event, and were proud of giving
+a detailed account of the affair to outsiders.
+
+They all talked patronisingly of Smithson, and seemed to think it
+rather a wonderful fact that he did not drop his aspirates or eat peas
+with a knife.
+
+'A man of stirling metal,' said the gossips, 'who can hold his own with
+many a fellow born in the purple.'
+
+Maulevrier called in Arlington Street, but Lady Kirkbank and her
+_protégée_ were out; and it was at a cricket match at the Orleans Club
+that the brother and sister met for the first time after Lord
+Hartfield's wedding, which by this time had been in all the papers; a
+very simple announcement:
+
+'On the 29th inst., at Grasmere, by the Reverend Douglass Brooke, the
+Earl of Hartfield to Mary, younger daughter of the ninth Earl of
+Maulevrier.'
+
+Lesbia was the centre of a rather noisy little court, in which Mr.
+Smithson was conspicuous by his superior reserve.
+
+He did not exert himself as a lover, paid no compliments, was not
+sentimental. The pearl was won, and he wore it very quietly; but
+wherever Lesbia went he went; she was hardly ever out of his sight.
+
+Maulevrier received the coolest possible greeting. Lesbia turned pale
+with anger at sight of him, for his presence reminded her of the most
+humiliating passage in her life; but the big red satin sunshade
+concealed that pale angry look, and nothing in Lesbia's manner betrayed
+emotion.
+
+'Where have you been hiding yourself all this time, and why were you not
+at Henley?' she asked.
+
+'I have been at Grasmere.'
+
+'Oh, you were a witness of that most romantic marriage. The Lady of
+Lyons reversed, the gardener's son turning out to be an earl. Was it
+excruciatingly funny?'
+
+'It was one of the most solemn weddings I ever saw.'
+
+'Solemn! what, with my Tomboy sister as bride! Impossible!'
+
+'Your sister ceased to be a Tomboy when she fell in love. She is a sweet
+and womanly woman, and will make an adorable wife to the finest fellow I
+know. I hear I am to congratulate you, Lesbia, upon your engagement with
+Mr. Smithson.'
+
+'If you think _I_ am the person to be congratulated, you are at liberty
+to do so. My engagement is a fact.'
+
+'Oh, of course, Mr. Smithson is the winner. But as I hope you intend to
+be happy, I wish you joy. I am told Smithson is a really excellent
+fellow when one gets to know him; and I shall make it my business to be
+better acquainted with him.'
+
+Smithson was standing just out of hearing, watching the bowling.
+Maulevrier went over to him and shook hands, their acquaintance hitherto
+having been of the slightest, and very shy upon his lordship's part; but
+now Smithson could see that Maulevrier meant to be cordial.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI.
+
+A RASTAQUOUÈRE.
+
+
+There was a dinner party in one of the new houses in Grosvenor Place
+that evening, to which Lady Kirkbank and Lesbia had been bidden. The new
+house belonged to a new man, who was supposed to have made millions out
+of railways, and other gigantic achievements in the engineering line;
+and the new man and his wife were friends of Mr. Smithson, and had made
+the simple Georgie's acquaintance only within the last three weeks.
+
+'Of course they are stupid, my dear,' she remarked, in response to some
+slighting remark of Lesbia's, 'but I am always willing to know rich
+people. One drops in for so many good things; and they never want any
+return in kind. It is quite enough for them to be allowed to spend their
+money _upon us._'
+
+The house was gorgeous in all the glory of the very latest fashions in
+upholstery; hall Algerian; dining-room Pompeian; drawing-room Early
+Italian; music-room Louis Quatorze; billiard-room mediæval English. The
+dinner was as magnificent as dinner can be made. Three-fourths of the
+guests were the _haute gomme_ of the financial world, and perspired
+gold. The other third belonged to a class which Mr. Smithson described
+somewhat contemptuously as the shake-back nobility. An Irish peer, a
+younger son of a ducal house that had run to seed, a political agitator,
+a grass widow whose titled husband was governor of an obscure colony, an
+ancient dowager with hair which was too luxuriant to be anything but a
+wig, and diamonds which were so large as to suggest paste.
+
+Lesbia sat by her affianced at the glittering table, lighted with
+clusters of wax candles, which shone upon a level _parterre_ of tea
+roses, gardenias, and gloire de Malmaison carnations; from which rose at
+intervals groups of silver-gilt dolphins, supporting shallow golden
+dishes piled with peaches, grapes, and all the costliest produce of
+Covent Garden.
+
+Conversation was not particularly brilliant, nor had the guests an
+elated air. The thermometer was near eighty, and at this period of the
+season everybody was tired of this kind of dinner, and would gladly have
+foregone the greatest achievements of culinary art, in favour of a
+chicken and a salad, eaten under green leaves, in a garden at Wargrave
+or Henley, within sound of the rippling river.
+
+On Lesbia's right hand there was a portly personage of Jewish type, dark
+to swarthiness, and somewhat oily, whose every word suggested bullion.
+He and Mr. Smithson were evidently acquaintances of long standing, and
+Mr. Smithson presented him to Lesbia, whereupon he joined in their
+conversation now and then.
+
+His talk was of the usual standard. He had seen everything worth seeing
+in London and in Paris, between which cities he seemed to oscillate with
+such frequency that he might be said to live in both places at once. He
+had his stall at Covent Garden, and his stall at the Grand Opera. He was
+a subscriber at the Theatre Français. He had seen all the races at
+Longchamps and Chantilly, as well as at Sandown and Ascot. But every now
+and then he and Mr. Smithson drifted from the customary talk about
+operas and races, pictures and French novels, to the wider world of
+commerce and speculation, mines, waterworks, and foreign loans--and
+Lesbia leant back in her chair, and fanned herself languidly, with
+half-closed eyelids, while two or three courses went round, she giving
+the little supercilious look at each _entrée_ offered to her, to be
+observed on such occasions, as if the thing offered were particularly
+nasty.
+
+She wondered how long the two men were going to prose about mines and
+shares, in those subdued half-mysterious voices, telling each other
+occult facts in half-expressed phrases, utterly dark to the outside
+world; but, while she was languidly wondering, a change in her lover's
+manner startled her into keenest curiosity.
+
+'Montesma is in Paris,' said Mr. Sampayo, the dark gentleman; 'I dined
+last week with him at the Continental.'
+
+Mr. Smithson's complexion faded curiously, and a leaden darkness came
+over his countenance, as of a man whose heart and lungs suddenly refuse
+their office. But in a few moments he was smiling feebly.
+
+'Indeed! I thought he was played out years ago.'
+
+'A man of that kind is never played out. Don Gomez de Montesma is as
+clever as Satan, as handsome as Apollo, and he bears one of the oldest
+names in Castile. Such a man will always come to the front. _C'est un
+rastaquouère mais rastaquouère de bon genre_. You knew him intimately
+_là bas_, I believe?'
+
+'In Cuba; yes, we were pretty good friends once.'
+
+'And were useful to each other, no doubt,' said Mr. Sampayo, pleasantly.
+'Was that Argentiferous Copper Company in sixty-four yours or his?'
+
+'There were a good many people concerned in it.'
+
+'No doubt; it takes a good many people to work that kind of thing, but I
+fancy you and Montesma were about the only two who came out of it
+pleasantly. And he and you did a little in the shipping line, didn't
+you--African produce? However, that's an old song. You have had so many
+good things since then.'
+
+'Did Montesma talk of coming to London?'
+
+'He did not talk about it; but he would hardly go back to the tropics
+without having a look round on both sides of the Channel. He was always
+fond of society, pretty women, dancing, and amusements of all kinds. I
+have no doubt we shall see him here before the end of the season.'
+
+Mr. Smithson pursued the subject no further. He turned to Lesbia, who had
+been curiously interested in this little bit of conversation--interested
+first because Smithson had seemed agitated by the mention of the
+Spaniard's name; secondly, because of the description of the man, which
+had a romantic sound. The very word tropic suggested a romance. And
+Lesbia, whose mind was jaded by the monotony of a London season, the
+threadbare fabric of society conversation, kindled at any image which
+appealed to her fancy.
+
+Clever as Satan, handsome as Apollo, scion of an old Castilian family,
+fresh from the tropics. Her imagination dwelt upon the ideas which these
+words had conjured up.
+
+Three days after this she was at the opera with her chaperon, her lover
+in attendance as usual. The opera was "Faust," with Nillson as
+Marguerite. After the performance they were to drive down to Twickenham
+on Mr. Smithson's drag, and to dance and sup at the Orleans. The last
+ball of the season was on this evening; and Lesbia had been persuaded
+that it was to be a particular _recherché_ ball, and that only the very
+nicest people were to be present. At any rate, the drive under the light
+of a July moon would be delicious; and if they did not like the people
+they found there they could eat their supper and come away immediately
+after, as Lady Kirkbank remarked philosophically.
+
+The opera was nearly over--that grand scene of Valentine's death was
+on--and Lesbia was listening breathlessly to every note, watching every
+look of the actors, when there came a modest little knock at the door of
+her box. She darted an angry glance round, and shrugged her shoulders
+vexatiously. What Goth had dared to knock during that thrilling scene?
+
+Mr. Smithson rose and crept to the door and quietly opened it.
+
+A dark, handsome man, who was a total stranger to Lesbia, glided in,
+shaking hands with Smithson as he entered.
+
+Till this moment Lesbia's whole being had been absorbed in the
+scene--that bitter anathema of the brother, the sister's cry of anguish
+and shame. Where else is there tragedy so human, so enthralling--grief
+that so wrings the spectator's heart? It needed a Goethe and a Gounod to
+produce this masterpiece.
+
+In an instant, in a flash, Lesbia's interest in the stage was gone. Her
+first glance at the stranger told her who he was. The olive tint, the
+eyes of deepest black, the grand form of the head and perfect chiselling
+of the features could belong only to that scion of an old Castilian race
+whom she had heard described the other evening--'clever as Satan,
+handsome as Apollo.'
+
+Yes, this must be the man, Don Gomez de Montesma. There was nothing in
+Mr. Smithson's manner to indicate that the Spaniard was an unwelcome
+guest. On the contrary, Smithson received him with a cordiality which in
+a man of naturally reserved manner seemed almost rapture. The curtain
+fell, and he presented Don Gomez to Lady Kirkbank and Lady Lesbia;
+whereupon dear Georgie began to gush, after her wont, and to ask a good
+many questions in a manner that was too girlish to seem impertinent.
+
+'How perfectly you speak English!' she exclaimed. 'You must have lived
+in England a good deal.'
+
+'On the contrary, it is my misfortune to have lived here very little,
+but I have known a good many English and Americans in Cuba and in
+Paris.'
+
+'In Cuba! Do you really come from Cuba? I have always fancied that Cuba
+must be an altogether charming place to live in--like Biarritz or Pau,
+don't you know, only further away. Do please tell me where it is, and
+what kind of a place.'
+
+Geographically, Lady Kirkbank's mind was a blank. It was quite a
+revelation to her to find that Cuba was an island.
+
+'It must be a lovely spot!' exclaimed the fervid creature. 'Let me see,
+now, what do we get from Cuba?--cigars--and--and tobacco. I suppose in
+Cuba everybody smokes?'
+
+'Men, women, and children.'
+
+'How delicious! Would that I were a Cuban! And the natives, are they
+nice?'
+
+'There are no aborigines. The Indians whom Columbus found soon perished
+off the face of the island. European civilisation generally has that
+effect. But one of our most benevolent captain-generals provided us with
+an imported population of niggers.'
+
+'How delightful. I have always longed to live among a slave population,
+dear submissive black things dressed in coral necklaces and feathers,
+instead of the horrid over-fed wretches we have to wait upon us. And if
+the aborigines were not wanted it was just as well for them to die out,
+don't you know,' prattled Lady Kirkbank.
+
+'It was very accommodating of them, no doubt. Yet we could employ half a
+million of them, if we had them, in draining our swamps. Agriculture
+suffered by the loss of Indian labour.'
+
+'I suppose they were like the creatures in Pizarro, poor dear yellow
+things with brass bracelets,' said Lady Kirkbank. 'I remember seeing
+Macready as Rolla when I was quite a little thing.'
+
+And now the curtain rose for the last act.
+
+'Do you care about staying for the end?' asked Mr. Smithson of Lesbia.
+'It will make us rather late at the Orleans.'
+
+'Never mind how late we are,' said Lesbia, imperiously. 'I have always
+been cheated out of this last act for some stupid party. Imagine losing
+Gounod and Nillson for the sake of struggling through the mob on a
+stifling staircase, and being elbowed by inane young men, with gardenias
+in their coats.'
+
+Lady Lesbia had a pretty little way of always opposing any suggestion of
+her sweetheart. She was resolved to treat him as badly as a future
+husband could be treated. In consenting to marry him she had done him a
+favour which was a great deal more than such a person had any right to
+expect.
+
+She leant forward to watch and listen, with her elbow resting on the
+velvet cushion--her head upon her hand, and she seemed absorbed in the
+scene. But this was mere outward seeming. All the enchantment of music
+and acting was over. She only heard and saw vaguely, as if it were a
+shadowy scene enacted ever so far away. Every now and then her eyes
+glanced involuntarily toward Don Gomez, who stood leaning against the
+back of the box, pale, languid, graceful, poetic, an altogether
+different type of manhood from that with which she had of late been
+satiated.
+
+Those deep dark eyes of his had a dreamy look. They gazed across the
+dazzling house, into space, above Lady Lesbia's head. They seemed to see
+nothing; and they certainly were not looking at her.
+
+Don Gomez was the first man she ever remembered to have been presented
+to her who did not favour her with a good deal of hard staring, more or
+less discreetly managed, during the first ten minutes of their
+acquaintance. On him her beauty fell flat. He evidently failed to
+recognise her supreme loveliness. It might be that she was the wrong
+type for Cuba. Every nation has its own Venus; and that far away spot
+beyond the torrid zone might have a somewhat barbarous idea of beauty.
+At any rate, Don Gomez was apparently unimpressed. And yet Lesbia
+flattered herself that she was looking her best to-night, and that her
+costume was a success. She wore a white satin gown, short in the skirt,
+for the luxury of freedom in waltzing, and made with Quaker-like
+simplicity, the bodice high to the throat, fitting her like a sheath.
+
+Her only ornaments were a garland of scarlet poppies wreathed from
+throat to shoulder, and a large diamond heart which Mr. Smithson had
+lately given her; 'a bullock's heart,' as Lady Kirkbank called it.
+
+When the curtain fell, and not till then, she rose and allowed herself
+to be clad in a brown velvet Newmarket, which completely covered her
+short satin gown. She had a little brown velvet toque to match the
+Newmarket, and thus attired she would be able to take her seat on the
+drag which was waiting on the quietest side of Covent Garden.
+
+'Why should not you go with us, Don Gomez?' exclaimed Lady Kirkbank, in
+a gush of hospitality. 'The drive will be charming--not equal to your
+tropical Cuba--but intensely nice. And the gardens will be something too
+sweet on such a night as this. I knew them when the dear Duc d'Aumale
+was there. Ay de mi, such a man!'
+
+Lady Kirkbank sighed, with the air of having known his Altesse Royale
+intimately.
+
+'I should be charmed,' said Don Gomez, 'if I thought my friend Smithson
+wanted me. Would you really like to have me, Smithson?'
+
+'I should be enchanted.'
+
+'And there is room on the drag?'
+
+'Room enough for half-a-dozen. I am only taking Sir George Kirkbank and
+Colonel Delville--whom we are to pick up at the Haute Gomme--and Mr. and
+Mrs. Mostyn, who are in the stalls.'
+
+'A nice snug little party,' exclaimed that charming optimist, Lady
+Kirkbank. 'I hate a crowd on a drag. The way some of the members of the
+Four-in-hand Club load their coaches on parade reminds me of a
+Beanfeast!'
+
+They found Lady Kirkbank's footman and one of Mr. Smithson's grooms
+waiting in the hall of the opera house. The groom to conduct them to the
+spot where the drag was waiting; the footman to carry wraps and take his
+mistress's final orders. There was a Bohemian flavour in the little walk
+to the great fruit garden, which was odorous of bruised peaches and
+stale salads as they passed it. Waggon-loads of cabbages and other
+garden stuff were standing about by the old church; the roadway was
+littered with the refuse of the market; and the air was faint and heavy
+with the scent of herbs and flowers.
+
+Lesbia mounted lightly to her place of honour on the box-seat; and Lady
+Kirkbank was hoisted up after her. Mr. and Mrs. Mostyn followed; and
+then Don Gomez took his seat by Lady Kirkbank's side and behind Lesbia,
+a vantage point from which he could talk to her as much as he liked. Mr.
+Smithson seated himself a minute afterwards, and drove off by King
+Street and Leicester Square and on to Piccadilly, steering cleverly
+through the traffic of cabs and carriages, which was at its apogee just
+now, when all the theatres were disgorging their crowds. Piccadilly was
+quieter, yet there were plenty of carriages, late people going to
+parties and early people going home, horses slipping and sliding on
+stones or wood, half the roadway up, and luminous with lanterns. They
+stopped in front of the Haute Gomme, where they picked up Sir George
+Kirkbank and Colonel Delville, a big man with a patriarchal head,
+supposed to be one of the finest whist players in London, and to make a
+handsome income by his play. He had ridden in the Balaclava charge, was
+a favourite everywhere, and, albeit no genius, was much cleverer than
+his friend and school-fellow, George Kirkbank. They had been at Eton
+together, had both made love to the lively Georgie, and had been
+inseparables for the last thirty years.
+
+'Couldn't get on without Delville,' said Sir George; 'dooced smart
+fellow, sir. Knows the ropes; and does all the thinking for both of us.'
+
+And now they were fairly started, and the team fell into a rattling
+pace, with the road pretty clear before them. Hyde Park was one
+umbrageous darkness, edged by long lines of golden light. Coolness and
+silence enfolded all things in the summer midnight, and Lesbia, not
+prone to romance, sank into a dreamy state of mind, as she leaned back
+in her seat and watched the shadowy trees glide by, the long vista of
+lamps and verdure in front of her. She was glad that no one talked to
+her, for talk of any kind must have broken the spell. Don Gomez sat like
+a statue in his place behind her. From Lady Kirkbank, the loquacious,
+came a gentle sound of snoring, a subdued, ladylike snore, breathed
+softly at intervals, like a sigh. Mr. Smithson had his team, and his own
+thoughts, too, for occupation,--thoughts which to-night were not
+altogether pleasant.
+
+At the back of the coach Mrs. Mostyn was descanting on the evolution of
+the nautilus, and the relationship of protoplasm and humanity, to
+Colonel Delville, who sat smiling placidly behind an immense cigar, and
+accepted the most stupendous facts and the most appalling theories with
+a friendly little nod of his handsome head.
+
+Mr. Mostyn frankly slept, as it was his custom to do upon all convenient
+occasions. He called it recuperating.
+
+'Frank ought to be delightfully fresh, for he recuperated all the way
+down,' said his wife, when they alighted in the dewy garden at
+Twickenham, in front of the lamp-lit portico.
+
+'I wouldn't have minded his recuperating if he hadn't snored so
+abominably,' remarked Colonel Delville.
+
+It was nearly one o'clock, and the ball had thinned a little, which made
+it all the better for those who remained. Mr. Smithson's orders had been
+given two days ago, and the very best of the waiters had been told off
+for his especial service. The ladies went upstairs to take off their
+wrappings and mufflings, and Lesbia emerged dazzling from her brown
+velvet Newmarket, while Lady Kirkbank, bending closely over the
+looking-glass, like a witch over a caldron, repaired her complexion with
+cotton wool.
+
+They went through the conservatory to the octagon dining-room, where the
+supper was ready, a special supper, on a table by a window, a table
+laden with exotics and brilliant with glass and silver. The supper was,
+of course, perfect in its way. Mr. Smithson's _chef_ had been down to
+see about it, and Mr. Smithson's own particular champagne and the claret
+grown in his own particular _clos_ in the Gironde, had been sent down
+for the feast. No common cuisine, no common wine could be good enough;
+and yet there was a day when the cheapest gargote in Belleville or
+Montmartre was good enough for Mr. Smithson. There had been days on
+which he did not dine at all, and when the fumes of a _gibelotte_
+steaming from a workman's restaurant made his mouth water.
+
+The supper was all life and gaiety. Everyone was hungry and thirsty, and
+freshened by the drive, except Lesbia. She was singularly silent, ate
+hardly anything, but drank three or four glasses of champagne.
+
+Don Gomez was not a great talker. He had the air of a prince of the
+blood royal, who expects other people to talk and to keep him amused.
+But the little he said was to the point. He had a fine baritone, very
+low and subdued, and had a languor which was almost insolent, but not
+without its charm. There was an air of originality about the manner and
+the man.
+
+He was the typical _rastaquouère_, a man of finished manners, and
+unknown antecedents, a foreigner, apparently rich, obviously
+accomplished, but with that indefinable air which bespeaks the
+adventurer; and which gives society as fair a warning as if the man wore
+a placard on his shoulder with the word _cave_.
+
+But to Lesbia this Spaniard was the first really interesting man she had
+met since she saw John Hammond; and her interest in him was much more
+vivid than her interest in Hammond had been at the beginning of their
+acquaintance. That pale face, with its tint of old ivory, those thin,
+finely-cut lips, indicative of diabolical craft, could she but read
+aright, those unfathomable eyes, touched her fancy as it had never yet
+been touched, awoke within her that latent vein of romance,
+self-abnegation, supreme foolishness, which lurks in the nature of every
+woman, be she chaste as ice and pure as snow.
+
+The supper was long. It was past two o'clock, and the ballroom was
+thinly occupied, when Mr. Smithson's party went there.
+
+'You won't dance to-night, I suppose?' said Smithson, as Lesbia and he
+went slowly down the room arm in arm. It was in a pause between two
+waltzes. The wide window at the end was opened to the summer night, and
+the room was delightfully cool. 'You must be horribly tired?'
+
+'I am not in the least tired, and I mean to waltz, if anyone will ask
+me,' replied Lesbia, decisively.
+
+'I ought to have asked you to dance, and then it would have been the
+other way,' said Smithson, with a touch of acrimony. 'Surely you have
+dancing enough in town, and you might be obliging for once in a way,
+and come and sit with me in the garden, and listen to the nightingales.'
+
+'There are no nightingales after June. There is the Manola,' as the band
+struck up, 'my very favourite waltz.'
+
+Don Gomez was at her elbow at this moment
+
+'May I have the honour of this waltz with you, Lady Lesbia?' he asked;
+and then with a serio-comic glance at his stoutish friend, 'I don't
+think Smithson waltzes?'
+
+'I have been told that nobody can waltz who has been born on this side
+of the Pyrenees,' answered Lesbia, withdrawing her arm from her lover's,
+and slipping, it through the Spaniard's, with the air of a slave who
+obeys a master.
+
+Smithson looked daggers, and retired to a corner of the room glowering.
+Were a man twenty-two times millionaire, like the Parisian Rothschild,
+he could not find armour against the poisoned arrows of jealousy. Don
+Gomez possessed many of those accomplishments which make men dangerous,
+but as a dancer he was _hors ligne_; and Horace Smithson knew that there
+is no surer road to a girl's fancy than the magic circle of a waltz.
+
+Those two were floating round the room in the old slow legato step,
+which recalled to Smithson the picture of a still more spacious room in
+an island under the Southern Cross--the blue water of the bay shining
+yonder under the starlight of the tropics, fire-flies gleaming and
+flashing in the foliage beyond the open windows, fire-flies flashing
+amidst the gauzy draperies of the dancers, and this same Gomez revolving
+with the same slow languid grace, his arm encircling the _svelte_ figure
+of a woman whose southern beauty outshone Lesbia's blonde English
+loveliness as the tropical stars outshine the lamps that light our
+colder skies. Yes, every detail of the scene flashed back into his mind,
+as if a curtain had been suddenly plucked back from a long-hidden
+picture. The Cuban's tall slim figure, the head gently bent towards his
+partner's head, as at this moment, and those dark eyes looking up at
+him, intoxicated with that nameless, indefinable fascination which it is
+the lot of some men to exercise.
+
+'He robbed me of _her_!' thought Smithson, gloomily. 'Will he rob me of
+this one too? Surely not! Havana is Havana--and this one is not a
+Creole. If I cannot trust that lovely piece of marble, there is no woman
+on earth to be trusted.'
+
+He turned his back upon the dancers, and went out into the garden. His
+soul was wrung with jealousy, yet he could watch no longer. There was
+too much pain--there were too many bitter memories of shame, and loss,
+and ignominy evoked by that infernal picture. If he had been free he
+would have asserted his authority as Lesbia's future husband; he would
+have taken her away from the Orleans; he would have told her plainly and
+frankly that Don Gomez was no fit person for her to know; and he would
+have so planned that they two should never meet again. But Horace
+Smithson was not free. He was bound hand and foot by those fetters which
+the chain of past events had forged--stern facts which the man himself
+may forget, or try to forget, but which other people never forget. There
+is generally some dark spot in the history of such men as Smithson--men
+who climb the giddiest heights of this world with that desperate
+rapidity which implies many a perilous leap from crag to crag, many a
+moraine skimmed over, and many an awful gulf spanned by a hair-breadth
+bridge. Mr. Smithson's history was not without such spots; and the
+darkest of all had relation to his career in Cuba. The story had been
+known by very few--perhaps completely known only by one man; and that
+man was Gomez de Montesma.
+
+For the last fifteen years the most fervent desire of Horace Smithson's
+heart had been the hope that tropical nature, in any one of her various
+disagreeable forms, would be obliging enough to make an end of Gomez.
+But the forces of nature had not worked on Mr. Smithson's side. No
+loathsome leprosy had eaten his enemy's flesh; neither cayman nor
+crocodile, neither Juba snake nor poisonous spider had marked him for
+its prey. The tropical sun had left him unsmitten. He had lived and he
+had prospered; and he was here, like a guilty conscience incarnate, to
+spoil Horace Smithson's peace.
+
+'I must be diplomatic,' Smithson said to himself, as he walked up and
+down an avenue of Irish yews, in a solitary part of the grounds, smoking
+his cigarette, and hearing the music swell and sink in the distance. 'I
+will give her a hint as to that man's character, and I will keep them
+apart as much as I can. But if he forces himself upon me there is no
+help for it. I cannot afford to be uncivil to him.'
+
+'Cannot afford' in this instance meant 'dare not,' and Horace Smithson's
+thoughts as he paced the yew-tree walk were full of gloom.
+
+During that long meditation he made up his mind on one point, namely,
+that, let him suffer what pangs he might, he must not betray his
+jealousy. To do that would be to lower himself in Lesbia's eyes, and to
+play into his rival's hand; for a jealous man is almost always
+contemptible in the sight of his mistress. He would carry himself as if
+he were sure of her fidelity; and this very confidence, with a woman of
+honour, a girl reared as Lesbia had been reared, would render it
+impossible for her to betray him. He would show himself high-minded,
+confident, generous, chivalrous, even; and he would trust to chance for
+the issue. Chance was Mr. Smithson's only idea of Divinity; and Chance
+had hitherto been kind to him. There had been dark hours in his life,
+but the darkness had not lasted long; and the lucky accidents of his
+career had been of a nature to beguile him into the belief that among
+the favourites of Destiny he stood first and foremost.
+
+While Mr. Smithson mused thus, alone and in the darkness, Montesma and
+Lady Lesbia were wandering arm in arm in another and lovelier part of
+the grounds, where golden lights were scattered like Cuban fire-flies
+among the foliage of seringa and magnolia, arbutus and rhododendron,
+while at intervals a sudden flush of rosier light was shed over garden
+and river, as if by enchantment, surprising a couple here and there in
+the midst of a flirtation which had begun in darkness.
+
+The grounds were lovely in the balmy atmosphere of a July night, the
+river gliding with mysterious motion under the stars, great masses of
+gloom darkening the stream with an almost awful look where the woods of
+Petersham and Ham House cast their dense shadows on the water. Don Gomez
+and his companion wandered by the river side to a spot where a group of
+magnolias sheltered them from the open lawn, and where there were some
+rustic chairs close to the balustrade which protected the parapet. In
+this spot, which was a kind of island, divided from the rest of the
+grounds by the intervening road, they found themselves quite alone, and
+in the midst of a summer stillness which was broken only by the low,
+lazy ripple of the tide running seawards. The lights of Richmond looked
+far away, and the little town with its variety of levels had an Italian
+air in the distance.
+
+From the ballroom, faint and fitful, came the music of a waltz.
+
+'I'm afraid I've brought you too far,' said Don Gomez.
+
+'On the contrary, it is a relief to get away from the lights and the
+people. How delicious this river is! I was brought up on the shores of a
+lake; but after all a lake is horribly tame. Its limits are always
+staring one in the face. There is no room for one's imagination to
+wander. Now a river like this suggests an infinity of possibilities,
+drifting on and on and on into undiscovered regions, by ever-varying
+shores. I feel to-night as if I should like to step into that little
+boat yonder,' pointing to a light skiff bobbing gently up and down with
+the tide, at the bottom of a flight of steps, 'and let the stream take
+me wherever it chose.'
+
+'If I could but go with you,' said Gomez, in that deep and musical tone
+which made the commonest words seem melody, 'I would ask for neither
+compass nor rudder. What could it matter whither the boat took me? There
+is no place under the stars which would not be a paradise--with you.'
+
+'Please don't make a dreamy aspiration the occasion for a compliment,'
+exclaimed Lesbia, lightly. 'What I said was so silly that I don't wonder
+you thought it right to say something just a little sillier. But
+moonlight and running water have a curious effect upon me; and I, who am
+the most prosaic among women, become ridiculously sentimental.'
+
+'I cannot believe that you are prosaic.'
+
+'I assure you it is perfectly true. I am of the earth, earthy; a woman
+of the world, in my first season, ambitious, fond of pleasure, vain,
+proud, exacting, all those things which I am told a woman ought not to
+be.'
+
+'You pain me when you so slander yourself; and I shall make it the
+business of my life to find out how much truth there is in that
+self-slander. For my own part I do not believe a word of it; but as it
+is rude to contradict a lady I will only say that I reserve my opinion.'
+
+'Are you to stay long in England?' asked Lesbia.
+
+She was leaning against the stone balustrade in a careless attitude, as
+of one who was weary, her elbow on the stone slab, and her head thrown
+back against her arm. The white satin gown, moulded to her figure, had a
+statuesque air, and she looked like a marble statue in the dim light,
+every line of the graceful form expressive of repose.
+
+'That will depend. I am not particularly fond of London. A very little
+of your English Babylon satisfies me, in a general way; but there are
+conditions which might make England enchanting. Where do you go at the
+end of the season?'
+
+'First to Goodwood, and then to Cowes. Mr. Smithson is so kind as to
+place his yacht at Lady Kirkbank's disposal, and I am to be her guest on
+board the Cayman, just as I am in Arlington Street.'
+
+'The Cayman! That name is a reminiscence of Mr. Smithson's South
+American travels.'
+
+'No doubt! Was he long in South America?'
+
+'Three or four years.'
+
+'But not in Cuba all that time, I suppose?'
+
+'He had business relations with Cuba all that time, and oscillated
+between our island and the main. He was rather fortunate in his little
+adventures with us--made almost as much money as General Tacon, of
+blessed memory. But I dare say Smithson has told you all his adventures
+in that part of the world.'
+
+'No, he very rarely talks about his travels: and I am not particularly
+interested in commercial speculations. There is always so much to think
+of and talk about in the business of the moment. Are you fond of Cuba?'
+
+'Not passionately. I always feel as if I were an exile there, and yet
+one of my ancestors was with Columbus when he discovered the island, and
+my race were among the earliest settlers. My family has given three
+Captain-generals to Cuba: but I cannot forget that I belong to an older
+world, and have forfeited that which ought to have been a brilliant
+place in Europe for the luxurious obscurity of a colony.'
+
+'But you must be attached to a place in which your family have lived for
+so many generations?'
+
+'I like the stars and the sea, the mountains and savannas, the tropical
+vegetation, and the dreamy, half-oriental life; but at best it is a kind
+of stagnation, and after a residence of a few months in the island of my
+birth I generally spread my wings for the wider world of the old
+continent or the new.'
+
+'You must have travelled so much,' said Lesbia, with a sigh. 'I have
+been nowhere and seen nothing. I feel like a child who has been shut up
+in a nursery all its life, and knows of no world beyond four walls.'
+
+'Not to travel is not to live,' said Don Gomez.
+
+'I am to be in Italy next November, I believe,' said Lesbia, not caring
+to own that this Italian trip was to be her honeymoon.
+
+'Italy!' exclaimed the Spaniard, contemptuously. 'Once the finishing
+school of the English nobility; now the happy hunting-ground of the
+Cockney tourist and the prosperous Yankee. All the poetry of Italy has
+been dried up, and the whole country vulgarised. If you want romance in
+the old world go to Spain; in the new, try Peru or Brazil, Mexico or
+California.'
+
+'I am afraid I am not adventurous enough to go so far.'
+
+'No: women cling to beaten tracks.'
+
+'We obey our masters,' answered Lesbia, meekly.
+
+'Ah, I forgot. You are to have a master--and soon. I heard as much
+before I saw you to-night.'
+
+Lesbia half rose, as if to leave this cool retreat above the rippling
+tide.
+
+'Yes, it is all settled,' she said; 'and now I think I must go back.
+Lady Kirkbank will be wondering what has become of me.'
+
+'Let her wonder a little longer,' said Don Gomez. 'Why should we hurry
+away from this delightful spot? Why break the spell of--the river? Life
+has so few moments of perfect contentment. If this is one with you--as
+it is with me--let us make the most of it. Lady Lesbia, do you see those
+weeds yonder, drifting with the tide, drifting side by side, touching as
+they drift? They have met heaven knows how, and will part heaven knows
+where, on their way to the sea; but they let themselves go with the
+tide. We have met like those poor weeds. Don't let us part till the tide
+parts us.'
+
+Lesbia gave a little sigh, and submitted. She had talked of women
+obeying their masters; and the implication was that she meant to obey
+Mr. Smithson. But there is a fate in these things; and the man who was
+to be her master, whose lightest breath was to sway her, whose lightest
+look was to rule her, was here at her side in the silence of the summer
+night.
+
+They talked long, but of indifferent subjects; and their talk might have
+been heard by every member of the Orleans Club, and no harm done. Yet
+words and phrases count for very little in such a case. It is the tone,
+it is the melody of a voice, it is the magic of the hour that tells.
+
+The tide came, in the person of Mr. Smithson, and parted these two weeds
+that were drifting towards the great mysterious ocean of fate.
+
+'I have been hunting for you everywhere,' he said, cheerfully. 'If you
+want another waltz, Lady Lesbia, you had better take the next. I believe
+it is to be the last. At any rate our party are clamouring to be driven
+home. I found poor Lady Kirkbank fast asleep in a corner of the
+drawing-room.'
+
+'Will you give me that last waltz?' asked Don Gomez.
+
+Lady Lesbia felt that the long-suffering Smithson had endured enough.
+Womanly instinct constrained her to refuse that final waltz: but it
+seemed to her as if she were making a tremendous sacrifice in so doing.
+And yet she had waltzed to her heart's content during the season that
+was waning, and knew all the waltzes played by all the fashionable
+bands. She gave a little sigh, as she said--
+
+'No, I must not indulge myself. I must go and take care of Lady
+Kirkbank.'
+
+Mr. Smithson offered his arm, and she took it and went away with him,
+leaving Don Gomez to follow at his leisure. There would be some delay no
+doubt before the drag started. The lamps had gone out among the foliage,
+and the stars were waning a little, and there was a faint cold light
+creeping over the garden which meant the advent of morning. Don Gomez
+strolled towards the lighted house, smoking a cigarette.
+
+'She is very lovely, and she is--well--not quite spoiled by her
+_entourage_, and they tell me she is an heiress--sure to inherit a
+fine fortune from some ancient grandmother, buried alive in
+Westmoreland,' he mused. 'What a splendid opportunity it would be if--if
+the business could be arranged on the square. But as it is--well--as it
+is there is the chance of an adventure; and when did a Montesma ever
+avoid an adventure, although there were dagger or poison lurking in the
+background? And here there is neither poison nor steel, only a lovely
+woman, and an infatuated stockbroker, about whom I know enough to
+disgrace and ruin an archbishop. Poor Smithson! How very unlucky that I
+should happen to come across your pathway in the heyday of your latest
+love affair. We have had our little adventures in that line already, and
+we have measured swords together, metaphorically, before to-night. When
+it comes to a question of actual swords my Smithson declines. _Pas si
+bête._'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII.
+
+LORD HARTFIELD REFUSES A FORTUNE.
+
+
+A honeymoon among lakes and mountains, amidst the gorgeous confusion of
+Borrowdale, in a little world of wild, strange loveliness, shut in and
+isolated from the prosaic outer world by the vast and towering masses of
+Skiddaw and Blencathara--a world of one's own, as it were, a world
+steeped in romance and poetry, dear to the souls of poets. There are
+many such honeymoons every summer; indeed, the mountain paths, the
+waterfalls and lakes swarm with happy lovers; and this land of hills and
+waters seems to have been made expressly for honeymoon travellers; yet
+never went truer lovers wandering by lake and torrent, by hill and
+valley, than those two whose brief honeymoon was now drawing to a close.
+
+It was altogether a magical time for Mary, this dawn of a new life. The
+immensity of her happiness almost frightened her. She could hardly
+believe in it, or trust in its continuance.
+
+'Am I really, really, really your wife?' she asked on their last day,
+bending down to speak to her husband, as he led her pony up the rough
+ways of Skiddaw. 'It is all so dreadfully like a dream.'
+
+'Thank God, it is the very truth,' answered Lord Hartfield, looking
+fondly at the fresh young face, brightened by the summer wind, which
+faintly stirred the auburn hair under the neat little hat.
+
+'And am I actually a Countess? I don't care about it one little bit, you
+know, except as a stupendous joke. If you were to tell me that you had
+been only making fun of poor grandmother and me, and that those diamonds
+are glass, and you only plain John Hammond, it wouldn't make the
+faintest difference. Indeed, it would be a weight off my mind. It is an
+awfully oppressive thing to be a Countess.'
+
+'I'm sorry I cannot relieve you of the burden. The law of the land has
+made you Lady Hartfield; and I hope you are preparing your mind for the
+duties of your position.'
+
+'It is very dreadful,' sighed Mary. 'If her ladyship were as well and as
+active as she was when first you came to Fellside, she could have helped
+me; but now there will be no one, except you. And you will help me,
+won't you Jack?'
+
+'With all my heart.'
+
+'My own true Jack,' with a little fervent squeeze of his sunburnt hand.
+'In society I suppose I shall have to call you Hartfield. "Hartfield,
+please ring the bell." "Give me a footstool, Hartfield." How odd it
+sounds. I shall be blurting out the old dear name.'
+
+'I don't think it will much matter. It will pass for one of Lady
+Hartfield's little ways. Every woman is supposed to have little ways,
+don't you know. One has a little way of dropping her friends; another
+has a little way of not paying her dressmaker; another's little way is
+to take too much champagne. I hope Lady Hartfield's little way will be
+her devotion to her husband.'
+
+'I'm afraid I shall end by being a nuisance to you, for I shall love you
+ridiculously,' answered Mary, gaily; 'and from what you have told me
+about society, it seems to me that there can be nothing so unfashionable
+as an affectionate wife. Will you mind my being quite out of fashion,
+Jack?'
+
+'I should very much object to your being in the fashion.'
+
+'Then I am happy. I don't think it is in my nature to become a woman of
+fashion; although I have cured myself, for your sake, of being a hoyden.
+I had so schooled myself for what I thought our new life was to be; so
+trained myself to be a managing economical wife, that I feel quite at
+sea now that I am to be mistress of a house in Grosvenor Square and a
+place in Kent. Still, I will bear with it all; yes, even endure the
+weight of those diamonds for your sake.'
+
+She laughed, and he laughed. They were quite alone among the
+hills--hardy mountaineers both--and they could be as foolish as they
+liked. She rested her head upon his shoulder, and he and she and the
+pony made one as they climbed the hill, close together.
+
+'Our last day,' sighed Mary, as they went down again, after a couple of
+blissful hours in that wild world between earth and sky. 'I shall be
+glad to go back to poor grandmother, who must be sadly lonely; but it is
+so sweet to be quite alone with you.'
+
+They left the Lodore Hotel in an open carriage, after luncheon next day,
+and posted to Fellside, where they arrived just in time to assist at
+Lady Maulevrier's afternoon tea. She received them both with warm
+affection, and made Hartfield sit close beside her sofa; and every now
+and then, in the pauses of their talk, she laid her wasted and too
+delicate fingers upon the young man's strong brown hand, with a
+caressing gesture.
+
+'You can never know how sweet it is to me to be able to love you,' she
+said tenderly. 'You can never know how my heart yearned to you from the
+very first, and how hard it was to keep myself in check and not be too
+kind to you. Oh, Hartfield, you should have told me the truth. You
+should not have come here under false colours.'
+
+'Should I not, Lady Maulevrier? It was my only chance of being loved
+for my own sake; or, at least of knowing that I was so loved. If I had
+come with my rank and my fortune in my hand, as it were--one of the good
+matches of the year--what security could I ever have felt in the
+disinterested love of the girl who chose me? As plain John Hammond I
+wooed and was rejected; as plain John Hammond I wooed and won; and the
+prize which I so won is a pearl above price. Not for worlds, were the
+last year to be lived over again, would I have one day of my life
+altered.'
+
+'Well, I suppose I ought to be satisfied. I wanted you for Lesbia, and I
+have got you for Mary. Best of all, I have got you for myself. Ronald
+Hollister's son is mine; he is of my kin; he belongs to me; he will not
+forsake me in life; he will be near me, God grant, when I die.'
+
+'Dear Lady Maulevrier, as far as in me lies, I will be to you as a son,'
+said Lord Hartfield, very solemnly, stooping to kiss her hand.
+
+Mary came away from her tea-table to embrace her grandmother.
+
+'It makes me so happy to have won a little of your regard,' she
+murmured, 'and to know that I have married a man whom you can love.'
+
+'Of course you have heard of Lesbia's engagement?' Lady Maulevrier said
+presently, when they were taking their tea.
+
+'Maulevrier wrote to us about it.'
+
+'To us.' How nice it sounded, thought Mary, as if they were a firm, and
+a letter written to one was written to both.
+
+'And do you know this Mr. Smithson?'
+
+'Not intimately. I have met him at the Carlton.'
+
+'I am told that he is very much esteemed by your party, and that he is
+very likely to get a peerage when this Ministry goes out of office.'
+
+'That is not improbable. Peerages are to be had if a man is rich enough;
+and Smithson is supposed to be inordinately rich.'
+
+'I hope he has character as well as money,' said Lady Maulevrier,
+gravely. 'But do you think a man can become inordinately rich in a short
+time, with unblemished honour?'
+
+'We are told that nothing is impossible,' answered Hartfield. 'Faith can
+remove a mountain; only one does not often see it done. However, I
+believe Mr. Smithson's character is fairly good as millionaires go. We
+do not inquire too closely into these things nowadays.'
+
+Lady Maulevrier sighed and held her peace. She remembered the day when
+she had protested vehemently, passionately, against Lesbia's marriage
+with a poor man. And now she had an unhappy feeling about Mr. Smithson's
+wealth, a doubt, a dread that all might not be well with those millions,
+that some portion of that golden tide might flow from impure sources.
+She had lived remote from the world, but she had read the papers
+diligently, and she knew how often the splendour of commercial wealth
+has been suddenly obscured behind a black cloud of obloquy. She could
+not rejoice heartily at the idea of Lesbia's engagement.
+
+'I am to see the man early in August,' she said, as if she were talking
+of a butler. 'I hope I may like him. Lady Kirkbank tells me it is a
+brilliant marriage, and I must take her word. What can _I_ do for my
+granddaughter--a useless log--a prisoner in two rooms?'
+
+'It is very hard,' murmured Mary, tenderly, 'but I do not see any reason
+why Lesbia should not be happy. She likes a brilliant life; and Mr.
+Smithson can give her as much gaiety and variety as she can possibly
+desire. And, after all, yachts, and horses, and villas, and diamonds
+_are_ nice things.'
+
+'They are the things for which half the world is ready to cheat or
+murder the other half,' said Lady Maulevrier, bitterly. She had told
+herself long ago that wealth was power, and she had sacrificed many
+things, her own peace, her own conscience among them, in order that her
+children and grandchildren should be rich; and, knowing this, she felt
+it ill became her to be scrupulous, and to inquire too closely as to
+the sources of Mr. Smithson's wealth. He was rich, and the world had no
+fault to find with him. He had attended the last _levée_. He went into
+reputable society. And he could give Lesbia all those things which the
+world calls good.
+
+Fräulein Müller had packed her heavy old German trunks, and had gone
+back to the _Heimath_, laden with presents of all kinds from Lady
+Maulevrier; so Mary and her husband felt as if Fellside was really their
+own. They dined with her ladyship, and left her for the night an hour
+after dinner; and then they went down to the gardens, and roamed about
+in the twilight, and talked, and talked, and talked, as only true lovers
+can talk, be they Strephon and Daphne in life's glad morning, or
+grey-haired Darby and Joan; and lastly they went down to the lake, and
+rowed about in the moonlight, and talked of King Arthur's death, and of
+that mystic sword, Excalibur, 'wrought by the lonely maiden of the
+lake.'
+
+They spent three happy days in wandering about the neighbourhood,
+revisiting in the delicious freedom of their wedded life those spots
+which they had seen together, when Mary was still in bondage, and the
+eye of propriety, as represented by Miss Müller, was always upon her.
+Now they were free to go where they pleased--to linger where they
+liked--they belonged to each other, and were under no other dominion.
+
+The dogcart, James Steadman's dogcart, which he had rarely used during
+the last six months, was put in requisition and Lord Hartfield drove his
+wife about the country. They went to the Langdale Pikes, and to Dungeon
+Ghyll; and, standing beside the waterfall, Mary told her husband how
+miserable she had felt on that very spot a little less than a year ago,
+when she believed that he thought her plain and altogether horrid.
+Whereupon he had to console her with many kisses and sweet words, for
+the bygone pain on her part, the neglect on his.
+
+'I was a wretch,' he said, 'blind, besotted, imbecile.'
+
+'No, no, no. Lesbia is very lovely--and I could not expect you would
+care for me till she was gone away. How glad I am that she went,' added
+Mary, naïvely.
+
+The sky, which had been cloudless all day, began to darken as Lord
+Hartfield drove back to Fellside, and Mary drew a little closer to the
+driver's elbow, as if for shelter from an impending tempest.
+
+'You have your waterproof, of course,' he said, looking down at her, as
+the first big drops of a thunder shower dashed upon the splash-board.
+'No young woman in the Lake country would think of being without a
+waterproof.'
+
+Mary was duly provided, and with the help of the groom put herself into
+a snug little tartan Inverness, while Hartfield sent the cart spinning
+along twelve miles an hour.
+
+They were at Fellside before the storm developed its full power, but the
+sky was leaden, the landscape dull and blotted, the atmosphere heavy and
+stifling. The thunder grumbled hoarsely, far away yonder in the wild
+gorges of Borrowdale; and Mary and her husband made up their minds that
+the tempest would come before midnight.
+
+Lady Maulevrier was suffering from the condition of the atmosphere. She
+had gone to bed, prostrate with a neuralgic headache, and had given
+orders that no one but her maid should go near her. So Lord Hartfield
+and his wife dined by themselves, in the room where Mary had eaten so
+many uninteresting dinners _tête-à-tête_ with Fräulein; and in spite of
+the storm which howled, pelted, and lightened every now and then, Mary
+felt as if she were in Paradise.
+
+There was no chance of going out after dinner. The lake looked like a
+pool of ink, the mountains were monsters of dark and threatening aspect,
+the rain rattled against the windows, and ran from the verandah in
+miniature water-spouts. There was nothing to do but stay in doors, in
+the sultry, dusky house.
+
+'Let us go to my boudoir,' said Mary. 'Let me enjoy the full privilege
+of having a boudoir--my very own room. Wasn't it too good of grandmother
+to have it made so smart for me?'
+
+'Nothing can be too good for my Mary,' answered her husband, still in
+the doting stage, 'but it was very nice of her ladyship--and the room is
+charming.'
+
+Delightful as the new boudoir might be, they dawdled in the picture
+gallery, that long corridor on which all the upper rooms opened, and at
+one end of which was the door of Lady Maulevrier's bedroom, at right
+angles with that red-cloth door, which was never opened, except to give
+egress or ingress to James Steadman, who kept the key of it, as if the
+old part of Fellside House had been an enchanted castle. Lord Hartfield
+had not forgotten that summer midnight last year, when his meditations
+were disturbed by a woman's piercing cry. He thought of it this evening,
+as Mary and he lowered their voices on drawing near Lady Maulevrier's
+door. She was asleep within there now, perhaps, that strange old woman;
+and at any moment an awful shriek, as of a soul in mortal agony, might
+startle them in the midst of their bliss.
+
+The lamps were lighted below; but this upper part of the house was
+wrapped in the dull grey twilight of a stormy evening. A single lamp
+burned dimly at the further end of the corridor, and all the rest was
+shadow.
+
+Mary and her husband walked up and down, talking in subdued tones. He
+was explaining the necessity of his being in London next week, and
+promising to come back to Fellside directly his business at the House
+was over.
+
+'It will be delightful to read your speeches,' said Mary; 'but I am
+silly and selfish enough to wish you were a country squire, with no
+business in London. And yet I don't wish that either, for I am intensely
+proud of you.'
+
+'And some day, before we are much older, you will sit in your robes in
+the peeress's gallery.'
+
+'Oh, I couldn't,' cried Mary. 'I should make a fool of myself, somehow.
+I should look like a housemaid in borrowed plumes. Remember, I have no
+_Anstand_--I have been told so all my life.'
+
+'You will be one of the prettiest peeresses who ever sat in that
+gallery, and the purest, and truest, and dearest,' protested her
+lover-husband.
+
+'Oh, if I am good enough for you, I am satisfied. I married _you_, and
+not the House of Lords. But I am afraid your friends will all say,
+"Hartfield, why in heaven's name did you marry that uncultivated
+person?" Look!'
+
+She stopped suddenly, with her hand on her husband's arm. It was growing
+momentarily darker in the corridor. They were at the end near the lamp,
+and that other end by Lady Maulevrier's door was in deeper darkness, yet
+not too dark for Lord Hartfield to see what it was to which Mary
+pointed.
+
+The red-cloth door was open, and a faint glimmer of light showed within.
+A man was standing in the corridor, a small, shrunken figure, bent and
+old.
+
+'It is Steadman's uncle,' said Mary. 'Do let me go and speak to him,
+poor, poor old man.'
+
+'The madman!' exclaimed Hartfield. 'No, Mary; go to your room at once.
+I'll get him back to his own den.'
+
+'But he is not mad--at any rate, he is quite harmless. Let me just say a
+few words to him. Surely I am safe with you.'
+
+Lord Hartfield was not inclined to dispute that argument; indeed, he
+felt himself strong enough to protect his wife from all the lunatics in
+Bedlam. He went towards the end of the corridor, keeping Mary well
+behind him; but Mary did not mean to lose the opportunity of renewing
+her acquaintance with Steadman's uncle.
+
+'I hope you are better, poor old soul,' she murmured, gently, lovingly
+almost, nestling at her husband's side.
+
+'What, is it you?' cried the old man, tremulous with joy. 'Oh,
+I have been looking for you--looking--looking--waiting, waiting for
+you. I have been hoping for you every hour and every minute. Why didn't
+you come to me, cruel girl?'
+
+'I tried with all my might,' said Mary, 'but people blocked up the door
+in the stables, and they wouldn't let me go to you; and I have been
+rather busy for the last fortnight,' added Mary, blushing in the
+darkness, 'I--I--am married to this gentleman.'
+
+'Married! Ah, that is a good thing. He will take care of you, if he is
+an honest man.'
+
+'I thought he was an honest man, but he has turned out to be an earl,'
+answered Mary, proudly. 'My husband is Lord Hartfield.'
+'Hartfield--Hartfield,' the old man repeated, feebly. 'Surely I have
+heard that name before.'
+
+There was no violence in his manner, nothing but imbecility; so Lord
+Hartfield made up his mind that Mary was right, and that the old man was
+quite harmless, worthy of all compassion and kindly treatment.
+
+This was the same old man whom he had met on the Fell in the bleak March
+morning. There was no doubt in his mind about that, although he could
+hardly see the man's face in the shadowy corridor.
+
+'Come,' said the man, 'come with me, my dear. You forgot me, but I have
+not forgotten you. I mean to leave you my fortune. Come with me, and
+I'll show you your legacy. It is all for you--every rupee--every jewel.'
+
+This word rupee startled Lord Hartfield. It had a strange sound from the
+lips of a Westmoreland peasant.
+
+'Come, child, come!' said the man impatiently. 'Come and see what I have
+left you in my will. I make a new will every day, but I leave everything
+to you--every will is in your favour. But if you are married you had
+better have your legacy at once. Your husband is strong enough to take
+care of you and your fortune.'
+
+'Poor old man,' whispered Mary; 'pray let us humour him.'
+
+It was the usual madman's fancy, no doubt. Boundless wealth, exalted
+rank, sanctity, power--these things all belong to the lunatic. He is the
+lord of creation, and, fed by such fancies, he enjoys flashes of wild
+happiness in the midst of his woe.
+
+'Come, come, both of you,' said the old man, eagerly, breathless with
+impatience.
+
+He led the way across the sacred threshold, looking back, beckoning to
+them with his wasted old hand, and Mary for the first time in her life
+entered that house which had seemed to her from her very childhood as a
+temple of silence and mystery. The passage was dimly lighted by a little
+lamp on a bracket. The old man crept along stealthily, looking back,
+with a face full of cunning, till he came to a broad landing, from which
+an old staircase, with massive oak banisters, led down to the square
+hall below. The ceilings were low, the passages were narrow. All things
+in the house were curiously different from that spacious mansion which
+Lady Maulevrier had built for herself.
+
+A door on the landing stood ajar. The old man pushed it open and went
+in, followed by Mary and her husband.
+
+They both expected to see a room humble almost to poverty--an iron
+bedstead, perhaps, and such furniture as the under servants in a
+nobleman's household are privileged to enjoy. Both were alike surprised
+at the luxury of the apartment they entered, and which was evidently
+reserved exclusively for Steadman's uncle.
+
+It was a sitting-room. The furniture was old-fashioned, but almost as
+handsome as any in Lady Maulevrier's apartments. There was a large sofa
+of most comfortable shape, covered with dark red velvet, and furnished
+with pillows and foot rugs, which would have satisfied a Sybarite of the
+first water. Beside the sofa stood a hookah, with all appliances in the
+Oriental fashion; and half a dozen long cherry-wood pipes neatly
+arranged above the mantelpiece showed that Mr. Steadman's uncle was a
+smoker of a luxurious type.
+
+In the centre of the room stood a large writing table, with a case of
+pigeon-holes at the back, a table which would not have disgraced a Prime
+Minister's study. A pair of wax candles, in tall silver candlesticks,
+lighted this table, which was littered with papers, in a wild confusion
+that too plainly indicated the condition of the owner's mind. The oak
+floor was covered with Persian prayer rugs, old and faded, but of the
+richest quality. The window curtains were dark red velvet; and through
+an open doorway Mary and her husband saw a corresponding luxury in the
+arrangements of the adjoining bedroom.
+
+The whole thing seemed wild and strange as a fairy tale. The weird and
+wizened old man, grinning and nodding his head at them. The handsome
+room, rich with dark, subdued colour, in the dim light of four wax
+candles, two on the table, two on the mantelpiece. The perfume of
+stephanotis and tea-roses, blended faintly with the all-pervading odour
+of latakia and Turkish attar. All was alike strange, bearing in mind
+that this old man was a recipient of Lady Maulevrier's charity, a
+hanger-on upon a confidential servant, who might be supposed to be
+generously treated if he had the run of his teeth and the shelter of a
+decent garret. Verily, there was something regal in such hospitality as
+this, accorded to a pauper lunatic.
+
+Where was Steadman, the alert, the watchful, all this time? Mary
+wondered. They had met no one. The house was as mute as if it were under
+the spell of a magician. It was like that awful chamber in the Arabian
+story, where the young man found the magic horse, and started on his
+fatal journey. Mary felt as if here, too, there must be peril; here,
+too, fate was working.
+
+The old man went to the writing table, pushed aside the papers, and then
+stooped down and turned a mysterious handle or winch under the
+knee-hole, and the writing-desk moved slowly on one side, while the
+pigeon-holes sank, and a deep well full of secret drawers was laid open.
+
+From one of these secret drawers the old man took a bunch of keys,
+nodding, chuckling, muttering to himself as he groped for them with
+tremulous hand.
+
+'Steadman is uncommonly clever--thinks he knows everything--but he
+doesn't know the trick of this table. I could hide a regiment of Sepoys
+in this table, my dear. Well, well, perhaps not Sepoys--too big, too
+big--but I could hide all the State papers of the Presidency. There are
+drawers enough for that.'
+
+Hartfield watched him intently, with thoughtful brow. There was a
+mystery here, a mystery of the deepest dye; and it was for him--it must
+needs be his task, welcome or unwelcome, to unravel it.
+
+This was the Maulevrier skeleton.
+
+'Now, come with me,' said the old man, clutching Mary's wrist, and
+drawing her towards the half-open door leading into the bedroom.
+
+She had a feeling of shrinking, for there was something uncanny about
+the old man, something that might be life or death, might belong to this
+world or the next; but she had no fear. In the first place, she was
+courageous by nature, and in the second her husband was with her, a
+tower of strength, and she could know no fear while he was at her side.
+
+The strange old man led the way across his bedroom to an inner chamber,
+oak pannelled, with very little furniture, but holding much treasure in
+the shape of trunks, portmanteaux--all very old and dusty--and two large
+wooden cases, banded with iron.
+
+Before one of these cases the man knelt down, and applied a key to the
+padlock which fastened it. He gave the candle to Lord Hartfield to hold,
+and then opened the box. It seemed to be full of books, which he began
+to remove, heaping them on the floor beside him; and it was not till he
+had cleared away a layer of dingy volumes that he came to a large metal
+strong box, so heavy that he could not lift it out of the chest.
+
+Slowly, tremulously, and with quickened breathing, he unlocked the box
+where it was, and raised the lid.
+
+'Look,' he said eagerly, 'this is her legacy--this is my little girl's
+legacy.'
+
+Lord Hartfield bent down and looked at the old man's treasure, by the
+wavering light of the candle; Mary looking over his shoulder, breathless
+with wonder.
+
+The strong box was divided into compartments. One, and the largest, was
+filled with rouleaux of coin, packed as closely as possible. The others
+contained jewels, set and unset--diamonds, emeralds, rubies,
+sapphires--which flashed back the flickering flame of the candle with
+glintings of rainbow light.
+
+'These are all for her--all--all,' exclaimed the old man. 'They are
+worth a prince's ransom. Those rouleaux are all gold; those gems are
+priceless. They were the dowry of a princess. But they are hers
+now--yes, my dear, they are yours--because you spoke sweetly, and smiled
+prettily, and were very good to a lonely old man--and because you have
+my mother's face, dear, a smile that recalls the days of my youth. Lift
+out the box and take it away with you, if you are strong enough,--you,
+you,' he said, touching Lord Hartfield. 'Hide it somewhere--keep it from
+_her_. Let no one know--no one except your wife and you must be in the
+secret.'
+
+'My dear sir, it is out of the question--impossible that my wife or I
+should accept one of those coins--or the smallest of those jewels.'
+
+'Why not, in the devil's name?'
+
+'First and foremost, we do not know how you came in possession of them;
+secondly, we do not know who you are.'
+
+'They came to me fairly enough--bequeathed to me by one who had the
+right to leave them. Would you have had all that gold left for an
+adventurer to wallow in?'
+
+'You must keep your treasure, sir, however it may have come to you,'
+answered Lord Hartfield firmly. 'My wife cannot take upon herself the
+burden of a single gold coin--least of all from a stranger. Remember,
+sir, to us your possession of this wealth--nay, your whole existence--is
+a mystery.'
+
+'You want to know who I am?' said the old man drawing himself up, with a
+sudden _hauteur_ which was not without dignity, despite his shrunken
+form and grotesque appearence. 'Well, sir. I am----'
+
+He checked himself abruptly, and looked round the room with a scared
+expression.
+
+'No, no, no,' he muttered; 'caution, caution! They have not done with me
+yet; she warned me--they are lying in wait; I mustn't walk into their
+trap.' And then turning to Lord Hartfield, he said, haughtily, 'I shall
+not condescend to tell you who I am, sir. You must know that I am a
+gentleman, and that is enough for you. There is my gift to your
+wife'--pointing to the chest--'take it or leave it.'
+
+'I shall leave it, sir, with all due respect.'
+
+A frightful change came over the old man's face at this determined
+refusal. His eyes glowered at Lord Hartfield under the heavy scowling
+brows; his bloodless lips worked convulsively.
+
+'Do you take me for a thief?' he exclaimed. 'Are you afraid to touch my
+gold--that gold for which men and women sell their souls, blast their
+lives with shame, and pain, and dishonour, all the world over? Do you
+stand aloof from it--refuse to touch it, as if it were infected? And
+you, too, girl! Have you no sense? Are you an idiot?'
+
+'I can do nothing against my husband's wish,' Mary answered, quietly;
+'and, indeed, there is no need for us to take your money. We are rich
+without it. Please leave that chest to a hospital. It will be ever so
+much better than giving it to us.'
+
+'You told me you were going to marry a poor man?'
+
+'I know. But he cheated me, and turned out to be a rich man. He was a
+horrid impostor,' said Mary, drawing closer to her husband, and smiling
+up at him.
+
+The old man flung down the lid of his strong box, which shut with a
+sonorous clang. He locked it, and put the key in his pocket.
+
+'I have done with you.' he said. 'You can go your ways, both of you.
+Fools, fools, fools! The world is peopled with rogues and fools; and, by
+heaven, I would rather have to do with the rogues!'
+
+He flung himself into an arm-chair, one of the few objects of furniture
+in the room, and left them to find their way back alone.
+
+'Good-night, sir,' said Lord Hartfield; but the old man made no reply.
+He sat frowning sullenly.
+
+'Good-night, sir,' said Mary, in her gentle voice, breathing infinite
+pity.
+
+'Good-night, child,' he growled. 'I am sorry you have married an ass.'
+
+This was more than Mary could stand, and she was about to reply with
+some acrimony, when her husband put his hand upon her lips and hurried
+her away.
+
+On the landing they met Mrs. Steadman, a stout, commonplace person, who
+always had the same half-frightened look, as of one who lived in the
+shadow of an abiding terror, obviously cowed and brow-beaten by her
+husband, according to the Fellside household.
+
+At sight of Lord Hartfield and his wife she looked a little more
+frightened than usual.
+
+'Goodness gracious, Lady Mary! how ever did you come here?' she gasped,
+not yet having quite realised the fact that Mary had been promoted.
+
+'We came to please Steadman's uncle--he brought us in here,' Mary
+answered, quietly.
+
+'But where did you find him?'
+
+'In the corridor--just by her ladyship's room.'
+
+'Then he must have taken the key out of Steadman's pocket, or Steadman
+must have left it about somewhere,' muttered Mrs. Steadman, as if
+explaining the matter to herself, rather than to Mary. 'My poor husband
+is not the man he was. And so you met him in the corridor, and he
+brought you in here. Poor old gentleman! He gets madder and madder every
+day.'
+
+'There is method in his madness,' said Lord Hartfield. 'He talked very
+much like sanity just now. Has your husband had the charge of him long?'
+
+Mrs. Steadman answered somewhat confusedly.
+
+'A goodish time, sir. I can't quite exactly say--time passes so quiet in
+a place like this. One hardly keeps count of the years.'
+
+'Forty years, perhaps?'
+
+Mrs. Steadman blenched under Lord Hartfield's steadfast look--a look
+which questioned more searchingly than his words.
+
+'Forty years,' she repeated, with a faint laugh. 'Oh, dear no, sir, not
+a quarter as long. It isn't so many years, after all, since Steadman's
+poor old uncle went a little queer in his head; and Steadman, having
+such a quiet home here, and plenty of spare room, made bold to ask her
+ladyship if he might give the poor old man a home, where he would be in
+nobody's way.'
+
+'And the poor old man seems to have a very luxurious home,' answered
+Lord Hartfield. 'Pray when and where did Mr. Steadman's uncle learn to
+smoke a hookah?'
+
+Simple as the question was, it proved too much for Mrs. Steadman. She
+only shook her head, and faltered some unintelligible reply.
+
+'Where is your husband?' asked Lord Hartfield; 'I should like to have a
+little talk with him, if he is disengaged.'
+
+'He is not very well, my lord,' answered Mrs. Steadman. 'He has been
+ailing off and on for the last six months, but I couldn't get him to see
+the doctor, or to tell her ladyship that he was in bad health. And about
+a week ago he broke down altogether, and fell into a kind of drowsy
+state. He keeps about, and he does his work pretty much the same as
+usual, but I can see that it's too much for him. If you like to come
+downstairs I can let you through the lower door into the hall; and if he
+should have woke up since I have left him he'll be at your lordship's
+service. But I'd rather not wake him out of his sleep.'
+
+'There is no occasion. What I have to say will keep till to-morrow.'
+
+Lord Hartfield and his wife followed Mrs. Steadman downstairs to the low
+dark hall, where an old eight-day clock ticked with hoarse and solemn
+beat, and a fine stag's head over each doorway gave evidence of some
+former Haselden's sporting tastes. The door of a small panelled parlour
+stood half-way open; and within the room Lord Hartfield saw James
+Steadman asleep in an arm-chair by the fire, which burned as brightly as
+if it had been Christmas time.
+
+'He was so chilly and shivery this afternoon that I was obliged to light
+a fire,' said Mrs. Steadman.
+
+'He seems to be sleeping heavily,' said Hartfield. 'Don't awaken him.
+I'll see him to-morrow morning before I go to London.'
+
+'He sleeps half the day just as heavy as that, my lord,' said the wife,
+with a troubled air. 'I don't think it can be right.'
+
+'I don't think so either,' answered Lord Hartfield. 'You had better call
+in the doctor.'
+
+'I will, my lord, to-morrow morning. James will be angry with me, I
+daresay; but I must take upon myself to do it without his leave.'
+
+She led the way along a passage corresponding with the one above, and
+unlocked a door opening into a lobby near the billiard-room.
+
+'Come, Molly, see if you can beat me at a fifty game,' said Lord
+Hartfield, with the air of a man who wants to shake off the impression
+of some dominant idea.
+
+'Of course you will annihilate me, but it will be a relief to play,'
+answered Mary. 'That strange old man has given me a shock. Everything
+about his surroundings is so different from what I expected. And how
+could an uncle of Steadman's come by all that money--and those
+jewels--if they were jewels, and not bits of glass which the poor old
+thing has chopped up, in order to delude himself with an imaginary
+treasure?'
+
+'I do not think they are bits of glass, Molly.'
+
+'They sparkled tremendously--almost as much as my--our--the family
+diamonds,' said Mary, puzzled how to describe that property which she
+held in right of her position as countess regnant; 'but if they are real
+jewels, and all those rouleaux real money, how could Steadman's uncle
+become possessed of such wealth?'
+
+'How, indeed?' said Lord Hartfield, choosing his cue
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII.
+
+ON BOARD THE 'CAYMAN.'
+
+
+Goodwood had come and gone, a brief bright season of loss and gain, fine
+gowns, flirtation, lobster en mayonaise, champagne, sunshine, dust,
+glare, babble of many voices, successes, failures, triumphs,
+humiliations. A very pretty picture to contemplate from the outside,
+this little world in holiday clothes, framed in greenery! but just on
+the Brocken, where the nicest girl among the dancers had the unpleasant
+peculiarity of dropping a little red mouse out of her mouth--so too here
+under different forms there were red mice dropping about among the
+company. Here a hint of coming insolvency; there a whisper of a
+threatened divorce suit, staved off for a while, compromises, family
+secrets, little difficulties everywhere; betrothed couples smilingly
+accepting congratulations, who should never have been affianced were
+truth and honour the rule of life; forsaken wives pretending to think
+their husbands models of fidelity; jovial creatures with ruin staring in
+their faces; households divided and shamming union; almost everybody
+living above his or her means; and the knowledge that nobody is any
+better or any happier than his neighbour society's only fountain of
+consolation.
+
+Lady Lesbia's gowns and parasols had been admired, her engagement had
+furnished an infinity of gossip, and the fact of Montesma's constant
+attendance upon her had given zest to the situation, just that flavour
+of peril and fatality which the soul of society loveth.
+
+'Is she going to marry them both?' asked an ancient dowager of the
+ever-young type.
+
+'No, dear Lady Sevenoaks, she can only marry one, don't you know; but
+the other is nice to go about with; and I believe it is the other she
+really likes.'
+
+'It is always the other that a woman likes,' answered the dowager; 'I am
+madly in love with this Peruvian--no, I think you said Cuban--myself. I
+wish some good-natured creature would present him to me. If you know
+anybody who knows him, tell them to bring him to my next
+afternoon--Saturday. But why does--_chose_--_machin_--Smithson allow
+such a handsome hanger-on? After marriage I could understand that he
+might not be able to help himself; but before marriage a man generally
+has some kind of authority.'
+
+The world wondered a little, just as Lady Sevenoaks wondered, at
+Smithson's complacency in allowing a man so attractive as Montesma to be
+so much in the society of his future wife, yet even the censorious could
+but admit that the Cuban's manner offered no ground for offence. He
+came to Goodwood 'on his own hook,' as society put it: and every man who
+wears a decent coat and is not a welsher has a right to enjoy the
+prettiest race-course in England. He spent a considerable part of the
+day in Lesbia's company; but since she was the centre of a little crowd
+all the time, there could be no offence in this. He was a stranger,
+knowing very few people, and having nothing to do but to amuse himself.
+Smithson was an old and familiar friend, and was in a measure bound to
+give him hospitality.
+
+Mr. Smithson had recognised that obligation, but in a somewhat sparing
+manner. There were a dozen unoccupied bedchambers in the Park Lane
+Renaissance villa; but Smithson did not invite his Cuban acquaintance to
+shift his quarters from the Bristol to Park Lane. He was civil to Don
+Gomez: but anyone who had taken the trouble to watch and study the
+conduct and social relations of these two men would have seen that his
+civility was a forced civility, and that he endured the Spaniard's
+society under constraint of some kind.
+
+And now all the world was flocking to Cowes for the regatta, and Lesbia
+and her chaperon were established on board Mr. Smithson's yacht, the
+_Cayman_; and the captain of the _Cayman_ and all her crew were
+delivered over to Lesbia to be her slaves and to obey her lightest
+breath. The _Cayman_ was to lie at anchor off Cowes for the regatta
+week; and then she was to sail for Hyde, and lie at anchor there for
+another regatta week; and she was to be a floating hotel for Lady Lesbia
+so long as the young lady would condescend to occupy her.
+
+The captain was an altogether exceptional captain, and the crew were a
+picked crew, ruddy faced, sandy whiskered for the most part, Englishmen
+all, honest, hardy fellows from between the Nore and the Wash, talking
+in an honest provincial patois, dashed with sea slang. They were the
+very pink and pattern of cleanliness, and the _Cayman_ herself from stem
+to stern was dazzling and spotless to an almost painful degree.
+
+Not content with the existing arrangements of the yacht, which were at
+once elegant and luxurious, Mr. Smithson had sent down a Bond Street
+upholsterer to refit the saloon and Lady Lesbia's cabin. The dark velvet
+and morocco which suited a masculine occupant would not have harmonised
+with girlhood and beauty; and Mr. Smithson's saloon, as originally
+designed, had something of the air of a _tabagie_. The Bond Street man
+stripped away all the velvet and morocco, plucked up the Turkey carpet,
+draped the scuttle-ports with pale yellow cretonne garnished with orange
+pompons, subdued the glare of the skylight by a blind of oriental silk,
+covered the divans with Persian saddlebags, the floor with a delicate
+Indian matting, and furnished the saloon with all that was most feminine
+in the way of bamboo chairs and tea-tables, Japanese screens and fans
+of gorgeous colouring. Here and there against the fluted yellow drapery
+he fastened a large Rhodes plate; and the thing was done. Lady Lesbia's
+cabin was all bamboo and embroidered India muslin. An oval glass, framed
+in Dresden biscuit, adorned the side, a large white bearskin covered the
+floor. The berth was pretty enough for the cradle of a duchess's first
+baby. Even Lesbia, spoiled by much indulgence and unlimited credit, gave
+a little cry of pleasure at sight of the nest that had been made ready
+for her.
+
+'Really, Mr. Smithson is immensely kind!' she exclaimed.
+
+'Smithson is always kind,' answered Lady Kirkbank, 'and you don't half
+enough appreciate him. He has given me his very own cabin--such a dear
+little den! There are his cigar boxes and everything lovely on the
+shelves, and his own particular dressing-case put open for me to
+use--all the backs of all the brushes _repoussé_ silver, and all the
+scent-bottles filled expressly for me. If the yacht would only stand
+quite still, I should think it more delicious than the best house I ever
+stayed in: only I don't altogether enjoy that little way it has of
+gurgling up and down perpetually.'
+
+Mr. Smithson's chief butler, a German Swiss, and a treasure of
+intelligence, had come down to take the domestic arrangements of the
+yacht into his control. The Park Lane _chef_ was also on board, Mr.
+Smithson's steward acting as his subordinate. This great man grumbled
+sorely at the smallness of his surroundings; for the most luxurious
+yacht was a poor substitute for the spacious kitchens and storerooms and
+stillrooms of the London mansion. There was a cabin for Lady Kirkbank's
+Rilboche and Lady Lesbia's Kibble, where the two might squabble at their
+leisure; in a word, everything had been done that forethought could do
+to make the yacht as perfect a place of sojourn as any floating
+habitation, from Noah's Ark to the Orient steamers, had ever been made.
+
+It was between four and five upon a delicious July afternoon that Lady
+Kirkbank and her charge came on board. The maids and the luggage had
+been sent a day in advance, so that everything might be in its place,
+and the empty boxes all stowed away, before the ladies arrived. They had
+nothing to do but walk on board and fling themselves into the low
+luxurious chairs ready for them on the deck, a little wearied by the
+heat and dust of a railway journey, and with that delicious sense of
+languid indifference to all the cares of life which seems to be in the
+very atmosphere of a perfect summer afternoon.
+
+A striped awning covered the deck, and great baskets of roses--pink, and
+red, and yellow--were placed about here and there. Tea was ready on a
+low table, a swinging brass kettle hissing merrily, with an air of
+supreme homeliness.
+
+Mr. Smithson had accompanied his _fiancée_ from town, and now sat
+reading the _Globe_, and meekly waiting for his tea, while Lesbia took a
+languid survey of the shore and the flotilla of boats, little and big,
+and while Lady Kirkbank rhapsodised about the yacht, praising
+everything, and calling everything by a wrong name. He was to be their
+guest all day, and every day. They were to have enough of him, as Lesbia
+had observed to her chaperon, with a spice of discontent, not quite so
+delighted with the arrangement as her faithful swain. To him the idea
+was rapture.
+
+'You have contrived somehow to keep me very much at a distance
+hitherto,' he told Lesbia, 'and I feel sometimes as if we were almost
+strangers; but a yacht is the best place in the world to bring two
+people together, and a week at Cowes will make us nearer to each other
+and more to each other than three months in London;' and Lesbia had said
+nothing, inwardly revolting at the idea of becoming any nearer and
+dearer to this man whom she had pledged herself to marry. She was to be
+his wife--yes, some day--and it was his desire the some day should be
+soon: but in the interval her dearest privilege was the power to keep
+him at a distance.
+
+And yet she could not make up her mind to break with him, to say
+honestly, 'I never liked you much, and now we are engaged I find myself
+liking you less and less every day. Save me from the irrevocable
+wickedness of a loveless marriage. Forgive me, and let me go.' No, this
+she could not bring herself to say. She did not like Mr. Smithson, but
+she valued the position he was able to give her. She wanted to be
+mistress of that infinite wealth--she could not renounce that right to
+which she fancied she had been born, her right to be one of the Queens
+of Society: and the only man who had offered to crown her as queen, to
+find her a palace and a court, was Horace Smithson. Without Mr. Smithson
+her first season would have resulted in dire failure. She might perhaps
+have endured that failure, and been content to abide the chances of a
+second season, had it not been for Mary's triumph. But for Mary to be a
+Countess, and for Lesbia to remain Lesbia Haselden, a nobody, dependent
+upon the caprices of a grandmother whose means might after all be but
+limited--no, such a concatenation as that was not to be endured. Lesbia
+told herself that she could not go back to Fellside to remain there
+indefinitely, a spinster and a dependent. She had learnt the true value
+of money; she had found out what the world was like; and it seemed to
+her that some such person as Mr. Smithson was essential to her
+existence, just as a butler is a necessity in a house. One may not like
+the man, but the post must be filled.
+
+Again, if she were to throw over Mr. Smithson, and speculate upon her
+chances of next year, what hope had she of doing better in her second
+season than in her first? The horizon was blank. There was no great
+_parti_ likely to offer himself for competition. She had seen all that
+the market could produce. Wealthy bachelors, high-born lovers, could not
+drop from the moon. Lesbia, schooled by Lady Kirkbank, knew her peerage
+by heart; and she knew that, having missed Lord Hartfield, there was
+really no one in the Blue Book worth waiting for. Thus, caring only for
+those things which wealth can buy, she had made up her mind that she
+could not do without Horace Smithson's money; and she must therefore
+needs resign herself to the disagreeable necessity of taking Smithson
+and his money together. The great auctioneer Fate would not divide the
+lot.
+
+She told herself that for her a loveless marriage was, after all, no
+prodigious sacrifice. She had found out that heart made but a small
+figure in the sum of her life. She could do without love. A year ago she
+had fancied herself in love with John Hammond. In her seclusion at St.
+Bees, in the long, dull August days, sauntering up and down by the edge
+of the sea, in the melancholy sunset hour, she thought that her heart
+was broken, that life was worthless without the man she loved. She had
+thought and felt all this, but not strongly enough to urge her to any
+great effort, not keenly enough to make her burst her chains. She had
+preferred to suffer this loss than to sacrifice her chances of future
+aggrandisement. And now she looked back and remembered those sunset
+walks by the sea, and all her thoughts and feelings in those silent
+summer hours; and she smiled at herself, half in scorn, half in pity,
+for her own weakness. How easily she had learned to do without him who
+at that hour seemed the better part of her existence. A good deal of
+gaiety and praise, a little mild flirtation at Kirkbank Castle, and lo!
+the image of her first lover began to grow dim and blurred, like a faded
+photograph. A season at Cannes, and she was cured. A week in London, and
+that first love was a thing of the past, a dream from which the dreamer
+awaketh, forgetting the things that he has dreamt.
+
+Remembering all this she told herself that she had no heart, that love
+or no love was a question of very little moment, and that the personal
+qualities of the man whom she chose for a husband mattered nothing to
+her, provided that his lands and houses and social status came up to her
+standard of merit. She had seen Mr. Smithson's houses and lands; and she
+was distinctly assured that he would in due course be raised to the
+peerage. She had, therefore, every reason to be satisfied.
+
+Having thus reasoned out the circumstances of her new life, she accepted
+her fate with a languid grace, which harmonised with her delicate and
+patrician beauty. Nobody could have for a moment supposed from her
+manner that she loved Horace Smithson; but nobody had the right to
+think that she detested him. She accepted all his attentions as a thing
+of course. The flowers which he strewed beneath her footsteps, the
+pearls which he melted in her wine--metaphorically speaking--were just
+'good enough' and no more. This afternoon, when Mr. Smithson asked her
+how she liked the arrangements of the saloon and cabin, she said she
+thought they would do very nicely. 'They would do.' Nothing more.
+
+'It is dreadfully small, of course,' she said, 'when one is accustomed
+to rooms: but it is rather amusing to be in a sort of doll's house, and
+on deck it is really very nice.'
+
+This was the most Mr. Smithson had for his pains, and he seemed to be
+content therewith. If a man will marry the prettiest girl of the year he
+must be satisfied with such scant civility as conscious perfection may
+give him. We know that Aphrodite was not altogether the most comfortable
+wife, and that Helen was a cause of trouble.
+
+Mr. Smithson sat in a bamboo chair beside his mistress, and looked
+ineffably happy when she handed him a cup of tea. Sky and sea were one
+exquisite azure--the colours of the boats glancing in the sunshine as if
+they had been jewels; here an emerald rudder, there a gunwale painted
+with liquid rubies. White sails, white frocks, white ducks made vivid
+patches of light against the blue. The landscape yonder shone and
+sparkled as if it had been incandescent. All the world of land and sky
+and sea was steeped in sunshine. A day on which to do nothing, read
+nothing, think nothing, only to exist.
+
+While they sat basking in the balmy atmosphere, looking lazily at that
+bright, almost insupportable picture of blue sea under blue sky, there
+came the dip of oars, making music, and a sound of coolness with every
+plash of water.
+
+'How good it is of somebody to row about, just to give us that nice
+soothing sound,' murmured Lesbia.
+
+Lady Kirkbank, with her dear old head thrown back upon the cushion of
+her luxurious chair, and her dear little cornflower hat just a thought
+on one side, was sleeping the sleep of the just, and unconsciously
+revealing the little golden arrangements which gave variety to her front
+teeth.
+
+The soothing sound came nearer and nearer, close under the _Cayman's_
+quarter, and then a brown hand clasped the man-ropes, and a light slim
+figure swung itself upon deck, while the boat bobbed and splashed below.
+
+It was Montesma, who had not been expected till the racing, which was
+not to begin for two days. A faint, faint rose bloom flushed Lady
+Lesbia's cheek at sight of him; and Mr. Smithson gave a little look of
+vexation, just one rapid contraction of the eyebrows, which resumed
+their conventional placidity the next instant.
+
+'So good of you,' he murmured. 'I really did not expect you till the
+beginning of the week.'
+
+'London is simply insupportable in this weather--most of all for a man
+born in the Havanas. My soul thirsted for blue water. So I said to
+myself, This good Smithson is at Cowes; he will give me the run of his
+yacht and a room at his villa. Why not go to Cowes at once?'
+
+'The room is at your service. I have only two or three of my people at
+Formosa, but just enough to look after a bachelor friend.'
+
+'I want very little service, my dear fellow,' answered Montesma,
+pleasantly. 'A man who has crossed the Cordilleras and camped in the
+primeval forest on the shores of the Amazon, learns to help himself. So
+this is the _Cayman_? _Muy deleitoso, mi amigo_. A floating Paradise in
+little. If the ark had been like this, I don't think any of the
+passengers would have wanted the flood to dry up.'
+
+He shook hands with Lady Lesbia as he spoke, and with Lady Kirkbank, who
+looked at him as if he were part of her dream, and then he sank into the
+chair on Lesbia's left hand, with the air of being established for the
+rest of the day.
+
+'I have left my portmanteaux at the end of the pier,' he said lazily. 'I
+dare say one of your fellows will be good enough to take them to Formosa
+for me?'
+
+Mr. Smithson gave the necessary order. All the beauty had gone out of the
+sea and the sky for him, all the contentment from his mind; and yet he
+was in no position to rebel against Fate--in no position to say directly
+or indirectly, 'Don Gomez de Montesma, I don't want you here, and I must
+request you to transfer yourself elsewhither.'
+
+Lesbia's feelings were curiously different. The very sight of that
+nervous brown hand upon the rope just now had sent a strange thrill
+through her veins. She who believed herself heartless could scarce trust
+herself to speak for the vehement throbbing of her heart. A sense of joy
+too deep for words possessed her as she reclined in her low chair, with
+drooping eyelids, yet feeling the fire of those dark southern eyes upon
+her face, scorching her like an actual flame.
+
+'Lady Lesbia, may I have a cup of tea?' he asked; not because he wanted
+the tea, but only for the cruel delight of seeing if she were able to
+give it to him calmly.
+
+Her hands shook, fluttered, wandered helplessly, as she poured out that
+cup of tea and handed it to Montesma, a feminine office which she had
+performed placidly enough for Mr. Smithson. The Spaniard took the cup
+from her with a quiet smile, a subtle look which seemed to explore the
+inmost depth of her consciousness.
+
+Yes, this man was verily her master. She knew it, and he know it, as
+that look of his told her. Vain to play her part of languid
+indifference--vain to struggle against her bondage. In heart and spirit
+she was at his feet, an odalisque, recognising and bowing down to her
+sultan.
+
+Happily for the general peace, Mr. Smithson had been looking away
+seaward, with a somewhat troubled brow, while that little cup and saucer
+episode was being enacted. And in the next minute Lesbia had recovered
+her self-command, and resumed that graceful languor which was one of her
+charms. She was weak, but she was not altogether foolish; and she had no
+idea of succumbing to this new influence--of yielding herself up to this
+conqueror, who seemed to take her life into his hand as if it were a bit
+of thistledown. Her agitation of those first few minutes was due to the
+suddenness of his appearance--the reaction from dulness to delight. She
+had been told that he was not to be at Cowes till Monday, and lo! he was
+here at her side, just as she was thinking how empty and dreary life was
+without him.
+
+He dropped into his place so naturally and easily, made himself so
+thoroughly at home and so agreeable to every one, that it was almost
+impossible for Horace Smithson to resent his audacity! Mr. Smithson's
+vitals might be devoured by the gnawing of the green-eyed monster, but
+however fierce that gnawing were, he did not want to seem jealous.
+Montesma was there as the very incarnation of some experiences in Mr.
+Smithson's past career, and he dared not object to the man's presence.
+
+And so the summer day wore on. They had the yacht all to themselves that
+evening, for the racing yachts were fulfilling engagements in other
+waters, and the gay company of pleasure-seekers had not yet fully
+assembled. They were dropping in one by one, all the evening, and Cowes
+roads grew fuller of life with every hour of the summer night.
+
+Mr. Smithson and his guests dined in the saloon, a snug little party of
+four, and sat long over dessert, deep into the dusk; and they talked of
+all things under heaven, things frivolous, things grave, but most of all
+about that fair, strange world in far-off southern waters, the sunny
+islands of the Caribbean Sea, and the dreamy, luxurious life of that
+tropical clime, half Spanish, half Oriental, wholly independent of
+European conventionalities. Lesbia listened, enchanted by the picture.
+What were Park Lane palaces, and Berkshire manors, the petty splendours
+of the architect and the upholsterer, weighed against a world in which
+all nature is on a grander scale? Mr. Smithson might give her fine
+houses and costly upholstery; but only the Tropic of Cancer could give
+her larger and brighter stars, a world of richer colouring, a land of
+perpetual summer, nights luminous with fire-flies, gardens in which the
+fern and the cactus were as forest trees, and where humming-birds
+flashed among the foliage like living flowers; nay, where the flowers
+themselves took the forms of the animal world and seemed instinct with
+life and motion.
+
+'Yes,' said Mr. Smithson, with his gentlemanlike drawl, 'Spanish America
+and the West Indies are delightful places to talk about. There are so
+many things one leaves out of the picture--thieves, niggers, jiggers,
+snakes, mosquitoes, yellow Jack, creeping, crawling creatures of all
+kinds. I always feel very glad I have been to South America.'
+
+'Why?'
+
+'In order that I may never go there again,' replied Mr. Smithson.
+
+'I was beginning to hope you would take me there some day,' said Lesbia.
+
+'Never again, no, not even for your sake. No man should ever leave
+Europe after he is five-and-thirty; indeed, I doubt if after that age he
+should venture beyond the Mediterranean. That is the sea of
+civilisation. Anything outside it means barbarism.'
+
+'I hope we are going to travel by-and-by,' said Lesbia; 'I have been
+mewed up in Grasmere half my life, and if you are going to confine me to
+the shores of the Mediterranean, which is, after all, only a larger
+lake, for the other half of my life, my existence will be a dull piece
+of work after all. I agree with what Don Gomez said the other night:
+"Not to travel is not to live."'
+
+They went on deck presently and sat in the summer darkness, lighted only
+by the stars, and by the lights of the yachts, and the faintly gleaming
+windows of the lighted town, sat long and late, in a state of ineffable
+repose. Lady Kirkbank, fortified by the produce of Mr. Smithson's
+particular _clos_, and by a couple of glasses of green Chartreuse, slept
+profoundly. She had not enjoyed herself so much for the last three
+months. She had been stretched on Society's rack, and she had been
+ground in Society's mill; and neither mind nor body had been her own to
+do what she liked withal. She had toiled early and late, and had spared
+herself in no wise. And now the trouble was over for a space. Here were
+rest and respite. She had done her duty as a chaperon, had provided her
+charge with the very best thing the matrimonial market offered. She had
+paid her creditors something on account all round, and had left them
+appeased and trustful, if not content. Sir George had gone oft alone to
+drink the waters at Spa, and to fortify himself for Scotland and the
+grouse season. She was her own mistress, and she could fold her hands
+and take her rest, eat and drink and sleep and be merry, all at Mr.
+Smithson's expense.
+
+The yachts came flocking in next day, like a flight of white-winged sea
+birds, and Mr. Smithson had enough to do receiving visitors upon the
+_Cayman_. He was fully occupied; but Montesma had nothing to do, except
+to amuse Lady Lesbia and her chaperon, and in this onerous task he
+succeeded admirably. Lesbia found that it was too warm to be on the deck
+when there were perspiring people, whose breath must be ninety by the
+thermometer, perpetually coming on board; so she and Lady Kirkbank sat
+in the saloon, and had the more distinguished guests brought down to
+them as to a Court; and the shrewder of the guests were quick to divine
+that no company beyond that of Don Gomez de Montesma was really wanted
+in that rose-scented saloon.
+
+The Spaniard taught Lady Kirkbank _monte_, which delighted her, and
+which she vowed she would introduce at her supper parties in the half
+season of November, when she should be in London for a week or two, as a
+bird of passage, flitting southwards. He began to teach Lesbia Spanish,
+a language for which she had taken a sudden fancy; and it is curious
+what tender accents, what hidden meanings even a grammar can take from
+such a teacher. Spanish came easily enough to a learner who had been
+thoroughly drilled in French and Italian, and who had been taught the
+rudiments of Latin; so by the end of a lesson, which went on at
+intervals all day, the pupil was able to lisp a passage of Don Quixote
+in the sweetest Castilian, very sweet to the ear of Don Gomez--a kind of
+baby language, precious as the first half-formed syllables of infancy to
+mothers.
+
+Montesma had nothing to do but to amuse himself and his companions all
+day in the saloon, amidst odours of roses and peaches, in a shadowy
+coolness made by striped silken blinds; but Mr. Smithson was not so much
+his own master. That innumerable company of friends which are the
+portion of the rich man given to hospitality would not let the owner of
+the _Cayman_ go scot-free.
+
+At a place like Cowes, on the eve of the regatta week, the freelances of
+society expect to find entertainment; and Mr. Smithson had to maintain
+his character for princely hospitalities at the sacrifice of his
+feelings as a lover. Every ripple of Lesbia's silvery laughter, every
+deep tone of Montesma's voice, from the cabin below, sent a pang to his
+jealous soul; and yet he had to smile, and to order more champagne cup,
+and to be lavish of his best cigars, albeit insisting that his friends
+should smoke their cigars in the bows well to leeward, so that no foul
+breathings of tobacco should pollute his Cleopatra galley.
+
+Cleopatra was very happy meanwhile, sublimely indifferent even to the
+odours of tobacco. She had her Antony at her feet, looking up at her,
+as she recited her lesson, with darkly luminous eyes, obviously
+worshipping her, obviously intent on winning her without counting the
+cost. When had a Montesma ever counted the cost to himself or
+others--the cost in gold, in honour, in human life? The records of Cuba
+in the palmy days of the slave trade would tell how lightly they held
+the last; and for honour, well, the private hells of island and main
+could tell their tale of specially printed playing cards, in which the
+swords or stars on the back of each card had a secret language of their
+own, and were as finger-posts for the initiated player.
+
+Mr. Smithson had business on shore, and was fain to leave the yacht for
+an hour or two before dinner. He invited Don Gomez to go with him, but
+the offer was graciously declined.
+
+'Amigo, I don't care even to look at land in such weather. It is so
+detestably dry,' he pleaded. 'It is only the sound of the sea gurgling
+against the hull that reconciles one to existence. Go, and be happy at
+your club, and send off those occult telegrams of yours, dearest. I
+shall not leave the _Cayman_ till bed-time.'
+
+He looked as fresh and cool as if utterly unaffected by the heat, which
+to a Cuban must have been a merely lukewarm condition of the atmosphere.
+But he affected to be prostrate, and Smithson could not insist. He had
+his cards to play in a game which required extremest caution, and there
+were no friendly indicators on the backs of his kings and aces. He was
+feeling his way in the dark, and did not know how much mischief Montesma
+was prepared to do.
+
+When the owner of the yacht was gone Don Gomez proposed an adjournment
+to the deck for afternoon tea, and the trio sat under the awning,
+tea-drinking and gossiping for the next hour. Lady Kirkbank told the
+steward to say not at home to everybody, just as if she had a street
+door.
+
+'There is a good deal of the _dolce far niente_ about this,' said
+Montesma, presently; 'but don't you think we have been anchored in sight
+of that shabby little town quite long enough, and that it would be
+rather nice to spread our wings and sail round the island before the
+racing begins?'
+
+'It would be exquisite,' said Lesbia. 'I am very tired of inaction,
+though I dearly love learning Spanish,' she added, with a lovely smile,
+and a look that was half submissive, half mutinous. 'But I have really
+been beginning to wonder whether this boat can move.'
+
+'You will see that she can, and at a smart pace, too, if I sail her.
+Shall we circumnavigate the island? We can set sail after dinner.'
+
+'Will Mr. Smithson consent, do you think?'
+
+'Why does Smithson exist, except to obey you?'
+
+'I don't know if Lady Kirkbank would quite like it,' said Lesbia,
+looking at her chaperon, who was waving a big Japanese fan, slowly,
+unsteadily, and with a somewhat drunken air, the while she slid into
+dreamland.
+
+'Quite like what?' she murmured, drowsily.
+
+'A little sail.'
+
+'I should dearly love it, if it didn't make me sea-sick.'
+
+'Sea-sick on a glassy lake like this! Impossible,' said Montesma. 'I
+consider the thing settled. We set sail after dinner.'
+
+Mr. Smithson came back to the yacht just in time to dress for dinner.
+Don Gomez excused himself from putting on his dress suit. He was going
+to sail the yacht himself, and he was dressed for his work,
+picturesquely, in white duck trousers, white silk shirt, and black
+velvet shooting jacket. He dined with the permission of the ladies, in
+this costume, in which he looked so much handsomer than in the livery of
+polite life. He had a red scarf tied round his waist, and when at his
+work by-and-by, he wore a little red silk cap, just stuck lightly on his
+dark hair. The dinner to-day was all animation and even excitement, very
+different from the languorous calm of yesterday. Lesbia seemed a new
+creature. She talked and laughed and flashed and sparkled as she had
+never yet done within Mr. Smithson's experience. He contemplated the
+transformation with wonder not unmixed with suspicion. Never for him had
+she been so brilliant--never in response to his glances had her violet
+eyes thus kindled, had her smile been so entrancingly sweet. He watched
+Montesma, but in him he could find no fault. Even jealousy could hardly
+take objection to the Spaniard's manner to Lady Lesbia. There was not a
+look, not a word that hinted at a private understanding between them, or
+which seemed to convey deeper meanings than the common language of
+society. No, there was no ground for fault-finding; and yet Smithson was
+miserable. He knew this man of old, and knew his influence over women.
+
+Mr. Smithson handed over the management of the yacht without a murmer,
+albeit he pretended to be able to sail her himself, and was in the habit
+of taking the command for a couple of hours on a sunny afternoon, much
+to the amusement of skipper and crew. But Montesma was a sailor born and
+bred--the salt keen breath of the sea had been the first breath in his
+nostrils--he had managed his light felucca before he was twelve years
+old, had sailed every inch of the Caribbean Sea, and northward to the
+furthermost of the Bahamas before he was fifteen. He had lived more on
+the water than on the land in that wild boyhood of his; a boyhood in
+which books and professors had played but small part. Montesma's school
+had been the world, and beautiful women his only professors. He had
+learnt arithmetic from the transactions of bubble companies; modern
+languages from the lips of the women who loved him. He was a crack shot,
+a perfect swordsman, a reckless horseman, and a dancer in whom dancing
+almost rose to genius. Beyond these limits he was as ignorant as dirt;
+but he had a cleverness which served as a substitute for book learning,
+and he seldom failed in impressing the people he met with the idea that
+he, Gomez de Montesma, was no ordinary man.
+
+Directly after dinner the preparations for an immediate start began;
+very much to the disgust of skipper and crew, who were not in the habit
+of working after dinner; but Montesma cared nothing for the short
+answers of the captain, or the black look of the men.
+
+Lesbia wanted to learn all about everything--the name of every sail, of
+every rope. She stood near the helmsman, a slim graceful figure in a
+white gown of some soft material, with never a jewel or a flower to
+relieve that statuesque simplicity. She wore no hat, and the rich
+chesnut hair was rolled in a loose knot at the back of the small
+Greek-looking head. Montesma came to her every now and then to explain
+what was being done; and by-and-by, when the canvas was all up, and the
+yacht was skimming over the water, like a giant swan borne by the
+current of some vast strong river, he came and stayed by her side, and
+they two sat making little baby sentences in Spanish, he as teacher and
+she as pupil, with no one near them but the sailors.
+
+The owner of the _Cayman_ had disappeared mysteriously a quarter of an
+hour after the sails were unfurled, and Lady Kirkbank had tottered down
+to the saloon.
+
+'I am not going--cabin,' she faltered, when Lesbia remonstrated with
+her, 'only--going--saloon--sofa--lie down--little--Smithson take
+care--you,' not perceiving that Smithson had vanished, 'shall be--quite
+close.'
+
+So Lesbia and Don Gomez were alone under the summer stars, murmuring
+little bits of Spanish.
+
+'It is the only true way of learning a language,' he said; 'grammars are
+a delusion.'
+
+It was a very delightful and easy way of learning, at any rate. Lesbia
+reclined in her bamboo chair, and fanned herself indolently, and watched
+the shadowy shores of the island, cliff and hill, down and wooded crest,
+flitting past her like dream-pictures, and her lips slowly shaped the
+words of that soft lisping language--so simple, so musical--a language
+made for lovers and for song, one would think. It was wonderful what
+rapid progress Lesbia made.
+
+She heard a church clock on the island striking, and asked Don Gomez the
+hour.
+
+'Ten,' he said.
+
+'Ten! Surely it must be later. It was past eight before we began dinner,
+and we have been sailing for ever so long. Captain, kindly tell me the
+time,' she called to the skipper, who was lolling over the gunwale near
+the foremast smoking a meditative pipe.
+
+'Twelve o'clock, my lady.'
+
+'Heavens, can I possibly have been sitting here so long. I should like
+to stay on deck all night and watch the sailing; but I must really go
+and take care of poor Lady Kirkbank. I am afraid she is not very well.'
+
+'She had a somewhat distracted air when she went below, but I daresay
+she will sleep off her troubles. If I were you I should leave her to
+herself.'
+
+'Impossible! What can have become of Mr. Smithson?'
+
+'I have a shrewd suspicion that it is with Smithson as with poor Lady
+Kirkbank.'
+
+'Do you mean that he is ill?'
+
+'Precisely.'
+
+'What, on a calm summer night, sailing over a sea of glass. The owner of
+a yacht!'
+
+'Rather ignominious for poor Smithson, isn't it? But men who own yachts
+are only mortal, and are sometimes wretched sailors. Smithson is feeble
+on that point, as I know of old.'
+
+'Then wasn't it rather cruel of us to sail his yacht?'
+
+'Yachts are meant for sailing, and again, sea-sickness is supposed to be
+a wholesome exercise.'
+
+'Good-night.'
+
+'Good-night,' both good nights in Spanish, and with a touch of
+tenderness which the words could hardly have expressed in English.
+
+'Must you really go?' pleaded Montesma, holding her hand just a thought
+longer than he had ever held it before.
+
+'Ah, the little more, and how much it is,' says the poet.
+
+'Really and truly.'
+
+'I am so sorry. I wish you could have stayed on deck all night.'
+
+'So do I, with all my heart. This calm sea under the starlit sky is like
+a dream of heaven.'
+
+'It is very nice, but if you stayed I think I could promise you
+considerable variety. We shall have a tempest before morning.'
+
+'Of all things in the world I should love to see a thunderstorm at sea.'
+
+'Be on the alert then, and Captain Parkes and I will try to oblige you.'
+
+'At any rate you have made it impossible for me to sleep. I shall stay
+with Lady Kirkbank in the saloon. Good-night, again.'
+
+'Good-night.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX.
+
+IN STORM AND DARKNESS.
+
+
+Lesbia found Lady Kirkbank prostrate on a low divan in the saloon,
+sleepless, and very cross. The atmosphere reeked with red lavender,
+sal-volatile, eau de Cologne, and brandy, which latter remedy poor
+Georgie had taken freely in her agonies. Kibble, the faithful Grasmere
+girl, sat by the divan, fanning the sufferer with a large Japanese fan.
+Rilboche had naturally, as a Frenchwoman, succumbed utterly to her own
+feelings, and was moaning in her berth, wailing out every now and then
+that she would never have taken service with Miladi had she suspected
+her to be capable of such cruelty as to take her to live for weeks upon
+the sea.
+
+If this was the state of affairs now while the ocean was only gently
+stirred, what would it be by-and-by if the tempest should really come?
+
+'What can you be thinking of, staying on deck all night with those men?'
+exclaimed Lady Kirkbank, peevishly. 'It is hardly respectable.'
+
+She would have been still more inclined to object had she known that
+Lesbia's companion had been 'that man' rather than 'those men.'
+
+'What do you mean by all night?' Lesbia retorted, contemptuously; 'it is
+only just twelve.'
+
+'Only twelve. I thought we were close upon daylight. I have suffered an
+eternity of agony.'
+
+'I am very sorry you should be ill; but really the sea has been so
+deliciously calm.'
+
+'I believe I should have suffered less if it had been diabolically
+rough. Oh, that monotonous flip-flap of the water, that slow heaving of
+the boat! Nothing could be worse.'
+
+'I am glad to hear you say that, for Don Gomez says we are likely to
+have a tempest.'
+
+'A tempest!' shrieked Georgie. 'Then let him stop the boat this instant
+and put me on shore. Tell him to land me anywhere--on the Needles even.
+I could stop at the lighthouse till morning. A storm at sea will be
+simply my death.'
+
+'Dear Lady Kirkbank, I was only joking,' said Lesbia, who did not want
+to be worried by her chaperon's nervous apprehensions: 'so far the night
+is lovely.'
+
+'Give me a spoonful more brandy, my good creature,'--to Kibble. 'Lesbia,
+you ought never to have brought me into this miserable state. I
+consented to staying on board the yacht; but I never consented to
+sailing on her.'
+
+'You will soon be well, dear Lady Kirkbank; and you will have such an
+appetite for breakfast to-morrow morning.'
+
+'Where shall we be at breakfast time?'
+
+'Off St. Catherine's Point, I believe--just half way round the island.'
+
+'If we are not at the bottom of the sea,' groaned Georgie.
+
+They were now in the open Channel, and the boat dipped and rose to
+larger billows than had encountered her course before. Lady Kirkbank lay
+in a state of collapse, in which life seemed only sustainable by
+occasional teaspoonfuls of cognac gently tilted down her throat by the
+patient Kibble.
+
+Lesbia went to her cabin, but with no intention of remaining there. She
+was firmly convinced that the storm would come, and she meant to be on
+deck while it was raging. What harm could thunder or lightning, hail or
+rain, do to her while he was by to protect her? He would be busy sailing
+the boat, perhaps, but still he would have a moment now and then in
+which to think of her and care for her.
+
+Yes, the storm was coming. There was a livid look upon the waters, and
+the atmosphere was heavy with heat; the sky to windward black as a
+funeral pall. Lesbia was almost fearless, yet she felt a thrill of awe
+as she looked into that dense blackness. To leeward the stars were still
+visible; but that gigantic mass of cloud came creeping slowly, solemnly
+over the sky, while the shadow flitted fast across the water, swallowing
+up that ghastly electric glare.
+
+Lesbia wrapped herself in a white cashmere _sortie de bal_ and stole up
+the companion. Montesma was working at the ropes with his own hands,
+calling directions to the sailors to shorten and take in the canvas,
+urging them to increased efforts by working at the ropes with his own
+hands, springing up the rigging and on deck, flashing backwards and
+forwards amidst the rigging like a being of supernatural power. He had
+taken off his jacket, and was clad from top to toe in white, save for
+that streak of scarlet which tightly girdled his waist. His tall
+flexible form, perfect in line as a Greek statue of Hermes, stood out
+against the background of black night. His voice, with its tones of
+brief imperious command, the proud carriage of his head, the easy grace
+of his rapid movements, all proclaimed the man born to rule over his
+fellow-men. And it is these master spirits, these born rulers, whom
+women instinctively recognise as their sovereign lords, and for whom
+women count no sacrifice too costly.
+
+In the midst of his activity Montesma suddenly saw that white-robed
+figure standing at the top of the companion, and flew to her side. The
+boat was pitching heavily, dipping into the trough of the sea at an
+angle of forty-five degrees, as it seemed to Lesbia.
+
+'You ought not to be here,' said Montesma; 'it is much rougher than I
+expected.'
+
+'I am not afraid,' she answered; 'but I will go back to my cabin if I am
+in your way.'
+
+'In my way' (with deepest tenderness): 'yes, you are in my way, for I
+shall think of nothing else now you are here. But I believe we have done
+all that need be done to the yacht, and I can take care of you till the
+storm is over.'
+
+He put his arm round her as the stem dipped, and led her towards the
+stern, guiding her footsteps, supporting her as her light figure swayed
+against him with the motion of the boat. A vivid flash of lightning
+showed him her face as they stood for an instant leaning against each
+other, his arm encircling her. Ah, what deep feeling in that
+countenance, once so passionless; what a new light in those eyes. It was
+like the awakening of a long dormant soul.
+
+He took the helm from the captain and stood steering the vessel, and
+calling out his orders, with Lesbia close beside him, holding her with
+his disengaged arm, drawing her near him as the vessel pitched
+violently, drawing her nearer still when they shipped a sea, and a great
+fountain of spray enfolded them both in a dense cloud of salt water.
+
+The thunder roared and rattled, as if it began and ended close beside
+them. Forked lightnings zigzagged amidst the rigging. Sheet lightning
+enwrapped those two in a luminous atmosphere, revealing faces that were
+pale with passion, lips that trembled with emotion. There were but scant
+opportunity for speech, and neither of these two felt the need of words.
+To be together, bound nearer to each other than they had ever been yet,
+than they might ever be again, in the midst of thunder and lightning and
+dense clouds of spray. This was enough. Once when the _Cayman_ pitched
+with exceptional fury, when the thunder crashed and roared loudest,
+Lesbia found her head lying on Montesma's breast and his arms round her,
+his lips upon her face. She did not wrench herself from that forbidden
+embrace. She let those lips kiss hers as never mortal man had kissed her
+before. But an instant later, when Montesma's attention was distracted
+by his duties as steersman, and he let her go, she slipped away in the
+darkness, and melted from his sight and touch like a modern Undine. He
+dared not leave the helm and follow her then. He sent one of the sailors
+below a little later, to make sure that she was safe in her cabin; but
+he saw her no more that night.
+
+The storm abated soon after daybreak, and the morning was lovely; but
+Don Gomez and Lady Lesbia did not meet again till the church bells on
+the island were ringing for morning service, and then the lady was safe
+under the wing of her chaperon, with her affianced husband in
+attendance upon her at the breakfast table in the saloon.
+
+She received Montesma with the faintest inclination of the head, and she
+carefully avoided all occasion of speech with him during the leisurely,
+long spun-out meal. She was as white as her muslin gown, and her eyes
+told of a sleepless night. She talked a little, very little to Lady
+Kirkbank and Mr. Smithson; to the Spaniard not at all. And yet Montesma
+was in no manner dashed by this appearance of deep offence. So might
+Francesca have looked the morning after that little scene over the book;
+yet she sacrificed her salvation for her lover all the same. It was a
+familiar stage upon the journey which Montesma knew by heart. Here the
+inclination of the road was so many degrees more or less; for this hill
+you are commanded to put on an extra horse; at this stage it is
+forbidden to go more than eight miles an hour, and so on, and so on.
+Montesma knew every inch of the ground. He put on a melancholy look, and
+talked very little. He had been on deck all night, and so there was an
+excuse for his being quiet.
+
+Lady Kirkbank related her impressions of the storm, and talked enough
+for four. She had suffered the pangs of purgatory, but her natural
+cheeriness asserted itself, and she made no moaning about past agonies
+which had exercised a really delightful influence on her appetite. Mr.
+Smithson also was cheerful. He had paid his annual tribute to Neptune,
+and might hope to go scot-free for the rest of the season.
+
+'If I had stayed on deck I must have had my finger in the pie; so I
+thought it better to go below and get a good night's rest in the
+steward's cabin,' he said, not caring to confess his sufferings as
+frankly as Lady Kirkbank admitted hers.
+
+After breakfast, which was prolonged till noon, Montesma asked Smithson
+to smoke a cigarette on deck with him.
+
+'I want to talk to you on a rather serious matter,' he said.
+
+Lesbia heard the words, and looked up with a frightened glance. Could he
+mean to attempt anything desperate? Was he going to confess the fatal
+truth to Horace Smithson, to tell her affianced lover that she was
+untrue to her bond, that she loved him, Montesma, as fondly as he loved
+her, that their two souls had mingled like two flames fanned by the same
+current, and thence had risen to a conflagration which must end in ruin,
+if she were not set free to follow where her heart had gone, free to
+belong to that man whom her spirit chose for lord and master. Her heart
+leapt at the hope that Montesma was going to do this, that he was strong
+enough to break her bonds for her, powerful and rich enough to secure
+her a brilliant future. Yet this last consideration, which hitherto had
+been paramount, seemed now of but little moment. To be with _him_, to
+belong to _him_, would be enough for bliss. Albeit that in such a
+choice she forfeited all that she had ever possessed or hoped for of
+earthly prosperity. Adventurer, beggar, whatever he might be, she chose
+him, and loved him with all the strength of a weak soul newly awakened
+to passionate feeling.
+
+Unhappily for Lesbia Haselden, Montesma was not at all the kind of man
+to take so direct and open a course as that which she imagined possible.
+
+His business with Mr. Smithson was of quite a different kind.
+
+'Smithson, do you know that you have an utterly incompetent crew?' he
+said, gravely, when they two were standing aft, lighting their
+cigarettes.
+
+'Indeed I do not. The men are all experienced sailors, and the captain
+ranks high among yachtsmen.'
+
+'English yachtsmen are not particularly good judges of sailors. I tell
+you your skipper is no sailor, and his men are fools. If it had not been
+for me the _Cayman_ would have gone to pieces on the rocks last night,
+and if you are to cross to St. Malo, as you talked of doing, for the
+regatta there, you had better sack these men and let me get you a South
+American crew. I know of a fellow who is in London just now--the captain
+of a Rio steamer, who'll send you a crew of picked men, if you give me
+authority to telegraph to him.'
+
+'I don't like foreign sailors,' said Smithson, looking perplexed and
+worried; 'and I have perfect confidence in Wilkinson.'
+
+'Which is as much as to say that you consider me a liar! Go to the
+bottom your own way, _mon ami: ce n'est pas mon affaire,_' said
+Montesma, turning on his heel, and leaving his friend to his own
+devices.
+
+Had he pressed the point, Smithson would have suspected him of some evil
+motive, and would have been resolute in his resistance; but as he said
+no more about it, Smithson began to feel uncomfortable.
+
+He was no sailor himself, knew absolutely nothing about the navigation
+of his yacht, though he sometimes pretended to sail her; and he had no
+power to judge of his skipper's capacity or his men's seamanship. He had
+engaged the captain wholly on the strength of the man's reputation,
+guaranteed by certain certificates which seemed to mean a great deal.
+But after all such certificates might mean very little--such a
+reputation might be no real guarantee. The sailors had been engaged by
+the captain, and their ruddy faces and thoroughly British appearence,
+the exquisite cleanliness which they maintained in every detail of the
+yacht, had seemed to Mr. Smithson the perfection of seamanship.
+
+But it was not the less true that the cleanest of yachts, with deck of
+spotless whiteness, sails of unsullied purity, brasses shining and
+sparkling like gold fresh from the goldsmith's, might be spiked upon a
+rock, or might founder on a sand-bank, or heel over under too much
+canvas. Mr. Smithson was inclined to suspect any proposition of
+Montesma's; yet he was not the less disturbed in mind by the assertion.
+
+The day wore on, and the yacht sailed merrily over a summer sea. Mr.
+Smithson fidgeted about the deck uneasily, watching every movement of
+the sailors. No boat could be sailing better, as it seemed to him; but
+in such weather and over such waters any boat must needs go easily. It
+was in the blackness of night, amidst the fury of the storm, that
+Montesma's opinion had been formed. Smithson began to think that his
+friend was right. The sailors had honest countenances, but they looked
+horribly stupid. Could men with such vacuous grins, such an air of
+imbecile good-nature, be capable of acting wisely in any terrible
+crisis?--could they have nerve and readiness, quickness, decision, all
+those grand qualites which are needed by the seaman who has to contend
+with the fury of the elements?
+
+Mr. Smithson and his guests had breakfasted too late for the possibility
+of luncheon. They were in Cowes Roads by one o'clock. A fleet of yachts
+had arrived during their absence, and the scene was full of life and
+gaiety. Lady Lesbia held a _levée_ at the afternoon tea, and had a crowd
+of her old admirers around her--adorers whose presence in no wise
+disturbed Horace Smithson's peace. He would have been content that his
+wife should go through life with a herd of such worshippers following in
+her footsteps. He knew the aimless innocence, the almost infantine
+simplicity of the typical Johnnie, Chappie, _Muscadin, Petit Creve,
+Gommeux_--call him by what name you will. From these he feared no evil.
+But in that one follower who gave no outward token of his worship he
+dreaded peril. It was Montesma he watched, while dragoons with
+close-cropped hair, and imbecile youths with heads rigid in four-inch
+collars, were hanging about Lady Lesbia's low bamboo chair, and
+administering obsequiously to the small necessities of the tea-table.
+
+It was while this tea-table business was going on that Mr. Smithson took
+the opportunity of setting his mind at rest, were it possible, as to the
+merits of Captain Wilkinson. Among his visitors this afternoon there was
+the owner of three or four racing yachts--a man renowned for his
+victories, at home and abroad.
+
+'I think you knew something of my captain, Wilkinson, before I engaged
+him,' said Smithson, with assumed carelessness.
+
+'I know every skipper on board every boat in the squadron,' answered his
+friend. 'A good fellow, Wilkinson--thoroughly honest fellow.'
+
+'Honest; oh yes, I know all about that. But how about his seamanship?
+His certificates were wonderfully good, but they are not everything.
+
+'Everything, my dear fellow,' cried the other; 'they are next to
+nothing. But I believe Wilkinson is a tolerable sailor.'
+
+This was not encouraging.
+
+'He has never been unlucky, I believe.'
+
+'My dear Smithson, you are a great authority in the City, but you are
+not very well up in the records of the yachting world, or you would know
+that your Captain Wilkinson was skipper on the _Orinoco_ when she ran
+aground on the Chesil Bank, coming home from Cherbourg Regatta, fifteen
+lives lost, and the yacht, in less than half an hour, ground to powder.
+That was rather a bad case, I remember; for though it was a tempestuous
+night, the accident would never have happened if Wilkinson had not
+mistaken the lights. So you see his Trinity House papers didn't prevent
+his going wrong.'
+
+Good heavens! This was the strongest confirmation of Montesma's charge.
+The man was a stupid man, an incapable man, a man to whose intelligence
+and care human life should never be trusted. A fig for his honesty! What
+would honesty be worth in a hurricane off the Chesil Beach? What would
+honesty serve a ship spitted on the Jailors off Jersey? Montesma was
+right. If the _Cayman_ was to make a trip to St. Malo she must be
+navigated by competent men. Horace Smithson hated foreign sailors,
+copper-faced ruffians, with flashing black eyes which seemed to threaten
+murder, did you but say a rough word to them; sleek, raven-haired
+scoundrels, with bowie-knives in their girdles, ready for mutiny. But,
+after all, life is worth too much to be risked for a prejudice, a
+sentiment.
+
+Perhaps that St. Malo business might be avoided; and then there need be
+no change in captain or crew. The yacht must be safe enough lying at
+anchor in the roadstead. By-and-by, when the visitors had departed, and
+Mr. Smithson was reposefully enjoying his tea by Lady Lesbia's side, he
+approached the subject.
+
+'Do you really care about crossing to St. Malo after this--really prefer
+the idea to Ryde?'
+
+'Infinitely,' exclaimed Lesbia, quickly. 'Ryde would only be Cowes ever
+again--a lesser Cowes; and I thought when you first proposed it that the
+plan was rather stupid, though I did not want to be uncivil and say so.
+But I was delighted with Don Gomez de Montesma's amendment, substituting
+St. Malo for Ryde. In the first place the trip across will be
+delicious'--Lady Kirkbank gave a faint groan--'and in the second place I
+am dying to see Brittany.'
+
+'I doubt if you will highly appreciate St. Malo. It is a town of many
+and various smells.'
+
+'But I want to smell those foreign smells of which one hears much. At
+least it is an experience. We need not be on shore any longer than we
+like. And I want to see that fine rocky coast, and Chateaubriand's tomb
+on the what's-its-name. So nice to be buried in that way.'
+
+'Then you have set your heart on going to St. Malo, and would not like
+any change in our plan?'
+
+'Any change will be simply detestable,' answered Lesbia, all the more
+decidedly since she suspected a desire for change on the part of Mr.
+Smithson.
+
+She was in no amiable humour this afternoon. All her nerves seemed
+strained to their utmost tension. She was irritated, tremulous with
+nervous excitement, inclined to hate everybody, Horace Smithson most of
+all. In her cabin a little later on, when she was changing her gown for
+dinner, and Kibble was somewhat slow and clumsy in the lacing of the
+bodice, she wrenched herself from the girl's hands, flung herself into a
+chair, and burst into a flood of passionate tears.
+
+'O God! that I were on one of those islands in the Caribbean Sea--an
+island where Europeans never come--where I might lie down among the
+poisonous tropical flowers, and sleep the rest of my days away. I am
+sick to death of my life here; of the yacht, the people--everything.'
+
+'This air is too relaxing, Lady Lesbia,' the girl murmured, soothingly;
+'and you didn't have your natural rest last night. Shall I get you a
+nice strong cup of tea?'
+
+'Tea! no. I have been living upon tea for the last twenty-four hours. I
+have eaten nothing. My mouth is parched and burning. Oh, Kibble!'
+flinging her head upon the girl's buxom arm, and letting it rest there,
+'what a happy creature you are--not a care--not a care.'
+
+'I'm sure you can't have any cares, Lady Lesbia,' said Kibble, with an
+incredulous smile, trying to smooth the disordered hair, anxious to make
+haste with the unfinished toilet, for it was within a few minutes of
+eight.
+
+'I am full of care. I am in debt--horribly in debt--getting deeper and
+deeper every day--and I am going to sell myself to the only man who can
+pay my debts and give me fine houses, and finery like this,' plucking at
+the _crêpe de chine_ gown, with its flossy fringe, its delicate lace, a
+marvel of artistic expenditure; a garment which looked simplicity
+itself, and yet was so cleverly contrived as to cost five-and-thirty
+guineas. The greatest effects in it required to be studied with a
+microscope.
+
+'But surely, dear Lady Lesbia, you won't marry Mr. Smithson, if you
+don't love him?'
+
+'Do you suppose love has anything to do with marriages in society?'
+
+'Oh, Lady Lesbia, it would be so unkind to him, so cruel to yourself.'
+
+'Cruel to myself. Yes, I am cruel to myself. I had the chance of
+happiness a year ago, and I lost it. I have the chance of happiness
+now--yes, of consummate bliss--and haven't the courage to snatch at it.
+Take off this horrid gown, Kibble; my head is splitting: I shan't go to
+dinner.'
+
+'Oh, Lady Lesbia, you are treading on the pearl embroidery,'
+remonstrated poor Kibble, as Lesbia kicked the new gown from under her
+feet.
+
+'What does it matter!' she exclaimed with a bitter little laugh. 'It has
+not been paid for--perhaps it never will be.'
+
+The dinner was silent and gloomy. It was as if a star had been suddenly
+blotted out of the sky. Smithson, ordinarily so hospitable, had been too
+much disturbed in mind to ask any of his friends to stay to dinner; so
+there were only Lady Kirkbank, who was too tired to be lively, and
+Montesma, who was inclined to be thoughtful. Lesbia's absence, and the
+idea that she was ill, gave the feast almost a funereal air.
+
+After dinner Smithson and Montesma sat on deck, smoking their cigars,
+and lazily watching the lights on sea, and the lights on shore; these
+brilliant in the foreground, those dim in the distance.
+
+'You can telegraph to your Rio Janeiro friend to-morrow morning, if you
+like,' said Smithson, presently, 'and tell him to send a first-rate
+skipper and crew. Lady Lesbia has made up her mind to see St. Malo
+Regatta, and with such a sacred charge I can't be too careful.'
+
+'I'll wire before eight o'clock to-morrow,' answered Montesma, 'You have
+decided wisely. Your respectable English Wilkinson is an excellent
+man--but nothing would surprise me less than his reducing your _Cayman_
+to matchwood in the next gale.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL.
+
+A NOTE OF ALARM.
+
+
+That strange scene in the old house at Fellside made a profound
+impression upon Lord Hartfield. He tried to disguise his trouble, and
+did all in his power to seem gay and at perfect ease in his wife's
+company; but his mind was full of anxiety, and Mary loved him too well
+to be for a moment in doubt as to his feelings.
+
+'There is something wrong, Jack,' she said, while they were breakfasting
+at a table in the verandah, with the lake and the bills in front of them
+and the sweet morning air around them. 'You try to talk and to be
+lively, but there is a little perpendicular wrinkle in your forehead
+which I know as well as the letters of the alphabet, and that little
+line means worry. I used to see it in the old days, when you were
+breaking your heart for Lesbia. Why cannot you be frank and confide in
+me. It is your duty, sir, as my husband.'
+
+'Is it my duty to halve my burdens as well as my joys? How do I know if
+those girlish shoulders are strong enough to bear the weight of them?'
+
+'I can bear anything you can bear, and I won't be cheated out of my
+share in your worries. If you were obliged to have a tooth out, I would
+have one out too, for company.'
+
+'I hope the dentist would be too conscientious to allow that.'
+
+'Tell me your trouble, Hartfield,' she said, earnestly, leaning across
+the table, bringing her grave intelligent face near to him.
+
+They were quite alone, he and she. The servants had done their
+ministering. Behind them there was the empty dining-room, in front of
+them the sunlit panorama of lake and hill. There could not be a safer
+place for telling secrets.
+
+'Tell me what it is that worries you,' Mary pleaded again.
+
+'I will, dear. After all perfect trust is the best; nay, it is your due,
+for you are brave enough and true enough to be trusted with secrets that
+mean life and death. In a word, then, Mary, the cause of my trouble is
+that old man we saw the other night.'
+
+'Steadman's uncle?'
+
+'Do you really believe that he is Steadman's uncle?'
+
+'My grandmother told me so,' answered Mary, reddening to the roots of
+her hair.
+
+To this girl, who was the soul of truth, there was deepest shame in the
+idea that her kinswoman, the woman whom of all the world she most owed
+reverence and honour, could be deemed capable of falsehood.
+
+'Do you think my grandmother would tell me an untruth?'
+
+'I do not believe that man is a poor dependent, an old servant's
+kinsman, sheltered and cared for in this house for charity's sake.
+Forgive me, Mary, if I doubt the word of one you love; but there are
+positions in life in which a man must judge for himself. Would Mr.
+Steadman's kinsman be lodged as that old man is lodged; would he talk as
+that old man talks; and last and greatest perplexity of all, would he
+possess a treasure of gold and jewels which must be worth many
+thousands?'
+
+'But you cannot know for certain that those things are valuable; they
+may be rubbish that this poor old man has scraped together and hoarded
+for years, glass jewels bought at country fairs. Those rouleaux may
+contain lead or coppers.'
+
+'I do not think so, Mary. The stones had all the brilliancy of valuable
+gems, and then there were others in the finest filagree
+settings--goldsmith's work which bore the stamp of an Eastern world.
+Take my word for it, that treasure came from India; and it must have
+been brought to England by Lord Maulevrier. It may have existed all
+these years without your grandmother's knowledge. That is quite
+possible; but it seems to me impossible that such wealth should be
+within the knowledge and the power of a pauper lunatic.'
+
+'But if that unhappy old man is not a relation of Steadman's supported
+here by my grandmother's benevolence, who can he be, and why is he
+here?' asked Mary.
+
+'Oh, Molly dear, these are two questions which I cannot answer, and
+which yet ought to be answered somehow. Since that night I have felt as
+if there were a dark cloud lowering over this house--a cloud almost as
+terrible in its menace of danger as the forshadowing of fate in a Greek
+legend. For your sake, for the honour of your race, for my own
+self-respect as your husband, I feel that this mystery ought to be
+solved, and all dark things made light before your grandmother's death.
+When she is gone the master-key to the past will be lost.'
+
+'But she will be spared for many years, I hope, spared to sympathise
+with my happiness, and with Lesbia's.'
+
+My dearest girl, we cannot hope that. The thread of her life is worn
+very thin. It may snap at any moment. You cannot look seriously in your
+grandmother's face, and yet delude yourself with the hope that she has
+years of life before her.'
+
+'It will be very hard to part, just as she has begun to care for me,'
+said Mary, with her eyes full of tears.
+
+'All such partings are hard, and your grandmother's life has been so
+lonely and joyless that the memory of it must always have a touch of
+pain. One cannot say of her as we can of the happy; she has lived her
+life--all things have been given to her, and she falls asleep at the
+close of a long and glorious day. For some reason which I cannot
+understand, Lady Maulevrier's life has been a prolonged sacrifice.'
+
+'She has always given us to understand that she was fond of Fellside,
+and that this secluded life suited her,' said Mary, meditatively.
+
+'I cannot help doubting her sincerity on that point. Lady Maulevrier is
+too clever a woman, and forgive me, dear, if I add too worldly a woman,
+to be content to live out of the world. The bird must have chafed its
+breast against the bars of the cage many and many a time when you
+thought that all was peace. Be sure, Mary, that your grandmother had a
+powerful motive for spending all her days in this place, and I can but
+think that the old man we saw the other night had some part in that
+motive. Do you remember telling me of her ladyship's vehement anger when
+she heard you had made the acquaintance of her pensioner?'
+
+'Yes, she was very angry,' Mary answered, with a troubled look. 'I
+never saw her so angry--she was almost beside herself--said the harshest
+things to me--talked as if I had done some dreadful mischief.'
+
+'Would she have been so moved, do you think, unless there was some fatal
+secret involved in that man's presence here?'
+
+'I hardly know what to think. Tell me everything. What is it that you
+fear?--what is it that you suspect?'
+
+'To tell you my fears and suspicions is to tell you a family secret that
+has been kept from you out of kindness all the years of your life--and I
+hardly think I could bring myself to that if I did not know what the
+world is, and how many good-natured friends Lady Hartfield will meet in
+society, by-and-by, ready to tell her, by hints and innuendoes, that her
+grandfather, the Governor of Madras, came back to England under a cloud
+of disgrace.'
+
+'My poor grandfather! How dreadful!' exclaimed Mary, pale with pity and
+shame. 'Did he deserve his disgrace, poor unhappy creature--or was he
+the victim of false accusation?'
+
+'I can hardly tell you that, Mary, any more than I can tell whether
+Warren Hastings deserved the abuse that was wreaked upon him at one
+time, or the acquittal that gave the lie to his slanderers in after
+years. The events occurred forty years ago--the story was only half
+known then, and like all such stories formed the basis for every kind of
+exaggeration and perversion.'
+
+'Does Maulevrier know?' faltered Mary.
+
+'Maulevrier knows all that is known by the general public, and no more.'
+
+'And you have married the granddaughter of a disgraced man,' said Mary,
+with a piteous look. 'Did you know--when you married me?'
+
+'As much as I know now, dear love. If you had been Jonathan Wild's
+granddaughter you would have been just as dear to me. I married _you_,
+dearest; I love _you_; I believe in _you_. All the grandfathers in
+Christendom would not shake my faith by one tittle.'
+
+She threw herself into his arms, and sobbed upon his breast. But sweet
+as this assurance of his love was to her, she was not the less stricken
+by shame at the thought of possible infamy in the past, a shameful
+memory for ever brooding over her name in the present.
+
+'Society never forgets a scandal,' she said; 'I have heard Maulevrier
+say that.'
+
+'Society has a long memory for other people's sins, but it only avenges
+its own wrongs. Give the wicked fairy Society a bad dinner, or leave her
+out of your invitation list for a ball, and she will twit you with the
+crimes or the misfortunes of a remote ancestor--she will go about
+talking of your grandfather the leper, or your great aunt who ran away
+with her footman. But so long as the wicked fairy gets all she wants out
+of you, she cares not a straw for the misdeeds of past generations.'
+
+He spoke lightly, laughingly almost, and then he ordered the dogcart to
+be brought round immediately, and he drove Mary across the hills towards
+Langdale, to bring the colour back to her blanched cheeks. He brought
+her home in time to give her grandmother an hour for letter-writing
+before luncheon, while he walked up and down the terrace below Lady
+Maulevrier's windows, meditating the course he was to take.
+
+He was to leave Westmoreland next day to take his place in the House of
+Lords during the last important debate of the session. He made up his
+mind that before he left he would seek an interview with Lady
+Maulevrier, and boldly ask her to explain the mystery of that old man's
+presence at Fellside. He was her kinsman by marriage, and he had sworn
+to honour her and to care for her as a son; and as a son he would urge
+her to confide in him, to unburden her conscience of any dark secret,
+and to make the crooked things straight, before she was called away.
+
+While he was forecasting this interview, meeting imaginary objections,
+arguing points which might have to be argued, a servant came out to him
+with an ochre envelope on a little silver tray--that unpleasant-looking
+envelope which seems always a presage of trouble, great or small.
+
+'Lord Maulevrier, Albany, to Lord Hartfield, Fellside, Grasmere.
+
+'For God's sake come to me at once. I am in great trouble; not on my own
+account, but about a relation.'
+
+A relation--except his grandmother and his two sisters Maulevrier had no
+relations for whom he cared a straw. This message must have relation to
+Lesbia. Was she ill--dying, the victim of some fatal accident, runaway
+horses, boat upset, train smashed? There was something; and Maulevrier
+appealed to his nearest and best friend. There was no withstanding such
+an appeal. It must be answered, and immediately.
+
+Lord Hartfield went into the library and wrote his reply message, which
+consisted of six words.
+
+'Going to you by first train.'
+
+The next train left Windermere at three. There was just time to get a
+fresh horse put in the dogcart, and a Gladstone bag packed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI.
+
+PRIVILEGED INFORMATION.
+
+
+Lord Hartfield did not arrive at Euston Square until near eleven o'clock
+at night. A hansom deposited him at the entrance to the Albany just as
+the clock of St. James's Church chimed the hour. He found only
+Maulevrier's valet. His lordship had waited indoors all the evening, and
+had only gone out a quarter of an hour ago. He had gone to the
+Cerberus, and begged that Lord Hartfield would be kind enough to follow
+him there.
+
+Lord Hartfield was not fond of the Cerberus, and indeed deemed that
+lively place of rendezvous a very dangerous sphere for his friend
+Maulevrier; but in the face of Maulevrier's telegram there was no time
+to be lost, so he walked across Piccadilly and down St. James's Street
+to the fashionable little club, where the men were dropping in after the
+theatres and dinners, and where sheafs of bank notes were being
+exchanged for those various coloured counters which represented divers
+values, from the respectable 'pony' to the modest 'chip.'
+
+Maulevrier was in the first room Hartfield looked into, standing behind
+some men who were playing.
+
+'That's something like friendship,' he exclaimed, when he saw Lord
+Hartfield, and then he hooked his arm through his friend's, and led him
+off to the dining room.
+
+'Come and have some supper, old fellow,' he said, 'and I can tell you my
+troubles while you are eating it. James, bring us a grill, and a
+lobster, and a bottle of Mumms, number 27, you know.'
+
+'Yes, my lord.'
+
+'Sorry to find you in this den, Maulevrier,' said Lord Hartfield.
+
+'Haven't touched a card. Haven't done half an hour's punting this
+season. But it's a kind of habit with me to wander in here now and then.
+I know so many of the members. One poor devil lost nine thousand one
+night last week. Rather rough upon him, wasn't it? All ready money at
+this shop, don't you know.'
+
+'Thank God, I know nothing about it. And now, Maulevrier, what is wrong,
+and with whom?'
+
+'Everything is wrong, and with my sister Lesbia.'
+
+'Good heavens! what do you mean?'
+
+'Only this, that there is a fellow after her whose very name means ruin
+to women--a Spanish-American adventurer--reckless, handsome, a gambler,
+seducer, duellist, dare-devil. The man she is to marry seems to have
+neither nous nor spunk to defend her. Everybody at Goodwood saw the game
+that was being played, everybody at Cowes is watching the cards, betting
+on the result. Yes, great God, the men at the Squadron Club are staking
+their money upon my sister's character--even monkeys that she bolts with
+Montesma--five to three against the marriage with Smithson ever coming
+off.'
+
+'Is this true?'
+
+'It is as true as your marriage with Molly, as true as your loyalty to
+me. I was told of it all this morning at the Haute Gomme by a man I can
+rely upon, a really good fellow, who would not leave me in the dark
+about my sister's danger when all the smoking-rooms in Pall Mall were
+sniggering about it. My first impulse was to take the train for Cowes;
+but then I knew if I went alone I should let my temper get the better of
+me. I should knock somebody down--throw somebody out of the window--make
+a devil of a scene. And this would be fatal for Lesbia. I wanted your
+counsel, your cool head, your steady common-sense. "Not a step forward
+without Jack," I said to myself, so I bolted off and sent that telegram.
+It relieved my feeling a little, but I've had a wretched day.'
+
+'Waiter, bring me a Bradshaw, or an A B C,' said Lord Hartfield.
+
+He had eaten nothing but a biscuit since breakfast, but he was ready to
+go off at once, supperless, if there were a train to carry him.
+Unluckily there was no train. The mail had started. Nothing till seven
+o'clock next morning.
+
+'Eat your supper, old fellow,' said Maulevrier. 'After all, the danger
+may not be so desperate as I fancied this morning. Slander is the
+favourite amusement of the age we live in. We must allow a margin for
+exaggeration.'
+
+'A very liberal margin,' answered Hartfield. 'No doubt the man who
+warned you meant honestly, but this scandal may have grown out of the
+merest trifles. The feebleness of the Masher's brain is only exceeded by
+the foulness of the Masher's tongue. I daresay this rumour about Lady
+Lesbia has its beginning and end among the Masher species.'
+
+'I hope so, but--I have seen those two together--I met them at Victoria
+one evening after Goodwood. Old Kirkbank was shuffling on ahead,
+carrying Smithson with her, absorbing his attention by fussification
+about her carriage. Lesbia and that Cuban devil were in the rear. They
+looked as if they had all the world to themselves. Faust and Marguerite
+in the garden were not in it for the expression of intense absorbing
+feeling compared with those two. I'm not an intellectual party, but I
+know something of human nature, and I know when a man and woman are in
+love with each other. It is one of the things that never has been, that
+never can be hidden.'
+
+'And you say this Montesma is a dangerous man?'
+
+'Deadly.'
+
+'Well, we must lose no time. When we are on the spot it will be easy to
+find out the truth; and it will be your duty, if there be danger, to
+warn Lesbia and her future husband.
+
+'I would much rather shoot the Cuban,' said Maulevrier. 'I never knew
+much good come of a warning in such a case: it generally precipitates
+matters. If I could play _écarté_ with him at the club, find him
+sporting an extra king, throw my cards in his face, and accept his
+challenge for an exchange of shots on the sands beyond Cherbourg--there
+would be something like satisfaction.'
+
+'You say the man is a gambler?'
+
+'Report says something worse of him. Report says he is a cheat.'
+
+'We must not be dependent upon society gossip,' replied Lord Hartfield.
+'I have an idea, Maulevrier. The more we know about this man--Montesma,
+I think you called him----'
+
+'Gomez de Montesma.'
+
+'The more fully we are acquainted with Don Gomez de Montesma's
+antecedents the better we shall be able to cope with him, if we come to
+handy-grips. It's too late to start for Cowes, but it is not too late to
+do something. Fitzpatrick, the political-economist, spent a quarter of a
+century in South America. He is a very old friend--knew my father--and I
+can venture to knock at his door after midnight--all the more as I know
+he is a night-worker. He is very likely to enlighten us about your Cuban
+hidalgo.'
+
+'You shall finish your supper before I let you stir. After that you may
+do what you like. I was always a child in your hands, Jack, whether it
+was climbing a mountain or crossing the Horse-shoe Fall. I consider the
+business in your hands now. I'll go with you wherever you like, and do
+what you tell me. When you want me to kick anybody, or fight anybody,
+you can give me the office and I'll do it. I know that Lesbia's
+interests are safe in your hands. You once cared very much for her. You
+are her brother-in-law now, and, next to me, you are her natural
+protector, taking into account that her future husband is a cad and
+doesn't score.'
+
+'Meet me at Waterloo at ten minutes to seven to-morrow morning, and
+we'll go down to Cowes together. I'm off to find Fitzpatrick. Good
+night.'
+
+So they parted. Lord Hartfield walked across the Park to Great George
+Street, where Mr. Fitzpatrick had chambers of a semi-official character,
+on the first floor of a solemn-looking old house, spacious, gloomy
+without and within, walls sombre with the subdued colouring of
+decorations half a century old.
+
+The lighted windows of those first-floor rooms told Lord Hartfield that
+he was not too late. He rang the bell, which was answered with the
+briefest delay by a sleepy-looking clerk, who had been taking shorthand
+notes for Mr. Fitzpatrick's great book upon 'Protection _versus_ Free
+Trade.' The clerk looked sleepy, but his employer had as brisk an air as
+if he were just beginning the day; although he had been working without
+intermission since nine o'clock that evening, and had done a long day's
+work before dinner. He was walking up and down the spacious unluxurious
+room, half office, half library, smoking a cigar. Upon a large table in
+the centre of the room stood two powerful reading lamps with green
+shades, illuminating a chaotic mass of books and pamphlets, heaped and
+scattered all over the table, save just on that spot between the two
+lamps, which accommodated Mr. Fitzpatrick's blotting pad and inkpot, a
+pewter inkpot which held about a pint.
+
+'How d'ye do, Hartfield? Glad you've looked me up at last,' said the
+Irishman, as if a midnight call were the most natural thing in the
+world. 'Just come from the House?'
+
+'No; I've just come from Westmoreland. I thought I should find you among
+those everlasting books of yours, late as it is. Can I have a few words
+alone with you?'
+
+'Certainly. Morgan, you can go away for a bit.'
+
+'Home, sir?'
+
+'Home--well--yes, I suppose it's late. You look sleepy. I should have
+been glad to finish the chapter on Beetroot Sugar to-night--but it may
+stand over for the morning. Be sure you're early.'
+
+'Yes, sir,' the clerk responded with a faint sigh.
+
+He was paid handsomely for late hours, liberally rewarded for his
+shorthand services; and yet he wished the great Fitzpatrick had not been
+quite so industrious.
+
+'Now, my dear Hartfield, what can I do for you?' asked Fitzpatrick, when
+the clerk had gone. 'I can see by your face that you've something
+serious in hand. Can I help you?'
+
+'You can, I believe, in a very material way. You were five-and-twenty
+years in Spanish America?'
+
+'Rather more than less.'
+
+'Here, there, and everywhere?'
+
+'Yes; there is _not_ a city in South America that I have not lived
+in--for something between a day and a year.'
+
+'You know something about most men of any mark in that part of the
+world, I conclude?'
+
+'It was my business to know men of all kinds. I had my mission from the
+Spanish Government. I was engaged to examine the condition of commerce
+throughout the colony, the working of protection as against free trade,
+and so on. Strange, by-the-bye, that Cuba, the last place to foster the
+slave trade, was of all spots of the earth the first to carry free-trade
+principles into practical effect, long before they were recognised in
+any European country.'
+
+'Strange to me that you should speak of Cuba so soon after my coming
+in,' answered Lord Hartfield. 'I am here to ask you to help me to find
+out the antecedents of a man who hails from that island.'
+
+'I ought to know something about him, whoever he is,' replied Mr.
+Fitzpatrick, briskly. 'I spent six months in Cuba not very long before
+my return to England. Cuba is one of my freshest memories; and I have a
+pretty tight memory for facts, names and figures. Never could remember
+two lines of poetry in my life.'
+
+'Did you ever hear of, or meet with, a man called Montesma--Gomez de
+Montesma?'
+
+'Couldn't have stopped a month in Havana without hearing something about
+that gentleman,' answered Fitzpatrick, 'I hope he isn't a friend of
+yours, and that you have not lent him money?'
+
+'Neither; but I want to know all you can tell me about him.'
+
+'You shall have it in black and white, out of my Cuban note-book,'
+replied the other, unlocking a drawer in the official table; 'I always
+take notes of anything worth recording, on the spot. A man is a fool who
+trusts to memory, where personal character is at stake. Montesma is as
+well known at Havana as the Morro Fort or the Tacon Theatre. I have
+heard stories enough about him to fill a big volume; but all the facts
+recorded there'--striking the morocco cover of the note-book--'have been
+thoroughly sifted; I can vouch for them.'
+
+He looked at the index, found the page, and handed the book to Lord
+Hartfield.
+
+'Read for yourself,' he said, quietly.
+
+Lord Hartfield read three or four pages of plain statement as to various
+adventures by sea and land in which Gomez de Montesma had figured, and
+the reputation which he bore in Cuba and on the Main.
+
+'You can vouch for this?' he said at last, after a long silence.
+
+'For every syllable.'
+
+'The story of his marriage?'
+
+'Gospel truth: I knew the lady.'
+
+'And the rest?'
+
+'All true.'
+
+'A thousand thanks. I know now upon what ground I stand. I have to save
+an innocent, high-bred girl from the clutches of a consummate
+scoundrel.'
+
+'Shoot him, and shoot her, too, if there's no better way of saving her.
+It will be an act of mercy,' said Mr. Fitzpatrick, without hesitation.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII.
+
+'SHALL IT BE?'
+
+
+While Lord Hartfield sat in his friend's office in Great George Street
+reading the life story of Gomez de Montesma, told with the cruel
+precision and the unvarnished language of a criminal indictment, the
+hero of that history was gliding round the spacious ballroom of the
+Cowes Club, with Lady Lesbia Haselden's dark-brown head almost reclining
+on his shoulder, her violet eyes looking up at his every now and then,
+shyly, entrancingly, as he bent his head to talk to her.
+
+The Squadron Ball was in full swing between midnight and the first hour
+of morning. The flowers had not lost their freshness, the odours of dust
+and feverish human breath had not yet polluted the atmosphere. The
+windows were open to the purple night, the purple sea. The stars seemed
+to be close outside the verandah, shining on purpose for the dancers;
+and these two--the man tall, pale, dark, with flashing eyes and short,
+sleek raven hair, small head, noble bearing; the girl divinely lovely in
+her marble purity of complexion, her classical grace of form--these two
+were, as every one avowed and acknowledged, the handsomest couple in the
+room.
+
+'We're none of us in it compared with them,' said a young naval
+commander to his partner, whereupon the young lady looked somewhat
+sourly, and replied that Lady Lesbia's features were undeniably regular
+and her complexion good, but that she was wanting in soul.
+
+'Is she?' asked the sailor, incredulously, 'Look at her now. What do you
+call that, if it isn't soul?'
+
+'I call it simply disgraceful,' answered his partner, sharply turning
+away her head.
+
+Lesbia was looking up at the Spaniard, her lips faintly parted, all her
+face listening eagerly as she caught some whispered word, breathed among
+the soft ripples of her hair, from lips that almost touched her brow.
+People cannot go on waltzing for ten minutes in a dead silence, like
+automatic dancers. There must be conversation. Only it is better that
+the lips should do most of the talking. When the eyes have so much to
+say society is apt to be censorious.
+
+Mr. Smithson was smoking a cigarette on the lawn with a sporting peer. A
+man to whom tobacco is a necessity cannot be always on guard; but it is
+quite possible that in the present state of Lady Lesbia's feelings
+Smithson would have had no restraining influence had he been ever so
+watchful. To what act in the passion drama had her love come to-night as
+she floated round the room, with her head inclined towards her lover's
+breast, the strong pulsation of his heart sounding in her ear, like the
+rhythmical beat of the basses yonder in Waldteufel's last waltz? Was
+there still the uncertainty as to the _dénouement_ which marks the third
+act of a good play? or was there the dread foreboding, the sense of
+impending doom which should stir the spectators with pity and terror as
+the fourth act hurries to its passionate close? Who could tell? She had
+been full of life and energy to-day on board the yacht during the
+racing, in which she seemed to take an ardent interest. The _Cayman_ had
+followed the racers for three hours through a freshening sea, much to
+Lady Kirkbank's disgust, and Lesbia had been the soul of the party.
+The same yesterday. The yacht had only got back to Cowes in time for the
+ball, and all had been hurry and excitement while the ladies dressed and
+crossed to the club, the spray dashing over their opera mantles, poor
+Lady Kirkbank's complexion yellow with _mal de mer_, in spite of a
+double coating of _Blanc de Fedora_, the last fashionable cosmetic.
+
+To-night Lesbia was curiously silent, depressed even, as it seemed to
+those who were interested in observing her; and all the world is
+interested in a famous beauty. She was very pale, even her lips were
+colourless, and the large violet eyes and firmly pencilled brows alone
+gave colour to her face. She looked like a marble statue, the eyes and
+eyebrows accentuated with touches of colour. Those lovely eyes had a
+heavy look, as of trouble, weariness; nay, absolute distress.
+
+Never had she looked less brilliant than to-night; never had she looked
+more beautiful. It was the loveliness of a newly-awakened soul. The
+wonderful Pandora-casket of life, with its infinite evil, its little
+good, had given up its secret. She knew what passionate love really
+means. She knew what such love mostly means--self-sacrifice, surrender
+of the world's wealth, severance from friends, the breaking of all old
+ties. To love as she loved means the crossing of a river more fatal than
+the Rubicon, the casting of a die more desperate than that which Cæsar
+flung upon the board when he took up arms against the Republic.
+
+The river was not yet crossed, but her feet were on the margin, wet with
+the ripple of the stream. The fatal die was not yet cast, but the
+dice-box was in her hand ready for the throw. Lesbia and Montesma danced
+together--not too often, three waltzes out of sixteen--but when they
+were so waltzing they were the cynosure of the room. That betting of
+which Maulevrier had heard was rife to-night, and the odds upon the
+Cuban had gone up. It was nine to four now that those two would be over
+the border before the week was out.
+
+Mr. Smithson was not neglectful of his affianced. He took her into the
+supper-room, where she drank some Moselle cup, but ate nothing. He sat
+out three or four waltzes with her on the lawn, listening to the murmer
+of the sea, and talking very little.
+
+'You are looking wretchedly ill to-night, Lesbia,' he said, after a
+dismal silence.
+
+'I am sorry that I should put you to shame by my bad looks,' she
+answered, with that keen acidity of tone which indicates irritated
+nerves.
+
+'You know that I don't mean anything of the kind; you are always lovely,
+always the loveliest everywhere; but I don't like to see you so ghastly
+pale.'
+
+'I suppose I am over-fatigued: that I have done too much in London and
+here. Life in Westmoreland was very different,' she added, with a sigh,
+and a touch of wonder that the Lesbia Haselden, whose methodical life
+had never been stirred by a ruffle of passion, could have been the same
+flesh and blood--yes, verily, the same woman, whose heart throbbed so
+vehemently to-night, whose brain seemed on fire.
+
+'Are you sure there is nothing the matter?' he asked, with a faint
+quiver in his voice.
+
+'What should there be the matter?'
+
+'Who can say? God knows that I know no cause for evil. I am honest
+enough, and faithful enough, Lesbia. But your face to-night is like a
+presage of calamity, like the dull, livid sky that goes before a
+thunderstorm.'
+
+'I hope there is no thunderbolt coming,' she answered, lightly. 'What
+very tall talk about a headache, for really that is all that ails me.
+Hark, they have begun "My Queen." I am engaged for this waltz.'
+
+'I am sorry for that.'
+
+'So am I. I would ever so much rather have stayed out here.'
+
+Two hours later, in the steely morning light, when sea and land and sky
+had a metallic look as if lit by electricity, Lady Lesbia stood with her
+chaperon and her affianced husband on the landing stage belonging to the
+club, ready to step into the boat in which six swarthy seamen in red
+shirts and caps were to row them back to the yacht. Mr. Smithson drew
+the warm _sortie de bal_, with its gold-coloured satin lining and white
+fox border, closer round Lesbia's slender form.
+
+'You are shivering,' he said; 'you ought to have warmer wraps.
+
+'This is warm enough for St. Petersburg. I am only tired--very tired.'
+
+'The _Cayman_ will rock you to sleep.'
+
+Don Gomez was standing close by, waiting for his host. The two men were
+to walk up the hill to Formosa, a village with a classic portico,
+delightfully situated above the town.
+
+'What time are we to come to breakfast? asked Mr. Smithson.
+
+'Not too early, in mercy's name. Two o'clock in the afternoon, three,
+four;--why not make it five--combine breakfast with afternoon tea,'
+exclaimed Lady Kirkbank, with a tremendous yawn. 'I never was so
+thoroughly fagged; I feel as if I had been beaten with sticks,
+basti--what's its name.'
+
+She was leaning all her weight upon Mr. Smithson, as he handed her down
+the steps and into the boat. Her normal weight was not a trifle, and
+this morning she was heavy with champagne and sleep. Carefully as
+Smithson supported her she gave a lurch at the bottom of the steps, and
+plunged ponderously into the boat, which dipped and careened under her,
+whereat she shrieked, and implored Mr. Smithson to save her.
+
+All this occupied some minutes, and gave Lesbia and the Cuban just
+time for a few words that had to be said somehow.
+
+'Good-night,' said Montesma, as they clasped hands; 'good-night;' and
+then in a lower voice he said, 'Well, have you decided at last? Shall it
+be?'
+
+She looked at him for a moment or so, pale in the starlight, and then
+murmured an almost inaudible syllable.
+
+'Yes.'
+
+He bent quickly and pressed his lips upon her gloved hand, and when Mr.
+Smithson looked round they two were standing apart, Montesma in a
+listless attitude, as if tired of waiting for his host.
+
+It was Smithson who handed Lesbia into the boat and arranged her wraps,
+and hung over her tenderly as he performed those small offices.
+
+'Now really,' he asked, just before the boat put off, 'when are we to be
+with you to-morrow?'
+
+'Lady Kirkbank says not till afternoon tea, but I think you may come a
+few hours earlier. I am not at all sleepy.'
+
+'You look as if you needed sleep badly,' answered Smithson. 'I'm afraid
+you are not half careful enough of yourself. Good-night.'
+
+The boat was gliding off, the oars dipping, as he spoke. How swiftly it
+shot from his ken, flashing in and out among the yachts, where the lamps
+were burning dimly in that clear radiance of new-born day.
+
+Montesma gave a tremendous yawn as he took out his cigar-case, and he
+and Mr. Smithson did not say twenty words between them during the walk
+to Formosa, where servants were sitting up, lamps burning, a great
+silver tray, with brandy, soda, liqueurs, coffee, in readiness.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIII.
+
+'ALAS, FOR SORROW IS ALL THE END OF THIS'
+
+
+Lady Kirkbank retired to her cabin directly she got on board the
+_Cayman_.
+
+'Good-night, child! I am more than half asleep,' she said; 'and I think
+if there were to be an earthquake an hour hence I should hardly hear it.
+Go to your berth directly, Lesbia; you look positively awful. I have
+seen girls look bad after balls before now, but I never saw such a
+spectre as you look this morning.'
+
+Poor Georgie's own complexion left something to be desired. The _Blanc
+de Fedora_ had been a brilliant success for the first two hours: after
+that the warm room began to tell upon it, and there came a greasiness,
+then a streakiness, and now all that was left of an alabaster skin was a
+livid patch of purplish paint here and there, upon a crow's-foot ground.
+The eyebrows, too, had given in, and narrow lines of Vandyke brown
+meandered down Lady Kirkbank's cheeks. The frizzy hair had gone
+altogether wrong, and had a wild look, suggestive of the witches in
+Macbeth, and the scraggy neck and poor old shoulders showed every year
+of their age in the ghastly morning light.
+
+Lesbia waited in the saloon till Lady Kirkbank had bolted herself into
+her cabin, and then she went up to the deck wrapped in her satin-lined,
+fur-bordered cloak, and coiled herself in a bamboo arm-chair, and
+nestled her bare head into a Turkish pillow, and tried to sleep, there
+with the cool morning breeze blowing upon her burning forehead, and the
+plish-plash of seawater soothing her ear.
+
+There were only three or four sailors on deck, weird, almost
+diabolical-looking creatures, Lesbia thought, in striped shirts, with
+bare arms, of a shining bronze complexion, flashing black eyes, sleek
+raven hair, a sinister look. What species of men they were--Mestizoes,
+Coolies, Yucatekes--she knew not, but she felt that they were something
+wild and strange, and their presence filled her with a vague fear. _He_,
+whose influence now ruled her life, had told her that these men were
+born mariners, and that she was twenty times safer with them than when
+the yacht had been under the control of those honest, grinning
+red-whiskered English Jack Tars. But she liked the English sailors best,
+all the same; and she shrank from the faintest contact with these
+tawny-visaged strangers, plucking away the train of her gown as they
+passed her chair, lest they should brush against her drapery.
+
+On deck this morning, with only those dark faces near, she had a sense
+of loneliness, of helplessness, of abandonment even. Unbidden the image
+of her home at Grasmere flashed into her mind--all things so calm, so
+perfectly ordered, such a sense of safety, of home--no peril, no
+temptation, no fever--only peace: and she had grown sick to death of
+peace. She had prayed for tempest: and the tempest had come.
+
+There was a heavenly quiet in the air in the early summer morning, only
+the creaking of a spar, the scream of a seagull now and then. How pale
+the lamps were growing on board the yachts. Paler still, yellow, and
+dim, and blurred yonder in the town. The eastward facing windows were
+golden with the rising sun. Yes, this was morning. The yachts were
+moving away yonder, majestical, swan-like, white sails shining against
+the blue.
+
+She closed her eyes, and tried to sleep; but sleep would not come. She
+was always listening--listening for the dip of oars, listening for a
+snatch of melody from a mellow baritone whose every accent she knew so
+well.
+
+It came at last, the sound her soul longed for. She lay among her
+cushions with closed eyes, listening, drinking in those rich ripe notes
+as they came nearer and nearer, to the measure of dipping oars, _'La
+donna e mobile--'_
+
+Nearer and nearer, until the little boat ground against the hull. She
+lifted her heavy eyelids as Montesma leapt over the gunwale, almost into
+her arms. He was at her side, kneeling by her low chair, kissing the
+little hands, chill with the freshness of morning.
+
+'My own, my very own,' he murmured, passionately.
+
+He cared no more for those copper-faced Helots yonder than if they had
+been made of wood. He had fate in his own hands now, as it seemed to
+him. He went to the skipper and gave him some orders in Spanish, and
+then the sails were unfurled, the _Cayman_ spread her broad white wings,
+and moved off among those other yachts which were gliding, gliding,
+gliding out to sea, melting from Cowes Roads like a vision that fadeth
+with the broad light of morning.
+
+When the sails were up and the yacht was running merrily through the
+water, Montesma went back to Lady Lesbia, and they two sat side by side,
+gilded and glorified in the vivid lights of sunrise, talking as they had
+never talked before, her head upon his shoulder, a smile of ineffable
+peace upon her lips, as of a weary child that has found rest.
+
+They were sailing for Havre, and at Havre they were to be married by the
+English chaplain, and from Havre they were to sail for the Havana, and
+to live there ever afterwards in a fairy-tale dream of bliss, broken
+only by an annual visit to Paris, just to buy gowns and bonnets.
+Surrendered were all Lesbia's ambitious hopes--forgotten--gone; her
+desire to reign princess paramount in the kingdom of fashion--her thirst
+to be wealthiest among the wealthy--gone--forgotten. Her dreams now were
+of the _dolce far niente_ of a tropical climate, a boudoir giving on the
+Caribbean sea, cigarettes, coffee, nights spent in a foreign opera
+house, the languid, reposeful existence of a Spanish dama--with him,
+with him. It was for his sake that she had modified all her ideas of
+life. To be with him she would have been content to dwell in the tents
+of the Patagonians, on the wild and snow-clad Pampas. A love which was
+strong enough to make her sacrifice duty, the world, her fair fame as a
+well-bred woman, was a love that recked but little of the paths along
+which her lover's hand was to lead. For him, to be with him, she
+renounced the world. The rest did not count.
+
+The summer hours glided past them. The _Cayman_ was far out at sea; all
+the other yachts had vanished, and they were alone amidst the blue,
+with only a solitary three-master yonder, on the edge of the horizon.
+More than once Lesbia had talked of going below to change her ball gown
+for the attire of everyday life; but each time her lover had detained
+her a little longer, had pleaded for a few more words. Lady Kirkbank
+would be astir presently, and there would be no more solitude for them
+till they were married, and could shake her off altogether. So Lesbia
+stayed, and those two drank the cup of bliss, hushed by the monotonous
+sing-song of the sea, the rhythm of the swinging sails. But now it was
+broad morning. The hour when society, however late it may keep its
+revels overnight, is apt to awaken, were it only to call for a cup of
+strong tea and to turn again on the pillow of lassitude, after that
+refreshment, like the sluggard of Holy Writ. At ten o'clock the sun sent
+his golden arrows across the silken coverlet of her berth and awakened
+Lady Kirkbank, who opened her eyes and looked about languidly. The
+little cabin was heaving itself up and down in a curious way; Mr.
+Smithson's cigar-cases were sloping as if they were going to fall upon
+Lady Kirkbank's couch, and the looking-glass, with all its dainty
+appliances, was making an angle of forty-five degrees. There was more
+swirling and washing of water against the hull than ever Georgie
+Kirkbank had heard in Cowes Roads.
+
+'Mercy on me! this horrid thing must be moving,' she exclaimed to the
+empty air. 'It must have broken loose in the night.'
+
+She had no confidence in those savage-looking sailors, and she had a
+vision of the yacht drifting at the mercy of winds and waves, drifting
+for days, weeks, and months; drifting to the German Ocean, drifting to
+the North Pole. Mr. Smithson and Montesma on shore--no one on board to
+exercise authority over those fearful men.
+
+Perhaps they had mutinied, and were carrying off the yacht as their
+booty, with Lesbia and her chaperon, and all their gowns.
+
+'I am almost glad that harpy Seraphine has my diamonds,' thought poor
+Georgie, 'or I should have had them with me on board this hateful boat.'
+
+And then she rapped vehemently against the panel of the cabin, and
+screamed for Rilboche, whose den was adjacent.
+
+Rilboche, who detested the sea, made her appearance after some delay,
+looking even greener than her mistress, who, in rising from her berth,
+already began to suffer the agonies of sea-sickness.
+
+'What does this mean?' exclaimed Lady Kirkbank; 'and where are we
+going?'
+
+'That's what I should like to know, my lady. But I daresay Lady Lesbia
+and Mr. Montesma can tell you. They are both on deck.'
+
+'Montesma! Why, we left him on shore!'
+
+'Yes, my lady, but he came on board at five o'clock this morning. I
+looked at my watch when I heard him land, and he and Lady Lesbia have
+been sitting on deck ever since.'
+
+'And now it is ten. Five hours on deck--impossible!'
+
+'Time doesn't seem long when one is happy, my lady,' murmured Rilboche,
+in her own language.
+
+'Help me to dress this instant,' screamed her mistress: 'that dreadful
+Spaniard is eloping with us.'
+
+Despite the hideous depression of that malady which strikes down Kaiser
+and beggar with the same rough hand, Lady Kirkbank contrived to get
+herself dressed decently, and to stagger up the companion to that part
+of the deck where the Persian carpet was spread, and the bamboo chairs
+and tables were set out under the striped awning. Lesbia and her lover
+were sitting together, he giving her a first lesson in the art of
+smoking a cigarette. He had told her playfully that every man, woman,
+and child in Cuba was a smoker, and she had besought him to let her
+begin, and now, with infinite coquetry, was taking her first lesson.
+
+'You shameless minx!' exclaimed Georgie, pale with anger.
+
+'Where is Smithson--my poor, good Smithson?'
+
+'Fast asleep in his bed at Formosa, I hope, dear Lady Kirkbank,' the
+Cuban answered, with perfect _sang froid_. 'Smithson is out of it, as
+you idiomatic English say. I hope, Lady Kirkbank, you will be as kind to
+me as you have been to Smithson; and depend upon it I shall make Lady
+Lesbia as good a husband as ever Smithson could have done.'
+
+'You!' exclaimed the matron, contemptuously. 'You!--a foreigner, an
+adventurer, who may be as poor as Job, for anything I know about you.'
+
+'Job was once rather comfortably off, Lady Kirkbank; and I can answer
+for it that Montesma's wife will know none of the pangs of poverty.'
+
+'If you were a beggar I would not care,' said Lesbia, drawing nearer to
+him.
+
+They had both risen at Lady Kirkbank's approach, and were standing side
+by side, confronting her. Lesbia had shrunk from the idea of poverty
+with John Hammond; yet, for this man's sake, she was ready to face
+penury, ruin, disgrace, anything.
+
+'Do you mean to tell me that Lord Maulevrier's sister, a young lady
+under my charge, answerable to me for her conduct, is capable of jilting
+the man to whom she has solemnly bound herself, in order to marry you?'
+demanded Lady Kirkbank, turning to Montesma.
+
+'Yes; that is what I am going to do,' answered Lesbia, boldly. 'It would
+be a greater sin to keep my promise than to break it. I never liked that
+man, and you know it. You badgered me into accepting him, against my own
+better judgment. You drifted me so deeply into debt that I was willing
+to marry a man I loathed in order to get my debts paid. _This_ is what
+you did for the girl placed under your charge. But, thank God, I have
+released myself from your clutches. I am going far away to a new world,
+where the memory of my old life cannot follow me. People may be angry or
+pleased! I do not care. I shall be the wife of the man I have chosen out
+of all the world for my husband--the man God made to be my master.'
+
+'You are----' gasped Lady Kirkbank. 'I can't say what you are. I never
+in my life felt so tempted to use improper language.'
+
+'Dear Lady Kirkbank, be reasonable,' pleaded Montesma; 'you can have no
+interest in seeing Lesbia married to a man she dislikes.'
+
+Georgia reddened a little, remembering that she was interested to the
+amount of some thousands in the Smithson and Haselden alliance; but she
+took a higher ground than mercenary considerations.
+
+'I am interested in doing the very best for a young lady who has been
+entrusted to my care, the granddaughter of an old friend,' she answered,
+with dignity. 'I have no objection to you in the abstract, Don Gomez.
+You have always been vastly civil, I am sure----'
+
+'Stand by us in our day of need, Lady Kirkbank, and you will find me the
+staunchest friend you ever had.'
+
+'I am bound in honour to consider Mr. Smithson, Lesbia,' said Lady
+Kirkbank. 'I wonder that a decently-brought up girl can behave so
+abominably.'
+
+'It would be more abominable to marry a man I detest. I have made up my
+mind, Lady Kirkbank. We shall be at Havre to-morrow morning, and we
+shall be married to-morrow--shall we not, Gomez?'
+
+She let her head sink upon his breast, and his arm enfold her. Thus
+sheltered, she felt safe, thus and thus only. She had thrown her cap
+over the mills; snapped her fingers at society; cared not a jot what the
+world might think or say of her. This man would she marry and no other;
+this man's fortune would she follow for good or evil. He had that kind
+of influence with women which is almost 'possession.' It smells of
+brimstone.
+
+'Come, my dear good soul,' said Montesma, smiling at the angry matron,
+'why not take things quietly? You have had a good many girls under your
+wing; and you must know that youth and maturity see life from a
+different standpoint. In your eyes my old friend Smithson is an
+admirable match. You measure him by his houses, his stable, his banker's
+book; but Lesbia would rather marry the man she loves, and take the
+risks of his fate. I am not a pauper, Lady Kirkbank, and the home to
+which I shall take my love is pretty enough for a princess of the blood
+royal, and for her sake I shall grow richer yet,' he added, with his
+eyes kindling; 'and if you care to pay us a visit next February in our
+Parisian apartment I will promise you as pleasant a nest as you can wish
+to occupy.'
+
+'How do I know that you will ever bring her back to Europe?' said Lady
+Kirkbank, piteously. 'How do I know that you will not bury her alive in
+your savage country, among blackamoors, like those horrid sailors, over
+there--kill her, perhaps, when you are tired of her?'
+
+At these words of Lady Kirkbank's, flung out at random, Montesma
+blanched, and his deep black eye met hers with a strangely sinister
+look.
+
+'Yes,' she cried, hysterically--'kill her, kill her! You look as if you
+could do it.'
+
+Lesbia nestled closer to her lover's heart.
+
+'How dare you say such things to him,' she cried, angrily. '_I_ trust
+him, don't you see; trust him with my whole heart, with all my soul. I
+shall be his wife to-morrow, for good or evil.'
+
+'Very much for evil, I'm afraid,' said Lady Kirkbank. 'Perhaps you will
+be kind enough to come to your cabin and take off that ball gown, and
+make yourself just a little less disreputable in outward appearance,
+while I get a cup of tea.'
+
+Lesbia obeyed, and went down to her cabin, where Kibble was waiting with
+a fresh white muslin frock and all its belongings, laid out ready for
+her mistress, sorely perplexed at the turn which affairs were taking.
+She had never liked Horace Smithson, although he had given her tips
+which were almost a provision for her old age; but she had thought it a
+good thing that her mistress, who was frightfully extravagant, should
+marry a millionaire; and now they were sailing over the sea with a lot
+of coloured sailors, and the millionaire was left on shore.
+
+Lady Kirkbank went into the saloon, where breakfast was laid ready, and
+where the steward was in attendance with that air of being absolutely
+unconscious of any domestic disturbance, which is the mark of a
+well-trained servant.
+
+Lesbia appeared in something less than an hour, newly dressed and fresh
+looking, in her pure white gown, her brown hair bound in a coronet round
+her small Greek head. She sat down by Lady Kirkbank's side, and tried to
+coax her into good humour.
+
+'Why can't you take things pleasantly, dear?' she pleaded. 'Do now, like
+a good soul. You heard him say he was well off, and that he will take me
+to Paris next winter, and you can come to us there on your way from
+Cannes, and stay with us till Easter. It will be so nice when the Prince
+and all the best people are in Paris. We shall only stay in Cuba till
+the fuss about my running away is all over, and people have forgotten,
+don't you know. As for Mr. Smithson, why should I have any more
+compunction about jilting him than he had about that poor Miss Trinder?
+By-the-bye, I want you to send him back all his presents for me. They
+are almost all in Arlington Street. I brought nothing with me except my
+engagement ring,' looking down at the half-hoop of diamonds, and pulling
+it off her fingers as she talked. 'I had a kind of presentiment----'
+
+'You mean that you had made up your mind to throw him over.'
+
+'No. But I felt there were breakers ahead. It might have come to
+throwing myself into the sea. Perhaps you would have liked that better
+than what has happened.'
+
+'I don't know, I'm sure. The whole thing is disgraceful. London will
+ring with the scandal. What am I to say to Lady Maulevrier, to your
+brother? And pray how do you propose to get married at Havre? You cannot
+be married in a French town by merely holding up your finger. There are
+no registry offices. I am sure I have no idea how the thing is done.'
+
+'Don Gomez has arranged all that--everything has been thought
+of--everything has been planned. A steamer will take us to St. Thomas,
+and another steamer will take us on to Cuba.'
+
+'But the marriage--the licence?'
+
+'I tell you everything has been provided for. Please take this ring and
+send it to Mr. Smithson when you go back to England.'
+
+'Send it to him yourself. I will have nothing to do with it.'
+
+'How dreadfully disagreeable you are,' said Lesbia, pouting, 'just
+because I am marrying to please myself, instead of to please you. It is
+frightfully selfish of you.'
+
+Montesma came in at this moment. He, too, had dressed himself freshly,
+and was looking his handsomest, in that buccaneer style of costume which
+he wore when he sailed the yacht. He and Lesbia breakfasted at their
+ease, while Lady Kirkbank reclined in her bamboo arm-chair, feeling very
+unhappy in her mind and far from well. Neptune and she could not
+accommodate themselves.
+
+After a leisurely breakfast, enlivened by talk and laughter, the cabin
+windows open, the sun shining, the freshening breeze blowing in, Lesbia
+and Don Gomez went on deck, and he reclined at her feet while she read
+to him from the pages of her favourite Keats, read languidly, lazily,
+yet exquisitely, for she had been taught to read as well as to sing. The
+poetry seemed to have been written on purpose for them; and the sky and
+the atmosphere around them seemed to have been made for the poetry. And
+so, with intervals of strolling on the deck, and an hour or so dawdled
+away at luncheon, and a leisurely afternoon tea, the day wore on to
+sunset, and they went back to Keats, while Lady Kirkbank sulked and
+slept in a corner of the saloon.
+
+'This is the happiest day of my life,' Lesbia murmured, in a pause of
+their reading, when they had dropped Endymion's love to talk of their
+own.
+
+'But not of mine, my angel. I shall be happier still when we are far
+away on broader waters, beyond the reach of all who can part us.'
+
+'Can any one part us, Gomez, now that we have pledged ourselves to each
+other?' she asked, incredulously.
+
+'Ah, love, such pledges are sometimes broken. All women are not
+lion-hearted. While the sea is smooth and the ship runs fair, all is
+easy enough; but when tempest and peril come--that is the test, Lesbia.
+Will you stand by me in the tempest, love?'
+
+'You know that I will,' she answered, with her hand locked in his two
+hands, clasped as with a life-long clasp.
+
+She could not imagine any severe ordeal to be gone through. If
+Maulevrier heard of her elopement in time for pursuit, there would be a
+fuss, perhaps--an angry bother raging and fuming. But what of that? She
+was her own mistress. Maulevrier could not prevent her marrying
+whomsoever she pleased.
+
+'Swear that you will hold to me against all the world,' he said,
+passionately, turning his head to look across the stern of the vessel.
+
+'Against all the world,' she answered, softly.
+
+'I believe your courage will be tested before long,' he said; and then
+he cried to the skipper, 'Crowd on all sail, Tomaso. That boat is
+chasing us.'
+
+Lesbia sprang to her feet, looking as he looked to a spot of vivid white
+on the horizon. Montesma had snatched up a glass and was watching that
+distant spot.
+
+'It is a steam-yacht,' he said. 'They will catch us.'
+
+He was right. Although the _Cayman_ strained every timber so that her
+keel cut through the water like a boomerang, wind and steam beat wind
+without steam. In less than an hour the steam-yacht was beside the
+_Cayman_, and Lord Maulevrier and Lord Hartfield had boarded Mr.
+Smithson's deck.
+
+'I have come to take you and Lady Kirkbank back to Cowes, Lesbia,' said
+Maulevrier. 'I'm not going to make any undue fuss about this little
+escapade of yours, provided you go back with Hartfield and me at once,
+and pledge yourself never to hold any further communication with Don
+Gomez de Montesma.'
+
+The Spaniard was standing close by, silent, white as death, but ready to
+make a good fight. That pallor of the clear olive skin was not from want
+of pluck; but there was the deadly knowledge of the ground he stood
+upon, the doubt that any woman, least of all such a woman as Lady Lesbia
+Haselden, could be true to him if his character and antecedents were
+revealed to her. And how much or how little these two men could tell her
+about himself or his past life was the question which the next few
+minutes would solve.
+
+'I am not going back with you,' answered Lesbia. 'I am going to Havre
+with Don Gomez de Montesma. We are to be married there as soon as we
+arrive.'
+
+'To be married--at Havre,' cried Maulevrier. 'An appropriate place. A
+sailor has a wife in every port, don't you know.'
+
+'We had better go down to the cabin,' said Hartfield, laying his hand
+upon his friend's shoulder. 'If Lady Lesbia will be good enough to come
+with us we can tell her all that we have to tell quietly there.'
+
+Lord Hartfield's tone was unmistakeable. Everything was known.
+
+'You can talk at your ease here,' said Montesma, facing the two men with
+a diabolical recklessness and insolence of manner. 'Not one of these
+fellows on board knows a dozen sentences of English.'
+
+'I would rather talk below, if it is all the same to you, Señor; and I
+should be glad to speak to Lady Lesbia alone.'
+
+'That you shall not do unless she desires it,' answered Montesma.
+
+'No, he shall hear all that you have to say. He shall hear how I answer
+you,' said Lesbia.
+
+Lord Hartfield shrugged his shoulders.
+
+'As you please,' he said. 'It will make the disclosure a little more
+painful than it need have been; but that cannot be helped.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIV.
+
+'OH, SAD KISSED MOUTH, HOW SORROWFUL IT IS!'
+
+
+They all went down to the saloon, where Lady Kirkbank sat, looking the
+image of despair, which changed to delighted surprise at sight of Lord
+Hartfield and his friend.
+
+'Did you give your consent to my sister's elopement with this man, Lady
+Kirkbank?' Maulevrier asked, brusquely.
+
+'I give my consent! Good gracious! no. He has eloped with me ever so
+much more than with your sister. She knew all about it, I've no doubt:
+but the wretch ran away with me in my sleep.'
+
+'I am glad, for your own self-respect, that you had no hand in this
+disgraceful business,' replied Maulevrier; and then turning to Lord
+Hartfield, he said, 'Hartfield, will you tell my sister who and what
+this man is? Will you make her understand what kind of pitfall she has
+escaped? Upon my soul, I cannot speak of it.'
+
+'I recognise no right of Lord Hartfield's to interfere with my actions,
+and I will hear nothing that he may have to say,' said Lesbia, standing
+by her lover's side, with head erect and eyes dark with anger.
+
+'Your sister's husband has the strongest right to control your actions,
+Lady Lesbia, when the family honour is at stake,' answered Hartfield,
+with grave authority. 'Accept me at least as a member of your family, if
+you will not accept me as your disinterested and devoted friend.'
+
+'Friend!' echoed Lesbia, scornfully. 'You might have been my friend
+once. Your friendship then would have been of some value to me, if you
+had told me the truth, instead of approaching me with a lie upon your
+lips. You talk of honour, Lord Hartfield; you, who came to my
+grandmother's house as an impostor, under a false name!'
+
+'I went there as a man standing on his own merits, assuming no rank save
+that which God gave him among his fellow-men, claiming to be possessed
+of no fortune except intellect and industry. If I could not win a wife
+with such credentials, it were better for me never to marry at all, Lady
+Lesbia. But we have no time to speak of the past. I am here as your
+brother's friend, here to save you.'
+
+'To part me from the man to whom I have given my heart. That you cannot
+do. Gomez, why do you not speak? Tell him, tell him!' cried Lesbia, with
+a voice strangled by sobs; 'tell him that I am to be your wife
+to-morrow, at Havre. Your wife!'
+
+'Dear Lady Lesbia, that cannot be,' said Lord Hartfield, sorrowfully,
+pitying her in her helplessness, as he might have pitied a young bird in
+the fowler's net. 'I am assured upon undeniable authority that Señor
+Montesma has a wife living at Cuba; and even were this not so--were he
+free to marry you--his character and antecedents would for ever forbid
+such a marriage.'
+
+'A wife! No, no, no!' shrieked Lesbia, looking wildly from one to the
+other. 'It is a lie--a lie, invented by my brother, who always hated
+me--by you, who fooled and deceived me! It is a lie, an infamous
+invention! Don Gomez, speak to them: for pity's sake answer them! Don't
+you see that they are driving me mad?'
+
+She flung herself into his arms, she buried her dishevelled head upon
+his breast; she clung to him with hands that writhed convulsively in her
+agony.
+
+Maulevrier sprang across the cabin and wrenched her from her lover's
+grasp.
+
+'You shall not pollute her with your touch,' he cried; 'you have
+poisoned her mind already. Scoundrel, seducer, slave-dealer! Do you
+hear, Lesbia? Shall I tell you what this man is--what trade he followed
+yonder, on his native island--this Spanish hidalgo--this
+all-accomplished gentleman--lineal descendant of the Cid--fine flower
+of Andalusian chivalry? It was not enough for him to cheat at cards, to
+float bubble companies, bogus lotteries. His profligate extravagance,
+his love of sybarite luxury, required a larger resource than the petty
+schemes which enrich smaller men. A slave ship, which could earn nearly
+twenty thousand pounds on every voyage, and which could make two runs in
+a year--that was the trade for Don Gomez de Montesma, and he carried it
+on merrily for six or seven years, till the British cruisers got too
+keen for him, and the good old game was played out. You see that scar
+upon the hidalgo's forehead, Lesbia--a token of knightly prowess, you
+think, perhaps. No, my girl, that is the mark of an English cutlass in a
+scuffle on board a slaver. A merry trade, Lesbia--the living cargo
+stowed close under hatches have rather a bad time of it now and
+then--short rations of food and water, yellow Jack. They die like rotten
+sheep sometimes--bad then for the dealer. But if he can land the bulk of
+his human wares safe and sound the profits are enormous. The
+Captain-General takes his capitation fee, the blackies are drafted off
+to the sugar plantations, and everybody is satisfied; but I think,
+Lesbia, that your British prejudices would go against marriage with a
+slave-trader, were he ever so free to make you his wife, which this
+particular dealer in blackamoors is not.'
+
+'Is this true, this part of their vile story?' demanded Lesbia, looking
+at her lover, who stood apart from them all now, his arms folded, his
+face deadly pale, the lower lip quivering under the grinding of his
+strong white teeth.
+
+'There is some truth in it,' he answered, hoarsely. 'Everybody in Cuba
+had a finger in the African trade, before your British philanthropy
+spoiled it. Mr. Smithson made sixty thousand pounds in that line. It was
+the foundation of his fortune. And yet he had his misfortunes in running
+his cargo--a ship burnt, a freight roasted alive. There are some very
+black stories in Cuba against poor Smithson. He will never go there
+again.'
+
+'Mr. Smithson may be a scoundrel; indeed, I believe he is a pretty bad
+specimen in that line,' said Lord Hartfield. 'But I doubt if there is
+any story that can be told of him quite so bad as the history of your
+marriage, and the events that went before it. I have been told the story
+of the beautiful Octoroon, who loved and trusted you, who shared your
+good and evil fortunes for the most desperate years of your life, was
+almost accepted as your wife, and whose strangled corpse was found in
+the harbour while the bells were ringing for your marriage with a rich
+planter's heiress--the lady who, no doubt, now patiently awaits your
+return to her native island.'
+
+'She will wait a long time,' said Montesma, 'or fare ill if I go back to
+her. Lesbia, his lordship's story of the Octoroon is a fable--an
+invention of my Cuban enemies, who hate us old Spaniards with a
+poisonous hatred. But this much is true. I am a married man--bound,
+fettered by a tie which I abhor. Our Havre marriage would have been
+bigamy on my part, a delusion on yours. I could not have taken you to
+Cuba. I had planned our life in a fairer, more civilised world. I am
+rich enough to have surrounded you with all that makes life worth
+living. I would have given you love as true and as deep as ever man gave
+to woman. All that would have been wanting would have been the legality
+of the tie: and as law never yet made a marriage happy which lacked the
+elements of bliss, our lawless union need not have missed happiness.
+Lesbia, you said that you would hold by me, come what might. The worst
+has come, love; but it leaves me not the less your true lover.'
+
+She looked at him with wild despairing eyes, and then, with a hoarse
+strange cry, rushed from the cabin, and up the companion, with a
+desperate swiftness which seemed like the flight of a bird. Montesma,
+Hartfield, Maulevrier, all followed her, heedless of everything except
+the dire necessity of arresting her flight. Each in his own mind had
+divined her purpose.
+
+They were not too late. It was Hartfield's strong arm that caught her,
+held her as in a vice, dragged her away from the edge of the deck, just
+where there was a space open to the waves. Another instant and she would
+have flung herself overboard. She fell back into Lord Hartfield's arms,
+with a wild choking cry: 'Let me go! Let me go!' Another moment, and a
+flood of crimson stained his shirt-front, as she lay upon his breast,
+with closed eyelids and blood-bedabbled lips, in blessed
+unconsciousness.
+
+They carried her on to the steam-yacht, and down to the cabin, where
+there was ample accommodation and some luxury, although not the elegance
+of Bond Street upholstery. Rilboche, Lady Kirkbank, Kibble, luggage of
+all kinds were transferred from one yacht to the other, even to the
+vellum bound Keats which lay face downwards on the deck, just where
+Lesbia had flung it when the _Cayman_ was boarded. The crew of the
+steam-yacht _Philomel_ helped in the transfer: there were plenty of
+hands, and the work was done quickly; while the Meztizoes, Yucatekes,
+Caribs, or whatever they were, looked on and grinned; and while Montesma
+stood leaning against the mast, with folded arms and sombre brow, a
+cigarette between his lips.
+
+When the women and all their belongings were on board the _Philomel_,
+Lord Hartfield addressed himself to Montesma.
+
+'If you consider yourself entitled to call me to account for this
+evening's work you know where to find me,' he said.
+
+Montesma shrugged his shoulders, and threw away his cigarette with a
+contemptuous gesture.
+
+_'Ce n'est pas la peine,'_ he said; 'I am a dead shot, and
+should be pretty sure to send a bullet through you if you gave me
+the chance; but I should not be any nearer winning her if I killed
+you: and it is she and she only that I want. You may think me an
+adventurer--swindler--gambler--slave-dealer--what you will--but I love her
+as I never thought to love a woman, and I should have been true as steel,
+if she had been plucky enough to trust me. But, as I told her an hour ago,
+women have not lion hearts. They can talk tall while the sky is clear and
+the sun shines, but at the first crack of thunder--_va te promener_.'
+
+'If you have killed her--' began Hartfield.
+
+'Killed her! No. Some small bloodvessel burst in the agitation of that
+terrible scene. She will be well in a week, and she will forget me. But
+I shall not forget her. She is the one flower that has sprung on the
+barren plain of my life. She was my Picciola.'
+
+He turned his back on Lord Hartfield and walked to the other end of the
+deck. Something in his face, in the vibration of his deep voice,
+convinced Hartfield of his truth. A bad man undoubtedly--steeped to the
+lips in evil--and yet so far true that he had passionately, deeply,
+devotedly loved this one woman.
+
+It was the dead of night when Lesbia recovered consciousness, and even
+then she lay silent, taking no heed of those around her, in a state of
+utter prostration. Kibble nursed her carefully, tenderly, all through
+the night; Maulevrier hardly left the cabin, and Lady Kirkbank, always
+more or less a victim to the agonies of sea-sickness, still found time
+to utter lamentations and wailings over the ruin of her protégée's
+fortune.
+
+'Never had a girl such a chance,' she moaned. 'Quite the best match in
+society. The house in Park Lane alone cost a fortune. Her diamonds would
+have been the finest in London.'
+
+'They would have been stained with the blood of the niggers he traded in
+out yonder,' answered Maulevrier. 'Do you think I would have let my
+sister marry a slave-dealer?'
+
+'I don't believe a syllable of it,' protested Lady Kirkbank, dabbing her
+brow with a handkerchief steeped in eau de Cologne. 'A vile fabrication
+of Montesma's, who wanted to blacken poor Smithson's character in order
+to extenuate his own crimes.'
+
+'Well, we won't go into that question,' said Maulevrier wearily. 'The
+Smithson match is off, anyhow; and it matters very little to us whether
+he made most money out of niggers or bubble companies, or lotteries or
+gaming hells.'
+
+'I am convinced that Smithson made his fortune in a thoroughly
+gentlemanlike manner,' argued Lady Kirkbank. 'Look at the people who
+visit him, and the houses he goes to. And I don't see why the match need
+be off. I'm sure, if Lesbia plays her cards properly, he will look over
+this--this--little escapade.'
+
+Maulevrier contemplated the worldly old face with infinite scorn.
+
+'Does she look like a girl who will play her cards in your fashion?' he
+asked, pointing to his sister, whose white face upon the pillow seemed
+like a mask cut out of marble. 'Upon my soul, Lady Kirkbank, I consider
+my sister's elopement with this Spanish adventurer, with whom she was
+over head and ears in love, a far more respectable act than her
+engagement to Smithson, for whom she cared not a straw.'
+
+'Well, I hope if you so approve of her conduct you will help her to pay
+her dressmaker, and the rest of them,' retorted Lady Kirkbank. 'She has
+been plunging rather deeply, I believe, under the impression that
+Smithson would pay all her bills when she was married. Your grandmother
+may not quite like the budget.'
+
+'I will do all I can for her,' answered Maulevrier. 'I would do a great
+deal to save her from the degradation to which your teaching has brought
+her.'
+
+Lady Kirkbank looked at him for a moment or so with reproachful eyes,
+and then shrugged her shoulders contemptuously.
+
+'If I ever expected gratitude from people I might feel the
+injustice--the insolence--of your last remark,' she said; 'but as I
+never do expect gratitude, I am not disappointed in this case. And now I
+think if there is a cabin which I can have to myself I should like to
+retire to it,' she added. 'My cares are thrown away here.'
+
+There was a cabin at Lady Kirkbank's disposal. It had been already
+appropriated by Rilboche, and smelt of cognac; but Rilboche resigned her
+berth to her mistress, and laid herself meekly on the floor for the rest
+of the voyage.
+
+They were in Cowes Roads at eight o'clock next morning, and Lord
+Hartfield went on shore for a doctor, whom he brought back before nine,
+and who pronounced Lady Lesbia to be in a very weak and prostrate
+condition, and forbade her being moved within the next two days. Happily
+Lord Hartfield had borrowed the _Philomel_ and her crew from a friend
+who had given him _carte blanche_ as to the use he made of her, and who
+freely left her at his disposal so long as he and his party should need
+the accommodation. Lesbia could nowhere be better off than on the yacht,
+where she was away from the gossip and tittle-tattle of the town.
+
+The roadstead was quiet enough now. All the racing yachts had melted
+away like a dream, and most of the pleasure yachts were off to Ryde.
+Lady Lesbia lay in her curtained cabin, with Kibble keeping watch beside
+her bed, while Maulevrier came in every half-hour to see how she
+was--sitting by her a little now and then, and talking of indifferent
+things in a low kind voice, which was full of comfort.
+
+She seemed grateful for his kindness, and smiled at him once in a way,
+with a piteous little smile; but she had the air of one in whom the
+mainspring of life is broken. The pallid face and heavy violet eyes,
+the semi-transparent hands which lay so listlessly upon the crimson
+coverlet, conveyed an impression of supreme despair. Hartfield, looking
+down at her for the last time when he came to say good-bye before
+leaving for London, was reminded of the story of one whose life had been
+thus rudely broken, who had loved as foolishly and even more fondly, and
+for whom the world held nothing when that tie was severed.
+
+    'She looked on many a face with vacant eye,
+      On many a token without knowing what;
+    She saw them watch her, without asking why,
+      And recked not who around her pillow sat.'
+
+But Lesbia Haselden belonged to a wider and more sophisticated world
+than that of the daughter of the Grecian Isle, and for her existence
+offered wider horizons. It might be prophesied that for her the dark
+ending of a girlish dream would not be a life-long despair. The
+passionate love had been at fever point; the passionate grief must have
+its fever too, and burn itself out.
+
+'Do all you can to cheer her,' said Lord Hartfield to Maulevrier, 'and
+bring her to Fellside as soon as ever she is strong enough to bear the
+journey. You and Kibble, with your own man, will be able to do all that
+is necessary.'
+
+'Quite able.'
+
+'That's right. I must be in the House for the expected division
+to-night, and I shall go back to Grasmere to-morrow morning. Poor Mary
+is horribly lonely.'
+
+Lord Hartfield went off in the boat to catch the Southampton steamer;
+and Maulevrier was now sole custodian of the yacht and of his sister. He
+and the doctor had agreed to keep her on board, in the fresh sea air,
+till she was equal to the fatigue of the journey to Grasmere. There was
+nothing to be gained by taking her on to the island or by carrying her
+to London. The yacht was well found, provided with all things needful
+for comfort, and Lesbia could be nowhere better off until she was safe
+in her old home:--that home she had left so gaily, in the freshness of
+her youthful inexperience, nearly a year ago, and to which she would
+return so battered and broken, so deeply degraded by the knowledge of
+evil.
+
+Lady Kirkbank had started for London on the previous day.
+
+'I am evidently not wanted _here_,' she said, with an offended air; 'and
+I must have everything at Kirkbank ready for a house full of people
+before the twelfth of August, so the sooner I get to Scotland the
+better. I shall make a _détour_ in order to go and see Lady Maulevrier
+on my way down. It is due to myself that I should let her know that _I_
+am entirely blameless in this most uncomfortable business.'
+
+'You can tell her ladyship what you please,' answered Maulevrier,
+bluntly. 'I shall not gainsay you, so long as you do not slander my
+sister; but as long as I live I shall regret that I, knowing something
+of London society, did not interfere to prevent Lesbia being given over
+to your keeping.'
+
+'If I had known the kind of girl she is I would have had nothing to do
+with her,' retorted Lady Kirkbank with exasperation; and so they parted.
+
+The _Philomel_ had been lying off Cowes three days before Mr. Smithson
+appeared upon the scene. He had got wind somehow from a sailor, who had
+talked with one of the foreign crew, of the destination of the _Cayman_,
+and he had crossed from Southampton to Havre on the steamer _Wolf_
+during that night in which Lesbia had been carried back to Cowes on the
+_Philomel_.
+
+He was at Havre when the _Cayman_ arrived, with Montesma and his
+tawny-visaged crew on board, no one else.
+
+'You may examine every corner of your ship,' Montesma cried, scornfully,
+when Smithson came on board and swore that Lesbia must be hidden
+somewhere in the vessel. 'The bird has flown: she will shelter in
+neither your nest nor in mine, Smithson. You have lost her--and so have
+I. We may as well be friends in misfortune.'
+
+He was haggard, livid with grief and anger. He looked ten years older
+than he had looked the other night at the ball, when his dash and
+swagger, and handsome Spanish head had been the admiration of the room.
+
+Smithson was very angry, but he was not a fighting man. He had enjoyed
+various opportunities for distinguishing himself in that line in the
+island of Cuba; but he had always avoided such opportunities. So now,
+after a good deal of bluster and violent language, which Montesma took
+as lightly as if it had been the whistling of the wind in the shrouds,
+poor Smithson calmed down, and allowed Gomez de Montesma to leave the
+yacht, with his portmanteaux, unharmed. He meant to take the first
+steamer for the Spanish Main, he told Smithson. He had had quite enough
+of Europe.
+
+'I daresay it will end in your marrying her,' he said, at the last
+moment. 'If you do, be kind to her.'
+
+His voice faltered, choked by a sob, at those last words. After all, it
+is possible for a man without principle, without morality, to begin to
+make love to a woman in a mere spirit of adventure, in sheer devilry,
+and to be rather hard hit at the last.
+
+Horace Smithson sailed his yacht back to Cowes without loss of time, and
+sent his card to Lord Maulevrier on board the _Philomel_. His lordship
+replied that he would wait upon Mr. Smithson that afternoon at four
+o'clock, and at that hour Maulevrier again boarded the _Cayman_; but
+this time very quietly, as an expected guest.
+
+The interview that followed was very painful. Mr. Smithson was willing
+that this unhappy episode in the life of his betrothed, this folly into
+which she had been beguiled by a man of infinite treachery, a man of
+all other men fatal to women, should be forgotten, should be as if it
+had never been.
+
+'It was her very innocence which made her a victim to that scoundrel,'
+said Smithson, 'her girlish simplicity and Lady Kirkbank's folly. But I
+love your sister too well to sacrifice her lightly, Lord Maulevrier; and
+if she can forget this midsummer madness, why, so can I.'
+
+'She cannot forget, Mr. Smithson,' answered Maulevrier, gravely. 'She
+has done you a great wrong by listening to your false friend's
+addresses; but she did you a still greater wrong when she accepted you
+as her husband without one spark of love for you. She and you are both
+happy in having escaped the degradation, the deep misery of a loveless
+union. I am glad--yes, glad even of this shameful escapade with
+Montesma--though it has dragged her good name through the gutter,--glad
+of the catastrophe that has saved her from such a marriage. You are very
+generous in your willingness to forget my sister's folly. Let your
+forgetfulness go a step further, and forget that you ever met her.'
+
+'That cannot be, Lord Maulevrier. She has ruined my life.'
+
+'Not at all. An affair of a season,' answered Maulevrier, lightly. 'Next
+year I shall hear of you as the accepted husband of some new beauty. A
+man of Mr. Smithson's wealth--and good nature--need not languish in
+single blessedness.'
+
+With this civil speech Lord Maulevrier went back to the _Philomel's_
+gig, and this was his last meeting with Mr. Smithson, until they met a
+year later in the beaten tracks of society.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLV.
+
+'THAT FELL ARREST, WITHOUT ALL BAIL.'
+
+
+It was the beginning of August before Lesbia was pronounced equal to the
+fatigue of a long journey; and even then it was but the shadow of her
+former self which returned to Fellside, the pale spectre of joys
+departed, of trust deceived.
+
+Maulevrier had been very good to her, patient, unselfish as a woman, in
+his ministering to the broken-hearted girl. That broken heart would be
+whole again, no doubt, in the future, as many other broken hearts have
+been; but the grief, the despair, the sense of hopelessness and
+aimlessness in life were very real in the present. If the picturesque
+seclusion of Fellside had seemed dull and joyless to Lesbia in days gone
+by, it was much duller to her now. She was shocked at the change in her
+grandmother, and she showed a good deal of feeling and affection in her
+intercourse with the invalid; but once out of her presence Lady
+Maulevrier was forgotten, and Lesbia's thoughts drifted back into the
+old current. They dwelt obstinately, unceasingly upon Montesma, the man
+whose influence had awakened the slumbering soul from its torpor, had
+stirred the deeps of a passionate nature.
+
+Slave-dealer, gambler, adventurer, liar--his name blackened by the
+suspicion of a still darker crime. She shuddered at the thought of the
+villain from whose snare she had been rescued: and yet, his image as he
+had been to her in the brief golden time when she believed him noble,
+and chivalrous, and true, haunted her lonely days, mixed itself with her
+troubled dreams, came between her and every other thought.
+
+Everybody was good to her. That pale and joyless face, that look of
+patient, hopeless suffering which she tried to disguise every now and
+then with a faint forced smile, and silvery little ripple of society
+laughter, seemed unconsciously to implore pity and pardon. Lady
+Maulevrier uttered no word of reproach. 'My dearest, Fate has not been
+kind to you,' she said, gently, after telling Lesbia of Lady Kirkbank's
+visit. 'The handsomest women are seldom the happiest. Destiny seems to
+have a grudge against them. And if things have gone amiss it is I who am
+most to blame. I ought never to have entrusted you with such a woman as
+Georgina Kirkbank. But you will be happier next season, I hope, dearest.
+You can live with Mary and Hartfield. They will take care of you.'
+
+Lesbia shuddered.
+
+'Do you think I am going back to the society treadmill?' she exclaimed.
+'No, I have done with the world. I shall end my days here, or in a
+convent.'
+
+'You think so now, dear, but you will change your mind by-and-by. A
+fancy that has lasted only a few weeks cannot alter your life. It will
+pass as other dreams have passed. At your age you have the future before
+you.'
+
+'No, it is the past that is always before me,' answered Lesbia. 'My
+future is a blank.'
+
+The bills came pouring in; dressmaker, milliner, glover, bootmaker,
+tailor, stationer, perfumer; awful bills which made Lady Maulevrier's
+blood run cold, so degrading was their story of selfish self-indulgence,
+of senseless extravagance. But she paid them all without a word. She
+took upon her shoulders the chief burden of Lesbia's wrongdoing. It was
+her indulgence, her weak preference which had fostered her
+granddaughter's selfishness, trained her to vanity and worldly pride.
+The result was ignominious, humiliating, bitter beyond all common
+bitterness; but the cup was of her own brewing, and she drank it without
+a murmur.
+
+Parliament was prorogued; the season was over; and Lord Hartfield was
+established at Fellside for the autumn--he and his wife utterly happy in
+their affection for each other, but not without care as to their
+surroundings, which were full of trouble. First there was Lesbia's
+sorrow. Granted that it was a grief which would inevitably wear itself
+out, as other such griefs have done from time immemorial; but still the
+sorrow was there, at their doors. Next, there was the state of Lady
+Maulevrier's health, which gave her old medical adviser the gravest
+fears. At Lord Hartfield's earnest desire a famous doctor was summoned
+from London; but the great man could only confirm Mr. Horton's verdict.
+The thread of life was wearing thinner every day. It might snap at any
+hour. In the meantime the only regime was repose of body and mind, an
+all-pervading calm, the avoidance of all exciting topics. One moment of
+violent agitation might prove fatal.
+
+Knowing this, how could Lord Hartfield call her ladyship to account for
+the presence of that mysterious old man under Steadman's charge?--how
+venture to touch upon a topic which, by Mary's showing, had exercised a
+most disturbing influence upon her ladyship's mind on that solitary
+occasion when the girl ventured to approach the subject?
+
+He felt that any attempt at an explanation was impossible. It was not
+for him to precipitate Lady Maulevrier's end by prying into her secrets.
+Granted that shame and dishonour of some kind were involved in the
+existence of that strange old man, he, Lord Hartfield, must endure his
+portion in that shame--must be content to leave the dark riddle
+unsolved.
+
+He resigned himself to this state of things, and tried to forget the
+cloud that hung over the house of Haselden; but the sense of a mystery,
+a fatal family secret, which must come to light sooner or later--since
+all such secrets are known at last--known, sifted, and bandied about
+from lip to lip, and published in a thousand different newspapers, and
+cried aloud in the streets--the sense of such a secret, the dread of
+such a revelation weighed upon him heavily.
+
+Maulevrier, the restless, was off to Argyleshire for the grouse shooting
+as soon as he had deposited Lady Lesbia comfortably at Fellside.
+
+'I should only be in your way if I stopped,' he said, 'for you and Molly
+have hardly got over the honeymoon stage yet, though you put on the airs
+of Darby and Joan. I shall be back in a week or ten days.'
+
+'In Lady Maulevrier's state of health I don't think you ought to stay
+away very long,' said Hartfield.
+
+'Poor Lady Maulevrier! She never cared much for me, don't you know. But
+I suppose it would seem unkind if I were to be out of the way when the
+end comes. The end! Good heavens! how coolly I talk of it; and a year
+ago I thought she was as immortal as Fairfield yonder.'
+
+He went away, his spirits dashed by that awful thought of death, and
+Lord and Lady Hartfield had the house to themselves, since Lesbia hardly
+counted. She seldom left her own rooms, except to sit with her
+grandmother for an hour. She lay on her sofa--or sat in a low arm-chair
+by the window, reading Keats or Shelley--or only dreaming--dreaming over
+the brief golden time of her life, with its fond delusions, its false
+brightness. Mr. Horton went to see her every day--felt the feeble little
+pulse which seemed hardly to have force enough to beat--urged her to
+struggle against apathy and inertia, to walk a little, to go for a long
+drive every day, to live in the open air--to which instructions she paid
+not the slightest attention. The desire for life was gone. Disappointed
+in her ambition, betrayed in her love, humiliated, duped, degraded--a
+social failure. What had she to live for? She felt as if it would have
+been a good thing, quite the best thing that could happen, if she could
+turn her face to the wall and die. All that past season, its triumphs,
+its pleasures, its varieties, was like a garish dream, a horror to look
+back upon, hateful to remember.
+
+In vain did Mary and Hartfield urge Lesbia to join in their simple
+pleasures, their walks and rides and drives, and boating excursions. She
+always refused.
+
+'You know I never cared much for roaming about these everlasting hills,'
+she told Mary. 'I never had your passion for Lakeland. It is very good
+of you to wish to have me, but it is quite impossible. I have hardly
+strength enough for a little walk in the garden.'
+
+'You would have more strength if you went out more,' pleaded Mary,
+almost with tears. 'Mr. Horton says sun and wind are the best doctors
+for you. Lesbia, you frighten me sometimes. You are just letting
+yourself fade away.'
+
+'If you knew how I hate the world and the sky, Mary, you wouldn't urge
+me to go out of doors,' Lesbia answered, moodily. 'Indoors I can read,
+and get away from my own thoughts somehow, for a little while. But out
+yonder, face to face with the hills and the lake--the scenes I have
+known all my life--I feel a heart-sickness that is worse than death. It
+maddens me to see that old, old picture of mountain and water, the same
+for ever and ever, no matter what hearts are breaking.'
+
+Mary crept close beside her sister's couch, put her arm round her neck,
+laid her cheek--rich in the ruddy bloom of health--against Lesbia's
+pallid and sunken cheek, and comforted her as much as she could with
+tender murmurs and loving kisses. Other comfort, she could give none.
+All the wisdom in the world will not cure a girl's heart-sickness when
+she has flung away the treasures of her love upon a worthless object.
+
+And so the days went by, peacefully, but sadly; for the shadow of doom
+hung heavily over the house upon the Fell. Nobody who looked upon Lady
+Maulevrier could doubt that her days were numbered, that the oil was
+waxing low in the lamp of life. The end, the awful, mysterious end, was
+drawing near; and she who was called was making no such preparations as
+the Christian makes to answer the dread summons. As she had lived, she
+meant to die--an avowed unbeliever. More than once Mary had taken
+courage, and had talked to her grandmother of the world beyond, the
+blessed hope of re-union with the friends we have lost, in a new and
+brighter life, only to be met by the sceptic's cynical smile, the
+materialist's barren creed.
+
+'My dearest, we know nothing except the immutable laws of material life.
+All the rest is a dream--a beautiful dream, if you like--a consolation
+to that kind of temperament which can take comfort from dreams; but for
+anyone who has read much, and thought much, and kept as far as possible
+on a level with the scientific intellect of the age--for such an one,
+Mary, these old fables are too idle. I shall die as I have lived, the
+victim of an inscrutable destiny, working blindly, evil to some, good to
+others. Ah! love, life has begun very fairly for you. May the fates be
+kind always to my gentle and loving girl!'
+
+There was more talk between them on this dark mystery of life and death.
+Mary brought out her poor little arguments, glorified by the light of
+perfect faith; but they were of no avail against opinions which had been
+the gradual growth of a long and joyless life. Time had attuned Lady
+Maulevrier's mind to the gospel of Schopenhauer and the Pessimists, and
+she was contented to see the mystery of life as they had seen it. She
+had no fear, but she had some anxiety as to the things that were to
+happen after she was gone. She had taken upon herself a heavy burden,
+and she had not yet come to the end of the road where her burden might
+be laid quietly down, her task accomplished. If she fell by the wayside
+under her load the consequences for the survivors might be full of
+trouble.
+
+Her anxieties were increased by the fact that her faithful servant and
+adviser, James Steadman, was no longer the man he had been. The change
+in him was painfully evident--memory failing, energy gone. He came to
+his mistress's room every morning, received her orders, answered her
+questions; but Lady Maulevrier felt that he went through the old duties
+in a mechanical way, and that his dull brain but half understood their
+importance.
+
+One evening at dusk, just as Hartfield and Mary were leaving Lady
+Maulevrier's room, after dinner, an appalling shriek ran through the
+house--a cry almost as terrible as that which Lord Hartfield heard in
+the summer midnight just a year ago. But this time the sound came from
+the old part of the house.
+
+'Something has happened,' exclaimed Hartfield, rushing to the door of
+communication.
+
+It was bolted inside. He knocked vehemently; but there was no answer. He
+ran downstairs, followed by Mary, breathless, in an agony of fear. Just
+as they approached the lower door, leading to the old house, it was
+flung open, and Steadman's wife stood before them pale with terror.
+
+'The doctor,' she cried; 'send for Mr. Horton, somebody, for God's sake.
+Oh, my lord,' with a sudden burst of sobbing, 'I'm afraid he's dead.'
+
+'Mary, despatch some one for Horton,' said Lord Hartfield. Keeping his
+wife back with one hand, he closed the door against her, and then
+followed Mrs. Steadman through the long low corridor to her husband's
+sitting-room.
+
+James Steadman was lying upon his back upon the hearth, near the spot
+were Lord Hartfield had seen him sleeping in his arm-chair a month ago.
+
+One look at the distorted face, dark with injected blood, the dreadful
+glassy glare of the eyes, the foam-stained lips, told that all was over.
+The faithful servant had died at his post. Whatever his charge had been,
+his term of service was ended. There was a vacancy in Lady Maulevrier's
+household.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVI.
+
+THE DAY OF RECKONING.
+
+
+Lord Hartfield stayed with the frightened wife while she knelt beside
+that awful figure on the hearth, wringing her hands with piteous
+bewailings and lamentations over the unconscious clay. He had always
+been a good husband to her, she murmured; hard and stern perhaps, but a
+good man. And she had obeyed him without a question. Whatever he did or
+said she had counted right.
+
+'We have not had a happy life, though there are many who have envied us
+her ladyship's favour,' she said in the midst of her lamentations. 'No
+one knows where the shoe pinches but those who have to wear it. Poor
+James! Early and late, early and late, studying her ladyship's
+interests, caring and thinking, in order to keep trouble away from her.
+Always on the watch, always on the listen. That's what wore him out, poor
+fellow!'
+
+'My good soul, your husband was an old man,' argued Lord Hartfield, in
+a consolatory tone, 'and the end must come to all of us somehow.'
+
+'He might have lived to be a much older man if he had had less worry,'
+said the wife, bending her face to kiss the cold dead brow. 'His days
+were full of care. We should have been happier in the poorest cottage in
+Grasmere than we ever were in this big grand house.'
+
+Thus, in broken fragments of speech, Mrs. Steadman lamented over her
+dead, while the heavy pendulum of the eight-day clock in the hall
+sounded the slowly-passing moments, until the coming of the doctor broke
+upon the quiet of the house, with the noise of opening doors and
+approaching footsteps.
+
+James Steadman was dead. Medicine could do nothing for that lifeless
+clay, lying on the hearth by which he had sat on so many winter nights,
+for so many years of faithful unquestioning service. There was nothing
+to be done for that stiffening form, save the last offices for the dead;
+and Lord Hartfield left Mr. Horton to arrange with the weeping woman as
+to the doing of these. He was anxious to go to Lady Maulevrier, to break
+to her, as gently as might be, the news of her servant's death.
+
+And what of that strange old man in the upper rooms? Who was to attend
+upon him, now that the caretaker was laid low?
+
+While Lord Hartfield lingered on the threshold of the door that led from
+the old house to the new, pondering this question, there came the sound
+of wheels on the carriage drive, and then a loud ring at the hall door.
+
+It was Maulevrier, just arrived from Scotland, smelling of autumn rain
+and cool fresh air.
+
+'Dreadfully bored on the moors,' he said, as they shook hands. 'No
+birds--nobody to talk to--couldn't stand it any longer. How are the
+sisters? Lesbia better? Why, man alive, how queer you look! Nothing
+amiss, I hope?'
+
+'Yes, there is something very much amiss. Steadman is dead.'
+
+'Steadman! Her ladyship's right hand. That's rather bad. But you will
+drop into his stewardship. She'll trust your long head, I know. Much
+better that she should look to her granddaughter's husband for advice in
+all business matters than to a servant. When did it happen?'
+
+'Half an hour ago. I was just going to Lady Maulevrier's room when you
+rang the bell. Take off your Inverness, and come with me.'
+
+'The poor grandmother,' muttered Maulevrier. 'I'm afraid it will be a
+blow.'
+
+He had much less cause for fear than Lord Hartfield, who knew of deep
+and secret reasons why Steadman's death should be a calamity of dire
+import for his mistress. Maulevrier had been told nothing of that scene
+with the strange old man--the hidden treasures--the Anglo-Indian
+phrases--which had filled Lord Hartfield's mind with the darkest doubts.
+
+If that half-lunatic old man, described by Lady Maulevrier as a kinsman
+of Steadman's, were verily the person Lord Hartfield believed, his
+presence under that roof, unguarded by a trust-worthy attendant, was
+fraught with danger. It would be for Lady Maulevrier, helpless, a
+prisoner to her sofa, at death's door, to face that danger. The very
+thought of it might kill her. And yet it was imperative that the truth
+should be told her without delay.
+
+The two young men went to her ladyship's sitting room. She was alone, a
+volume of her favourite Schopenhauer open before her, under the light of
+the shaded reading-lamp. Sorry comfort in the hour of trouble!
+
+Maulevrier went over to her and kissed her; and then dropped silently
+into a chair near at hand, his face in shadow. Hartfield seated himself
+nearer the sofa, and nearer the lamp.
+
+'Dear Lady Maulevrier, I have come to tell you some very bad news--'
+
+'Lesbia?' exclaimed her ladyship, with a frightened look.
+
+'No, there is nothing wrong with Lesbia. It is about your old servant
+Steadman.'
+
+'Dead?' faltered Lady Maulevrier, ashy pale, as she looked at him in the
+lamplight.
+
+He bent his head affirmatively.
+
+'Yes. He was seized with apoplexy--fell from his chair to the hearth,
+and never spoke or stirred again.'
+
+Lady Maulevrier uttered no word of sorrow or surprise. She lay, looking
+straight before her into vacancy, the pale attenuated features rigid as
+if they had been marble. What was to be done--what must be told--whom
+could she trust? Those were the questions repeating themselves in her
+mind as she stared into space. And no answer came to them.
+
+No answer came, except the opening of the door opposite her couch. The
+handle turned slowly, hesitatingly, as if moved by feeble fingers; and
+then the door was pushed slowly open, and an old man came with shuffling
+footsteps towards the one lighted spot in the middle of the room.
+
+It was the old man Lord Hartfield had last seen gloating over his
+treasury of gold and jewels--the man whom Maulevrier had never
+seen--whose existence for forty years had been hidden from every
+creature in that house, except Lady Maulevrier and the Steadmans, until
+Mary found her way into the old garden.
+
+He came close up to the little table in front of Lady Maulevrier's
+couch, and looked down at her, a strange, uncanny being, withered and
+bent, with pale, faded eyes in which there was a glimmer of unholy
+light.
+
+'Good-evening to you, Lady Maulevrier,' he said in a mocking voice. 'I
+shouldn't have known you if we had met anywhere else. I think, of the
+two of us, you are more changed than I.'
+
+She looked up at him, her features quivering, her haughty head drawn
+back; as a bird shrinks from the gaze of a snake, recoiling, but too
+fascinated to fly. Her eyes met his with a look of unutterable horror.
+For some moments she was speechless, and then, looking at Lord
+Hartfield, she said, piteously--
+
+'Why did you let him come here? He ought to be taken care of--shut up.
+It is Steadman's old uncle--a lunatic--I sheltered. Why is he allowed to
+come to my room?'
+
+'I am Lord Maulevrier,' said the old man, drawing himself up and
+planting his crutch stick upon the floor; 'I am Lord Maulevrier, and this
+woman is my wife. Yes, I am mad sometimes, but not always. I have my bad
+fits, but not often. But I never forget who and what I am, Algernon,
+Earl of Maulevrier, Governor of Madras.'
+
+'Lady Maulevrier, is this horrible thing true?' cried her grandson,
+vehemently.
+
+'He is mad, Maulevrier. Don't you see that he is mad?' she exclaimed,
+looking from Hartfield to her grandson, and then with a look of loathing
+and horror at her accuser.
+
+'I tell you, young man, I am Maulevrier,' said the accuser; 'there is no
+one else who has a right to be called by that name, while I live. They
+have shut me up--she and her accomplice--denied my name--hidden me from
+the world. He is dead, and she lies there--stricken for her sins.'
+
+'My grandfather died at the inn at Great Langdale, faltered Maulevrier.
+
+'Your grandfather was brought to this house--ill--out of his wits. All
+cloud and darkness here,' said the old man, touching his forehead. 'How
+long has it been? Who can tell? A weary time--long, dark nights, full of
+ghosts. Yes, I have seen him--the Rajah, that copper-faced scoundrel,
+seen him as she told me he looked when she gave the signal to her slaves
+to strangle him, there in the hall, where the grave was dug ready for
+the traitor's carcass. She too--yes, she has haunted me, calling upon me
+to give up her treasure, to restore her son.'
+
+'Yes,' cried the paralytic woman, suddenly lifted out of herself, as it
+were, in a paroxysm of fury, every feature convulsed, every nerve
+strained to its utmost tension; 'yes, this is Lord Maulevrier. You have
+heard the truth, and from his own lips. You, his only son's only son.
+You his granddaughter's husband. You hear him avow himself the
+instigator of a diabolical murder; you hear him confess how his
+paramour's husband was strangled at his false wife's bidding, in his own
+palace, buried under the Moorish pavement in the hall of many arches.
+You hear how he inherited the Rajah's treasures from a mistress who
+died strangely, swiftly, conveniently, as soon so he had wearied of her,
+and a new favourite had begun to exercise her influence. Such things are
+done in the East--dynasties annihilated, kingdoms overthrown, poison or
+bowstring used at will, to gratify a profligate's passion, or pay for a
+spendthrift's extravagances. Such things were done when that man was
+Governor of Madras as were never done by an Englishman in India before
+his time. He went there fettered by no prejudices--he was more Mussulman
+than the Mussulmen themselves--a deeper, darker traitor. And it was to
+hide such crimes as these--to interpose the great peacemaker Death
+between him and the Government which was resolved upon punishing him--to
+save the honour, the fortune of my son, and the children who were to
+come after him, the name of a noble race, a name that was ever stainless
+until he defiled it--it was for this great end I took steps to hide that
+feeble, useless life of his from the world he had offended; it was for
+this end that I caused a peasant to be buried in the vault of the
+Maulevriers, with all the pomp and ceremony that befits the funeral of
+one of England's oldest earls. I screened him from his enemies--I saved
+him from the ignominy of a public trial--from the execration of his
+countrymen. His only punishment was to eat his heart under this roof, in
+luxurious seclusion, his comfort studied, his whims gratified so far as
+they could be by the most faithful of servants. A light penance for the
+dark infamies of his life in India, I think. His mind was all but gone
+when he came here, but he had his rational intervals, and in these the
+burden of his lonely life may have weighed heavily upon him. But it was
+not such a heavy burden as I have borne--I, his gaoler, I who have
+devoted my existence to the one task of guarding the family honour.'
+
+He, whom she thus acknowledged as her husband, had sunk exhausted into a
+chair near her. He took out his gold snuff-box, and refreshed himself
+with a leisurely pinch of snuff, looking about him curiously all the
+while, with a senile grin. That flash of passion which for a few minutes
+had restored him to the full possession of his reason had burnt itself
+out, and his mind had relapsed into the condition in which it had been
+when he talked to Mary in the garden.
+
+'My pipe, Steadman,' he said, looking towards the door; 'bring me my
+pipe,' and then, impatiently, 'What has become of Steadman? He has been
+getting inattentive--very inattentive.'
+
+He got up, and moved slowly to the door, leaning on his crutch-stick,
+his head sunk upon his breast, muttering to himself as he went; and thus
+he vanished from them, like the spectre of some terrible ancestor which
+had returned from the grave to announce the coming of calamity to a
+doomed race. His grandson looked after him, with an expression of
+intense displeasure.
+
+'And so, Lady Maulevrier,' he exclaimed, turning to his grandmother, 'I
+have borne a title that never belonged to me, and enjoyed the possession
+of another man's estates all this time, thanks to your pretty little
+plot. A very respectable position for your grandson to occupy, upon my
+life!'
+
+Lord Hartfield lifted his hand with a warning gesture.
+
+'Spare her,' he said. 'She is in no condition to endure your
+reproaches.'
+
+Spare her--yes. Fate had not spared her. The beautiful face--beautiful
+even in age and decay--changed suddenly as she looked at them--the mouth
+became distorted, the eyes fixed: and then the heavy head fell back upon
+the pillow--the paralysed form, wholly paralysed now, lay like a thing
+of stone. It never moved again. Consciousness was blotted out for ever
+in that moment. The feeble pulses of heart and brain throbbed with
+gradually diminishing power for a night and a day; and in the twilight
+of that dreadful day of nothingness the last glimmer of the light died
+in the lamp, and Lady Maulevrier and the burden of her sin were beyond
+the veil.
+
+Viscount Haselden, _alias_ Lord Maulevrier, held a long consultation
+with Lord Hartfield on the night of his grandmother's death, as to what
+steps ought to be taken in relation to the real Earl of Maulevrier: and
+it was only at the end of a serious and earnest discussion that both
+young men came to the decision that Lady Maulevrier's secret ought to be
+kept faithfully to the end. Assuredly no good purpose could be achieved
+by letting the world know of old Lord Maulevrier's existence. A
+half-lunatic octogenarian could gain nothing by being restored to rights
+and possessions which he had most justly forfeited. All that justice
+demanded was that the closing years of his life should be made as
+comfortable as care and wealth could make them; and Hartfield and
+Haselden took immediate steps to this end. But their first act was to
+send the old earl's treasure chest under safe convoy to the India House,
+with a letter explaining how this long-hidden wealth, brought from India
+by Lord Maulevrier, had been discovered among other effects in a
+lumber-room at Lady Maulevrier's country house. The money so delivered
+up might possibly have formed part of his lordship's private fortune;
+but, in the absence of any knowledge as to its origin, his grandson, the
+present Lord Maulevrier, preferred to deliver it up to the authorities
+of the India House, to be dealt with as they might think fit.
+
+The old earl made no further attempt to assert himself. He seemed
+content to remain in his own rooms as of old, to potter about the
+garden, where his solitude was as complete as that of a hermit's cell.
+The only moan be made was for James Steadman, whose services he missed
+sorely. Lord Hartfield replaced that devoted servant by a clever
+Austrian valet, a new importation from Vienna, who understood very
+little English, a trained attendant upon mental invalids, and who was
+quite capable of dealing with old Lord Maulevrier.
+
+Lord Hartfield went a step farther; and within a week of those two
+funerals of servant and mistress, which cast a gloom over the peaceful
+valley of Grasmere, he brought down a famous mad-doctor to diagnose his
+lordship's case. There was but little risk in so doing, he argued with
+his friend, and it was their duty so to do. If the old man should assert
+himself to the doctor as Lord Maulevrier, the declaration would pass as
+a symptom of his lunacy. But it happened that the physician arrived at
+Fellside on one of Lord Maulevrier's bad days, and the patient never
+emerged from the feeblest phase of imbecility.
+
+'Brain quite gone,' pronounced the doctor, 'bodily health very poor.
+Take him to the South of France for the winter--Hyères, or any quiet
+place. He can't last long.'
+
+To Hyères the old man was taken, with Mrs. Steadman as nurse, and the
+Austrian valet as body-servant and keeper. Mary, for whom, in his
+brighter hours he showed a warm affection, went with him under her
+husband's wing.
+
+Lord Hartfield rented a chateau on the slope of an olive-clad hill,
+where he and his young wife, whose health was somewhat delicate at this
+time, spent a winter in peaceful seclusion; while Lesbia and her brother
+travelled together in Italy. The old man's strength improved in that
+lovely climate. He lived to see the roses and orange blossoms of the
+early spring, and died in his arm-chair suddenly, without a pang, while
+Mary sat at his feet reading to him: a quiet end of an evil and troubled
+life. And now he whom the world had known as Lord Maulevrier was verily
+the earl, and could hear himself called by his title once more without a
+touch of shame.
+
+The secret of Lady Maulevrier's sin had been so faithfully kept by the
+two young men that neither of her granddaughters knew the true story of
+that mysterious person whom Mary had first heard of as James Steadman's
+uncle. She and Lesbia both knew that there were painful circumstances of
+some kind connected with this man's existence, his hidden life in the
+old house at Fellside; but they were both content to learn no more.
+Respect for their grandmother's memory, sorrowful affection for the
+dead, prevailed over natural curiosity.
+
+Early in February Maulevrier sent decorators and upholsterers into the
+old house in Curzon Street, which was ready before the middle of May to
+receive his lordship and his young wife, the girlish daughter of a
+Florentine nobleman, a gazelle-eyed Italian, with a voice whose every
+tone was music, and with the gentlest, shyest, most engaging manners of
+any girl in Florence. Lady Lesbia, strangely subdued and changed by the
+griefs and humiliations of her last campaign, had been her brother's
+counsellor and confidante throughout his wooing of his fair Italian
+bride. She was to spend the season under her brother's roof, to help to
+initiate young Lady Maulevrier in the mysterious rites of London
+society, and to warn her of those rocks and shoals which had wrecked her
+own fortunes.
+
+The month of May brought a son and heir to Lord Hartfield; and it was
+not till after his birth that Mary, Countess of Hartfield, was presented
+to her sovereign, and began her career as a matron of rank and standing,
+very much overpowered by the weight of her honours, and looking forward
+with delight to the end of the season and a flight to Argyleshire with
+her husband and baby.
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Phantom Fortune, A Novel, by M. E. Braddon
+
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diff --git a/old/old/10905.txt b/old/old/10905.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e6c886b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/old/10905.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,20040 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Phantom Fortune, A Novel, by M. E. Braddon
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Phantom Fortune, A Novel
+
+Author: M. E. Braddon
+
+Release Date: February 1, 2004 [EBook #10905]
+[Last updated: August 4, 2013]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PHANTOM FORTUNE, A NOVEL ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jonathan Ingram and PG Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+PHANTOM FORTUNE
+
+
+A Novel
+
+
+BY THE AUTHOR OF "LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET," "VIXEN," ETC. ETC. ETC.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+I.       PENELOPE
+II.      ULYSSES
+III.     ON THE WRONG ROAD
+IV.      THE LAST STAGE
+V.       FORTY YEARS AFTER
+VI.      MAULEVRIER'S HUMBLE FRIEND
+VII.     IN THE SUMMER MORNING
+VIII.    THERE IS ALWAYS A SKELETON
+IX.      A CRY IN THE DARKNESS
+X.       'O BITTERNESS OF THINGS TOO SWEET'
+XI.      'IF I WERE TO DO AS ISEULT DID'
+XII.     'THE GREATER CANTLE OF THE WORLD IS LOST'
+XIII.    'SINCE PAINTED OR NOT PAINTED ALL SHALL FADE'
+XIV.     'NOT YET'
+XV.      'OF ALL MEN ELSE I HAVE AVOIDED THEE'
+XVI.     'HER FACE RESIGNED TO BLISS OR BALE'
+XVII.    'AND THE SPRING COMES SLOWLY UP THIS WAY'
+XVIII.   'AND COME AGEN, BE IT BY NIGHT OR DAY'
+XIX.     THE OLD MAN ON THE FELL
+XX.      LADY MAULEVRIER'S LETTER-BAG
+XXI.     ON THE DARK BROW OF HELVELLYN
+XXII.    WISER THAN LESBIA
+XXIII.   'A YOUNG LAMB'S HEART AMONG THE FULL-GROWN FLOCKS'
+XXIV.    'NOW NOTHING LEFT TO LOVE OR HATE'
+XXV.     CARTE BLANCHE
+XXVI.    'PROUD CAN I NEVER BE OF WHAT I HATE'
+XXVII.   LESBIA CROSSES PICCADILLY
+XXVIII.  'CLUBS, DIAMONDS, HEARTS, IN WILD DISORDER SEEN'
+XXIX.    'SWIFT, SUBTLE POST, CARRIER OF GRISLY CARE'
+XXX.     'ROSES CHOKED AMONG THORNS AND THISTLES'
+XXXI.    'KIND IS MY LOVE TO-DAY, TO-MORROW KIND'
+XXXII.   WAYS AND MEANS
+XXXIII.  BY SPECIAL LICENCE
+XXXIV.   'OUR LOVE WAS NEW, AND THEN BUT IN THE SPRING'
+XXXV.    'ALL FANCY, PRIDE, AND FICKLE MAIDENHOOD'
+XXXVI.   A RASTAQUOUERE
+XXXVII.  LORD HARTFIELD REFUSES A FORTUNE
+XXXVIII. ON BOARD THE 'CAYMAN'
+XXXIX.   IN STORM AND DARKNESS
+XL.      A NOTE OF ALARM
+XLI.     PRIVILEGED INFORMATION
+XLII.    'SHALL IT BE?'
+XLIII.   'ALAS, FOR SORROW IS ALL THE END OF THIS'
+XLIV.    'OH, SAD KISSED MOUTH, HOW SORROWFUL IT IS!'
+XLV.     'THAT FELL ARREST WITHOUT ALL BAIL'
+XLVI.    THE DAY OF RECKONING
+
+[Illustration: H. French, del.) (T. Symmons, sc. "The old man sat looking
+at Mary in silence for some moments."--Page 171.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+PENELOPE.
+
+
+People dined earlier forty years ago than they do now. Even that salt of
+the earth, the elect of society, represented by that little great world
+which lies between the narrow circle bounded by Bryanstone Square on the
+north and by Birdcage Walk on the south, did not consider seven o'clock
+too early an hour for a dinner party which was to be followed by routs,
+drums, concerts, conversazione, as the case might be. It was seven
+o'clock on a lovely June evening, and the Park was already deserted, and
+carriages were rolling swiftly along all the Westend squares, carrying
+rank, fashion, wealth, and beauty, political influence, and intellectual
+power, to the particular circle in which each was destined to illumine
+upon that particular evening.
+
+Stateliest among London squares, Grosvenor--in some wise a wonder to the
+universe as newly lighted with gas--grave Grosvenor, with its heavy old
+Georgian houses and pompous porticoes, sparkled and shone, not alone
+with the novel splendour of gas, but with the light of many wax candles,
+clustering flower-like in silver branches and girandoles, multiplying
+their flame in numerous mirrors; and of all the houses in that stately
+square none had a more imposing aspect than Lord Denyer's dark red brick
+mansion, with stone dressings, and the massive grandeur of an Egyptian
+mausoleum.
+
+Lord Denyer was an important personage in the political and diplomatic
+world. He had been ambassador at Constantinople and at Paris, and had
+now retired on his laurels, an influence still, but no longer an active
+power in the machine of government. At his house gathered all that was
+most brilliant in London society. To be seen at Lady Denyer's evening
+parties was the guinea stamp of social distinction; to dine with Lord
+Denyer was an opening in life, almost as valuable as University honours,
+and more difficult of attainment.
+
+It was during the quarter of an hour before dinner that a group of
+persons, mostly personages, congregated round Lord Denyer's
+chimney-piece, naturally trending towards the social hearth, albeit it
+was the season for roses and lilies rather than of fires, and the hum of
+the city was floating in upon the breath of the warm June evening
+through the five tall windows which opened upon Lord Denyer's balcony.
+
+The ten or twelve persons assembled seemed only a sprinkling in the large
+lofty room, furnished sparsely with amber satin sofas, a pair of Florentine
+marble tables, and half an acre or so of looking glass. Voluminous amber
+draperies shrouded the windows, and deadened the sound of rolling wheels,
+and the voices and footfalls of western London. The drawing rooms of those
+days were neither artistic nor picturesque--neither Early English nor Low
+Dutch, nor Renaissance, nor Anglo-Japanese. A stately commonplace
+distinguished the reception rooms of the great world. Upholstery stagnated
+at a dead level of fluted legs, gilding, plate glass, and amber satin.
+
+Lady Denyer stood a little way in advance of the group on the hearthrug,
+fanning herself, with her eye on the door, while she listened languidly
+to the remarks of a youthful diplomatist, a sprig of a lordly tree, upon
+the last _debut_ at Her Majesty's Theatre.
+
+'My own idea was that she screamed,' said her ladyship. 'But the new
+Rosinas generally do scream. Why do we have a new Rosina every year,
+whom nobody ever hears of afterwards? What becomes of them? Do they die,
+or do they set up as singing mistresses in second-rate watering-places?'
+hazarded her ladyship, with her eye always on the door.
+
+She was a large woman in amethyst satin, and a gauze turban with a
+diamond aigrette, a splendid jewel, which would not have misbeseemed the
+head-gear of an Indian prince. Lady Denyer was one of the last women who
+wore a turban, and that Oriental head-dress became her bold and massive
+features.
+
+Infinitely bored by the whiskerless attache, who had entered upon a
+disquisition on the genius of Rossini as compared with this new man
+Meyerbeer, her ladyship made believe to hear, while she listened
+intently to the confidential murmurs of the group on the hearthrug,
+the little knot of personages clustered round Lord Denyer.
+
+Hi 'Indian mail in this morning,' said one--'nothing else talked of at
+the club. Very flagrant case! A good deal worse than Warren Hastings.
+Quite clear there must be a public inquiry--House of Lords--criminal
+prosecution.'
+
+'I was told on very good authority, that he has been recalled, and is
+now on his passage home,' said another man.
+
+Lord Denyer shrugged his shoulders, pursed up his lips, and looked
+ineffably wise, a way he had when he knew very little about the subject
+under discussion.
+
+'How will _she_ take it, do you think?' inquired Colonel Madison, of the
+Life Guards, a man about town, and an inveterate gossip, who knew
+everybody, and everybody's family history, down to the peccadilloes of
+people's great grandmothers.
+
+'You will have an opportunity of judging,' replied his lordship, coolly.
+'She's to be here this evening.'
+
+'But do you think she'll show?' asked the Colonel. 'The mail must have
+brought the news to her, as well as to other people--supposing she knew
+nothing about it beforehand. She must know that the storm has burst. Do
+you think she'll----'
+
+'Come out in the thunder and lightning?' interrupted Lord Denver; 'I'm
+sure she will. She has the pride of Lucifer and the courage of a lion.
+Five to one in ponies that she is here before the clock strikes seven!'
+
+'I think you are right. I knew her mother, Constance Talmash. Pluck was
+a family characteristic of the Talmashes. Wicked as devils, and brave as
+lions. Old Talmash, the grandfather, shot his valet in a paroxysm of
+_delirium tremens_,' said Colonel Madison. 'She's a splendid woman, and
+she won't flinch. I'd rather back her than bet against her.'
+
+'Lady Maulevrier!' announced the groom of the chambers; and Lady Denyer
+moved at least three paces forward to meet her guest.
+
+The lady who entered, with slow and stately movements and proudly
+balanced head, might have served for a model as Juno or the Empress
+Livia. She was still in the bloom of youth, at most seven-and-twenty,
+but she had all the calm assurance of middle-age. No dowager, hardened
+by the varied experiences of a quarter of a century in the great world,
+could have faced society with more perfect coolness and self-possession.
+She was beautiful, and she let the world see that she was conscious of
+her beauty, and the power that went along with it. She was clever, and
+she used her cleverness with unfailing tact and unscrupulous audacity.
+She had won her place in the world as an acknowledged beauty, and one of
+the leaders of fashion. Two years ago she had been the glory and delight
+of Anglo-Indian society in the city of Madras, ruling that remote and
+limited kingdom with a despotic power. Then all of a sudden she was
+ordered, or she ordered her physician to order her, an immediate
+departure from that perilous climate, and she came back to England with
+her three-year-old son, two Ayahs, and four European servants, leaving
+her husband, Lord Maulevrier, Governor of the Madras Presidency, to
+finish the term of his service in an enforced widowhood.
+
+She returned to be the delight of London society. She threw open the
+family mansion in Curzon Street to the very best people, but to those
+only. She went out a great deal, but she was never seen at a second-rate
+party. She had not a single doubtful acquaintance upon her visiting
+list. She spent half of every year at the family seat in Scotland, was a
+miracle of goodness to the poor of her parish, and taught her boy his
+alphabet.
+
+Lord Denyer came forward while his wife and Lady Maulevrier were shaking
+hands, and greeted her with more than his usual cordiality. Colonel
+Madison watched for the privilege of a recognising nod from the
+divinity. Sir Jasper Paulet, a legal luminary of the first brilliancy,
+likely to be employed for the Crown if there should be an inquiry into
+Lord Maulevrier's conduct out yonder, came to press Lady Maulevrier's
+hand and murmur a tender welcome.
+
+She accepted their friendliness as a matter of course, and not by the
+faintest extra quiver of the tremulous stars which glittered in a
+circlet above her raven hair did she betray her consciousness of the
+cloud that darkened her husband's reputation. Never had she appeared
+gayer, or more completely satisfied with herself and the world in which
+she lived. She was ready to talk about anything and everything--the
+newly-wedded queen, and the fortunate Prince, whose existence among us
+had all the charm of novelty--of Lord Melbourne's declining health--and
+Sir Robert Peel's sliding scale--mesmerism--the Oxford Tracts--the
+latest balloon ascent--the opera--Macready's last production at Drury
+lane--Bulwer's new novel--that clever little comic paper, just
+struggling into popularity--what do you call the thing--_Punch?_--yes,
+_Punch, or the London Charivari_--a much more respectable paper than its
+Parisian prototype.
+
+Seated next Lord Denyer, who was an excellent listener, Lady
+Maulevrier's vivacity never flagged throughout the dinner, happily not
+so long as a modern banquet, albeit more ponderous and not less
+expensive. From the turtle to the pines and strawberries, Lady
+Maulevrier held her host or her right-hand neighbour in interested
+conversation. She always knew the particular subjects likely to interest
+particular people, and was a good listener as well as a good talker. Her
+right-hand neighbour was Sir Jasper Paulet, who had been allotted to the
+pompous wife of a court physician, a lady who had begun her married life
+in the outer darkness of Guildford Street, Bloomsbury, with a household
+consisting of a maid-of-all-work and a boy in buttons, with an
+occasional interregnum of charwoman; and for whom all the length and
+breadth of Harley Street was now much too small.
+
+Sir Jasper was only decently civil to this haughty matron, who on the
+strength of a card for a ball or a concert at the palace once in a
+season affected to be on the most intimate terms with Royalty, and knew
+everything that happened, and every fluctuation of opinion in that
+charmed circle. The great lawyer's left ear was listening greedily for
+any word of meaning that might fall from the lips of Lady Maulevrier;
+but no such word fell. She talked delightfully, with a touch-and-go
+vivacity which is the highest form of dinner-table talk, not dwelling
+with a heavy hand upon any one subject, but glancing from theme to theme
+with airy lightness. But not one word did she say about the governor of
+Madras; and at this juncture of affairs it would have been the worst
+possible taste to inquire too closely after his lordship's welfare.
+
+So the dinner wore on to its stately close, and just as the solemn
+procession of flunkeys, long as the shadowy line of the kings in
+'Macbeth,' filed off with the empty ice-dishes, Lady Maulevrier said
+something which was as if a shell had exploded in the middle of the
+table.
+
+'Perhaps you are surprised to see me in such good spirits,' she said,
+beaming upon her host, and speaking in those clear, perfectly finished
+syllables which are heard further than the louder accents of less
+polished speakers, 'but you will not wonder when I let you into the
+secret. Maulevrier is on his way home.'
+
+'Indeed!' said Lord Denyer, with the most benignant smile he could
+command at such short notice. He felt that the muscles round his eyes
+and the corners of his mouth were betraying too much of his real
+sentiments. 'You must be very glad.'
+
+'I am gladder than I can say,' answered Lady Maulevrier, gaily. 'That
+horried climate--a sky like molten copper--an atmosphere that tastes of
+red-hot sand--that flat barren coast never suited him. His term of
+office would expire in little more than a year, but I hardly think he
+could have lived out the year. However, I am happy to say the mail that
+came in to-day--I suppose you know the mail is in?' (Lord Denyer
+bowed)--'brought me a letter from his Lordship, telling me that he has
+sent in his resignation, and taken his passage by the next big ship that
+leaves Madras. I imagine he will be home in October.'
+
+'If he have a favourable passage,' said Lord Denyer. 'Favoured by your
+good wishes the winds and the waves ought to deal gently with him.'
+
+'Ah, we have done with the old days of Greek story, when Neptune was
+open to feminine influence,' sighed her ladyship. 'My poor Ulysses has
+no goddess of wisdom to look after him.'
+
+'Perhaps not, but he has the most charming of Penelopes waiting for him
+at home.'
+
+'A Penelope who goes to dinners, and takes life pleasantly in his
+absence. That is a new order of things, is it not?' said her ladyship,
+laughingly. 'I hope my poor Ulysses will not come home thoroughly broken
+in health, but that our Sutherlandshire breezes will set him up again.'
+
+'Rather an ordeal after India, I should think,' said Lord Denyer.
+
+'It is his native air. He will revel in it.'
+
+'Delicious country, no doubt,' assented his lordship, who was no
+sportsman, and who detested Scotland, grouse moors, deer forests, salmon
+rivers included.
+
+His only idea of a winter residence was Florence or Capri, and of the
+two he preferred Capri. The island was at that time little frequented by
+Englishmen. It had hardly been fashionable since the time of Tiberius,
+but Lord Denyer went there, accompanied by his French chef, and a dozen
+other servants, and roughed it in a native hotel; while Lady Denyer
+wintered at the family seat among the hills near Bath, and gave herself
+over to Low Church devotion, and works of benevolence. She made herself
+a terror to the neighbourhood by the strictness of her ideas all through
+the autumn and winter; and in the spring she went up to London, put on
+her turban and her diamonds, and plunged into the vortex of West-End
+society, where she revolved among other jewelled matrons for the season,
+telling herself and her intimates that this sacrifice of inclination was
+due to his lordship's position. Lady Denyer was not the less
+serious-minded because she was seen at every aristocratic resort, and
+wore low gowns with very short sleeves, and a great display of mottled
+arm and dimpled elbow.
+
+Now came her ladyship's smiling signal for the withdrawal of that fairer
+half of the assembly which was supposed to be indifferent to Lord
+Denyer's famous port and Madeira. She had been throwing out her gracious
+signals unperceived for at least five minutes before Lady Maulevrier
+responded, so entirely was that lady absorbed in her conversation with
+Lord Denyer; but she caught the look at last, and rose, as if moved by
+the same machinery which impelled her hostess, and then, graceful as a
+swan sailing with the current, she drifted down the room to the distant
+door, and headed the stately procession of matronly velvet and diamonds,
+herself at once the most regal and the most graceful figure in that bevy
+of fair woman.
+
+In the drawing-room nobody could be gayer than Lady Maulevrier, as she
+marked the time of Signor Paponizzi's saltarello, exquisitely performed
+on the Signor's famed Amati violin--or talked of the latest
+scandal--always excepting that latest scandal of all which involved her
+own husband--in subdued murmurs with one of her intimates. In the
+dining-room the men drew closer together over their wine, and tore Lord
+Maulevrier's character to rags. Yea, they rent him with their teeth and
+gnawed the flesh from his bones, until there was not so much left of him
+as the dogs left of Jezebel.
+
+He had been a scamp from his cradle, a spendthrift at Eton and Oxford, a
+blackleg in his manhood. False to men, false to women. Clever? Yes,
+undoubtedly, just as Satan is clever, and as unscrupulous as that very
+Satan. This was what his friends said of him over their wine. And now he
+was rumoured to have sold the British forces in the Carnatic provinces
+to one of the native Princes. Yes, to have taken gold, gold to an amount
+which Clive in his most rapacious moments never dreamt of, for his
+countrymen's blood. Tidings of dark transactions between the Governor
+and the native Princes had reached the ears of the Government, tidings
+so vague, so incredible, that the Government might naturally be slow to
+believe, still slower to act. There were whispers of a woman's
+influence, a beautiful Ranee, a creature as fascinating and as
+unscrupulous as Cleopatra. The scandal had been growing for months past,
+but it was only in the letters received to-day that the rumour had taken
+a tangible shape, and now it was currently reported that Lord Maulevrier
+had been recalled, and would have to answer at the bar of the House of
+Lords for his misdemeanours, which were of a much darker colour than
+those acts for which Warren Hastings had been called to account fifty
+years before.
+
+Yet in the face of all this, Lady Maulevrier bore herself as proudly as
+if her husband's name were spotless, and talked of his return with all
+the ardour of a fond and trusting wife.
+
+'One of the finest bits of acting I ever saw in my life,' said the court
+physician. 'Mademoiselle Mars never did anything better.'
+
+'Do you really think it was acting?' inquired Lord Denyer, affecting a
+youthful candour and trustfulness which at his age, and with his
+experience, he could hardly be supposed to possess.
+
+'I know it,' replied the doctor. 'I watched her while she was talking of
+Maulevrier, and I saw just one bead of perspiration break out on her
+upper lip--an unmistakable sign of the mental struggle.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+ULYSSES.
+
+
+October was ending drearily with north-east winds, dust, drifting dead
+leaves, and a steel-grey sky; and the Dolphin Hotel at Southampton was
+glorified by the presence of Lady Maulevrier and suite. Her ladyship's
+suite was on this occasion limited to three servants--her French maid, a
+footman, and a kind of factotum, a man of no distinct and arbitrary
+signification in her ladyship's household, neither butler nor steward,
+but that privileged being, an old and trusted servant, and a person who
+was supposed to enjoy more of Lady Maulevrier's confidence than any
+other member of her establishment.
+
+This James Steadman had been valet to her ladyship's father, Lord
+Peverill, during the declining years of that nobleman. The narrow limits
+of a sick room had brought the master and servant into a closer
+companionship than is common to that relation. Lady Diana Angersthorpe
+was a devoted daughter, and in her attendance upon the Earl during the
+last three years of his life--a life which closed more than a year
+before her own marriage--she saw a great deal of James Steadman, and
+learned to trust him as servants are not often trusted. He was not more
+than twenty years of age at the beginning of his service, but he was a
+man of extraordinary gravity, much in advance of his years; a man of
+shrewd common-sense and clear, sharp intellect. Not a reading man, or a
+man in any way superior to his station and belongings, but a man who
+could think quickly, and understand quickly, and who always seemed to
+think rightly. Prompt in action, yet steady as a rock, and to all
+appearance recognising no earthly interest, no human tie, beyond or
+above the interests of his master. As a nurse Steadman showed himself
+invaluable. Lord Peverill left him a hundred pounds in acknowledgment of
+his services, which was something for Lord Peverill, who had very little
+ready cash wherewith to endow his only daughter. After his death the
+title and the estates went to a distant cousin; Lady Diana Angersthorpe
+was taken in hand by her aunt, the Dowager Marchioness of Carrisbrook;
+and James Steadman would have had to find employment among strangers, if
+Lady Diana had not pleaded so urgently with her aunt as to secure him a
+somewhat insignificant post in her ladyship's establishment.
+
+'If ever I have a house of my own, you shall have a better place in it,
+Steadman,' said Lady Diana.
+
+She kept her word, and on her marriage with Lord Maulevrier, which
+happened about eighteen months afterwards, Steadman passed into that
+nobleman's service. He was a member of her ladyship's bodyguard, and his
+employment seemed to consist chiefly in poking fires, cutting the leaves
+of books and newspapers, superintending the footman's attendance upon
+her ladyship's household pets, and conveying her sentiments to the other
+servants. He was in a manner Lady Maulevrier's mouthpiece, and although
+treated with a respect that verged upon awe, he was not a favourite with
+the household.
+
+And now the house in Mayfair was given over to the charge of caretakers.
+All the other servants had been despatched by coach to her ladyship's
+favourite retreat in Westmoreland, within a few miles of the Laureate's
+home at Rydal Mount, and James Steadman was charged with the whole
+responsibility of her ladyship's travelling arrangements.
+
+Penelope had come to Southampton to wait for Ulysses, whose ship had
+been due for more than a week, and whose white sails might be expected
+above the horizon at any moment. James Steadman spent a good deal of his
+time waiting about at the docks for the earliest news of Greene's ship,
+the _Hypermnestra_; while Lady Maulevrier waited patiently in her
+sitting-room at the Dolphin, whose three long French windows commanded a
+full view of the High Street, with all those various distractions
+afforded by the chief thoroughfare of a provincial town. Her ladyship
+was provided with a large box of books, from Ebers' in Bond Street, a
+basket of fancy work, and her favourite Blenheim spaniel, Lalla Rookh;
+but even these sources of amusement did not prevent the involuntary
+expression of weariness in occasional yawns, and frequent pacings up and
+down the room, where the formal hotel furniture had a comfortless and
+chilly look.
+
+Fellside, her ladyship's place in Westmoreland, was the pleasure house
+which, among all her possessions, she most valued; but it had hitherto
+been reserved for summer occupation, or for perhaps two or three weeks
+at Easter, when the spring was exceptionally fine. The sudden
+determination to spend the coming winter in the house near Grasmere was
+considered a curious freak of Lady Maulevrier's, and she was constrained
+to explain her motives to her friends.
+
+'His lordship is out of health,' she said, 'and wants perfect rest and
+retirement. Now, Fellside is the only place we have in which he is
+likely to get perfect rest. Anywhere else we should have to entertain.
+Fellside is out of the world. There is no one to be entertained.'
+
+'Except your neighbour, Wordsworth. I suppose you see him sometimes?'
+
+'Dear simple-minded old soul, he gives nobody any trouble,' said her
+ladyship.
+
+'But is not Westmoreland very cold in winter?' asked her friend.
+
+Lady Maulevrier smiled benignly, as at an inoffensive ignorance.
+
+'So sheltered,' she murmured. 'We are at the base of the Fell. Loughrigg
+rises up like a cyclopean wall between us and the wind.'
+
+'But when the wind is in the other direction?'
+
+'We have Nabb Scar. You do not know how we are girdled and defended by
+hills.'
+
+'Very pleasant,' agreed the friend; 'but for my own part I would rather
+winter in the south.'
+
+Those terrible rumours which had first come upon the world of London
+last June, had been growing darker and more defined ever since, but
+still Lady Maulevrier made believe to ignore them; and she acted her
+part of unconsciousness with such consummate skill that nobody in her
+circle could be sure where the acting began and where the ignorance left
+off. The astute Lord Denyer declared that she was a wonderful woman, and
+knew more about the real state of the case than anybody else.
+
+Meanwhile it was said by those who were supposed to be well-informed
+that a mass of evidence was accumulating against Lord Maulevrier. The
+India House, it was rumoured, was busy with the secret investigation of
+his case, prior to that public inquiry which was to come on during the
+next session. His private fortune would be made answerable for his
+misdemeanours--his life, said the alarmists, might pay the penalty of
+his treason. On all sides it was agreed that the case against Lord
+Maulevrier was black as Erebus; and still Lady Maulevrier looked society
+in the face with an unshaken courage, and was ready with smiles and
+gracious words for all comers.
+
+But now came a harder trial, which was to receive the man who had
+disgraced her, lowered her pride to the dust, degraded the name she
+bore. She had married him, not loving him--nay, plucking another love
+out of her heart in order that she might give herself to him. She had
+married him for position and fortune; and now by his follies, by his
+extravagance, and by that greed of gold which is inevitable in the
+spendthrift and profligate, he had gone near to cheat her out of both
+name and fortune. Yet she so commanded herself as to receive him with a
+friendly air when he arrived at the Dolphin, on a dull grey autumn
+afternoon, after she had waited for him nearly a fortnight.
+
+James Steadman ushered in his lordship, a frail attenuated looking
+figure, of middle height, wrapped in a furred cloak, yet shivering, a
+pale sickly face, light auburn whiskers, light blue eyes, full and
+large, but with no intellectual power in them. Lady Maulevrier was
+sitting by the fire, in a melancholy attitude, with the Blenheim spaniel
+on her lap. Her son was at Hastings with his nurses. She had nothing
+nearer and dearer than the spaniel.
+
+She rose and went over to her husband, and let him kiss her. It would
+have been too much to say that she kissed him; but she submitted her
+lips unresistingly to his, and then they sat down on opposite sides of
+the hearth.
+
+'A wretched afternoon,' said his lordship, shivering, and drawing his
+chair closer to the fire. Steadman had taken away his fur-lined cloak.
+'I had really underrated the disagreeableness of the English climate. It
+is abominable!'
+
+'To-day is not a fair sample,' answered her ladyship, trying to be
+cheerful; 'we have had some pleasant autumn days.'
+
+'I detest autumn!' exclaimed Lord Maulevrier, 'a season of dead leaves,
+damp, and dreariness. I should like to get away to Montpellier or Nice
+as soon as we can.'
+
+Her ladyship gave him a scathing look, half-scornful, half-incredulous.
+
+'You surely would not dream of leaving the country,' she said, 'under
+present circumstances. So long as you are here to answer all charges no
+one will interfere with your liberty; but if you were to cross the
+Channel--'
+
+'My slanderers might insinuate that I was running away,' interrupted
+Maulevrier, 'although the very fact of my return ought to prove to every
+one that I am able to meet and face this cabal.'
+
+'Is it a cabal?' asked her ladyship, looking at him with a gaze that
+searched his soul. 'Can you meet their charges? Can you live down this
+hideous accusation, and hold up your head as a man of honour?'
+
+The sensualist's blue eyes nervously shunned that look of earnest
+interrogation. His lips answered the wife's spoken question with a lie,
+a lie made manifest by the expression of his countenance.
+
+'I am not afraid,' he said.
+
+His wife answered not a word. She was assured that the charges were
+true, and that the battered rake who shivered over the fire had neither
+courage nor ability to face his accusers. She saw the whole fabric of
+her life in ruins, her son the penniless successor to a tarnished name.
+There was silence for some minutes. Lady Maulevrier sat with lowered
+eyelids looking at the fire, deep in painful thought. Two perpendicular
+wrinkles upon her broad white forehead--so calm, so unclouded in
+society--told of gnawing cares. Then she stole a look at her husband,
+as he reclined in his arm-chair, his head lying back against the
+cushions in listless repose, his eyes looking vacantly at the window,
+whence he could see only the rain-blurred fronts of opposite houses,
+blank, dull windows, grey slated roofs, against a leaden sky.
+
+He had been a handsome man, and he was handsome still, albeit premature
+decay, the result of an evil life, was distinctly marked in his faded
+face. The dull, yellow tint of the complexion, the tarnished dimness of
+the large blue eyes, the discontented droop of the lips, the languor of
+the attitude, the pallid transparency of the wasted hands, all told of a
+life worn threadbare, energies exhausted, chances thrown away, a mind
+abandoned to despair.
+
+'You look very ill,' said his wife, after that long blank interval,
+which marked so unnatural an apathy between husband and wife meeting
+after so long a severance.
+
+'I am very ill. I have been worried to death--surrounded by rogues and
+liars--the victim of a most infernal conspiracy.' He spoke hurriedly,
+growing whiter and more tremulous as he went on.
+
+'Don't talk about it. You agitate yourself to no purpose,' said Lady
+Maulevrier, with a tranquillity which seemed heartless yet which might
+be the result of suppressed feeling. 'If you are to face this scandal
+firmly and boldly next January, you must try to recover physical
+strength in the meanwhile. Mental energy may come with better health.'
+
+'I shall never be any better,' said Lord Maulevrier, testily; 'that
+infernal climate has shattered my constitution.'
+
+'Two or three months of perfect rest and good nursing will make a new
+man of you. I have arranged that we shall go straight from here to
+Fellside. No one can plague you there with that disguised impertinence
+called sympathy. You can give all your thoughts to the ordeal before
+you, and be ready to meet your accusers. Fortunately, you have no Burke
+against you.'
+
+'Fellside? You think of going to Fellside?'
+
+'Yes. You know how fond I am of that place. I little thought when you
+settled it upon me--a cottage in Westmoreland with fifty acres of garden
+and meadow--so utterly insignificant--that I should ever like it better
+than any of your places.'
+
+'A charming retreat in summer; but we have never wintered there? What
+put it into your head to go there at such a season as this? Why, I
+daresay the snow is on the tops of the hills already.'
+
+'It is the only place I know where you will not be watched and talked
+about,' replied Lady Maulevrier. 'You will be out of the eye of the
+world. I should think that consideration would weigh more with you than
+two or three degrees of the thermometer.'
+
+'I detest cold,' said the Earl, 'and in my weak health----'
+
+'We will take care of you,' answered her ladyship; and in the discussion
+which followed she bore herself so firmly that her husband was fain to
+give way.
+
+How could a disgraced and ruined man, broken in health and spirits,
+contest the mere details of life with a high-spirited woman ten years
+his junior?
+
+The Earl wanted to go to London, and remain there at least a week, but
+this her ladyship strenuously opposed. He must see his lawyer, he urged;
+there were steps to be taken which could be taken only under legal
+advice--counsel to be retained. If this lying invention of Satan were
+really destined to take the form of a public trial, he must be prepared
+to fight his foes on their own ground.
+
+'You can make all your preparations at Fellside,' answered his wife,
+resolutely. 'I have seen Messrs. Rigby and Rider, and your own
+particular ally, Rigby, will go to you at Fellside whenever you want
+him.'
+
+'That is not like my being on the spot,' said his lordship, nervously,
+evidently much disconcerted by her ladyship's firmness, but too feeble
+in mind and body for a prolonged contest.
+
+'I ought to be on the spot. I am not without influence; I have friends,
+men in power.'
+
+'Surely you are not going to appeal to friendship in order to vindicate
+your honour. These charges are true or false. If they are false your own
+manhood, your own rectitude, can face them and trample upon them,
+unaided by back-stairs influence. If they are true, no one can help
+you.'
+
+'I think you, at least, ought to know that they are as false as hell,'
+retorted the Earl, with an attempt to maintain his dignity.
+
+'I have acted as if I so believed,' replied his wife. 'I have lived as
+if there were no such slanders in the air. I have steadily ignored every
+report, every insinuation--have held my head as high as if I knew you
+were immaculate.'
+
+'I expected as much from you,' answered the Earl, coolly. 'If I had not
+known you were a woman of sense I should not have married you.'
+
+This was his utmost expression of gratitude. His next remarks had
+reference solely to his own comfort. Where were his rooms? at what hour
+were they to dine? And hereupon he rang for his valet, a German Swiss,
+and a servant out of a thousand.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+ON THE WRONG ROAD.
+
+
+Lord and Lady Maulevrier left Southampton next morning, posting. They
+took two servants in the rumble, Steadman and the footman. Steadman was
+to valet his lordship, the footman to be useful in all emergencies of
+the journey. The maid and the valet were to travel by heavy coach, with
+the luggage--her ladyship dispensing with all personal attendance during
+the journey.
+
+The first day took them to Rugby, whither they travelled across country
+by Wallingford and Oxford. The second day took them to Lichfield. Lord
+Maulevrier was out of health and feeble, and grumbled a good deal about
+the fatigue of the journey, the badness of the weather, which was dull
+and cold, east winds all day, and a light frost morning and night. As
+they progressed northward the sky looked grayer, the air became more
+biting. His lordship insisted upon the stages being shortened. He lay in
+bed at his hotel till noon, and was seldom ready to start till two
+o'clock. He could see no reason for haste; the winter would be long
+enough in all conscience at Fellside. He complained of mysterious aches
+and pains, described himself in the presence of hotel-keepers and
+headwaiters as a mass of maladies. He was nervous, irritable, intensely
+disagreeable. Lady Maulevrier bore his humours with unwavering patience,
+and won golden opinions from all sorts of people by her devotion to a
+husband whose blighted name was the common talk of England. Everybody,
+even in distant provincial towns, had heard of the scandal against the
+Governor of Madras; and everybody looked at the sallow, faded
+Anglo-Indian with morbid curiosity. His lordship, sensitive on all
+points touching his own ease and comfort, was keenly conscious of this
+unflattering inquisitiveness.
+
+The journey, protracted by Lord Maulevrier's languor and ill-health,
+dragged its slow length along for nearly a fortnight; until it seemed to
+Lady Maulevrier as if they had been travelling upon those dismal, flat,
+unpicturesque roads for months. Each day was so horribly like yesterday.
+The same hedgerows and flat fields, and passing glimpse of river or
+canal. The same absence of all beauty in the landscape--the same formal
+hotel rooms, and smirking landladies--and so on till they came to
+Lancaster, after which the country became more interesting--hills arose
+in the background. Even the smoky manufacturing towns through which
+they passed without stopping, were less abominable than the level
+monotony of the Midland counties.
+
+But now as they drew nearer the hills the weather grew colder, snow was
+spoken of, and when they got into Westmoreland the mountain-peaks
+gleamed whitely against a lead-coloured sky.
+
+'You ought not to have brought me here in such weather,' complained the
+Earl, shivering in his sables, as he sat in his corner of the travelling
+chariot, looking discontentedly at the gloomy landscape. 'What is to
+become of us if we are caught in a snowstorm?'
+
+'We shall have no snow worth talking about before we are safely housed
+at Fellside, and then we can defy the elements,' said Lady Maulevrier,
+coolly.
+
+They slept that night at Oxenholme, and started next morning, under a
+clean, bright sky, intending to take luncheon at Windermere, and to be
+at home by nightfall.
+
+But by the time they got to Windermere the sky had changed to a dark
+grey, and the people at the hotel prophesied a heavy fall before night,
+and urged the Earl and Countess to go no further that day. The latter
+part of the road to Fellside was rough and hilly. If there should be a
+snowstorm the horses would never be able to drag the carriage up the
+steepest bit of the way. Here, however, Lord Maulevrier's obstinacy came
+into play. He would not endure another night at an hotel so near his own
+house. He was sick to death of travelling, and wanted to be at rest
+among comfortable surroundings.
+
+'It was murder to bring me here,' he said to his wife. 'If I had gone to
+Hastings I should have been a new man by this time. As it is I am a
+great deal worse than when I landed.'
+
+Everyone at the hotel noticed his lordship's white and haggard looks. He
+had been known there as a young man in the bloom of health and strength,
+and his decay was particularly obvious to these people.
+
+'I saw death in his face,' the landlord said, afterwards.
+
+Every one, even her ladyship's firmness and good sense, gave way before
+the invalid's impatience. At three in the afternoon they left the hotel,
+with four horses, to make the remaining nineteen miles of the way in one
+stage. They had not been on the road half an hour before the snow began
+to fall thickly, whitening everything around them, except the lake,
+which showed a dark leaden surface at the bottom of the slope along the
+edge of which they were travelling. Too sullen for speech, Lord
+Maulevrier sat back in his corner, with his sable cloak drawn up to his
+chin, his travelling cap covering head and ears, his eyes contemplating
+the whitening world with a weary anger. His wife watched the landscape
+as long as she could, but the snow soon began to darken all the air,
+and she could see nothing save that blank blinding fall.
+
+Half-way to Fellside there was a point where two roads met, one leading
+towards Grasmere, the other towards the village of Great Langdale, a
+cluster of humble habitations in the heart of the hills. When the horses
+had struggled as far as this point, the snow was six inches deep on the
+road, and made a thick curtain around them as it fell. By this time the
+Earl had dozed off to sleep.
+
+He woke an hour after, let down the window, which let in a snow-laden
+gust, and tried to pierce the gloom without.
+
+'As black as Erebus!' he exclaimed, 'but we ought to be close at home by
+this time. Yes, thank God, there are the lights.'
+
+The carriage drew up a minute afterwards, and Steadman came to the door.
+
+'Very sorry, my lord. The horses must have taken a wrong turn after we
+crossed the bridge. And now the men say they can't go back to Fellside
+unless we can get fresh horses; and I'm afraid there's no chance of that
+here.'
+
+'Here!' exclaimed the Earl, 'what do you mean by here? Where the devil
+are we?'
+
+'Great Langdale, my lord.'
+
+A door opened and let out a flood of light--the red light of a wood
+fire, the pale flame of a candle--upon the snowy darkness, revealing the
+panelled hall of a neat little rustic inn: an eight-day clock ticking in
+the corner, a black and white sheep-dog coming out at his master's heels
+to investigate the travellers. To the right of the door showed the light
+of a window, sheltered by a red curtain, behind which the chiefs of the
+village were enjoying their evening.
+
+'Have you any post-horses?' asked the Earl, discontentedly, as the
+landlord stood on the threshold, shading the candle with his hand. 'No,
+sir. We don't keep post-horses.'
+
+'Of course not. I knew as much before I asked,' said the Earl.
+
+'We are fixed in this dismal hole for the night, I suppose. How far are
+we from Fellside?'
+
+'Seven miles,' answered the landlord. 'I beg your pardon, my lord; I
+didn't know it was your lordship,' he added, hurriedly. 'We're in sore
+trouble, and it makes a man daft-like; but if there's anything we can
+do----'
+
+'Is there no hope of getting on, Steadman?' asked the Earl, cutting
+short these civilities.
+
+'Not with these horses, my lord.'
+
+'And you hear we can't get any others. Is there any farmer about here
+who could lend us a pair of carriage horses?'
+
+The landlord knew of no such person.
+
+'Then we must stop here till to-morrow morning. What infernal fools
+those post-boys must be,' protested Lord Maulevrier.
+
+James Steadman apologised for the postilions, explaining that when they
+came to the critical point of their journey, where the road branched off
+to the Langdales, the snow was falling so thickly, the whole country was
+so hidden in all-pervading whiteness, that even he, who knew the way so
+well, could give no help to the drivers. He could only trust to the
+instinct of local postilions and local horses; and instinct had proved
+wrong.
+
+The travellers alighted, and were ushered into a not
+uncomfortable-looking parlour; very low as to the ceiling, very
+old-fashioned as to the furniture, but spotlessly clean, and enlivened
+by a good fire, to which his lordship drew near, shivering and muttering
+discontentedly to himself.
+
+'We might be worse off,' said her ladyship, looking round the bright
+little room, which pleased her better than many a state apartment in the
+large hotels at which they had stopped.
+
+'Hardly, unless we were out on the moor,' grumbled her husband. 'I am
+sick to death of this ill-advised, unreasonable journey. I am at a loss
+to imagine your motive in bringing me here. You must have had a motive.'
+
+'I had,' answered Lady Maulevrier, with a freezing look. 'I wanted to
+get you out of the way. I told you that plainly enough at Southampton.'
+
+'I don't see why I should be hurried away and hidden,' said Lord
+Maulevrier. 'I must face my accusers, sooner or later.'
+
+'Of course. The day of reckoning must come. But in the meantime have you
+no delicacy? Do you want to be pointed at everywhere?'
+
+'All I know is that I am very ill,' answered her husband, 'and that this
+wretched journey has made me twenty years older.'
+
+'We shall be safe at home before noon to-morrow, and you can have Horton
+to set you right again. You know you always believed in his skill.'
+
+'Horton is a clever fellow enough, as country doctors go; but at
+Hastings I could have had the best physicians in London to see me,'
+grumbled his lordship.
+
+The rustic maid-servant came in to lay the table, assisted by her
+ladyship's footman, who looked a good deal too tall for the room.
+
+'I shan't dine,' said the Earl. 'I am a great deal too ill and cold.
+Light a fire in my room, girl, and send Steadman to me'--this to the
+footman, who hastened to obey. 'You can send me up a basin of soup
+presently. I shall go to bed at once.'
+
+He left the room without another word to his wife, who sat by the hearth
+staring thoughtfully at the cheery wood fire. Presently she looked up,
+and saw that the man and maid were going on with their preparations for
+dinner.
+
+'I do not care about dining alone,' said her ladyship. 'We lunched at
+Windermere, and I have no appetite. You can clear away those things, and
+bring me some tea.'
+
+When the table furniture had been cleared, and a neat little tea-tray
+set upon the white cloth, Lady Maulevrier drew her chair to the table,
+and took out her pocket-book, from which she produced a letter. This she
+read more than once, meditating profoundly upon its contents.
+
+'I am very sorry he has come home,' wrote her correspondent, 'and yet if
+he had stayed in India there must have been an investigation on the
+spot. A public inquiry is inevitable, and the knowledge of his arrival
+in the country will precipitate matters. From all I hear I much fear
+that there is no chance of the result being favourable to him. You have
+asked me to write the unvarnished truth, to be brutal even, remember.
+His delinquencies are painfully notorious, and I apprehend that the last
+sixpence he owns will be answerable. His landed estate I am told can
+also be confiscated, in the event of an impeachment at the bar of the
+House of Lords, as in the Warren Hastings case. But as yet nobody seems
+clear as to the form which the investigation will take. In reply to your
+inquiry as to what would have happened if his lordship had died on the
+passage home, I believe I am justified in saying the scandal would have
+been allowed to die with him. He has contrived to provoke powerful
+animosities both in the Cabinet and at the India House, and there is, I
+fear, an intention to pursue the inquiry to the bitter end.'
+
+Assurances of the writer's sympathy followed these harsh truths. But to
+this polite commonplace her ladyship paid no attention. Her mind was
+intent on hard facts, the dismal probabilities of the near future.
+
+'If he had died upon the passage home!' she repeated. 'Would to God that
+he had so died, and that my son's name and fortune could be saved.'
+
+The innocent child who had never given her an hour's care; the one
+creature she loved with all the strength of her proud nature--his future
+was to be blighted by his father's misdoings--overshadowed by shame and
+dishonour in the very dawn of life. It was a wicked wish--an unnatural
+wish to find room in a woman's breast; but the wish was there. Would to
+God he had died before the ship touched an English port.
+
+But he was living, and would have to face his accusers--and she, his
+wife, must give him all the help she could.
+
+She sat long by the waning fire. She took nothing but a cup of tea,
+although the landlady had sent in substantial accompaniments to the
+tea-tray in the shape of broiled ham, new-laid eggs, and hot cakes,
+arguing that a traveller on such a night must be hungry, albeit
+disinclined for a ceremonious dinner. She had been sitting for nearly
+an hour in almost the same attitude, when there came a knock at the
+door, and, on being bidden to enter, the landlady came in, with some
+logs in her apron, under pretence of replenishing the fire.
+
+'I was afraid your fire must be getting low, and that you'd be amost
+starved, my lady,' she said, as she put on the logs, and swept up the
+ashes on the hearth. 'Such a dreadful night. So early in the year, too.
+I'm thinking we shall have a gay hard winter.'
+
+'That does not always follow,' said Lady Maulevrier. 'Has Steadman come
+downstairs?'
+
+'Yes, my lady. He told me to tell your ladyship that his lordship is
+pretty comfortable, and hopes to pass a good night.'
+
+'I am glad to hear it. You can give me another room, I suppose. It would
+be better for his lordship not to be disturbed, as he is very much out
+of health.'
+
+'There is another room, my lady, but it's very small.'
+
+'I don't mind how small, if it is clean and airy.'
+
+'Yes, my lady. I am thankful to say you won't find dirt or stuffiness
+anywhere in this house. His lordship do look mortal badly,' added the
+landlady, shaking her head dolefully; 'and I remember him such a fine
+young gentleman, when he used to come down the Rothay with the otter
+hounds, running along the bank--joomping in and out of the beck--up to
+his knees in the water--and now to see him, so white and mashiated, and
+broken-down like, in the very prime of life, all along of living out in
+a hot country, among blackamoors, which is used to it--poor, ignorant
+creatures--and never knew no better. It must be a hard trial for you, my
+lady.'
+
+'It is a hard trial.'
+
+'Ah! we all have our trials, rich and poor,' sighed the woman, who
+desired nothing better than to be allowed to unbosom her woes to the
+grand looking lady in the fur-bordered cloth pelisse, with beautiful
+dark hair piled up in clustering masses above a broad white forehead,
+and slender white hands on which diamonds flashed and glittered in the
+firelight, an unaccustomed figure by that rustic hearth.
+
+'We all have our trials--high and low.'
+
+'That reminds me,' said Lady Maulevrier, looking up at her, 'your
+husband said you were in trouble. What did that mean?'
+
+'Sickness in the house, my lady. A brother of mine that went to America
+to make his fortune, and seemed to be doing so well for the first five
+or six years, and wrote home such beautiful letters, and then left off
+writing all at once, and we made sure as he was dead, and never got a
+word from him for ten years, and just three weeks ago he drops in upon
+us as we was sitting over our tea between the lights, looking as white
+as a ghost. I gave a shriek when I saw him, for I was regular scared
+out of my senses. "Robert's ghost!" I cried; but it was Robert himself,
+come home to us to die. And he's lying upstairs now, with so little life
+in him that I expect every breath to be his last.'
+
+'What is his complaint?'
+
+'Apathy, my lady. Dear, dear, that's not it. I never do remember the
+doctor's foreign names.'
+
+'Atrophy,' perhaps.
+
+'Yes, my lady, that was it. Happen such crack-jaw words come easy to a
+scholar like your ladyship.'
+
+'Does the doctor give no hope?'
+
+'Well, no, my lady. He don't go so far as to say there's no hope, though
+Robert has been badly so long. It all depends, he says, upon the
+rallying power of the constitution. The lungs are not gone, and the
+heart is not diseased. If there's rallying power, Robert will come
+round, and if there isn't he'll sink. But the doctor says nature will
+have to make an effort. But I have my own idea about the case,' added
+the landlady, with a sigh.
+
+'What is your idea?'
+
+'That our Robert was marked for death when he came into this house, and
+that he meant what he said when he spoke of coming home to die. Things
+had gone against him for the last ten years in America. He married and
+took his wife out to a farm in the Bush, and thought to make a good
+thing out of farming with the bit of brass he'd saved at heeam. But
+America isn't Gert Langdale, you see, my lady, and his knowledge stood
+him in no stead in the Bush; and first he lost his money, and he fashed
+himself terrible about that, and then he lost a child or two, and then
+he lost his wife, and he came back to us a broken-hearted man, with no
+wish to live. The doctor may call it atrophy, but I will call it what
+the Scripture calls it, a broken and a wounded spirit.'
+
+'Who is your doctor?'
+
+'Mr. Evans, of Ambleside.'
+
+'That little half-blind old man!' exclaimed her ladyship. 'Surely you
+have no confidence in him?'
+
+'Not much, my lady. But I don't believe all the doctors in London could
+do anything for Robert. Good nursing will bring him round if anything
+can; and he gets that, I can assure your ladyship. He's my only brother,
+the only kith and kin that's left to me, and he and I were gay fond of
+each other when he was young. You may be sure I don't spare any trouble,
+and my good man thinks the best of his larder or his celler hardly good
+enough for Robert.'
+
+'I am sure you are kind good people,' replied her ladyship gently; 'but
+I should have thought Mr. Horton, of Grasmere, could have done more than
+old Evans. However, you know best. I hope his lordship is not going to
+add to your cares by being laid up here, but he looked very ill this
+evening.'
+
+'He did, my lady, mortal bad.'
+
+'However, we must hope for the best. Steadman is a splendid servant in
+illness. He nursed my father for years. Will you tell him to come to me,
+if you please? I want to hear what he thinks of his lordship, and to
+discuss the chances of our getting home early to-morrow.'
+
+The landlady retired, and summoned Mr. Steadman, who was enjoying his
+modest glass of grog in front of the kitchen fire. He had taught himself
+to dispense with the consolations of tobacco, lest he should at any time
+make himself obnoxious to her ladyship.
+
+Steadman was closeted with Lady Maulevrier for the next half-hour,
+during which his lordship's condition was gravely discussed. When he
+left the sitting-room he told the landlord to be sure and feed the
+post-horses well, and make them comfortable for the night, so that they
+might be ready for the drive to Fellside early next morning.
+
+'Do you think his lordship will be well enough to travel?' asked the
+landlord.
+
+'He has made up his mind to get home--ill or well,' answered Steadman.
+'He has wasted about a week by his dawdling ways on the road; and now
+he's in a fever to get to Fellside.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE LAST STAGE.
+
+
+The post-horses--which had been well fed, but accommodated somewhat
+poorly in stable and barn--were quite ready to go on next morning; but
+Lord Maulevrier was not able to leave his room, where her ladyship
+remained in close attendance upon him. The hills and valleys were white
+with snow, but there was none falling, and Mr. Evans, the elderly
+surgeon from Ambleside, rode over to Great Langdale on his elderly cob
+to look at Robert Haswell, and was called in to see Lord Maulevrier. Her
+ladyship had spoken lightly of his skill on the previous evening, but
+any doctor is better than none, so this feeble little personage was
+allowed to feel his lordship's pulse, and look at his lordship's tongue.
+
+His opinion, never too decidedly given, was a little more hazy than
+usual on this occasion, perhaps because of a certain awfulness, to
+unaccustomed eyes, in Lady Maulevrier's proud bearing. He said that his
+lordship was low, very low, and that the pulse was more irregular than
+he liked, but he committed himself no further than this, and went away,
+promising to send such pills and potions as were appropriate to the
+patient's condition.
+
+A boy rode the same pony over to Langdale later in the afternoon with
+the promised medicines.
+
+Throughout the short winter day, which seemed terribly long in the
+stillness and solitude of Great Langdale, Lady Maulevrier kept watch in
+the sick-room, Steadman going in and out in constant attendance upon his
+master--save for one half-hour only, which her ladyship passed in the
+parlour below, in conversation with the landlady, a very serious
+conversation, as indicated by Mrs. Smithson's grave and somewhat
+troubled looks when she left her ladyship; but a good deal of her
+trouble may have been caused by her anxiety about her brother, who was
+pronounced by the doctor to be 'much the same.'
+
+At eleven o'clock that night a mounted messenger was sent off to
+Ambleside in hot haste to fetch Mr. Evans, who came to the inn to find
+Lady Maulevrier kneeling beside her husband's bed, while Steadman stood
+with a troubled countenance at a respectful distance.
+
+The room was dimly lighted by a pair of candles burning on a table near
+the window, and at some distance from the old four-post bedstead,
+shaded by dark moreen curtains. The surgeon looked round the room, and
+then fumbled in his pockets for his spectacles, without the aid of which
+the outside world presented itself to him under a blurred and uncertain
+aspect.
+
+He put on his spectacles, and moved towards the bed; but the first
+glance in that direction showed him what had happened. The outline of
+the rigid figure under the coverlet looked like a sculptured effigy upon
+a tomb. A sheet was drawn over the face of death.
+
+'You are too late to be of any use, Mr. Evans,' murmured Steadman,
+laying his hand upon the doctor's sleeve and drawing him away towards
+the door.
+
+They went softly on to the landing, off which opened the door of that
+other sick-room where the landlady's brother was lying.
+
+'When did this happen?'
+
+'A quarter of an hour after the messenger rode off to fetch you,'
+answered Steadman. 'His lordship lay all the afternoon in a heavy sleep,
+and we thought he was going on well; but after dark there was a
+difficulty in his breathing which alarmed her ladyship, and she insisted
+upon you being sent for. The messenger had hardly been gone a quarter of
+an hour when his lordship woke suddenly, muttered to himself in a
+curious way, gave just one long drawn sigh, and--and all was over. It
+was a terrible shock for her ladyship.'
+
+'Indeed it must have been,' murmured the village doctor. 'It is a great
+surprise to me. I knew Lord Maulevrier was low, very low, the pulse
+feeble and intermittent; but I had no fear of anything of this kind. It
+is very sudden.'
+
+'Yes, it is awfully sudden,' said Steadman, and then he murmured in the
+doctor's ear, 'You will give the necessary certificate, I hope, with as
+little trouble to her ladyship as possible. This is a dreadful blow, and
+she----'
+
+'She shall not be troubled. The body will be removed to-morrow, I
+suppose.'
+
+'Yes. He must be buried from his own house. I sent a second messenger to
+Ambleside for the undertaker. He will be here very soon, no doubt, and
+if the shell is ready by noon to-morrow, the body can be removed then. I
+have arranged to get her ladyship away to-night.'
+
+'So late? After midnight?'
+
+'Why not? She cannot stay in this small house--so near the dead. There
+is a moon, and there is no snow falling, and we are within seven miles
+of Fellside.'
+
+The doctor had nothing further to say against the arrangement, although
+such a drive seemed to him a somewhat wild and reckless proceeding. Mr.
+Steadman's grave, self-possessed manner answered all doubts. Mr. Evans
+filled in the certificate for the undertaker, drank a glass of hot
+brandy and water, and remounted his nag, in nowise relishing his
+midnight ride, but consoling himself with the reflection that he would
+be handsomely paid for his trouble.
+
+An hour later Lady Maulevrier's travelling carriage stood ready in the
+stable yard, in the deep shadow of wall and gables. It was at Steadman's
+order that the carriage waited for her ladyship at an obscure side door,
+rather than in front of the inn. An east wind was blowing keenly along
+the mountain road, and the careful Steadman was anxious his mistress
+should not be exposed to that chilly blast.
+
+There was some delay, and the four horses jingled their bits
+impatiently, and then the door of the inn opened, a feeble light gleamed
+in the narrow passage within, Steadman stood ready to assist her
+ladyship, there was a bustle, a confusion of dark figures on the
+threshold, a huddled mass of cloaks and fur wraps was lifted into the
+carriage, the door was clapped to, the horses went clattering out of the
+yard, turned sharply into the snowy road, and started at a swinging pace
+towards the dark sullen bulk of Loughrigg Fell.
+
+The moon was shining upon Elterwater in the valley yonder--the mountain
+ridges, the deep gorges below those sullen heights, looked back where
+the shadow of night enfolded them, but all along the snow-white road the
+silver light shone full and clear, and the mountain way looked like a
+path through fairyland.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+FORTY YEARS AFTER.
+
+
+'What a horrid day!' said Lady Mary, throwing down her book with a yawn,
+and looking out of the deep bay window into a world of mountain and lake
+which was clouded over by a dense veil of rain and dull grey mist; such
+rain as one sees only in a lake district, a curtain of gloom which shuts
+off sky and distance, and narrows the world to one solitary dwelling,
+suspended amidst cloud and water, like another ark in a new deluge.
+
+Rain--such rain as makes out-of-door exercise impossible--was always an
+affliction to Lady Mary Haselden. Her delight was in open air and
+sunshine--fishing in the lake and rivers--sitting in some sheltered
+hollow of the hills more fitting for an eagle's nest than for the
+occupation of a young lady, trying to paint those ever-varying,
+unpaintable mountain peaks, which change their hues with every change of
+the sky--swimming, riding, roving far and wide over hill and
+heather--pleasures all more or less masculine in their nature, and which
+were a subject of regret with Lady Maulevrier.
+
+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. Grandmother
+and Lesbia adored each other. Lesbia was the one person for whom Lady
+Maulevrier's stateliness was subjugated by perfect love. To all the rest
+of the world the Countess was marble, but to Lesbia she was wax. Lesbia
+could mould her as she pleased; but happily Lesbia was not the kind of
+young person to take advantage of this privilege; she was thoroughly
+ductile or docile, and had no desire, at present, which ran counter to
+her grandmother.
+
+Lesbia was a beauty. In her nineteenth year she was a curious
+reproduction in face and figure, expression and carriage, of that Lady
+Diana Angersthorpe who five and forty years ago fluttered the dove-cots
+of St. James's and Mayfair by her brilliant beauty and her keen
+intelligence. There in the panelled drawing-room at Fellside hung
+Harlow's portrait of Lady Diana in her zenith, in a short-waisted, white
+satin frock, with large puffed gauze sleeves, through which the perfect
+arm showed dimly. Standing under that picture Lady Lesbia looked as if
+she had stepped out of the canvas. She was to be painted by Millais next
+year. Lady Maulevrier said, when she had been introduced, and society
+was beginning to talk about her: for Lady Maulevrier made up her mind
+five or six years ago that Lesbia should be the reigning beauty of her
+season. To this end she had educated and trained her, furnishing her
+with all those graces best calculated to please and astonish society.
+She was too clever a woman not to discover Lesbia's shallowness and lack
+of all great gifts, save that one peerless dower of perfect beauty. She
+knew exactly what Lesbia could be trained to do; and to this end Lesbia
+had been educated; and to this end Lady Maulevrier brought down to
+Fellside the most accomplished of Hanoverian governesses, who had
+learned French in Paris, and had toiled in the educational mill with
+profit to herself and her pupils for a quarter of a century. To this
+lady the Countess entrusted the education of her granddaughters' minds,
+while for their physical training she provided another teacher in the
+person of a clever little Parisian dancing mistress, who had set up at
+the West-End of London as a teacher of dancing and calisthenics, and had
+utterly failed to find pupils enough to pay her rent and keep her modest
+_pot-au-feu_ going. Mademoiselle Thiebart was very glad to exchange the
+uncertainties of a first floor in North Audley Street for the comfort
+and security of Fellside Manor, with a salary of one hundred and fifty
+pounds a year.
+
+Both Fraeulein and Mademoiselle had been quick to discover that Lady
+Lesbia was the apple of her grandmother's eye, while Lady Mary was
+comparatively an outsider.
+
+So it came about that Mary's education was in somewise a mere picking-up
+of the crumbs which fell from Lesbia's table, and that she was allowed
+in a general way to run wild. She was much quicker at any intellectual
+exercise than Lesbia. She learned the lessons that were given her at
+railroad speed, and rattled off her exercises with a slap-dash
+penmanship which horrified the neat and niggling Fraeulein, and then
+rushed off to the lake or mountain, and by this means grew browner and
+browner, and more indelibly freckled day by day, thus widening the gulf
+between herself and her beauty sister.
+
+But it is not to be supposed that because Lesbia was beautiful, Mary was
+plain. This is very far from the truth. Mary had splendid hazel eyes,
+with a dancing light in them when she smiled, ruddy auburn hair, white
+teeth, a deeply-dimpled chin, and a vivacity and archness of expression,
+which served only in her present state of tutelage for the subjugation
+of old women and shepherd boys. Mary had been taught to believe that her
+chances of future promotion were of the smallest; that nobody would ever
+talk of her, or think of her by-and-by when she in her turn would make
+her appearance in London society, and that it would be a very happy
+thing for her if she were so fortunate as to attract the attention of a
+fashionable physician, a Canon of Westminster or St. Paul's, or a
+barrister in good practice.
+
+Mary turned up her pert little nose at this humdrum lot.
+
+'I would much rather spend all my life among these dear hills than marry
+a nobody in London,' she said, fearless of that grand old lady at whose
+frown so many people shivered. 'If you don't think people will like me
+and admire me--a little--you had better save yourself the trouble of
+taking me to London. I don't want to play second fiddle to my sister.'
+
+'You are a very impertinent person, and deserve to be taken at your
+word,' replied my lady, scowling at her; 'but I have no doubt before you
+are twenty you will tell another story.'
+
+'Oh!' said Mary, now just turned seventeen, 'then I am not to come out
+till I am twenty.'
+
+'That will be soon enough,' answered the Countess. 'It will take you as
+long to get rid of those odious freckles. And no doubt by that time
+Lesbia will have made a brilliant marriage.'
+
+And now on this rainy July morning these two girls, neither of whom had
+any serious employment for her life, or any serious purpose in living,
+wasted the hours, each in her own fashion.
+
+Lesbia reclined upon a cushioned seat in the deep embrasure of a Tudor
+window, her _pose_ perfection--it was one of many such attitudes which
+Mademoiselle had taught her, and which by assiduous training had become
+a second nature. Poor Mademoiselle, having finished her mission and
+taught Lesbia all she could teach, had now departed to a new and far
+less luxurious situation in a finishing school at Passy; but Fraeulein
+Mueller was still retained, as watch-dog and duenna.
+
+Lesbia's pale blue morning gown harmonised exquisitely with a complexion
+of lilies and roses, violet eyes, and golden-brown hair. Her features
+were distinguished by that perfect chiselling which gave such a haughty
+grace to her grandmother's countenance, even at sixty-seven years of
+age--a loveliness which, like the sculptured marble it resembles, is
+unalterable by time. Lesbia was reading Keats. It was her habit to read
+the poets, carefully and deliberately, taking up one at a time, and duly
+laying a volume aside when she found herself mistress of its contents.
+She had no passion for poetry, but it was an elegant leisurely kind of
+reading which suited her languid temperament. Moreover, her grandmother
+had told her that an easy familiarity with the great poets is of all
+knowledge that which best qualifies a woman to shine in conversation,
+without offending the superior sex by any assumption of scholarship.
+
+Mary was a very different class of reader; capricious, omniverous,
+tearing out the hearts of books, roaming from flower to flower in the
+fields of literature, loving old and new, romance and reality, novels,
+travels, plays, poetry, and never dwelling long on any one theme.
+Perhaps if Mary had lived in the bosom of a particularly sympathetic
+family she might have been reckoned almost a genius, so much of poetry
+and originality was there in her free unconventional character; but
+hitherto it had been Mary's mission in life to be snubbed, whereby she
+had acquired a very poor opinion of her own talents.
+
+'Oh,' she cried with a desperate yawn, while Lesbia smiled her languid
+smile over Endymion, 'how I wished something would happen--anything to
+stir us out of this statuesque, sleeping-beauty state of being. I verily
+believe the spiders are all asleep in the ivy, and the mice behind the
+wainscot, and the horses in the stable.'
+
+'What could happen?' asked Lesbia, with a gentle elevation of pencilled
+brows. 'Are not these lovely lines--
+
+    "And coverlids gold-tinted like the peach,
+    Or ripe October's faded marigolds,
+    Fell sleek about him in a thousand folds."
+
+Faded marigolds! Is not that intensely sweet?'
+
+'Very well for your sleepy Keats, but I don't suppose you would have
+noticed the passage if marigolds were not in fashion,' said Mary, with a
+touch of scorn. 'What could happen? Why a hundred things--an earthquake,
+flood, or fire. What could happen, do you say, Lesbia? Why Maulevrier
+might come home unexpectedly, and charm us out of this death-in-life.'
+
+'He would occasion a good deal of unpleasantness if he did,' answered
+Lesbia, coldly. 'You know how angry he has made grandmother.'
+
+'Because he keeps race-horses which have an unlucky knack of losing,'
+said Mary, dubiously. 'I suppose if his horses won, grandmother would
+rather approve?'
+
+'Not at all. That would make hardly any difference, except that he would
+not ruin himself quite so quickly. Grandmother says that a young man
+who goes on the turf is sure to be ruined sooner or later. And then
+Maulevrier's habits are altogether wild and foolish. It is very hard
+upon grandmother, who has such noble ambition for all of us.'
+
+'Not for me,' answered Mary smiling. 'Her views about me are very
+humble. She considers that I shall be most fortunate if a doctor or a
+lawyer condescend to like me well enough to make me an offer. He might
+make me the offer without liking me, for the sake of hearing himself and
+his wife announced as Mr. and Lady Mary Snooks at dinner parties. That
+would be too horrid! But I daresay such things have happened.'
+
+'Don't talk nonsense, Mary,' said Lesbia, loftily. 'There is no reason
+why you should not make a really good marriage, if you follow
+grandmother's advice and don't affect eccentricity.'
+
+'I don't affect eccentricity, but I'm afraid I really am eccentric,'
+murmured Mary, meekly, 'for I like so many things I ought not to like,
+and detest so many things which I ought to admire.'
+
+'I daresay you will have tamed down a little before you are presented,'
+said Lesbia, carelessly.
+
+She could not even affect a profound interest in anyone but herself. She
+had a narrowness of mental vision which prevented her looking beyond the
+limited circle of her own pleasures, her own desires, her own dreams and
+hopes. She was one of those strictly correct young women who was not
+likely to do much harm in the world but who was just as unlikely to do
+any good. Mary sighed, and went back to her book, a bulky volume of
+travels, and tried to lose herself in the sandy wastes of Africa, and to
+be deeply interested in the sources of the Congo, not, in her heart of
+hearts, caring a straw whether that far-away river comes from the
+mountains of the moon, or from the moon itself. To-day she could not pin
+her mind to pages which might have interested her at another time. Her
+thoughts were with Lord Maulevrier, that fondly-loved only brother, just
+seven years her senior, who had taken to race-horses and bad ways, and
+seemed to be trying his hardest to dissipate the splendid fortune which
+his grandmother, the dowager Countess, had nursed so judiciously during
+his long minority. Maulevrier and Mary had always been what the young
+man called 'no end of chums.'
+
+He called her his own brown-eyed Molly, much to the annoyance of Lady
+Maulevrier and Lesbia; and Mary's life was all gladness when Maulevrier
+was at Fellside. She devoted herself wholly to his amusements, rode and
+drove with him, followed on her pony when he went otter hunting, and
+very often abandoned the pony to the care of some stray mountain youth
+in order to join the hunters, and go leaping from stone to stone on the
+margin of the stream, and occasionally, in moments of wild excitement,
+when the hounds were in full cry, splashing in and out of the water,
+like a naiad in a neat little hunting-habit.
+
+Mary looked after Maulevrier's stable when he was away, and had supreme
+command of a kennel of fox-terriers which cost her brother more money
+than the Countess would have cared to know; for in the wide area of Lady
+Maulevrier's ambition there was no room for two hundred guinea
+fox-terriers, were they never so perfect.
+
+Altogether Mary's life was a different life when her brother was at
+home; and in his absence the best part of her days were spent in
+thinking about him and fulfilling the duties of her position as his
+representative in stable and kennel, and among certain rustics in the
+district, chiefly of the sporting type, who were Maulevrier's chosen
+allies or _proteges_.
+
+Never, perhaps, had two girls of patrician lineage lived a more secluded
+life than Lady Maulevrier's granddaughters. They had known no pleasures
+beyond the narrow sphere of home and home friends. They had never
+travelled--they had seen hardly anything of the outside world. They had
+never been to London or Paris, or to any city larger than York; and
+their visits to that centre of dissipation had been of the briefest, a
+mere flash of mild gaiety, a horticultural show or an oratorio, and back
+by express train, closely guarded by governess and footmen, to Fellside.
+In the autumn, when the leaves were falling in the wooded grounds of
+Fellside, the young ladies were sent, still under guardianship of
+governesses and footmen, to some quiet seaside resort between Alnwick
+and Edinburgh, where Mary lived the wild free life she loved, roaming
+about the beach, boating, shrimping, seaweed-gathering, making hard work
+for the governesses and footmen who had been sent in charge of her.
+
+Lady Maulevrier never accompanied her granddaughters on these occasions.
+She was a vigorous old woman, straight as a dart, slim as a girl, active
+in her degree as any young athlete among those hills, and she declared
+that she never felt the need of change of air. The sodden shrubberies,
+the falling leaves, did her no harm. Never within the memory of this
+generation had she left Fellside. Her love of this mountain retreat was
+a kind of _culte_. She had come here broken spirited, perhaps broken
+hearted, bringing her dead husband from the little inn at Great Langdale
+forty years ago, and she had hardly left the spot since that day.
+
+In those days Fellside House was a very different kind of dwelling from
+the gracious modern Tudor mansion which now crowned and beautified the
+hill-side above Grasmere Lake. It was then an old rambling stone house,
+with queer little rooms and inconvenient passages, low ceilings,
+thatched gables, and all manner of strange nooks and corners. Lady
+Maulevrier was of too strictly conservative a temper to think of
+pulling down an old house which had been in her husband's family for
+generations. She left the original cottage undisturbed, and built her
+new house at right angles with it, connecting the two with a wide
+passage below and a handsome corridor above, so that access should be
+perfect in the event of her requiring the accommodation of the old
+quaint, low ceiled rooms for her family or her guests. During forty
+years no such necessity had ever arisen; but the old house, known as the
+south wing, was still left intact, the original furniture undisturbed,
+although the only occupants of the building were her ladyship's faithful
+old house-steward, James Steadman, and his elderly wife.
+
+The house which Lady Maulevrier had built for herself and her
+grandchildren had not been created all at once, though the nucleus
+dating forty years back was a handsome building. She had added more
+rooms as necessity or fancy dictated, now a library with bedrooms over
+it, now a music room for Lady Lesbia and her grand piano--anon a
+billiard-room, as an agreeable surprise for Maulevrier when he came home
+after a tour in America. Thus the house had grown into a long low pile
+of Tudor masonry--steep gables, heavily mullioned casements, grey stone
+walls, curtained with the rich growth of passion-flower, magnolia,
+clematis, myrtle and roses--and all those flowers which thrive and
+flourish in that mild and sheltered spot.
+
+The views from those mullioned casements were perfect. Switzerland could
+give hardly any more exquisite picture than that lake shut in by hills,
+grand and bold in their varied outlines, so rich in their colouring that
+the eye, dazzled with beauty, forgot to calculate the actual height of
+those craggy peaks and headlands, the mind forgot to despise them
+because they were not so lofty as Mont Blanc or the Matterhorn. The
+velvet sward of the hill sloped steeply downward from Lady Maulevrier's
+drawing-room windows to the road beside the lake, and this road was so
+hidden by the wooded screen which bounded her ladyship's grounds that
+the lake seemed to lie in the green heart of her gardens, a lovely,
+placid lake on summer days, reflecting the emerald hue of the
+surrounding hills, and looking like a smooth green meadow, which invited
+the foot passenger to cross it.
+
+The house was approached by a winding carriage drive that led up and up
+and up from the road beside the lake, so screened and sheltered by
+shrubberies and pine woods, that the stranger knew not whither he was
+going, till he came upon an opening in the wood, and the stately Italian
+garden in front of a massive stone porch, through which he entered a
+spacious oak-panelled hall, and anon, descending a step or two, he found
+himself in Lady Maulevrier's drawing-room, and face to face with that
+divine view of the everlasting hills, the lake shining below him,
+bathed in sunlight.
+
+Or if it were the stranger's evil fate to come in wet weather, he saw
+only a rain-blotted landscape--the blurred outlines of grey mountain
+peaks, scowling at him from the other side of a grey pool. But if the
+picture without were depressing, the picture within was always good to
+look upon, for those oak-panelled or tapestried rooms, communicating by
+richly-curtained doorways from drawing room to library, from library to
+billiard room, were as perfect as wealth and taste could make them. Lady
+Maulevrier argued that as there was but one house among all the
+possessions of her race which she cared to inhabit, she had a right to
+make that house beautiful, and she had spared nothing upon the
+beautification of Fellside; and yet she had spent much less than would
+have been squandered by any pleasure-loving dowager, restlessly roving
+from Piccadilly to the Engadine, from Pontresina to Nice or Monaco,
+winding up with Easter in Paris, and then back to Piccadilly. Her
+ladyship's friends wondered that she could care to bury herself alive in
+Westmoreland, and expatiated on the eccentricity of such a life; nay,
+those who had never seen Fellside argued that Lady Maulevrier had taken
+in her old age to hoarding, and that she pigged at a cottage in the Lake
+district, in order to swell a fortune which young Maulevrier would set
+about squandering as soon as she was in her coffin. But here they were
+wrong. It was not in Lady Maulevrier's nature to lead a sordid life in
+order to save money. Yet in these quiet years that were gone--starting
+with that golden nucleus which her husband was supposed to have brought
+home from India, obtained no one knows how, the Countess had amassed one
+of the largest fortunes possessed by any dowager in the peerage. She had
+it, and she held it, with a grasp that nothing but death could loosen;
+nay, that all-foreseeing mind of hers might contrive to cheat grim death
+itself, and to scheme a way for protecting this wealth, even when she
+who had gathered and garnered it should be mouldering in her grave. The
+entailed estates belonged to Maulevrier, were he never such a fool or
+spendthrift; but this fortune of the dowager's was her own, to dispose
+of as she pleased, and not a penny of it was likely to go to the young
+Earl.
+
+Lady Maulevrier's pride and hopes were concentrated upon her
+granddaughter Lesbia. She should be the inheritress of this noble
+fortune--she should spread and widen the power of the Maulevrier race.
+Lesbia's son should link the family name with the name of his father;
+and if by any hazard of fate the present Earl should die young and
+childless, the old Countess's interest should be strained to the
+uttermost to obtain the title for Lesbia's offspring. Why should she not
+be Countess of Maulevrier in her own right? But in order to make this
+future possible the most important factor in the sum was yet to be
+found in the person of a husband for Lady Lesbia--a husband worthy of
+peerless beauty and exceptional wealth, a husband whose own fortune
+should be so important as to make him above suspicion. That was Lady
+Maulevrier's scheme--to wed wealth to wealth--to double or quadruple the
+fortune she had built up in the long slow years of her widowhood, and
+thus to make her granddaughter one of the greatest ladies in the land;
+for it need hardly be said that the man who was to wed Lady Lesbia must
+be her equal in wealth and lineage, if not her superior.
+
+Lady Maulevrier was not a miser. She was liberal and benevolent to all
+who came within the circle of her life. Wealth for its own sake she
+valued not a jot. But she lived in an age in which wealth is power, and
+ambition was her ruling passion. As she had been ambitious for her
+husband in the days that were gone, she was now ambitious for her
+granddaughter. Time had intensified the keen eagerness of her mind. She
+had been disappointed, cruelly, bitterly, in the ambition of her youth.
+She had been made to drink the cup of shame and humiliation. But to this
+ambition of her old age she held with even greater tenacity. God help
+her if she should be disappointed here!
+
+It is not to be supposed that so astute a schemer as Lady Maulevrier had
+not surveyed the marriage market in order to discover that fortunate
+youth who should be deemed worthy to become the winner of Lesbia's hand.
+Years ago, when Lesbia was still in the nursery, the dowager had made
+herself informed of the age, weight, and colours of every likely runner
+in the matrimonial stakes; or, in plainer words, had kept herself, by
+her correspondence with a few intimate friends, and her close study of
+the fashionable newspapers, thoroughly acquainted with the characters
+and exploits, the dispositions and antecedents, of those half-dozen
+elder sons, among whom she hoped to find Lesbia's lord and master. She
+knew her peerage by heart, and she knew the family history of every
+house recorded therein; the sins and weaknesses, the follies and losses
+of bygone years; the taints, mental and physical; the lateral branches
+and intermarriages; the runaway wives and unfaithful husbands; idiot
+sons or scrofulous daughters. She knew everything that was to be known
+about that aristocratic world into which she had been born sixty-seven
+years ago; and the sum-total of her knowledge was that there was one man
+whom she desired for her granddaughter's husband--one man, and one only,
+and into whose hands, when earth and sky should fade from her glazing
+eyes, she could be content to resign the sceptre of power.
+
+There were no doubt half-a-dozen, or more, in the list of elder sons,
+who were fairly eligible. But this young man was the Achilles in the
+rank and file of chivalry, and her soul yearned to have him and no other
+for her darling.
+
+Her soul yearned to him with a tenderness which was not all on Lesbia's
+account. Forty-nine years ago she had fondly loved his father--loved him
+and had been fain to renounce him; for Ronald Hollister, afterwards Earl
+of Hartfield, was then a younger son, and the two families had agreed
+that marriage between paupers was an impudent flying in the face of
+Providence, which must be put down with an iron hand. Lord Hartfield
+sent his son to Turkey in the diplomatic service; and the old dowager
+Lady Carrisbrook whisked her niece off to London, and kept her there,
+under watch and ward, till Lord Maulevrier proposed and was accepted by
+her. There should be no foolishness, no clandestine correspondence. The
+iron hand crushed two young hearts, and secured a brilliant future for
+the bodies which survived.
+
+Fifteen years later Ronald's elder brother died unmarried. He abandoned
+that career of vagrant diplomacy which had taken him all over Europe,
+and as far as Washington, and re-appeared in London, the most elegant
+man of his era, but thoroughly _blase_. There were rumours of an unhappy
+attachment in the Faubourg Saint Germain; of a tragedy at Petersburg.
+Society protested that Lord Hartfield would die a bachelor, as his
+brother died before him. The Hollisters are not a marrying family, said
+society. But six or seven years after his return to England Lord
+Hartfield married Lady Florence Ilmington, a beauty in her first season,
+and a very sweet but somewhat prudish young person. The marriage
+resulted in the birth of an heir, whose appearance upon this mortal
+stage was followed within a year by his father's exit. Hence the
+Hartfield property, always a fine estate, had been nursed and fattened
+during a long minority, and the present Lord Hartfield was reputed one
+of the richest young men of his time. He was also spoken of as a
+superior person, inheriting all his father's intellectual gifts, and
+having the reputation of being singularly free from the vices of
+profligate youth. He was neither prig nor pedant, and he was very
+popular in the best society; but he was not ashamed to let it be seen
+that his ambition soared higher than the fashionable world of turf and
+stable, cards and pigeon matches.
+
+Though not of the gay world, nor in it, Lady Maulevrier had contrived to
+keep herself thoroughly _en rapport_ with society. Her few chosen
+friends, with whom she corresponded on terms of perfect confidence, were
+among the best people in London--not the circulators of club-house
+canards, the pickers-up of second-hand gossip from the society papers,
+but actors in the comedy of high life, arbiters of fashion and taste,
+born and bred in the purple.
+
+Last season Lord Hartfield's absence had cast a cloud over the
+matrimonial horizon. He had been a traveller for more than a
+year--Patagonia, Peru, the Pyramids, Japan, the North Pole--society
+cared not where--the fact that he was gone was all-sufficient. Bachelors
+a shade less eligible came to the front in his absence and became first
+favourites. Lady Maulevrier, well informed in advance, had deferred
+Lesbia's presentation till next season, when she was told Lord Hartfield
+would certainly re-appear. His plans had been made for return before
+Christmas; and it would seem that his scheme of life was laid down with
+as much precision as if he had been a prince of the blood royal. Thus it
+happened, to Lesbia's intense disgust, that her _debut_ was deferred
+till the verge of her twentieth birthday. It would never do, Lady
+Maulevrier told herself, for the edge to be taken off the effect which
+Lesbia's beauty was to make on society during Lord Hartfield's absence.
+He must be there, on the spot, to see this star rise gently and slowly
+above society's horizon, and to mark how everybody bowed down and
+worshipped the new light.
+
+'I shall be an old woman before I appear in society,' said Lesbia,
+petulantly; 'and I shall be like a wild woman of the woods; for I have
+seen nothing, and know nothing of the civilised world.'
+
+'You will be ever so much more attractive than the young women I hear
+of, who have seen and known a great deal too much,' answered the
+dowager; and as her granddaughter knew that Lady Maulevrier's word was a
+law that altered not, there were no more idle repinings.
+
+Her ladyship gave no reason for the postponement of Lesbia's
+presentation. She was far too diplomatic to breathe a word of her ideas
+with regard to Lord Hartfield. Anything like a matrimonial scheme would
+have been revolting to Lesbia, who had grand, but not sordid views about
+matrimony. She thought it her mission to appear and to conquer. A crowd
+of suitors would sigh around her, like the loves and graces round that
+fair Belinda whose story she had read so often; and it would be her part
+to choose the most worthy. The days are gone when a girl would so much
+as look at such a fribble as Sir Plume. Her virgin fancy demands the
+Tennysonian ideal, the grave and knightly Arthur.
+
+But when Lesbia thought of the most worthy, it was always of the
+worthiest in her own particular sphere; and he of course would be titled
+and wealthy, and altogether fitted to be her husband. He would take her
+by the hand and lead her to a higher seat on the dais, and place upon
+her head, or at least upon her letter-paper and the panels of her
+carriage, a coronet in which the strawberry leaves should stand out more
+prominently than in her brother's emblazonment. Lesbia's mind could not
+conceive an ignoble marriage, or the possibility of the most worthy
+happening to be found in a lower circle than her own.
+
+And now it was the end of July, and the season which should have been
+glorified by Lady Lesbia's _debut_ was over and done with. She had read
+in the society papers of all the balls, and birthdays, and race
+meetings, and regattas, and cricket matches, and gowns, and parasols,
+and bonnets--what this beauty wore on such an occasion, and how that
+other beauty looked on another occasion--and she felt as she read like a
+spell-bound princess in a fairy tale, mewed up in a battlemented tower,
+and deprived of her legitimate share in all the pleasures of earth. She
+had no patience with Mary--that wild, unkempt, ungraceful creature, who
+could be as happy as summer days are long, racing about the hills with
+her bamboo alpenstock, rioting with a pack of fox-terriers, practising
+long losers, rowing on the lake, doing all things unbecoming Lady
+Maulevrier's granddaughter.
+
+That long rainy day dragged its slow length to a close; and then came fine
+days, in which Molly and her fox-terriers went wandering over the sunlit
+hills, skipping and dancing across the mountain streamlets--gills, as they
+were called in this particular world--almost as gaily as the shadows of
+fleecy cloudlets dancing up yonder in the windy sky. Molly spent half her
+days among the hills, stealing off from governess and grandmother and the
+stately beauty sister, and sometimes hardly being missed by them, so ill
+did her young exuberance harmonise with their calmer life.
+
+'One can tell when Mary is at home by a perpetual banging of doors,'
+said Lesbia, which was a sisterly exaggeration founded upon fact, for
+Molly was given to impetuous rushing in and out of rooms when that eager
+spirit of hers impelled the light lithe body upon some new expedition.
+Nor is the society of fox-terriers conducive to repose or stateliness of
+movement; and Maulevrier's terriers, although strictly forbidden the
+house, were for ever breaking bonds and leaping in upon Molly's
+retirement at all unreasonable hours. She and they were enchanted to get
+away from the beautiful luxurious rooms, and to go roving by hill-side
+and force, away to Easedale Tarn, to bask for hours on the grassy margin
+of the deep still water, or to row round and round the mountain lake in
+a rotten boat. It was here, or in some kindred spot, that Molly got
+through most of her reading--here that she read Shakespeare, Byron, and
+Shelley, and Wordsworth--dwelling lingeringly and lovingly upon every
+line in which that good old man spoke of her native land. Sometimes she
+climbed to higher ground, and felt herself ever so much nearer heaven
+upon the crest of Silver Howe, or upon the rugged stony steep of Dolly
+Waggon pike, half way up the dark brow of Helvellyn; sometimes she
+disappeared for hours, and climbed to the summit of the hill, and
+wandered in perilous pathways on Striding Edge, or by the dark still
+water of the Red Tarn. This had been her life ever since she had been
+old enough to have an independent existence; and the hills and the
+lakes, and the books of her own choosing, had done a great deal more in
+ripening her mind than Fraeulein Mueller and that admirable series of
+educational works which has been provided for the tuition of modern
+youth. Grammars and geographies, primers and elementary works of all
+kinds, were Mary's detestation; but she loved books that touched her
+heart and filled her mind with thoughts wide and deep enough to reach
+into the infinite of time and space, the mystery of mind and matter,
+life and death.
+
+Nothing occurred to break the placid monotony of life at Fellside for
+three long days after that rainy morning; and then came an event which,
+although commonplace enough in itself, marked the beginning of a new era
+in the existence of Lady Maulevrier's granddaughters.
+
+It was evening, and the two girls were dawdling about on the sloping
+lawn before the drawing-room windows, where Lady Maulevrier read the
+newspapers in her own particular chair by one of those broad Tudor
+windows, according to her infallible custom. Remote as her life had been
+from the busy world, her ladyship had never allowed her knowledge of
+public life and the bent of modern thought to fall into arrear. She took
+a keen interest in politics, in progress of all kinds. She was a staunch
+Conservative, and looked upon every Liberal politician as her personal
+enemy; but she took care to keep herself informed of everything that was
+being said or done in the enemy's camp. She had an intense respect for
+Lord Bacon's maxim: Knowledge is power. It was a kind of power secondary
+to the power of wealth, perhaps; but wealth unprotected by wisdom would
+soon dwindle into poverty.
+
+Lady Lesbia sauntered about the lawn, looking very elegant in her
+cream-coloured Indian silk gown, very listless, very tired of her lovely
+surroundings. Neither lake nor mountain possessed any charm for her. She
+had had too much of them. Mary roamed about with a swifter footstep,
+looking at the roses, plucking off a dead leaf, or a cankered bud here
+and there. Presently she tore across the lawn to the shrubbery which
+screened the lawn and flower gardens from the winding carriage drive
+sunk many feet below, and disappeared in a thicket of arbutus and Irish
+yew.
+
+'What terribly hoydenish manners!' murmured Lesbia, with a languid shrug
+of her shoulders, as she strolled back to the drawing-room.
+
+She cared very little for the newspapers, for politics not at all; but
+anything was better than everlasting contemplation of the blue still
+water, and the rugged crest of Helm Crag.
+
+'What was the matter with Mary that she rushed off like a mad woman?'
+inquired Lady Maulevrier, looking up from the _Times_.
+
+'I haven't the least idea. Mary's movements are quite beyond the limits
+of my comprehension. Perhaps she has gone after a bird's-nest.'
+
+Mary was intent upon no bird's-nest. Her quick ear had caught the sound
+of manly voices in the winding drive under the pine wood; and surely,
+yes, surely one was a clear and familiar voice, which heralded the
+coming of happiness. In such a moment she seemed to have wings. She
+became unconscious that she touched the earth; she went skimming
+bird-like over the lawn, and in and out, with fluttering muslin frock,
+among arbutus and bay, yew and laurel, till she stood poised lightly on
+the top of the wooded bank which bordered the steep ascent to Lady
+Maulevrier's gate, looking down at two figures which were sauntering up
+the drive.
+
+They were both young men, both tall, broad-shouldered, manly, walking
+with the easy swinging movement of men accustomed to active exercise.
+One, the handsomer of the two in Mary's eyes, since she thought him
+simply perfection, was fair-haired, blue-eyed, the typical Saxon. This
+was Lord Maulevrier. The other was dark, bronzed by foreign travel,
+perhaps, with black hair, cut very close to an intelligent-looking head,
+bared to the evening breeze.
+
+'Hulloa!' cried Maulevrier. 'There's Molly. How d'ye do, old girl?'
+
+The two men looked up, and Molly looked down. Delight at her brother's
+return so filled her heart and mind that there was no room left for
+embarrassment at the appearance of a stranger.
+
+'O, Maulevrier, I am so glad! I have been pining for you. Why didn't you
+write to say you were coming? It would have been something to look
+forward to.'
+
+'Couldn't. Never knew from day to day what I was going to be up to;
+besides, I knew I should find you at home.'
+
+'Of course. We are always at home,' said Mary; 'go up to the house as
+fast as ever you can. I'll go and tell grandmother.'
+
+'And tell them to get us some dinner,' said Maulevrier.
+
+Mary's fluttering figure dipped and was gone, vanishing in the dark
+labyrinth of shrubs. The two young men sauntered up to the house.
+
+'We needn't hurry,' said Maulevrier to his companion, whom he had not
+taken the trouble to introduce to his sister. 'We shall have to wait for
+our dinner.'
+
+'And we shall have to change our dusty clothes,' added the other; 'I
+hope that man will bring our portmanteaux in time.'
+
+'Oh, we needn't dress. We can spend the evening in my den, if you
+like!'
+
+Mary flew across the lawn again, and bounded up the steps of the
+verandah--a picturesque Swiss verandah which made a covered promenade in
+front of the house.
+
+'Mary, may I ask the meaning of this excitement,' inquired her ladyship,
+as the breathless girl stood before her.
+
+'Maulevrier has come home.'
+
+'At last?'
+
+'And he has brought a friend.'
+
+'Indeed! He might have done me the honour to inquire if his friend's
+visit would be agreeable. What kind of person?'
+
+'I have no idea. I didn't look at him. Maulevrier is looking so well.
+They will be here in a minute. May I order dinner for them?'
+
+'Of course, they must have dinner,' said her ladyship, resignedly, as if
+the whole thing were an infliction; and Mary ran out and interviewed the
+butler, begging that all things might be made particularly comfortable
+for the travellers. It was nine o'clock, and the servants were enjoying
+their eventide repose.
+
+Having given her orders, Mary went back to the drawing-room, impatiently
+expectant of her brother's arrival, for which event Lesbia and her
+grandmother waited with perfect tranquillity, the dowager calmly
+continuing the perusal of her _Times_, while Lesbia sat at her piano in
+a shadowy corner, and played one of Mendelssohn's softest Lieder. To
+these dreamy strains Maulevrier and his friend presently entered.
+
+'How d'ye do, grandmother? how do, Lesbia? This is my very good friend
+and Canadian travelling companion, Jack Hammond--Lady Maulevrier, Lady
+Lesbia.'
+
+'Very glad to see you, Mr. Hammond,' said the dowager, in a tone so
+purely conventional that it might mean anything. 'Hammond? I ought to
+remember your family--the Hammonds of----'
+
+'Of nowhere,' answered the stranger in the easiest tone; 'I spring from
+a race of nobodies, of whose existence your ladyship is not likely to
+have heard.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+MAULEVRIER'S HUMBLE FRIEND.
+
+
+That faint interest which Lady Lesbia had felt in the advent of a
+stranger dwindled to nothing after Mr. Hammond's frank avowal of his
+insignificance. At the very beginning of her career, with the world
+waiting to be conquered by her, a high-born beauty could not be expected
+to feel any interest in nobodies. Lesbia shook hands with her brother,
+honoured the stranger with a stately bend of her beautiful throat, and
+then withdrew herself from their society altogether as it were, and
+began to explore her basket of crewels, at a distant table, by the soft
+light of a shaded lamp, while Maulevrier answered his grandmother's
+questions, and Mary stood watching him, hanging on his words, as if
+unconscious of any other presence.
+
+Mr. Hammond went over to the window and looked out at the view. The moon
+was rising above the amphitheatre of hills, and her rays were silvering
+the placid bosom of the lake. Lights were dotted here and there about
+the valley, telling of village life. The Prince of Wales's hotel yonder
+sparkled with its many lights, like a castle in a fairy tale. The
+stranger had looked upon many a grander scene, but on none more lovely.
+Here were lake and mountain in little, without the snow-peaks and awful
+inaccessible regions of solitude and peril; homely hills that one might
+climb, placid English vales in which English poets have lived and died.
+
+'Hammond and I mean to spend a month or six weeks with you, if you can
+make us comfortable,' said Maulevrier.
+
+'I am delighted to hear that you can contemplate staying a month
+anywhere,' replied her ladyship. 'Your usual habits are as restless as
+if your life were a disease. It shall not be my fault if you and Mr.
+Hammond are uncomfortable at Fellside.'
+
+There was courtesy, but no cordiality in the reply. If Mr. Hammond was a
+sensitive man, touchily conscious of his own obscurity, he must have
+felt that he was not wanted at Fellside--that he was an excrescence,
+matter in the wrong place.
+
+Nobody had presented the stranger to Lady Mary. It never entered into
+Maulevrier's mind to be ceremonious about his sister Molly. She was so
+much a part of himself that it seemed as if anyone who knew him must
+needs know her. Molly sat a little way from the window by which Mr.
+Hammond was standing, and looked at him doubtfully, wonderingly, with
+not altogether a friendly eye, as he stood with his profile turned to
+her, and his eyes upon the landscape. She was inclined to be jealous of
+her brother's friend, who would most likely deprive her of much of that
+beloved society. Hitherto she had been Maulevrier's chosen companion, at
+Fellside--indeed, his sole companion after the dismissal of his tutor.
+Now this brown, bearded stranger would usurp her privileges--those two
+young men would go roaming over the hills, fishing, otter-hunting, going
+to distant wrestling matches and leaving her at home. It was a hard
+thing, and she was prepared to detest the interloper. Even to-night she
+would be a loser by his presence. Under ordinary circumstances she would
+have gone to the dining-room with Maulevrier, and sat by him and waited
+upon him as he ate. But she dared not intrude herself upon a meal that
+was to be shared with a stranger.
+
+She looked at John Hammond critically, eager to find fault with his
+appearence; but unluckily for her present humour there was not much room
+for fault-finding.
+
+He was tall, broad-shouldered, well-built. His enemies would hardly deny
+that he was good-looking--nay, even handsome. The massive regular
+features were irreproachable. He was more sunburnt than a gentleman
+ought to be, Mary thought. She told herself that his good looks were of
+a vulgar quality, like those of Charles Ford, the champion wrestler,
+whom she saw at the sports the other day. Why did Maulevrier pick up a
+companion who was evidently not of his own sphere? Hoydenish,
+plain-spoken, frank and affectionate as Mary Haselden was, she knew that
+she belonged to a race apart, that there were circles beneath circles,
+below her own world, circles which hers could never touch, and she
+supposed Mr. Hammond to be some waif from one of those nethermost
+worlds--a village doctor's son, perhaps, or even a tradesman's--sent to
+the University by some benevolent busybody, and placed at a disadvantage
+ever afterwards, an unfortunate anomaly, suspended between two worlds
+like Mahomet's coffin.
+
+The butler announced that his lordship's dinner was served.
+
+'Come along, Molly,' said Maulevrier; 'come and tell me about the
+terriers, while I eat my dinner.'
+
+Mary hesitated, glanced doubtfully at her grandmother, who made no sign,
+and then slipped out of the room, hanging fondly on her brother's arm,
+and almost forgetting that there was any such person as Mr. Hammond in
+existence.
+
+When these three were gone Lady Lesbia expressed herself strongly upon
+Maulevrier's folly in bringing such a person as Mr. Hammond to Fellside.
+
+'What are we to do with him, grandmother?' she said, pettishly. 'Is he
+to live with us, and be one of us, a person of whose belongings we know
+positively nothing, who owns that his people are common?'
+
+'My dear, he is your brother's friend, and we have the right to suppose
+he is a gentleman.'
+
+'Not on that account,' said Lesbia, more sharply than her wont. 'Didn't
+he make a friend, or almost a friend of Jack Howell, the huntsman, and
+of Ford, the wrestler. I have no confidence in Maulevrier's ideas of
+fitness.'
+
+'We shall find out all about this Mr. Hamleigh--no Hammond--in a day or
+two,' replied her ladyship, placidly; 'and in the meantime we must
+tolerate him, and be grateful to him if he reconcile Maulevrier to
+remaining at Fellside for the next six weeks.'
+
+Lesbia was silent. She did not consider Maulevrier's presence at
+Fellside an unmitigated advantage, or, indeed, his presence anywhere.
+Those two were not sympathetic. Maulevrier made fun of his elder
+sister's perfections, chaffed her intolerably about the great man she
+was going to captivate, in her first season, the great houses in which
+she was going to reign. Lesbia despised him for that neglect of all his
+opportunities of culture which had left him, after the most orthodox and
+costly curriculum, almost as ignorant as a ploughboy. She despised a man
+whose only delight was in horse and hound, gun and fishing-tackle. Molly
+would have cared very little for the guns or the fishing-tackle perhaps
+in the abstract; but she cared for everything that interested
+Maulevrier, even to the bagful of rats which were let loose in the
+stable-yard sometimes, for the education of a particularly game
+fox-terrier.
+
+There was plenty of talk and laughter at the dinner-table, while the
+Countess and Lady Lesbia conversed gravely and languidly in the
+dimly-lighted drawing-room. The dinner was excellent, and both
+travellers were ravenous. They had eaten nothing since breakfast, and
+had driven from Windermere on the top of the coach in the keen evening
+air. When the sharp edge of the appetite was blunted, Maulevrier began
+to talk of his adventures since he and Molly had last met. He had not
+being dissipating in London all the time--or, indeed, any great part of
+the time of his absence from Fellside; but Molly had been left in
+Cimmerian, darkness as to his proceedings. He never wrote a letter if he
+could possibly avoid doing so. If it became a vital necessity to him to
+communicate with anyone he telegraphed, or, in his own language, 'wired'
+to that person; but to sit down at a desk and labour with pen and ink
+was not within his capacities or his views of his mission in life.
+
+'If a fellow is to write letters he might as well be a clerk in an
+office,' he said, 'and sit on a high stool.'
+
+Thus it happened that when Maulevrier was away from Fellside, no fair
+_chatelaine_ of the Middle Ages could be more ignorant of the movements
+or whereabouts of her crusader knight than Mary was of her brother's
+goings on. She could but pray for him with fond and faithful prayer, and
+wait and hope for his return. And now he told her that things had gone
+badly with him at Epsom, and worse at Ascot, that he had been, as he
+expressed it, 'up a tree,' and that he had gone off to the Black Forest
+directly the Ascot week was over, and at Rippoldsau he had met his old
+friend and fellow traveller, Hammond, and they had gone for a walking
+tour together among the homely villages, the watchmakers, the timber
+cutters, the pretty peasant girls. They had danced at fairs--and shot at
+village sports--and had altogether enjoyed the thing. Hammond, who was
+something of an artist, had sketched a good deal. Maulevrier had done
+nothing but smoke his German pipe and enjoy himself.
+
+'I was glad to find myself in a world where a horse was an exception and
+not the rule,' he said.
+
+'Oh, how I should love to see the Black Forest!' cried Mary, who knew
+the first part of Faust by heart, albeit she had never been given
+permission to read it, 'the gnomes and the witches--der Freischuetz--all
+that is lovely. Of course, you went up the Brocken?'
+
+'Of course,' answered Mr. Hammond; 'Mephistopheles was our _valet de
+place_, and we went up among a company of witches riding on
+broomsticks.' And then quoted,
+
+    'Seh' die Baeume hinter Baeumen,
+    Wie sie schnell vorueberruecken,
+    Und die Klippen, die sich buecken,
+    Und die langen Felsennasen,
+    Wie sie schnarchen, wie sie blasen!'
+
+This was the first time he had addressed himself directly to Mary, who
+sat close to her brother's side, and never took her eyes from his face,
+ready to pour out his wine or to change his plate, for the serving-men
+had been dismissed at the beginning of this unceremonious meal.
+
+Mary looked at the stranger almost as superciliously as Lesbia might
+have done. She was not inclined to be friendly to her brother's friend.
+
+'Do you read German?' she inquired, with a touch of surprise.
+
+'You had better ask him what language he does not read or speak,' said
+her brother. 'Hammond is an admirable Crichton, my dear--by-the-by, who
+was admirable Crichton?--knows everything, can twist your little head
+the right way upon any subject.'
+
+'Oh,' thought Mary, 'highly cultivated, is he? Very proper in a man who
+was educated on charity to have worked his hardest at the University.'
+
+She was not prepared to think very kindly of young men who had been
+successful in their college career, since poor Maulevrier had made such
+a dismal failure of his, had been gated and sent down, and ploughed, and
+had everything ignominious done to him that could be done, which
+ignominy had involved an expenditure of money that Lady Maulevrier
+bemoaned and lamented until this day. Because her brother had not been
+virtuous, Mary grudged virtuous young men their triumphs and their
+honours. Great, raw-boned fellows, who have taken their degrees at
+Scotch Universities, come to Oxford and Cambridge and sweep the board,
+Maulevrier had told her, when his own failures demanded explanation.
+Perhaps this Mr. Hammond had graduated north of the Tweed, and had come
+southward to rob the native. Mary was not any more inclined to be civil
+to him because he was a linguist. He had a pleasant manner, frank and
+easy, a good voice, a cheery laugh. But she had not yet made up her mind
+that he was a gentleman.
+
+'If some benevolent old person were to take a fancy to Charles Ford, the
+wrestler, and send him to a Scotch University, I daresay he would turn
+out just as fine a fellow,' she thought, Ford being somewhat of a
+favourite as a local hero.
+
+The two young men went off to the billiard-room after they had dined. It
+was half-past ten by this time, and, of course, Mary did not go with
+them. She bade her brother good-night at the dining-room door.
+
+'Good-night, Molly; be sure you are up early to show me the dogs,' said
+Maulevrier, after an affectionate kiss.
+
+'Good-night, Lady Mary,' said Mr. Hammond, holding out his hand, albeit
+she had no idea of shaking hands with him.
+
+She allowed her hand to rest for an instant in that strong, friendly
+grasp. She had not risen to giving a couple of fingers to a person whom
+she considered her inferior; but she was inclined to snub Mr. Hammond as
+rather a presuming young man.
+
+'Well, Jack, what do you think of my beauty sister?' asked his lordship,
+as he chose his cue from the well-filled rack.
+
+The lamps were lighted, the table uncovered and ready, Carambole in his
+place, albeit it was months since any player had entered the room.
+Everything which concerned Maulevrier's comfort or pleasure was done as
+if by magic at Fellside; and Mary was the household fairy whose
+influence secured this happy state of things.
+
+'What can any man think except that she is as lovely as the finest of
+Reynold's portraits, as that Lady Diana Beauclerk of Colonel Aldridge's,
+or the Kitty Fisher, or any example you please to name of womanly
+loveliness?'
+
+'Glad to hear it,' answered Maulevrier, chalking his cue; 'can't say I
+admire her myself--not my style, don't you know. Too much of my lady
+Di--too little of poor Kitty. But still, of course, it always pleases a
+fellow to know that his people are admired; and I know that my
+grandmother has views, grand views,' smiling down at his cue. 'Shall I
+break?' and he began with the usual miss in baulk.
+
+'Thank you,' said Mr. Hammond, beginning to play. 'Matrimonial views, of
+course. Very natural that her ladyship should expect such a lovely
+creature to make a great match. Is there no one in view? Has there been
+no family conclave--no secret treaty? Is the young lady fancy free?'
+
+'Perfectly. She has been buried alive here; except parsons and a few
+decent people whom she is allowed to meet now and then at the houses
+about here, she has seen nothing of the world. My grandmother has kept
+Lesbia as close as a nun. She is not so fond of Molly, and that young
+person has wild ways of her own, and gives everybody the slip.
+By-the-by, how do you like my little Moll?'
+
+The adjective was hardly accurate about a young lady who measured five
+feet six, but Maulevrier had not yet grown out of the ideas belonging to
+that period when Mary was really his little sister, a girl of twelve,
+with long hair and short petticoats.
+
+Mr. Hammond was slow to reply. Mary had not made a very strong
+impression upon him. Dazzled by her sister's pure and classical beauty,
+he had no eyes for Mary's homelier charms. She seemed to him a frank,
+affectionate girl, not too well-mannered; and that was all he thought of
+her.
+
+'I'm afraid Lady Mary does not like me,' he said, after his shot, which
+gave him time for reflection.
+
+'Oh, Molly is rather _farouche_ in her manners; never would train fine,
+don't you know. Her ladyship lectured till she was tired, and now Mary
+runs wild, and I suppose will be left at grass till six months before
+her presentation, and then they'll put her on the pillar-reins a bit to
+give her a better mouth. Good shot, by Jove!'
+
+John Hammond was used to his lordship's style of conversation, and
+understood his friend at all times. Maulevrier was not an intellectual
+companion, and the distance was wide between the two men; but his
+lordship's gaiety, good-nature, and acuteness made amends for all
+shortcomings in culture. And then Mr. Hammond may have been one of those
+good Conservatives who do not expect very much intellectual power in an
+hereditary legislator.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+IN THE SUMMER MORNING.
+
+
+John Hammond loved the wild freshness of morning, and was always eager
+to explore a new locality; so he was up at five o'clock next morning,
+and out of doors before six. He left the sophisticated beauty of the
+Fellside gardens below him, and climbed higher and higher up the Fell,
+till he was able to command a bird's-eye view of the lake and village,
+and just under his feet, as it were, Lady Maulevrier's favourite abode.
+He was provided with a landscape glass which he always carried in his
+rambles, and with the aid of this he could see every stone of the
+building.
+
+The house, added to at her ladyship's pleasure, and without regard to
+cost, covered a considerable extent of ground. The new part consisted of
+a straight range of about a hundred and twenty feet, facing the lake,
+and commandingly placed on the crest of a steepish slope; the old
+buildings, at right angles with the new, made a quadrangle, the third
+and fourth sides of which were formed by the dead walls of servants'
+rooms and coach-houses, which had no windows upon this inner enclosed
+side. The old buildings were low and irregular, one portion of the roof
+thatched, another tiled. In the quadrangle there was an old-fashioned
+garden, with geometrical flower-beds, a yew tree hedge, and a stone
+sun-dial in the centre. A peacock stalked about in the morning light,
+and greeted the newly risen sun with a discordant scream. Presently a
+man came out of a half glass door under a verandah which shaded one side
+of the quadrangle, and strolled about the garden, stopping here and
+there to cut a dead rose, or trim a geranium, a stoutly-built broad
+shouldered man, with gray hair and beard, the image of well-fed
+respectability.
+
+Mr. Hammond wondered a little at the man's leisurely movements as he
+sauntered about, whistling to the peacock. It was not the manner of a
+servant who had duties to perform--rather that of a gentleman living at
+ease, and hardly knowing how to get rid of his time.
+
+"Some superior functionary, I suppose," thought Hammond, "the
+house-steward, perhaps."
+
+He rambled a long way over the hill, and came back to Fellside by a path
+of his own discovering, which brought him to a wooden gate leading into
+the stable-yard, just in time to meet Maulevrier and Lady Mary emerging
+from the kennel, where his lordship had been inspecting the terriers.
+
+'Angelina is bully about the muzzle,' said Maulevrier; 'we shall have to
+give her away.'
+
+'Oh, don't,' cried Mary. 'She is a most perfect darling, and laughs so
+deliciously whenever she sees me.'
+
+Angelina was in Lady Mary's arms at this moment; a beautifully marked
+little creature, all thew and sinew, palpitating with suppressed
+emotions, and grinning to her heart's content.
+
+Lady Mary looked very fresh and bright in her neat tailor gown, kilted
+kirtle, and tight-fitting bodice, with neat little brass buttons. It was
+a gown of Maulevrier's ordering, made at his own tailor's. Her splendid
+chestnut hair was uncovered, the short crisp curls about her forehead
+dancing in the morning air. Her large, bright, brown eyes were dancing,
+too, with delight at having her brother home again.
+
+She shook hands with Mr. Hammond more graciously than last night; but
+still with a carelessness which was not complimentary, looking at him
+absently, as if she hardly knew that he was there, and hugging Angelina
+all the time.
+
+Hammond told his friend about his ramble over the hills, yonder, up
+above that homely bench called 'Rest, and be Thankful,' on the crest of
+Loughrigg Fell. He was beginning to learn the names of the hills
+already. Yonder darkling brow, rugged, gloomy looking, was Nab Scar;
+yonder green slope of sunny pasture, stretching wide its two arms as if
+to enfold the valley, was Fairfield; and here, close on the left, as he
+faced the lake, were Silver Howe and Helm Crag, with that stony
+excrescence on the summit of the latter known as the 'Lion and the
+Lamb.' Lady Maulevrier's house stood within a circle of mountain peaks
+and long fells, which walled in the deep, placid, fertile valley.
+
+'If you are not too tired to see the gardens, we might show them to you
+before breakfast,' said Maulevrier. 'We have three-quarters of an hour
+to the good.'
+
+'Half an hour for a stroll, and a quarter to make myself presentable
+after my long walk,' said Hammond, who did not wish to face the dowager
+and Lady Lesbia in disordered apparel. Lady Mary was such an obvious
+Tomboy that he might be pardoned for leaving her out of the question.
+
+They set out upon an exploration of the gardens, Mary clinging to her
+brother's arm, as if she wanted to make sure of him, and still carrying
+Angelina.
+
+The gardens were as other gardens, but passing beautiful. The sloping
+lawns and richly-timbered banks, winding shrubberies, broad terraces cut
+on the side of the hill, gave infinite variety. All that wealth and
+taste and labour could do to make those grounds beautiful had been
+done--the rarest conifers, the loveliest flowering shrubs grew and
+flourished there, and the flowers bloomed as they bloom only in
+Lakeland, where every cottage garden can show a wealth of luxurious
+bloom, unknown in more exposed and arid districts. Mary was very proud
+of those gardens. She had loved them and worked in them from her
+babyhood, trotting about on chubby legs after some chosen old gardener,
+carrying a few weeds or withered leaves in her pinafore, and fancying
+herself useful.
+
+'I help 'oo, doesn't I, Teeven?' she used to say to the gray-headed old
+gardener, who first taught her to distinguish flowers from weeds.
+
+'I shall never learn as much out of these horrid books as poor old
+Stevens taught me,' she said afterwards, when the gray head was at rest
+under the sod, and governesses, botany manuals, and hard words from the
+Greek were the order of the day.
+
+Nine o'clock was the breakfast hour at Fellside. There were no family
+prayers. Lady Maulevrier did not pretend to be pious, and she put no
+restraints of piety upon other people. She went to Church on Sunday
+mornings for the sake of example; but she read all the newest scientific
+books, subscribed to the Anthropological Society, and thought as the
+newest scientific people think. She rarely communicated her opinions
+among her own sex; but now and then, in strictly masculine and superior
+society, she had been heard to express herself freely upon the nebular
+hypothesis and the doctrine of evolution.
+
+'After all, what does it matter?' she said, finally, with her grand air;
+'I have only to marry my granddaughters creditably, and prevent my
+grandson going to the dogs, and then my mission on this insignificant
+planet will be accomplished. What new form that particular modification
+of molecules which you call Lady Maulevrier may take afterwards is
+hidden in the great mystery of material life.'
+
+There was no family prayer, therefore, at Fellside. The sisters had been
+properly educated in their religious duties, had been taught the
+Anglican faith carefully and well by their governess, Fraeulein Mueller,
+who had become a staunch Anglican before entering the families of the
+English nobility, and by the kind Vicar of Grasmere, who took a warm
+interest in the orphan girls. Their grandmother had given them to
+understand that they might be as religious as they liked. She would be
+no let or hindrance to their piety; but they must ask her no awkward
+questions.
+
+'I have read a great deal and thought a great deal, and my ideas are
+still in a state of transition,' she told Lesbia; and Lesbia, who was
+somewhat automatic in her piety, had no desire to know more.
+
+Lady Maulevrier seldom appeared in the forenoon. She was an early riser,
+being too vivid and highly strung a creature, even at sixty-seven years
+of age, to give way to sloth. She rose at seven, summer and winter, but
+she spent the early part of the day in her own rooms, reading, writing,
+giving orders to her housekeeper, and occasionally interviewing
+Steadman, who, without any onerous duties, was certainly the most
+influential person in the house. People in the village talked of him,
+and envied him so good a berth. He had a gentleman's house to live in,
+and to all appearance lived as a gentleman. This tranquil retirement,
+free from care or labour, was a rich reward for the faithful service of
+his youth. And it was known by the better informed among the Grasmere
+people that Mr. Steadman was saving money, and had shares in the
+North-Western Railway. These facts had oozed out, of themselves, as it
+were. He was not a communicative man, and rarely wasted half an hour at
+the snug little inn near St. Oswald's Church, amidst the cluster of
+habitations that was once called Kirktown. He was an unsociable man,
+people said, and thought himself better than Grasmere folk, the
+lodging-house keepers, and guides, and wrestlers, and the honest
+friendly souls who were the outcome of that band of Norwegian exiles
+which found a home in these peaceful vales.
+
+Miss Mueller, more commonly known as Fraeulein, officiated at breakfast.
+She never appeared at the board when Lady Maulevrier was present, but in
+her ladyship's absence Miss Mueller was guardian of the proprieties. She
+was a stout, kindly creature, and by no means a formidable dragon. When
+the gong sounded, John Hammond went into the dining-room, where he found
+Miss Mueller seated alone in front of the urn.
+
+He bowed, quick to read 'governess' or 'companion' in the lady's
+appearance; and she bowed.
+
+'I hope you have had a nice walk,' she said. 'I saw you from my bedroom
+window.'
+
+'Did you? Then I suppose yours is one of the few windows which look into
+that curious old quadrangle?'
+
+'No, there are no windows looking into the quadrangle. Those that were
+in the original plan of the house were walled up at her ladyship's
+orders, to keep out the cold winds which sweep down from the hills in
+winter and early spring, when the edge of Loughrigg Fell is white with
+snow. My window looks into the gardens, and I saw you there with his
+lordship and Lady Mary.'
+
+Lady Lesbia came in at this moment, and saluted Mr. Hammond with a
+haughty inclination of her beautiful head. She looked lovelier in her
+simple morning gown of pale blue cambric than in her more elaborate
+toilette of last evening; such purity of complexion, such lustrous eyes;
+the untarnished beauty of youth, breathing the delicate freshness of a
+newly-opened flower. She might be as scornful as she pleased, yet John
+Hammond could not withhold his admiration. He was inclined to admire a
+woman who kept him at a distance; for the general bent of young women
+now-a-days is otherwise.
+
+Maulevrier and Mary came in, and everyone sat down to breakfast. Lady
+Lesbia unbent a little presently, and smiled upon the stranger. There
+was a relief in a stranger's presence. He talked of new things, places
+and people she had never seen. She brightened and became quite friendly,
+deigned to invite the expression of Mr. Hammond's opinions upon music
+and art, and after breakfast allowed him to follow her into the
+drawing-room, and to linger there fascinated for half an hour, looking
+over her newest books, and her last batch of music, but looking most of
+all at her, while Maulevrier and Mary were loafing on the lawn outside.
+
+'What are you going to do with yourself this morning?' asked Maulevrier,
+appearing suddenly at the window.
+
+'Anything you like,' answered Hammond. 'Stay, there is one pilgrimage I
+am eager to make. I must see Wordsworth's grave, and Wordsworth's
+house.'
+
+'You shall see them both, but they are in opposite directions--one at
+your elbow, the other a four mile walk. Which will you see first? We'll
+toss for it,' taking a shilling from a pocketful of loose cash, always
+ready for moments of hesitation. 'Heads, house; tails, grave. Tails it
+is. Come and have a smoke, and see the poet's grave. The splendour of
+the monument, the exquisite neatness with which it is kept, will astound
+you, considering that we live in a period of Wordsworth worship.'
+
+Hammond hesitated, and looked at Lady Lesbia.
+
+'Aren't you coming?' called Maulevrier from the lawn. 'It was a fair
+offer. I've got my cigarette case.'
+
+'Yes, I'm coming,' answered the other, with a disappointed air.
+
+He had hoped that Lesbia would offer to show him the poet's grave. He
+could not abandon that hope without a struggle.
+
+'Will you come with us, Lady Lesbia? We'll suppress the cigarettes!'
+
+'Thanks, no,' she said, becoming suddenly frigid. 'I am going to
+practice.'
+
+'Do you never walk in the morning--on such a lovely morning as this?'
+
+'Not very often.'
+
+She had re-entered those frozen regions from which his attentions had
+lured him for a little while. She had reminded herself of the inferior
+social position of this person, in whose conversation she had allowed
+herself to be interested.
+
+'_Filons_!' cried Maulevrier from below, and they went.
+
+Mary would have very much liked to go with them, but she did not want to
+be intrusive; so she went off to the kennels to see the terriers eat
+their morning and only meal of dog biscuit.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+THERE IS ALWAYS A SKELETON.
+
+
+The two young men strolled through the village, Maulevrier pausing to
+exchange greetings with almost everyone he met, and so to the rustic
+churchyard, above the beck.
+
+The beck was swollen with late rains, and was brawling merrily over its
+stony bed; the churchyard grass was deep and cool and shadowy under the
+clustering branches. The poet's tomb was disappointing in its unlovely
+simplicity, its stern, slatey hue. The plainest granite cross would have
+satisfied Mr. Hammond, or a cross in pure white marble, with a
+sculptured lamb at the base. Surely the lamb, emblem at once pastoral
+and sacred, ought to enter into any monument to Wordsworth; but that
+gray headstone, with its catalogue of dates, those stern iron
+railings--were these fit memorials of one whose soul so loved nature's
+loveliness?
+
+After Mr. Hammond had seen the little old, old church, and the medallion
+portrait inside, had seen all that Maulevrier could show him, in fact,
+the two young men went back to the place of graves, and sat on the low
+parapet above the beck, smoking their cigarettes, and talking with that
+perfect unreserve which can only obtain between men who are old and
+tried friends. They talked, as it was only natural they should talk, of
+that household at Fellside, where all things were new to John Hammond.
+
+'You like my sister Lesbia?' said Maulevrier.
+
+'Like her! well, yes. The difficulty with most men must be not to
+worship her.'
+
+'Ah, she's not my style. And she's beastly proud.'
+
+'A little _hauteur_ gives piquancy to her beauty; I admire a grand
+woman.'
+
+'So do I in a picture. Titian's Queen of Cyprus, or any party of that
+kind; but for flesh and blood I like humility--a woman who knows she is
+human, and not infallible, and only just a little better than you or me.
+When I choose a wife, she will be no such example of cultivated
+perfection as my sister Lesbia. I want no goddess, but a nice little
+womanly woman, to jog along the rough and tumble road of life with me.'
+
+'Lady Maulevrier's influence, no doubt, has in a great measure
+determined the bent of your sister's character: and from what you have
+told me about her ladyship, I should think a fixed idea of her own
+superiority would be inevitable in any girl trained by her.'
+
+'Yes, she is a proud woman--a proud, hard woman--and she has steeped
+Lesbia's mind in all her own pet ideas and prejudices. Yet, God knows,
+we have little reason to hold our heads high,' said Maulevrier, with a
+gloomy look.
+
+John Hammond did not reply to this remark: perhaps there was some
+difficulty for a man situated as he was in finding a fit reply. He
+smoked in silence, looking down at the pure swift waters of the Rotha
+tumbling over the crags and boulders below.
+
+'Doesn't somebody say there is always a skeleton in the cupboard, and
+the nobler and more ancient the race the bigger the skeleton?' said
+Maulevrier, with a philosophical air.
+
+'Yes, your family secret is an attribute of a fine old race. The
+Pelopidae, for instance--in their case it was not a single skeleton, but
+a whole charnel house. I don't think your skeleton need trouble you,
+Maulevrier. It belongs to the remote past.'
+
+'Those things never belong to the past,' said the young man. 'If it were
+any other kind of taint--profligacy--madness, even--the story of a duel
+that went very near murder--a runaway wife--a rebellious son--a cruel
+husband. I have heard such stories hinted at in the records of families.
+But our story means disgrace. I seldom see strangers putting their heads
+together at the club without fancying they are telling each other about
+my grandfather, and pointing me out as the grandson and heir of a
+thief.'
+
+'Why use unduly hard words?'
+
+'Why should I stoop to sophistication with you, my friend. Dishonesty
+is dishonesty all the world over; and to plunder Rajahs on a large scale
+is no less vile than to pick a pocket on Ludgate Hill.'
+
+'Nothing was ever proved against your grandfather.'
+
+'No, he died in the nick of time, and the inquiry was squashed, thanks
+to the Angersthorpe interest, and my grandmother's cleverness. But if he
+had lived a few weeks longer England would have rung with the story of
+his profligacy and dishonour. Some people say he committed suicide in
+order to escape the inquiry; but I have heard my mother emphatically
+deny this. My father told her that he had often talked with the people
+who kept the little inn where his father died, and they were clear
+enough in their assertion that the death was a natural death--the sudden
+collapse of an exhausted constitution.'
+
+'Was it on account of this scandal that your father spent the best part
+of his life away from England?' Hammond asked, feeling that it was a
+relief to Maulevrier to talk about this secret burden of his.
+
+The young Earl was light-hearted and frivolous by nature, yet even he
+had his graver moments; and upon this subject of the old Maulevrier
+scandal he was peculiarly sensitive, perhaps all the more so because his
+grandmother had never allowed him to speak to her about it, had never
+satisfied his curiosity upon any details of that painful story.
+
+'I have very little doubt it was so--though I wasn't old enough when he
+died to hear as much from his own lips. My father went straight from the
+University to Vienna, where he began his career in the diplomatic
+service, and where he soon afterwards married a dowerless English girl
+of good family. He went to Rio as first secretary, and died of fever
+within seven years of his marriage, leaving a widow and three babies,
+the youngest in long clothes. Mother and babies all came over to
+England, and were at once established at Fellside. I can remember the
+voyage--and I can remember my poor mother who never recovered the blow
+of my father's death, and who died in yonder house, after five years of
+broken health and broken spirits. We had no one but the dowager to look
+to as children--hardly another friend in the world. She did what she
+liked with us; she kept the girls as close as nuns, so _they_ have never
+heard a hint of the old history; no breach of scandal has reached
+_their_ ears. But she could not shut me up in a country house for ever,
+though she did succeed in keeping me away from a public school. The time
+came when I had to go to the University, and there I heard all that had
+been said about Lord Maulevrier. The men who told me about the old
+scandal in a friendly way pretended not to believe it; but one night,
+when I had got into a row at a wine-party with a tailor's son, he told
+me that if his father was a snip my grandfather was a thief, and so he
+thought himself the better bred of the two. I smashed his nose for him,
+but as it was a decided pug before the row began, that hardly squared
+the matter.'
+
+'Did you ever hear the exact story?'
+
+'I have heard a dozen stories; and if only a quarter of them are true my
+grandfather was a scoundrel. It seems that he was immensely popular for
+the first year or so of his government, gave more splendid
+entertainments than had been given at Madras for half a century before
+his time, lavished his wealth upon his favourites. Then arose a rumour
+that the governor was insolvent and harassed by his creditors, and then
+a new source of wealth seemed to be at his command; he was more
+reckless, more princely than ever; and then, little by little, there
+arose the suspicion that he was trafficking in English interests,
+selling his influence to petty princes, winking at those mysterious
+crimes by which rightful heirs are pushed aside to make room for
+usurpers. Lastly it became notorious that he was the slave of a wicked
+woman, false wife, suspected murderess, whose husband, a native prince,
+disappeared from the scene just when his existence became perilous to
+the governor's reputation. According to one version of the story, the
+scandal of this Rajah's mysterious disappearance, followed not long
+after by the Ranee's equally mysterious death, was the immediate cause
+of my grandfather's recall. How much, or how little of this story--or
+other dark stories of the same kind--is true, whether my grandfather was
+a consummate scoundrel, or the victim of a baseless slander,--whether he
+left India a rich man or a poor man, is known to no mortal except Lady
+Maulevrier, and compared with her the Theban Sphinx was a communicative
+individual.'
+
+'Let the dead bury their dead,' said Hammond. 'Neither you nor your
+sisters can be the worse for this ancient slander. No doubt every part
+of the story has been distorted and exaggerated in the telling; and a
+great deal of it may be pure invention, evolved from the inner
+consciousness of the slanderer. God forbid that any whisper of scandal
+should ever reach Lady Lesbia's ears.'
+
+He ignored poor Mary. It was to him as if there were no such person. Her
+feeble light was extinguished by the radiance of her sister's beauty;
+her very individuality was annihilated.
+
+'As for you, dear old fellow,' he said, with warm affection, 'no one
+will ever think the worse of you on account of your grandfather's
+peccadilloes.'
+
+'Yes, they will. Hereditary genius is one of our modern crazes. When a
+man's grandfather was a rogue, there must be a taint in his blood.
+People don't believe in spontaneous generation, moral or physical,
+now-a-days. Typhoid breeds typhoid, and typhus breeds typhus, just as
+dog breeds dog; and who will believe that a cheat and a liar can be the
+father of honest men?'
+
+'In that case, knowing what kind of man the grandson is, I will never
+believe that the grandfather was a rogue,' said Hammond, heartily.
+
+Maulevrier put out his hand without a word, and it was warmly grasped by
+his friend.
+
+'As for her ladyship, I respect and honour her as a woman who has led a
+life of self-sacrifice, and has worn her pride as an armour,' continued
+Hammond.
+
+'Yes, I believe the dowager's character is rather fine,' said
+Maulevrier; 'but she and I have never hit our horses very well together.
+She would have liked such a fellow as you for a grandson, Jack--a man
+who took high honours at Oxford, and could hold his own against all
+comers. Such a grandson would have gratified her pride, and would have
+repaid her for the trouble she had taken in nursing the Maulevrier
+estate; for however poor a property it was when her husband went to
+India there is no doubt that it is a very fine estate now, and that the
+dowager has been the making of it.'
+
+The two young men strolled up to Easedale Tarn before they went back to
+Fellside, where Lady Maulevrier received them with a stately
+graciousness, and where Lady Lesbia unbent considerably at luncheon, and
+condescended to an animated conversation with her brother's friend. It
+was such a new thing to have a stranger at the family board, a man whose
+information was well abreast with the march of progress, who could talk
+eloquently upon every subject which people care to talk about. In this
+new and animated society Lesbia seemed like an enchanted princess
+suddenly awakened from a spell-bound slumber. Molly looked at her sister
+with absolute astonishment. Never had she seen her so bright, so
+beautiful--no longer a picture or a statue, but a woman warm with the
+glow of life.
+
+'No wonder Mr. Hammond admires her,' thought poor Molly, who was quite
+acute enough to see the stranger's keen appreciation of her sister's
+charms, and positive indifference towards herself.
+
+There are some things which women find out by instinct, just as the
+needle turns towards the magnet. Shut a girl up in a tower till she is
+eighteen years old, and on the day of her release introduce her to the
+first man her eyes have ever looked upon, and she will know at a glance
+whether he admires her.
+
+After luncheon the four young people started for Rydal Mount; with
+Fraeulein as chaperon and watch-dog. The girls were both good walkers.
+Lady Lesbia even, though she looked like a hot-house flower, had been
+trained to active habits, could walk and ride, and play tennis, and
+climb a hill as became a mountain-bred damsel. Molly, feeling that her
+conversational powers were not appreciated by her brother's friend, took
+half a dozen dogs for company, and with three fox-terriers, a little
+Yorkshire dog, a colley and an otter-hound, was at no loss for society
+on the road, more especially as Maulevrier gave her most of his company,
+and entertained her with an account of his Black Forest adventures, and
+all the fine things he had said to the fair-haired, blue-eyed Baden
+girls, who had sold him photographs or wild strawberries, or had
+awakened the echoes of the hills with the music of their rustic flutes.
+
+Fraeulein was perfectly aware that her mission upon this particular
+afternoon was not to let Lady Lesbia out of her sight for an instant, to
+hear every word the young lady said, and every word Mr. Hammond
+addressed to her. She had received no specific instructions from Lady
+Maulevrier. They were not necessary, for the Fraeulein knew her
+ladyship's intentions with regard to her elder granddaughter,--knew
+them, at least, so far as that Lesbia was intended to make a brilliant
+marriage; and she knew, therefore, that the presence of this handsome
+and altogether attractive young man was to the last degree obnoxious to
+the dowager. She was obliged to be civil to him for her nephew's sake,
+and she was too wise to let Lesbia imagine him dangerous: but the fact
+that he was dangerous was obvious, and it was Fraeulein's duty to protect
+her employer's interests.
+
+Everybody knew Lord Maulevrier, so there was no difficulty about getting
+admission to Wordsworth's garden and Wordsworth's house, and after Mr.
+Hammond and his companions had explored these, they went back to the
+shores of the little lake, and climbed that rocky eminence upon which
+the poet used to sit, above the placid waters of silvery Rydal. It is a
+lovely spot, and that narrow lake, so poor a thing were magnitude the
+gauge of beauty, had a soft and pensive loveliness in the clear
+afternoon light.
+
+'Poor Wordsworth' sighed Lesbia, as she stood on the grassy crag looking
+down on the shining water, broken in the foreground by fringes of
+rushes, and the rich luxuriance of water-lilies. 'Is it not pitiable to
+think of the years he spent in this monotonous place, without any
+society worth speaking of, with only the shabbiest collection of books,
+with hardly any interest in life except the sky, and the hills, and the
+peasantry?'
+
+'I think Wordsworth's was an essentially happy life, in spite of his
+narrow range,' answered Hammond. 'You, with your ardent youth and vivid
+desire for a life of action, cannot imagine the calm blisses of reverie
+and constant communion with nature. Wordsworth had a thousand companions
+you and I would never dream of; for him every flower that grows was an
+individual existence--almost a soul.'
+
+'It was a mild kind of lunacy, an everlasting opium dream without the
+opium; but I am grateful to him for living such a life, since it has
+bequeathed us some exquisite poetry,' said Lesbia, who had been too
+carefully cultured to fleer or flout at Wordsworth.
+
+'I do believe there's an otter just under that bank,' cried Molly, who
+had been watching the obvious excitement of her bandy-legged hound; and
+she rushed down to the brink of the water, leaping lightly from stone to
+stone, and inciting the hound to business.
+
+'Let him alone, can't you?' roared Maulevrier; 'leave him in peace till
+he's wanted. If you disturb him now he'll desert his holt, and we may
+have a blank day. The hounds are to be out to-morrow.'
+
+'I may go with you?' asked Mary, eagerly.
+
+'Well, yes, I suppose you'll want to be in it.' Molly and her brother
+went on an exploring ramble along the edge of the water towards
+Ambleside, leaving John Hammond in Lesbia's company, but closely guarded
+by Miss Mueller. These three went to look at Nab Cottage, where poor
+Hartley Coleridge ended his brief and clouded days; and they had gone
+some way upon their homeward walk before they were rejoined by
+Maulevrier and Mary, the damsel's kilted skirt considerably the worse
+for mud and mire.
+
+'What would grandmother say if she were to see you!' exclaimed Lesbia,
+looking contemptuously at the muddy petticoat.
+
+'I am not going to let her see me, so she will say nothing,' cried Mary,
+and then she called to the dogs, 'Ammon, Agag, Angelina;' and the three
+fox terriers flew along the road, falling over themselves in the
+swiftness of their flight, darting, and leaping, and scrambling over
+each other, and offering the spectators the most intense example of
+joyous animal life.
+
+The colley was far up on the hill-side, and the otter-hound was still
+hunting the water, but the terriers never went out of Mary's sight. They
+looked to her to take the initiative in all their sports.
+
+They were back at Fellside in time for a very late tea. Lady Maulevrier
+was waiting for them in the drawing-room.
+
+'Oh, grandmother, why did you not take your tea!' exclaimed Lesbia,
+looking really distressed. 'It is six o'clock.'
+
+'I am used to have you at home to hand me my cup,' replied the dowager,
+with a touch of reproachfulness.
+
+'I am so sorry,' said Lesbia, sitting down before the tea-table, and
+beginning her accustomed duty. 'Indeed, dear grandmother, I had no idea
+it was so late; but it was such a lovely afternoon, and Mr. Hammond is
+so interested in everything connected with Wordsworth--'
+
+She was looking her loveliest at this moment, all that was softest in
+her nature called forth by her desire to please her grandmother, whom
+she really loved. She hung over Lady Maulevrier's chair, attending to
+her small wants, and seeming scarcely to remember the existence of
+anyone else. In this phase of her character she seemed to Mr. Hammond
+the perfection of womanly grace.
+
+Mary had rushed off to her room to change her muddy gown, and came in
+presently, dressed for dinner, looking the picture of innocence.
+
+John Hammond received his tea-cup from Lesbia's hand, and lingered in
+the drawing-room talking to the dowager and her granddaughters till it
+was time to dress. Lady Maulevrier found herself favourably impressed by
+him in spite of her prejudices. It was very provoking of Maulevrier to
+have brought such a man to Fellside. His very merits were objectionable.
+She tried with exquisite art to draw him into some revealment as to his
+family and antecedents: but he evaded every attempt of that kind. It was
+too evident that he was a self-made man, whose intellect and good looks
+were his only fortune. It was criminal in Maulevrier to have brought
+such a person to Fellside. Her ladyship began to think seriously of
+sending the two girls to St. Bees or Tynemouth for change of air, in
+charge of Fraeulein. But any sudden proceeding of that kind would
+inevitably awaken Lesbia's suspicions; and there is nothing so fatal to
+a woman's peace as this idea of danger. No, the peril must be faced. She
+could only hope that Maulevrier would soon tire of Fellside. A week's
+Westmoreland weather--gray skies and long rainy days, would send these
+young men away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+A CRY IN THE DARKNESS.
+
+
+The peril had to be faced, for the weather did not favour Lady
+Maulevrier's hopes. Westmoreland skies forgot to shed their accustomed
+showers. Westmoreland hills seemed to have lost their power of drawing
+down the rain. That August was a lovely month, and the young people at
+Fellside revelled in ideal weather. Maulevrier took his friend
+everywhere--by hill and stream and force and gill--to all those chosen
+spots which make the glory of the Lake country--on Windermere and
+Thirlmere, away through the bleak pass of Kirkstone to Ullswater--on
+driving excursions, and on boating excursions, and pedestrian rambles,
+which latter the homely-minded Hammond seemed to like best of all, for
+he was a splendid walker, and loved the freedom of a mountain ramble,
+the liberty to pause and loiter and waste an hour at will, without being
+accountable to anybody's coachman, or responsible for the well-being of
+anybody's horses.
+
+On some occasions the two girls and Miss Mueller were of the party, and
+then it seemed to John Hammond as if nothing were needed to complete the
+glory of earth and sky. There were other days--rougher journeys--when
+the men went alone, and there were days when Lady Mary stole away from
+her books and music, and all those studies which she was supposed still
+to be pursuing--no longer closely supervised by her governess, but on
+parole, as it were--and went with her brother and his friend across the
+hills and far away. Those were happy days for Mary, for it was always
+delight to her to be with Maulevrier; yet she had a profound conviction
+of John Hammond's indifference, kind and courteous as he was in all his
+dealings with her, and a sense of her own inferiority, of her own humble
+charms and little power to please, which was so acute as to be almost
+pain. One day this keen sense of humiliation broke from her unawares in
+her talk with her brother, as they two sat on a broad heathy slope face
+to face with one of the Langdale pikes, and with a deep valley at their
+feet, while John Hammond was climbing from rock to rock in the gorge on
+their right, exploring the beauties of Dungeon Ghyll.
+
+'I wonder whether he thinks me very ugly?' said Mary, with her hands
+clasped upon her knees, her eyes fixed on Wetherlam, upon whose steep
+brow a craggy mass of brown rock clothed with crimson heather stood out
+from the velvety green of the hill-side.
+
+'Who thinks you ugly?'
+
+'Mr. Hammond. I'm sure he does. I am so sunburnt and so horrid!'
+
+'But you are not ugly. Why, Molly, what are you dreaming about?'
+
+'Oh, yes, I am ugly. I may not seem so to you, perhaps, because you are
+used to me, but I know he must think me very plain compared with Lesbia,
+whom he admires so much.'
+
+'Yes, he admires Lesbia. There is no doubt of that.'
+
+'And I know he thinks me plain,' said Molly, contemplating Wetherlam
+with sorrowful eyes, as if the sequence were inevitable.
+
+'My dearest girl, what nonsense! Plain, forsooth? Ugly, quotha? Why,
+there are not a finer pair of eyes in Westmoreland than my Molly's, or a
+prettier smile, or whiter teeth.'
+
+'But all the rest is horrid,' said Mary, intensely in earnest. 'I am
+sunburnt, freckled, and altogether odious--like a haymaker or a market
+woman. Grandmother has said so often enough, and I know it is the truth.
+I can see it in Mr. Hammond's manner.'
+
+'What! freckles and sunburn, and the haymaker, and all that?' cried
+Maulevrier, laughing. 'What an expressive manner Jack's must be, if it
+can convey all that--like Lord Burleigh's nod, by Jove. Why, what a
+goose you are, Mary. Jack thinks you a very nice girl, and a very pretty
+girl, I'll be bound; but aren't you clever enough to understand that
+when a man is over head and ears in love with one woman, he is apt to
+seem just a little indifferent to all the other women in the world? and
+there is no doubt Jack is desperately in love with Lesbia.'
+
+'You ought not to let him be in love with her,' protested Mary. 'You
+know it can only lead to his unhappiness. You must know what grandmother
+is, and how she has made up her mind that Lesbia is to marry some great
+person. You ought not to have brought Mr. Hammond here. It is like
+letting him into a trap.'
+
+'Do you think it was wrong?' asked her brother, smiling at her
+earnestness. 'I should be very sorry if poor Jack should come to grief.
+But still, if Lesbia likes him--which I think she does--we ought to be
+able to talk over the dowager.'
+
+'Never,' cried Mary. 'Grandmother would never give way. You have no idea
+how ambitious she is. Why, once when Lesbia was in a poetical mood, and
+said she would marry the man she liked best in the world, if he were a
+pauper, her ladyship flew into a terrible passion, and told her she
+would renounce her, that she would curse her, if she were to marry
+beneath her, or marry without her grandmother's consent.'
+
+'Hard lines for Hammond,' said Maulevrier, rather lightly. 'Then I
+suppose we must give up the idea of a match between him and Lesbia.'
+
+'You ought not to have brought him here,' retorted Mary. 'You had better
+invent some plan for sending him away. If he stay it will be only to
+break his heart.'
+
+'Dear child, men's hearts do not break so easily. I have fancied that
+mine was broken more than once in my life, yet it is sound enough, I
+assure you.'
+
+'Oh!' sighed Mary, 'but you are not like him; wounds do not go so deep
+with you.'
+
+The subject of their conversation came out of the rocky cleft in the
+hills as Mary spoke. She saw his hat appearing out of the gorge, and
+then the man himself emerged, a tall well-built figure, clad in brown
+tweed, coming towards them, with sketch-book and colour-box in his
+pocket. He had been making what he called memoranda of the waterfall, a
+stone or two here, a cluster of ferns there, or a tree torn up by the
+roots, and yet green and living, hanging across the torrent, a rude
+natural bridge.
+
+This round by the Langdale Pikes and Dungeon Ghyll was one of their best
+days; or, at least, Molly and her brother thought so; for to those two
+the presence of Lesbia and her chaperon was always a restraint.
+
+Mary could walk twice as far as her elder sister, and revelled in
+hill-side paths and all manner of rough places. They ordered their
+luncheon at the inn below the waterfall, and had it carried up on to the
+furzy slope in front of Wetherlam, where they could eat and drink and be
+merry to the music of the force as it came down from the hills behind
+them, while the lights and shadows came and went upon yonder rugged
+brow, now gray in the shadow, now ruddy in the sunshine.
+
+Mary was as gay as a bird during that rough and ready luncheon. No one
+would have suspected her uneasiness about John Hammond's peril or her
+own plainness. She might let her real self appear to her brother, who
+had been her trusted friend and father confessor from her babyhood; but
+she was too thorough a woman to let Mr. Hammond discover the depth of
+her sympathy, the tenderness of her compassion for his woes. Later, as
+they were walking home across the hills, by Great Langdale and Little
+Langdale, and Fox Howe and Loughrigg Fell, she fell behind a few paces
+with Maulevrier, and said to him very earnestly--
+
+'You won't tell, will you, dear?'
+
+'Tell what?' he asked, staring at her.
+
+'Don't tell Mr. Hammond what I said about his thinking me ugly. He might
+want to apologise to me, and that would be too humiliating. I was very
+childish to say such a silly thing.'
+
+'Undoubtedly you were.'
+
+'And you won't tell him?'
+
+'Tell him anything that would degrade my Mary? Assail her dignity by so
+much as a breath? Sooner would I have this tongue torn out with red-hot
+pincers.'
+
+On the next day, and the next, sunshine and summer skies still
+prevailed; but Mr. Hammond did not seem to care for rambling far afield.
+He preferred loitering about in the village, rowing on the lake, reading
+in the garden, and playing lawn tennis. He had only inclination for
+those amusements which kept him within a stone's throw of Fellside: and
+Mary knew that this disposition had arisen in his mind since Lesbia had
+withdrawn herself from all share in their excursions. Lesbia had not
+been rude to her brother or her brother's friend; she had declined their
+invitations with smiles and sweetness; but there was always some
+reason--a new song to be practised, a new book to be read, a letter to
+be written--why she should not go for drives or walks or steamboat trips
+with Maulevrier and his friend.
+
+So Mr. Hammond suddenly found out that he had seen all that was worth
+seeing in the Lake country, and that there was nothing so enjoyable as
+the placid idleness of Fellside; and at Fellside Lady Lesbia could not
+always avoid him without a too-marked intention, so he tasted the
+sweetness of her society to a much greater extent than was good for his
+peace, if the case were indeed as hopeless as Lady Mary declared. He
+strolled about the grounds with her; he drank the sweet melody of her
+voice in Heine's tenderest ballads; he read to her on the sunlit lawn in
+the lazy afternoon hours; he played billiards with her; he was her
+faithful attendant at afternoon tea; he gave himself up to the study of
+her character, which, to his charmed eyes, seemed the perfection of pure
+and placid womanhood. There might, perhaps, be some lack of passion and
+of force in this nature, a marked absence of that impulsive feeling
+which is a charm in some women: but this want was atoned for by
+sweetness of character, and Mr. Hammond argued that in these calm
+natures there is often an unsuspected depth, a latent force, a grandeur
+of soul, which only reveals itself in the great ordeals of life.
+
+So John Hammond hung about the luxurious drawing-room at Fellside in a
+manner which his friend Maulevrier ridiculed as unmanly.
+
+'I had no idea you were such a tame cat,' he said: 'if when we were
+salmon fishing in Canada anybody had told me you could loll about a
+drawing-room all day listening to a girl squalling and reading novels, I
+shouldn't have believed a word of it.'
+
+'We had plenty of roughing on the shores of the St. Lawrence,' answered
+Hammond. 'Summer idleness in a drawing-room is an agreeable variety.'
+
+It is not to be supposed that John Hammond's state of mind could long
+remain unperceived by the keen eyes of the dowager. She saw the gradual
+dawning of his love, she saw the glow of its meridian. She was pleased
+to behold this proof of Lesbia's power over the heart of man. So would
+she conquer the man foredoomed to be her husband when the coming time
+should bring them together. But agreeable as the fact of this first
+conquest might be, as an evidence of Lesbia's supremacy among women, the
+situation was not without its peril; and Lady Maulevrier felt that she
+could no longer defer the duty of warning her granddaughter. She had
+wished, if possible, to treat the thing lightly to the very last, so
+that Lesbia should never know there had been danger. She had told her, a
+few days ago, that those drives, and walks with the two young men were
+undignified, even although guarded by the Fraeulein's substantial
+presence.
+
+'You are making yourself too much a companion to Maulevrier and his
+friend,' said the dowager. 'If you do not take care you will grow like
+Mary.'
+
+'I would do anything in the world to avoid _that_,' replied Lesbia. 'Our
+walks and drives have been very pleasant. Mr. Hammond is extremely
+clever, and can talk about everything.'
+
+Her colour heightened ever so little as she spoke of him, an indication
+duly observed by Lady Maulevrier.
+
+'No doubt the man is clever; all adventurers are clever; and you have
+sense enough to see that this man is an adventurer--a mere sponge and
+toady of Maulevrier's.'
+
+'There is nothing of the sponge or the toady in his manner,' protested
+Lady Lesbia, with a still deeper blush, the warm glow of angry feeling.
+
+'My dear child, what do you know of such people--or of the atmosphere in
+which they are generated? The sponge and toady of to-day is not the
+clumsy fawning wretch you have read about in old-fashioned novels. He
+can flatter adroitly, and feed upon his friends, and yet maintain a show
+of manhood and independence. I'll wager Mr. Hammond's trip to Canada did
+not cost him sixpence, and that he hardly opened his purse all the time
+he was in Germany.'
+
+'If my brother wants the company of a friend who is much poorer than
+himself, he must pay for it,' argued Lesbia. 'I think Maulevrier is
+lucky to have such a companion as Mr. Hammond.'
+
+Yet, even while she so argued, Lady Lesbia felt in some manner
+humiliated by the idea that this man who so palpably worshipped her was
+too poor to pay his own travelling expenses.
+
+Poets and philosophers may say what they will about the grandeur of
+plain living and high thinking; but a young woman thinks better of the
+plain liver who is not compelled to plainness by want of cash. The idea
+of narrow means, of dependence upon the capricious generosity of a
+wealthy friend is not without its humiliating influence. Lesbia was
+barely civil to Mr. Hammond that evening when he praised her singing;
+and she refused to join in a four game proposed by Maulevrier, albeit
+she and Mr. Hammond had beaten Mary and Maulevrier the evening before,
+with much exultant hilarity.
+
+Hammond had been at Fellside nearly a month, and Maulevrier was
+beginning to talk about a move further northward. There was a grouse
+moor in Argyleshire which the two young men talked about as belonging to
+some unnamed friend of the Earl's, which they had thought of shooting
+over before the grouse season was ended.
+
+'Lord Hartfield has property in Argyleshire,' said the dowager, when
+they talked of these shootings. 'Do you know his estate, Mr. Hammond?'
+
+'Hammond knows that there is such a place, I daresay,' replied
+Maulevrier, replying for his friend.
+
+'But you do not know Lord Hartfield, perhaps,' said her ladyship, not
+arrogantly, but still in a tone which implied her conviction that John
+Hammond would not be hand-in-glove with earls, in Scotland or elsewhere.
+
+'Oh, yes! I know him by sight--every one in Argyleshire knows him by
+sight.'
+
+'Naturally. A young man in his position must be widely known. Is he
+popular?'
+
+'Fairly so.'
+
+'His father and I were friends many years ago,' said Lady Maulevrier,
+with a faint sigh. 'Have you ever heard if he resembles his father?'
+
+'I believe not. I am told he is like his mother's family.'
+
+'Then he ought to be handsome. Lady Florence Ilmington was a famous
+beauty.'
+
+They were sitting in the drawing-room after dinner, the room dimly
+lighted by darkly-shaded lamps, the windows wide open to the summer sky
+and moonlit lake. In that subdued light Lady Maulevrier looked a woman
+in the prime of life. The classical modelling of her features and the
+delicacy of her complexion were unimpaired by time, while those traces
+of thought and care which gave age to her face in the broad light of day
+were invisible at night. John Hammond contemplated that refined and
+placid countenance with profound admiration. He remembered how her
+ladyship's grandson had compared her with the Sphinx; and it seemed to
+him to-night, as he studied her proud and tranquil beauty, that there
+was indeed something of the mysterious, the unreadable in that
+countenance, and that beneath its heroic calm there might be the ashes
+of tragic passion, the traces of a life-long struggle with fate. That
+such a woman, so beautiful, so gifted, so well fitted to shine and
+govern in the great world, should have been content to live a long life
+of absolute seclusion in this remote valley was in itself a social
+mystery which must needs set an observant young man wondering. It was
+all very well to say that Lady Maulevrier loved a country life, that she
+had made Fellside her earthly Paradise, and had no desire beyond it. The
+fact remained that it was not in Lady Maulevrier's temperament to be
+satisfied with such an existence; that falcon eye was never meant to
+gaze for ever upon one narrow range of mountain and lake; that lip was
+made to speak among the great ones of the world.
+
+Lady Maulevrier was particularly gracious to her grandson's friend this
+evening. Maulevrier spoke so decisively about a speedy migration
+northward, seemed so inclined to regret the time wasted since the
+twelfth of the month, that she thought the danger was past, and she
+could afford to be civil. She really liked the young man, had no doubt
+in her own mind that he was a gentleman in the highest and broadest
+sense of the word, but not in the sense which made him an eligible
+husband for either of her granddaughters.
+
+Lesbia was in a pensive mood this evening. She sat in the verandah,
+looking dreamily at the lake, and at Fairfield yonder, a broad green
+slope, silvered with moonlight, and seeming to stretch far away into
+unfathomable distance.
+
+If one could but take one's lover by the hand and go wandering over
+those mystic moonlit slopes into some new unreal world where it would
+not matter whether a man were rich or poor, high-born or low-born, where
+there should be no such things as rank and state to be won or lost!
+Lesbia felt to-night as if she would like to live out her life in
+dreamland. Reality was too hard, too much set round by difficulties and
+sacrifices.
+
+While Lesbia was losing herself in that dream-world, Lady Maulevrier
+unbent considerably to John Hammond, and talked to him with more
+appearance of interest in his actual self, and in his own affairs, than
+she had manifested, hitherto although she had been uniformly courteous.
+
+She asked him his plans for the future--had he chosen a profession?
+
+He told her that he had not. He meant to devote himself to literature
+and politics.
+
+'Is not that rather vague?' inquired her ladyship.
+
+'Everything is vague at first.'
+
+'But literature now--as an amusement, no doubt, it is delightful--but as
+a profession--does literature ever pay?'
+
+'There have been such cases.'
+
+'Yes, I suppose so. Walter Scott, Gibbon, Macaulay, Froude, those made
+money no doubt. But there is a suspicion of hopelessness in the idea of
+a young man starting in life intending to earn his bread by literature.
+One remembers Chatterton. I should have thought that in your case the
+law or the church would have been better. In the latter Maulevrier might
+have been useful to you. He is patron of three or four livings.'
+
+'You are too good even to think of such a thing,' said Hammond; 'but I
+have set my heart upon a political career. I must swim or sink in that
+sea.'
+
+Lady Maulevrier looked at him with a compassionate smile Poor young man!
+No doubt he thought himself a genius, and that doors which had remained
+shut to everybody else would turn on their hinges directly he knocked at
+them. She was sincerely sorry for him. Young, clever, enthusiastic, and
+doomed to bitterest disappointment.
+
+'You have parents, perhaps, who are ambitious for you--a mother who
+thinks her son a heaven-born statesman!' said her ladyship, kindly.
+
+'Alas, no! that incentive to ambition is wanting in my case. I have
+neither father nor mother living.'
+
+'That is very sad. No doubt that fact has been a bond of sympathy
+between you and Maulevrier?'
+
+'I believe it has.'
+
+'Well, I hope Providence will smile upon your path.'
+
+'Come what may, I shall never forget the happy weeks I have spent at
+Fellside,' said Hammond, 'or your ladyship's gracious hospitality.'
+
+He took up the beautiful hand, white to transparency, showing the
+delicate tracing of blue veins, and pressed his lips upon it in
+chivalrous worship of age and womanly dignity.
+
+Lady Maulevrier smiled upon him with her calm, grave smile. She would
+have liked to say, 'You shall be welcome again at Fellside,' but she
+felt that the man was dangerous. Not while Lesbia remained single could
+she court his company. If Maulevrier brought him she must tolerate his
+presence, but she would do nothing to invite that danger.
+
+There was no music that evening. Maulevrier and Mary were playing
+billiards; Fraeulein Mueller was sitting in her corner working at a
+high-art counterpane. Lesbia came in from the verandah presently, and
+sat on a low stool by her grandmother's arm-chair, and talked to her in
+soft, cooing accents, inaudible to John Hammond, who sat a little way
+off turning the leaves of the _Contemporary Review_: and this went on
+till eleven o'clock, the regular hour for retiring, when Mary came in
+from the billiard-room, and told Mr. Hammond that Maulevrier was waiting
+for a smoke and a talk. Then candles were lighted, and the ladies all
+departed, leaving John Hammond and his friend with the house to
+themselves.
+
+They played a fifty game, and smoked and talked till the stroke of
+midnight, by which time it seemed as if there were not another creature
+awake in the house. Maulevrier put out the lamps in the billiard-room,
+and then they went softly up the shadowy staircase, and parted in the
+gallery, the Earl going one way, and his friend the other.
+
+The house was large and roomy, spread over a good deal of ground, Lady
+Maulevrier having insisted upon there being only two stories. The
+servants' rooms were all in a side wing, corresponding with those older
+buildings which had been given over to Steadman and his wife, and among
+the villagers of Grasmere enjoyed the reputation of being haunted. A
+wide panelled corridor extended from one end of the house to the other.
+It was lighted from the roof, and served as a gallery for the display of
+a small and choice collection of modern art, which her ladyship had
+acquired during her long residence at Fellside. Here, too, in Sheraton
+cabinets, were those treasures of old English china which Lady
+Maulevrier had inherited from past generations.
+
+Her ladyship's rooms were situated at the southern end of this corridor,
+her bed-chamber being at the extreme end of the house, with windows
+commanding two magnificent views, one across the lake and the village of
+Grasmere to the green slopes of Fairfield, the other along the valley
+towards Rydal Water. This and the adjoining boudoir were the prettiest
+rooms in the house, and no one wondered that her ladyship should spend
+so much of her life in the luxurious seclusion of her own apartments.
+
+John Hammond went to his room, which was on the same side of the house
+as her ladyship's; but he was in no disposition for sleep. He opened the
+casement, and stood looking out upon the moonlit lake and the quiet
+village, where one solitary light shone like a faint star in a cottage
+window, amidst that little cluster of houses by the old church, once
+known as Kirktown. Beyond the village rose gentle slopes, crowned with
+foliage, and above those wooded crests appeared the grand outline of the
+hills, surrounding and guarding Easedale's lovely valley, as the hills
+surrounded Jerusalem of old.
+
+He looked at that delicious landscape with eyes that hardly saw its
+beauty. The image of a lovely face came between him and all the glory of
+earth and sky.
+
+'I think she likes me,' he was saying to himself. 'There was a look in
+her eyes to-night that told me the time was come when----'
+
+The thought died unfinished in his brain. Through the silent house,
+across the placid lake, there rang a wild, shrill cry that froze the
+blood in his veins, or seemed so to freeze it--a shriek of agony, and in
+a woman's voice. It rang out from an open window near his own. The sound
+seemed close to his ear.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+'O BITTERNESS OF THINGS TOO SWEET.'
+
+
+Only for an instant did John Hammond stand motionless after hearing that
+unearthly shriek. In the next moment he rushed into the corridor,
+expecting to hear the sound repeated, to find himself face to face with
+some midnight robber, whose presence had caused that wild cry of alarm.
+But in the corridor all was silent as the grave. No open door suggested
+the entrance of an intruder. The dimly-burning lamps showed only the
+long empty gallery. He stood still for a few moments listening for
+voices, footsteps, the rustle of garments: but there was nothing.
+
+Nothing? Yes, a groan, a long-drawn moaning sound, as of infinite pain.
+This time there was no doubt as to the direction from which the sound
+came. It came from Lady Maulevrier's room. The door was ajar, and he
+could see the faint light of the night-lamp within. That fearful cry had
+come from her ladyship's room. She was in peril or pain of some kind.
+
+Convinced of this one fact, Mr. Hammond had not an instant's hesitation.
+He pushed open the door without compunction, and entered the room,
+prepared to behold some terrible scene.
+
+But all was quiet as death itself. No midnight burglar had violated the
+sanctity of Lady Maulevrier's apartment. The soft, steady light of the
+night-lamp shone on the face of the sleeper. Yes, all was quiet in the
+room, but not in that sleeper's soul. The broad white brow was painfully
+contracted, the lips drawn down and distorted, the delicate hand, half
+hidden by the deep Valenciennes ruffle, clutched the coverlet with
+convulsive force. Sigh after sigh burst from the agitated breast. John
+Hammond gazed upon the sleeper in an agony of apprehension, uncertain
+what to do. Was this dreaming only; or was it some kind of seizure which
+called for medical aid? At her ladyship's age the idea of paralysis was
+not too improbable for belief. If this was a dream, then indeed the
+visions of Lady Maulevrier's head upon her bed were more terrible than
+the dreams of common mortals.
+
+In any case Mr. Hammond felt that it was his duty to send some attendant
+to Lady Maulevrier, some member of the household who was familiar with
+her ladyship's habits, her own maid if that person could be unearthed
+easily. He knew that the servants slept in a separate wing; but he
+thought it more than likely that her ladyship's personal attendant
+occupied a room near her mistress.
+
+He went back to the corridor and looked round him in doubt, for a moment
+or two.
+
+Close against her ladyship's door there was a swing door, covered with
+red cloth, which seemed to communicate with the old part of the house.
+John Hammond pushed this door, and it yielded to his hand, revealing a
+lamp-lit passage, narrow, old-fashioned, and low. He thought it likely
+that Lady Maulevrier's maid might occupy a room in this half-deserted
+wing. As he pushed open the door he saw an elderly man coming towards
+him, with a candle in his hand, and with the appearance of having
+huddled on his clothes hastily.
+
+'You heard that scream?' said Hammond.
+
+'Yes. It was her ladyship, I suppose. Nightmare. She is subject to
+nightmare.'
+
+'It is very dreadful. Her whole countenance was convulsed just now, when
+I went into her room to see what was wrong. I was almost afraid of a fit
+of some kind. Ought not her maid to go to her?'
+
+'She wants no assistance,' the man answered, coolly. 'It was only a
+dream. It is not the first time I have been awakened by a shriek like
+that. It is a kind of nightmare, no doubt; and it passes off in a few
+minutes, and leaves her sleeping calmly.'
+
+He went to her ladyship's door, pushed it open a little way, and looked
+in. 'Yes, she is sleeping as quietly as an infant,' he said, shutting
+the door softly as he spoke.
+
+'I am very glad; but surely she ought to have her maid near her at
+night, if she is subject to those attacks.'
+
+'It is no attack, I tell you. It is nothing but a dream,' answered
+Steadman impatiently.
+
+'Yet you were frightened, just as I was, or you would not have got up
+and dressed,' said Hammond, looking at the man suspiciously.
+
+He had heard of this old servant Steadman, who was supposed to enjoy
+more of her ladyship's confidence than any one else in the household;
+but he had never spoken to the man before that night.
+
+'Yes, I came. It was my duty to come, knowing her ladyship's habits. I
+am a light sleeper, and that scream woke me instantly. If her ladyship's
+maid were wanted I should call her. I am a kind of watch-dog, you see,
+sir.'
+
+'You seem to be a very faithful dog.'
+
+'I have been in her ladyship's service more than forty years. I have
+reason to be faithful. I know her ladyship's habits better than any one
+in the house. I know that she had a great deal of trouble in her early
+life, and I believe the memory of it comes back upon her sometimes in
+her dreams, and gets the better of her.'
+
+'If it was memory that wrung that agonised shriek from her just now, her
+recollections of the past must be very terrible.'
+
+'Ah, sir, there is a skeleton in every house,' answered James Steadman,
+gravely.
+
+This was exactly what Maulevrier had said under the yew trees which
+Wordsworth planted.
+
+'Good-night, sir,' said Steadman.
+
+'Good-night. You are sure that Lady Maulevrier may be left safely--that
+there is no fear of illness of any kind?'
+
+'No, sir. It was only a bad dream. Good-night, sir.'
+
+Steadman went back to his own quarters. Mr. Hammond heard him draw the
+bolts of the swing door, thus cutting off all communication with the
+corridor.
+
+The eight-day clock on the staircase struck two as Mr. Hammond returned
+to his room, even less inclined for sleep than when he left it. Strange,
+that nocturnal disturbance of a mind which seemed so tranquil in the
+day. Or was that tranquillity only a mask which her ladyship wore before
+the world: and was the bitter memory of events which happened forty
+years ago still a source of anguish to that highly strung nature?
+
+'There are some minds which cannot forget,' John Hammond said to
+himself, as he meditated upon her ladyship's character and history. 'The
+story of her husband's crime may still be fresh in her memory, though it
+is only a tradition for the outside world. His crime may have involved
+some deep wrong done to herself, some outrage against her love and faith
+as a wife. One of the stories Maulevrier spoke of the other day was of a
+wicked woman's influence upon the governor--a much more likely story
+than that of any traffic in British interests or British honour, which
+would have been almost impossible for a man in Lord Maulevrier's
+position. If the scandal was of a darker kind--a guilty wife--the
+mysterious disappearance of a husband--the horror of the thing may have
+made a deeper impression on Lady Maulevrier than even her nearest and
+dearest dream of: and that superb calm which she wears like a royal
+mantle may be maintained at the cost of struggles which tear her
+heart-strings. And then at night, when the will is dormant, when the
+nervous system is no longer ruled by the power of waking intelligence,
+the old familiar agony returns, the hated images flash back upon the
+brain, and in proportion to the fineness of the temperament is the
+intensity of the dreamer's pain.'
+
+And then he went on to reflect upon the long monotonous years spent in
+that lonely house, shut in from the world by those everlasting hills.
+Albeit the house was an ideal house, set in a landscape of infinite
+beauty, the monotony must be none the less oppressive for a mind
+burdened with dark memories, weighed down by sorrows which could seek no
+relief from sympathy, which could never become familiarised by
+discussion.
+
+'I wonder that a woman of Lady Maulevrier's intellect should not have
+better known how to treat her own malady,' thought Hammond.
+
+Mr. Hammond inquired after her ladyship's health next morning, and was
+told she was perfectly well.
+
+'Grandmother is in capital spirits,' said Lady Lesbia. 'She is pleased
+with the contents of yesterday's _Globe_. Lord Denyer, the son of one of
+her oldest friends, has been making a great speech at Liverpool in the
+Conservative interest, and her ladyship thinks we shall have a change of
+parties before long.'
+
+'A general shuffle of the cards,' said Maulevrier, looking up from his
+breakfast. 'I'm sure I hope so. I'm no politician, but I like a row.'
+
+'I hope you are a Conservative, Mr. Hammond,' said Lesbia.
+
+'I had hoped you would have known that ever so long ago, Lady Lesbia.'
+
+Lesbia blushed at his tone, which was almost a reproach.
+
+'I suppose I ought to have understood from the general tenor of your
+conversation,' she said; 'but I am terribly stupid about politics. I
+take so little interest in them. I am always hearing that we are being
+badly governed--that the men who legislate for us are stupid or wicked;
+yet the world seems to go on somehow, and we are no worse.'
+
+'It is just the same with sport,' said Maulevrier. 'Every rainy spring
+we are told that all the young birds have been drowned, or that the
+grouse-disease has decimated the fathers and mothers, and that we shall
+have nothing to shoot; but when August comes the birds are there all the
+same.'
+
+'It is the nature of mankind to complain,' said Hammond. 'Cain and Abel
+were the first farmers, and you see one of them grumbled.'
+
+They were rather lively at breakfast that morning--Maulevrier's last
+breakfast but one--for he had announced his determination of going to
+Scotland next day. Other fellows would shoot all the birds if he dawdled
+any longer. Mary was in deep despondency at the idea of his departure,
+yet she laughed and talked with the rest. And perhaps Lesbia felt a
+little moved at the thought of losing Mr. Hammond. Maulevrier would come
+back to Mary, but John Hammond was hardly likely to return. Their
+parting would be for ever.
+
+'You needn't sit quite in my pocket, Molly,' said Maulevrier to his
+younger sister.
+
+'I like to make the most of you, now you are going away,' sighed Mary.
+'Oh, dear, how dull we shall all be when you are gone.'
+
+'Not a bit of it! You will have some fox-hunting, perhaps, before the
+snow is on the hills.'
+
+At the very mention of fox-hounds Lady Mary's bright young face
+crimsoned, and Maulevrier began to laugh in a provoking way, with
+side-long glances at his younger sister.
+
+'Did you ever hear of Molly's fox-hunting, by-the-by, Hammond?' he
+asked.
+
+Mary tried to put her hand before his lips, but it was useless.
+
+'Why shouldn't I tell?' he exclaimed. 'It was quite a heroic adventure.
+You must know our fox-hunting here is rather a peculiar
+institution,--very good in its way, but strictly local. No horse could
+live among our hills, so we hunt on foot, and as the pace is good, and
+the work hard, nobody who starts with the hounds is likely to be in at
+the death, except the huntsmen. We are all mad for the sport, and off we
+go, over the hills and far away, picking up a fresh field as we go. The
+ploughman leaves his plough, and the shepherd leaves his flock, and the
+farmer leaves his thrashing, to follow us; in every field we cross we
+get fresh blood, while those who join us at the start fall off by
+degrees. Well, it happened one day late in October, when there were long
+ridges of snow on Helvellyn, and patches of white on Fairfield, Mistress
+Mary here must needs take her bamboo staff and start for the Striding
+Edge. It was just the day upon which she might have met her death easily
+on that perilous point, but happily something occurred to divert her
+juvenile fancy, for scarcely had she got to the bottom of Dolly Waggon
+Pike--you know Dolly----'
+
+'Intimately,' said Hammond, with a nod.
+
+'Scarcely had she neared the base of Dolly Waggon when she heard the
+huntsman's horn and the hounds at full cry, streaming along towards
+Dunmail Raise. Off flew Molly, all among the butcher boys, and farmers'
+men, and rosy-cheeked squireens of the district--racing over the rugged
+fields--clambering over the low stone walls--up hill, down
+hill--shouting when the others shouted--never losing sight of the waving
+sterns--winding and doubling, and still going upward and upward, till
+she stood, panting and puffing like a young grampus, on the top of Seat
+Sandal, still all among the butcher boys and the farmer's men, and the
+guides and the red-cheeked squireens, her frock torn to ribbons, her hat
+lost in a ditch, her hair streaming down her back, and every inch of
+her, from her nose downwards, splashed and spattered with mire and clay.
+What a spectacle for gods and men, guides and butcher boys. And there
+she stood with the sun going down beyond Coniston Old Man, and a
+seven-mile walk between her and Fellside.
+
+'Poor Lady Mary!' said Hammond, looking at her very kindly: but Mary did
+not see that friendly glance, which betokened sympathy rather than
+scorn. She sat silent and very red, with drooping eyelids, thinking her
+brother horribly cruel for thus publishing her foolishness.
+
+'Poor, indeed!' exclaimed Maulevrier. 'She came crawling home after
+dark, footsore and draggled, looking like a beggar girl, and as evil
+fate would have it, her ladyship, who so seldom goes out, must needs
+have been taking afternoon tea at the Vicarage upon that particular
+occasion, and was driving up the avenue as Mary crawled to the gate. The
+storm that followed may be more easily imagined than described.'
+
+'It was years and years ago,' expostulated Mary, looking very angry.
+'Grandmother needn't have made such a fuss about it.'
+
+'Ah, but in those days she still had hopes of civilising you,' answered
+Maulevrier. 'Since then she has abandoned all endeavour in that
+direction, and has given you over to your own devices--and me. Since
+then you have become a chartered libertine. You have letters of mark.'
+
+'I don't care what you call me,' said Mary. 'I only know that I am very
+happy when you are at home, and very miserable when you are away.'
+
+'It is hardly kind of you to say that, Lady Mary,' remonstrated Fraeulein
+Mueller, who, up to this point, had been busily engaged with muffins and
+gooseberry jam.
+
+'Oh, I don't mean that any one is unkind to me or uses me badly,' said
+Mary. 'I only mean that my life is empty when Maulevrier is away, and
+that I am always longing for him to come back again.'
+
+'I thought you adored the hills, and the lake, and the villagers, and
+your pony, and Maulevrier's dogs,' said, Lesbia faintly contemptuous.
+
+'Yes, but one wants something human to love,' answered Mary, making it
+very obvious that there was no warmth of affection between herself and
+the feminine members of her family.
+
+She had not thought of the significance of her speech. She was very
+angry with Maulevrier for having held her up to ridicule before Mr.
+Hammond, who already despised her, as she believed, and whose contempt
+was more galling than it need have been, considering that he was a mere
+casual visitor who would go away and return no more. Never till his
+coming had she felt her deficiencies; but in his presence she writhed
+under the sense of her unworthiness, and had an almost agonising
+consciousness of all those faults which her grandmother had told her
+about so often with not the slightest effect. In those days she had not
+cared what Lady Maulevrier or any one else might say of her, or think of
+her. She lived her life, and defied fortune. She was worse than her
+reputation. To-day she felt it a bitter thing that she had grown to the
+age of womanhood lacking all those graces and accomplishments which made
+her sister adorable, and which might make even a plain woman charming.
+
+Never till John Hammond's coming had she felt a pang of envy in the
+contemplation of Lesbia's beauty or Lesbia's grace; but now she had so
+keen a sense of the difference between herself and her sister that she
+began to fear that this cruel pain must indeed be that lowest of all
+vices. Even the difference in their gowns was a source of humiliation to
+her how. Lesbia was looking her loveliest this morning, in a gown that
+was all lace and soft Madras muslin, flowing, cloud-like; while Mary's
+tailor gown, with its trim tight bodice, horn buttons, and kilted skirt,
+seemed to cry aloud that it had been made for a Tomboy. And this tailor
+gown was a costume to which Mary had condemned herself by her own folly.
+Only a year ago, moved by an artistic admiration for Lesbia's delicate
+breakfast gowns, Mary had told her grandmother that she would like to
+have something of the same kind, whereupon the dowager, who did not take
+the faintest interest in Mary's toilet, but who had a stern sense of
+justice, replied--
+
+'I do not think Lesbia's frocks and your habits will agree, but you can
+have some pretty morning gowns if you like;' and the order had been
+given for a confection in muslin and lace for Lady Mary.
+
+Mary came down to breakfast one bright June morning, in the new frock,
+feeling very proud of herself, and looking very pretty.
+
+'Fine feathers make fine birds,' said Fraeulein Mueller. 'I should hardly
+have known you.'
+
+'I wish you would always dress like that,' said Lesbia; 'you really look
+like a young lady;' and Mary danced about on the lawn, feeling
+sylph-like, and quite in love with her own elegance, when a sudden
+uplifting of canine voices in the distance had sent her flying to see
+what was the matter with the terrier pack.
+
+In the kennel there was riot and confusion. Ahab was demolishing
+Angelina, Absalom had Agamemnon in a deadly grip. Dog-whip in hand, Mary
+rushed to the rescue, and laid about her, like the knights of old,
+utterly forgetful of her frock. She soon succeeded in restoring order,
+but the Madras muslin, the Breton lace had perished in the conflict. She
+left the kennel panting, and in rags and tatters, some of the muslin and
+lace hanging about her in strips a yard long, but the greater part
+remaining in the possession of the terriers, who had mauled and munched
+her finery to their hearts' content, while she was reading the Riot Act.
+
+She went back to the house, bowed down by shame and confusion, and
+marched straight to the dowager's morning-room.
+
+'Look what the terriers have done to me, grandmother,' she said, with a
+sob. 'It is all my own fault, of course. I ought not to have gone near
+them in that stupid muslin. Please forgive me for being so foolish. I am
+not fit to have pretty frocks.'
+
+'I think, my dear, you can now have no doubt that the tailor gowns are
+fittest for you,' answered Lady Maulevrier, with crushing placidity. 'We
+have tried the experiment of dressing you like Lesbia, and you see it
+does not answer. Tell Kibble to throw your new gown in the rag-bag, and
+please let me hear no more about it.'
+
+After this dismal failure Mary could not feel herself ill-used in
+having to wear tailor gowns all the year round. She was allowed cotton
+frocks for very warm weather, and she had pretty gowns for evening wear;
+but her usual attire was cloth or linsey woolsey, made by the local
+tailor. Sometimes Maulevrier ordered her a gown or a coat from his own
+man in Conduit Street, and then she felt herself smart and fashionable.
+And even the local tailor contrived to make her gowns prettily, having a
+great appreciation of her straight willowy figure, and deeming it a
+privilege to work for her, so that hitherto Mary had felt very well
+content with her cloth and linsey. But now that John Hammond so
+obviously admired Lesbia's delicate raiment, poor Mary began to think
+her woollen gowns odious.
+
+After breakfast Mary and Maulevrier went straight off to the kennels.
+His lordship had numerous instructions to give on this last day, and his
+lieutenant had to receive and register his orders. Lesbia went to the
+garden with her book and with Fraeulein--the inevitable Fraeulein as
+Hammond thought her--in close attendance.
+
+It was a lovely morning, sultry, summer-like, albeit September had just
+begun. The tennis lawn, which had been levelled on one side of the
+house, was surrounded on three sides by shrubberies planted forty years
+ago, in the beginning of Lady Maulevrier's widowhood. All loveliest
+trees grew there in perfection, sheltered by the mighty wall of the
+mountain, fed by the mists from the lake. Larch and mountain ash, and
+Lawsonian cyprus,--deodara and magnolia, arbutus, and silver broom,
+acacia and lilac, flourished here in that rich beauty which made every
+cottage garden in the happy district a little paradise; and here in a
+semi-circular recess at one end of the lawn were rustic chairs and
+tables and an umbrella tent. This was Lady Lesbia's chosen retreat on
+summer mornings, and a favourite place for afternoon tea.
+
+Mr. Hammond followed the two ladies to their bower.
+
+'This is to be my last morning,' he said, looking at Lesbia. 'Will you
+think me a great bore if I spend it with you?'
+
+'We shall think it very nice of you,' answered Lesbia, without a vestige
+of emotion; 'especially if you will read to us.'
+
+'I will do any thing to make myself useful. What shall I read?'
+
+'Anything you like. What do you say to Tennyson?'
+
+'That he is a noble poet, a teacher of all good; but too philosophical
+for my present mood. May I read you some of Heine's ballads, those songs
+which you sing so exquisitely, or rather some you do not sing, and which
+will be fresher to you. My German is far from perfect, but I am told it
+is passable, and Fraeulein Mueller can throw her scissors at me when my
+accent is too dreadful.'
+
+'You speak German beautifully,' said Fraeulein. 'I wonder where you
+learned it?'
+
+'I have been a good deal in Germany, and I had a Hanoverian valet who
+was quite a gentleman, and spoke admirably. I think I learned more from
+him than from grammars or dictionaries. I'll go and fetch Heine.'
+
+'What a very agreeable person Mr. Hammond is,' said Fraeulein, when he
+was gone. 'We shall quite miss him.'
+
+'Yes, I have no doubt we shall miss him,' said Lesbia, again without the
+faintest emotion.
+
+The governess began to think that the ordeal of an agreeable young man's
+presence at Fellside had been passed in safety, and that her pupil was
+unscathed. She had kept a close watch on the two, as in duty bound. She
+knew that Hammond was in love with Lesbia; but she thought Lesbia was
+heart-whole.
+
+Mr. Hammond came back with a shabby little book in his hand and
+established himself comfortably in one of the two Beaconsfield chairs.
+
+He opened his book at that group of short poems called Heimkehr, and
+read here and there, as fancy led him. Sometimes the strain was a
+love-song, brief, passionate as the cry of a soul in pain; sometimes the
+verses were bitter and cynical; sometimes full of tenderest simplicity,
+telling of childhood, and youth and purity; sometimes dark with hidden
+meanings, grim, awful, cold with the chilling breath of the
+charnel-house. Sometimes Lesbia's heart beat a little faster as Mr.
+Hammond read, for it seemed as if it was he who was speaking to her, and
+not the dead poet.
+
+An hour or more passed in this way. Fraeulein Mueller was charmed at
+hearing some of her favourite poems, asking now for this little bit, and
+anon for another, and expatiating upon the merits of German poets in
+general, and Heine in particular, in the pauses of the lecture. She was
+quite carried away by her delight in the poet, and was so entirely
+uplifted to the ideal world that, when a footman came with a message
+from Lady Maulevrier requesting her presence, she tripped gaily off at
+once, without a thought of danger in leaving those two together on the
+lawn. She had been a faithful watch-dog up to this point; but she was
+now lulled into a false sense of security by the idea that the time of
+peril was all but ended.
+
+So she left them; but could she have looked back two minutes afterwards
+she would have perceived the unwisdom of that act.
+
+No sooner had the Fraeulein turned the corner of the shrubbery than
+Hammond laid aside his book and drew nearer Lesbia, who sat looking
+downward, with her eyes upon the delicate piece of fancy work which had
+occupied her fingers all the morning.
+
+'Lesbia, this is my last day at Fellside, and you and I may never have a
+minute alone together again while I am here. Will you come for a little
+walk with me on the Fell? There is something I must say to you before I
+go.'
+
+Lesbia's delicate cheek grew a shade more pale. Instinct told her what
+was coming, though never mortal man had spoken to her of love. Nor until
+now had Mr. Hammond ever addressed her by her Christian name without
+the ceremonious prefix. There was a deeper tone in his voice, a graver
+look in his eyes, than she had ever noticed before.
+
+She rose, and took up her sunshade, and went with him meekly through the
+cultivated shrubbery of ornamental timber to the rougher pathway that
+wound through a copse of Scotch fir, which formed the outer boundary of
+Lady Maulevrier's domain. Beyond the fir trees rose the grassy slope of
+the hill, on the brow of which sheep were feeding. Deep down in the
+hollow below the lawns and shrubberries of Fellside the placid bosom of
+the lake shone like an emerald floor in the sunlight, reflecting the
+verdure of the hill, and the white sheep dotted about here and there.
+
+There was not a breath in the air around them as those two sauntered
+slowly side by side in the pine wood, not a cloud in the dazzling blue
+sky above; and for a little time they too were silent, as if bound by a
+spell which neither dared to break. Then at last Hammond spoke.
+
+'Lesbia, you know that I love you,' he began, in his low, grave voice,
+tremulous with feeling. 'No words I can say to-day can tell you of my
+love more plainly than my heart has been telling you in every hour of
+this happy, happy time that you and I have spent together. I love you as
+I never hoped to love, fervently, completely, believing that the
+perfection of earthly bliss will be mine if I can but win you. Dearest,
+is there such a sweet hope for me; are you indeed my own, as I am yours,
+heart and soul, and mind and being, till the last throb of life in this
+poor clay?'
+
+He tried to take her hand, but she drew herself away from him with a
+frightened look. She was very pale, and there was infinite distress in
+the dark violet eyes, which looked entreatingly, deprecatingly at her
+lover.
+
+'I dare not answer as you would like me to answer,' she faltered, after
+a painful pause. 'I am not my own mistress. My grandmother has brought
+me up, devoted herself to me almost, and she has her own views, her own
+plans. I dare not frustrate them!'
+
+'She would like to marry you to a man of rank and fortune--a man who
+will choose you, perhaps, because other people admire you, rather than
+because he himself loves you as you ought to be loved; who will choose
+you because you are altogether the best and most perfect thing of your
+year; just as he would buy a yearling at Newmarket or Doncaster. Her
+ladyship means you to make a great alliance--coronets, not hearts, are
+the counters for her game; but, Lesbia, would you, in the bloom and
+freshness of youth--you with the pulses of youth throbbing at your
+heart--lend yourself to the calculations of age which has lived its life
+and forgotten the very meaning of love? Would you submit to be played as
+a card in the game of a dowager's ambition? Trust me, dearest, in the
+crisis of a woman's life there is one only counsellor she should listen
+to, and that counsellor is her own heart. If you love me--as I dare to
+hope you do--trust in me, hold by me, and leave the rest to Heaven. I
+know that I can make your life happy.'
+
+'You frighten me by your impetuosity,' said Lesbia. 'Surely you forget
+how short a time we have known each other.'
+
+'An age. All my life before the day I saw you is a dead, dull blank as
+compared with the magical hours I have spent with you.'
+
+'I do not even know who and what you are.'
+
+'First, I am a gentleman, or I should not be your brother's friend. A
+poor gentleman, if you like, with only my own right arm to hew my
+pathway through the wood of life to the temple of fortune; but trust me,
+only trust me, Lesbia, and I will so hew my path as to reach that
+temple. Look at me, love. Do I look like a man born to fail?'
+
+She looked up at him shyly, with eyes that were dim with tears. He
+looked like a demi-god, tall, straight as the pine trunks amongst which
+he was standing, a frame formed for strength and activity, a face
+instinct with mental power, dark eyes that glowed with the fire of
+intellect and passion. The sunlight gave an almost unearthly radiance to
+the clear dark of his complexion, the curly brown hair cut close to the
+finely shaped head, the broad brow and boldly modelled features.
+
+Lesbia felt in her heart that such a man must be destined for success,
+born to be a conqueror in all strifes, a victor upon every field.
+
+'Have I the thews and sinews of a man doomed to be beaten in the
+battle?' he asked her. 'No, dearest; Heaven meant me to succeed; and
+with you to fight for I shall not be beaten by adverse fortune. Can you
+not trust Providence and me?'
+
+'I cannot disobey my grandmother. If she will consent----'
+
+'She will not consent. You must defy Lady Maulevrier, Lesbia, if you
+mean to reward my love. But I will promise you this much, darling, that
+if you will be my wife--with your brother's consent--which I am sure of
+before I ask for it, within one year of our marriage I will find means
+of reconciling her ladyship to the match, and winning her entire
+forgiveness for you and me.'
+
+'You are talking of impossibilities,' said Lesbia, frowning. 'Why do you
+talk to me as if I were a child? I know hardly anything of the world,
+but I do know the woman who has reared and educated me. My grandmother
+would never forgive me if I married a poor man. I should be an outcast.'
+
+'We would be outcasts together--happy outcasts. Besides, we should not
+always be poor. I tell you I am predestined to conquer fate.'
+
+'But we should have to begin from the beginning.'
+
+'Yes, we should have to begin from the beginning, as Adam and Eve did
+when they left Paradise.'
+
+'We are not told in the Bible that they had any happiness after that. It
+seems to have been all trouble and weariness, and toil and death, after
+the angel with the flaming sword drove them out of Eden.'
+
+'They were together, and they must have been happy. Oh, Lesbia, if you
+do not feel that you can face poverty and the world's contempt by my
+side, and for my sake, you do not love me. Love never calculates so
+nicely; love never fears the future; and yet you do love me, Lesbia,' he
+said, trying to fold her in his arms; but again she drew herself away
+from him--this time with a look almost of horror--and stood facing him,
+clinging to one of the pine trunks, like a scared wood-nymph.
+
+'You have no right to say that,' she said.
+
+'I have the divine right of my own deep love--of heart which cries out
+to heart. Do you think there is no magnetic power in true love which can
+divine the answering love in another? Lesbia, call me an insolent
+coxcomb if you like, but I know you love me, and that you and I may be
+utterly happy together. Oh, why--why do you shrink from me, my beloved;
+why withhold yourself from my arms! Oh, love, let me hold you to my
+heart--let me seal our betrothal with a kiss!'
+
+'Betrothal--no, no; not for the world,' cried Lesbia. 'Lady Maulevrier
+would cast me off for ever; she would curse me.'
+
+'What would the curse of an ambitious woman weigh against my love? And I
+tell you that her anger would be only a passing tempest. She would
+forgive you.'
+
+'Never--you don't know her.'
+
+'I tell you she would forgive you, and all would be well with us before
+we had been married a year. Why cannot you believe me, Lesbia?'
+
+'Because I cannot believe impossibilities, even from your lips,' she
+answered sullenly.
+
+She stood before him with downcast eyes, the tears streaming down her
+pale cheeks, exquisitively lovely in her agitation and sorrow. Yes, she
+did love him; her heart was beating passionately; she was longing to
+throw herself on his breast, to be folded upon that manly heart, in
+trust in that brave, bright look which seemed to defy fortune. Yes, he
+was a man born to conquer; he was handsome, intellectual, powerful in
+all mental and physical gifts. A man of men. But he was, by his own
+admission, a very obscure and insignificant person, and he had no money.
+Life with him meant a long fight with adverse circumstances; life for
+his wife must mean patience, submission, long waiting upon destiny, and
+perhaps with old age and grey hairs the tardy turning of Fortune's
+wheel. And was she for this to resign the kingdom that had been
+promised to her, the giddy heights which she was born to scale, the
+triumphs and delights and victories of the great world? Yes, Lesbia
+loved this fortuneless knight; but she loved herself and her prospects
+of promotion still better.
+
+'Oh, Lesbia, can you not be brave for my sake--trustful for my sake? God
+will be good to us if we are true to each other.'
+
+'God will not be good to me if I disobey my grandmother. I owe her too
+much; ingratitude in me would be doubly base. I will speak to her. I
+will tell her all you have said, and if she gives me the faintest
+encouragement----'
+
+'She will not; that is a foregone conclusion. Tell her all, if you like;
+but let us be prepared for the answer. When she denies the right of your
+heart to choose its own mate, then rise up in the might of your
+womanhood and defy her. Tell her, "I love him, and be he rich or poor, I
+will share his fate;" tell her boldly, bravely, nobly, as a true woman
+should; and if she be adamant still, proclaim your right to disobey her
+worldly wisdom rather than the voice of your own heart. And then come to
+me, darling, and be my own, and the world which you and I will face
+together shall not be a bad world. I will answer for that. No trouble
+shall come near you. No humiliation shall ever touch you. Only believe
+in me.'
+
+'I can believe in you, but not in the impossible,' answered Lesbia, with
+measured accents.
+
+The voice was silver-sweet, but passing cold. Just then there was a
+rustling among the pine branches, and Lesbia looked round with a
+startled air.
+
+'Is there any one listening?' she exclaimed. 'What was that?'
+
+'Only the breath of heaven. Oh, Lesbia, if you were but a little less
+wise, a little more trustful. Do not be a dumb idol. Say that you love
+me, or do not love me. If you can look me in the face and say the last,
+I will leave you without another word. I will take my sentence and go.'
+
+But this was just what Lesbia could not do. She could not deny her love;
+and yet she could not sacrifice all things for her love. She lifted the
+heavy lids which veiled those lovely eyes, and looked up at him
+imploringly.
+
+'Give me time to breathe, time to think,' she said.
+
+'And then will you answer me plainly, truthfully, without a shadow of
+reserve, remembering that the fate of two lives hangs on your words.'
+
+'I will.'
+
+'Let it be so, then. I'll go for a ramble over the hills, and return in
+time for afternoon tea. I shall look for you on the tennis lawn at
+half-past four.'
+
+He took her in his arms, and this time she yielded herself to him, and
+the beautiful head rested for a few moments upon his breast, and the
+soft eyes looked up at him in confiding fondness. He bent and kissed her
+once only, but a kiss that meant for life and death. In the next moment
+he was gone, leaving her alone among the pine trees.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+'IF I WERE TO DO AS ISEULT DID.'
+
+
+Lady Maulevrier rarely appeared at luncheon. She took some slight
+refection in her morning-room, among her books and papers, and in the
+society of her canine favourites, whose company suited her better at
+certain hours than the noisier companionship of her grandchildren. She
+was a studious woman, loving the silent life of books better than the
+inane chatter of everyday humanity. She was a woman who thought much and
+read much, and who lived more in the past than the present. She lived
+also in the future, counting much upon the splendid career of her
+beautiful granddaughter, which should be in a manner a lengthening out,
+a renewal of her own life. She looked forward to the day when Lesbia
+should reign supreme in the great world, a famous beauty and leader of
+fashion, her every act and word inspired and directed by her
+grandmother, who would be the shadow behind the throne. It was
+possible--nay, probable--that in those days Lady Maulevrier would
+herself re-appear in society, establish her salon, and draw around her
+closing years all that is wittiest, best, and wisest in the great world.
+
+Her ladyship was reposing in her low reading-chair, with a volume of
+Tyndall on the book-stand before her, when the door was opened softly
+and Lesbia came gliding in, and seated herself without a word on the
+hassock at her grandmother's feet. Lady Maulevrier passed her hand
+caressingly over the girl's soft brown hair, without looking up from her
+book.
+
+'You are a late visitor,' she said; 'why did you not come to me after
+breakfast?'
+
+'It was such a lovely morning, we went straight from the breakfast table
+to the garden; I did not think you wanted me.'
+
+'I did not want you; but I am always glad to see my pet. What were you
+doing in the garden all the morning? I did not hear you playing tennis.'
+
+Lady Maulevrier had already interrogated the German governess upon this
+very subject, but she had her own reasons for wishing to hear Lesbia's
+account.
+
+'No, it was too warm for tennis. Fraeulein and I sat and worked, and Mr.
+Hammond read to us.'
+
+'What did he read?'
+
+'Heine's ballads. He reads German beautifully.
+
+'Indeed! I daresay he was at school in Germany. There are cheap schools
+there to which middle-class people send their boys.'
+
+This was like a thrust from a rusty knife.
+
+'Mr. Hammond was at Oxford,' Lesbia said, reproachfully; and then, after
+a longish pause, she clasped her hands upon the arm of Lady Maulevrier's
+chair, and said, in a pleading voice, 'Grandmother, Mr. Hammond has
+asked me to marry him.'
+
+'Indeed! Only that? And pray, did he tell you what are his means of
+maintaining Lord Maulevrier's sister in the position to which her birth
+entitles her?' inquired the dowager, with crushing calmness.
+
+'He is not rich; indeed, I believe, he is poor; but he is brave and
+clever, and he is full of confidence in his power to conquer fortune.'
+
+'No doubt; that is your true adventurer's style. He confides implicitly
+in his own talents, and in somebody else's banker. Mr. Hammond would
+make a tremendous figure in the world, I daresay, and while he was
+making it your brother would have to keep him. Well, my dear Lesbia, I
+hope you gave this gentleman the answer his insolence deserved; or that
+you did better, and referred him to me. I should be glad to give him my
+opinion of his conduct--a person admitted to this house as your
+brother's hanger-on--tolerated only on your brother's account; such a
+person, nameless, penniless, friendless (except for Maulevrier's too
+facile patronage), to dare to lift his eyes to my granddaughter! It is
+ineffable insolence!'
+
+Lesbia crouched by her grandmother's chair, her face hidden from Lady
+Maulevrier's falcon eye. Every word uttered by her ladyship stung like
+the knotted cords of a knout. She knew not whether to be most ashamed of
+her lover or of herself--of her lover for his obscure position, his
+hopeless poverty; of herself for her folly in loving such a man. And she
+did love him, and would fain have pleaded his cause, had she not been
+cowed by the authority that had ruled her all her life.
+
+'Lesbia, if I thought you had been silly enough, degraded enough, to
+give this young man encouragement, to have justified his audacity of
+to-day by any act or word of yours, I should despise, I should detest
+you,' said Lady Maulevrier, sternly. 'What could be more contemptible,
+more hateful in a girl reared as you have been than to give
+encouragement to the first comer--to listen greedily to the first
+adventurer who had the insolence to make love to you, to be eager to
+throw yourself into the arms of the first man who asked you. That my
+granddaughter, a girl reared and taught and watched and guarded by me,
+should have no more dignity, no more modesty, or womanly feeling, than a
+barmaid at an inn!'
+
+Lesbia began to cry.
+
+'I don't see why a barmaid should not be a good woman, or why it
+should be a crime to fall in love,' she said, in a voice broken by sobs.
+'You need not speak to me so unkindly. I am not going to marry Mr.
+Hammond.'
+
+'Oh, you are not? that is very good of you. I am deeply grateful for
+such an assurance.'
+
+'But I like him better than anyone I ever saw in my life before.'
+
+'You have seen so many people. You have had such a wide area for
+choice.'
+
+'No; I know I have been kept like a nun in a convent: but I don't think
+when I go into the world I shall ever see anyone I should like better
+than Mr. Hammond.'
+
+'Wait till you have seen the world before you make up your mind about
+that. And now, Lesbia, leave off talking and thinking like a child; look
+me in the face and listen to me, for I am going to speak seriously; and
+with me, when I am in earnest, what is said once is said for ever.'
+
+Lady Maulevrier grasped her granddaughter's arm with long slender
+fingers which held it as tightly as the grasp of a vice. She drew the
+girl's slim figure round till they were face to face, looking into each
+other's eyes, the dowager's eagle countenance lit up with impassioned
+feeling, severe, awful as the face of one of the fatal sisters, the
+avengers of blood, the harbingers of doom.
+
+'Lesbia, I think I have been good to you, and kind to you,' she said.
+
+'You have been all that is kind and dear,' faltered Lesbia.
+
+'Then give me measure for measure. My life has been a hard one, child;
+hard and lonely, and loveless and joyless. My son, to whom I devoted
+myself in the vigour of youth and in the prime of life, never loved me,
+never repaid me for my love. He spent his days far away from me, when
+his presence would have gladdened my difficult life. He died in a
+strange land. Of his three children, you are the one I took into my
+heart. I did my duty to the others; I lavished my love upon you. Do not
+give me cursing instead of blessing. Do not give me a stone instead of
+bread. I have built every hope of happiness or pleasure in this world
+upon you and your obedience. Obey me, be true to me, and I will make you
+a queen, and I will sit in the shadow of your throne. I will toil for
+you, and be wise for you. You shall have only to shine, and dazzle, and
+enjoy the glory of life. My beautiful darling, for pity's sake do not
+give yourself over to folly.'
+
+'Did not you marry for love, grandmother?'
+
+'No, Lesbia. Lord Maulevrier and I got on very well together, but ours
+was no love-match.'
+
+'Does nobody in our rank ever marry for love? are all marriages a mere
+exchange and barter?'
+
+'No, there are love-matches now and then, which often turn out badly.
+But, my darling, I am not asking you to marry for rank or for money. I
+am only asking you to wait till you find your mate among the noblest in
+the land. He may be the handsomest and most accomplished of men, a man
+born to win women's hearts; and you may love him as fervently as ever a
+village girl loved her first lover. I am not going to sacrifice you, or
+to barter you, dearest. I mean to marry you to the best and noblest
+young man of his day. You shall never be asked to stoop to the unworthy,
+not even if worthlessness wore strawberry leaves in his cap, and owned
+the greatest estate in the land.'
+
+'And if--instead of waiting for this King Arthur of yours--I were to do
+as Iseult did--as Guinevere did--choose for myself----'
+
+'Iseult and Guinevere were wantons. I wonder that you can name them in
+comparison with yourself.'
+
+'If I were to marry a good and honourable man who has his place to make
+in the world, would you never forgive me?'
+
+'You mean Mr. Hammond? You may just as well speak plainly,' said Lady
+Maulevrier, freezingly. 'If you were capable of such idiocy as that,
+Lesbia, I would pluck you out of my heart like a foul weed. I would
+never look upon you, or hear your name spoken, or think of you again as
+long as I lived. My life would not last very long after that blow. Old
+age cannot bear such shocks. Oh, Lesbia, I have been father and mother
+to you; do not bring my grey hairs in sorrow to the grave.'
+
+Lesbia gave a deep sigh, and brushed the tears from her cheeks. Yes, the
+very idea of such a marriage was foolishness. Just now, in the pine
+wood, carried away by the force of her lover's passion, by her own
+softer feelings, it had seemed to her as if she could count the world
+well lost for his sake; but now, at Lady Maulevrier's feet, she became
+again true to her training, and the world was too much to lose.
+
+'What can I do, grandmother?' she asked, submissively, despairingly. 'He
+loves me, and I love him. How can I tell him that he and I can never be
+anything to each other in this world?'
+
+'Refer him to me. I will give him his answer.'
+
+'No, no; that will not do. I have promised to answer him myself. He has
+gone for a walk on the hills, and will come back at four o'clock for my
+answer.'
+
+'Sit down at that table, and write as I dictate.'
+
+'But a letter will be so formal.'
+
+'It is the only way in which you can answer him. When he comes back from
+his walk you will have left Fellside. I shall send you off to St. Bees
+with Fraeulein. You must never look upon that man's face again.'
+
+Lesbia brushed away a few more tears, and obeyed. She had been too well
+trained to attempt resistance. Defiance was out of the question.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+'THE GREATER CANTLE OF THE WORLD IS LOST.'
+
+
+The sky was still cloudless when John Hammond strolled slowly up the
+leafy avenue at Fellside. He had been across the valley and up the hill
+to Easedale Tarn, and then by rough untrodden ways, across a chaos of
+rock and heather, into a second valley, long, narrow, and sterile, known
+as Far Easedale, a desolate gorge, a rugged cleft in the heart of the
+mountains. The walk had been long and laborious; but only in such
+clambering and toiling, such expenditure of muscular force and latent
+heat, could the man's restless soul endure those long hours of suspense.
+
+'How will she answer me? Oh, my God! how will she answer?' he said
+within himself, as he walked up the romantic winding road, which made so
+picturesque an approach to Lady Maulevrier's domain, 'Is my idol gold or
+clay? How will she come through the crucible? Oh, dearest, sweetest,
+loveliest, only be true to the instinct of your womanhood, and my cup
+will be full of bliss, and all my days will flow as sweetly as the
+burden of a song. But if you prove heartless, if you love the world's
+wealth better than you love me--ah! then all is over, and you and I are
+lost to each other for ever. I have made up my mind.'
+
+His face settled into an expression of indomitable determination, as of
+a man who would die rather than be false to his own purpose. There was
+no glow of hope in his heart. He had no deep faith in the girl he loved;
+indeed in his heart of hearts he knew that this being to whom he had
+trusted his hopes of bliss was no heroine. She was a lovely, loveable
+girl, nothing more. How would she greet him when they met presently on
+the tennis lawn? With tears and entreaties, and pretty little
+deprecating speeches, irresolution, timidity, vacillation, perhaps;
+hardly with heroic resolve to act and dare for his sake.
+
+There was no one on the tennis lawn when he went there, though the hour
+was close at hand at which Lesbia had promised to give him his answer.
+He sat down in one of the low chairs, glad to rest after his long ramble
+having had no refreshment but a bottle of soda-water and a biscuit at
+the cottage by Easedale Tarn. He waited, calmly as to outward seeming,
+but with a heavy heart.
+
+'If it were Mary now whom I loved, I should have little fear of the
+issue,' he thought, weighing his sweetheart's character, as he weighed
+his chances of success. 'That young termagant would defy the world for
+her lover.'
+
+He sat in the summer silence for nearly half-an-hour, and still there
+was no sign of Lady Lesbia. Her satin-lined workbasket, with the work
+thrown carelessly across it, was still on the rustic table, just as she
+had left it when they went to the pine wood. Waiting was weary work when
+the bliss of a lifetime trembled in the balance; and yet he did not want
+to be impatient. She might find it difficult to get away from her
+family, perhaps. She was closely watched and guarded, as the most
+precious thing at Fellside.
+
+At last the clock struck five, and Hammond could endure delay no longer.
+He went round by the flower garden to the terrace before the
+drawing-room windows, and through an open window to the drawing-room.
+
+Lady Maulevrier was in her accustomed seat, with her own particular
+little table, magazines, books, newspapers at her side. Lady Mary was
+pouring out the tea, a most unusual thing; and Maulevrier was sitting on
+a stool at her feet, with his knees up to his chin, very warm and dusty,
+eating pound cake.
+
+'Where the mischief have you been hiding yourself all day, Jack?' he
+called out as Hammond appeared, looking round the room as he entered,
+with eager, interrogating eyes, for that one figure which was absent.
+
+'I have been for a walk.'
+
+'You might have had the civility to announce your design, and Molly and
+I would have shared your peregrinations.'
+
+'I am sorry that I lost the privilege of your company.'
+
+'I suppose you lost your luncheon, which was of more importance,' said
+Maulevrier.
+
+'Will you have some tea?' asked Mary, who looked more womanly than usual
+in a cream-coloured surah gown--one of her Sunday gowns.
+
+She had a faint hope that by this essentially feminine apparel she might
+lessen the prejudicial effect of Maulevrier's cruel story about the
+fox-hunt.
+
+Mr. Hammond answered absently, hardly looking at Mary, and quite
+unconscious of her pretty gown.
+
+'Thanks, yes,' he said, taking the cup and saucer, and looking at the
+door by which he momently expected Lady Lesbia's entrance, and then, as
+the door did not open, he looked down at Mary, very busy with china
+teapots and a brass kettle which hissed and throbbed over a spirit lamp.
+
+'Won't you have some cake,' she asked, looking up at him gently, grieved
+at the distress and disappointment in his face. 'I am sure you must be
+dreadfully hungry.'
+
+'Not in the least, thanks. How came you to be entrusted with those
+sacred vessels, Lady Mary? What has become of Fraeulein and your sister?'
+
+'They have rushed off to St. Bees. Grandmother thought Lesbia looking
+pale and out of spirits, and packed her off to the seaside at a minute's
+notice.'
+
+'What! She has left Fellside?' asked Hammond, paling suddenly, as if a
+man had struck him. 'Lady Maulevrier, do I understand that Lady Lesbia
+has gone away?'
+
+He asked the question in an authoritative tone, with the air of a man
+who had a right to be answered. The dowager wondered at his surpassing
+insolence.
+
+'My granddaughter has gone to the seaside with her governess,' she said,
+haughtily.
+
+'At a minute's notice?'
+
+'At a minute's notice. I am not in the habit of hesitating about any
+step which I consider necessary for my grandchildren's welfare.'
+
+She looked him full in the face, with those falcon eyes of hers; and he
+gave her back a look as resolute, and every whit as full of courage and
+of pride.
+
+'Well,' he said, after a very perceptible pause, 'no doubt your ladyship
+has done wisely, and I must submit to your jurisdiction. But I had asked
+Lady Lesbia a question, and I had been promised an answer.'
+
+'Your question has been answered by Lady Lesbia. She left a note for
+you,' replied Lady Maulevrier.
+
+'Thanks,' answered Mr. Hammond, briefly, and he hurried from the room
+without another word.
+
+The letter was on the table in his bedroom. He had little hope of any
+good waiting for him in a letter so written. The dowager and the world
+had triumphed over a girl's dawning love, no doubt.
+
+This was Lesbia's letter:
+
+    'Dear Mr. Hammond,--Lady Maulevrier desires me to say that the
+    proposal which you honoured me by making this morning is one which I
+    cannot possibly accept, and that any idea of an engagement between
+    you and me could result only in misery and humiliation to both. She
+    thinks it best, under these circumstances, that we should not again
+    meet, and I shall therefore have left Fellside before you receive
+    this letter.
+
+    'With all good wishes, very faithfully yours,
+
+    'LESBIA HASELDEN.'
+
+'Very faithfully mine--faithful to her false training, to the worldly
+mind that rules her; faithful to the gods of this world--Belial and
+Mammon, and the Moloch Fashion. Poor cowardly soul! She loves me, and
+owns as much, yet weakly flies from me, afraid to trust the strong arm
+and the brave heart of the man who loves her, preferring the glittering
+shams of the world to the reality of true and honest love. Well, child,
+I have weighed you in the balance and found you wanting. Would to God it
+had been otherwise! If you had been brave and bold for love's sake,
+where is that pure and perfect chrysolite for which I would have
+bartered you?'
+
+He flung himself into a chair, and sat with his head bowed upon his
+folded arms, and his eyes not innocent of tears. What would he not have
+given to find truth and courage and scorn of the world's wealth in that
+heart which he had tried to win. Did he think her altogether heartless
+because she so glibly renounced him? No, he was too just for that. He
+called her only half-hearted. She was like the cat in the adage,
+'Letting I dare not, wait upon I would.' But he told himself with one
+deep sigh of resignation that she was lost to him for ever.
+
+'I have tried her, and found her not worth the winning,' he said.
+
+The house, even the lovely landscape smiling under his windows, the
+pastoral valley, smooth lake and willowy island, seemed hateful to him.
+He felt himself hemmed round by those green hills, by yonder brown and
+rugged wall of Nabb Scar, stifled for want of breathing space. The
+landscape was lovely enough, but it was like a beautiful grave. He
+longed to get away from it.
+
+'Another man would follow her to St. Bees,' he said. 'I will not.'
+
+He flung a few things into a Gladstone bag, sat down, and wrote a brief
+note to Maulevrier, asking him to make his excuses to her ladyship. He
+had made up his mind to go to Keswick that afternoon, and would rejoin
+his friend to-morrow, at Carlisle. This done, he rang for Maulevrier's
+valet, and asked that person to look after his luggage and bring it on
+to Scotland with his master's things; and then, without a word of adieu
+to anyone, John Hammond went out of the house, with the Gladstone bag in
+his hand, and shook the dust of Fellside off his feet.
+
+He ordered a fly at the Prince of Wales's Hotel, and drove to Keswick,
+whence he went on to the Lodore. The gloom and spaciousness of
+Derwentwater, grey in the gathering dusk, suited his humour better than
+the emerald prettiness of Grasmere--the roar of the waterfall made music
+in his ear. He dined in a private room, and spent the evening roaming on
+the shores of the lake, and at eleven o'clock went back to his hotel and
+sat late into the night reading Heine, and thinking of the girl who had
+refused him.
+
+Mr. Hammond's letter was delivered to Lord Maulevrier five minutes
+before dinner, as he sat in the drawing-room with her ladyship and Mary.
+Poor Mary had put on another pretty gown for dinner, still bent upon
+effacing Mr. Hammond's image of her as a tousled, frantic creature in
+torn and muddy raiment. She sat watching the door, just as Hammond had
+watched it three hours ago.
+
+'So,' said Maulevrier, 'your ladyship has succeeded in driving my friend
+away. Hammond has left Fellside, and begs me to convey to you his
+compliments and his grateful acknowledgment of all your kindness.'
+
+'I hope I have not been uncivil to him,' answered Lady Maulevrier
+coldly. 'As you had both made up your minds to go to-morrow, it can
+matter very little that he should go to-day.'
+
+Mary looked down at the ribbon and lace on her prettiest frock, and
+thought that it mattered a great deal to her. Yet, if he had stayed,
+would he have seen her frock or her? With his bodily eyes, perhaps, but
+not with the eyes of his mind. Those eyes saw only Lesbia.
+
+'No, perhaps it hardly matters,' answered Maulevrier, with suppressed
+anger. 'The man is not worth talking about or thinking about. What is
+he? Only the best, truest, bravest fellow I ever knew.'
+
+'There are shepherds and guides in Grasmere of whom we could say almost
+as much,' said Lady Maulevrier, 'yet you would scarcely expect me to
+encourage one of them to pay his addresses to your sister? Pray spare us
+all nonsense-talk, Maulevrier. This business is very well ended. You
+ought never to have brought Mr. Hammond here.'
+
+'I am sure of that now. I am very sorry I did bring him.'
+
+'Oh, the man will not die for love. A disappointment of that kind is
+good for a young man in his position. It will preserve him from more
+vulgar entanglements, and perhaps from the folly of a too early
+marriage.'
+
+'That is a mighty philosophical way of looking at the matter.'
+
+'It is the only true way. I hope when you are my age you will have
+learnt to look at everything in a philosophical spirit.'
+
+'Well, Lady Maulevrier, you have had it all your own way,' said the
+young man, walking up and down the room in an angry mood. 'I hope you
+will never be sorry for having come between two people who loved each
+other, and might have made each other happy.'
+
+'I shall never be sorry for having saved my granddaughter from an
+imprudent marriage. Give me your arm, Maulevrier, and let me hear no
+more about Mr. Hammond. We have all had quite enough of him,' said her
+ladyship, as the butler announced dinner.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+'SINCE PAINTED OR NOT PAINTED ALL SHALL FADE.'
+
+
+Fraeulein Mueller and her charge returned from St. Bees after a sojourn of
+about three weeks upon that quiet shore: but Lady Lesbia did not appear
+to be improved in health or spirits by the revivifying breezes of the
+ocean.
+
+'It is a dull, horrid place, and I was bored to death there!' she said,
+when Mary asked how she had enjoyed herself. 'There was no question of
+enjoyment. Grandmother took it into her head that I was looking ill, and
+sent me to the sea; but I should have been just as well at Fellside.'
+
+This meant that between Lesbia and that distinctly inferior being, her
+younger sister, there was to be no confidence. Mary had watched the
+life-drama acted under her eyes too closely not to know all about it,
+and was not inclined to be so put off.
+
+That pale perturbed countenance of John Hammond's, those eager inquiring
+eyes looking to the door which opened not, had haunted Mary's waking
+thoughts, had even mingled with the tangled web of her dreams. Oh, how
+could any woman scorn such love? To be so loved, and by such a man,
+seemed to Mary the perfection of earthly bliss. She had never been
+educated up to those wider and loftier views of life, which teach a
+woman that houses and lands, place and power, are the supreme good.
+
+'I can't understand how you could treat that noble-minded man so badly,'
+she exclaimed one day, when she and Lesbia were alone in the library,
+and after she had sat for ever so long, staring out of the window,
+meditating upon her sister's cruelty.
+
+'Of whom are you speaking, pray?'
+
+'As if you didn't know! Of Mr. Hammond.'
+
+'And pray, how do you know that he is noble-minded, or that I treated
+him badly?'
+
+'Well, as to his being noble-minded, that jumps to the eyes, as French
+books say. As for your treatment of him, I was looking on all the time,
+and I know how unkind you were, and I heard him talking to you in the
+fir-copse that day.'
+
+'You were listening' cried Lesbia indignantly.
+
+'I was not listening! I was passing by. And if people choose to carry on
+their love affairs out of doors they must expect to be overheard. I
+heard him pleading to you, telling you how he would work for you, fight
+the battle of life for you, asking you to be trustful and brave for his
+sake. But you have a heart of stone. You and grandmother both have
+hearts of stone. I think she must have taken out your heart when you
+were little, and put a stone in its place.'
+
+'Really,' said Lesbia, trying to carry things with a high hand, albeit
+her very human heart was beating passionately all the time, 'I think you
+ought to be very grateful to me--and grandmother--for refusing Mr.
+Hammond.'
+
+'Why grateful?'
+
+'Because it leaves you a chance of getting him for yourself; and
+everybody can see that you are over head and ears in love with him. That
+jumps to the eyes, as you say.'
+
+Mary turned crimson, trembled with rage, looked at her sister as if she
+would kill her, for a moment or so, and finally burst into tears.
+
+'That is not true, and it is shameful for you to say such a thing,' she
+cried.
+
+'Why, what a virago you are, Mary. Well, I'm very glad it is not true.
+Mr. Hammond is--yes, I will be quite candid with you--he is the only man
+I am ever likely to admire for his own sake. He is good, brave, clever,
+all that you think him. But you and I do not live in a world in which
+girls are free to follow their own inclinations. I should break Lady
+Maulevrier's heart if I were to make a foolish marriage; and I owe her
+too much to set her wishes at naught, or to make her declining years
+unhappy. I must obey her, at any cost to my own feelings. Please never
+mention Mr. Hammond's name. I'm sure I've had quite enough unhappiness
+about him.'
+
+'I see,' said Mary, bitterly. 'It is your own pain you think of, not
+his. He may suffer, so long as you are not worried.'
+
+'You are an impertinent chit,' retorted Lesbia, 'and you know nothing
+about it.'
+
+After this there was no more said about Mr. Hammond; but Mary did not
+forget him. She wrote long letters to her brother, who was still in
+Scotland, shooting, deer-stalking, fishing, killing something or other
+daily, in the most approved fashion of an Englishman taking his
+pleasure. Maulevrier occasionally repaid her with a telegram; but he was
+not a good correspondent. He declared that life was too short for
+letter-writing.
+
+Summer was gone; the lake was no longer a shining emerald floor, dotted
+with the reflection of the flock upon the verdant slopes above it, but
+dull and grey of hue, and broken by white-edged wavelets. Patches of
+snow gleamed on the misty heights of Helvellyn, and the autumn winds
+howled and shrieked around Fellside in the evenings, when all the
+shutters were shut, and the outside world seemed little more than an
+idea: that mystic hour when the sheep are slumbering under the starry
+sky, and when, as the Westmoreland peasant believes, the fairies help
+the housewife at her spinning-wheel.
+
+Those October evenings were very long and weary for Lesbia and her
+sister. Lady Maulevrier read and mused in her low chair beside the fire,
+with her books piled upon her own particular table, and lighted by her
+own particular lamp. She talked very little, but she was always gracious
+to her granddaughters and their governess, and she liked them to be with
+her in the evening. Lesbia played or sang, or sat at work at her
+basket-table, which occupied the other side of the fireplace; and
+Fraeulein and Mary had the rest of the room to themselves, as it were,
+those two places by the hearth being sacred, as if dedicated to
+household gods. Mary read immensely in those long evenings, devouring
+volume after volume, feeding her imagination with every kind of
+nutriment, good, bad, and indifferent. Fraeulein Mueller knitted a woollen
+shawl, which seemed to have neither beginning, middle, nor end, and was
+always ready for conversation, but there were times when silence brooded
+over the scene for long intervals, and when every sound of the light
+wood-ashes dropping on the tiled hearth was distinctly audible.
+
+This state of things went on for about three weeks after Lesbia's return
+from St. Bees, Lady Maulevrier watchful of her granddaughter all the
+time, though saying nothing. She saw that Lesbia was not happy, not as
+she had been in the time before the coming of John Hammond. She had
+never been particularly gay or light-hearted, never gifted with the wild
+spirits and buoyancy which make girlhood so lovely a season to some
+natures, a time of dance and song and joyousness, a morning of life
+steeped in the beauty and gladness of the universe. She had never been
+gay as young lambs and foals and fawns and kittens and puppy dogs are
+gay, by reason of the well-spring of delight within them, needing no
+stimulus from the outside world. She had been just a little inclined to
+murmur at the dulness of her life at Fellside; yet she had borne herself
+with a placid sweetness which had been Lady Maulevrier's delight. But
+now there was a marked change in her manner. She was not the less
+submissive and dutiful in her bearing to her grandmother, whom she both
+loved and feared; but there were moments of fretfulness and impatience
+which she could not conceal. She was captious and sullen in her manner
+to Mary and the Fraeulein. She would not walk or drive with them, or
+share in any of their amusements. Sometimes of an evening that studious
+silence of the drawing-room was suddenly broken by Lesbia's weary sigh,
+breathed unawares as she bent over her work.
+
+Lady Maulevrier saw, too, that Lesbia's cheek was paler than of old, her
+eyes less bright. There was a heavy look that told of broken slumbers,
+there was a pinched look in that oval check. Good heavens! if her beauty
+were to pale and wane, before society had bowed down and worshipped it;
+if this fair flower were to fade untimely; if this prize rose in the
+garden of beauty were to wither and decay before it won the prize.
+
+Her ladyship was a woman of action, and no sooner did this fear shape
+itself in her mind than she took steps to prevent the evil her thoughts
+foreshadowed.
+
+Among those friends of her youth and allies of her house with whom she
+had always maintained an affectionate correspondence was Lady Kirkbank,
+the fashionable wife of a sporting baronet, owner of a castle in
+Scotland, a place in Yorkshire, a villa at Cannes, and a fine house in
+Arlington Street, with an income large enough for their enjoyment. When
+Lady Diana Angersthorpe shone forth in the West End world as the
+acknowledged belle of the season, the star of Georgina Lorimer was
+beginning to wane. She was the eldest daughter of Colonel Lorimer, a man
+of good old family, and a fine soldier, who had fought shoulder to
+shoulder with Gough and Lawrence, and who had contrived to make a figure
+in society with very small means. Georgina's sisters had all married
+well. It was a case of necessity, the Colonel told them; they must
+either marry or gravitate ultimately to the workhouse. So the Miss
+Lorimers made the best use of their youth and freshness, and 'no good
+offer refused' was the guiding rule of their young lives. Lucy married
+an East India merchant, and set up a fine house in Porchester Terrace.
+Maud married wealth personified in the person of a leading member of the
+Tallow Chandlers' Company, and had her town house and country house, and
+as fine a set of diamonds as a duchess.
+
+But Georgina, the eldest, trifled with her chances, and her
+twenty-seventh birthday beheld her pouring out her father's tea in a
+small furnished house in a street off Portland Place, which the Colonel
+had hired on his return from India, and which he declared himself unable
+to maintain another year.
+
+'Directly the season is over I shall give up housekeeping and take a
+lodging at Bath,' said Colonel Lorimer. 'If you don't like Bath all the
+year round you can stay with your sisters.'
+
+'That is the last thing I am likely to do,' answered Georgina; 'my
+sisters were barely endurable when they were single and poor. They are
+quite intolerable now they are married and rich. I would sooner live in
+the monkey-house at the Zoological than stay with either Lucy or Maud.'
+
+'That's rank envy,' retorted her father 'You can't forgive them for
+having done so much better than you.'
+
+'I can't forgive them for having married snobs. When I marry I shall
+marry a gentleman.'
+
+'When!' echoed the parent, with a sneering laugh. 'Hadn't you better say
+"if"?'
+
+At this period Georgina's waning good looks were in some measure
+counterbalanced by the cumulative effects of half a dozen seasons in
+good society, which had given style to her person, ease to her manners,
+and sharpness to her tongue. Nobody in society said sharper or more
+unpleasant things than Miss Lorimer, and by virtue of this gift she got
+invited about a great deal more than she might have done had she been
+distinguished for sweetness of speech and manner. Georgie Lorimer's
+presence at a dinner table gave just that pungent flavour which is like
+the faint suspicion of garlic in a fricassee or of tarragon in a salad.
+
+Now in this very season, when Colonel Lorimer was inclined to speak of
+his daughter, as Sainte Beuve wrote of Musset, as a young woman with a
+very brilliant past, a lucky turn of events gave Georgina a fresh start
+in life, which may be called a new departure. Lady Diana Angersthorpe,
+the belle of the season, took a fancy to her, was charmed with her sharp
+tongue and acute sense of the ridiculous. The two became fast friends,
+and were seen everywhere together. The best men all flocked round the
+beauty, and all talked to the beauty's companion: and before the season
+was over, Sir George Kirkbank, who had half made up his mind to
+propose to Lady Diana, found himself engaged to that uncommonly jolly
+girl, Lady Diana's friend. Georgina spent August and September with Lady
+Di, at the Marchioness of Carisbroke's delightful villa in the Isle of
+Wight, and Sir George kept his yacht at Cowes all the time, and was in
+constant attendance upon his fiancee. It was George and Georgie
+everywhere. In October Colonel Lorimer had the profound pleasure of
+giving away his daughter, before the altar in St. George's, Hanover
+Square, and it may be said of him that nothing in his relations with
+that young lady became him better than his manner of parting with her.
+
+So the needy Colonel's daughter became Lady Kirkbank, and in the
+following spring Diana Angersthorpe was married at the same St. George's
+to the Earl of Maulevrier. The friends were divided by distance and by
+circumstance as the years rolled on; but friendship was steadily
+maintained; and a regular correspondence with Lady Kirkbank, whose pen
+was as sharp as her tongue, was one of the means by which Lady
+Maulevrier had kept herself thoroughly posted in all those small events,
+unrecorded by newspapers, which make up the secret history of society.
+
+It was of her old friend Georgie that her ladyship thought in her
+present anxiety. Lady Kirkbank had more than once suggested that Lady
+Maulevrier's granddaughters should vary the monotony of Fellside by a
+visit to her place near Doncaster, or her castle north of Aberdeen; but
+her ladyship had evaded these friendly suggestions, being very jealous
+of any strange influence upon Lesbia's life. Now, however, there had
+come a time when Lesbia must have a complete change of scenery and
+surroundings, lest she should pine and dwindle in sullen submission to
+fate, or else defy the world and elope with John Hammond.
+
+Now, therefore, Lady Maulevrier decided to accept Lady Kirkbank's
+hospitality. She told her friend the whole story with perfect frankness,
+and her letter was immediately answered by a telegram.
+
+'I start for Scotland to-morrow, will break my journey by staying a
+night at Fellside, and will take Lady Lesbia on to Kirkbank with me next
+day, if she can be ready to go.'
+
+'She shall be ready,' said Lady Maulevrier.
+
+She told Lesbia that she had accepted an invitation for her, and that
+she was to go to Kirkbank Castle the day after to-morrow. She was
+prepared for unwillingness, resistance even; but Lesbia received the
+news with evident pleasure.
+
+'I shall be very glad to go,' she said, 'this place is so dull. Of
+course I shall be sorry to leave you, grandmother, and I wish you would
+go with me; but any change will be a relief. I think if I had to stay
+here all the winter, counting the days and the hours, I should go out of
+my mind.'
+
+The tears came into her eyes, but she wiped them away hurriedly, ashamed
+of her emotion.
+
+'My dearest child, I am so sorry for you,' murmured Lady Maulevrier.
+'But believe me the day will come when you will be very glad that you
+conquered the first foolish inclination of your girlish heart.'
+
+'Yes, I daresay, when I am eighty,' Lesbia answered, impatiently. She
+had made up her mind to submit to the inevitable. She had loved John
+Hammond--had been as near breaking her heart for him as it was in her
+nature to break her heart for anybody; but she wanted to make a great
+marriage, to be renowned and admired. She had been reared and trained
+for that; and she was not going to belie her training.
+
+A visitor from the great London world was so rare an event that there
+was naturally a little excitement in the idea of Lady Kirkbank's
+arrival. The handsomest and most spacious of the spare bedrooms was
+prepared for the occasion. The housekeeper was told that the dinner must
+be perfect. There must be nothing old-fashioned or ponderous; there must
+be mind as well as matter in everything. Rarely did Lady Maulevrier look
+at a bill of fare; but on this particular morning she went carefully
+through the menu, and corrected it with her own hand.
+
+A pair of post-horses brought Lady Kirkbank and her maid from Windermere
+station, in time for afternoon tea, and the friends who had only met
+twice within the last forty years, embraced each other on the threshold
+of Lady Maulevrier's morning-room.
+
+'My dearest Di,' cried Lady Kirkbank, 'what a delight to see you again
+after such ages; and what a too lovely spot you have chosen for your
+retreat from the world, the flesh, and the devil. If I could be a
+recluse anywhere, it would be amongst just such delicious surroundings.'
+
+Without, twilight shades were gathering; within, there was only the
+light of a fire and a shaded lamp upon the tea table; there was just
+light enough for the two women to see each other's faces, and the change
+which time had wrought there.
+
+Never did womanhood in advanced years offer a more striking contrast
+than that presented by the woman of fashion and the recluse. Lady
+Maulevrier was almost as handsome in the winter of her days as she had
+been when life was in its spring. The tall, slim figure, erect as a
+dart, the delicately chiselled features and alabaster complexion, the
+soft silvery hair, the perfect hand, whiter and more transparent than
+the hand of girlhood, the stately movements and bearing, all combined to
+make Lady Maulevrier a queen among women. Her brocade gown of a deep
+shade of red, with a border of dark sable on cuffs and collar, suggested
+a portrait by Velasquez. She wore no ornaments except the fine old
+Brazilian diamonds which flashed and sparkled upon her slender fingers.
+
+If Lady Maulevrier looked like a picture in the Escurial, Lady Kirkbank
+resembled a caricature in _La Vie Parisienne_. Everything she wore was
+in the very latest fashion of the Parisian _demi-monde_, that
+exaggerated elegance of a fashion plate which only the most exquisite of
+women could redeem from vulgarity. Plush, brocade, peacock's feathers,
+golden bangles, mousquetaire gloves, a bonnet of purple plumage set off
+by ornaments of filagree gold, an infantine little muff of lace and wild
+flowers, buttercups and daisies; and hair, eyebrows and complexion as
+artificial as the flowers on the muff.
+
+All that art could do to obliterate the traces of age had been done for
+Georgina Kirkbank. But seventy years are not to be obliterated easily,
+and the crow's feet showed through the bloom de Ninon, and the eyes
+under the painted arches were glassy and haggard, the carnation lips had
+a withered look. Age was made all the more palpable by the artifice
+which would have disguised it.
+
+Lady Maulevrier suffered an absolute shock at beholding the friend of
+her youth. She had not accustomed herself to the idea that women in
+society could raddle their cheeks, stain their lips, and play tricks
+before high heaven with their eyebrows and eyelashes. In her own youth
+painted faces had been the ghastly privilege of a class of womankind of
+which the women of society were supposed to know nothing. Persons who
+showed their ankles and rouged their cheeks were to be seen of an
+afternoon in Bond Street; but Lady Diana Angersthorpe had been taught to
+pass them by as if she saw them not, to behold without seeing these
+creatures outside the pale. And now she saw her own dearest friend, a
+person distinctly within the pale, plastered with bismuth and stained
+with carmine, and wearing hair of a colour so obviously false and
+inharmonious, that child-like faith could hardly accept it as reality.
+Forty years ago Lady Kirkbank's long ringlets had been darkest glossiest
+brown, to-day she wore a tousled fringe of bright yellow, piquantly
+contrasting with Vandyke brown eyebrows.
+
+It took Lady Maulevrier some moments to get over the shock. She drew a
+chair to the fire and established her friend in it, and then, with a
+little gasp, she said:
+
+'I am charmed to see you again, Georgie!'
+
+'You darling, I was sure you would be glad. But you must find me awfully
+changed--awfully.'
+
+For worlds Lady Maulevrier could not have denied this truth. Happily
+Lady Kirkbank did not wait for an answer.
+
+'Society is so wearing, and George and I never seem to get an interval
+of quiet. Kirkbank is to be full of men next week. Your granddaughter
+will have a good time.'
+
+'There will be a few women, of course?'
+
+'Oh, yes, there's no avoiding that; only one doesn't reckon them. Sir
+George only counts his guns. We expect a splendid season. I shall send
+you some birds of my own shooting.'
+
+'You shoot!' exclaimed Lady Maulevrier, amazed.
+
+'Shoot! I should think I do. What else is there to amuse one in
+Scotland, after the salmon fishing is over? I have never missed a season
+for the last thirty years, unless we have been abroad.'
+
+'Please, don't innoculate Lesbia with your love of sport.'
+
+'What! you wouldn't like her to shoot? Well, perhaps you are right. It
+is hardly the thing for a pretty girl with her fortune to make. It
+spoils the delicacy of the skin. But I'm afraid she'll find Kirkbank
+dull if she doesn't go out with the guns. She can meet us with the rest
+of the women at luncheon. We have some capital picnic luncheons on the
+moor, I can assure you.'
+
+'I know she will enjoy herself with you. She has been accustomed to a
+very quiet life here.'
+
+'It is a lovely spot; but I own I cannot understand how you can have
+lived here exclusively during all these years--you who used to be all
+life and fire, loving change, action, political and diplomatic society,
+to dance upon the crest of the wave, as it were. Your whole nature must
+have suffered some curious change.'
+
+Their close intimacy of the past warranted freedom of speech in the
+present.
+
+'My nature did undergo a change, and a severe one,' answered Lady
+Maulevrier, gloomily.
+
+'It was that horrid--and I daresay unfortunate scandal about his
+lordship; and then the sad shock of his death,' murmured Lady Kirkbank,
+sympathetically. 'Most women, with your youth and beauty, would have
+forgotten the scandal and the husband in a twelvemonth, and would have
+made a second marriage more brilliant than the first. But no Indian
+widow who ever performed suttee was more worthy of praise than you, or
+even that person of Ephesus, whose story I have heard somewhere. Indeed,
+I have always spoken of your life as a long suttee. But you mean to
+re-appear in society next season, I hope, when you present your
+granddaughter?'
+
+'I shall certainly go up to London to present her, and possibly I may
+spend the season in town; but I shall feel like Rip Van Winkle.'
+
+'No, no, you won't, my dear Di. You have kept yourself _au courant_, I
+know. Even my silly gossiping letters may have been of _some_ use.'
+
+'They have been most valuable. Let me give you another cup of tea,' said
+Lady Maulevrier, who had been officiating at her own exquisite
+tea-table, an arrangement of inlaid woods, antique silver, and modern
+china, which her friend pronounced a perfect poem.
+
+Indeed, the whole room was poetic, Lady Kirkbank declared, and there are
+many highly praised scenes which less deserve the epithet. The dark red
+walls and cedar dado, the stamped velvet curtains, of an indescribable
+shade between silver-grey and olive, the Sheraton furniture, the
+parqueterie floor and Persian prayer-rugs, the deep yet brilliant hues
+of crackle porcelain and Chinese cloisonne enamel, the artistic
+fireplace, with dog-stove, low brass fender, and ingle-nook recessed
+under the high mantelpiece, all combined to form a luxurious and
+harmonious whole.
+
+Lady Kirkbank admired the _tout ensemble_ in the fitful light of the
+fire, the dim grey of deepening twilight.
+
+'There never was a more delicious cell!' she exclaimed, 'but still I
+should feel it a prison, if I had to spend six weeks in the year in it.
+I never stay more than six weeks anywhere out of London; and I always
+find six weeks more than enough. The first fortnight is rapture, the
+third and fourth weeks are calm content, the fifth is weariness, the
+sixth a fever to be gone. I once tried a seventh week at Pontresina, and
+I hated the place so intensely that I dared not go back there for the
+next three years. But now tell me. Diana, have you really performed
+suttee, have you buried yourself alive in this sweet spot deliberately,
+or has the love of retirement grown upon you, and have you become a kind
+of lotus-eater?'
+
+'I believe I have become a kind of lotus-eater. My retirement here has
+been no sentimental sacrifice to Lord Maulevrier's memory.'
+
+'I am glad to hear that; for I really think the worst possible use a
+woman can make of her life is in wasting it on lamentation for a dead
+and gone husband. Life is odiously short at the best, and it is mere
+imbecility to fritter away any of our scanty portion upon the dead, who
+can never be any the better for our tears.'
+
+'My motive in living at Fellside was not reverence for the dead. And now
+let us talk of the gay world, of which you know all the secrets. Have
+you heard anything more about Lord Hartfield?'
+
+'Ah, there is a subject in which you have reason to be interested. I
+have not forgotten the romance of your youth--that first season in which
+Ronald Hollister used to haunt every place at which you appeared. Do you
+remember that wet afternoon at the Chiswick flower-show, when you and he
+and I took shelter in the orange house, and you two made love to each
+other most audaciously in an atmosphere of orange-blossoms that almost
+stifled me? Yes, those were glorious days!'
+
+'A short summer of gladness, a brief dream,' sighed Lady Maulevrier. 'Is
+young Lord Hartfield like his father?'
+
+'No, he takes after the Ilmingtons; but still there is a look of your
+old sweetheart--yes, I think there is an expression. I have not seen him
+for nearly a year. He is still abroad, roaming about somewhere in search
+of adventures. These young men who belong to the Geographical and the
+Alpine Club are hardly ever at home.'
+
+'But though they may be sometimes lost to society, they are all the
+more worthy of society's esteem when they do appear,' said Lady
+Maulevrier. 'I think there must be an ennobling influence in Alpine
+travel, or in the vast solitudes of the Dark Continent. A man finds
+himself face to face with unsophisticated nature, and with the grandest
+forces of the universe. Professor Tyndall writes delightfully of his
+Alpine experiences; his mind seems to have ripened in the solitude and
+untainted air of the Alps. And I believe Lord Hartfield is a young man
+of very high character and of considerable cultivation, is he not?'
+
+'He is a splendid young fellow. I never heard a word to his
+disparagement, even from those people who pretend to know something bad
+about everybody. What a husband he would make for one of your girls!'
+
+'Admirable! But those perfect arrangements, which seem predestined by
+heaven itself, are so rarely realised on earth,' answered the dowager,
+lightly.
+
+She was not going to show her cards, even to an old friend.
+
+'Well, it would be very sweet if they were to meet next season and fall
+in love with each other,' said Lady Kirkbank. 'He is enormously rich, and
+I daresay your girls will not be portionless.'
+
+'Lesbia may take a modest place among heiresses,' answered Lady
+Maulevrier. 'I have lived so quietly during the last forty years that I
+could hardly help saving money.'
+
+'How nice!' sighed Georgie. 'I never saved sixpence in my life, and am
+always in debt.'
+
+'The little fortune I have saved is much too small for division. Lesbia
+will therefore have all I can leave her. Mary has the usual provision as
+a daughter of the Maulevrier house.'
+
+'And I suppose Lesbia has that provision also?'
+
+'Of course.'
+
+'Lucky Lesbia. I only wish Hartfield were coming to us for the shooting.
+I would engage he should fall in love with her. Kirkbank is a splendid
+place for match-making. But the fact is I am not very intimate with him.
+He is almost always travelling, and when he is at home he is not in our
+set. And now, my dear Diana, tell me more about yourself, and your own
+life in this delicious place.'
+
+'There is so little to tell. The books I have read, the theories of
+literature and art and science which I have adopted and dismissed,
+learnt and forgotten--those are the history of my life. The ideas of the
+outside world reach me here only in books and newspapers; but you who
+have been living in the world must have so much to say. Let me be the
+listener.'
+
+Lady Kirkbank desired nothing better. She rattled on for three-quarters
+of an hour about her doings in the great world, her social triumphs, the
+wonderful things she had done for Sir George, who seemed to be as a
+puppet in her hands, the princes and princelings she had entertained,
+the songs she had composed, the comedy she had written, for private
+representation only, albeit the Haymarket manager was dying to produce
+it, the scathing witticisms with which she had withered her social
+enemies. She would have gone on much longer, but for the gong, which
+reminded her that it was time to dress for dinner.
+
+Half-an-hour later Lady Kirkbank was in the drawing-room, where Mary had
+retired to the most shadowy corner, anxious to escape the gaze of the
+fashionable visitor.
+
+But Lady Kirkbank was not inclined to take much notice of Mary. Lesbia's
+brilliant beauty, the exquisite Greek head, the faultless complexion,
+the deep, violet eyes, caught Georgina Kirkbank's eye the moment she had
+entered the room, and she saw that this girl and no other must be the
+beauty, the beloved and chosen grandchild.
+
+'How do you do, my dear?' she said, taking Lesbia's hand, and then, as
+if with a gush of warm feeling, suddenly drawing the girl towards her
+and kissing her on both cheeks. 'I am going to be desperately fond of
+you, and I hope you will soon contrive to like me--just a little.'
+
+'I feel sure that I shall like you very much,' Lesbia answered sweetly.
+'I am prepared to love you as grandmother's old friend.'
+
+'Oh, my dear, to think that I should ever be the old friend of anybody's
+grandmother!' sighed Lady Kirkbank, with unaffected regret. 'When I was
+your age I used to think all old people odious. It never occurred to me
+that I should live to be one of them.'
+
+'Then you had no dear grandmother whom you loved,' said Lesbia, 'or you
+would have liked old people for her sake.'
+
+'No, my love, I had no grandparents. I had a father, and he was
+all-sufficient--anything beyond him in the ancestral line would have
+been a burden laid upon me greater than I could bear, as the poet says.'
+
+Dinner was announced, and Mary came shyly out of her corner, blushing
+deeply.
+
+'And this is Lady Mary, I suppose?' said Lady Kirkbank, in an off-hand
+way, 'How do you do, my dear? I am going to steal your sister.'
+
+'I am very glad,' faltered Mary. 'I mean I am glad that Lesbia should
+enjoy herself.'
+
+'And some fine day, when Lesbia is married and a great lady, I shall ask
+you to come to Scotland,' said Lady Kirkbank, condescendingly, and then
+she murmured in her friend's ear, as they went to the dining-room,
+'Quite an English girl. Very fresh and frank and nice,' which was great
+praise for such a second-rate young person as Lady Mary.
+
+'What do you think of Lesbia?' asked Lady Maulevrier, in the same
+undertone.
+
+'She is simply adorable. Your letters prepared me to expect beauty, but
+not such beauty. My dear, I thought the progress of the human race was
+all in a downward line since our time; but your granddaughter is as
+handsome as you were in your first season, and that is going very far.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+'NOT YET.'
+
+
+Lady Kirkbank carried off Lesbia early next day, the girl radiant at the
+idea of seeing life under new conditions. She had a few minutes' serious
+talk with her grandmother before she went.
+
+'Lesbia, you are going into the world,' said Lady Maulevrier; 'yes, even
+a country house is the world in little. You will have many admirers
+instead of one; but I think, I believe, that you will be true to me and
+to yourself.'
+
+'You need not fear, grandmother. I have been an idiot; but--but it was
+only a passing folly, and I shall never be so weak again.'
+
+Lesbia's scornful lips and kindling eyes gave intensity to her speech.
+It was evident that she despised herself for that one touch of womanly
+softness which had made her as ready to fall in love with her first
+wooer as any peasant girl in Grasmere Vale.
+
+'I am delighted to hear you speak thus, dearest,' said Lady Maulevrier.
+'And if Mr. Hamilton--Hammond, I mean--should have the audacity to
+follow you to Kirkbank, and to intrude himself upon you there--perhaps
+to persecute you with clandestine addresses----'
+
+'I do not believe he would do anything clandestine,' said Lesbia,
+drawing herself up. 'He is quite above that.'
+
+'My dear child, we know absolutely nothing about him. He has his way to
+make in the world unaided by family or connections. He is
+clever--daring. Such a man cannot help being an adventurer; and an
+adventurer is capable of anything. I warn you to beware of him.'
+
+'I don't suppose I shall ever see his face again,' retorted Lesbia,
+irritably.
+
+She had made up her mind that her life was not to be spoiled, her
+brilliant future sacrificed, for the sake of John Hammond; but the wound
+which she had suffered in renouncing him was still fresh, her feelings
+were still sore. Any contemptuous mention of him stung her to the quick.
+
+'I hope not. And you will beware of other adventurers, Lesbia, men of a
+worse stamp than Mr. Hammond, more experienced in ruse and iniquity, men
+steeped to the lips in worldly knowledge, men who look upon women as
+mere counters in the game of life. The world thinks that I am rich, and
+you will no doubt take rank as an heiress. You will therefore be a mark
+for every spendthrift, noble or otherwise, who wants to restore his
+broken fortunes by a wealthy marriage. And now, my dearest, good-bye.
+Half my heart goes with you. Nothing could induce me to part with you,
+even for a few weeks, except the conviction that it is for your good.'
+
+'But we shall not be parted next year, I hope, grandmother,' said
+Lesbia, affectionately. 'You said something about presenting me, and
+then leaving me in Lady Kirkbank's care for the season. I should not
+like that at all. I want you to go everywhere with me, to teach me all
+the mysteries of the great world. You have always promised me that it
+should be so.'
+
+'And I have always intended that it should be so. I hope that it will be
+so,' answered her grandmother, with a sigh; 'but I am an old woman,
+Lesbia, and I am rooted to this place.'
+
+'But why should you be rooted here? What charm can keep you here, when
+you are so fitted to shine in society? You are old in nothing but years,
+and not even old in years in comparison with women whom we hear of,
+going everywhere and mixing in every fashionable amusement. You are full
+of fire and energy, and as active as a girl. Why should you not enjoy a
+London season, grandmother?' pleaded Lesbia, nestling her head lovingly
+against Lady Maulevrier's shoulder.
+
+'I should enjoy it, dearest, with you. It would be a renewal of my youth
+to see you shine and conquer. I should be as proud as if the glory were
+all my own. Yes, dear, I hope that I shall be a spectator of your
+triumphs. But do not let us plan the future. Life is so full of changes.
+Remember what Horace says----'
+
+'Horace is a bore,' said Lesbia. 'I hate a poet who is always harping
+upon change and death.'
+
+The carriage, which was to take the travellers to Windermere Station,
+was announced at this moment, and Lesbia and her grandmother gave each
+other the farewell embrace.
+
+'You like Lady Kirkbank, I hope?' said Lady Maulevrier, as they went
+towards the hall, where that lady was waiting for them, with Lady Mary
+and Fraeulein Mueller in attendance upon her.
+
+'She seems very kind, but I should like her better if she did not
+paint--or if she painted better.'
+
+'My dear child I'm afraid it is the fashion of the day, just as it was
+in Pope's time, and we ought to think nothing about it.'
+
+'Well, I suppose I shall get hardened in time.'
+
+'My dearest Lesbia,' shrieked Lady Kirkbank from below, 'remember we
+have to catch a train.'
+
+Lesbia hurried downstairs, followed by Lady Maulevrier, who had to bid
+her friend adieu. The luggage had been sent on in a cart, Lesbia's
+trunks and dress baskets forming no small item. She was so well
+furnished with pretty gowns of all kinds that there had been no
+difficulty in getting her ready for this sudden visit. Her maid was on
+the box beside the coachman. Lady Kirkbank's attendant, a Frenchwoman of
+five-and-thirty, who looked as if she had graduated at Mabille, was to
+occupy the back seat of the landau.
+
+Lady Mary looked after her sister longingly, as the carriage drove down
+the hill. She was going into a new world, to see all kinds of
+people--clever people--distinguished people--musical, artistic,
+political people--hunting and shooting people--while Mary was to stay at
+home all the winter among the old familiar faces. Dearly as she loved
+these hills and vales her heart sank a little at the thought of those
+long lonely months, days and evenings that would be all alike, and which
+must be spent without sympathetic companionship. And there would be
+dreary days on which the weather would keep her a prisoner in her
+luxurious gaol, when the mountains, and the rugged paths beside the
+mountain streams, would be inaccessible, when she would be restricted to
+Fraeulein's phlegmatic society, that lady being stout and lazy, fond of
+her meals, and given to afternoon slumbers. Lesbia and Mary were not by
+any means sympathetic; yet, after all, blood is thicker than water; and
+Lesbia was intelligent, and could talk of the things Mary loved, which
+was better than total dumbness, even if she generally took an
+antagonistic view of them.
+
+'I shall miss her dreadfully,' thought Mary, as she strolled listlessly
+in the gardens, where the leaves where falling and the flowers fading.
+
+'I wonder if she will see Mr. Hammond at Lady Kirkbank's?' mused Mary.
+'If he were anything like a lover he would find out all about her visit,
+and seize the opportunity of her being away from grandmother. But then
+if he had been much of a lover he would have followed her to St. Bees.'
+
+Lady Maulevrier sorely missed her favourite grandchild. In a life spent
+in such profound seclusion, so remote from the busy interests of the
+world, this beloved companionship had become a necessity to her. She had
+concentrated her affections upon Lesbia, and the girl's absence made a
+fearful blank. But her ladyship's dignity was not compromised by any
+outward signs of trouble or loss.
+
+She spent her mornings in her own room, reading and writing and musing
+at her leisure; she drove or walked every fine afternoon, sometimes
+alone, sometimes attended by Mary, who hated these stately drives and
+walks. She dined _tete-a-tete_ with Mary, except on those rare occasions
+when there were visitors--the Vicar and his wife, or some wandering star
+from other worlds. Mary lived in profound awe of her grandmother, but
+was of far too frank a nature to be able to adapt her speech or her
+manners to her ladyship's idea of feminine perfection. She was silent
+and shy under those falcon eyes; but she was still the same Mary, the
+girl to whom pretence or simulation of any kind was impossible.
+
+Letters came almost every day from Kirkbank Castle, letters from Lesbia
+describing the bright gay life she was living at that hospitable abode,
+the excursions, the rides, the picnic luncheons after the morning's
+sport, the dinner parties, the dances.
+
+'It is the most delightful house you can imagine,' wrote Lesbia; 'and
+Lady Kirkbank is an admirable hostess. I have quite forgiven her for
+wearing false eyebrows; for after all, you know, one must _have_
+eyebrows; they are a necessity; but why does she not have the two arches
+alike? They are _never_ a pair, and I really think that French maid of
+hers does it on purpose.
+
+'By-the-bye, Lady Kirkbank is going to write to you to beseech you to
+let me go to Cannes and Monte Carlo with her. Sir George insists upon
+it. He says they both like young society, and will be horribly vexed if
+I refuse to go with them. And Lady Kirkbank thinks my chest is just a
+little weak--I almost broke down the other night in that lovely little
+song of Jensen's--and that a winter in the south is just what I want.
+But, of course, dear grandmother, I won't ask you to let me be away so
+long if you think you will miss me.'
+
+'If I think I shall miss her!' repeated Lady Maulevrier. 'Has the girl
+no heart, that she can ask such a question? But can I wonder at that? Of
+what account was I or my love to her father, although I sacrificed
+myself for his good name? Can I expect that she should be of a different
+clay?'
+
+And then, meditating upon the events of the summer that was gone, Lady
+Maulevrier thought--
+
+She renounced her first lover at my bidding; she renounces her love for
+me at the bidding of the world. Or was it not rather self-interest, the
+fear of making a bad marriage, which influenced her in her renunciation
+of Mr. Hammond. It was not obedience to me, it was not love for me which
+made her give him up. It was the selfishness engrained in her race.
+Well, I have heaped my love upon her, because she is fair and sweet, and
+reminds me of my own youth. I must let her go, and try to be happy in
+the knowledge that she is enjoying her life far away from me.'
+
+Lady Maulevrier wrote her consent to the extension of Lesbia's visit,
+and by return of post came a letter from Lesbia which seemed brimming
+over with love, and which comforted the grandmother's wounded heart.
+
+'Lady Kirkbank and I are both agreed, dearest, that you must join us at
+Cannes,' wrote Lesbia. 'At your age it is very wrong of you to spend a
+winter in our horrible climate. You can travel with Steadman and your
+maid. Lady Kirkbank will secure you a charming suite of rooms at the
+hotel, or she would like it still better if you would stay at her own
+villa. Do consent to this plan, dear grandmother, and then we shall not
+be parted for a long winter. Of course Mary would be quite happy at home
+running wild.'
+
+Lady Maulevrier sighed as she read this letter, sighed again, and
+heavily, as she put it back into the envelope. Alas, how many and many a
+year had gone, long, monotonous, colourless years, since she had seen
+that bright southern world which she was now urged to revisit. In fancy
+she saw it again to-day, the tideless sea of deepest sapphire blue, the
+little wavelets breaking on a yellow beach, the white triangular sails,
+the woods full of asphodel and great purple and white lilies, the
+atmosphere steeped in warmth and light and perfume, the glare of white
+houses in the sun, the red and yellow blinds, the pots of green and
+orange and crimson clay, with oleanders abloom, the wonderful glow of
+colour everywhere and upon all things. And then as the eyes of the mind
+recalled these vivid images her bodily eyes looked out upon the
+rain-blotted scene, the mountains rising in a dark and dismal circle
+round that sombre pool below, walling her in from the outer world.
+
+'I am at the bottom of a grave,' she said to herself. 'I am in a living
+tomb, from which there is no escape. Forty years! Forty years of
+patience and hope, for what? For dreams which may never be realised; for
+descendants who may never give me the price of my labours. Yes, I should
+like to go to my dear one. I should like to revisit the South of France,
+to go on to Italy. I should feel young again amidst that eternal,
+unchangeable loveliness. I should forget all I have suffered. But it
+cannot be. Not yet, not yet!'
+
+Presently with a smile of concentrated bitterness she repeated the words
+'Not yet!'
+
+'Surely at my age it must be folly to dream of the future; and yet I
+feel as if there were half a century of life in me, as if I had lost
+nothing in either mental or bodily vigour since I came here forty years
+ago.'
+
+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 _tete-a-tete_ 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.
+
+Who could tell how long they might be covered; the winding tracks
+hidden; the narrow forces looking like black water or molten iron
+against that glittering whiteness? Mary could only walk along the road
+by Loughrigg to the bench called 'Rest and be thankful,' from which she
+looked with longing eyes across towards the Langdale Pikes, and to the
+sharp cone-shaped peak, known as Coniston Old Man, just visible above
+the nearer hills. Fraeulein Mueller suggested that it was in just such
+weather as this that a well brought up young lady, a young lady with
+_Vernunft_ and _Anstand_, should devote herself to the improvement of
+her mind.
+
+'Let us read German this _abscheulich_ afternoon,' said the Fraeulein.
+'Suppose we go on with the "Sorrows of Werther."'
+
+'Werther was a fool,' cried Mary; 'any book but that.'
+
+'Will you choose your own book?'
+
+'Let me read Heine.'
+
+Fraeulein looked doubtful. There were things in Heine--an all-pervading
+tone--which rendered him hardly an appropriate poet for 'the young
+person.' But Fraeulein compromised the matter by letting Mary read Atta
+Troll, the exact bearing of which neither of them understood.
+
+'How beautifully Mr. Hammond read Heine that morning!' said Mary,
+breaking off suddenly from a perfectly automatic reading.
+
+'You did not hear him, did you? You were not there,' said the Fraeulein.
+
+'I was not _there_, but I heard him. I--I was sitting on the bank among
+the pine trees.'
+
+'Why did you not come and sit with us? It would have been more ladylike
+than to hide yourself behind the trees.'
+
+Mary blushed crimson.
+
+'I had been in the kennels with Maulevrier; I was not fit to be seen,'
+she said.
+
+'Hardly a ladylike admission,' replied the Fraeulein, who felt that with
+Lady Mary her chief duty was to reprove.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+'OF ALL MEN ELSE I HAVE AVOIDED THEE.'
+
+
+It was afternoon. The white hills yonder and all the length of the
+valley were touched here and there with gleams of wintry sunlight, and
+Lady Maulevrier was taking her solitary walk on the terrace in front of
+her house, a stately figure wrapped in a furred mantle, tall, erect,
+moving with measured pace up and down the smooth gravel path. Now and
+then at the end of the walk the dowager stopped for a minute or so, and
+stood as if in deep thought, with her eyes dreamily contemplating the
+landscape. An intense melancholy shadowed her face, as she thus gazed
+with brooding eyes on the naked monotony of those wintry hills. So had
+she looked in many and many a winter, and it seemed to her that her life
+was of a piece with those bleak hills, where in the dismal winter time
+nothing living trod. She stood gazing at the sinking sun, a fiery ball
+shining at the end of a long gallery of crag and rock, like a lamp at
+the end of a corridor; and as she gazed the red round orb dropped
+suddenly behind the edge of a crag, as if she had been an enchantress
+and had dismissed it with a wave of her wand.
+
+'O Lord, how long, how long?' she said. 'How many times have I seen that
+sun go down from this spot, in winter and summer, in spring and autumn!
+And now that the one being I loved and cared for is far away, I feel all
+the weariness and emptiness of my life.'
+
+As she turned to resume her walk she heard the muffled sound of wheels
+in the road below, that road which was completely hidden by foliage in
+summer, but which was now visible here and there between the leafless
+trees. A carriage with a pair of horses was coming along the road from
+Ambleside.
+
+Lady Maulevrier stood and watched until the carriage drew up at the
+lodge gate, and then, when the gate had been opened, slowly ascended the
+winding drive to the house.
+
+She expected no visitor; indeed, there was no one likely to come to her
+from the direction of Ambleside. Her heart began to beat heavily, with
+the apprehension of coming evil. What kind of evil she knew not. Bad
+news about her granddaughter, perhaps, or about Maulevrier. And yet that
+could hardly be. Evil tidings of that kind would have reached her by
+telegram.
+
+Perhaps it was Maulevrier himself. His movements were generally erratic.
+
+Lady Maulevrier hurried back to the house. She went through the
+conservatory, where the warm whiteness of azalia, and spirea, and arum
+lilies contrasted curiously with the cold white snow out of doors, to
+the hall, where a stranger was standing talking to the butler.
+
+He was a man of foreign appearance, wearing a cloak lined with sables,
+and a sable cap, which he removed as Lady Maulevrier approached. He was
+thin and small, with a clear olive complexion, olive inclining to pale
+bronze, sleek raven hair, and black almond-shaped eyes. At the first
+glance Lady Maulevrier knew that he was an Oriental. Her heart sank
+within her, and seemed to grow chill as death at sight of him. Anything
+associated with India was horrible to her.
+
+The stranger came forward to meet her, bowing deferentially. He had
+those lithe, gliding movements which she remembered of old, when she had
+seen princes and dignitaries of the East creeping shoeless to her
+husband's feet.
+
+'Will your ladyship do me the honour to grant me an interview?' he said
+in very good English. 'I have travelled from London expressly for that
+privilege.'
+
+'Then I fear you have wasted your time, sir, whatever your mission may
+be,' the dowager answered, haughtily. 'However, I am willing to hear
+anything you may have to say, if you will be good enough to come this
+way.'
+
+She moved towards the library, the butler preceding her to open the
+door, and the stranger followed her into the spacious room, where coals
+and logs were heaped high upon the wide dog stove, deeply recessed
+beneath the old English mantelpiece.
+
+It was one of the handsomest rooms of the house, furnished with oak
+bookcases about seven feet high, above which vases of Oriental ware and
+varied colouring stood boldly out against the dark oak wall. Richly
+bound books in infinite variety testified to the wealth and taste of the
+owner; while one side of the room was absorbed by a wide Gothic window,
+beyond which appeared the panorama of lake and mountain, beautiful in
+every season. A tawny velvet curtain divided this room from the
+drawing-room; but there was also a strong oak door behind the curtain,
+which was generally closed in cold weather.
+
+Lady Maulevrier went over to this door, and took the precaution to draw
+the bolt, before she seated herself in her arm-chair by the hearth. She
+had her own particular chair in all the rooms she occupied--a chair
+which was sacred as a throne.
+
+She drew off her sealskin gloves, and motioned with a slender white hand
+to the stranger to be seated.
+
+'To whom have I the honour of speaking?' she asked, looking; him through
+and through with an unflinching gaze, as she would have looked at Death
+himself, had the grim skeleton figure come to beckon her.
+
+He handed her a visiting card on which was engraved--
+
+'Louis Asoph, Rajah of Bisnagar.'
+
+'If my memory does not deceive me as to the history of modern India, the
+territory from which you take your title has been absorbed into the
+English dominion?' said Lady Maulevrier.
+
+'It was trafficked away forty-three years ago, stolen, filched from my
+father! but so long as I have power to think and to act I will maintain
+my claim to that land; yes, if only by the empty mockery of a name on a
+visiting card. It is a duty I owe to myself as a man, which I owe still
+more to my murdered father.'
+
+'Have you come all the way from London, and in such weather, only to
+tell me this story?'
+
+She had twisted his card between her fingers as she listened to him, and
+now, with an action at once careless and contemptuous, she flung it upon
+the burning logs. Slight as the action was it was eloquent of scorn for
+the man.
+
+'No, Lady Maulevrier, my mention of this story, with which you are no
+doubt perfectly familiar, is only a preliminary. I have come to claim my
+own, and to appeal to you as a woman of honour to do me justice. Nay, I
+will say as a woman of common honesty; since there is no nice point of
+honour in question, only the plain laws of mine and thine, which I
+believe are the same among all nations and creeds. I come to you, Lady
+Maulevrier, to ask you to restore to me the wealth which your husband
+stole from my father.'
+
+'You come to my house, to me, an old woman, helpless, defenceless, in
+the absence of my grandson, the present Earl, to insult me, and insult
+the dead,' said Lady Maulevrier, white as statuary marble, and as cold
+and calm. 'You come to rake up old lies, and to fling them in the face
+of a solitary woman, old enough to be your mother. Do you think that is
+a noble thing to do? Even in your barbarous Eastern code of morals and
+manners is _that_ the act of a gentleman?'
+
+'We are no barbarians in the East, Lady Maulevrier. I come from the
+cradle of civilisation, the original fount of learning. We were
+scholars and gentleman, priests and soldiers, two thousand years before
+your British ancestors ran wild in their woods, and sacrificed to their
+unknown gods or rocky altars reeking with human blood! I know the errand
+upon which I have come is not a pleasant one, either for you or for me;
+but I come to you strong in the right of a son to claim the heritage
+which was stolen from him by an infamous mother and her more infamous
+paramour----'
+
+'I will not hear another word!' cried Lady Maulevrier, starting to her
+feet, livid with passion. 'Do not dare to pronounce that name in my
+hearing--the name of that abominable woman who brought disgrace and
+dishonour upon my husband and his race.'
+
+'And who brought your husband the wealth of my murdered father,'
+answered the Indian, defiantly. 'Do not ignore that fact, Lady
+Maulevrier. What has become of that fortune--two hundred thousand pounds
+in money and jewels. It was known to have passed into Lord Maulevrier's
+possession after my father was put away by his paid instruments.
+
+'How dare you bring that vile charge against the dead?'
+
+'There are men living in India who know the truth of that charge: men
+who were at Bisnagar when my father, sick and heartbroken, was shut up
+in his deserted harem, hemmed in by spies and traitors, men with murder
+in their faces. There are those who know tint he was strangled by one of
+those wretches, that a grave was dug for him under the marble floor of
+his zenana, a grave in which his bones were found less than a year ago,
+in my presence, and fitly entombed at my bidding. He was said to have
+disappeared of his own free will--to have left his palace under cover of
+night, and sought refuge from possible treachery in another province;
+but there were those, and not a few, who knew the real history of his
+disappearance--who knew, and at the time were ready to testify in any
+court of justice, that he had been got rid of by the Ranee's agents, and
+at Lord Maulevrier's instigation, and that his possessions in money and
+jewels had been conveyed in the palankins that carried the Ranee and her
+women to his lordship's summer retreat near Madras. The Ranee died at
+that retreat six months after her husband's murder, not without
+suspicion of poison, and the wealth which she carried with her when she
+left Bisnagar passed into his lordship's possession. Had your husband
+lived, Lady Maulevrier, this story must have been brought to light.
+There were too many people in Madras interested in sifting the facts.
+There must have been a public inquiry. It was a happy thing for you and
+your race that Lord Maulevrier died before that inquiry had been
+instituted, and that many animosities died with him. Lucky too for you
+that I was a helpless infant at the time, and that the Mahratta
+adventurer to whom my father's territory had been transferred in the
+shuffling of cards at the end of the war was deeply concerned in hushing
+up the story.'
+
+'And pray, why have you nursed your wrath in all these years? Why do
+you intrude on me after nearly half a century, with this legend of
+rapine and murder?'
+
+'Because for nearly half a century I have been kept in profound
+ignorance of my father's fate--in ignorance of my race. Lord
+Maulevrier's jealousy banished me from my mother's arms shortly after my
+father's death. I was sent to the South of France under the care of an
+ayah. My first memories are of a monastery near Marseilles, where I was
+reared and educated by a Jesuit community, where I was baptised and
+brought up in the Roman Catholic faith. By the influence of the Jesuit
+Fathers I was placed in a house of commerce at Marseilles. Funds to
+provide for my education and establishment in life, under very modest
+conditions, were sent periodically by an agent at Madras. It was known
+that I was of East Indian birth, but little more was known about me. It
+was only when years had gone by and I was a merchant on my own account
+and could afford to go to India on a voyage of discovery--yes, as much a
+voyage of discovery as that of Vasco de Gama or of Drake--that I got
+from the Madras agent the clue which enabled me, at the cost of infinite
+patience and infinite labour, to unravel the mystery of my birth. There
+is no need to enter now upon the details of that story. I have
+overwhelming documentary evidence--a cloud of witnesses--to convince the
+most sceptical as to who and what I am. The documents are some of them
+in my valise, at your ladyship's service. Others are at my hotel in
+London, ready for the inspection of your ladyship's lawyers. I do not
+think you will desire to invite a public inquiry, or force me to recover
+my birthright in a court of justice. I believe that you will take a
+broader and nobler view of the case, and that you will restore to the
+wronged and abandoned son the fortune stolen from his murdered father.'
+
+'How dare you come to me with this tissue of lies? How dare you look me
+in the face and charge my dead husband with treachery and dishonour? I
+believe neither in your story nor in you, and I defy you to the proof of
+this vile charge against the dead!'
+
+'In other words you mean that you will keep the money and jewels which
+Lord Maulevrier stole from my father?'
+
+'I deny the fact that any such jewels or money ever passed into his
+lordship's possession. That vile woman, your mother, whose infamy cast a
+dark cloud over Lord Maulevrier's honour, may have robbed her husband,
+may have emptied the public treasury. But not a rupee or a jewel
+belonging to her ever came into my possession. I will not bear the
+burden of her crimes. Her existence spoiled my life--banished me from
+India, a widow in all but the name, and more desolate than many widows.'
+
+'Lord Maulevrier was known to leave India carrying with him two large
+chests--supposed to contain books--but actually containing treasure. A
+man who was in the Governor's confidence, and who had been the
+go-between in his intrigues, confessed on his death-bed that he had
+assisted in removing the treasure. Now, Lady Maulevrier, since your
+husband died immediately after his arrival in England, and before he
+could have had any opportunity of converting or making away with the
+valuables so appropriated, it stands to reason that those valuables must
+have passed into your possession, and it is from your honour and good
+feeling that I claim their restitution. If you deny the claim so
+advanced, there remains but one course open to me, and that is to make
+my wrongs public, and claim my right from the law of the land.'
+
+'And do you suppose that any English judge or English jury would believe
+so wild a story--or countenance so vile an accusation against the
+defenceless?' demanded Lady Maulevrier, standing up before him, tall,
+stately, with flashing eye and scornful lip, the image of proud
+defiance. 'Bring forward your claim, produce your documents, your
+witnesses, your death-bed confessions. I defy you to injure my dead
+husband or me by your wild lies, your foul charges! Go to an English
+lawyer, and see what an English law court will do for you--and your
+claim. I will hear no more of either.'
+
+She rang the bell once, twice, thrice, with passionate hand, and a
+servant flew to answer that impatient summons.
+
+'Show this gentlemen to his carriage,' she said, imperiously.
+
+The gentleman who called himself Louis Asoph bowed, and retired without
+another word.
+
+As the door closed upon him, Lady Maulevrier stood, with clenched hands
+and frowning brow, staring into vacancy. Her right arm was outstretched,
+as if she would have waved the intruder away. Suddenly, a strange
+numbness crept over that uplifted arm, and it fell to her side. From her
+shoulder down to her foot, that proud form grew cold and feelingless and
+dead, and she, who had so long carried herself as a queen among women,
+sank in a senseless heap upon the floor.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+'HER FACE RESIGNED TO BLISS OR BALE.'
+
+
+Lady Mary and the Fraeulein had been sitting in the drawing-room all this
+time waiting for Lady Maulevrier to come to tea. They heard her come in
+from the garden; and then the footman told them that she was in the
+library with a stranger. Not even the muffled sound of voices penetrated
+the heavy velvet curtain and the thick oak door. It was only by the loud
+ringing of the bell and the sound of footsteps in the hall that Lady
+Mary knew of the guest's departure. She went to the door between the
+two rooms, and was surprised to find it bolted.
+
+'Grandmamma, won't you come to tea?' she asked timidly, knocking on the
+oaken panel, but there was no reply.
+
+She knocked again, and louder. Still no reply.
+
+'Perhaps her ladyship is going to take tea in her own room,' she said,
+afraid to be officious.
+
+Attendance upon her grandmother at afternoon tea had been one of
+Lesbia's particular duties; but Mary felt that she was an unwelcome
+substitute for Lesbia. She wanted to get a little nearer her
+grandmother's heart if she could; but she knew that her attentions were
+endured rather than liked.
+
+She went into the hall, where the footman on duty was staring at the
+light snowflakes dancing past the window, perhaps wishing he were a
+snowflake himself, and enjoying himself in that white whirligig.
+
+'Is her ladyship having tea in the morning-room?' asked Mary.
+
+The footman gave a little start, as if awakened out of a kind of trance.
+The sheer vacuity of his mind might naturally slide into mesmeric sleep.
+
+He told Lady Mary that her ladyship had not left the library, and Mary
+went in timidly, wondering why her grandmother had not joined them in
+the drawing-room when the stranger was gone.
+
+The sky was dark outside the wide windows, white hills and valleys
+shrouded in the shades of night. The library was only lighted by the
+glow of the logs on the hearth, and in that ruddy light the spacious
+room looked empty. Mary was turning to go away, thinking the footman had
+been mistaken, when her eye suddenly lighted upon a dark figure lying on
+the ground. And then she heard an awful stertorous breathing, and knew
+that her grandmother was lying there, stricken and helpless.
+
+Mary shrieked aloud, with a cry that pierced curtains and doors, and
+brought Fraeulein and half-a-dozen servants to her help. One of the men
+brought a lamp, and among them they lifted the smitten figure. Oh, God!
+how ghastly the face looked in the lamplight!--the features drawn to one
+side, the skin livid.
+
+'Her ladyship has had a stroke,' said the butler.
+
+'Is she dying?' faltered Mary, white as ashes. 'Oh, grandmother, dear
+grandmother, don't look at us like that!'
+
+One of the servants rushed off to the stables to send for the doctor. Of
+course, being an indoor man, he no more thought of going out himself
+into the snowy night on such an errand than Noah thought of going out of
+the ark to explore the face of the waters in person.
+
+They carried Lady Maulevrier to her bed and laid her there, like a
+figure carved out of stone. She was not unconscious. Her eyes were
+open, and she moaned every now and then as if in bodily or mental pain.
+Once she tried to speak, but had no power to shape a syllable aright,
+and ended with a shuddering sigh. Once she lifted her left arm and waved
+it in the air, as if waving some one off in fear or anger. The right
+arm, indeed the whole of the right side, was lifeless, motionless as a
+stone. It was a piteous sight to see the beautiful features drawn and
+distorted, the lips so accustomed to command mouthing the broken
+syllables of an unknown tongue. Lady Mary sat beside the bed with
+clasped hands, praying dumbly, with her eyes fixed on her grandmother's
+altered face.
+
+Mr. Horton came, as soon as his stout mountain pony could bring him. He
+did not seem surprised at her ladyship's condition, and accepted the
+situation with professional calmness.
+
+'A marked case of hemiplegia,' he said, when he had observed the
+symptoms.
+
+'Will she die?' asked Mary.
+
+'Oh, dear, no! She will want great care for a little while, but we shall
+bring her round easily. A splendid constitution, a noble frame; but I
+think she has overworked her brain a little, reading Huxley and Darwin,
+and the German physiologists upon whom Huxley and Darwin have built
+themselves. Metaphysics too. Schopenhauer, and the rest of them. A
+wonderful woman! Very few brains could hold what hers has had poured
+into it in the last thirty years. The conducting nerves between the
+brain and the spinal marrow have been overworked: too much activity, too
+constant a strain. Even the rails and sleepers on the railroad wear out,
+don't you know, if there's excessive traffic.'
+
+Mr. Horton had known Mary from her childhood, had given her Gregory's
+powder, and seen her safely through measles and other infantine
+ailments, so he was quite at home with her, and at Fellside generally.
+Lady Maulevrier had given him a good deal of her confidence during those
+thirty years in which he had practised as his father's partner and
+successor at Grasmere. He used to tell people that he owed the best part
+of his education to her ladyship, who condescended to talk to him of the
+new books she read, and generally gave him a volume to put in his pocket
+when he was leaving her.
+
+'Don't be downhearted, Lady Mary,' he said; 'I shall come in two or
+three times a day and see how things are going on, and if I see the
+slightest difficulty in the case I'll telegraph for Jenner.'
+
+Mary and the Fraeulein sat up with the invalid all that night. Lady
+Maulevrier's maid was also in attendance, and one of the menservants
+slept in his clothes on a couch in the corridor, ready for any
+emergency. But the night passed peacefully, the patient slept a good
+deal, and next day there was evident improvement. The stroke which had
+prostrated the body, which reduced the vigorous, active frame to an
+awful statue--like stillness--a quietude as of death of itself--had not
+overclouded the intellect. Lady Maulevrier lay on her bed in her
+luxurious room, with wide Tudor windows commanding half the circle of
+the hills, and was still the ruling spirit of the house, albeit
+powerless to move that slender hand, the lightest wave of which had been
+as potent to command in her little world as royal sign-manual or sceptre
+in the great world outside.
+
+Now there remained only one thing unimpaired by that awful shock which
+had laid the stately frame low, and that was the will and sovereign
+force of the woman's nature. Voice was altered, speech was confused and
+difficult; but the strength of will, the supreme power of mind, seemed
+undiminished.
+
+When Lady Maulevrier was asked if Lesbia should be telegraphed for, she
+replied no, not unless she was in danger of sudden death.
+
+'I should like to see her before I go,' she said, labouring to pronounce
+the words.
+
+'Dear grandmother,' said Mary, tenderly, 'Mr. Horton says there is no
+danger.'
+
+'Then do not send for her; do not even tell her what has happened; not
+yet.'
+
+'But she will miss your letters.'
+
+'True. You must write twice a week at my dictation. You must tell her
+that I have hurt my hand, that I am well but cannot use a pen. I would
+not spoil her pleasure for the world.'
+
+'Dear grandmother, how unselfish you are! And Maulevrier, shall he be
+sent for? He is not so far away,' said Mary, hoping her grandmother
+would say yes.
+
+What a relief, what an unspeakable solace Maulevrier's presence would be
+in that dreary house, smitten to a sudden and awful stillness, as if by
+the Angel of Death!
+
+'No, I do not want Maulevrier!' answered her ladyship impatiently.
+
+'May I sit here and read to you, grandmother?' Mary asked, timidly. 'Mr.
+Horton said you were to be kept very quiet, and that we were not to let
+you talk, or talk much to you, but that we might read to you if you
+like.'
+
+'I do not wish to be read to. I have my thoughts for company,' said Lady
+Maulevrier.
+
+Mary felt that this implied a wish to be alone. She bent over the
+invalid's pillow and kissed the pale cheek, feeling as if she were
+taking a liberty in venturing so much. She would hardly have done it had
+Lesbia been at home; but she had a feeling that in Lesbia's absence Lady
+Maulevrier must want somebody's love--even hers. And then she crept
+away, leaving Halcott the maid in attendance, sitting at her work at the
+window furthest from the bed.
+
+'Alone with my thoughts,' mused Lady Maulevrier, looking out at the
+panorama of wintry hills, white, ghost-like against an iron sky.
+'Pleasant thoughts, truly! Walled in by the hills--walled in and hemmed
+round for ever. This place has always felt like a grave: and now I know
+that it _is_ my grave.'
+
+Fraeulein, and Lady Mary, and the maid Halcott, a sedate personage of
+forty summers, had all been instructed by the doctor that Lady
+Maulevrier was to be kept profoundly quiet. She must not talk much,
+since speech was likely to be a painful effort with her for some little
+time; she must not be talked to much by anyone, least of all must she be
+spoken to upon any agitating topic. Life must be made as smooth and easy
+for her as for a new-born infant. No rough breath from the outer world
+must come near her. She was to see no one but her maid and her
+granddaughter. Mr. Horton, a plain family man, took it for granted that
+the granddaughter was dear to her heart, and likely to exercise a
+soothing influence. Thus it happened that although Lady Maulevrier asked
+repeatedly that James Steadman should be brought to her, she was not
+allowed to see him. She whose will had been paramount in that house,
+whose word had been law, was now treated as a little child, while the
+will was still as strong, the mind as keen as ever.
+
+'She would talk to him of business,' said Mr. Horton, when he was told
+of her ladyship's desire to see Steadman, 'and that cannot be allowed,
+not for some little time at least.'
+
+'She is very angry with us for refusing to obey her,' said Lady Mary.
+
+'Naturally, but it is for her own welfare she is disobeyed. She can have
+nothing to say to Steadman which will not keep till she is better. This
+establishment goes by clockwork.'
+
+Mary wished it was a little less like clockwork. Since Lady Maulevrier
+had been lying upstairs--the voice which had once ruled over the house
+muffled almost to dumbness--the monotony of life at Fellside had seemed
+all the more oppressive. The servants crept about with stealthier tread.
+Mary dared not touch either piano or billiard balls, and was naturally
+seized with a longing to touch both. The house had a darkened look, as
+if the shadow of doom overhung it.
+
+During this regimen of perfect quiet Lady Maulevrier was not allowed to
+see the newspapers; and Mary was warned that in reading to her
+grandmother she was to avoid all exciting topics. Thus it happened that
+the account of a terrible collision between the Scotch express and a
+luggage train, a little way beyond Preston, an accident in which seven
+people were killed and about thirty seriously hurt, was not made known
+to her ladyship; and yet that fact would have been of intense interest
+and significance to her, since one of those passengers whose injuries
+were fatal bore the name of Louis Asoph.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+'AND THE SPRING COMES SLOWLY UP THIS WAY.'
+
+
+The wintry weeks glided smoothly by in a dull monotony, and now Lady
+Maulevrier, still helpless, still compelled to lie on her bed or her
+invalid couch, motionless as marble, had at least recovered her power of
+speech, was allowed to read and to talk, and to hear what was going on
+in that metropolitan world which she seemed unlikely ever to behold
+again.
+
+Lady Lesbia was still at Cannes, whence she wrote of her pleasures and
+her triumphs, of flowers and sapphire sea, and azure sky, of all things
+which were not in the grey bleak mountain world that hemmed in Fellside.
+She was meeting many of the people whom she was to meet again next
+season in the London world. She had made an informal _debut_ in a very
+select circle, a circle in which everybody was more or less _chic_, or
+_chien_, or _zinc_, and she was tasting all the sweets of success. But
+in none of her letters was there any mention of Lord Hartfield. He was
+not in the little great world by the blue tideless sea.
+
+There was no talk of Lesbia's return. She was to stay till the carnival;
+she was to stay till the week before Easter. Lady Kirkbank insisted upon
+it; and both Lesbia and Lady Kirkbank upbraided Lady Maulevrier for her
+cruelty in not joining them at Cannes.
+
+So Lady Maulevrier had to resign herself to that solitude which had
+become almost the habit of her life, and to the society of Mary and the
+Fraeulein. Mary was eager to be of use, to sit with her grandmother, to
+read to her, to write for her. The warm young heart was deeply moved by
+the spectacle of this stately woman stricken into helplessness, chained
+to her couch, immured within four walls. To Mary, who so loved the hills
+and the streams, the sun and the wind, this imprisonment seemed
+unspeakable woe. In her pity for such a martyrdom she would have done
+anything to give pleasure or solace to her grandmother. Unhappily there
+was very little Mary could do to increase the invalid's sum of pleasure.
+Lady Maulevrier was a woman of strong feeling, not capable of loving
+many people. She had concentrated her affection upon Lesbia: and she
+could not open her heart to Mary all at once because Lesbia was out of
+the way.
+
+'If I had a dog I loved, and he were to die, I would never have another
+in his place,' Lady Maulevrier said once; and that speech was the
+keynote of her character.
+
+She was very courteous to Mary, and seemed grateful for her attentions;
+but she did not cultivate the girl's society. Mary wrote all her letters
+in a fine bold hand, and with a rapid pen; but when the letter-writing
+was over Lady Maulevrier always dismissed her.
+
+'My dear, you want to be out in the air, riding your pony, or
+scampering about with your dogs,' she said, kindly. 'It would be a
+cruelty to keep you indoors.'
+
+'No, indeed, dear grandmother, I should like to stay. May I stop and
+read to you?'
+
+'No, thank you, Mary. I hate being read to. I like to devour a book.
+Reading aloud is such slow work.
+
+'But I am afraid you must sometimes feel lonely,' faltered Mary.
+
+'Lonely,' echoed the dowager, with a sigh. 'I have been lonely for the
+last forty years--I have been lonely all my life. Those I loved never
+gave me back love for love--never--not even your sister. See how lightly
+she cuts the link that bound her to me. How happy she is among
+strangers! Yes, there was one who loved me truly, and fate parted us.
+Does fate part all true lovers, I wonder?'
+
+'You parted Lesbia and Mr. Hammond,' said Mary, impetuously. 'I am sure
+they loved each other truly.'
+
+'The old and the worldly-wise are Fate, Mary,' answered the dowager, not
+angry at this daring reproach. 'I know your sister; and I know she is
+not the kind of woman to be happy in an ignoble life--to bear poverty
+and deprivation. If it had been you, now, whom Mr. Hammond had chosen, I
+might have taken the subject into my consideration.'
+
+Mary flamed crimson.
+
+'Mr. Hammond never gave me a thought,' she said, 'unless it was to think
+me contemptible. He is worlds too good for such a Tomboy. Maulevrier
+told him about the fox-hunt, and they both laughed at me--at least I
+have no doubt Mr. Hammond laughed, though I was too much ashamed to look
+at him.'
+
+'Poor Mary, you are beginning to find out that a young lady ought to be
+ladylike,' said Lady Maulevrier; 'and now, my dear, you may go. I was
+only joking with you. Mr. Hammond would be no match for any
+granddaughter of mine. He is nobody, and has neither friends nor
+interest. If he had gone into the church Maulevrier could have helped
+him; but I daresay his ideas are too broad for the church; and he will
+have to starve at the bar, where nobody can help him. I hope you will
+bear this in mind, Mary, if Maulevrier should ever bring him here
+again.'
+
+'He is never likely to come back again. He suffered too much; he was
+treated too badly in this house.'
+
+'Lady Mary, be good enough to remember to whom you are speaking,' said
+her ladyship, with a frown. 'And now please go, and tell some one to
+send Steadman to me.'
+
+Mary retired without a word, gave Lady Maulevrier's message to a footman
+in the corridor, slipped off to her room, put on her sealskin hat and
+jacket, took her staff and went out for a long ramble. The hills and
+valleys were still white. It had been a long, cold winter, and spring
+was still far off--February had only just begun.
+
+Lady Maulevrier's couch had been wheeled into the morning-room--that
+luxurious room which was furnished with all things needful to her quiet
+life, her books, her favourite colours, her favourite flowers, every
+detail studiously arranged for her pleasure and comfort. She was wheeled
+into this room every day at noon. When the day was bright and sunny her
+couch was placed near the window: and when the day was dull and grey the
+couch was drawn close to the low hearth, which flashed and glittered
+with brightly coloured tiles and artistic brass.
+
+To-day the sky was dull, and the velvet couch stood beside the hearth.
+Halcott sat at work in the adjoining bed-chamber, and came in every now
+and then to replenish the fire: a footman was always on duty in the
+corridor. A spring bell stood among the elegant trifles upon her
+ladyship's table; and the lightest touch of her left hand upon the bell
+brought her attendants to her side. She resolutely refused to have any
+one sitting with her all day long. Solitude was a necessity of her
+being, she told Mr. Horton, when he recommended that she should have
+some one always in attendance upon her.
+
+As the weeks wore on her features had been restored to their proud, calm
+beauty, her articulation was almost as clear as of old: yet, now and
+then, there would be a sudden faltering, the tongue and lips would
+refuse their office, or she would forget a word, or use a wrong word
+unconsciously. But there was no recovery of power or movement on that
+side of the body which had been stricken. The paralysed limbs were still
+motionless, lifeless as marble; and it was clear that Mr. Horton had
+begun to lose heart about his patient. There was nothing obscure in the
+case, but the patient's importance made the treatment a serious matter,
+and the surgeon begged to be allowed to summon Sir William Jenner.
+
+This, however, Lady Maulevrier refused.
+
+'I don't want any fuss made about me,' she said. 'I am content to trust
+myself to your skill, and I beg that no other doctor may be summoned.'
+
+Mr. Horton understood his patient's feelings on this point. She had a
+sense of humiliation in her helplessness, and, like some wounded animal
+that crawls to its covert to die, she would fain have hidden her misery
+from the eye of strangers. She had allowed no one, not even Maulevrier,
+to be informed of the nature of her illness.
+
+'It will be time enough for him to know all about me when he comes
+here,' she said. 'I shall be obliged to see him whenever he does come.'
+
+Maulevrier had spent Christmas and New Year in Paris, Mr. Hammond still
+his companion. Her ladyship commented upon this with a touch of scorn.
+
+'Mr. Hammond is like the Umbra you were reading about the other day in
+Lord Lytton's "Last Days of Pompeii,"' she said to Mary. 'It must be
+very nice for him to go about the world with a friend who franks him
+everywhere.'
+
+'But we don't know that Maulevrier franks him,' protested Mary,
+blushing. 'We have no right to suppose that Mr. Hammond does not pay his
+own expenses.'
+
+'My dear child, is it possible for a young man who has no private means
+to go gadding about the world on equal terms with a spendthrift like
+Maulevrier--to pay for Moors in Scotland and apartments at the Bristol?'
+
+'But they are not staying at the Bristol,' exclaimed Mary. 'They are
+staying at an old-established French hotel on the left side of
+the Seine. They are going about amongst the students and the workmen,
+dining at popular restaurants, hearing people talk. Maulevrier says it
+is delightfully amusing--ever so much better than the beaten track of
+life in Anglo-American Paris.'
+
+'I daresay they are leading a Bohemian life, and will get into trouble
+before they have done,' said her ladyship, gloomily. 'Maulevrier is
+as wild as a hawk.'
+
+'He is the dearest boy in the world,' exclaimed Mary.
+
+She was deeply grateful for her brother's condescension in writing her a
+letter of two pages long, letting her into the secrets of his life. She
+felt as if Mr. Hammond were ever so much nearer to her now she knew
+where he was, and how he was amusing himself.
+
+'Hammond is such a queer fellow,' wrote Maulevrier, 'the strangest
+things interest him. He sits and talks to the workmen for hours; he
+pokes his nose into all sorts of places--hospitals, workshops,
+poverty-stricken dens--and people are always civil to him. He is what
+Lesbia calls _sympatico_. Ah! what a mistake Lesbia and my grandmother
+made when they rejected Hammond! What a pearl above price they threw
+away! But, you see, neither my lady nor Lesbia could appreciate a gem,
+unless it was richly set.'
+
+And now Lady Maulevrier lay on her couch by the fire, waiting for James
+Steadman. She had seen him several times since the day of her seizure,
+but never alone. There was an idea that Steadman must necessarily talk
+to her of business matters, or cause her mind to trouble itself about
+business matters; so there had been a well-intentioned conspiracy in the
+house to keep him out of her way; but now she was much better, and her
+desire to see Steadman need no longer be thwarted.
+
+He came at her bidding, and stood a little way within the door, tall,
+erect, square-shouldered, resolute-looking, with a quiet force of
+character expressed in every feature. He was very much the same man that
+he had been forty years ago, when he went with her ladyship to
+Southampton, and accompanied his master and mistress on that tedious
+journey which was destined to be Lord Maulevrier's last earthly
+pilgrimage. Time had done little to Steadman in those forty years,
+except to whiten his hair and beard, and imprint some thoughtful lines
+upon his sagacious forehead. Time had done something for him mentally,
+insomuch as he had read a great many books and cultivated his mind in
+the monotonous quiet of Fellside. Altogether he was a superior man for
+the passage of those forty years.
+
+He had married within the time, choosing for himself the buxom daughter
+of a lodgekeeper, whose wife had long been laid at rest in Grasmere
+churchyard. The buxom girl had grown into a bulky matron, but she was a
+colourless personage, and her existence made hardly any difference in
+James Steadman's life. She had brought him no children, and their
+fireside was lonely; but Steadman seemed to be one of those
+self-contained personages to whom a solitary life is no affliction.
+
+'I hope I see you in better health, my lady,' he said, standing straight
+and square, like a soldier on parade.
+
+'I am better, thank you, Steadman; better, but a poor lifeless log
+chained to this sofa. I sent for you because the time has come when I
+must talk to you upon a matter of business. You heard, I suppose, that a
+stranger called upon me just before I had my attack?'
+
+'Yes, my lady.'
+
+'Did you hear who and what he was?'
+
+'Only that he was a foreigner, my lady.'
+
+'He is of Indian birth. He claims to be the son of the Ranee of
+Bisnagar.'
+
+'He could do you no harm, my lady, if he were twenty times her son.'
+
+'I hope not. Now, I want to ask you a question. Among those trunks and
+cases and packages of Lord Maulevrier's which were sent here by heavy
+coach, after they were landed at Southampton, do you remember two cases
+of books?'
+
+'There are two large cases among the luggage, my lady; very heavy cases,
+iron clamped. I should not be surprised if they were full of books.'
+
+'Have they never been opened?'
+
+'Not to my knowledge.'
+
+'Are they locked?'
+
+'Yes, my lady. There are two padlocks on each chest.'
+
+'And are the keys in your possession?'
+
+'No, my lady.'
+
+'Where are the cases?'
+
+'In the Oak Room, with the rest of the Indian luggage.'
+
+'Let them remain there. No doubt those cases contain the books of which
+I have been told. You have not heard that the person calling himself
+Rajah of Bisnagar has been here since my illness, have you?'
+
+'No, my lady; I am sure he has not been here.'
+
+Lady Maulevrier gave him a scrutinising look.
+
+'He might have come, and my people might have kept the knowledge from
+me, out of consideration for my infirmity,' she said. 'I should be very
+angry if it were so. I should hate to be treated like a child.'
+
+'You shall not be so treated, my lady, while I am in this house; but I
+know there is no member of the household who would presume so to treat
+you.'
+
+'They might do it out of kindness; but I should loathe such kindness,'
+said Lady Maulevrier, impatiently. 'Though I have been smitten down,
+though I lie here like a log, I have a mind to think and to plan; and I
+am not afraid to meet danger, face to face. Are you telling me the
+truth, Steadman? Have there been no visits concealed from me, no letters
+kept from me since I have been ill?'
+
+'I am telling you nothing but the truth, my lady. No letter has been
+kept from you; no visitor has been to this house whose coming you have
+not been told of.'
+
+'Then I am content,' said her ladyship, with a sigh of relief.
+
+After this there followed some conversation upon business matters. James
+Steadman was trusted with the entire management of the dowager's income,
+the investment of her savings. His honesty was above all suspicion. He
+was a man of simple habits, his wants few. He had saved money in every
+year of his service; and for a man of his station was rich enough to be
+unassailable by the tempter.
+
+He had reconciled his mind to the monotonous course of life at Fellside
+in the beginning of things; and, as the years glided smoothly by, his
+character and wants and inclinations had, as it were, moulded themselves
+to fit that life. He had easy duties, a comfortable home, supreme
+authority in the household. He was looked up to and made much of in the
+village whenever he condescended to appear there; and by the rareness of
+his visits to the Inn or the Reading-room, and his unwillingness to
+accept hospitality from the tradesmen of Grasmere and Ambleside, he
+maintained his dignity and exaggerated his importance. He had his books
+and his newspapers, his evening leisure, which no one ever dared to
+disturb. He had the old wing of the house for his exclusive occupation;
+and no one ventured to intrude upon him in his privacy. There was a bell
+in the corridor which communicated with his rooms, and by this bell he
+was always summoned. There were servants who had been ten years at
+Fellside, and who had never crossed the threshold of the red cloth door
+which was the only communication between the new house and the old one.
+Steadman's wife performed all household duties of cooking and cleaning
+in the south wing, where she and her husband took all their meals, and
+lived entirely apart from the other servants, an exclusiveness which was
+secretly resented by the establishment.
+
+'Mr. Steadman may be a very superior man,' said the butler 'and I know
+that in his own estimation the Premier isn't in it compared with him;
+but I never was fond of people who set themselves upon pinnacles, and
+I'm not fond of the Steadmans.'
+
+'Mrs. Steadman's plain and homely enough,' replied the housekeeper, 'and
+I know she'd like to be more sociable, and drop into my room for a cup
+of tea now and then; but Steadman do so keep her under his thumb: and
+because he's a misanthrope she's obliged to sit and mope alone.'
+
+If Steadman wanted to drive, there was a dogcart and horse at his
+disposal; but he did not often leave Fellside. He seemed in his humble
+way to model his life upon Lady Maulevrier's secluded habits. It was
+growing dusk when Steadman left his mistress, and she lay for some time
+looking at the landscape over which twilight shadows were stealing, and
+thinking of her own life. Over that life, too, the shadows of evening
+were creeping. She had begun to realise the fact that she was an old
+woman; that for her all personal interest in life was nearly over. She
+had never felt her age while her activity was unimpaired. She had been
+obliged to remind herself very often that the afternoon and evening of
+life had slipped away unawares in that tranquil retirement, and that the
+night was at hand.
+
+For her the close of earthly life meant actual night. No new dawn, no
+mysterious after-life shone upon her with magical gleams of an unknown
+light upon the other side of the dark river. She had accepted the
+Materialist's bitter and barren creed, and had taught herself that this
+little life was all. She had learned to scorn the idea of a great
+Artificer outside the universe, a mighty spirit riding amidst the
+clouds, and ruling the course of nature and the fate of man. She had
+schooled herself to think that the idea of a blind, unconscious Nature,
+working automatically through infinite time and space, was ever so much
+grander than the old-world notion of a personal God, a Being of infinite
+power and inexhaustible beneficence, mighty to devise and direct the
+universe, with knowledge reaching to the farthest confines of space,
+with ear to listen to the prayer of His lowest creatures. Her belief
+stopped short even of the Deist's faith in an Almighty Will. She saw in
+creation nothing but the inevitable development of material laws; and it
+seemed to her that there was quite as much hope of a heavenly world
+after death for the infusoria in the pool as for man in his pride and
+power.
+
+She read her Bible as diligently as she read her Shakespeare, and the
+words of the Royal Preacher in some measure embodied her own dreary
+creed. And now, in the darkening winter day, she watched the gloomy
+shadows creep over the rugged breast of Nabb Scar, and she thought how
+there was a time for all things, and that her day of hope and ambition
+was past.
+
+Of late years she had lived for Lesbia, looking forward to the day when
+she was to introduce this beloved grandchild to the great world of
+London; and now that hope was gone for ever.
+
+What could a helpless cripple do for a fashionable beauty? What good
+would it be for her to be conveyed to London, and to lie on a couch in
+Mayfair, while Lesbia rode in the Row and went to three or four parties
+every night with a more active chaperon?
+
+She had hoped to go everywhere with her darling, to glory in all her
+successes, to shield her from all possibility of failure. And now Lesbia
+must stand or fall alone.
+
+It was a hard thing; but perhaps the hardest part of it was that Lesbia
+seemed so very well able to get on without her. The girl wrote in the
+highest spirits; and although her letters were most affectionately
+worded, they were all about self. That note was dominant in every
+strain. Her triumphs, her admirers, her bonnets, her gowns. She had had
+more money from her grandmother, and more gowns from Paris.
+
+'You have no idea how the people dress in this place,' she wrote. 'I
+should have been quite out in the cold without my three new frocks from
+Worth. The little Princess bonnets I wear are the rage. Worth
+recommended me to adopt special flowers and colours; so I have worn
+nothing but primroses since I have been here, and my little primrose
+bonnets are to be seen everywhere, sometimes on hideous old women. Lady
+Kirkbank hopes you will be able to go to London directly after Easter.
+She says I must be presented at the May drawing-room--that is
+imperative. People have begun to talk about me; and unless I make my
+_debut_ while their interest is fresh I shall be a failure. There is an
+American beauty here, and I believe she and I are considered rivals, and
+young men lay wagers about us, as to which will look best at a ball, or
+a regatta, what colours we shall wear, and so on. It is immense fun. I
+only wish you were here to enjoy it. The American girl is a most
+insolent person, but I have had the pleasure of crushing her on several
+occasions in the calmest way. In the description of the concert in last
+week's newspaper I was called _l'Anglais de marbre_. I certainly had the
+decency to hold my tongue while Faure was singing. Miss Bolsover's voice
+was heard ever so many times above the music. According to our English
+ideas she has most revolting manners, and the money she spends on her
+clothes would make your hair stand on end. Now do, dearest grandmother,
+make all your arrangements for beginning the campaign directly after
+Easter. You must take a house in the very choicest quarter--Lady
+Kirkbank suggests Grosvenor-place--and it _must_ be a large house, for
+of course you will give a ball. Lady K. says we might have Lord
+Porlock's house--poor Lady Porlock and her baby died a few weeks ago,
+and he has gone to Sweden quite broken-hearted. It is one of the new
+houses, exquisitely furnished, and Lady K. thinks you might have it for
+a song. Will you get Steadman to write to his lordship's steward, and
+see what can be done?
+
+'I hope the dear hand is better. You have never told me how you hurt
+it. It is very sweet of Mary to write me such long letters, and quite a
+pleasant surprise to find she can spell; but I want to see your own dear
+hand once more.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+'AND COME AGEN BE IT BY NIGHT OR DAY.'
+
+
+Those winter months were unutterably dreary for Lady Mary Haselden. She
+felt weighed down by a sense of death and woe near at hand. The horror
+of that dreadful moment in which she found her grandmother lying
+senseless on the ground, the terror of that distorted countenance, those
+starting eyes, that stertorous breathing, was not easily banished from a
+vivid girlish imagination; seeing how few distractions there were to
+divert Mary's thoughts, and how the sun sank and rose again upon the
+same inevitable surroundings, to the same monotonous routine.
+
+Her grandmother was kinder than she had been in days gone by, less
+inclined to find fault; but Mary knew that her society gave Lady
+Maulevrier very little pleasure, that she could do hardly anything
+towards filling the gap made by Lesbia's absence. There was no one to
+scold her, no one to quarrel with her. Fraeulein Mueller lectured her
+mildly from time to time; but that stout German was too lazy to put any
+force or fire into her lectures. Her reproofs were like the fall of
+waterdrops on a stone, and infinite ages would have been needed to cause
+any positive impression.
+
+February came to an end without sign or token from the outer world to
+disturb the even tenor of life at Fellside. Mary read, and read, and
+read, till she felt she was made up of the contents of books, crammed
+with other people's ideas. She read history, or natural science, or
+travels, or German poetry in the morning, and novels or English poetry
+in the evening. She had pledged herself to devote her morning indoor
+hours to instructive literature, and to accomplish some portion of study
+in every day. She was carrying on her education on parole, as before
+stated; and she was too honourable to do less than was expected from
+her.
+
+March came in with its most leonine aspect, howling and blustering;
+north-east winds shrieking along the gorges and wailing from height to
+height.
+
+'I wonder the lion and the lamb are not blown into the lake,' said Mary,
+looking at Helm Crag from the library window.
+
+She scampered about the gardens in the very teeth of those bitter
+blasts, and took her shivering terriers for runs on the green slopes of
+the Fell. The snow had gradually melted from the tides of the lowermost
+range of hills, but the mountain peaks were still white and ghostly,
+the ground was still hard and slippery in the early mornings. Mary had
+to take her walks alone in this bleak weather. Fraeulein had a convenient
+bronchial affection which forbade her to venture so much as the point of
+her nose outside the house in an east wind, and which justified her in
+occasionally taking her breakfast in bed. She spent her days for the
+most part in her arm-chair, drawn close to the fireplace, which she
+still insisted upon calling the oven, knitting diligently, or reading
+the _Rundschau_. Even music, which had once been her strong point, was
+neglected in this trying weather. It was such a cold journey from the
+oven to the piano.
+
+Mary played a good deal in her desultory manner, now that she had the
+drawing-room all to herself, and no fear of Lady Maulevrier's critical
+ear or Lesbia's superior smile. The Fraeulein was pleased to hear her
+pupil ramble on with her favourite bits from Raff, and Hensel, and
+Schubert, and Mendelssohn, and Mozart, and was very well content to let
+her play just what she liked, and to escape the trouble of training her
+to that exquisite perfection into which Lady Lesbia had been drilled.
+Lesbia was not a genius, and the training process had been quite as hard
+for the governess as for the pupil.
+
+Thus the slow days wore on till the first week in March, and on one
+bleak bitter afternoon, when Fraeulein Mueller stuck to the oven even a
+little closer than usual, Mary felt she must go out, in the face of the
+east wind, which was tossing the leafless branches in the valley below
+until the trees looked like an angry crowd, hurling its arms in the air,
+fighting, struggling, writhing. She must leave that dreary house for a
+little while, were it even to be lashed and bruised and broken by that
+fierce wind. So she told Fraeulein that she really must have her
+constitutional; and after a feeble remonstrance Fraeulein let her go, and
+subsided luxuriously into the pillowed depth of her arm-chair.
+
+There had been a hard frost, and all the mountain ways were perilous, so
+Mary set out upon a steady tramp along the road leading towards the
+Langdales. The wind seemed to assail her from every side, but she had
+accustomed herself to defy the elements, and she only hugged her
+sealskin jacket closer to her, and quickened her pace, chirruping and
+whistling to Ahab and Ariadne, the two fox-terriers which she had
+selected for the privilege of a walk.
+
+The terriers raced along the road, and Mary, seeing that she had the
+road all to herself, raced after them. A light snow-shower, large
+feathery flakes flying wide apart, fell from the steel-grey sky; but
+Mary minded the snow no more than she minded the wind. She raced on, the
+terriers scampering, rushing, flying before her, until, just where the
+road took a curve, she almost ran into a horse, which was stepping along
+at a tremendous pace, with a light, high dogcart behind him.
+
+'Hi!' cried the driver, 'where are you coming, young woman? Have you
+never seen a horse till to-day?'
+
+Some one beside the driver leapt out, and ran to see if Mary was hurt.
+The horse had swerved to one side, reared a little, and then spun on for
+a few yards, leaving her standing in the middle of the road.
+
+'Why, it's Molly!' cried the driver, who was no less distinguished a
+whip than Lord Maulevrier, and who had recognised the terriers.
+
+'I hope you are not hurt,' said the gentleman who had alighted,
+Maulevrier's friend and shadow, John Hammond.
+
+Mary was covered with confusion by her exploit, and could hardly answer
+Mr. Hammond's very simple question.
+
+She looked up at him piteously, trying to speak, and he took alarm at
+her scared expression.
+
+'I am sure you are hurt,' he said earnestly, 'the horse must have struck
+you, or the shaft perhaps, which was worse. Is it your shoulder that is
+hurt, or your chest? Lean on me, if you feel faint or giddy. Maulevrier,
+you had better drive your sister home, and get her looked after.'
+
+'Indeed, I am not hurt; not the least little bit,' gasped Mary, who had
+recovered her senses by this time. 'I was only frightened, and it was
+such a surprise to see you and Maulevrier.'
+
+A surprise--yes--a surprise which had set her heart throbbing so
+violently as to render her speechless. Had horse or shaft-point struck
+her ever so, she would have hardly been more tremulous than she felt at
+this moment. Never had she hoped to see him again. He had set his all
+upon one cast--loved, wooed, and lost her sister. Why should he ever
+come again? What was there at Fellside worth coming for? And then she
+remembered what her grandmother thought of him. He was a hanger-on, a
+sponge, a led captain. He was Maulevrier's Umbra, and must go where his
+patron went. It was a hard thing so to think of him, and Mary's heart
+sank at the thought that Lady Maulevrier's worldly wisdom might have
+reckoned aright.
+
+'It was very foolish of me to run into the horse,' said Mary, while Mr.
+Hammond stood waiting for her to recover herself.
+
+'It was very foolish of Maulevrier to run into you. If he didn't drive
+at such a break-neck pace it wouldn't have happened.'
+
+Umbra was very plain-spoken, at any rate.
+
+'There's rank ingratitude,' cried Maulevrier, who had turned back, and
+was looking down at them from his elevated perch. 'After my coming all
+the way round by Langdale to oblige you with a view of Elterwater.
+Molly's all safe and sound. She wouldn't have minded if I'd run over
+her. Come along, child, get up beside me, Hammond will take the back
+seat.'
+
+This was easier said than done, for the back of the dogcart was piled
+with Gladstone bags, fishing rods, and hat-boxes; but Umbra was ready
+to oblige. He handed Mary up to the seat by the driver, and clambered up
+at the back, when he hooked himself on somehow among the luggage.
+
+'Dear Maulevrier, how delicious of you to come!' said Mary, when they
+were rattling on towards Fellside; 'I hope you are going to stay for
+ages.'
+
+'Well, I dare say, if you make yourself very agreeable, I may stay till
+after Easter.'
+
+Mary's countenance fell.
+
+'Easter is in three weeks,' she said, despondingly.
+
+'And isn't three weeks an age, at such a place as Fellside? I don't know
+that I should have come at all on this side of the August sports, only
+as the grandmother was ill, I thought it a duty to come and see her. A
+fellow mayn't care much for ancestors when they're well, you know; but
+when a poor old lady is down on her luck, her people ought to look after
+her. So, here I am; and as I knew I should be moped to death here----'
+
+'Thank you for the compliment,' said Mary.
+
+'I brought Hammond along with me. Of course, I knew Lesbia was safe out
+of the way,' added Maulevrier in an undertone.
+
+'It is very obliging of Mr. Hammond always to go where you wish,'
+returned Mary, who could not help a bitter feeling when she remembered
+her grandmother's cruel suggestion. 'Has he no tastes or inclinations of
+his own?'
+
+'Yes, he has, plenty of them, and much loftier tastes than mine, I can
+tell you. But he's kind enough to let me hang on to him, and to put up
+with my frivolity. There never were two men more different than he and I
+are; and I suppose that's why we get on so well together. When we were
+in Paris he was always up to his eyes in serious work--lectures, public
+libraries, workmen's syndicates, Mary Anne, the International--heaven
+knows what, making himself master of the political situation in France;
+while I was _rigolant_ and _chaloupant_ at the Bal Bullier.'
+
+It was generous of Maulevrier to speak of his hanger-on thus; and no
+doubt the society of a well-informed earnest young man was a great good
+for Maulevrier, a good far above the price of those pounds, shillings,
+and pence which the Earl might spend for his dependent's benefit; but
+when a girl of Mary's ardent temper has made a hero of a man, it galls
+her to think that her hero's dignity should be sacrificed, his honour
+impeached, were it by the merest tittle.
+
+Maulevrier made a good many inquiries about his grandmother, and seemed
+really full of kindness and sympathy; but it was with a feeling of
+profound awe, nay, of involuntary reluctance and shrinking, that he
+presently entered her ladyship's sitting-room, ushered in by Mary, who
+had been to her grandmother beforehand to announce the grandson's
+arrival.
+
+The young man had hardly ever been in a sick room before. He half
+expected to see Lady Maulevrier in bed, with a crowd of medicine bottles
+and a cut orange on a table by her side, and a sick nurse of the
+ancient-crone species cowering over the fire. It was an infinite relief
+to him to find his grandmother lying on a sofa by the fire in her pretty
+morning room. A little tea-table was drawn close up to her sofa, and she
+was taking her afternoon tea. It was rather painful to see her lifting
+her tea-cup slowly and carefully with her left hand, but that was all.
+The dark eyes still flashed with the old eagle glance, the lines of the
+lips were as proud and firm as ever. All sign of contraction or
+distortion had passed away. In hours of calm her ladyship's beauty was
+unimpaired; but with any strong emotion there came a convulsive working
+of the features, and the face was momentarily drawn and distorted, as it
+had been at the time of the seizure.
+
+Maulevrier's presence had not an unduly agitating effect on her
+ladyship. She received him with tranquil graciousness, and thanked him
+for his coming.
+
+'I hope you have spent your winter profitably in Paris,' she said.
+'There is a great deal to be learnt there if you go into the right
+circles.'
+
+Maulevrier told her that he had found much to learn, and that he had
+gone into circles where almost everything was new to him. Whereupon his
+grandmother questioned him about certain noble families in the Faubourg
+Saint Germain who had been known to her in her own day of power, and
+whose movements she had observed from a distance since that time; but
+here she found her grandson dark. He had not happened to meet any of the
+people she spoke about: the plain truth being that he had lived
+altogether as a Bohemian, and had not used one of the letters of
+introduction that had been given to him.
+
+'Your friend Mr. Hammond is with you, I am told,' said Lady Maulevrier,
+not altogether with delight.
+
+'Yes, I made him come; but he is quite safe. He will bolt like a shot at
+the least hint of Lesbia's return. He doesn't want to meet that young
+lady again, I can assure you.'
+
+'Pray don't talk in that injured tone. Mr. Hammond is a gentlemanlike
+person, very well informed, very agreeable. I have never denied that.
+But you could not expect me to allow my granddaughter to throw herself
+away upon the first adventurer who made her an offer.'
+
+'Hammond is not an adventurer.'
+
+'Very well, I will not call him so, if the term offends you. But Mr.
+Hammond is--Mr. Hammond, and I cannot allow Lesbia to marry Mr. Hammond
+or Mr. Anybody, and I am very sorry you have brought him here again.
+There is Mary, a silly, romantic girl. I am very much afraid he has made
+an impression upon her. She colours absurdly when she talks of him, and
+flew into a passion with me the other day when I ventured to hint that
+he is not a Rothschild, and that his society must be expensive to you.'
+
+'His society does not cost me anything. Hammond is the soul of
+independence. He worked as a blacksmith in Canada for three months, just
+to see what life was like in a wild district. There never was such a
+fellow to rough it. And as for Molly, well, now, really, if he happened
+to take a fancy to her, and if she happened to like him, I wouldn't bosh
+the business, if I were you, grandmother. Take my word for it, Molly
+might do worse.'
+
+'Of course. She might marry a chimney sweep. There is no answering for a
+girl of her erratic nature. She is silly enough and romantic enough for
+anything; but I shall not countenance her if she wants to throw herself
+away on a person without prospects or connections; and I look to you,
+Maulevrier, to take care of her, now that I am a wretched log chained to
+this room.'
+
+'You may rely upon me, grandmother, Molly shall come to no harm, if I
+can help it.'
+
+'Thank you,' said her ladyship, touching her bell twice.
+
+The two clear silvery strokes were a summons for Halcott, the maid, who
+appeared immediately.
+
+'Tell Mrs. Power to get his lordship's room ready immediately, and to
+give Mr. Hammond the room he had last summer,' said Lady Maulevrier,
+with a sigh of resignation.
+
+While Maulevrier was with his grandmother John Hammond was smoking a
+solitary cigar on the terrace, contemplating the mountain landscape in
+its cold March greyness, and wondering very much to find himself again
+at Fellside. He had gone forth from that house full of passionate
+indignation, shaking off the dust from his feet, sternly resolved never
+again to cross the threshold of that fateful cave, where he had met his
+cold-hearted Circe. And now, because Circe was safe out of the way, he
+had come back to the cavern; and he was feeling all the pain that a man
+feels who beholds again the scene of a great past sorrow.
+
+Was this the old love and the old pain again, he wondered, or was it
+only the sharp thrust of a bitter memory? He had believed himself cured
+of his useless love--a great and noble love, wasted on a smaller nature
+than his own. He had thought that because his eyes were opened, and he
+understood the character of the girl he loved, his cure must needs be
+complete. Yet now, face to face with the well-remembered landscape,
+looking down upon that dull grey lake which he had seen smiling in the
+sunshine, he began to doubt the completeness of his cure. He recalled
+the lovely face, the graceful form, the sweet, low voice--the perfection
+of gracious womanhood, manner, dress, movements, tones, smiles, all
+faultless; and in the absence of that one figure, it seemed to him as if
+he had come back to a tenantless, dismantled house, where there was
+nothing that made life worth living.
+
+The red sun went down--a fierce and lurid face that seemed to scowl
+through the grey--and Mr. Hammond felt that it was time to arouse
+himself from gloomy meditation and go in and dress for dinner.
+Maulevrier's valet was to arrive by the coach with the heavier part of
+the luggage, and Maulevrier's valet did that very small portion of
+valeting which was ever required by Mr. Hammond. A man who has worked at
+a forge in the backwoods is not likely to be finicking in his ways, or
+dependent upon servants for looking after his raiment.
+
+Despite Mr. Hammond's gloomy memories of past joys and disillusions, he
+contrived to make himself very agreeable, by-and-by, at dinner, and in
+the drawing-room after dinner, and the evening was altogether gay and
+sprightly. Maulevrier was in high spirits, full of his Parisian
+experiences, and talking slang as glibly as a student of the Quartier
+Latin. He would talk nothing but French, protesting that he had almost
+forgotten his native tongue, and his French was the language of
+Larchey's Dictionary of Argot, in which nothing is called by its right
+name. Mary was enchanted with this new vocabulary, and wanted to have
+every word explained to her; but Maulevrier confessed that there was a
+good deal that was unexplainable.
+
+The evening was much livelier than those summer evenings when the
+dowager and Lady Lesbia were present. There was something less of
+refinement, perhaps, and Fraeulein remonstrated now and then about some
+small violation of the unwritten laws of 'Anstand,' but there was more
+mirth. Maulevrier felt for the first time as if he were master at
+Fellside. They all went to the billiard room soon after dinner, and
+Fraeulein and Mary sat by the fire looking on, while the two young men
+played. In such an evening there was no time for bitter memories: and
+John Hammond was surprised to find how little he had missed that
+enchantress whose absence had made the house seem desolate to him when
+he re-entered it.
+
+He was tired with his journey and the varying emotions of the day, for
+it was not without strong emotion that he had consented to return to
+Fellside--and he slept soundly for the earlier part of the night. But he
+had trained himself long ago to do with a very moderate portion of
+sleep, and he was up and dressed while the dawn was still slowly
+creeping along the edges of the hills. He went quietly down to the hall,
+took one of the bamboos from a collection of canes and mountain sticks,
+and set out upon a morning ramble over the snowy slopes. The snow
+showers of yesterday had only sprinkled the greensward upon the lower
+ground, but in the upper regions the winter snows still lingered, giving
+an Alpine character to the landscape.
+
+John Hammond was too experienced a mountaineer to be deterred by a
+little snow. He went up Silver Howe, and from the rugged breast of the
+mountain saw the sun leap up from amidst a chaos of hill and crag, in
+all his majesty, while the grey mists of night slowly floated up from
+the valley that had lain hidden below them, and Grasmere Lake sparkled
+and flashed in the light of the newly-risen sun.
+
+The church clock was striking eight as Hammond came at a brisk pace down
+to the valley. There was still an hour before breakfast, so he took a
+circuitous path to Fellside, and descended upon the house from the Fell,
+as he had done that summer morning when he saw James Steadman sauntering
+about in his garden.
+
+Within about a quarter of a mile of Lady Maulevrier's shrubberies Mr.
+Hammond encountered a pedestrian, who, like himself, was evidently
+taking a constitutional ramble in the morning air, but on a much less
+extended scale, for this person did not look capable of going far
+afield.
+
+He was an old man, something under middle height, but looking as if he
+had once been taller; for his shoulders were much bent, and his head was
+sunk on his chest. His whole form looked wasted and shrunken, and John
+Hammond thought he had never seen so old a man--or at any rate any man
+who was so deeply marked with all the signs of extreme age; and yet in
+the backwoods of America he had met ancient settlers who remembered
+Franklin, and who had been boys when the battle of Bunker's Hill was
+fresh in the memory of their fathers and mothers.
+
+The little old man was clad in a thick grey overcoat of some shaggy kind
+of cloth which looked like homespun. He wore a felt hat, and carried a
+thick oak stick, and there was nothing in his appearance to indicate
+that he belonged to any higher grade than that of the shepherds and
+guides with whom Hammond had made himself familiar during his previous
+visit. And yet there was something distinctive about the man, Hammond
+thought, something wild and uncanny, which made him unlike any of those
+hale and hearty-looking dalesmen on whom old age sate so lightly. No,
+John Hammond could not fancy this man, with his pallid countenance and
+pale crafty eyes, to be of the same race as those rugged and
+honest-looking descendants of the Norsemen.
+
+Perhaps it was the man's exceeding age, for John Hammond made up his
+mind that he must be a centenarian, which gave him so strange and unholy
+an air. He had the aspect of a man who had been buried and brought back
+to life again.
+
+So might look one of those Indian Fakirs who have the power to suspend life
+by some mysterious process, and to lie in the darkness of the grave for a
+given period, and then at their own will to resume the functions of the
+living. His long white hair fell upon the collar of his grey coat, and
+would have given him a patriarchal appearance had the face possessed the
+dignity of age: but it was a countenance without dignity, a face deeply
+scored with the lines of evil passions and guilty memories--the face of
+the vulture, with a touch of the ferret--altogether a most unpleasant
+face, Mr. Hammond thought.
+
+And yet there was a kind of fascination about that bent and shrunken
+figure, those feeble movements, and shuffling gait. John Hammond turned
+to look after the old man when he had passed him, and stood to watch him
+as he went slowly up the Fell, plant his crutch stick upon the ground
+before every footstep, as if it were a third leg, and more serviceable
+than either of the other two.
+
+Mr. Hammond watched him for two or three minutes, but, as the old man's
+movements had an automatic regularity, the occupation soon palled, and
+he turned and walked toward Fellside. A few yards nearer the grounds he
+met James Steadman, walking briskly, and smoking his morning pipe.
+
+'You are out early this morning,' said Hammond, by way of civility.
+
+'I am always pretty early, sir. I like a mouthful of morning air.'
+
+'So do I. By-the-bye, can you tell me anything about a queer-looking old
+man I passed just now a little higher up the Fell? Such an old, old man,
+with long white hair.'
+
+'Yes, sir. I believe I know him.'
+
+'Who is he? Does he live in Grasmere?'
+
+Steadman looked puzzled.
+
+'Well, you see, sir, your description might apply to a good many; but if
+it's the man I think you mean he lives in one of the cottages behind the
+church. Old Barlow, they call him.'
+
+'There can't be two such men--he must be at least a century old. If any
+one told me he were a hundred and twenty I shouldn't be inclined to
+doubt the fact. I never saw such a shrivelled, wrinkled visage,
+bloodless, too, as if the poor old wretch never felt your fresh mountain
+air upon his hollow cheeks. A dreadful face. It will haunt me for a
+month.'
+
+'It must be old Barlow,' replied Steadman. 'Good day, sir.'
+
+He walked on with his swinging step, and at such a pace that he was up
+the side of the Fell and close upon old Barlow's heels when Hammond
+turned to look after him five minutes later.
+
+'There's a man who shows few traces of age, at any rate,' thought
+Hammond. 'Yet her ladyship told me that he is over seventy.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+THE OLD MAN ON THE FELL.
+
+
+Having made up his mind to stay at Fellside until after Easter,
+Maulevrier settled down very quietly--for him. He rode a good deal,
+fished a little, looked after his dogs, played billiards, made a devout
+appearance in the big square pew at St. Oswald's on Sunday mornings, and
+behaved altogether as a reformed character. Even his grandmother was
+fain to admit that Maulevrier was improved, and that Mr. Hammond's
+influence upon him must be exercised for good and not for evil.
+
+'I plunged awfully last year, and the year before that,' said
+Maulevrier, sitting at tea in her ladyship's morning room one afternoon
+about a week after his return, when she had expressed her gracious
+desire that the two young men should take tea with her.
+
+Mary was in charge of the tea-pot and brass kettle, and looked as
+radiant and as fresh as a summer morning. A regular Gainsborough girl,
+Hammond called her, when he praised her to her brother; a true English
+beauty, unsophisticated, a little rustic, but full of youthful
+sweetness.
+
+'You see, I didn't know what a racing stable meant,' continued
+Maulevrier, mildly apologetic--'in fact, I thought it was an easy way
+for a nobleman to make as good a living as your City swells, with their
+soft goods or their Brummagem ware, a respectable trade for a gentleman
+to engage in. And it was only when I was half ruined that I began to
+understand the business; and as soon as I did understand it I made up my
+mind to get out of it; and I am happy to say that I sold the very last
+of my stud in February, and Tony Lumpkin is his own man again. So you
+may welcome the prodigal grandson, and order the fatted calf to be
+slain, grandmother!'
+
+Lady Maulevrier stretched out her left hand to him, and the young man
+bent over it and kissed it affectionately. He felt really touched by her
+misfortunes, and was fonder of her than he had ever been before. She had
+been somewhat hard with him in his boyhood, but she had always cared for
+his dignity and protected his interests: and, after all, she was a noble
+old woman, a grandmother of whom a man might be justly proud. He thought
+of the painted harridans, the bare-shouldered skeletons, whom some of
+his young friends were obliged to own in the same capacity, and he was
+thankful that he could reverence his father's mother.
+
+'That is the best news I have heard for a long time, Maulevrier,' said
+her ladyship graciously; 'better medicine for my nerves than any of Mr.
+Horton's preparations. If Mr. Hammond's advice has influenced you to get
+rid of your stable I am deeply grateful to Mr. Hammond.'
+
+Hammond smiled as he sipped his tea, sitting close to Mary's tray, ready
+to fly to her assistance on the instant should the brazen kettle become
+troublesome. It had a threatening way of hissing and bubbling over its
+spirit lamp.
+
+'Oh, you have no idea what a fellow Hammond is to lecture,' answered
+Maulevrier. 'He is a tremendous Radical, and he thinks that every young
+man in my position ought to be a reformer, and devote the greater part
+of his time and trouble to turning out the dirty corners of the world,
+upsetting those poor dear families who like to pig together in one room,
+ordering all the children off to school, marrying the fathers and
+mothers, thrusting himself between free labour and free beer, and
+interfering with the liberty of the subject in every direction.'
+
+'All that may sound like Radicalism, but I think it is the true
+Conservatism, and that every young man ought to do as much, if he wants
+this timeworn old country to maintain its power and prosperity,'
+answered Lady Maulevrier, with an approving glance at John Hammond's
+thoughtful face.
+
+'Right you are, grandmother,' returned Maulevrier, 'and I believe
+Hammond calls himself a Conservative, and means to vote with the
+Conservatives.'
+
+Means to vote! An idle phrase, surely, thought her ladyship, where the
+young man's chance of getting into Parliament was so remote.
+
+That afternoon tea in Lady Maulevrier's room was almost as cheerful as
+the tea-drinkings in the drawing-room, unrestrained by her ladyship's
+presence. She was pleased with her grandson's conduct, and was therefore
+inclined to be friendly to his friend. She could see an improvement in
+Mary, too. The girl was more feminine, more subdued, graver, sweeter;
+more like that ideal woman of Wordsworth's, whose image embodies all
+that is purest and fairest in womanhood.
+
+Mary had not forgotten that unlucky story about the fox-hunt, and ever
+since Hammond's return she had been as it were on her best behaviour,
+refraining from her races with the terriers, and holding herself aloof
+from Maulevrier's masculine pursuits. She sheltered herself a good deal
+under the Fraeulein's substantial wing, and took care never to intrude
+herself upon the amusements of her brother and his friend. She was not
+one of those young women who think a brother's presence an excuse for a
+perpetual _tete-a-tete_ with a young man. Yet when Maulevrier came in
+quest of her, and entreated her to join them in a ramble, she was not
+too prudish to refuse the pleasure she so thoroughly enjoyed. But
+afternoon tea was her privileged hour--the time at which she wore her
+prettiest frock, and forgot to regret her inferiority to Lesbia in all
+the graces of womanhood.
+
+One afternoon, when they had all three walked to Easedale Tarn, and were
+coming back by the side of the force, picking their way among the grey
+stones and the narrow threads of silvery water, it suddenly occurred to
+Hammond to ask Mary about that queer old man he had seen on the Fell
+nearly a fortnight before. He had often thought of making the inquiry
+when he was away from Mary, but had always forgotten the thing when he
+was with her. Indeed, Mary had a wonderful knack of making him forget
+everything but herself.
+
+'You seem to know every creature in Grasmere, down to the two-year-old
+babies,' said Hammond, Mary having just stopped to converse with an
+infantine group, straggling and struggling over the boulders. 'Pray, do
+you happen to know a man called Barlow, a very old man?'
+
+'Old Sam Barlow,' exclaimed Mary; 'why, of course I know him.'
+
+She said it as if he were a near relative, and the question palpably
+absurd.
+
+'He is an old man, a hundred, at least, I should think,' said Hammond.
+
+'Poor old Sam, not much on the wrong side of eighty. I go to see him
+every week, and take him his week's tobacco, poor old dear. It is his
+only comfort.'
+
+'Is it?' asked Hammond. 'I should have doubted his having so humanising
+a taste as tobacco. He looks too evil a creature ever to have yielded to
+the softening influence of a pipe.'
+
+'An evil creature! What, old Sam? Why he is the most genial old thing,
+and as cheery--loves to hear the newspaper read to him--the murders and
+railway accidents. He doesn't care for politics. Everybody likes old Sam
+Barlow.'
+
+'I fancy the Grasmere idea of reverend and amiable age must be strictly
+local. I can only say that I never saw a more unholy countenance.'
+
+'You must have been dreaming when you saw him,' said Mary. 'Where did
+you meet him?'
+
+'On the Fell, about a quarter of a mile from the shrubbery gate.'
+
+'_Did_ you? I shouldn't have thought he could have got so far. I've a
+good mind to take you to see him, this very afternoon, before we go
+home.'
+
+'Do,' exclaimed Hammond, 'I should like it immensely. I thought him a
+hateful-looking old person; but there was something so thoroughly
+uncanny about him that he exercised an absolute fascination upon me: he
+magnetised me, I think, as the green-eyed cat magnetises the bird. I
+have been positively longing to see him again. He is a kind of human
+monster, and I hope some one will have a big bottle made ready for him
+and preserve him in spirits when he dies.'
+
+'What a horrid idea! No, sir, dear old Barlow shall lie beside the
+Rotha, under the trees Wordsworth planted. He is such a man as
+Wordsworth would have loved.'
+
+Mr. Hammond shrugged his shoulders, and said no more. Mary's little
+vehement ways, her enthusiasm, her love of that valley, which might be
+called her native place, albeit her eyes had opened upon heaven's light
+far away, her humility, were all very delightful in their way. She was
+not a perfect beauty, like Lesbia; but she was a fresh, pure-minded
+English girl, frank as the day, and if he had had a brother he would
+have recommended that brother to choose just such a girl for his wife.
+
+Mr. Samuel Barlow occupied a little old cottage, which seemed to consist
+chiefly of a gable end and a chimney stack, in that cluster of dwellings
+behind St. Oswald's church, which was once known as the Kirk Town.
+Visitors went downstairs to get to Mr. Barlow's ground-floor, for the
+influence of time and advancing civilisation had raised the pathway in
+front of Mr. Barlow's cottage until his parlour had become of a
+cellar-like aspect. Yet it was a very nice little parlour when one got
+down to it, and it enjoyed winter and summer a perpetual twilight, since
+the light that crept through the leaded casement was tempered by a
+screen of flowerpots, which were old Barlow's particular care. There
+were no finer geraniums in all Grasmere than Barlow's, no bigger
+carnations or picotees, asters or arums.
+
+It was about five o'clock in the March afternoon, when Mary ushered John
+Hammond into Mr. Barlow's dwelling, and, in the dim glow of a cheery
+little fire and the faint light that filtered through the screen of
+geranium leaves, the visitor looked for a moment or so doubtfully at the
+owner of the cottage. But only for a moment. Those bright blue eyes and
+apple cheeks, that benevolent expression, bore no likeness to the
+strange old man he had seen on the Fell. Mr. Barlow was toothless and
+nut-cracker like of outline; he was thin and shrunken, and bent with the
+burden of long years, but his healthy visage had none of those deep
+lines, those cross markings and hollows which made the pallid
+countenance of that other old man as ghastly as would be the abstract
+idea of life's last stage embodied by the bitter pencil of a Hogarth.
+
+'I have brought a gentleman from London to see you, Sam,' said Mary. 'He
+fancied he met you on the Fell the other morning.'
+
+Barlow rose and quavered a cheery welcome, but protested against the
+idea of his having got so far as the Fell.
+
+'With my blessed rheumatics, you know it isn't in me, Lady Mary. I shall
+never get no further than the churchyard; but I likes to sit on the wall
+hard by Wordsworth's tomb in a warm afternoon, and to see the folks pass
+over the bridge; and I can potter about looking after my flowers, I can.
+But it would be a dull life, now the poor old missus is gone and the
+bairns all out at service, if it wasn't for some one dropping in to have
+a chat, or read me a bit of the news sometimes. And there isn't anybody
+in Grasmere, gentle or simple, that's kinder to me than you, Lady Mary.
+Lord bless you, I do look forward to my newspaper. Any more of them
+dreadful smashes?'
+
+'No, Sam, thank Heaven, there have been no railway accidents.'
+
+'Ah, we shall have 'em in August and September,' said the old man,
+cheerily. 'They're bound to come then. There's a time for all things,
+as Solomon says. When the season comes t'smashes all coom. And no more
+of these mysterious murders, I suppose, which baffle t'police and keep
+me awake o' nights thinking of 'em.'
+
+'Surely you do not take delight in murder, Mr. Barlow?' said Hammond.
+
+'No, sir, I do not wish my fellow-creatures to mak' awa' wi' each other;
+but if there is a murder going in the papers I like to get the benefit
+of it. I like to sit in front of my fire of an evening and wonder about
+it while I smoke my pipe, and fancy I can see the murderer hiding in a
+garret in an out-of-the-way alley, or as a stowaway on board a gert
+ship, or as a miner deep down in a coalpit, and never thinking that even
+there t'police can track him. Did you ever hear tell o' Mr. de Quincey,
+sir?'
+
+'I believe I have read every line he ever wrote.'
+
+'Ah, you should have heard him talk about murders. It would have made
+you dream queer dreams, just as he did. He lived for years in the white
+cottage that Wordsworth once lived in, just behind the street yonder--a
+nice, neat, lile gentleman, in a houseful of books. I've had many a talk
+with him when I was a young man.'
+
+'And how old may you be now, Mr. Barlow?'
+
+'Getting on for eighty four, sir.'
+
+'But you are not the oldest man in Grasmere, I should say, by twenty
+years?'
+
+'I don't think there's many much older than me, sir.'
+
+'The man I saw on the Fell looked at least a hundred. I wish you could
+tell me who he is; I feel a morbid curiosity about him.'
+
+He went on to describe the old man in the grey coat, as minutely as he
+could, dwelling on every characteristic of that singular-looking old
+person; but Samuel Barlow could not identify the description with any
+one in Grasmere. Yet a man of that age, seen walking on the hill-side at
+eight in the morning, could hardly have come from far afield.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+LADY MAULEVRIER'S LETTER-BAG.
+
+
+Although Maulevrier had assured his grandmother that John Hammond would
+take flight at the first warning of Lesbia's return, Lady Maulevrier's
+dread of any meeting between her granddaughter and that ineligible lover
+determined her in making such arrangements as should banish Lesbia from
+Fellside, so long as there seemed the slightest danger of such a
+meeting. She knew that Lesbia had loved her fortuneless suitor; and she
+did not know that the wound was cured, even by a season in the
+little-great world of Cannes. Now that she, the ruler of that
+household, was a helpless captive in her own apartments, she felt that
+Lesbia at Fellside would be her own mistress, and hemmed round with the
+dangers that beset richly-dowered beauty and inexperienced youth.
+
+John Hammond might be playing a very deep game, perhaps assisted by
+Maulevrier. He might ostensibly leave Fellside before Lesbia's return,
+yet lurk in the neighbourhood, and contrive to meet her every day. If
+Maulevrier encouraged this folly, they might be married and over the
+border, before her ladyship--fettered, impotent as she was--could
+interfere.
+
+Lady Maulevrier felt that Georgie Kirkbank was her strong rock. So long
+as Lesbia was under that astute veteran's wing there could be no danger.
+In that embodied essence of worldliness and diplomacy, there was an
+ever-present defence from all temptations that spring from romance and
+youthful impulses. It was a bitter thing, perhaps, to steep a young and
+pure soul in such an atmosphere, to harden a fresh young nature in the
+fiery crucible of fashionable life; but Lady Maulevrier believed that
+the end would sanctify the means. Lesbia, once married to a worthy man,
+such a man as Lord Hartfield, for instance, would soon rise to a higher
+level than that Belgravian swamp over which the malarian vapours of
+falsehood, and slander, and self-seeking, and prurient imaginings hang
+dense and thick. She would rise to the loftier table-land of that really
+great world which governs and admonishes the ruck of mankind by examples
+of noble deeds and noble thoughts; the world of statesmen, and soldiers,
+and thinkers, and reformers; the salt wherewithal society is salted.
+
+But while Lesbia was treading the tortuous mazes of fashion, it was well
+for her to be guided and guarded by such an old campaigner as Lady
+Kirkbank, a woman who, in the language of her friends, 'knew the ropes.'
+
+Lesbia's last letter had been to the effect that she was to go back to
+London with the Kirkbanks directly after Easter, and that directly they
+arrived she would set off with her maid for Fellside, to spend a week or
+a fortnight with her dearest grandmother, before going back to Arlington
+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,
+
+    'This is a world in which our brightest day-dreams generally end in
+    mere dreaming. For years past I have cherished the hope of
+    presenting you to your sovereign, to whom I was presented six and
+    forty years ago, when she was so fair and girlish a creature that
+    she seemed to me more like a queen in a fairy tale than the actual
+    ruler of a great country. I have beguiled my monotonous days with
+    thoughts of the time when I should return to the great world, full
+    of pride and delight in showing old friends what a sweet flower I
+    had reared in my mountain home; but, alas, Lesbia, it may not be.
+
+    'Fate has willed otherwise. The maimed hand does not recover,
+    although Horton is very clever, and thoroughly understands my case.
+    I am not ill, I am not in danger; so you need feel no anxiety about
+    me; but I am a cripple; and I am likely to remain a cripple for
+    months; so the idea of a London season this year is hopeless.
+
+    'Now, as you have in a manner made your _debut_ at Cannes, it would
+    never do to bury you here for another year. You complained of the
+    dullness last summer; but you would find Fellside much duller now
+    that you have tasted the elixir of life. No, my dear love, it will
+    be well for you to be presented, as Lady Kirkbank proposes, at the
+    first drawing-room after Easter; and Lady Kirkbank will have to
+    present you. She will be pleased to do this, I know, for her letters
+    are full of enthusiasm about you. And, after all, I do not think you
+    will lose by the exchange. Clever as I think myself, I fear I should
+    find myself sorely at fault in the society of to-day. All things are
+    changed: opinions, manners, creeds, morals even. Acts that were
+    crimes in my day are now venial errors--opinions that were
+    scandalous are now the mark of "advanced thought." I should be too
+    formal for this easy-going age, should be ridiculed as old-fashioned
+    and narrow-minded, should put you to the blush a dozen times a day
+    by my prejudices and opinions.
+
+    'It is very good of you to think of travelling so long a distance to
+    see me; and I should love to look at your sweet face, and hear you
+    describe your new experiences; but I could not allow you to travel
+    with only the protection of a maid; and there are many reasons why I
+    think it better to defer the meeting till the end of the season,
+    when Lady Kirkbank will bring my treasure back to me, eager to tell
+    me the history of all the hearts she has broken.'
+
+The dowager's letter to Lady Kirkbank was brief and business-like. She
+could only hope that her old friend Georgie, whose acuteness she knew of
+old, would divine her feelings and her wishes, without being explicitly
+told what they were.
+
+    'My dear Georgie,
+
+    'I am too ill to leave this house; indeed I doubt if I shall ever
+    leave it till I am taken away in my coffin; but please say nothing
+    to alarm Lesbia. Indeed, there is no ground for fear, as I am not
+    dangerously ill, and may drag out an imprisonment of long years
+    before the coffin comes to fetch me. There are reasons, which you
+    will understand, why Lesbia should not come here till after the
+    season; so please keep her in Arlington Street, and occupy her mind
+    as much as you can with the preparations for her first campaign. I
+    give you _carte blanche_. If Carson is still in business I should
+    like her to make my girl's gowns; but you must please yourself in
+    this matter, as it is quite possible that Carson is a little behind
+    the times.
+
+    'I must ask you to present my darling, and to deal with her exactly
+    as if she were a daughter of your own. I think you know all my views
+    and hopes about her; and I feel that I can trust to your friendship
+    in this my day of need. The dream of my life has been to launch her
+    myself, and direct her every step in the mazes of town life; but
+    that dream is over. I have kept age and infirmity at a distance,
+    have even forgotten that the years were going by; and now I find
+    myself an old woman all at once, and my golden dream has vanished.'
+
+Lady Kirkbank's reply came by return of post, and happily this gushing
+epistle had not to be submitted to Mary's eye.
+
+    'My dearest Di,
+
+    'My heart positively bleeds for you. What is the matter with your
+    hand, that you talk of being a life-long prisoner to your room? Pray
+    send for Paget or Erichsen, and have yourself put right at once. No
+    doubt that local simpleton is making a mess of your case. Perhaps
+    while he is dabbing with lint and lotions the real remedy is the
+    knife. I am sure amputation would be less melancholy than the
+    despondent state of feeling which you are now suffering. If any limb
+    of mine went wrong, I should say to the surgeon, "Cut it off, and
+    patch up the stump in your best style; I give you a fortnight, and
+    at the end of that time I expect to be going to parties again." Life
+    is not long enough for dawdling surgery.
+
+    'As regards Lesbia, I can only say that I adore her, and I am
+    enchanted at the idea that I am to run her myself. I intend her to
+    be _the_ beauty of the season--not _one of the loveliest
+    debutantes_, or any rot of that kind--but just the girl whom
+    everybody will be crazy about. There shall be a mob wherever she
+    appears, Di, I promise you that. There is no one in London who can
+    work a thing of that kind better than your humble servant. And when
+    once the girl is the talk of the town, all the rest is easy. She can
+    choose for herself among the very best men in society. Offers will
+    pour in as thickly as circulars from undertakers and mourning
+    warehouses after a death.
+
+    'Lesbia is so cool-headed and sensible that I have not the least
+    doubt of her success. With an impulsive or romantic girl there is
+    always the fear of a _fiasco_. But this sweet child of yours has
+    been well brought up, and knows her own value. She behaved like a
+    queen here, where I need not tell you society is just a little
+    mixed; though, of course, we only cultivate our own set. Your heart
+    would swell with pride if you could see the way she puts down men
+    who are not quite good style; and the ease with which she crushes
+    those odious American girls, with their fine complexions and loud
+    manners.
+
+    'Be assured that I shall guard her as the apple of my eye, and that
+    the detrimental who circumvents me will be a very Satan of schemers.
+
+    'I can but smile at your mention of Carson, whose gowns used to fit
+    us so well in our girlish days, and whose bills seem moderate
+    compared with the exorbitant accounts I get now.
+
+    'Carson has long been forgotten, my dear soul, gone with the snows
+    of last year. A long procession of fashionable French dressmakers
+    has passed across the stage since her time, like the phantom kings
+    in Macbeth; and now the last rage is to have our gowns made by an
+    Englishman who works for the Princess, and who gives himself most
+    insufferable airs, or an Irishwoman who is employed by all the best
+    actresses. It is to the latter, Kate Kearney, I shall entrust our
+    sweet Lesbia's toilettes.'
+
+The same post brought a loving letter from Lesbia, full of regret at not
+being allowed to go down to Fellside, and yet full of delight at the
+prospect of her first season.
+
+    'Lady Kirkbank and I have been discussing my court dress,' she wrote,
+    'and we have decided upon a white cut-velvet train, with a border of
+    ostrich feathers, over a satin petticoat embroidered with seed
+    pearl. It will be expensive, but we know you will not mind that.
+    Lady Kirkbank takes the idea from the costume Buckingham wore at the
+    Louvre the first time he met Anne of Austria. Isn't that clever of
+    her? She is not a deep thinker like you; is horribly ignorant of
+    science, metaphysics, poetry even. She asked me one day who Plato
+    was, and whether he took his name from the battle of Platoea; and
+    she says she never could understand why people make a fuss about
+    Shakespeare; but she has read all the secret histories and memoirs
+    that ever were written, and knows all the ins and outs of court life
+    and high life for the last three hundred years; and there is not a
+    person in the peerage whose family history she has not at her
+    fingers' ends, except my grandfather. When I asked her to tell me
+    all about Lord Maulevrier and his achievements as Governor of
+    Madras, she had not a word to say. So, perhaps, she draws upon her
+    invention a little in talking about other people, and felt herself
+    restrained when she came to speak of my grandfather.'
+
+This passage in Lesbia's letter affected Lady Maulevrier as if a
+scorpion had wriggled from underneath the sheet of paper. She folded the
+letter, and laid it in the satin-lined box on her table, with a deep
+sigh.
+
+'Yes, she is in the world now, and she will ask questions. I have never
+warned her against pronouncing her grandfather's name. There are some
+who will not be so kind as Georgie Kirkbank; some, perhaps, who will
+delight in humiliating her, and who will tell her the worst that can be
+told. My only hope is that she will make a great marriage, and speedily.
+Once the wife of a man with a high place in the world, worldlings will
+be too wise to wound her by telling her that her grandfather was an
+unconvicted felon.'
+
+The die was cast. Lady Maulevrier might dread the hazard of evil
+tongues, of slanderous memories; but she could not recall her consent to
+Lesbia's _debut_. The girl was already launched; she had been seen and
+admired. The next stage in her career must be to be wooed and won by a
+worthy wooer.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+ON THE DARK BROW OF HELVELLYN.
+
+
+While these plans were being settled, and while Lesbia's future was the
+all-absorbing subject of Lady Maulevrier's thoughts, Mary contrived to
+be happier than she had ever been in her life before. It was happiness
+that grew and strengthened with every day; and yet there was no obvious
+reason for this deep joy. Her life ran in the same familiar groove. She
+walked and rode on the old pathways; she rowed on the lake she had known
+from babyhood; she visited her cottagers, and taught in the village
+school, just the same as of old. The change was only that she was no
+longer alone; and of late the solitude of her life, the ever-present
+consciousness that nobody shared her pleasures or sympathised with her
+upon any point, had weighed upon her like an actual burden. Now she had
+Maulevrier, who was always kind, who understood and shared almost all
+her tastes, and Maulevrier's friend, who, although not given to saying
+smooth things, seemed warmly interested in her pursuits and opinions. He
+encouraged her to talk, although he generally took the opposite side in
+every argument; and she no longer felt oppressed or irritated by the
+idea that he despised her.
+
+Indeed, although he never flattered or even praised her, Mr. Hammond let
+her see that he liked her society. She had gone out of her way to avoid
+him, very fearful lest he should think her bold or masculine; but he had
+taken pains to frustrate all her efforts in that direction; he had
+refused to go upon excursions which she could not share. 'Lady Mary must
+come with us,' he said, when they were planning a morning's ramble. Thus
+it happened that Mary was his guide and companion in all his walks, and
+roamed with him bamboo in hand, over every one of those mountainous
+paths she knew and loved so well. Distance was as nothing to
+them--sometimes a boat helped them, and they went over wintry Windermere
+to climb the picturesque heights above Bowness. Sometimes they took
+ponies, and a groom, and left their steeds to perform the wilder part of
+the way on foot. In this wise John Hammond saw all that was to be seen
+within a day's journey of Grasmere, except the top of Helvellyn.
+Maulevrier had shirked the expedition, had always put off Mary and Mr.
+Hammond when they proposed it. The season was not advanced enough--the
+rugged pathway by the Tongue Ghyll would be as slippery as glass--no
+pony could get up there in such weather.
+
+'We have not had any frost to speak of for the last fortnight,' pleaded
+Mary, who was particularly anxious to do the honours of Helvellyn, as
+the real lion of the neighbourhood.
+
+'What a simpleton you are, Molly!' cried Maulevrier. 'Do you suppose
+because there is no frost in your grandmother's garden--and if you were
+to ask Staples about his peaches he would tell you a very different
+story--that there's a tropical atmosphere on Dolly Waggon Pike? Why, I'd
+wager the ice on Grisdale Tarn is thick enough for skating. Helvellyn
+won't run away, child. You and Hammond can dance the Highland
+Schottische on Striding Edge in June, if you like.'
+
+'Mr. Hammond won't be here in June,' said Mary.
+
+'Who knows?--the train service is pretty fair between London and
+Windermere. Hammond and I would think nothing of putting ourselves in
+the mail on a Friday night, and coming down to spend Saturday and Sunday
+with you--if you are good.'
+
+There came a sunny morning soon after Easter which seemed mild enough
+for June; and when Hammond suggested that this was the very day for
+Helvellyn, Maulevrier had not a word to say against the truth of that
+proposition. The weather had been exceptionally warm for the last week,
+and they had played tennis and sat in the garden just as if it had been
+actually summer. Patches of snow might still linger on the crests of the
+hills--but the approach to those bleak heights could hardly be glacial.
+
+Mary clasped her hands delightedly.
+
+'Dear old Maulevrier!' she exclaimed, 'you are always good to me. And
+now I shall be able to show you the Red Tarn, the highest pool of water
+in England,' she said, turning to Hammond. 'And you will see Windermere
+winding like a silvery serpent between the hills, and Grasmere shining
+like a jewel in the depth of the valley, and the sea glittering like a
+line of white light between the edges of earth and heaven, and the dark
+Scotch hills like couchant lions far away to the north.'
+
+'That is to say these things are all supposed to be on view from the top
+of the mountain; but as a peculiar and altogether exceptional state of
+the atmosphere is essential to their being seen, I need not tell you
+that they are rarely visible,' said Maulevrier. 'You are talking to old
+mountaineers, Molly. Hammond has done Cotapaxi and had his little
+clamber on the equatorial Andes, and I--well, child, I have done my
+Righi, and I have always found the boasted panorama enveloped in dense
+fog.'
+
+'It won't be foggy to-day,' said Mary. 'Shall we do the whole thing on
+foot, or shall I order the ponies?'
+
+Mr. Hammond inquired the distance up and down, and being told that it
+involved only a matter of eight miles, decided upon walking.
+
+'I'll walk, and lead your pony,' he said to Mary, but Mary declared
+herself quite capable of going on foot, so the ponies were dispensed
+with as a possible encumbrance.
+
+This was planned and discussed in the garden before breakfast. Fraeulein
+was told that Mary was going for a long walk with her brother and Mr.
+Hammond; a walk which might last over the usual luncheon hour; so
+Fraeulein was not to wait luncheon. Mary went to her grandmother's room
+to pay her duty visit. There were no letters for her to write that
+morning, so she was perfectly free.
+
+The three pedestrians started an hour after breakfast, in light marching
+order. The two young men wore their Argyleshire shooting
+clothes--homespun knickerbockers and jackets, thick-ribbed hose knitted
+by Highland lasses in Inverness. They carried a couple of hunting flasks
+filled with claret, and a couple of sandwich boxes, and that was all.
+Mary wore her substantial tailor-gown of olive tweed, and a little toque
+to match, with a silver mounted grouse-claw for her only ornament.
+
+It was a delicious morning, the air fresh and sweet, the sun comfortably
+warm, a little too warm, perhaps, presently, when they had trodden the
+narrow path by the Tongue Ghyll, and were beginning to wind slowly
+upwards over rough boulders and last year's bracken, tough and brown and
+tangled, towards that rugged wall of earth and stone tufted with rank
+grasses, which calls itself Dolly Waggon Pike. Here they all came to a
+stand-still, and wiped the dews of honest labour from their foreheads;
+and here Maulevrier flung himself down upon a big boulder, with the
+soles of his stout shooting boots in running water, and took out his
+cigar case.
+
+'How do you like it?' he asked his friend, when he had lighted his
+cigarette. 'I hope you are enjoying yourself.'
+
+'I never was happier in my life,' answered Hammond.
+
+He was standing on higher ground, with Mary at his elbow, pointing out
+and expatiating upon the details of the prospect. There were the
+lakes--Grasmere, a disk of shining blue; Rydal, a patch of silver; and
+Windermere winding amidst a labyrinth of wooded hills.
+
+'Aren't you tired?' asked Maulevrier.
+
+'Not a whit.'
+
+'Oh, I forgot you had done Cotapaxi, or as much of Cotapaxi as living
+mortal ever has done. That makes a difference. I am going home.'
+
+'Oh, Maulevrier!' exclaimed Mary, piteously.
+
+'I am going home. You two can go to the top. You are both hardened
+mountaineers, and I am not in it with either of you. When I rashly
+consented to a pedestrian ascent of Helvellyn I had forgotten what the
+gentleman was like; and as to Dolly Waggon I had actually forgotten her
+existence. But now I see the lady--as steep as the side of a house, and
+as stony--no, naught but herself can be her parallel in stoniness. No,
+Molly, I will go no further.'
+
+'But we shall go down on the other side,' urged Mary. 'It is a little
+steeper on the Cumberland side, but not nearly so far.'
+
+'A little steeper! I Can anything be steeper than Dolly Waggon? Yes, you
+are right. It is steeper on the Cumberland side. I remember coming down
+a sheer descent, like an exaggerated sugar-loaf; but I was on a pony,
+and it was the brute's look-out. I will not go down the Cumberland side
+on my own legs. No, Molly, not even for you. But if you and Hammond want
+to go to the top, there is nothing to prevent you. He is a skilled
+mountaineer. I'll trust you with him.'
+
+Mary blushed, and made no reply. Of all things in the world she least
+wanted to abandon the expedition. Yet to climb Helvellyn alone with her
+brother's friend would no doubt be a terrible violation of those laws of
+maidenly propriety which Fraeulein was always expounding. If Mary were to
+do this thing, which she longed to do, she must hazard a lecture from
+her governess, and probably a biting reproof from her grandmother.
+
+'Will you trust yourself with me, Lady Mary?' asked Hammond, looking at
+her with a gaze so earnest--so much more earnest than the occasion
+required--that her blushes deepened and her eyelids fell. 'I have done a
+good deal of climbing in my day, and I am not afraid of anything
+Helvellyn can do to me. I promise to take great care of you if you will
+come.'
+
+How could she refuse? How could she for one moment pretend that she did
+not trust him, that her heart did not yearn to go with him. She would
+have climbed the shingly steep of Cotapaxi with him--or crossed the
+great Sahara with him--and feared nothing. Her trust in him was
+infinite--as infinite as her reverence and love.
+
+'I am afraid Fraeulein would make a fuss,' she faltered, after a pause.
+
+'Hang Fraeulein,' cried Maulevrier, puffing at his cigarette, and kicking
+about the stones in the clear running water. 'I'll square it with
+Fraeulein. I'll give her a pint of fiz with her lunch, and make her see
+everything in a rosy hue. The good soul is fond of her Heidseck. You
+will be back by afternoon tea. Why should there be any fuss about the
+matter? Hammond wants to see the Red Tarn, and you are dying to show him
+the way. Go, and joy go with you both. Climbing a stony hill is a form
+of pleasure to which I have not yet risen. I shall stroll home at my
+leisure, and spend the afternoon on the billiard-room sofa reading
+Mudie's last contribution to the comforts of home.'
+
+'What a Sybarite,' said Hammond. 'Come, Lady Mary, we mustn't loiter, if
+we are to be back at Fellside by five o'clock.'
+
+Mary looked at her brother doubtfully, and he gave her a little nod
+which seemed to say, 'Go, by all means;' so she dug the end of her staff
+into Dolly's rugged breast, and mounted cheerily, stepping lightly from
+boulder to boulder.
+
+The sun was not so warm as it had been ten minutes ago, when Maulevrier
+flung himself down to rest. The sky had clouded over a little, and a
+cooler wind was blowing across the breast of the hill. Fairfield yonder,
+that long smooth slope of verdure which a little while ago looked
+emerald green in the sunlight, now wore a soft and shadowy hue. All the
+world was greyer and dimmer in a moment, as it were, and Coniston Lake
+in its distant valley disappeared beneath a veil of mist, while the
+shimmering sea-line upon the verge of the horizon melted and vanished
+among the clouds that overhung it. The weather changes very quickly in
+this part of the world. Sharp drops of rain came spitting at Hammond and
+Mary as they climbed the crest of the Pike, and stopped, somewhat
+breathless, to look back at Maulevrier. He was trudging blithely down
+the winding way, and seemed to have done wonders while they had been
+doing very little.
+
+'How fast he is going!' said Mary.
+
+'Easy is the descent of Avernus. He is going down-hill, and we are going
+upwards. That makes all the difference in life, you see,' answered
+Hammond.
+
+Mary looked at him with divine compassion. She thought that for him the
+hill of life would be harder than Helvellyn. He was brave, honest,
+clever; but her grandmother had impressed upon her that modern
+civilisation hardly has room for a young man who wants to get on in the
+world, without either fortune or powerful connexions. He had better go
+to Australia and keep sheep, than attempt the impossible at home.
+
+The rain was a passing shower, hardly worth speaking of, but the glory
+of the day was over. The sky was grey, and there were dark clouds
+creeping up from the sea-line. Silvery Windermere had taken a leaden
+hue; and now they turned their last fond look upon the Westmoreland
+valley, and set their faces steadily towards Cumberland, and the fine
+grassy plateau on the top of the hill.
+
+All this was not done in a flash. It took them some time to scale
+Dolly's stubborn breast, and it took them another hour to reach Seat
+Sandal; and by the time they came to the iron gate in the fence, which
+at this point divides the two counties, the atmosphere had thickened
+ominously, and dark wreaths of fog were floating about and around them,
+whirled here and there by a boisterous wind which shrieked and roared at
+them with savage fury, as if it were the voice of some Titan monarch of
+the mountain protesting against this intrusion upon his domain.
+
+'I'm afraid you won't see the Scottish hills,' shouted Mary, holding on
+her little cloth hat.
+
+She was obliged to shout at the top of her voice, though she was close
+to Mr. Hammond's elbow, for that shrill screaming wind would have
+drowned the voice of a stentor.
+
+'Never mind the view,' replied Hammond in the same fortissimo, 'but I
+really wish I hadn't brought you up here. If this fog should get any
+worse, it may be dangerous.'
+
+'The fog is sure to get worse,' said Mary, in a brief lull of the
+hurly-burly, 'but there is no danger. I know every inch of the hill, and
+I am not a bit afraid. I can guide you, if you will trust me.'
+
+'My bravest of girls,' he exclaimed, looking down at her. 'Trust you!
+Yes, I would trust my life to you--my soul--my honour--secure in your
+purity and good faith.'
+
+Never had eyes of living man or woman looked down upon her with such
+tenderness, such fervent love. She looked up at him; looked with eyes
+which, at first bewildered, then grew bold, and lost themselves, as it
+were, in the dark grey depths of the eyes they met. The savage wind,
+hustling and howling, blew her nearer to him, as a reed is blown against
+a rock. Dark grey mists were rising round them like a sea; but had that
+ever-thickening, ever-darkening vapour been the sea itself, and death
+inevitable, Mary Haselden would have hardly cared. For in this moment
+the one precious gift for which her soul had long been yearning had been
+freely given to her. She knew all at once, that she was fondly loved by
+that one man whom she had chosen for her idol and her hero.
+
+What matter that he was fortuneless, a nobody, with but the poorest
+chances of success in the world? What if he must needs, only to win the
+bare means of existence, go to Australia and keep sheep, or to the Bed
+River valley and grow corn? What if he must labour, as the peasants
+laboured on the sides of this rude hill? Gladly would she go with him to
+a strange country, and keep his log cabin, and work for him, and share
+his toilsome life, rough or smooth. No loss of social rank could lessen
+her pride in him, her belief in him.
+
+They were standing side by side a little way from the edge of the sheer
+descent, below which the Bed Tarn showed black in a basin scooped out of
+the naked hill, like water held in the hollow of a giant's hand.
+
+'Look,' cried Mary, pointing downward, 'you must see the Red Tarn, the
+highest water in England?'
+
+But just at this moment there came a blast which shook even Hammond's
+strong frame, and with a cry of fear he snatched Mary in his arms and
+carried her away from the edge of the hill. He folded her in his arms
+and held her there, thirty yards away from the precipice, safely
+sheltered against his breast, while the wind raved round them, blowing
+her hair from the broad, white brow, and showing him that noble forehead
+in all its power and beauty; while the darkness deepened round them so
+that they could see hardly anything except each other's eyes.
+
+'My love, my own dear love,' he murmured fondly; 'I will trust you with
+my life. Will you accept the trust? I am hardly worthy; for less than a
+year ago I offered myself to your sister, and I thought she was the only
+woman in this wide world who could make me happy. And when she refused
+me I was in despair, Mary; and I left Fellside in the full belief that I
+had done with life and happiness. And then I came back, only to oblige
+Maulevrier, and determined to be utterly miserable at Fellside. I was
+miserable for the first two hours. Memories of dead and gone joys and
+disappointed hopes were very bitter. And I tried honestly to keep up my
+feeling of wretchedness for the first few days. But it was no use,
+Molly. There was a genial spirit in the place, a laughing fairy who
+would not let me be sad; and I found myself becoming most unromantically
+happy, eating my breakfast with a hearty appetite, thinking my cup of
+afternoon tea nectar for love of the dear hand that gave it. And so, and
+so, till the new love, the purer and better love, grew and grew into a
+mighty tree, which was as an oak to an orchid, compared with that
+passion flower of earlier growth. Mary, will you trust your life to me,
+as I trust mine to you. I say to you almost in the words I spoke last
+year to Lesbia,' and here his tone grew grave almost to solemnity,
+'trust me, and I will make your life free from the shadow of care--trust
+me, for I have a brave spirit and a strong arm to fight the battle of
+life--trust me, and I will win for you the position you have a right to
+occupy--trust me, and you shall never repent your trust.'
+
+She looked up at him with eyes which told of infinite faith, child-like,
+unquestioning faith.
+
+'I will trust you in all things, and for ever,' she said. 'I am not
+afraid to face evil fortune. I do not care how poor you are--how hard
+our lives may be--if--if you are sure you love me.'
+
+'Sure! There is not a beat of my heart or a thought of my mind that does
+not belong to you. I am yours to the very depths of my soul. My innocent
+love, my clear-eyed, clear-souled angel! I have studied you and watched
+you and thought of you, and sounded the depths of your lovely nature,
+and the result is that you are for me earth's one woman. I will have no
+other, Mary, no other love, no other wife.'
+
+'Lady Maulevrier will be dreadfully angry,' faltered Mary.
+
+'Are you afraid of her anger?'
+
+'No; I am afraid of nothing, for your sake.'
+
+He lifted her hand to his lips, and kissed it reverently, and there was
+a touch of chivalry in that reverential kiss. His eyes clouded with
+tears as he looked down into the trustful face. The fog had darkened to
+a denser blackness, and it was almost as if they were engulfed in sudden
+night.
+
+'If we are never to find our way down the hill; if this were to be the
+last hour of our lives, Mary, would you be content?'
+
+'Quite content,' she answered, simply. 'I think I have lived long
+enough, if you really love me--if you are not making fun.'
+
+'What, Molly, do you still doubt? Is it strange that I love you?'
+
+'Very strange. I am so different from Lesbia.'
+
+'Yes, very different, and the difference is your highest charm. And now,
+love, we had better go down whichever side of the hill is easiest, for
+this fog is rather appalling. I forgive the wind, because it blew you
+against my heart just now, and that is where I want you to dwell for
+ever!'
+
+'Don't be frightened,' said Mary. 'I know every step of the way.'
+
+So, leaning on her lover, and yet guiding him, slowly, step by step,
+groping their way through the darkness, Lady Mary led Mr. Hammond down
+the winding track along which the ponies and the guides travel so often
+in the summer season. And soon they began to descend out of that canopy
+of fog which enveloped the brow of Helvellyn, and to see the whole world
+smiling beneath them, a world of green pastures and sheepfolds, with a
+white homestead here and there amidst the fields, looking so human and
+so comfortable after that gloomy mountain top, round which the tempest
+howled so outrageously. Beyond those pastures stretched the dark waters
+of Thirlmere, looking like a broad river.
+
+The descent was passing steep, but Hammond's strong arm and steady
+steps made Mary's progress very easy, while she had in no wise
+exaggerated her familiarity with the windings and twistings of the
+track. Yet as they had need to travel very slowly so long as the fog
+still surrounded them, the journey downward lasted a considerable time,
+and it was past five when they arrived at the little roadside inn at the
+foot of the hill.
+
+Here Mr. Hammond insisted that Mary should rest at least long enough to
+take a cup of tea. She was very white and tired. She had been profoundly
+agitated, and looked on the point of fainting, although she protested
+that she was quite ready to walk on.
+
+'You are not going to walk another step,' said Hammond. 'While you are
+taking your tea I will get you a carriage.'
+
+'Indeed, I had rather hurry on at once,' urged Mary. 'We are so late
+already.'
+
+'You will get home all the sooner if you obey me. It is your duty to
+obey me now,' said Hammond, in a lowered voice.
+
+She smiled at him, but it was a weak, wan little smile, for that descent
+in the wind and the fog had quite exhausted her. Mr. Hammond took her
+into a snug little parlour where there was a cheerful fire, and saw her
+comfortably seated in an arm chair by the hearth, before he went to look
+after a carriage.
+
+There was no such thing as a conveyance to be had, but the Windermere
+coach would pass in about half an hour, and for this they must wait. It
+would take them back to Grasmere sooner than they could get there on
+foot, in Mary's exhausted condition.
+
+The tea-tray was brought in presently, and Hammond poured out the tea
+and waited upon Lady Mary. It was a reversal of the usual formula but it
+was very pleasant to Mary to sit with her feet on the low brass fender
+and be waited upon by her lover. That fog on the brow of Helvellyn--that
+piercing wind--had chilled her to the bone, and there was unspeakable
+comfort in the glow and warmth of the fire, in the refreshment of a good
+cup of tea.
+
+'Mary, you are my own property now, remember,' said Hammond, watching
+her tenderly as she sipped her tea.
+
+She glanced up at him shyly, now and then, with eyes full of innocent
+wonder. It was so strange to her, as strange as sweet, to know that he
+loved her; such a marvellous thing that she had pledged herself to be
+his wife.
+
+'You are my very own--mine to guard and cherish, mine to think and work
+for,' he went on, 'and you will have to trust me, sweet one, even if the
+beginning of things is not altogether free from trouble.'
+
+'I am not afraid of trouble.'
+
+'Bravely spoken! First and foremost, then, you will have to announce
+your engagement to Lady Maulevrier. She will take it ill, no doubt; will
+do her utmost to persuade you to give me up. Have you courage and
+resolution, do you think, to stand against her arguments? Can you hold
+to your purpose bravely, and cry, no surrender?'
+
+'There shall be no surrender,' answered Mary, 'I promise you that. No
+doubt grandmother will be very angry. But she has never cared for me
+very much. It will not hurt her for me to make a bad match, as it would
+have done in Lesbia's case. She has had no day-dreams--no grand ambition
+about me!'
+
+'So much the better, my wayside flower! When you have said all that is
+sweet and dutiful to her, and have let her know at the same time that
+you mean to be my wife, come weal come woe, I will see her, and will
+have my say. I will not promise her a grand career for my darling: but I
+will pledge myself that nothing of that kind which the world calls
+evil--no penury, or shabbiness of surroundings--shall ever touch Mary
+Haselden after she is Mary Hammond. I can promise at least so much as
+that.'
+
+'It is more than enough,' said Mary. 'I have told you that I would
+gladly share poverty with you.'
+
+'Sweet! it is good of you to say as much, but I would not take you at
+your word. You don't know what poverty is.'
+
+'Do you think I am a coward, or self-indulgent? You are wrong, Jack. May
+I call you Jack, as Maulevrier does?'
+
+'May you?'
+
+The question evoked such a gush of tenderness that he was fain to kneel
+beside her chair and kiss the little hand holding the cup, before he
+considered he had answered properly.
+
+'You are wrong, Jack. I do know what poverty means. I have studied the
+ways of the poor, tried to console them, and help them a little in their
+troubles; and I know there is no pain that want of money can bring which
+I would not share willingly with you. Do you suppose my happiness is
+dependent on a fine house and powdered footmen? I should like to go to
+the Red River with you, and wear cotton gowns, and tuck up my sleeves
+and clean our cottage.'
+
+'Very pretty sport, dear, for a summer day; but my Mary shall have a
+sweeter life, and shall occasionally walk in silk attire.'
+
+That tea-drinking by the fireside in the inn parlour was the most
+delicious thing within John Hammond's experience. Mary was a bewitching
+compound of earnestness and simplicity, so humble, so confiding, so
+perplexed and astounded at her own bliss.
+
+'Confess, now, in the summer, when you were in love with Lesbia, you
+thought me a horrid kind of girl,' she said, presently, when they were
+standing side by side at the window, waiting for the coach.
+
+'Never, Mary. My crime is to have thought very little about you in those
+days. I was so dazzled by Lesbia's beauty, so charmed by her
+accomplishments and girlish graces, that I forgot to take notice of
+anything else in the world. If I thought of you at all it was as
+another Maulevrier--a younger Maulevrier in petticoats, very gay, and
+good-humoured, and nice.'
+
+'But when you saw me rushing about with the terriers--I must have seemed
+utterly horrid.'
+
+'Why, dearest? There is nothing essentially horrible in terriers, or in a
+bright lively girl running races with them. You made a very pretty
+picture in the sunlight, with your hat hanging on your shoulder, and
+your curly brown hair and dancing hazel eyes. If I had not been deep in
+love with Lesbia's peerless complexion and Grecian features, I should
+have looked below the surface of that Gainsborough picture, and
+discovered what treasures of goodness, and courage, and truth and purity
+those frank brown eyes and that wide forehead betokened. I was sowing my
+wild oats last summer, Mary, and they brought me a crop of sorrow. But I
+am wiser now--wiser and happier.
+
+'But if you were to see Lesbia again would not the old love revive?'
+
+'The old love is dead, Mary. There is nothing left of it but a handful
+of ashes, which I scatter thus to the four winds,' with a wave of his
+hand towards the open casement. 'The new love absorbs and masters my
+being. If Lesbia were to re-appear at Fellside this evening, I could
+offer her my hand in all brotherly frankness, and ask her to accept me
+as a brother. Here comes the coach. We shall be at Fellside just in time
+for dinner.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+WISER THAN LESBIA.
+
+
+Lady Mary and Mr. Hammond were back at Fellside at a quarter before
+eight, by which time the stars were shining on pine woods and Fell. They
+managed to be in the drawing-room when dinner was announced, after the
+hastiest of toilets; yet her lover thought Mary had never looked
+prettier than she looked that night, in her limp white cashmere gown,
+and with her brown hair brushed into a large loose knot on the top of
+her head. There had been great uneasiness about them at Fellside when
+evening began to draw in, and the expected hour of their return had gone
+by. Scouts had been sent in quest of them, but in the wrong direction.
+
+'I did not think you would be such idiots as to come down the north side
+of the hill in a tempest,' said Maulevrier; 'we could see the clouds
+racing over the crest of Seat Sandal, and knew it was blowing pretty
+hard up there, though it was calm enough down here.'
+
+'Blowing pretty hard;' echoed Hammond, 'I don't think I was ever out in
+a worse gale; and yet I have been across the Bay of Biscay when the
+waves struck the side of the steamer like battering rams, and when the
+whole surface of the sea was white with seething foam.'
+
+'It was a most imprudent thing to go up Helvellyn in such weather,' said
+Fraeulein Mueller, shaking her head gloomily as she ate her fish.
+
+Mary felt that the Fraeulein's manner boded ill. There was a storm
+brewing. A scolding was inevitable. Mary felt quite capable of doing
+battle with the Fraeulein; but her feelings were altogether different
+when she thought of facing that stern old lady upstairs, and of the
+confession she had to make. It was not that her courage faltered. So far
+as resolutions went she was as firm as a rock. But she felt that there
+was a terrible ordeal to be gone through; and it seemed a mockery to be
+sitting there and pretending to eat her dinner and take things lightly,
+with that ordeal before her.
+
+'We did not go up the hill in bad weather, Miss Mueller,' said Mr.
+Hammond. 'The sun was shining and the sky was blue when we started. We
+could not foresee darkness and storm at the top of the hill. That was
+the fortune of war.'
+
+'I am very sorry Lady Mary had not more good sense,' replied Fraeulein
+with unabated gloom; but on this Maulevrier took up the cudgels.
+
+'If there was any want of sense in the business, that's my look-out,
+Fraeulein,' he said, glaring angrily at the governess. 'It was I who
+advised Hammond and Lady Mary to climb the hill. And here they are, safe
+and sound after their journey. I see no reason why there should be any
+fuss about it.'
+
+'People have different ways of looking at things, replied Fraeulein,
+plodding steadily on with her dinner. Mary rose directly the dessert had
+been handed round, and marched out of the room: like a warrior going to
+a battle in which the chances of defeat were strong. Fraeulein Mueller
+shuffled after her.
+
+'Will you be kind enough to go to her ladyship's room at once, Lady
+Mary,' she said. 'She wants to speak to you.'
+
+'And I want to speak to her,' said Mary.
+
+She ran quickly upstairs and arrived in the morning room, a little out
+of breath. The room was lighted by one low moderator lamp, under a dark
+red velvet shade, and there was the glow of the wood fire, which gave a
+more cheerful light than the lamp. Lady Maulevrier was lying on her
+couch in a loose brocade tea-gown, with old Brussels collar and ruffles.
+She was as well dressed in her day of affliction and helplessness as she
+had been in her day of strength; for she knew the value of surroundings,
+and that her stateliness and power were in some manner dependent on
+details of this kind. The one hand which she could use glittered with
+diamonds, as she waved it with a little imperious gesture towards the
+chair on which she desired Lady Mary to seat herself; and Mary sat down
+meekly, knowing that this chair represented the felon's dock.
+
+'Mary,' began her grandmother, with freezing gravity, 'I have been
+surprised and shocked by your conduct to-day. Yes, surprised at such
+conduct even in you.'
+
+'I do not think I have done anything very wrong, grandmother.'
+
+'Not wrong! You have done nothing wrong? You have done something
+absolutely outrageous. You, my granddaughter, well born, well bred,
+reared under my roof, to go up Helvellyn and lose yourself in a fog
+alone with a young man. You could hardly have done worse if you were a
+Cockney tourist,' concluded her ladyship, with ineffable disgust.
+
+'I could not help the fog,' said Mary, quietly. The battle had to be
+fought, and she was not going to flinch. 'I had no intention of going up
+Helvellyn alone with Mr. Hammond. Maulevrier was to have gone with us;
+but when we got to Dolly Waggon he was tired, and would not go any
+further. He told me to go on with Mr. Hammond.'
+
+'_He_ told you! Maulevrier!--a young man who has spent some of the best
+hours of his youth in the company of jockeys and trainers--who hasn't
+the faintest idea of the fitness of things. You allow Maulevrier to be
+your guide in a matter in which your own instinct should have guided
+you--your womanly instinct! But you have always been an unwomanly girl.
+You have put me to shame many a time by your hoydenish tricks; but I
+bore with you, believing that your madcap follies were at least
+harmless. To-day you have gone a step too far, and have been guilty of
+absolute impropriety, which I shall be very slow to pardon.'
+
+'Perhaps you will be still more angry when you know all, grandmother,'
+said Mary.
+
+Lady Maulevrier flashed her dark eyes at the girl with a look which
+would have almost killed a nervous subject; but Mary faced her
+steadfastly, very pale, but as resolute as her ladyship.
+
+'When I know all! What more is there for me to know?'
+
+'Only that while we were on the top of Helvellyn, in the fog and the
+wind, Mr. Hammond asked me to be his wife.'
+
+'I am not surprised to hear it,' retorted her ladyship, with a harsh
+laugh. 'A girl who could act so boldly and flirtingly was a natural mark
+for an adventurer. Mr. Hammond no doubt has been told that you will have
+a little money by-and-by, and thinks he might do worse than marry you.
+And seeing how you have flung yourself at his head, he naturally
+concludes that you will not be too proud to accept your sister's
+leavings.'
+
+'There is nothing gained by making cruel speeches, grandmother,' said
+Mary, firmly. 'I have promised to be John Hammond's wife, and there is
+nothing you nor anyone else can say which will make me alter my mind. I
+wish to act dutifully to you, if I can, and I hope you will be good to
+me and consent to this marriage. But if you will not consent, I shall
+marry him all the same. I shall be full of sorrow at having to disobey
+you, but I have promised, and I will keep my promise.'
+
+'You will act in open rebellion against me--against the kinswoman who
+has reared you, and educated you, and cared for you in all these years!'
+
+'But you have never loved me,' answered Mary, sadly. 'Perhaps if you had
+given me some portion of that affection which you lavished on my sister
+I might be willing to sacrifice this new deep love for your sake--to lay
+down my broken heart as a sacrifice on the altar of gratitude. But you
+never loved me. You have tolerated me, endured my presence as a
+disagreeable necessity of your life, because I am my father's daughter.
+You and Lesbia have been all the world to each other; and I have stood
+aloof, outside your charmed circle, almost a stranger to you. Can you
+wonder, grandmother, recalling this, that I am unwilling to surrender
+the love that has been given me to-day--the true heart of a brave and
+good man!'
+
+Lady Maulevrier looked at her for some moments in scornful wonderment;
+looked at her with a slow, deliberate smile.
+
+'Poor child!' she said; 'poor ignorant, inexperienced baby! For what a
+Will-o-the-wisp are you ready to sacrifice my regard, and all the
+privileges of your position as my granddaughter! No doubt this Mr.
+Hammond has said all manner of fine things to you; but can you be weak
+enough to believe that he who half a year ago was sighing and dying at
+the feet of your sister can have one spark of genuine regard for you?
+The thing is not in nature; it is an obvious absurdity. But it is easy
+enough to understand that Mr. Hammond without a penny in his pocket, and
+with his way to make in the world, would be very glad to secure Lady
+Mary Haselden and her five hundred a year, and to have Lord Maulevrier
+for his brother in-law?'
+
+'Have I really five hundred a year? Shall I have five hundred a year
+when I marry?' asked Mary, suddenly radiant.
+
+'Yes; if you marry with your brother's consent.'
+
+'I am so glad--for his sake. He could hardly starve if I had five
+hundred a year. He need not be obliged to emigrate.'
+
+'Has he been offering you the prospect of emigration as an additional
+inducement?'
+
+'Oh, no, he does not say that he is very poor, but since you say he is
+penniless I thought we might be obliged to emigrate. But as I have five
+hundred a year--'
+
+'You will stay at home, and set up a lodging-house, I suppose,' sneered
+Lady Maulevrier.
+
+'I will do anything my husband pleases. We can live in a humble way in
+some quiet part of London, while Mr. Hammond works at literature or
+politics. I am not afraid of poverty or trouble, I am willing to endure
+both for his sake.'
+
+'You are a fool!' said her grandmother sternly. 'And I have nothing more
+to say to you. Go away, and send Maulevrier to me.'
+
+Mary did not obey immediately. She went over to her grandmother's couch
+and knelt by her side, and kissed the poor maimed hand which lay on the
+velvet cushion.
+
+'Dear grandmother,' she said gently. 'I am very sorry to rebel against
+you. But this is a question of life or death with me. I am not like
+Lesbia. I cannot barter love and truth for worldly advantage--for pride
+of race. Do not think me so weak or so vain as to be won by a few fine
+speeches from an adventurer. Mr. Hammond is no adventurer, he has made
+no fine speeches--but, I will tell you a secret, grandmother. I have
+liked and admired him from the first time he came here. I have looked up
+to him and reverenced him; and I must be a very foolish girl if my
+judgment is so poor that I can respect a worthless man.'
+
+'You _are_ a very foolish girl,' answered Lady Maulevrier, more kindly
+than she had spoken before, 'but you have been very good and dutiful to
+me since I have been ill, and I don't wish to forget that. I never said
+that Mr. Hammond was worthless; but I say that he is no fit husband for
+you. If you were as yielding and obedient as Lesbia it would be all the
+better for you; for then I should provide for your establishment in life
+in a becoming manner. But as you are wilful, and bent upon taking your
+own way--well--my dear, you must take the consequence; and when you are
+a struggling wife and mother, old before your time, weighed down with
+the weary burden of petty cares, do not say, "My grandmother might have
+saved me from this martyrdom."'
+
+'I will run the risk, grandmother. I will be answerable for my own
+fate.'
+
+'So be it, Mary. And now send Maulevrier to me.'
+
+Mary went down to the billiard room, where she found her brother and her
+lover engaged in a hundred game.
+
+'Take my cue and beat him if you can, Molly,' said Maulevrier, when he
+had heard Mary's message. 'I'm fifteen ahead of him, for he has been
+falling asleep over his shots. I suppose I am going to get a lecture.'
+
+'I don't think so,' said Mary.
+
+'Well, my dearest, how did you fare in the encounter?' asked Hammond,
+directly Maulevrier was gone.
+
+'Oh, it was dreadful! I made the most rebellious speeches to poor
+grandmother, and then I remembered her affliction, and I asked her to
+forgive me, and just at the last she was ever so much kinder, and I
+think that she will let me marry you, now she knows I have made up my
+mind to be your wife--in spite of Fate.'
+
+'My bravest and best.'
+
+'And do you know, Jack'--she blushed tremendously as she uttered this
+familiar name--'I have made a discovery!'
+
+'Indeed!'
+
+'I find that I am to have five hundred a year when I am married. It is
+not much. But I suppose it will help, won't it? We can't exactly starve
+if we have five hundred a year. Let me see. It is more than a pound a
+day. A sovereign ought to go a long way in a small house; and, of
+course, we shall begin in a very wee house, like De Quincey's cottage
+over there, only in London.'
+
+'Yes, dear, there are plenty of such cottages in London. In Mayfair, for
+instance, or Belgravia.'
+
+'Now, you are laughing at my rustic ignorance. But the five hundred
+pounds will be a help, won't it?'
+
+'Yes, dear, a great help.'
+
+'I'm so glad.'
+
+She had chalked her cue while she was talking, but after taking her aim,
+she dropped her arm irresolutely.
+
+'Do you know I'm afraid I can't play to-night,' she said. 'Helvellyn
+and the fog and the wind have quite spoilt my nerve. Shall we
+go to the drawing-room, and see if Fraeulein has recovered from her
+gloomy fit?'
+
+'I would rather stay here, where we are free to talk; but I'll do
+whatever you like best.'
+
+Mary preferred the drawing-room. It was very sweet to be alone with her
+lover, but she was weighed down with confusion in his presence. The
+novelty, the wonderment of her position overpowered her. She yearned for
+the shelter of Fraeulein Mueller's wing, albeit the company of that most
+prosaic person was certain death to romance.
+
+Miss Mueller was in her accustomed seat by the fire, knitting her
+customary muffler. She had appropriated Lady Maulevrier's place, much to
+Mary's disgust. It irked the girl to see that stout, clumsy figure in
+the chair which had been filled by her grandmother's imperial form. The
+very room seemed vulgarised by the change.
+
+Fraeulein looked up with a surprised air when Mary and Hammond entered
+together, the girl smiling and happy. She had expected that Mary would
+have left her ladyship's room in tears, and would have retired to her
+own apartment to hide her swollen eyelids and humiliated aspect. But
+here she was, after the fiery ordeal of an interview with her offended
+grandmother, not in the least crestfallen.
+
+'Are we not to have any tea to-night?' asked Mary, looking round the
+room.
+
+'I think you are unconscious of the progress of time, Lady Mary,'
+answered Fraeulein, stiffly. 'The tea has been brought in and taken out
+again.'
+
+'Then it must be brought again, if Lady Mary wants some,' said Hammond,
+ringing the bell in the coolest manner.
+
+Fraeulein felt that things were coming to a pretty pass, if Maulevrier's
+humble friend was going to give orders in the house. Quiet and
+commonplace as the Hanoverian was, she had her ambition, and that was to
+grasp the household sceptre which Lady Maulevrier must needs in some
+wise resign, now that she was a prisoner to her rooms. But so far
+Fraeulein had met with but small success in this endeavour. Her
+ladyship's authority still ruled the house. Her ladyship's keen
+intellect took cognisance even of trifles: and it was only in the most
+insignificant details that Fraeulein felt herself a power.
+
+'Well, your ladyship, what's the row?' said Maulevrier marching into his
+grandmother's room with a free and easy air. He was prepared for a
+skirmish, and he meant to take the bull by the horns.
+
+'I suppose you know what has happened to-day?' said her ladyship.
+
+'Molly and Hammond's expedition, yes, of course. I went part of the way
+with them, but I was out of training, got pumped out after a couple of
+miles, and wasn't such a fool as to go to the top.'
+
+'Do you know that Mr. Hammond made Mary an offer, while they were on the
+hill, and that she accepted him?'
+
+'A queer place for a proposal, wasn't it? The wind blowing great guns
+all the time. I should have chosen a more tranquil spot.'
+
+'Maulevrier, cannot you be serious? Do you forget that this business of
+to-day must affect your sister's welfare for the rest of her life?'
+
+'No, I do not. I will be as serious as a judge after he has put on the
+black cap,' said Maulevrier, seating himself near his grandmother's
+couch, and altering his tone altogether. 'Seriously I am very glad that
+Hammond has asked Mary to be his wife, and still more glad that she is
+tremendously in love with him. I told you some time ago not to put your
+spoke in that wheel. There could not be a happier or a better marriage
+for Mary.'
+
+'You must have rather a poor opinion, of your sister's attractions,
+personal or otherwise, if you consider a penniless young man--of no
+family--good enough for her.'
+
+'I do not consider my sister a piece of merchandise to be sold to the
+highest bidder. Granted that Hammond is poor and a nobody. He is an
+honourable man, highly gifted, brave as a lion, and he is my dearest
+friend. Can you wonder that I rejoice at my sister's having won him for
+her adoring lover?'
+
+'Can he really care for her, after having loved Lesbia?'
+
+'That was the desire of the eye, this is the love of the heart. I know
+that he loves Mary ever so much better than he loved Lesbia. I can
+assure your ladyship that I am not such a fool as I look. I am very fond
+of my sister Mary, and I have not been blind to her interests. I tell
+you on my honour that she ought to be very happy as John Hammond's
+wife.'
+
+'I am obliged to believe what you say about his character,' said Lady
+Maulevrier. 'And I am willing to admit that the husband's character has
+a great deal to do with the wife's happiness, from a moral point of
+view; but still there are material questions to be considered. Has your
+friend any means of supporting a wife?'
+
+'Yes, he has means; quite sufficient means for Mary's views, which are
+very simple.'
+
+'You mean to say he would keep her in decent poverty? Cannot you be
+explicit, Maulevrier, and say what means the man has, whether an income
+or none? If you cannot tell me I must question Mr. Hammond himself.'
+
+'Pray do not do that,' exclaimed her grandson urgently. 'Do not take all
+the flavour of romance out of Molly's love story, by going into pounds,
+shillings, and pence. She is very young. You would hardly wish her to
+marry immediately?'
+
+'Not for the next year, at the very least.'
+
+'Then why enter upon this sordid question of ways and means. Make
+Hammond and Mary happy by consenting to their engagement, and trust the
+rest to Providence, and to me. Take my word for it, Hammond is not a
+beggar, and he is a man likely to make his mark in the world. If a year
+hence his income is not enough to allow of his marrying, I will double
+Mary's allowance out of my own purse. Hammond's friendship has steadied
+me, and saved me a good deal more than five hundred a year.'
+
+'I can quite believe that. I believe Mr. Hammond is a worthy man, and
+that his influence has been very good for you; but that does not make
+him a good match for Mary. However, you seem to have settled the
+business among you, and I suppose I must submit. You had better all
+drink tea with me to morrow afternoon; and I will receive your friend as
+Mary's future husband.'
+
+'That is the best and kindest of grandmothers.'
+
+'But I should like to know more of his antecedents and his relations.'
+
+'His antecedents are altogether creditable. He took honours at the
+University; he has been liked and respected everywhere. He is an orphan,
+and it is better not to talk to him of his family. He is sensitive on
+that point, like most men who stand alone in the world.'
+
+'Well, I will hold my peace. You have taken this business into your
+hands, Maulevrier; and you must be responsible for the result.'
+
+Maulevrier left his grandmother soon after this, and went downstairs,
+whistling for very joyousness. Finding the billiard-room deserted he
+repaired to the drawing-room, where he found Mary playing scraps of
+melody to her lover at the shadowy end of the room, while Fraeulein sat
+by the fire weaving her web as steadily as one of the Fatal Sisters, and
+with a brow prophetic of evil.
+
+Maulevrier crept up to the piano, and came stealthily behind the lovers.
+
+'Bless you, my children,' he said, hovering over them with outspread
+hands. 'I am the dove coming back to the ark. I am the bearer of happy
+tidings. Lady Maulevrier consents to your acquiring the legal right to
+make each other miserable for the rest of your lives.'
+
+'God bless you, Maulevrier,' said Hammond, clasping him by the hand.
+
+'Only as this sister of mine is hardly out of the nursery you will have
+to wait for her at least a year. So says the dowager, whose word is like
+the law of the Medes and Persians, and altereth not.'
+
+'I would wait for her twice seven years, as Jacob waited, and toil for
+her, as Jacob toiled,' answered Hammond, 'but I should like to call her
+my own to-morrow, if it were possible.'
+
+Nothing could be happier or gayer than the tea-drinking in Lady
+Maulevrier's room on the following afternoon. Her ladyship having once
+given way upon a point knew how to make her concession gracefully. She
+extended her hand to Mr. Hammond as frankly as if he had been her own
+particular choice.
+
+'I cannot refuse my granddaughter to her brother's dearest friend,' she
+said, 'but I think you are two most imprudent young people.'
+
+'Providence takes care of imprudent lovers, just as it does of the birds
+in their nests,' answered Hammond, smiling.
+
+'Just as much and no more, I fear. Providence does not keep off the cat
+or the tax-gatherer.'
+
+'Birds must take care of their nests, and husbands must work for their
+homes,' argued Hammond. 'Heaven gives sweet air and sunlight, and a
+beautiful world to live in.'
+
+'I think,' said Lady Maulevrier, looking at him critically, 'you are
+just the kind of person who ought to emigrate. You have ideas that would
+do for the Bush or the Yosemite Valley, but which are too primitive for
+an over-crowded country.'
+
+'No, Lady Maulevrier, I am not going to steal your granddaughter. When
+she is my wife she shall live within call. I know she loves her native
+land, and I don't think either of us would care to put an ocean between
+us and rugged old Helvellyn.'
+
+'Of course having made idiots of yourselves up there in the fog and the
+storm you are going to worship the mountain for ever afterwards,' said
+her ladyship laughing.
+
+Never had she seemed gayer or brighter. Perhaps in her heart of hearts
+she rejoiced at getting Mary engaged, even to so humble a suitor as
+fortuneless John Hammond. Ever since the visit of the so-called Rajah
+she had lived as Damocles lived, with the sword of destiny--the avenging
+sword--hanging over her by the finest hair. Every time she heard
+carriage wheels in the drive--every time the hall-door bell rang a
+little louder than usual, her heart seemed to stop beating and her whole
+being to hang suspended on a thread. If the thread were to snap, there
+would come darkness and death. The blow that had paralysed one side of
+her body must needs, if repeated, bring total extinction. She who
+believed in no after life saw in her maimed and wasting arm the
+beginning of death. She who recognised only the life of the body felt
+that one half of her was already dead. But months had gone by, and Louis
+Asoph had made no sign. She began to hope that his boasted documents and
+witnesses were altogether mythical. And yet the engines of the law are
+slow to put in motion. He might be working up his case, line upon line,
+with some hard-headed London lawyer; arranging and marshalling his
+facts; preparing his witnesses; waiting for affidavits from India;
+working slowly but surely, underground like the mole; and all at once,
+in an hour, his case might be before the law courts. His story and the
+story of Lord Maulevrier's infamy might be town talk again; as it had
+been forty years ago, when the true story of that crime had been happily
+unknown.
+
+Yes, with the present fear of this Louis Asoph's revelations, of a new
+scandal, if not a calamity, Lady Maulevrier felt that it was a good
+thing to have her younger granddaughter's future in some measure
+secured. John Hammond had said of himself to Lesbia that he was not the
+kind of man to fail, and looking at him critically to-day Lady
+Maulevrier saw the stamp of power and dauntless courage in his
+countenance and bearing. It is the inner mind of a man which moulds the
+lines of his face and figure; and a man's character may be read in the
+way he walks and holds himself, the action of his hand, his smile, his
+frown, his general outlook, as clearly as in any phrenological
+development. John Hammond had a noble outlook: bold, without impudence
+or self-assertion; self-possessed, without vanity. Yes, assuredly a man
+to wrestle with difficulty, and to conquer fate.
+
+When that little tea-drinking was over and Maulevrier and his friend
+were going away to dress for dinner, Lady Maulevrier detained Mary for a
+minute or two by her couch. She took her by the hand with unaccustomed
+tenderness.
+
+'My child, I congratulate you,' she said. 'Last night I thought you a
+fool, but I begin to think that you are wiser than Lesbia. You have won
+the heart of a noble young man.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+'A YOUNG LAMB'S HEART AMONG THE FULL-GROWN FLOCKS.'
+
+
+For three most happy days Mary rejoiced in her lover's society,
+Maulevrier was with them everywhere, by brookside and fell, on the lake,
+in the gardens, in the billiard-room, playing propriety with admirable
+patience. But this could not last for ever. A man who has to win name
+and fortune and a home for his young wife cannot spend all his days in
+the primrose path. Fortunes and reputations are not made in dawdling
+beside a mountain stream, or watching the play of sunlight and shadow on
+a green hill-side; unless, indeed, one were a new Wordsworth, and even
+then fortune and renown are not quickly made.
+
+And again, Maulevrier, who had been a marvel of good-nature and
+contentment for the last eight weeks, was beginning to be tired of this
+lovely Lakeland. Just when Lakeland was daily developing into new
+beauty, Maulevrier began to feel an itching for London, where he had a
+comfortable nest in the Albany, and which was to his mind a metropolis
+expressly created as a centre or starting point for Newmarket, Epsom,
+Ascot and Goodwood.
+
+So there came a morning upon which Mary had to say good-bye to those two
+companions who had so blest and gladdened her life. It was a bright
+sunshiny morning, and all the world looked gay; which seemed very unkind
+of Nature, Mary thought. And yet, even in the sadness of this parting,
+she had much reason to be glad. As she stood with her lover in the
+library, in the three minutes of _tete-a-tete_ stolen from the
+argus-eyed Fraeulein, folded in his arms, looking up at his manly face,
+it seemed to her that the mere knowledge that she belonged to him and
+was beloved by him ought to sustain and console her even in long years
+of severance. Yes, even if he were one of the knights of old, going to
+the Holy Land on a crusade full of peril and uncertainty. Even then a
+woman ought to be brave, having such a lover.
+
+But her parting was to be only for a few months. Maulevrier promised to
+come back to Fellside for the August sports, and Hammond was to come
+with him. Three months--or a little more--and they were to meet again.
+
+Yet in spite of these arguments for courage, Mary's face blanched and
+her eyes grew unutterably sad as she looked up at her lover.
+
+'You will take care of yourself, Jack, for my sake, won't you, dear?'
+she murmured. 'If you should be ill while you are in London! If you
+should die--'
+
+'Life is very uncertain, love, but I don't feel like sickness or death
+just at present,' answered Hammond cheerily. 'Indeed, I feel that the
+present is full of sweetness, and the future full of hope. Don't
+suppose, dear, that I am not grieved at this good-bye; but before we
+are a year older I hope the time will have come when there will be no
+more farewells for you and me. I shall be a very exacting husband,
+Molly. I shall want to spend all the days and hours of my life with you;
+to have not a fancy or a pursuit in which you cannot share, or with
+which you cannot sympathise. I hope you will not grow tired of me!'
+
+'Tired!'
+
+Then came silence, and a long farewell kiss, and then the voice of
+Maulevrier shouting in the hall, just in time to warn the lovers, before
+Miss Mueller opened the door and exclaimed,
+
+'Oh, Mr. Hammond, we have been looking for you _everywhere_. The luggage
+is all in the carriage, and Maulevrier says there is only just time to
+get to Windermere!'
+
+In another minute or so the carriage was driving down the hill; and Mary
+stood in the porch looking after the travellers.
+
+'It seems as if it is my fate to stand here and see everybody drive
+away,' she said to herself.
+
+And then she looked round at the lovely gardens, bright with spring
+flowers, the trees glorious with their young, fresh foliage, and the
+vast panorama of hill and dale, and felt that it was a wicked thing to
+murmur in the midst of such a world. And she remembered the great
+unhoped-for bliss that had come to her within the last four days, and
+the cloud upon her brow vanished, as she clasped her hands in child-like
+joyousness.
+
+'God bless you, dear old Helvellyn,' she exclaimed, looking up at the
+sombre crest of the mountain. 'Perhaps if it had not been for you he
+would have never proposed.'
+
+But she was obliged to dismiss this idea instantly; for to suppose John
+Hammond's avowal of his love an accident, the mere impulse of a weak
+moment, would be despair. Had he not told her how she had grown nearer
+and nearer to his heart, day by day, and hour by hour, until she had
+become part of his life? He had told her this--he, in whom she believed
+as in the very spirit of truth.
+
+She wandered about the gardens for an hour after the carriage had
+started for Windermere, revisiting every spot where she and her lover
+had walked together within the last three days, living over again the
+rapture of those hours, repeating to herself his words, recalling his
+looks, with the fatuity of a first girlish love. And yet amidst the
+silliness inseparable from love's young dream, there was a depth of true
+womanly feeling, thoughtful, unselfish, forecasting a future which was
+not to travel always along the primrose path of dalliance--a future in
+which the roses were not always to be thornless.
+
+John Hammond was going to London to work for a position in the world, to
+strive and labour among the seething mass of strugglers, all pressing
+onward for the same goal--independence, wealth, renown. Little as Mary
+know of the world by experience, she had at least heard the wiseacres
+talk; and that which she had heard was calculated to depress rather than
+to inspire industrious youth. She had heard how the professions were all
+over-crowded: how a mighty army of young men were walking the hospitals,
+all intent on feeling the pulses and picking the pockets of the rising
+generation: how at the Bar men were growing old and grey before they saw
+their first brief: how competitors were elbowing and hustling each other
+upon every road, thronging at every gate. And while masculine youth
+strove and wrestled for places in the race, aunts and sisters and
+cousins were pressing into the same arena, doing their best to crowd out
+the uncles and the brothers and the nephews.
+
+'Poor Jack,' sighed Mary, 'at the worst we can go to the Red River
+country and grow corn.'
+
+This was her favourite fancy, that she and her lover should find their
+first dwelling in the new world, live as humbly as the peasants lived
+round Grasmere, and patiently wait upon fortune. And yet that would not
+be happiness, unless Maulevrier were to come and stay with them every
+autumn. Nothing could reconcile Mary to being separated from Maulevrier
+for any lengthened period.
+
+There were hours in which she was more hopeful, and defied the
+wiseacres. Clever young men had succeeded in the past--clever men whose
+hair was not yet grey had come to the front in the present. Granted that
+these were the exceptional men, the fine flower of humanity. Did she not
+know that John Hammond was as far above average youth as Helvellyn was
+above yonder mound in her grandmother's shrubbery?
+
+Yes, he would succeed in literature, in politics, in whatever career he
+had chosen for himself. He was a man to do the thing he set himself to
+do, were it ever so difficult. To doubt his success would be to doubt
+his truth and his honesty; for he had sworn to her he would make her
+life bright and happy, and that evil days should never come to her; and
+he was not the man to promise that which he was not able to perform.
+
+The house seemed terribly dull now that the two young men were gone.
+There was an oppressive silence in the rooms which had lately resounded
+with Maulevrier's frank, boyish laughter, and with his friend's deep,
+manly tones--a silence broken only by the click of Fraeulein Mueller's
+needles.
+
+The Fraeulein was not disposed to be sympathetic or agreeable about Lady
+Mary's engagement. Firstly, she had not been consulted about it. The
+thing had been done, she considered, in an underhand manner; and Lady
+Maulevrier, who had begun by strenuously opposing the match, had been
+talked over in a way that proved the latent weakness of that great
+lady's character. Secondly, Miss Mueller, having herself for some reason
+missed such joys as are involved in being wooed and won, was disposed to
+look sourly upon all love affairs, and to take a despondent view of all
+matrimonial engagements.
+
+She did not say anything openly uncivil to Mary Haselden; but she let
+the damsel see that she pitied her and despised her infatuated
+condition; and this was so unpleasant that Mary was fain to fall back
+upon the society of ponies and terriers, and to take up her pilgrim's
+staff and go wandering over the hills, carrying her happy thoughts into
+solitary places, and sitting for hours in a heathery hollow, steeped in
+a sea of summer light, and trying to paint the mountain side and the
+rush of the waterfall. Her sketch-book was an excuse for hours of
+solitude, for the indulgence of an endless day-dream.
+
+Sometimes she went among her humble friends in the Grasmere cottages, or
+in the villages of Great and Little Langdale; and she had now a new
+interest in these visits, for she had made up her mind that it was her
+solemn duty to learn housekeeping--not such housekeeping as might have
+been learnt at Fellside, supposing she had mustered the courage to ask
+the dignified upper-servants in that establishment to instruct her; but
+such domestic arts as are needed in the dwellings of the poor. The art
+of making a very little money go a great way; the art of giving grace,
+neatness, prettiness to the smallest rooms and the shabbiest furniture;
+the art of packing all the ugly appliances and baser necessities of
+daily life, the pots and kettles and brooms and pails, into the
+narrowest compass, and hiding them from the aesthetic eye. Mary thought
+that if she began by learning the homely devices of the villagers--the
+very A B C of cookery and housewifery--she might gradually enlarge upon
+this simple basis to suit an income of from five to seven hundred a
+year. The house-mothers from whom she sought information were puzzled at
+this sudden curiosity about domestic matters. They looked upon the thing
+as a freak of girlhood which drifted into eccentricity, from sheer
+idleness; yet they were not the less ready to teach Mary anything she
+desired to learn. They told her those secret arts by which coppers and
+brasses are made things of beauty, and meet adornment for an old oak
+mantelshelf. They allowed her to look on at the milking of the cow, and
+at the churning of the butter; and at bread making, and cake making, and
+pie and pudding making; and some pleasant hours were spent in the
+acquirement of this useful knowledge. Mary did not neglect the invalid
+during this new phase of her existence. Lady Maulevrier was a lover of
+routine, and she liked her granddaughter to go to her at the same hour
+every day. From eleven to twelve was the time for Mary's duty as
+amanuensis. Sometimes there were no letters to be written. Sometimes
+there were several; but her ladyship rarely allowed the task to go
+beyond the stroke of noon. At noon Mary was free, and free till five
+o'clock, when she was generally in attendance, ready to give Lady
+Maulevrier her afternoon tea, and sit and talk with her, and tell her
+any scraps of local news which she had gathered in the day.
+
+There were days on which her ladyship preferred to take her tea alone,
+and Mary was left free to follow her own devices till dinner-time.
+
+'I do not feel equal even to your society to-day, my dear,' her ladyship
+would say; 'go and enjoy yourself with your dogs and your tennis;'
+forgetting that there was very seldom anybody on the premises with whom
+Lady Mary could play tennis.
+
+But in these lonely days of Mary Haselden's life there was one crowning
+bliss which was almost enough to sweeten solitude, and take away the
+sting of separation; and that was the delight of expecting and receiving
+her lover's letters. Busily as Mr. Hammond must be engaged in fighting
+the battle of life, he was in no way wanting in his duty as a lover. He
+wrote to Mary every other day; but though his letters were long, they
+told her hardly anything of himself or his occupation. He wrote about
+pictures, books, music, such things as he knew must be interesting to
+her; but of his own struggles not a word.
+
+'Poor fellow,' thought Mary. 'He is afraid to sadden me by telling me
+how hard the struggle is.'
+
+Her own letters to her betrothed were simple outpourings of girlish
+love, breathing that too flattering-sweet idolatry which an innocent
+girl gives to her first lover. Mary wrote as if she herself were of the
+least possible value among created things.
+
+With one of Mr. Hammond's earlier letters came the engagement ring; no
+half-hoop of brilliants or sapphires, rubies or emeralds, no gorgeous
+triple circlet of red, white, and green; but only a massive band of dead
+gold, on the inside of which was engraved this posy--'For ever.'
+
+Mary thought it the loveliest ring she had ever seen in her life.
+
+May was half over and the last patch of snow had vanished from the crest
+of Helvellyn, from Eagle's Crag and Raven's Crag, and Coniston Old Man.
+Spring--slow to come along these shadowy gorges--had come in real
+earnest now, spring that was almost summer; and Lady Maulevrier's
+gardens were as lovely as dreamland. But it was an unpeopled paradise.
+Mary had the grounds all to herself, except at those stated times when
+the Fraeulein, who was growing lazier and larger day by day in her
+leisurely and placid existence, took her morning and afternoon
+constitutional on the terrace in front of the drawing-room, or solemnly
+perambulated the shrubberies.
+
+On fine days Mary lived in the garden, save when she was far afield
+learning the domestic arts from the cottagers. She read French and
+German, and worked conscientiously at her intellectual education, as
+well as at domestic economy. For she told herself that accomplishments
+and culture might be useful to her in her married life. She might be
+able to increase her husband's means by giving lessons abroad, or taking
+pupils at home. She was ready to do anything. She would teach the
+stupidest children, or scrub floors, or bake bread. There was no service
+she would deem degrading for his sake. She meant when she married to
+drop her courtesy title. She would not be Lady Mary Hammond, a poor
+sprig of nobility, but plain Mrs. Hammond, a working man's wife.
+
+Lesbia's presentation was over, and had realised all Lady Kirkbank's
+expectations. The Society papers were unanimous in pronouncing Lord
+Maulevrier's sister the prettiest _debutante_ of the season. They
+praised her classical features, the admirable poise of her head, her
+peerless complexion. They described her dress at the drawing-room; they
+described her 'frocks' in the Park and at Sandown. They expatiated on
+the impression she had made at great assemblies. They hinted at even
+Royal admiration. All this, frivolous fribble though it might be, Lady
+Maulevrier read with delight, and she was still more gratified by
+Lesbia's own account of her successes. But as the season advanced
+Lesbia's letters to her grandmother grew briefer--mere hurried scrawls
+dashed off while the carriage was at the door, or while her maid was
+brushing her hair. Lady Maulevrier divined, with the keen instinct of
+love, that she counted for very little in Lesbia's life, now that the
+whirligig of society, the fret and fever of fashion, had begun.
+
+One afternoon in May, at that hour when Hyde Park is fullest, and the
+carriages move slowly in triple rank along the Lady's Mile, and the
+mounted constables jog up and down with a business-like air which sets
+every one on the alert for the advent of the Princess of Wales, just at
+that hour when Lesbia sat in Lady Kirkbank's barouche, and distributed
+gracious bows and enthralling smiles to her numerous acquaintance, Mary
+rode slowly down the Fell, after a rambling ride on the safest and most
+venerable of mountain ponies. The pony was grey, and Mary was grey, for
+she wore a neat little homespun habit made by the local tailor, and a
+neat little felt hat with a ptarmigan's feather.
+
+All was very quiet at Fellside as she went in at the stable gate. There
+was not an underling stirring in the large old stable-yard which had
+remained almost unaltered for a century and a half; for Lady Maulevrier,
+whilst spending thousands on the new part of the house, had deemed the
+existing stables good enough for her stud. They were spacious old
+stables, built as solidly as a Norman castle, and with all the virtues
+and all the vices of their age.
+
+Mary looked round her with a sigh. The stillness of the place was
+oppressive, and within doors she knew there would be the same stillness,
+made still more oppressive by the society of the Fraeulein, who grew
+duller and duller every day, as it seemed to Mary.
+
+She took her pony into the dusky old stable, where four other ponies
+began rattling their halters in the gloom, by way of greeting. A bundle
+of purple tares lay ready in a corner for Mary to feed her favourites;
+and for the next ten minutes or so she was happily employed going from
+stall to stall, and gratifying that inordinate appetite for green meat
+which seems natural to all horses.
+
+Not a groom or stable-boy appeared while she was in the stable; and she
+was just going away, when her attention was caught by a flood of
+sunshine streaming into an old disused harness-room at the end of the
+stable--a room with one small window facing the Fell.
+
+Whence could that glow of western light come? Assuredly not from the
+low-latticed window which faced eastward, and was generally obscured by
+a screen of cobwebs. The room was only used as a storehouse for lumber,
+and it was nobody's business to clean the window.
+
+Mary looked in, curious to solve the riddle. A door which she had often
+noticed, but never seen opened, now stood wide open, and the old
+quadrangular garden, which was James Steadman's particular care, smiled
+at her in the golden evening light. Seen thus, this little old Dutch
+garden seemed to Mary the prettiest thing she had ever looked upon.
+There were beds of tulips and hyacinths, ranunculus, narcissus,
+tuberose, making a blaze of colour against the old box borders, a foot
+high. The crumbling old brick walls of the outbuildings, and that
+dungeon-like wall which formed the back of the new house, were clothed
+with clematis and wistaria, woodbine and magnolia. All that loving
+labour could do had been done day by day for the last forty years to
+make this confined space a thing of beauty. Mary went out of the dark
+stable into the sunny garden, and looked round her, full of admiration
+for James Steadman's work.
+
+'If ever Jack and I can afford to have a garden, I hope we shall be able
+to make it like this,' she thought. 'It is such a comfort to know that
+so small a garden can be pretty: for of course any garden we could
+afford must be small.'
+
+Lady Mary had no idea that this quadrangle was spacious as compared with
+the narrow strip allotted to many a suburban villa calling itself 'an
+eligible residence.'
+
+In the centre of the garden there was an old sundial, with a stone bench
+at the base, and, as she came upon an opening in the circular yew tree
+hedge which environed this sundial, and from which the flower beds
+radiated in a geometrical pattern, Lady Mary was surprised to see an old
+man--a very old man--sitting on this bench, and basking in the low light
+of the westering sun.
+
+His figure was shrunken and bent, and he sat with his chin resting on
+the handle of a crutched stick, and his head leaning forward. His long
+white hair fell in thin straggling locks over the collar of his coat. He
+had an old-fashioned, mummyfied aspect, and Mary thought he must be
+very, very old.
+
+Very, very old! In a flash there came back upon her the memory of John
+Hammond's curiosity about a hoary and withered old man whom he had met
+on the Fell in the early morning. She remembered how she had taken him
+to see old Sam Barlow, and how he had protested that Sam in no wise
+resembled the strange-looking old man of the Fell. And now here, close
+to the Fell, was a face and figure which in every detail resembled that
+ancient stranger whom Hammond had described so graphically.
+
+It was very strange. Could this person be the same her lover had seen
+two months ago? And, if so, had he been living at Fellside all the time;
+or was he only an occasional visitor of Steadman's?
+
+While she stood for a few moments meditating thus, the old man raised
+his head and looked up at her, with eyes that burned like red-hot coals
+under his shaggy white brows. The look scared her. There was something
+awful in it, like the gaze of an evil spirit, a soul in torment, and she
+began to move away, with side-long steps, her eyes riveted on that
+uncanny countenance.
+
+'Don't go,' said the man, with an authoritative air, rattling his bony
+fingers upon the bench. 'Sit down here by my side, and talk to me. Don't
+be frightened, child. You wouldn't, if you knew what they say of me
+indoors.' He made a motion of his head towards the windows of the old
+wing--'"Harmless," they say, "quite harmless. Let him alone, he's
+harmless." A tiger with his claws cut and his teeth drawn--an old,
+grey-bearded tiger, ghastly and grim, but harmless--a cobra with the
+poison-bag plucked out of his jaw! The venom grows again, child--the
+snake's venom--but youth never comes back. Old, and helpless, and
+harmless!'
+
+Again Mary tried to move away, but those evil eyes held her as if she
+were a bird riveted by the gaze of a serpent.
+
+'Why do you shrink away?' asked the old man, frowning at her. 'Sit down
+here, and let me talk to you. I am accustomed to be obeyed.'
+
+Old and feeble and shrunken as he was, there was a power in his tone of
+command which Mary was unable to resist. She felt very sure that he was
+imbecile or mad. She knew that madmen are apt to imagine themselves
+great personages, and to take upon themselves, with a wonderful power of
+impersonation, the dignity and authority of their imaginary rank; and
+she supposed that it must be thus with this strange old man. She
+struggled against her sense of terror. After all there could be no real
+danger, in the broad daylight, within the precincts of her own home,
+within call of the household.
+
+She seated herself on the bench by the unknown, willing to humour him a
+little; and he turned himself about slowly, as if every bone in his body
+were stiff with age, and looked at her with a deliberate scrutiny.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+'NOW NOTHING LEFT TO LOVE OR HATE.'
+
+
+The old man sat looking at Mary in silence for some moments; not a great
+space of time, perhaps, as marked by the shadow on the dial behind them,
+but to Mary that gaze was unpleasantly prolonged. He looked at her as if
+he could read every pulsation in every fibre of her brain, and knew
+exactly what it meant.
+
+'Who are you?' he asked, at last.
+
+'My name is Mary Haselden.'
+
+'Haselden,' he repeated musingly, 'I have heard that name before.'
+
+And then he resumed his former attitude, his chin resting on the handle
+of his crutch-stick, his eyes bent upon the gravel path, their unholy
+brightness hidden under the penthouse brows.
+
+'Haselden,' he murmured, and repeated the name over and over again,
+slowly, dreamily, with a troubled tone, like some one trying to work out
+a difficult problem. 'Haselden--when? where?'
+
+And then with a profound sigh he muttered, 'Harmless, quite harmless.
+You may trust him anywhere. Memory a blank, a blank, a blank, my lord!'
+
+His head sank lower upon his breast, and again he sighed, the sigh of a
+spirit in torment, Mary thought. Her vivid imagination was already
+interested, her quick sympathies were awakened.
+
+She looked at him wonderingly, compassionately. So old, so infirm, and
+with a mind astray; and yet there were indications in his speech and
+manner that told of reason struggling against madness, like the light
+behind storm-clouds. He had tones that spoke of a keen sensitiveness to
+pain, not the lunatic's imbecile placidity. She observed him intently,
+trying to make out what manner of man he was.
+
+He did not belong to the peasant class: of that she felt assured. The
+shrunken, tapering hand had never worked at peasant's work. The profile
+turned towards her was delicate to effeminacy. The man's clothes were
+shabby and old-fashioned, but they were a gentleman's garments, the
+cloth of a finer texture than she had ever seen worn by her brother. The
+coat, with its velvet collar, was of an old-world fashion. She
+remembered having seen just such a coat in an engraved portrait of Count
+d'Orsay, a print nearly fifty years old. No Dalesman born and bred ever
+wore such a coat; no tailor in the Dales could have made it.
+
+The old man looked up after a long pause, during which Mary felt afraid
+to move. He looked at her again with inquiring eyes, as if her presence
+there had only just become known to him.
+
+'Who are you?' he asked again.
+
+'I told you my name just now. I am Mary Haselden.'
+
+'Haselden--that is a name I knew--once. Mary? I think my mother's name
+was Mary. Yes, yes, I remember that. You have a sweet face, Mary--like
+my mother's. She had brown eyes, like yours, and auburn hair. You don't
+recollect her, perhaps?'
+
+'Alas! poor maniac,' thought Mary, 'you have lost all count of time.
+Fifty years to you in the confusion of your distraught brain, are but as
+yesterday.'
+
+'No, of course not, of course not,' he muttered; 'how should she
+recollect my mother, who died while I was a boy? Impossible. That must
+be half a century ago.'
+
+'Good evening to you,' said Mary, rising with a great effort, so strong
+was her feeling of being spellbound by the uncanny old man, 'I must go
+indoors now.'
+
+He stretched out his withered old hand, small, semi-transparent, with
+the blue veins showing darkly under the parchment-coloured skin, and
+grasped Mary's arm.
+
+'Don't go,' he pleaded. 'I like your face, child; I like your voice--I
+like to have you here. What do you mean by going indoors? Where do you
+live?'
+
+'There,' said Mary, pointing to the dead wall which faced them. 'In the
+new part of Fellside House. I suppose you are staying in the old part
+with James Steadman.'
+
+She had made up her mind that this crazy old man must be a relation of
+Steadman's to whom he gave hospitality either with or without her
+ladyship's consent. All powerful as Lady Maulevrier had ever been in her
+own house, it was just possible that now, when she was a prisoner in her
+own rooms, certain small liberties might be taken, even by so faithful a
+servant as Steadman.
+
+'Staying with James Steadman,' repeated the old man in a meditative
+tone. 'Yes, I stay with Steadman. A good servant, a worthy person. It is
+only for a little while. I shall be leaving Westmoreland next week. And
+you live in that house, do you?' pointing to the dead wall. 'Whose
+house?'
+
+'Lady Maulevrier's. I am Lady Maulevrier's granddaughter.'
+
+'Lady Mau-lev-rier.' He repeated the name in syllables. 'A good name--an
+old title--as old as the conquest. A Norman race those Maulevriers. And
+you are Lady Maulevrier's granddaughter! You should be proud. The
+Maulevriers were always a proud race.'
+
+'Then I am no true Maulevrier,' answered Mary gaily.
+
+She was beginning to feel more at her ease with the old man. He was
+evidently mad, as mad as a March hare; but his madness seemed only the
+harmless lunacy of extreme old age. He had flashes of reason, too. Mary
+began to feel a friendly interest in him. To youth in its flush of life
+and vigour there seems something so unspeakably sad and pitiable in
+feebleness and age--the brief weak remnant of life, the wreck of body
+and mind, sunning itself in the declining rays of a sun that is so soon
+to shine upon its grave.
+
+'What, are you not proud?' asked the old man.
+
+'Not at all. I have been taught to consider myself a very insignificant
+person; and I am going to marry a poor man. It would not become me to be
+proud.'
+
+'But you ought not to do that,' said the old man. 'You ought not to
+marry a poor man. Poverty is a bad thing, my dear. You are a pretty
+girl, and ought to marry a man with a handsome fortune. Poor men have no
+pleasure in this world--they might just as well be dead. I am poor, as
+you see. You can tell by this threadbare coat'--he looked down at the
+sleeve from which the nap was worn in places--'I am as poor as a church
+mouse.'
+
+'But you have kind friends, I dare say,' Mary said, soothingly. 'You are
+well taken care of, I am sure.'
+
+'Yes, I am well taken care of--very well taken care of. How long is it,
+I wonder--how many weeks, or months, or years, since they have taken
+care of me? It seems a long, long time; but it is all like a dream--a
+long dream. Once I used to try and wake myself. I used to try and
+struggle out of that weary dream. But that was ages ago. I am satisfied
+now--I am quite content now--so long as the weather is warm, and I can
+sit out here in the sun.'
+
+'It is growing chilly now,' said Mary, 'and I think you ought to go
+indoors. I know that I must go.'
+
+'Yes, I must go in now--I am getting shivery,' answered the old man,
+meekly. 'But I want to see you again, Mary--I like your face--and I like
+your voice. It strikes a chord here,' touching his breast, 'which has
+long been silent. Let me see you again, child. When can I see you
+again?'
+
+'Do you sit here every afternoon when it is fine?'
+
+'Yes, every day--all day long sometimes when the sun is warm.'
+
+'Then I will come here to see you.'
+
+'You must keep it a secret, then,' said the old man, with a crafty look.
+'If you don't they will shut me up in the house, perhaps. They don't
+like me to see people, for fear I should talk. I have heard Steadman say
+so. Yet what should I talk about, heaven help me? Steadman says my
+memory is quite gone, and that I am childish and harmless--childish and
+harmless. I have heard him say that. You'll come again, won't you, and
+you'll keep it a secret?'
+
+Mary deliberated for a few minutes.
+
+'I don't like secrets,' she said, 'there is generally something
+dishonourable in them. But this would be an innocent secret, wouldn't
+it? Well, I'll come to see you somehow, poor old man; and if Steadman
+sees me here I will make everything right with him.'
+
+'He mustn't see you here,' said the old man. 'If he does he will shut me
+up in my own rooms again, as he did once, years and years ago.'
+
+'But you have not been here long, have you?' Mary asked, wonderingly.
+
+'A hundred years, at least. That's what it seems to me sometimes. And
+yet there are times when it seems only a dream. Be sure you come again
+to-morrow.'
+
+'Yes, I promise you to come; good-night.'
+
+'Good-night.'
+
+Mary went back to the stable. The door was still open, but how could she
+be sure that it would be open to-morrow? There was no other access that
+she knew of to the quadrangle, except through the old part of the house,
+and that was at times inaccessible to her.
+
+She found a key--a big old rusty key--in the inside of the door, so she
+shut and locked it, and put the key in her pocket. The door she supposed
+had been left open by accident; at any rate this key made her mistress
+of the situation. If any question should arise as to her conduct she
+could have an explanation with Steadman; but she had pledged her word to
+the poor mad old man, and she meant to keep her promise, if possible.
+
+As she left the stable she saw Steadman riding towards the gate on his
+grey cob. She passed him as she went back to the house.
+
+Next day, and the day after that, and for many days, Mary used her key,
+and went into the quadrangle at sundown to sit for half an hour or so
+with the strange old man, who seemed to take an intense pleasure in her
+company. The weather was growing warmer as May wore on towards June, and
+this evening hour, between six and seven, was deliciously bright and
+balmy. The seat by the sundial was screened on every side by the clipped
+yew hedge, dense and tall, surrounding the circular, gravelled space, in
+the centre of which stood the old granite dial, with its octagonal
+pedestal and moss-grown steps. There, as in a closely-shaded arbour,
+Lady Mary and her old friend were alone and unobserved. The yew-tree
+boundary was at least eight feet high, and Mary and her companion could
+hardly have been seen even from the upper windows of the low, old house.
+
+Mary had fallen into the habit of going for her walk or her ride at five
+o'clock every day, when she was not in attendance on Lady Maulevrier,
+and after her walk or ride she slipped through the stable, and joined
+her ancient friend. Stables and courtyard were generally empty at this
+hour, the men only appearing at the sound of a big bell, which summoned
+them from their snuggery when they were wanted. Most of Lady
+Maulevrier's servants had arrived at that respectable stage of long
+service in which fidelity is counted as a substitute for hard work.
+
+The old man was not particularly conversational, and was apt to repeat
+the same things over and over again, with a sublime unconsciousness of
+being prosy; but he liked to hear Mary talk, and he listened with
+seeming intelligence. He questioned her about the world outside his
+cloistered life--the wars and rumours of wars--and, although the names
+of the questions and the men of the day seemed utterly strange to him,
+and he had to have them repeated to him again and again, he seemed to
+take an intelligent interest in the stirring facts of the time, and
+listened intently when Mary gave him a synopsis of her last newspaper
+reading.
+
+When the news was exhausted, Mary hit upon a more childish form of
+amusement, and that was to tell the story of any novel or poem she had
+been lately reading. This was so successful that in this manner Mary
+related the stories of most of Shakespeare's plays; of Byron's Bride of
+Abydos, and Corsair; of Keats's Lamia; of Tennyson's Idylls; and of a
+heterogenous collection of poetry and romance, in all of which stories
+the old man took a vivid interest.
+
+'You are better to me than the sunshine,' he told Mary one day when she
+was leaving him. 'The world grows darker when you leave me.'
+
+Once at this parting moment he took both her hands, and drew her nearer
+to him, peering into her face in the clear evening light.
+
+'You are like my mother,' he said. 'Yes, you are very like her. And who
+else is it that you are like? There is some one else, I know. Yes, some
+one else! I remember! It is a face in a picture--a picture at Maulevrier
+Castle.'
+
+'What do you know of Maulevrier Castle?' asked Mary, wonderingly.
+
+Maulevrier was the family seat in Herefordshire, which had not been
+occupied by the elder branch for the last forty years. Lady Maulevrier
+had let it during her son's minority to a younger branch of the family,
+a branch which had intermarried with the world of successful commerce,
+and was richer than the heads of the house. This occupation of
+Maulevrier Castle had continued to the present time, and was likely
+still to continue, Maulevrier having no desire to set up housekeeping in
+a feudal castle in the marches.
+
+'How came you to know Maulevrier Castle?' repeated Mary.
+
+'I was there once. There is a picture by Lely, a portrait of a Lady
+Maulevrier in Charles the Second's time. The face is yours, my love. I
+have heard of such hereditary faces. My mother was proud of resembling
+that portrait.'
+
+'What did your mother know of Maulevrier Castle?'
+
+The old man did not answer. He had lapsed into that dream-like
+condition into which he often sank, when his brain was not stimulated to
+attention and coherency by his interest in Mary's narrations.
+
+Mary concluded that this man had once been a servant in the Maulevrier
+household, perhaps at the place in Herefordshire, and that all his old
+memories ran in one groove--the house of Maulevrier.
+
+The freedom of her intercourse with him was undisturbed for about three
+weeks; and at the end of that time she came face to face with James
+Steadman as she emerged from the circle of greenery.
+
+'You here, Lady Mary?' he exclaimed with an angry look.
+
+'Yes, I have been sitting talking to that poor old man,' Mary answered,
+cheerily, concluding that Steadman's look of vexation arose from his
+being detected in the act of harbouring a contraband relation. 'He is a
+very interesting character. A relation of yours, I suppose?'
+
+'Yes, he is a relation,' replied Steadman. 'He is very old, and his mind
+has long been gone. Her ladyship is kind enough to allow me to give him
+a home in her house. He is quite harmless, and he is in nobody's way.'
+
+'Of course not, poor soul. He is only a burden to himself. He talks as
+if his life had been very weary. Has he been long in that sad state?'
+
+'Yes, a long time.'
+
+Steadman's manner to Lady Mary was curt at the best of times. She had
+always stood somewhat in awe of him, as a person delegated with
+authority by her grandmother, a servant who was much more than a
+servant. But to-day his manner was more abrupt than usual.
+
+'He spoke of Maulevrier Castle just now,' said Mary, determined not to
+be put down too easily. 'Was he once in service there?'
+
+'He was. Pray how did you find your way into this garden, Lady Mary?'
+
+'I came through the stable. As it is my grandmother's garden I suppose I
+did not take an unwarrantable liberty in coming,' said Mary, drawing
+herself up, and ready for battle.
+
+'It is Lady Maulevrier's wish that this garden should be reserved for my
+use,' answered Steadman. 'Her ladyship knows that my uncle walks here of
+an afternoon, and that, owing to his age and infirmities, he can go
+nowhere else; and if only on that account, it is well that the garden
+should be kept private. Lunatics are rather dangerous company, Lady
+Mary, and I advise you to give them a wide berth wherever you may meet
+them.'
+
+'I am not afraid of your uncle,' said Mary, resolutely. 'You said
+yourself just now that he is quite harmless: and I am really interested
+in him, poor old creature. He likes me to sit with him a little of an
+afternoon and to talk to him; and if you have no objection I should like
+to do so, whenever the weather is fine enough for the poor old man to be
+out in the garden at this hour.'
+
+'I have a very great objection, Lady Mary, and that objection is chiefly
+in your interest,' answered Steadman, firmly. 'No one who is not
+experienced in the ways of lunatics can imagine the danger of any
+association with them--their consummate craftiness, their capacity for
+crime. Every madman is harmless up to a certain point--mild,
+inoffensive, perhaps, up to the very moment in which he commits some
+appalling crime. And then people cry out upon the want of prudence, the
+want of common-sense which allowed such an act to be possible. No, Lady
+Mary, I understand the benevolence of your motive, but I cannot permit
+you to run such a risk.'
+
+'I am convinced that the poor old creature is perfectly harmless,' said
+Mary, with suppressed indignation. 'I shall certainly ask Lady
+Maulevrier to speak to you on the subject. Perhaps her influence may
+induce you to be a little more considerate to your unhappy relation.'
+
+'Lady Mary, I beg you not to say a word to Lady Maulevrier on this
+subject. You will do me the greatest injury if you speak of that man. I
+entreat you--'
+
+But Mary was gone. She passed Steadman with her head held high and her
+eyes sparkling with anger. All that was generous, compassionate, womanly
+in her nature was up in arms against her grandmother's steward. Of all
+other things, Mary Haselden most detested cruelty; and she could see in
+Steadman's opposition to her wish nothing but the most cold-hearted
+cruelty to a poor dependent on his charity.
+
+She went in at the stable door, shut and locked it, and put the key in
+her pocket as usual. But she had little hope that this mode of access
+would be left open to her. She knew enough of James Steadman's
+character, from hearsay rather than from experience, to feel sure that
+he would not easily give way. She was not surprised, therefore, on
+returning from her ride on the following afternoon, to find the disused
+harness-room half filled with trusses of straw, and the door of
+communication completely blocked. It would be impossible for her to
+remove that barricade without assistance; and then, how could she be
+sure that the door itself was not nailed up, or secured in some way?
+
+It was a delicious sunny afternoon, and she could picture the lonely old
+man sitting in his circle of greenery beside the dial, which for him had
+registered so many dreary and solitary hours, waiting for the little ray
+of social sunlight which her presence shed over his monotonous life. He
+had told her that she was like the sunshine to him--better than
+sunshine--and she had promised not to forsake him. She pictured him
+waiting, with his hand clasped upon his crutch-stick, his chin resting
+upon his hands, his eyes poring on the ground, as she had seen him for
+the first time. And as the stable clock chimed the quarters he would
+begin to think himself abandoned, forgotten; if, indeed, he took any
+count of the passage of time, of which she was not sure. His mind seemed
+to have sunk into a condition which was between dreaming and waking, a
+state to which the outside world seemed only half real--a phase of being
+in which there was neither past nor future, only the insufferable
+monotony of an everlasting _now_.
+
+Pity is so near akin to love that Mary, in her deep compassion for this
+lonely, joyless, loveless existence, felt a regard which was almost
+affection for this strange old man, whose very name was unknown to her.
+True that there was much in his countenance and manner which was
+sinister and repellant. He was a being calculated to inspire fear rather
+than love; but the fact that he had courted her presence and looked to
+her for consolation had touched Mary's heart, and she had become
+reconciled to all that was forbidding and disagreeable in the lunatic
+physiognomy. Was he not the victim of a visitation which entitled him to
+respect as well as to pity?
+
+For some days Mary held her peace, remembering Steadman's vehement
+entreaty that she should not speak of this subject to her grandmother.
+She was silent, but the image of the old man haunted her at all times
+and seasons. She saw him even in her dreams--those happy dreams of the
+girl who loves and is beloved, and before whom the pathway of the future
+smiles like a vision of Paradise. She heard him calling to her with a
+piteous cry of distress, and on waking from this troubled dream she
+fancied that he must be dying, and that this sound in her dreams was one
+of those ghostly warnings which give notice of death. She was so unhappy
+about him, altogether so distressed at being compelled to break her
+word, that she could not prevent her thoughts from dwelling upon him,
+not even after she had poured out all her trouble to John Hammond in a
+long letter, in which her garden adventures and her little skirmish with
+Steadman were graphically described.
+
+To her intense discomfiture Hammond replied that he thoroughly approved
+of Steadman's conduct in the matter. However agreeable Mary's society
+might be to the lunatic, Mary's life was far too precious to be put
+within the possibility of peril by any such _tete-a-tetes_. If the
+person was the same old man whom Hammond had seen on the Fell, he was a
+most sinister-looking creature, of whom any evil act might be fairly
+anticipated. In a word Mr. Hammond took Steadman's view of the matter,
+and entreated his dearest Mary to be careful, and not to allow her warm
+heart to place her in circumstances of peril.
+
+This was most disappointing to Mary, who expected her lover to agree
+with her upon every point; and if he had been at Fellside the
+difference of opinion might have given rise to their first quarrel. But
+as she had a few hours' leisure for reflection before the post went out,
+she had time to get over her anger, and to remember that promise of
+obedience given, half in jest, half in earnest, at the little inn beyond
+Dunmail Raise. So she wrote submissively enough, only with just a touch
+of reproach at Jack's want of compassion for a poor old man who had such
+strong claims upon everybody's pity.
+
+The image of the poor old man was not to be banished from her thoughts,
+and on that very afternoon, when her letter was dispatched, Mary went on
+a visit of exploration to the stables, to see if by any chance Mr.
+Steadman's plans for isolating his unhappy relative might be
+circumvented.
+
+She went all over the stables--into loose boxes, harness and saddle
+rooms, sheds for wood, and sheds for roots, but she found no door
+opening into the quadrangle, save that door by which she had entered,
+and which was securely defended by a barricade of straw that had been
+doubled by a fresh delivery of trusses since she first saw it. But while
+she was prowling about the sweet-scented stable, much disappointed at
+the result of her investigations, she stumbled against a ladder which
+led to an open trap-door. Mary mounted the ladder, and found herself
+amidst the dusty atmosphere of a large hayloft, half in shadow, half in
+the hot bright sunlight. A large shutter was open in the sloping roof,
+the roof that sloped towards the quadrangle, an open patch admitting
+light and air. Mary, light and active as a squirrel, sprang upon a truss
+of hay, and in another moment had swung herself in the opening of the
+shutter, and was standing with her feet on the wooden ledge at the
+bottom of the massive frame, and her figure supported against the slope
+of thick thatched roof. Perched, or half suspended, thus, she was just
+high enough to look over the top of the yew-tree hedge into the circle
+round the sundial.
+
+Yes, there was the unhappy victim of fate, and man's inhumanity to man.
+There sat the shrunken figure, with drooping head, and melancholy
+attitude--the bent shoulders of feeble old age, the patriarchal locks so
+appealing to pity. There he sat with eyes poring upon the ground just as
+she had seen him the first time. And while she had sat with him and
+talked with him he had seemed to awaken out of that dull despondency,
+gleams of pleasure had lighted up his wrinkled face--he had grown
+animated, a sentient living instead of a corpse alive. It was very hard
+that this little interval of life, these stray gleams of gladness should
+be denied to the poor old creature, at the behest of James Steadman.
+
+Mary would have felt less angrily upon the subject had she believed in
+Steadman's supreme carefulness of her own safety; but in this she did
+not believe. She looked upon the house-steward's prudence as a
+hypocritical pretence, an affectation of fidelity and wisdom, by which
+he contrived to gratify the evil tendencies of his own hard and cruel
+nature. For some reasons of his own, perhaps constrained thereto by
+necessity, he had given the old man an asylum for his age and infirmity:
+but while thus giving him shelter he considered him a burden, and from
+mere perversity of mind refused him all such consolations as were
+possible to his afflicted state, mewed him up as a prisoner, cut him off
+from the companionship of his fellow-men.
+
+Two years ago, before Mary emerged from her Tomboyhood, she would have
+thought very little of letting herself out of the loft window and
+clambering down the side of the stable, which was well furnished with
+those projections in the way of gutters, drain-pipes, and century-old
+ivy, which make such a descent easy. Two years ago Mary's light figure
+would have swung itself down among the ivy leaves, and she would have
+gloried in the thought of circumventing James Steadman so easily. But
+now Mary was a young lady--a young lady engaged to be married, and
+impressed with the responsibilities of her position, deeply sensible of
+a new dignity, for the preservation of which she was in a manner
+answerable to her lover.
+
+'What would _he_ think of me if I went scrambling down the ivy?' she
+asked herself; 'and after he has approved of Steadman's heartless
+restrictions, it would be rank rebellion against him if I were to do it.
+Poor old man, "Thou art so near and yet so far," as Lesbia's song says.'
+
+She blew a kiss on the tips of her fingers towards that sad solitary
+figure, and then dropped back into the dusty duskiness of the loft. But
+although her new ideas upon the subject of 'Anstand'--or good
+behaviour--prevented her getting the better of Steadman by foul means,
+she was all the more intent upon having her own way by fair means, now
+that the impression of the old man's sadness and solitude had been
+renewed by the sight of the drooping figure by the sundial.
+
+She went back to the house, and walked straight to her grandmother's
+room. Lady Maulevrier's couch had been placed in front of the open
+window, from which she was watching the westward-sloping sun above the
+long line of hills, dark Helvellyn, rugged Nabb Scarr, and verdant
+Fairfield, with its two giant arms stretched out to enfold and shelter
+the smiling valley.
+
+'Heavens! child, what an object you are;' exclaimed her ladyship, as
+Mary drew near. 'Why, your gown is all over dust, and your hair is--why
+your hair is sprinkled with hay and clover. I thought you had learnt to
+be tidy, since your engagement. What have you been doing with yourself?'
+
+'I have been up in the hayloft,' answered Mary, frankly; and, intent on
+one idea, she said impetuously, 'Dear grandmother, I want you to do me a
+favour--a very great favour. There is a poor old man, a relation of
+Steadman's, who lives with him, out of his mind, but quite harmless, and
+he is so sad and lonely, so dreadfully sad, and he likes me to sit with
+him in the garden, and tell him stories, and recite verses to him, poor
+soul, just as if he were a child, don't you know, and it is such a
+pleasure to me to be a little comfort to him in his lonely wretched
+life, and James Steadman says I mustn't go near him, because he may
+change at any moment into a dangerous lunatic, and do me some kind of
+harm, and I am not a bit afraid, and I'm sure he won't do anything of
+the kind, and, please grandmother, tell Steadman, that I am to be
+allowed to go and sit with his poor old prisoner half an hour every
+afternoon.'
+
+Carried along the current of her own impetuous thoughts, Mary had talked
+very fast, and had not once looked at her grandmother while she was
+speaking. But now at the end of her speech her eyes sought Lady
+Maulevrier's face in gentle entreaty, and she recoiled involuntarily at
+the sight she saw there.
+
+The classic features were distorted almost as they had been in the worst
+period of the paralytic seizure. Lady Maulevrier was ghastly pale, and
+her eyes glared with an awful fire as they gazed at Mary. Her whole
+frame was convulsed, and she, the cripple, whose right limbs lay numbed
+and motionless upon the couch, made a struggling motion as she raised
+herself a little with the left arm, as if, by very force of angry will,
+she would have lifted herself up erect before the girl who had offended
+her.
+
+For a few moments her lips moved dumbly; and there was something
+unspeakably awful in those convulsed features, that livid countenance,
+and those voiceless syllables trembling upon the white dry lips.
+
+At last speech came.
+
+'Girl, you were created to torment me;' she exclaimed.
+
+'Dear grandmother, what harm have I done?' faltered Mary.
+
+'What harm? You are a spy. Your very existence is a torment and a
+danger. Would to God that you were married. Yes, married to a
+chimney-sweep, even--and out of my way.'
+
+'If that is your only difficulty,' said Mary, haughtily, 'I dare say Mr.
+Hammond would be kind enough to marry me to-morrow, and take me out of
+your ladyship's way.'
+
+Lady Maulevrier's head sank back upon her pillows, those velvet and
+satin pillows, rich with delicate point lace and crewel-work adornment,
+the labour of Mary and Fraeulein, pillows which could not bring peace to
+the weary head, or deaden the tortures of memory. The pale face
+recovered its wonted calm, the heavy lips drooped over the weary eyes,
+and for a few moments there was silence in the room.
+
+Then Lady Maulevrier raised her eyelids, and looked at her granddaughter
+imploringly, pathetically.
+
+'Forgive me, Mary,' she said. 'I don't know what I was saying just now;
+but whatever it was, forgive and forget it. I am a wretched old woman,
+heart sick, heart sore, worn out by pain and weariness. There are times
+when I am beside myself; moments when I am not much saner than
+Steadman's lunatic uncle. This is one of my worst days, and you came
+bouncing in upon me, and tortured my nerves by your breathless torrent
+of words. Pray forgive me, if I said anything rude.'
+
+'If,' thought Mary: but she tried to be charitable, and to believe that
+Lady Maulevrier's attack upon her was a new phase of hysteria, so she
+murmured meekly, 'There is nothing for me to forgive, grandmother, and I
+am very sorry I disturbed you.'
+
+She was going to leave the room, thinking that her absence would be a
+relief to the invalid, when Lady Maulevrier called her back.
+
+'You were asking me something--something about that old man of
+Steadman's,' she said with a weary air, half indifference, half the
+lassitude natural to an invalid who sinks under the burden of monotonous
+days. 'What was it all about? I forget.'
+
+Mary repeated her request, but this time in measured tones.
+
+'My dear, I am sure that Steadman was only properly prudent.' answered
+Lady Maulevrier, 'and that it would never do for me to interfere in this
+matter. It stands to reason that he must know his old kinsman's
+temperament much better than you can, after your half-hour interviews
+with him in the garden. Pray how long have these garden scenes been
+going on, by-the-by?' asked her ladyship, with a searching look at
+Mary's downcast face.
+
+The girl had not altogether recovered from the rude shock of her
+grandmother's late attack.
+
+'About three weeks,' faltered Mary. 'But it is more than a week now
+since I was in the garden. It was quite by accident that I first went
+there. Perhaps I ought to explain.'
+
+And Mary, not being gainsayed, went on to describe that first afternoon
+when she had seen the old man brooding in the sun. She drew quite a
+pathetic picture of his joyless solitude, whilst all nature around and
+about him was looking so glad in the spring sunshine. There was a long
+silence, a silence of some minutes, when she had done; and Lady
+Maulevrier lay with lowered eyelids, deep in thought. Mary began to hope
+that she had touched her grandmother's heart, and that her request would
+be granted: but she was soon undeceived.
+
+'I am sorry to be obliged to refuse you a favour, Mary, but I must stand
+by Steadman,' said her ladyship. 'When I gave Steadman permission to
+shelter his aged kinsman in my house, I made it a condition that the old
+man should be kept in the strictest care by himself and his wife, and
+that nobody in this establishment should be troubled by him. This
+condition has been so scrupulously adhered to that the old man's
+existence is known to no one in this house except you and me; and you
+have discovered the fact only by accident. I must beg you to keep this
+secret to yourself. Steadman has particular reasons for wishing to
+conceal the fact of his uncle's residence here. The old man is not
+actually a lunatic. If he were we should be violating the law by keeping
+him here. He is only imbecile from extreme old age; the body has
+outlived the mind, that is all. But should any officious functionary
+come down upon Fellside, this imbecility might be called madness, and
+the poor old creature whom you regard so compassionately, and whose case
+you think so pitiable here, would be carried off to a pauper lunatic
+asylum, which I can assure you would be a much worse imprisonment than
+Fellside Manor.'
+
+'Yes, indeed, grandmother,' exclaimed Mary, whose vivid imagination
+conjured up a vision of padded cells, strait-waist-coats,
+murderously-inclined keepers, chains, handcuffs, and bread and water
+diet, 'now I understand why the poor old soul has been kept so
+close--why nobody knows of his existence. I beg Steadman's pardon with
+all my heart. He is a much better fellow than I thought him.'
+
+'Steadman is a thoroughly good fellow, and as true as steel,' said her
+ladyship. 'No one can know that so well as the mistress he has served
+faithfully for nearly half a century. I hope, Mary, you have not been
+chattering to Fraeulein or any one else about your discovery.'
+
+'No, grandmother, I have not said a word to a mortal, but----'
+
+'Oh, there is a "but," is there? I understand. You have not been so
+reticent in your letters to Mr. Hammond.'
+
+'I tell him all that happens to me. There is very little to write about
+at Fellside; yet I contrive to send him volumes. I often wonder what
+poor girls did in the days of Miss Austen's novels, when letters cost a
+shilling or eighteen pence for postage, and had to be paid for by the
+recipient. It must have been such a terrible check upon affection.'
+
+'And upon twaddle,' said Lady Maulevrier. 'Well you told Mr. Hammond
+about Steadman's old uncle. What did he say?'
+
+'He thoroughly approved Steadman's conduct in forbidding me to go and
+see him,' answered Mary. 'I couldn't help thinking it rather unkind of
+him; but, of course, I feel that he must be right,' concluded Mary, as
+much as to say that her lover was necessarily infallible.
+
+'I always thought Mr. Hammond a sensible young man, and I am glad to
+find that his conduct does not belie my good opinion,' said Lady
+Maulevrier. 'And now, my dear, you had better go and make yourself
+decent before dinner. I am very weary this afternoon, and even our
+little talk has exhausted me.'
+
+'Yes, dear grandmother, I am going this instant. But let me ask one
+question: What is the poor old man's name?'
+
+'His name!' said her ladyship, looking at Mary with a puzzled air, like
+a person whose thoughts are far away. 'His name--oh, Steadman, I
+suppose, like his nephew's; but if I ever heard the name I have
+forgotten it, and I don't know whether the kinship is on the father's or
+the mother's side. Steadman asked my permission to give shelter to a
+helpless old relative, and I gave it. That is really all I remember.'
+
+'Only one other question,' pleaded Mary, who was brimful of curiosity
+upon this particular subject. 'Has he been at Fellside very long?'
+
+'Oh, I really don't know; a year, or two, or three, perhaps. Life in
+this house is all of a piece. I hardly keep count of time.'
+
+'There is one thing that puzzles me very much,' said Mary, still
+lingering near her grandmother's couch, the balmy evening air caressing
+her as she leaned against the embrasure of the wide Tudor window, the
+sun drawing nearer to the edge of the hills, an orb of yellow flame,
+soon to change to a gigantic disk of lurid fire. 'I thought from the old
+man's talk that he, too, must be an old servant in our family. He talked
+of Maulevrier Castle, and said that I reminded him of a picture by Lely,
+a portrait of a Lady Maulevrier.
+
+'It is quite possible that he may have been in service there, though I
+do not remember to have heard anything about it,' answered her ladyship,
+carelessly. 'The Steadmans come from that part of the country, and
+theirs is a hereditary service. Good-night, Mary, I am utterly weary.
+Look at that glorious light yonder, that mighty world of fire and flame,
+without which our little world would be dark and dreary. I often think
+of that speech of Macbeth's, "I 'gin to be aweary of the sun." There
+comes a time, Mary, when even the sun is a burden.'
+
+'Only for such a man as Macbeth,' said Mary, 'a man steeped in crime.
+Who can wonder that he wanted to hide himself from the sun? But, dear
+grandmother, there ought to be plenty of happiness left for you, even if
+your recovery is slow to come. You are so clever, you have such
+resources in your own mind and memory, and you have your grandchildren,
+who love you dearly,' added Mary, tenderly.
+
+Her nature was so full of pity that an entirely new affection had grown
+up in her mind for Lady Maulevrier since that terrible evening of the
+paralytic stroke.
+
+'Yes, and whose love, as exemplified by Lesbia, is shown in a hurried
+scrap of a letter scrawled once a week--a bone thrown to a hungry dog,'
+said her ladyship, bitterly.
+
+'Lesbia is so lovely, and she is so surrounded by flatterers and
+admirers,' murmured Mary, excusingly.
+
+'Oh, my dear, if she had a heart she would not forget me, even in the
+midst of her flatterers. Good-night again, Mary. Don't try to console
+me. For some natures consolations and soothing suggestions are like
+flowers thrown upon a granite tomb. They do just as much and just as
+little good to the heart that lies under the stone. Good-night.'
+
+Mary stooped to kiss her grandmother's forehead, and found it cold as
+marble. She murmured a loving good-night, and left the mistress of
+Fellside in her loneliness.
+
+A footman would come in and light the lamps, and draw the velvet
+curtains, presently, and shut out the later glories of sunset. And then
+the butler himself would come and arrange the little dinner table by her
+ladyship's couch, and would himself preside over the invalid's simple
+dinner, which would be served exquisitely, with all that is daintiest
+and most costly in Salviati glass and antique silver. Yet better the
+dinner of herbs, and love and peace withal, than the choicest fare or
+the most perfect service.
+
+Before the coming of the servants and the lamps there was a pause of
+silence and loneliness, an interval during which Lady Maulevrier lay
+gazing at the declining orb, the lower rim of which now rested on the
+edge of the hill. It seemed to grow larger and more dazzling as she
+looked at it.
+
+Suddenly she clasped her left hand across her eyes, and said aloud--
+
+'Oh, what a hateful life! Almost half a century of lies and hypocricies
+and prevarications and meannesses! For what? For the glory of an empty
+name; and for a fortune that may slip from my dead hand to become the
+prey of rogues and adventurers. Who can forecast the future?'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+CARTE BLANCHE.
+
+
+Lady Kirkbank's house in Arlington Street was known to half fashionable
+London as one of the pleasantest houses in town; and it was known by
+repute only, to the other half of fashionable London, as a house whose
+threshold was not to be crossed by persons with any regard for their own
+dignity and reputation. It was not that Lady Kirkbank had ever actually
+forfeited her right to be considered an honest woman and a faithful
+wife. People who talked of the lady and her set with a contemptuous
+shrug of the shoulders and a dubious elevation of the eyebrows were
+ready, when hard pushed in argument, to admit that they knew of no
+actual harm in Lady Kirkbank, no overt bad behaviour.
+
+'But--well,' said the punctilious half of society, the Pejinks and
+Pernickitys, the Picksomes and Unco-Goods, 'Lady Kirkbank is--Lady
+Kirkbank; and I would not allow my girls to visit her, don't you know.'
+'Lady Kirkbank is received, certainly,' said a severe dowager. 'She
+goes to very good houses. She gets tickets for the Royal enclosure. She
+is always at private views, and privileged shows of all kinds; and she
+contrives to squeeze herself in at a State ball or a concert about once
+in two years; but any one who can consider Lady Kirkbank good style must
+have a very curious idea of what a lady ought to be.' 'Lady Kirkbank is
+a warm-hearted, nice creature,' said a diplomatist of high rank, and one
+of her particular friends, 'but her manners are decidedly--continental!'
+
+About Sir George, society, adverse or friendly, was without strong
+opinions. His friends, the men who shot over his Scotch moor, and filled
+the spare rooms in his villa at Cannes, and loaded his drag for Sandown
+or Epsom, and sponged upon him all the year round, talked of him as 'an
+inoffensive old party,' 'a cheery soul,' 'a genial old boy,' and in like
+terms of approval. That half of society which did not visit in Arlington
+Street, in whose nostrils the semi-aristocratic, semi-artistic,
+altogether Bohemian little dinners, the suppers after the play, the
+small hours devoted to Nap or Poker, had an odour as of sulphur, the
+reek of Tophet--even this half of the great world was fain to admit that
+Sir George was harmless. He had never had an idea beyond the realms of
+sport; he had never had a will of his own outside his stable. To shoot
+pigeons at Hurlington or Monaco, to keep half a dozen leather-platers,
+and attend every race from the Craven to the Leger, to hunt four days a
+week, when he was allowed to spend a winter in England, and to saunter
+and sleep away all the hours which could not be given to sport,
+comprised Sir George's idea of existence. He had never troubled himself
+to consider whether there might not possibly be a better way of getting
+rid of one's life. He was as God had made him, and was perfectly
+satisfied with himself and the universe; save at such times as when a
+favourite horse went lame, or his banker wrote to tell him that his
+account was overdrawn.
+
+Sir George had no children; he had never had a serious care in his life.
+He never thought, he never read. Lady Kirkbank declared that she had
+never seen him with a book in his hands since their marriage.
+
+'I don't believe he would know at which end to begin,' she said.
+
+What was the specific charge which the very particular people brought
+against Lady Kirkbank? Such charges rarely _are_ specific. The idea that
+the lady belonged to the fast and furious section of society, the
+Bohemia of the upper ten, was an idea in the air. Everybody knew it. No
+one could quite adequately explain it.
+
+From thirty to fifty Lady Kirkbank had been known as a flirty matron.
+Wherever she went, a train of men went with her; men young and
+middle-aged and elderly; handsome youths from the public offices; War,
+Admiralty, Foreign Office, Somerset House young men; attractive men of
+mature years, with grey moustachios, military, diplomatic, horsey, what
+you will, but always agreeable. At home, abroad, Lady Kirkbank was never
+without her court; but the court was entirely masculine. In those days
+the fair Georgie did not scruple to say that she hated women, and that
+girls were her particular abomination. But as the years rolled on Lady
+Kirkbank began to find it very difficult to muster her little court, to
+keep her train in attendance upon her. 'The birds were wild,' Sir George
+said. Her young adorers found their official duties more oppressive than
+hitherto; her elderly swains had threatenings of gout or rheumatism
+which prevented their flocking round her as of old at race meeting or
+polo match. They were loyal enough in keeping their engagements at the
+dinner table, for Lady Kirkbank's cook was one of the best in London;
+and the invited guests were rarely missing at the little suppers after
+opera or play: but Georgia's box was no longer crowded with men who
+dropped in between the acts to see what she thought of the singer or the
+piece, and her swains were no longer contented to sit behind her chair
+all the evening, seeing an empty corner of the stage across Georgia's
+ivory shoulder, and hearing the voices of invisible actors in the brief
+pauses of Georgie's subdued babble.
+
+At fifty-five, Georgina Kirkbank told herself sadly enough that her day,
+as a bright particular star, all-sufficient in her own radiance, was
+gone. She could not live without her masculine circle, men who could
+bring her all the news, the gossip of the clubs; where everything seemed
+to become known as quickly as if each club had its own Asmodeus,
+unroofing all the housetops of the West End for inspection every night.
+She could not live without her courtiers; and to keep them about her she
+knew that she must make her house pleasant. It was not enough to give
+good dinners, elegant little suppers washed down by choicest wines; she
+must also provide fair faces to smile upon the feast, and bright eyes to
+sparkle in the subdued light of low shaded lamps, and many candles
+twinkling under coloured shades.
+
+'I am an old woman now,' Lady Kirkbank said to herself with a sigh, 'and
+my own attractions won't keep my friends about me. _C'est trop connu
+ca_.'
+
+And now the house in Arlington Street in which feminine guests had been
+as one in ten, opened its doors to the young and the fair. Pretty
+widows, lively girls, young wives who were not too absurdly devoted to
+their husbands, actresses of high standing and good looks, these began
+to be welcomed effusively in Arlington Street. Lady Kirkbank began to
+hunt for beauties to adorn her rooms, as she had hitherto hunted lions
+to roar at her parties. She prided herself on being the first to
+discover this or that new beauty. That lovely girl from Scotland with
+the large eyes--that sweet young creature from Ireland with the long
+eyelashes. She was always inventing new divinities. But even this
+change of plan, this more feminine line of politics failed to reconcile
+the strict and the stern, the Queen Charlotte-ish elderly ladies, and
+the impeccable matrons, to Lady Kirkbank and her set. The girls who were
+launched by Lady Kirkbank never took high rank in society. When they
+made good marriages it was generally to be observed that they dropped
+Lady Kirkbank soon afterwards. It was not their fault, these ingrates
+pleaded piteously; but Edward, or Henry, or Theodore, as the case might
+be, had a most cruel prejudice against dear Lady Kirkbank, and the young
+wives were obliged to obey.
+
+Others there were, however, the loyal few, who having won the prize
+matrimonial in Lady Kirkbank's happy hunting grounds, remained true to
+their friend ever afterwards, and defended her character against every
+onslaught.
+
+When Lady Maulevrier told her grandson that she had entrusted Lady
+Kirkbank with the duty of introducing Lesbia to society, Maulevrier
+shrugged his shoulders and held his peace. He knew no actual harm in the
+matter. Lady Kirkbank's was rather a fast set; and had he been allowed
+to choose it was not to Lady Kirkbank that he would have delegated his
+grandmother's duty. In Maulevrier's own phrase it was 'not good enough'
+for Lesbia. But it was not in his power to interfere. He was not told of
+the plan until everything had been settled. The thing was accomplished;
+and against accomplished facts Maulevrier was the last to protest.
+
+His friend John Hammond had not been silent. He knew nothing of Lady
+Kirkbank personally; but he knew the position which she held in London
+society, and he urged his friend strongly to enlighten Lady Maulevrier
+as to the kind of circle into which she was about to entrust her young
+granddaughter, a girl brought up in the Arcadia of England.
+
+'Not for worlds would I undertake such a task,' said Maulevrier. 'Her
+ladyship never had any opinion of my wisdom, and this Lady Kirkbank is a
+friend of her own youth. She would cut up rough if I were to say a word
+against an old friend. Besides what's the odds, if you come to think of
+it? all society is fast nowadays, or at any rate all society worth
+living in. And then again, Lesbia is just one of those cool-headed girls
+who would keep herself head uppermost in a maelstrom. She knows on which
+side her bread is buttered. Look how easily she chucked you up because
+she did not think you good enough. She'll make use of this Lady
+Kirkbank, who is a good soul, I am told, and will make the best match of
+the season.'
+
+And now the season had begun, and Lady Lesbia Haselden was circulating
+with other aristocratic atoms in the social vortex, with her head
+apparently uppermost.
+
+'Old Lady K--has nobbled a real beauty, this time,' said one of the
+Arlington Street set to his friend as they lolled on the railings in the
+park, 'a long way above any of those plain-headed ones she tried to palm
+off upon us last year: the South American girl with the big eyes and a
+complexion like a toad, the Forfarshire girl with freckles and
+unsophisticated carrots. "Those lovely Spanish eyes," said Lady K----,
+"that Titianesque auburn hair!" But it didn't answer. Both the girls
+were plain, and they have gone back to their native obscurity spinsters
+still. But this is a real thorough-bred one--blood, form, pace, all
+there.'
+
+'Who is she?' drawled his friend.
+
+'Lord Maulevrier's sister, Lady Lesbia Haselden. Has money, too, I
+believe; rich grandmother; old lady buried alive in Westmoreland; horrid
+old miser.'
+
+'I shouldn't mind marrying a miser's granddaughter,' said the other. 'So
+nice to know that some wretched old idiot has scraped and hoarded
+through a lifetime of deprivation and self-denial, in order that one may
+spend his money when he is under the sod.'
+
+Lady Lesbia was accepted everywhere, or almost everywhere, as the beauty
+of the season. There were six or seven other girls who aspired to the
+same proud position, who were asserted by their own particular friends
+to have won it; just as there are generally four or five horses which
+claim to be first favourites; but the betting was all in favour of Lady
+Lesbia.
+
+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.
+
+'What a cold-hearted creature you must be,' said Georgie. 'You don't
+seem to admire any of my favourite men.'
+
+'They are very nice,' Lesbia answered languidly; 'but they are all
+alike. They say the same things--wear the same clothes--sit in the same
+attitude. One would think they were all drilled in a body every morning
+before they go out. Mr. Nightshade, the actor, who came to supper the
+other night, is the only man I have seen who has a spark of
+originality.'
+
+'You are right,' answered Lady Kirkbank, 'there is an appalling sameness
+in men: only it is odd you should find it out so soon. I never
+discovered it till I was an old woman. How I envy Cleopatra her Caesar
+and her Antony. No mistaking one of those for the other. Mary Stuart
+too, what marked varieties of character she had an opportunity of
+studying in Rizzio and Chastelard, Darnley and Bothwell. Ah, child, that
+is what it is to _live_.'
+
+'Mary is very interesting,' sighed Lesbia; 'but I fear she was not a
+correct person.'
+
+'My love, what correct person ever is interesting? History draws a misty
+halo round a sinner of that kind, till one almost believes her a saint.
+I think Mary Stuart, Froude's Mary, simply perfect.'
+
+Lesbia had begun by blushing at Lady Kirkbank's opinions; but she was
+now used to the audacity of the lady's sentiments, and the almost
+infantile candour with which she gave utterance to them. Lady Kirkbank
+liked to make her friends laugh. It was all she could do now in order to
+be admired. And there is nothing like audacity for making people laugh
+nowadays. Lady Kirkbank was a close student of all those delightful
+books of French memoirs which bring the tittle-tattle of the Regency and
+the scandals of Louis the Fifteenth's reign so vividly before us: and
+she had unconsciously founded her manners and her ways of thinking and
+talking upon that easy-going but elegant age. She did not want to seem
+better than women who had been so altogether charming. She fortified the
+frivolity of historical Parisian manners by a dash of the British
+sporting character. She drove, shot, jumped over five-barred gates,
+contrived on the verge of seventy to be as active us a young woman; and
+she flattered herself that the mixture of wit, audacity, sport, and
+good-nature was full of fascination.
+
+However this might be, it is certain that a good many people liked her,
+chiefly perhaps because she was good-natured, and a little on account of
+that admirable cook.
+
+To Lesbia, who had been weary to loathing of her old life amidst the
+hills and waterfalls of Westmoreland, this new life was one perpetual
+round of pleasure. She flung herself with all her heart and mind into
+the amusement of the moment; she knew neither weariness nor satiety. To
+ride in the park in the morning, to go to a luncheon party, a garden
+party, to drive in the park for half an hour after the garden party, to
+rush home and dress for the fourth or fifth time, and then off to a
+dinner, and from dinner to drum, and from drum to big ball, at which
+rumour said the Prince and Princess were to be present; and so, from
+eleven o'clock in the morning till four or five o'clock next morning,
+the giddy whirl went on; and every hour was so occupied by pleasure
+engagements that it was difficult to squeeze in an occasional morning
+for shopping--necessary to go to the shops sometimes, or one would not
+know how many things one really wants--or for an indispensable interview
+with the dressmaker. Those mornings at the shops were hardly the least
+agreeable of Lesbia's hours. To a girl brought up in one perpetual
+_tete-a-tete_ with green hill-sides and silvery watercourses, the West
+End shops were as gardens of Eden, as Aladdin Caves, as anything,
+everything that is rapturous and intoxicating. Lesbia, the clear-headed,
+the cold-hearted, fairly lost her senses when she went into one of those
+exquisite shops, where a confusion of brocades and satins lay about in
+dazzling masses of richest colour, with here and there a bunch of
+lilies, a cluster of roses, a tortoise-shell fan, an ostrich feather, or
+a flounce of peerless Point d'Alencon flung carelessly athwart the sheen
+of a wine-dark velvet or golden-hued satin.
+
+Lady Maulevrier had said Lesbia was to have _carte blanche_; so Lesbia
+bought everything she wanted, or fancied she wanted, or that the
+shop-people thought she must want, or that Lady Kirkbank happened to
+admire. The shop-people were so obliging, and so deeply obliged by
+Lesbia's patronage. She was exactly the kind of customer they liked to
+serve. She flitted about their showrooms like a beautiful butterfly
+hovering over a flower-bed--her eye caught by every novelty. She never
+asked the price of anything; and Lady Kirkbank informed them, in
+confidence, that she was a great heiress, with a millionaire grandmother
+who indulged her every whim. Other high born young ladies, shopping upon
+fixed allowances, and sorely perplexed to make both ends meet, looked
+with eyes of envy upon this girl.
+
+And then came the visit to the dressmaker. It happened after all that
+Kate Kearney was not intrusted with Lady Lesbia's frocks. Miss Kearney
+was the fashion, and could pick and choose her customers; and as she was
+a young lady of good business aptitudes, she had a liking for ready
+money, or at least half-yearly settlements; and, finding that Lady
+Kirkbank was much more willing to give new orders than to pay old
+accounts, she had respectfully informed her ladyship that a pressure of
+business would prevent her executing any further demands from Arlington
+Street, while the necessity of posting her ledger obliged her to request
+the favour of an immediate cheque.
+
+The little skirmish--per letter--occurred while Lady Kirkbank was at
+Cannes, and Miss Kearney's conduct was stigmatised as insolent and
+ungrateful, since had not she, Lady Kirkbank by the mere fact of her
+patronage, given this young person her chief claim to fashion?
+
+'I shall drop her,' said Georgie, 'and go back to poor old Seraphine,
+who is worth a cartload of such Irish adventuresses.'
+
+So to Madame Seraphine, of Clanricarde Place, Lady Lesbia was taken as
+a lamb to the slaughter-house.
+
+Seraphine had made Lady Kirkbank's clothes, off and on for the last
+thirty years. Seraphine and Georgia had grown old together. Lady
+Kirkbank was always dropping Seraphine and taking her up again,
+quarrelling and making friends with her. They wrote each other little
+notes, in which Lady Kirkbank called the dressmaker her _cher ange_--her
+_bonne chatte_, her _chere vielle sotte_--and all manner of affectionate
+names--and in which Seraphine occasionally threatened the lady with the
+dire engines of the law, if money were not forthcoming before Saturday
+evening.
+
+Lady Kirkbank within those thirty years had paid Seraphine many
+thousands; but she had never once got herself out of the dear creature's
+debt. All her payments were payments on account. A hundred pounds; or
+fifty--or an occasional cheque for two hundred and fifty, when Sir
+George had been lucky at Newmarket and Doncaster. But the rolling
+nucleus of debt went rolling on, growing bigger every year until the
+payments on account needed to be larger or more numerous than of old to
+keep Seraphine in good humour.
+
+Seraphine was a woman of genius and versatility and had more than one
+art at her fingers' ends--those skinny and claw-shaped fingers, the
+nails whereof were not always clean. She took charge of her customer's
+figures, and made their corsets, and lectured them if they allowed
+nature to get the upper hand.
+
+'If Madame's waist gets one quarter of an inch thicker it must be that I
+renounce to make her gowns,' she would tell a ponderous matron, with
+cool insolence, and the matron would stand abashed before the little
+sallow, hooked-nosed, keen eyed Jewess, like a child before a severe
+mother.
+
+'Oh, Seraphine, do you really think that I am stouter?' the customer
+would ask feebly, panting in her tightened corset.
+
+'Is it that I think so? Why that jumps to the eyes. Madame had always
+that little air of Rubens, even in the flower of her youth--but now--it
+is a Rubens of the Faubourg du Temple.'
+
+And horrified at the idea of her vulgarised charms the meek matron would
+consent to encase herself in one of Seraphine's severest corsets, called
+in bitterest mockery _a la sante_--at five guineas--in order that the
+dressmaker might measure her for a forty-guinea gown.
+
+'A plain satin gown, my dear, with an eighteenpenny frilling round the
+neck and sleeves, and not so much trimming as would go round my little
+finger. It is positive robbery,' the matron told her friends afterwards,
+not the less proud of her skin-tight high shouldered sleeves and the
+peerless flow of her train.
+
+Seraphine was an artist in complexions, and it was she who provided her
+middle-aged and elderly customers with the lilies and roses of youth.
+Lady Kirkbank's town complexion was superintended by Seraphine,
+sometimes even manipulated by those harpy-like claws. The eyebrows of
+which Lesbia complained were only eyebrows _de province_--eyebrows _de
+voyage_. In London Georgie was much more particular; and Seraphine was
+often in Arlington Street with her little morocco bag of washes and
+creams, and brushes and sponges, to prepare Lady Kirkbank for some great
+party, and to instruct Lady Kirkbank's maid. At such times Georgie was
+all affection for the little dressmaker.
+
+'_Ma chatte_, you have made me positively adorable,' she would say,
+peering at her reflection in the ivory hand-mirror, a dazzling image of
+rouge and bismuth, carmined lips, diamonds, and frizzy yellow hair; 'I
+verily believe I look under thirty--but do not you think this gown is a
+thought too _decolletee--un peu trop de peau, hein?_'
+
+'Not for you, Lady Kirkbank, with your fine shoulders. Shoulders are of
+no age--_les epaules sont la vraie fontaine de jouvence pour les jolies
+femmes._'
+
+'You are such a witty creature, Seraphine, Fifine. You ought to be a
+descendant of that wicked old Madame du Deffand. Rilboche, give Madame
+some more chartreuse.'
+
+And Lady Kirkbank and the dressmaker would chink their liqueur glasses
+in amity before the lady gathered up her satin train and allowed her
+peerless shoulders to be muffled in a plush mantle to go down to her
+carriage, fortified by that last glass of green chartreuse.
+
+There were always the finest chartreuse and curacoa in a liqueur cabinet
+on Lady Kirkbank's dressing-table. The cabinet formed a companion to the
+dressing-case, which contained all those creamy and rose-hued cosmetics,
+powders, brushes, and medicaments, which were necessary for the
+manufacture of Georgie's complexion. The third bottle in the liqueur
+case held cognac, and this, as Rilboche the maid knew, was oftenest
+replenished. Yet nobody could accuse Lady Kirkbank of intemperate
+habits. The liqueur box only supplied the peg that was occasionally
+wanted to screw the superior mind to concert pitch.
+
+'One must always be at concert pitch in society, don't you know, my
+dear,' said Georgie to her young protegee.
+
+Thus it happened that, Miss Kearney having behaved badly, Lesbia was
+carried off to dear old Seraphine, and delivered over to that modern
+witch, as a sacrifice tied to the horns of the altar.
+
+Clanricarde Place is a little nook of Queen Anne houses--genuine Queen
+Anne, be it understood--between Piccadilly and St. James's Palace, and
+hardly five minutes' walk from Arlington Street. It is a quiet little
+_cul de sac_ in the very heart of the fashionable world; and here of an
+afternoon might be seen the carriages of Madame Seraphine's customers,
+blocking the whole of the carriage way, and choking up the narrow
+entrance to the street, which widened considerably at the inner end.
+
+Madame Seraphine's house was at the end, a narrow house, with tall
+old-fashioned windows curtained with amber satin. It was a small, dark
+house, and exhaled occasional odours of garlic and main sewer; but the
+staircase was a gem in old oak, and the furniture in the triple
+telescopic drawing rooms, dwindling to a closet at the end, was genuine
+Louis Seize.
+
+Seraphine herself was the only shabby thing in the house--a wizened
+little woman, with a wicked old Jewish face, and one shoulder higher
+than the other, dressed in a shiny black moire gown, years after moires
+had been exploded, and with a rag of old lace upon her sleek black
+hair--raven black hair, and the only good thing about her appearance.
+
+One ornament, and one only, had Seraphine ever been guilty of wearing,
+and that was an old-fashioned half-hoop ring of Brazilian diamonds,
+brilliants of the first water. This ring she called her yard measure;
+and she was in the habit of using it as her Standard of purity, and
+comparing it with any diamonds which her customers submitted to her
+inspection. For the clever little dressmaker had a feeling heart for a
+lady in difficulties, and was in the habit of lending money on good
+security, and on terms that were almost reasonable as compared with the
+usurious rates one reads of in the newspapers.
+
+Lesbia's first sensation upon having this accomplished person presented
+to her was one of shrinking and disgust. There was something sinister in
+the sallow face, the small shrewd eyes, and long hooked nose, the
+crooked figure, and claw-shaped hands. But when Madame Seraphine began
+to talk about gowns, and bade her acolytes--smartly-dressed young women
+with pleasing countenances--bring forth marvels of brocade and satin,
+embroideries, stamped velvets, bullion fringes, and ostrich feather
+flouncings, Lesbia became interested, and forgot the unholy aspect of
+the high priestess.
+
+Lady Kirkbank and the dressmaker discussed Lesbia's charms as calmly as
+if she had been out of the room.
+
+'What do you think of her figure?' asked Lady Kirkbank.
+
+'One cannot criticise what does not exist,' replied the dressmaker, in
+French. 'The young lady has no figure. She has evidently been brought up
+in the country.'
+
+And then with rapid bird-like movements, and with her head on one side,
+Seraphine measured Lesbia's waist and bust, muttering little argotic
+expressions _sotto voce_ as she did so.
+
+'Waist three inches too large, shoulders six inches too narrow,' she
+said decisively, and she dictated some figures to one of the damsels,
+who wrote them down in an order-book.
+
+'What does that mean?' asked Lesbia, not at all approving of such
+cavalier treatment.
+
+'Only that Seraphine will make your corsets the right size,' answered
+Lady Kirkbank.
+
+'What? Three inches too small for my waist, and six too wide for my
+shoulders?'
+
+'My love, you must have a figure,' replied Lady Kirkbank, conclusively.
+'It is not what you are, but what you ought to be that has to be
+considered.'
+
+So Lesbia, the cool-headed, who was also the weak-minded, consented to
+have her figure adjusted to the regulation mark of absolute beauty, as
+understood by Madame Seraphine. It was only when her complexion came
+under discussion, and Seraphine ventured to suggest that she would be
+all the better for a little accentuation of her eyebrows and darkening
+of her lashes, that Lesbia made a stand.
+
+'What would my grandmother think of me if she heard I painted?' she
+asked, indignantly.
+
+Lady Kirkbank laughed at her _naivete_.
+
+'My dear child, your grandmother is just half a century behind the age,'
+she said. 'I hope you are not going to allow your life in London to be
+regulated by an oracle at Grasmere?'
+
+'I am not going to paint my face,' replied Lesbia, firmly.
+
+'Well, perhaps you are right. The eyebrows are a little weak and
+undecided, Seraphine, as you say, and the lashes would be all the better
+for your famous cosmetic; but after all there is a charm in what the
+painters call "sincerity," and any little errors of detail will prove
+the genuineness of Lady Lesbia's beauty. One _may_ be too artistic.'
+
+And Lady Kirkbank gave a complacent glance at her own image in one of
+the Marie Antoinette mirrors, pleased with the general effect of arched
+brows, darkened eyelids, and a daisy bonnet. The fair Georgie generally
+affected field-flowers and other simplicities, which would have been
+becoming to a beauty of eighteen.
+
+'One is obliged to smother one's self in satin and velvet for balls and
+dinners,' said Lady Kirkbank, when she discussed the great question of
+gowns; 'but I know I always look my best in my cotton frock and straw
+hat.'
+
+That first visit to Seraphine's den--den as terrible, did one but know
+it, as that antediluvian hyena-cave at Torquay, where the threshold is
+worn by the bodies of beasts dragged across it, and the ground paved
+with their bones--that first visit was a serious business. Later
+interviews might be mere frivolities, half-an-hour wasted in looking at
+new fashions, an order given carelessly on the spur of the moment; but
+upon this occasion Lady Kirkbank had to arm her young _protegee_ for the
+coming campaign, and the question was to the last degree serious.
+
+The chaperon and the dressmaker put their heads together, looked at
+fashion plates, talked solemnly of Worth and his compeers, of the gowns
+that were being worn by Bernhardt, and Pierson, and Croisette, and other
+stars of the Parisian stage; and then Lady Kirkbank gave her orders,
+Lesbia listening and assenting.
+
+Nothing was said about prices; but Lesbia had a vague idea that some of
+the things would be rather expensive, and she ventured to ask Lady
+Kirkbank if she were not ordering too many gowns.
+
+'My dear, Lady Maulevrier said you were to have _carte blanche_,'
+replied Georgie, solemnly. 'Your dear grandmother is as rich as Croesus,
+and she is generosity itself; and how should I ever forgive myself if I
+allowed you to appear in society in an inadequate style. You have to
+take a high place, the very highest place, Lesbia; and you must be
+dressed in accordance with that position.'
+
+Lesbia said no more. After all it was Lady Kirkbank's business and not
+hers. See had been entrusted to Lady Kirkbank as to a person who
+thoroughly knew the great world, and she must submit to be governed by
+the wisdom and experience of her chaperon. If the bills were heavy, that
+would be Lady Kirkbank's affair; and no doubt dear grandmother was rich
+enough to afford anything Lesbia wanted. She had been told that she was
+to take rank among heiresses.
+
+Lady Maulevrier had given her granddaughter some old-fashioned
+ornaments, topaz, amethysts, turquoise--jewels that had belonged to dead
+and gone Talmashes and Angersthorpes--to be reset. This entailed a visit
+to a Bond Street jeweller, and in the dazzling glass-cases on the
+counter of the Bond Street establishment Lesbia saw a good many things
+which she felt were real necessities to her new phase of existence, and
+these, with Lady Kirkbank's approval, she ordered. They were not
+important matters. Half-a-dozen gold bangles of real oriental
+workmanship, three or four jewelled arrows, flies and beetles, and
+caterpillars, to pin on her laces and flowers, a diamond clasp for her
+pearl necklace, a dear little gold hunter to wear when she rode in the
+park, a diamond butterfly to light up that old-fashioned amethyst
+_parure_ which the jeweller was to reset with an artistic admixture of
+brilliants.
+
+'I am sure you would not like the effect without diamonds,' said the
+jeweller. 'Your amethysts are very fine, but they are dark and heavy in
+tone, and want a good deal of lighting-up, especially for the present
+fashion of half-lighted rooms. If you will allow me to use my own
+discretion, and mix in a few brilliants, I shall be able to produce a
+really artistic _parure_; otherwise I would not recommend you to touch
+them. The present setting is clumsy and inelegant; but I really do not
+know that I could improve upon it, without an admixture of brilliants.'
+
+'Will the diamonds add very much to the expense?' Lesbia inquired,
+timidly.
+
+'My dear child, you are perfectly safe in leaving the matter in Mr.
+Cabochon's hands,' interposed Lady Kirkbank, who had particular reasons
+for wishing to be on good terms with the head of the establishment. 'Your
+dear grandmother gave you the amethysts to be reset; and of course she
+would wish it to be done in an artistic manner. Otherwise, as Mr.
+Cabochon judiciously says, why have the stones reset at all? Better wear
+them in all their present hideousness.'
+
+Of course, after this Lesbia consented to the amethysts being dealt with
+according to Mr. Cabochon's taste.
+
+'Which is simply perfect,' interjected Lady Kirkbank.
+
+And now Lesbia's campaign began in real earnest--a life of pleasure, a
+life of utter selfishness and self-indulgence, which would go far to
+pervert the strongest mind, tarnish the purest nature. To dress and be
+admired--that was what Lesbia's life meant from morning till night. She
+had no higher or nobler aim. Even on Sunday mornings at the fashionable
+church, where the women sat on one side of the nave and the men on the
+other, where divinest music was as a pair of wings, on which the
+enraptured soul flew heavenward--even here Lesbia thought more of her
+bonnet and gloves--the _chic_ or non-_chic_ of her whole costume, than
+of the service. She might kneel gracefully, with her bent head, just
+revealing the ivory whiteness of a lovely throat, between the edge of
+her lace frilling and the flowers in her bonnet. She might look the
+fairest image of devotion; but how could a woman pray whose heart was a
+milliner's shop, whose highest ambition was to be prettier and better
+dressed than other women?
+
+The season was six weeks old. It was Ascot week, the crowning glory of
+the year, and Lesbia and her chaperon had secured tickets for the Royal
+enclosure--or it may be said rather that Lesbia had secured them--for
+the Master of the Royal Buckhounds might have omitted poor old Lady
+Kirkbank's familiar name from his list if it had not been for that
+lovely girl who went everywhere under the veteran's wing.
+
+Six weeks, and Lesbia's appearance in society had been one perpetual
+triumph; but as yet nothing serious had happened. She had had no offers.
+Half a dozen men had tried their hardest to propose to her--had sat out
+dances, had waylaid her in conservatories and in back drawing-rooms, in
+lobbies while she waited for her carriage--had looked at her piteously
+with tenderest declarations trembling on their lips; but she had
+contrived to keep them at bay, to strike them dumb by her coldness, or
+confound them by her coquetry; for all these were ineligibles, whom Lady
+Lesbia Haselden did not want to have the trouble of refusing.
+
+Lady Kirkbank was in no haste to marry her _protegee_--nay, it was much
+more to her interest that Lesbia should remain single for three or four
+seasons, and that she, Lady Kirkbank, might have the advantage of close
+association with the young beauty, and the privilege of spending Lady
+Maulevrier's money. But she would have liked to be able to inform
+Lesbia's grandmother of some tremendous conquest--the subjugation of a
+worthy victim. This herd of nobodies--younger sons with courtesy titles
+and empty pockets, ruined Guardsmen, briefless barristers--what was the
+use of telling Lady Maulevrier about such barren victories? Lady
+Kirkbank therefore contented herself with expatiating upon Lesbia's
+triumphs in a general way: how graciously the Princess spoke to her and
+about her; how she had been asked to sit on the dais at the ball at
+Marlborough House, and had danced in the Royal quadrille.
+
+'Has Lesbia happened to meet Lord Hartfield?' Lady Maulevrier asked,
+incidentally, in one of her letters.
+
+No. Lord Hartfield was in London, for he had made a great speech in the
+Lords on a question of vital interest; but he was not going into
+society, or at any rate into society of a frivolous kind. He had given
+himself up to politics, as so many young men did nowadays, which was
+altogether horrid of them. His name had appeared in the list of guests
+at one or two cabinet dinners; but the world of polo matches and
+afternoon teas, dances and drums, private theatricals, and Orleans House
+suppers, knew him not. As a competitor on the fashionable race-course,
+Lord Hartfield was, in common parlance, out of the running.
+
+And now on this glorious June day, this Thursday of Thursdays, the Ascot
+Cup day, for the first time since Lesbia's debut, Lady Kirkbank had
+occasion to smile upon an admirer whose pretensions were worthy of the
+highest consideration.
+
+Mr. Smithson, of Park Lane, and Rood Hall, near Henley, and Formosa,
+Cowes, and Le Bouge, Deauville, and a good many other places too
+numerous to mention, was reputed to be one of the richest commoners in
+England. He was a man of that uncertain period of life which enemies
+call middle age, and friends call youth. That he would never see a
+five-and-thirtieth birthday again was certain; but whether he had passed
+the Rubicon of forty was open to doubt. It is possible that he was
+enjoying those few golden years between thirty-five and forty, which for
+the wealthy bachelor constitute verily the prime and summer-tide of
+life. Wisdom has come, experience has been bought, taste has been
+cultivated, the man has educated himself to the uttermost in the great
+school of daily life. He knows his world thoroughly, whatever that world
+is, and he knows how to enjoy every gift and every advantage which
+Providence has bestowed upon him.
+
+Mr. Smithson was a great authority on the Stock Exchange, though he had
+ceased for the last three or four years to frequent the 'House,' or to
+be seen in the purlieus of Throgmorton Street. Indeed he had an air of
+hardly knowing his way to the City, of being acquainted with that part
+of London only by hearsay. He complained that his horses shied at
+passing Temple Bar. And yet a few years ago Mr. Smithson's city
+operations had been on a very extensive scale: It was in the rise and
+fall of commodities rather than of stocks and shares that Horace
+Smithson had made his money. He had exercised occult influences upon the
+trade of the great city, of the world itself, whereof that city is in a
+manner the keystone. Iron had risen or fallen at his beck. At the breath
+of his nostrils cochineal had gone up in the market at an almost magical
+rate, as if the whole civilised world had become suddenly intent upon
+dyeing its garments red, nay, as if even the naked savages of the Gold
+Coast and the tribes of Central Africa were bent on staining their dusky
+skins with the bodies of the female coccus.
+
+Favoured by a hint from Smithson, his particular friends followed his
+lead, and rushed into the markets to buy all the cochineal that could be
+had; to buy at any price, since the market was rising hourly. And then,
+all in a moment, as the sky clouds over on a summer day, there came a
+dulness in the cochineal market, and the female coccus was being sold at
+an enormous sacrifice. And anon it leaked out that Mr. Smithson had
+grown tired of cochineal, and had been selling for the last week or two;
+and it was noised abroad that this rise and fall in cocci had brought
+Mr. Smithson seventy thousand pounds.
+
+Mr. Smithson was said to have commenced life in a very humble capacity.
+There were some who declared he was the very youth who stooped to pick
+up a pin in a Parisian banker's courtyard, after his services as clerk
+had just been rejected by the firm, and who was thereupon recognised as
+a youth worthy of favour and taken into the banker's office. But this
+touching incident of the pin was too ancient a tradition to fit Mr.
+Smithson, still under forty.
+
+Some there were who remembered him eighteen years ago as an adventurer
+in the great wilderness of London, penniless, friendless, a
+Jack-of-all-trades, living as the birds of the air live, and with as
+little certainty of future maintenance. And then Mr. Smithson
+disappeared for a space--he went under, as his friends called it; to
+re-appear fifteen years later as Smithson the millionaire. He had been
+in Peru, Mexico, California. He had traded in hides, in diamonds, in
+silver, in stocks and shares. And now he was the great Smithson, whose
+voice was the voice of an oracle, who was supposed to be able to make
+the fortunes of other men by a word, or a wink, a nod, or a little look
+across the crowd, and whom all the men and women in London
+society--short of that exclusive circle which does _not_ open its ranks
+to Smithsons--were ready to cherish and admire.
+
+Mr. Smithson had been in Petersburg, Paris, Vienna, all over civilised
+Europe during the last five weeks, whether on business or on pleasure
+bent, nobody knew. He affected to be an elegant idler; but it was said
+by the initiated that wherever Smithson went the markets rose or fell,
+and hides, iron, copper, or tin, felt the influence of his presence.
+
+He came back to London in time for the Cup Day, and in time to fall
+desperately in love with Lesbia, whom he met for the first time in the
+Royal enclosure.
+
+She was dressed in white, purest ivory white, from top to toe--radiant,
+dazzling, under an immense sunshade fringed with creamy marabouts. Her
+complexion--untouched by Seraphine--her dark and glossy hair, her large
+violet eyes, luminous, dark almost to blackness, were all set off and
+accentuated by the absence of colour in her costume. Even the cluster of
+exotics on her shoulder were of the same pure tint, gardenias and lilies
+of the valley.
+
+Mr. Smithson was formally presented to the new beauty, and received with
+a cool contempt which riveted his chains. He was so accustomed to be run
+after by women, that it was a new sensation to meet one who was not in
+the least impressed by his superior merits.
+
+'I don't suppose the girl knows who I am,' he said to himself, for
+although he had a very good idea of his intrinsic worth, he knew that
+his wealth ranked first among his merits.
+
+But on after occasions when Lesbia had been told all that could be told
+to the advantage of Mr. Smithson, she accepted his homage with the same
+indifference, and treated him with less favour than she accorded to the
+ruined guardsmen and younger sons who were dying for her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+'PROUD CAN I NEVER BE OF WHAT I HATE.'
+
+
+It was a Saturday afternoon, and even in that great world which has no
+occupation in life except to amuse itself, whose days are all holidays,
+there is a sort of exceptional flavour, a kind of extra excitement on
+Saturday afternoons, distinguished by polo matches at Hurlingham, just
+as Saturday evenings are by the production of new plays at fashionable
+theatres. There was a great military polo match for this particular
+Saturday--Lancers against Dragoons. It was a lovely June afternoon, and
+Hurlingham would be at its best. The cool greensward, the branching
+trees, the flowing river, would afford an unspeakable relief after the
+block of carriages in Bond Street and the heated air of London, where
+even the parks felt baked and arid; and to Hurlingham Lady Kirkbank
+drove directly after luncheon.
+
+Lesbia leaned back in the barouche listening calmly, while her chaperon
+expatiated upon the wealth and possessions of Horace Smithson. It was
+now ten days since the meeting at Ascot, and Mr. Smithson had contrived
+to see a great deal of Lesbia in that short time. He was invited almost
+everywhere, and he had haunted her at afternoon and evening parties; he
+had supped in Arlington Street after the opera; he had played cards with
+Lesbia, and had enjoyed the felicity of winning her money. His
+admiration was obvious, and there was a seriousness in his manner of
+pursuing her which showed that, in Lady Kirkbank's unromantic
+phraseology, 'the man meant business.'
+
+'Smithson is caught at last, and I am glad of it,' said Georgie.
+
+'The creature is an abominable flirt, and has broken more hearts than
+any man in London. He was all but the death of one of the dearest girls
+I know.'
+
+'Mr. Smithson breaks hearts!' exclaimed Lesbia, languidly. 'I should not
+have thought that was in his line. Mr. Smithson is not an Adonis, nor
+are his manners particularly fascinating.'
+
+'My child how fresh you are! Do you suppose it is the handsome men or
+the fascinating men for whom women break their hearts in society? It is
+the rich men they all want to marry--men like Smithson, who can give
+them diamonds, and yachts, and a hunting stud, and half a dozen fine
+houses. Those are the prizes--the blue ribbons of the matrimonial
+race-course--men like Smithson, who pretend to admire all the pretty
+women, who dangle, and dangle, and keep off other offers, and give ten
+guinea bouquets, and then at the end of the season are off to Hombourg
+or the Scotch moors, without a word. Do you think that kind of treatment
+is not hard enough to break a penniless girl's heart? She sees the
+golden prize within her grasp, as she believes; she thinks that she and
+poverty have parted company for ever; she imagines herself mistress of
+town house and country houses, yachts and stables; and then one fine
+morning the gentleman is off and away! Do not you think that is enough
+to break a girl's heart?'
+
+'I can imagine that a girl steeped to the lips in poverty might be willing
+to marry Mr. Smithson's houses and yachts,' answered Lesbia, in her low
+sweet voice, with a faint sneer even amidst the sweetness, 'but, I think
+it must have been a happy release for any one to be let off the
+sacrifice at the last moment.'
+
+'Poor Belle Trinder did not think so.'
+
+'Who was Belle Trinder?'
+
+'An Essex parson's daughter whom I took under my wing five years ago--a
+splendid girl, large and fair, and just a trifle coarse--not to be
+spoken of in the same day with you, dearest; but still a decidedly
+handsome creature. And she took remarkably well. She was a very lively
+girl, "never ran mute," Sir George used to say. Sir George was very fond
+of her. She amused him, poor girl, with her rather brainless rattle.'
+
+'And Mr. Smithson admired her?'
+
+'Followed her about everywhere, sent her whole flower gardens in the way
+of bouquets and Japanese baskets, and floral _parures_ for her gowns,
+and opera boxes and concert tickets. Their names were always coupled.
+People used to call them Bel and the Dragon. The poor child made up her
+mind she was to be Mrs. Smithson. She used to talk of what she would do
+for her own people--the poor old father, buried alive in a damp
+parsonage, and struggling every winter with chronic bronchitis; the four
+younger sisters pining in dulness and penury; the mother who hardly knew
+what it was to rest from the continual worries of daily life.'
+
+'Poor things!' sighed Lesbia, gazing admiringly at the handle of her
+last new sunshade.
+
+'Belle used to talk of what she would do for them all,' pursued Lady
+Kirkbank. 'Father should go every year to the villa at Monte Carlo;
+mother and the girls should have a month in Park Lane every season, and
+their autumn holiday at one of Mr. Smithson's country houses. I knew the
+world well enough to be sure that this kind of thing would never answer
+with a man like Smithson. It is only one man in a thousand--the modern
+Arthur, the modern Quixote--who will marry a whole family. I told Belle
+as much, but she laughed. She felt so secure of her power over the man.
+"He will do anything I ask him," she said.'
+
+'Miss Trinder must be an extraordinary young person,' observed Lesbia,
+scornfully. 'The man had not proposed, had he?'
+
+'No; the actual proposal hung fire, but Belle thought it was a settled
+thing all the same. Everybody talked to her as if she were engaged to
+Smithson, and those poor, ignorant vicarage girls used to write her long
+letters of congratulation, envying her good fortune, speculating about
+what she would do when she was married. The girl was too open and candid
+for London society--talked too much, "gave the view before she was sure
+of her fox," Sir George said. All this silly talk came to Smithson's
+ears, and one morning we read in the Post that Mr. Smithson had started
+the day before for Algiers, where he was to stay at the house of the
+English Consul, and hunt lions. We waited all day, hoping for some
+letter of explanation, some friendly farewell which would mean _a
+revoir_. But there was nothing, and then poor Belle gave way altogether.
+She shut herself up in her room, and went out of one hysterical fit into
+another. I never heard a girl sob so terribly. She was not fit to be
+seen for a week, and then she went home to her father's parsonage in the
+flat swampy country on the borders of Suffolk, and eat her heart, as
+Byron calls it. And the worst of it was that she had no actual
+justification for considering herself jilted. She had talked, and other
+people had talked, and among them they had settled the business. But
+Smithson had said hardly anything. He had only flirted to his heart's
+content, and had spent a few hundreds upon flowers, gloves, fans, and
+opera tickets, which perhaps would not have been accepted by a girl with
+a strong sense of her own dignity.'
+
+'I should think not, indeed,' interjected Lesbia.
+
+'But which poor Belle was only too delighted to get.'
+
+'Miss Trinder must be very bad style,' said Lesbia, with languid scorn,
+'and Mr. Smithson is an execrable person. Did she die?'
+
+'No, my dear, she is alive poor soul!'
+
+'You said she broke her heart.'
+
+'"The heart may break, yet brokenly live on,"' quoted Lady Kirkbank.
+'The disappointed young women don't all die. They take to district
+visiting, or rational dressing, or china painting, or an ambulance
+brigade. The lucky ones marry well-to-do widowers with large families,
+and so slip into a comfortable groove by the time they are
+five-and-thirty. Poor Belle is still single, still buried in the damp
+parsonage, where she paints plates and teacups, and wears out my old
+gowns, just as she is wearing out her own life, poor creature!'
+
+'The idea of any one wanting to marry Mr. Smithson,' said Lesbia. 'It
+seems too dreadful.'
+
+'A case of real destitution, you think. Wait till you have seen
+Smithson's house in Park Lane--his team, his yacht, his orchid houses in
+Berkshire.'
+
+Lesbia sighed. Her knowledge of London society was only seven weeks old;
+and yet already the day of disenchantment had begun! She was having her
+eyes opened to the stern realities of life. A year ago when her
+appearance in the great world was still only a dream of the future, she
+had pictured to herself the crowd of suitors who would come to woo, and
+she had resolved to choose the worthiest.
+
+What would he be like, that worthiest among the wooers, that King Arthur
+among her knights?
+
+First and foremost, he would be of rank higher than her own--a duke, a
+marquis, or one of the first and oldest among earls. Title and lofty
+lineage were indispensable. It would be a fall, a failure, a
+disappointment, were she to marry a commoner, however distinguished.
+
+The worthy one must be noble, therefore, and of the old nobility. He
+must be young, handsome, intellectual. He must stand out from among his
+peers by his gifts of mind and person. He must have won distinction in
+the arena of politics or diplomacy, arms or letters. He must be
+'somebody.'
+
+She had been seven weeks in society, and this modern Arthur had not
+appeared. So far as she had been able to discover, there was no such
+person. The dukes and marquises were mostly men of advanced years. The
+young unmarried nobility were given over to sport, play, and
+foolishness. She had heard of only one man who at all corresponded with
+her ideal, and he was Lord Hartfield. But Lord Hartfield had given
+himself up to politics, and was no doubt a prig. Lady Kirkbank spoke of
+him with contempt, as an intolerable person. But then Lord Hartfield was
+not in Lady Kirkbank's set. He belonged to that serious circle to which
+Lady Kirkbank's house appeared about as reputable a place of gathering
+as a booth on a race-course.
+
+And now Lady Kirkbank told Lesbia that this Mr. Smithson, a nobody with
+a great fortune, was a man whose addresses she, the sister of Lord
+Maulevrier, ought to welcome. Mr. Smithson, who claimed to be a lineal
+descendant of that Sir Michael Carrington, standard-bearer to Coeur de
+Lion in the Holy Land, whose descendants changed their name to Smith
+during the Wars of the Roses. Mr. Smithson bodily proclaimed himself a
+scion of this good old county family, and bore on his plate and his
+coach panels the elephant's head and the three demi-griffins of the
+Hertfordshire Smiths, who only smiled and shrugged their shoulders when
+they were complimented upon the splendid surroundings of their cousin.
+Who could tell? Some lateral branch of the standard-bearer's family tree
+might have borne this illustrious twig.
+
+Lady Kirkbank and all Lady Kirkbank's friends seemed to have conspired
+to teach Lesbia Haselden one lesson, and that lesson meant that money
+was the first prize in the great game of life. Money ranked before
+everything--before titles, before noble lineage, genius, fame, beauty,
+courage, honour. Money was Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end.
+Mr. Smithson, whose antecedents were as cloudy as those of Aphrodite,
+was a greater man than a peer whose broad acres only brought him two per
+cent., or half of whose farms were tenantless, and his fields growing
+cockle instead of barley.
+
+Yes, one by one, Lady Lesbia's illusions were reft from her. A year ago
+she had fancied beauty all-powerful, a gift which must ensure to its
+possessor dominion over all the kingdoms of the earth. Rank, intellect,
+fame would bow down before that magical diadem. And, behold, she had
+been shining upon London society for seven weeks, and only empty heads
+and empty pockets had bowed down--the frivolous, the ineligible,--and
+Mr. Smithson.
+
+Another illusion which had been dispelled was Lesbia's comfortable idea
+of her own expectations. Her grandmother had told her that she might
+take rank among heiresses; and she had held herself accordingly, deeming
+that her place was among the wealthiest. And now, since Mr. Smithson's
+appearance upon the scene, Lady Kirkbank had informed her young friend
+with noble candour that Lady Maulevrier's fortune, however large it
+might seem at Grasmere, would be a poor thing in London; and that Lady
+Maulevrier's ideas about money were as old-fashioned as her notions
+about morals.
+
+'Life is about six times as expensive as it was in your grandmother's
+time.' said Lady Kirkbank, as the carriage rolled softly along the
+shabby road between Knightsbridge and Fulham. 'It is the pace that
+kills. Society, which used to jog along comfortably, like the old
+Brighton stage, at ten miles an hour, now goes as fast as the Brighton
+express. In my mother's time poor Lord Byron was held up to the
+execration of respectable people as the type of cynical profligacy; in
+my own time people talked about Lord Waterford; but, my dear, the young
+men now are all Byrons and Waterfords, without the genius of the one or
+the generosity of the other. We are all going at steeplechase rate.
+Social success without money is impossible. The rich Americans, the
+successful Jews, will crowd us out unless we keep pace with them. Ah,
+Lesbia, my dear girl, there would be a great future before you if you
+could only make up your mind to accept Mr. Smithson.'
+
+'How do you know that he means to propose to me?' asked Lesbia,
+mockingly. 'Perhaps he is only going to behave as he did to Miss
+Trinder.'
+
+'Lady Lesbia Haselden is a very different person from a country parson's
+daughter,' answered her chaperon; 'Smithson told me all about it
+afterwards. He was really taken with Belle's fine figure and good
+complexion; but one of her particular friends told him of her foolish
+talk about her sisters, and how well she meant to get them married when
+she was Mrs. Smithson. This disgusted him. He went down to Essex,
+reconnoitered the parsonage, saw one of the sisters hanging out cuffs
+and collars in the orchard--another feeding the fowls--both in shabby
+gowns and country-made boots; one of them with red hair and freckles.
+The mother was bargaining for fish with a hawker at the kitchen door.
+And these were the people he was expected to import into Park Lane,
+under ceilings painted by Leighton. These were the people he was to
+exhibit on board his yacht, to cart about on his drag. "I had half made
+up my mind to marry the girl, but I would sooner have hung myself than
+marry her mother and sisters so I took the first train for Dover, en
+route for Algiers," said Smithson, and upon my word I could hardly blame
+the man,' concluded Lady Kirkbank.
+
+They were driving up the narrow avenue to the gates of Hurlingham by
+this time. Lesbia shook out her frock and looked at her gloves,
+tan-coloured mousquetaires, reaching up to the elbow, and embroidered to
+match her frock.
+
+To-day she was a study in brown and gold. Brown satin petticoat
+embroidered with marsh marigolds; little bronze shoes, with marsh
+marigolds tied on the latchets; brown stockings with marsh marigold
+clocks; tunic brown foulard smothered with quillings of soft brown lace;
+Princess bonnet of brown straw, with a wreath of marsh marigold and a
+neat little buckle of brown diamonds; parasol brown satin, with an
+immense bunch of marsh marigolds on the top; fan to match parasol.
+
+The seats in front of the field were nearly all full when Lady Kirkbank
+and Lesbia left their carriage; but their interests had been protected
+by a gentleman who had turned down two chairs and sat between them on
+guard. This was Mr. Smithson.
+
+'I have been sitting here for an hour keeping your chairs,' he said, as
+he rose to greet them. 'You have no idea what work I have had, and how
+ferociously all the women have looked at me.'
+
+The match was going on. The Lancers were scuffling for the ball, and
+affording a fine display of hog-maned ponies and close-cropped young men
+in ideal boots. But Lesbia cared very little about the match. She was
+looking along the serried ranks of youth and beauty to see if anybody's
+frock was smarter than her own.
+
+No. She could see nothing she liked so well as her brown satin and
+buttercups. She sat down in a perfectly contented frame of mind, pleased
+with herself and with Seraphine--pleased even with Mr. Smithson, who had
+shown himself devoted by his patient attendance upon the empty chairs.
+
+After the match was over the two ladies and their attendant strolled
+about the gardens. Other men came and fluttered round Lesbia, and women
+and girls exchanged endearing smiles and pretty little words of greeting
+with her, and envied her the brown frock and buttercups and Mr. Smithson
+at her chariot wheel. And then they went to the lawn in front of the
+club-house, which was so crowded that even Mr. Smithson found it
+difficult to get a tea-table, and would hardly have succeeded so soon as
+he did if it had not been for the assistance of a couple of Lesbia's
+devoted Guardsmen, who ran to and fro and badgered the waiters.
+
+After much skirmishing they were seated at a rustic table, the blue
+river gleaming and glancing in the distance, the good old trees
+spreading their broad shadows over the grass, the company crowding and
+chattering and laughing--an animated picture of pretty faces, smart
+gowns, big parasols, Japanese fans.
+
+Lesbia poured out the tea with the prettiest air of domesticity.
+
+'Can you really pour out tea?' gasped a callow lieutenant, gazing upon
+her with goggling, enraptured eyes. 'I did not think you could do
+anything so earthly.'
+
+'I can, and drink it too,' answered Lesbia, laughing. 'I adore tea.
+Cream and sugar?'
+
+'I--I beg your pardon--how many?' murmured the youth, who had lost
+himself in gazing, and no longer understood plain English.
+
+Mr. Smithson frowned at the intruder, and contrived to absorb Lesbia's
+attention for the rest of the afternoon. He had a good deal more to say
+for himself than her military admirers, and was altogether more amusing.
+He had a little cynical air which Lesbia's recent education had taught
+her to enjoy. He depreciated all her female friends--abused their gowns
+and bonnets, and gave her to understand, between the lines, as it were,
+that she was the only woman in London worth thinking about.
+
+She looked at him curiously, wondering how Belle Trinder had been able
+to resign herself to the idea of marrying him.
+
+He was not absolutely bad looking--but he was in all things unlike a
+girl's ideal lover. He was short and stout, with a pale complexion, and
+sunken faded eyes, as of a man who had spent the greater part of his
+life by candle light, and had pored much over ledgers and bank books,
+share lists and prospectuses. He dressed well, or allowed himself to be
+dressed by the most correct of tailors--the Prince's tailor--but he
+never attempted to lead the fashion in his garments. He had no
+originality. Such sublime flights as that of the man who revived
+corduroy, or of that daring genius who resuscitated the half-forgotten
+Inverness coat, were unknown to him. He could only follow the lead of
+the highest. He had small feet, of which he was intensely proud, podgy
+white hands on which he wore the most exquisite rings. He changed his
+rings every day, like a Roman Emperor; was reported to have summer and
+winter rings--onyx and the coolest looking intaglios set in filagree for
+warm weather--fiery rubies and diamonds in massive bands of dull gold
+for winter. He was said to devote half-an-hour every morning to the
+treatment of his nails, which were perfect. All the inkstains of his
+youth had been obliterated, and those nails which had once been bitten
+to the quick during the throes of financial study were now things of
+beauty.
+
+Lady Lesbia surveyed Mr. Smithson critically, and shuddered at the
+thought that this person was the best substitute which the season had
+yet offered her for her ideal knight. She thought of John Hammond, the
+tall, strong figure, straight and square; the head so proudly carried on
+a neck which would have graced a Greek arena. The straight, clearly-cut
+features, the flashing eyes, bright with youth and hope and the promise
+of all good things. Yes, there was indeed a man--a man in all the
+nobility of manhood, as God made him, an Adam before the Fall.
+
+Ah, if John Hammond had only possessed a quarter of Mr. Smithson's
+wealth how gladly would Lesbia have defied the world and married him.
+But to defy the world upon nothing a year was out of the question.
+
+'Why didn't he go on the Stock Exchange and make his fortune?' thought
+Lesbia, pettishly, 'instead of talking vaguely about politics and
+literature.'
+
+She felt angry with her rejected lover for having come to her
+empty-handed. She had seen no man in London who was, or who seemed to
+her, his equal. And yet she did not repent of having rejected him. The
+more she knew of the world and the more she knew of herself the more
+deeply was she convinced that poverty was an evil thing, and that she
+was not the right kind of person to endure it.
+
+She was inwardly making these comparisons as they strolled back to the
+carriage, while Mr. Smithson and Lady Kirkbank talked confidentially at
+her side.
+
+'Do you know that Lady Kirkbank has promised and vowed three things for
+you?' said Mr. Smithson.
+
+'Indeed! I thought I was past the age at which one can be compromised by
+other people's promises. Pray what are those three things?'
+
+'First, that you will come to breakfast in Park Lane with Lady Kirkbank
+next Wednesday morning. I say Wednesday because that will give me time
+to ask some nice people to meet you; secondly, that you will honour me
+by occupying my box at the Lyceum some evening next week; and thirdly,
+that you will allow me to drive you down to the Orleans for supper after
+the play. The drive only takes an hour, and the moonlight nights are
+delicious at this time of the year.'
+
+'I am in Lady Kirkbank's hands,' answered Lesbia, laughing. 'I am her
+goods, her chattels; she takes me wherever she likes.'
+
+'But would you refuse to do me this honour if you were a free agent?'
+
+'I can't tell. I hardly know what it is to be a free agent. At Grasmere
+I did whatever my grandmother told me; in London I obey Lady Kirkbank. I
+was transferred from one master to another. Why should we breakfast in
+Park Lane instead of in Arlington Street? What is the use of crossing
+Piccadilly to eat our breakfast?'
+
+This was a cool-headed style of treatment to which Mr. Smithson was not
+accustomed, and which charmed him accordingly. Young women usually threw
+themselves at his head, as it were; but here was a girl who talked to
+him as indifferently as if he were a tradesman offering his wares.
+
+'What a dreadfully practical person you are!' he exclaimed. 'What is the
+use of crossing Piccadilly? Well, in the first place, you will make me
+ineffably happy. But perhaps that doesn't count. In the second place, I
+shall be able to show you some rather good pictures of the French
+school--'
+
+'I hate the French school!' interjected Lesbia. 'Tricky, flashy, chalky,
+shallow, smelling of the footlights and the studio.'
+
+'Well, sink the pictures. You will meet some very charming people,
+belonging to that artist world which is not to be met everywhere.'
+
+'I will go to Park Lane to meet your people, if Lady Kirkbank likes to
+take me,' said Lesbia; and with this answer Mr. Smithson was bound to be
+content.
+
+'My pet, if you had made it the study of your life how to treat that man
+you could not do it better,' said Lady Kirkbank, when they were driving
+along the dusty road between dusty hedges and dusty trees, past that
+last remnant of country which was daily being debased into London.
+'Upon my word, Lesbia, I begin to think you must be a genius.'
+
+'Did you see any gowns you liked better than mine?' asked Lesbia,
+reclining reposefully, with her little bronze shoes upon the opposite
+cushion.
+
+'Not one--Seraphine has surpassed herself.'
+
+'You are always saying that. One would suppose you were a sleeping
+partner in the firm. But I really think this brown and buttercups is
+rather nice. I saw that odious American girl just now--Miss--Miss
+Milwaukee, that mop-stick girl people raved about at Cannes. She was in
+pale blue and cream colour, a milk and water mixture, and looked
+positively plain.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+LESBIA CROSSES PICCADILLY.
+
+
+Lady Kirkbank and Lady Lesbia drove across Piccadilly at eleven o'clock
+on Wednesday morning to breakfast with Mr. Smithson, and although Lesbia
+had questioned whether it was worth while crossing Piccadilly to eat
+one's breakfast, she had subsequently considered it worth while ordering
+a new gown from Seraphine for the occasion; or, it may be, rather that
+the breakfast made a plausible excuse for a new gown, the pleasure of
+ordering which was one of those joys of a London life that had not yet
+lost their savour.
+
+The gown, devised especially for the early morning, was simplicity
+itself--rusticity, even. It was a Dresden shepherdess gown, made of a
+soft flowered stuff, with roses and forget-me-nots on a creamy ground.
+There was a great deal of creamy lace, and innumerable yards of palest
+azure and palest rose ribbon in the confection, and there was a
+coquettish little hat, the regular Dresden hat, with a wreath of
+rosebuds.
+
+'Dresden china incarnate!' exclaimed Smithson, as he welcomed Lady
+Lesbia on the threshold of his marble hall, under the glass marquise
+which sheltered arrivals at his door. 'Why do you make yourself so
+lovely? I shall want to keep you in one of my Louis Seize cabinets, with
+the rest of my Dresden!'
+
+Lady Kirkbank had considered the occasion suitable for one of her
+favourite cotton frocks and rustic hats--a Leghorn hat, with clusters of
+dog-roses and honeysuckle, and a trail of the same hedge-flowers to
+fasten her muslin fichu.
+
+Mr. Smithson's house in Park Lane was simply perfect. It is wonderful
+what good use a _parvenu_ can make of his money nowadays, and how rarely
+he disgraces himself by any marked offences against good taste. There
+are so many people at hand to teach the _parvenu_ how to furnish his
+house, or how to choose his stud. If he go wrong it must be by sheer
+perversity, an arrogant insistence upon being governed by his own
+ignorant inclinations.
+
+Mr. Smithson was too good a tactician to go wrong in this way. He had
+taken the trouble to study the market before he went out to buy his
+goods. He knew that taste and knowledge were to be bought just as easily
+as chairs and tables, and he went to the right shop. He employed a
+clever Scotchman, an artist in domestic furniture, to plan his house,
+and make drawings for the decoration and furniture of every room--and
+for six months he gave himself up to the task of furnishing.
+
+Money was spent like water. Painters, decorators, cabinet-makers had a
+merry time of it. Royal Academicians were impressed into the service by
+large offers, and the final result of Mr. MacWalter's taste and Mr.
+Smithson's bullion was a palace in the style of the Italian Renaissance,
+frescoed ceilings, painted panels, a staircase of sculptured marble, as
+beautiful as a dream, a conservatory as exquisite as a jewel casket by
+Benvenuto Cellini, a picture gallery which was the admiration of all
+London, and of the enlightened foreigner, and of the inquiring American.
+This was the house which Lesbia had been brought to see, and through
+which she walked with the calmly critical air of a person who had seen
+so many palaces that one more or less could make no difference.
+
+In vain did Mr. Smithson peruse her countenance in the hope of seeing
+that she was impressed by the splendour of his surroundings, and by the
+power of the man who commanded such splendour. Lesbia was as cold as the
+Italian sculptor's Reading Girl in an alcove of Mr. Smithson's picture
+gallery; and the stockbroker felt very much as Aladdin might have done
+if the fair Badroulbadour had shown herself indifferent to the hall of
+the jewelled windows, in that magical palace which sprang into being in
+a single night.
+
+Lesbia had been impressed by that story of poor Belle Trinder and by
+Lady Kirkbank's broad assertion that half the young women in London were
+running after Mr. Smithson; and she had made up her mind to treat the
+man with supreme scorn. She did not want his houses or his yachts.
+Nothing could induce her to marry such a man, she told herself; but her
+vanity fed upon the idea of his subjugation, and her pride was gratified
+by the sense of her power over him.
+
+The guests were few and choice. There was Mr. Meander, the poet, one of
+the leading lights in that new sect which prides itself upon the
+cultivation of abstract beauty, and occasionally touches the verge of
+concrete ugliness. There were a newspaper man--the editor of a
+fashionable journal--and a middle-aged man of letters, playwright,
+critic, humourist, a man whose society was in demand everywhere, and who
+said sharp things with the most supreme good-nature. The only ladies
+whose society Mr. Smithson had deemed worthy the occasion were a
+fashionable actress, with her younger sister, the younger a pretty copy
+of the elder, both dressed picturesquely in flowing cashmere gowns of
+faint sea-green, with old lace fichus, leghorn hats, and a general
+limpness and simplicity of style which suited their cast of feature and
+delicate colouring. Lesbia wondered to see how good an effect could be
+produced by a costume which could have cost so little. Mr. Nightshade,
+the famous tragedian, had been also asked to grace the feast, but the
+early hour made the invitation a mockery. It was not to be supposed that
+a man who went to bed at daybreak would get up again before the sun was
+in the zenith, for the sake of Mr. Smithson's society, or Mr. Smithson's
+Strasbourg pie, for the manufacture whereof a particular breed of geese
+were supposed to be set apart, like sacred birds in Egypt, while a
+particular vineyard in the Gironde was supposed to be devoted wholly and
+solely to the production of Mr. Smithson's claret. It was a cabinet
+wine, like those rare vintages of the Rhineland which are reserved
+exclusively for German princes.
+
+Breakfast was served in Mr. Smithson's smallest dining-room--there were
+three apartments given up to feasting, beginning with a spacious
+banqueting-room for great dinners, and dwindling down to this snuggery,
+which held about a dozen comfortably, with ample room and verge enough
+for the attendants. The walls were old gold silk, the curtains a tawny
+velvet of deeper tone, the cabinets and buffet of dark Italian walnut,
+inlaid with lapis-lazuli and amber. The fireplace was a masterpiece of
+cabinet work, with high narrow shelves, and curious recesses holding
+priceless jars of Oriental enamel. The deep hearth was filled with arum
+lilies and azalias, like a font at Easter.
+
+Lady Kirkbank, who pretended to adore genius, was affectionately
+effusive to Miss Fitzherbert, the popular actress, but she rather
+ignored the sister. Lesbia was less cordial, and was not enchanted at
+finding that Miss Fitzherbert shone and sparkled at the breakfast table
+by the gaiety of her spirits and the brightness of her conversation.
+There was something frank and joyous, almost to childishness, in the
+actress's manner, which was full of fascination; and Lesbia felt herself
+at a disadvantage almost for the first time since she had been in
+London.
+
+The editor, the wit, the poet, the actress, had a language of their own;
+and Lesbia felt herself out in the cold, unable to catch the ball as it
+glanced past her, not quick enough to follow the wit that evoked those
+ripples of silvery laughter from the two fair-haired, pale-faced girls
+in sea-green cashmere. She felt as an Englishman may feel who has made
+himself master of academical French, and who takes up one of Zola's
+novels, or goes into artistic society, and finds that there is another
+French, a complete and copious language, of which he knows not a word.
+
+Lesbia began to think that she had a great deal to learn. She began to
+wonder even whether, in the event of her having made rather too free use
+of Lady Maulevrier's _carte blanche_, it might not be well to make a new
+departure in the art of dressing, and to wear untrimmed cashmere gowns,
+and rags of limp lace.
+
+After breakfast they all went to look at Mr. Smithson's picture gallery.
+His pictures were, as he had told Lesbia, chiefly of the French school,
+and there may have been a remote period--say, in the time of good Queen
+Charlotte--when such pictures would hardly have been exhibited to young
+ladies. His pictures were Mr. Smithson's own unaided choice. Here the
+individual taste of the man stood revealed.
+
+There were two or three Geromes; and in the place of honour at the end
+of the gallery there was a grand Delaroche, Anne Boleyn's last letter to
+the king, the hapless girl-queen sitting at a table in her gloomy cell
+in the Tower, a shaft of golden light from the narrow window streaming
+on the fair, disordered hair, the face bleached with unutterable woe, a
+sublime image of despair and self-abandonment.
+
+The larger pictures were historical, classic, grand; but the smaller
+pictures--the lively little bits of colour dotted in here and
+there--were of that new school which Mr. Smithson affected. They were of
+that school which is called Impressionist, in which ballet dancers and
+jockeys, burlesque actresses, masked balls, and all the humours of the
+side scenes are represented with the sublime audacity of an art which
+disdains finish, and relies on _chic, fougue, chien, flou, elan_, the
+inspiration of the moment. Lesbia blushed as she looked at the ballet
+girls, the maskers in their scanty raiment, the _demi-mondaines_ lolling
+out of their opera boxes, and half out of their gowns, with false smiles
+and frizzled hair. And then there came the works of that other school
+which lavishes the finish of a Meissonier on the most meretricious
+compositions. A woman in a velvet gown warming her dainty little feet on
+a gilded fender, in a boudoir all aglow with colour and lamplight; a
+cavalier in satin raiment buckling his sword-belt before a Venetian
+mirror; a pair of lovers kissing in a sunlit corridor; a girl in a
+hansom cab; a milliner's shop; and so on, and so on.
+
+Then came the classical subjects of the last new school. Weak imitations
+of Alma Tadema. Nero admiring his mother's corpse; Claudius interrupting
+Messalina's marriage with her lover Silus; Clodius disguised among the
+women of Caesar's household; Pyrrha's grotto. Lady Kirkbank expatiated
+upon all the pictures, and generally made unlucky guesses at the
+subjects of them. Classical literature was not her strong point.
+
+Mr. Meander, the poet, discovered that all the beautiful heads were
+like Miss Fitzherbert. 'It is the same line,' he exclaimed, 'the line of
+lilies and flowing waters--the gracious ineffable upward returning
+ripple of the true _retrousse_ nose, the divine _flou_, the loveliness
+which has lain dormant for centuries--nay, was at one period of debased
+art scorned and trampled under foot by the porcine multitude, as akin to
+the pug and the turn-up, until discovered and enshrined on the altar of
+the Beautiful by the Boticelli Revivalists.'
+
+Miss Fitzherbert simpered, and accepted these remarks as mere statements
+of obvious fact. She was accustomed to hear of Boticelli and the early
+Italian painters in connection with her own charms of face and figure.
+
+Lesbia, whose faultless features were of the aquiline type, regarded the
+bard's rhapsody as insufferable twaddle, and began to think Mr. Smithson
+almost a wit when he made fun of the bard.
+
+Smithson was enchanted when she laughed at his jokelets, even although
+she did not scruple to tell him that she thought his favourite pictures
+detestable, and looked with the eye of indifference on a collection of
+jade that was worth a small fortune.
+
+Mr. Meander fell into another rhapsody over those classic cups and
+shallow little bowls of absinthe-coloured jade.
+
+'Here if you like, are colour and beauty,' he murmured, caressing one of
+the little cups with the roseate tips of his supple fingers. 'These,
+dearest Smithson, are worth all the rest of your collection; worth
+vanloads of your cloisonne enamels, your dragon-jars in blood-colour and
+blue. This cloudy indefinable substance, not crudely transparent nor yet
+distinctly opaque, a something which touches the boundary line of two
+worlds--the real and the ideal. And then the colour! Great heaven, can
+anything be lovelier than this shadowy tint which is neither yellow nor
+green; faint, faint as the dawn of newly-awakened day? After the siege
+of blood-bedabbled Delhi, Baron Rothschild sent a special agent to India
+to buy him a little jade tea-pot which had been the joy of Eastern
+Kings. Only a tea-pot. Yet Rothschild deemed it worth a voyage from
+England to India. That is what the love of the beautiful means, in Jew
+or Gentile,' concluded the bard, smiling on the company, as they
+gathered round the Florentine table on which the jade specimens were set
+out, Lady Kirkbank looking at the little cups and basins as if she
+thought they were going to do something, after all this fuss had been
+made about them. It seemed hardly credible that any reasonable being
+could have given thirty guineas for one of those bits of greenish-yellow
+clouded glass, unless the thing had some peculiar property of expansion
+or contraction.
+
+After this breakfast in Park Lane Lady Lesbia and her admirer met daily.
+He went to all her parties; he sat out waltzes with her, in
+conservatories, and on staircases; for Horace Smithson was much too
+shrewd a man to enter himself in the race for dancing men, handicapped
+by his forty years and his fourteen stone. He contrived to amuse Lesbia
+by his conversation, which was essentially mundane, depreciating people
+whom all the rest of the world admired, or pretended to admire, telling
+her of the secret springs by which the society she saw around her was
+moved. He was judicious in his revelations of hidden evil, and careful
+to say nothing which should offend Lady Lesbia's modesty; yet he
+contrived in a very short time to teach her that the world in which she
+lived was an utterly corrupt world, whose high priest was Satan; that
+all lofty aspirations and noble sentiments were out of place in society;
+and that the worst among the people she met were the people who laid any
+claim to being better than their neighbours.
+
+'That's why I adore Lady Kirkbank,' he said, confidentially. 'The dear
+soul never pretends to be any better than the rest of us. She gambles,
+and we all know she gambles; she pegs, and we all know she pegs; and she
+makes rather a boast of being up to her eyes in debt. No humbug about
+dear old Georgie.'
+
+Lesbia had seen enough of her chaperon by this time to know that Mr.
+Smithson's description of the lady was correct, and, this being so, she
+supposed that the facts and traits of character which he told her about
+in other people were also true. She thus adopted the Smithsonian, or
+fashionable-pessimist view of society in general, and resigned herself
+to the idea that the world was a very wicked world, as well as a very
+pleasant world, that the wickedest people were generally the
+pleasantest, and that it did not much matter.
+
+The fact that Mr. Smithson was at Lesbia Haselden's feet was obvious to
+everybody.
+
+Lesbia, who had at first treated him with supreme hauteur, had grown
+more civil as she began to understand the place he held in the world,
+and how much social influence goes along with unlimited wealth. She was
+civil, but she had quite made up her mind that nothing could ever induce
+her to become Horace Smithson's wife. That offer which had hung fire in
+the case of poor Belle Trinder, was not too long delayed on this
+occasion. Mr. Smithson called in Arlington Street about ten days after
+the breakfast in Park Lane, before luncheon, and before Lady Kirkbank
+had left her room. He brought tickets for a _matinee d'invitation_ in
+Belgrave Square, at which a new and wonderful Russian pianiste was to
+make a kind of semi-official _debut_, before an audience of critics and
+distinguished amateurs, and the elect of the musical world. They were
+tickets which money could not buy, and were thus a meet offering for
+Lady Lesbia, and a plausible excuse for an early call.
+
+Mr. Smithson succeeded in seeing Lesbia alone, and then and there, with
+very little circumlocution, asked her to be his wife.
+
+Her social education had advanced considerably since that summer day in
+the pine-wood, when John Hammond had wooed her with passionate wooing.
+Mr. Smithson was a much less ardent suitor, and made his offer with the
+air of a man who expects to be accepted.
+
+Lesbia's beautiful head bent a little, like a lily on its stalk, and a
+faint blush deepened the pale rose tint of her complexion. Her reply was
+courteous and conventional. She was flattered, she was grateful for Mr.
+Smithson's high opinion of her; but she was deeply grieved if anything
+in her manner had given him reason to think that he was more to her than
+a friend, an old friend of dear Lady Kirkbank's, whom she was naturally
+predisposed to like, as Lady Kirkbank's friend.
+
+Horace Smithson turned pale as death, but if he was angry, he gave no
+utterance to his angry feelings. He only asked if Lady Lesbia's answer
+was final--and on being told that it was so, he dismissed the subject in
+the easiest manner, and with a gentlemanlike placidity which very much
+astonished the lady.
+
+'You say that you regard me as your friend,' he said. 'Do not withdraw
+that privilege from me because I have asked for a higher place in your
+esteem. Forget all I have said this morning. Be assured I shall never
+offend you by repeating it.'
+
+'You are more than good,' murmured Lesbia, who had expected a wild
+outbreak of despair or fury, rather than this friendly calm.
+
+'I hope that you and Lady Kirkbank will go and hear Madame Metzikoff
+this afternoon,' pursued Mr. Smithson, returning to the subject of the
+_matinee_. 'The duchess's rooms are lovely; but no doubt you know them.'
+
+Lesbia blushed, and confessed that the Duchess of Lostwithiel was one of
+those select few who were not on Lady Kirkbank's visiting list.
+
+'There are people Lady Kirkbank cannot get on with,' she said. 'Perhaps
+she will hardly like to go to the duchess's, as she does not visit her.'
+
+'Oh, but this affair counts for nothing. We go to hear Metzikoff, not to
+bow down to the duchess. All the people in town who care for music will
+be there, and you who play so divinely must enjoy fine professional
+playing.'
+
+'I worship a really great player,' said Lesbia, 'and if I can drag Lady
+Kirkbank to the house of the enemy, we will be there.'
+
+On this Mr. Smithson discreetly murmured '_au revoir_,' took up his hat
+and cane, and departed, without, in Sir George's parlance, having turned
+a hair.
+
+'Refusal number one,' he said to himself, as he went downstairs, with
+his leisurely catlike pace, that velvet step by which he had gradually
+crept into society. 'We may have to go through refusal number two and
+number three; but she means to have me. She is a very clever girl for a
+countrybred one; and she knows that it is worth her while to be Lady
+Lesbia Smithson.'
+
+This soliloquy may be taken to prove that Horace Smithson knew Lesbia
+Haselden better than she knew herself. She had refused him in all good
+faith; but even to-day, after he had left her, she fell into a day-dream
+in which Mr. Smithson's houses and yachts, drags and hunters, formed the
+shifting pictures in a dissolving view of society; and Lesbia wondered
+if there were any other young woman in London who would refuse such an
+offer as that which she had quietly rejected half-an-hour ago.
+
+Lady Kirkbank surprised her while she was still absorbed in this dreamy
+review of the position. It is just possible that the fair Georgie may
+have had notice of Mr. Smithson's morning visit, and may have kept out
+of the way on purpose, for she was not a person of lazy habits, and was
+generally ready for her nine o'clock breakfast and her morning stroll in
+the park, however late she might have been out overnight.
+
+'Mr. Smithson has been here, I understand,' said Lady Kirkbank, settling
+herself in an arm-chair by the open window, after she had kissed her
+_protegee_. 'Rilboche passed him on the stairs.'
+
+'Rilboche is always passing people on the stairs,' answered Lesbia
+rather pettishly. 'I think she must spend her life on the landing,
+listening for arrivals and departures.'
+
+'I had a kind of vague idea that Smithson would call to-day. He was so
+fussy about those tickets for the Metzikoff recital. I hate pianoforte
+recitals, and I detest that starched old duchess, but I suppose I shall
+have to take you there--or poor Smithson will be miserable,' said Lady
+Kirkbank, watching Lesbia keenly over the top of the newspaper.
+
+She expected Lesbia to confide in her, to announce herself blushingly as
+the betrothed of one of the richest commoners in England. But Lesbia sat
+gazing dreamily across the flowers in the balcony at the house over the
+way, and said never a word; so Lady Kirkbank's curiosity burst into
+speech.
+
+'Well, my dear, has he proposed? There was something in his manner last
+night when he put on your wraps that made me think the crisis was near.'
+
+'The crisis is come and is past, and Mr. Smithson and I are just as good
+friends as ever.'
+
+'What!' screamed Lady Kirkbank. 'Do you mean to tell me that you have
+refused him?'
+
+'Certainly. You know I never meant to do anything else. Did you think I
+was like Miss Trinder, bent upon marrying town and country houses,
+stables and diamonds?'
+
+'I did not think you were a fool,' cried Lady Kirkbank, almost beside
+herself with vexation, for it had been borne in upon her, as the
+Methodists sometimes say, that if Mr. Smithson should prosper in his
+wooing it would be better for her, Lady Kirkbank, who would have a claim
+upon his kindness ever after. 'What can be your motive in refusing one
+of the very best matches of the season--or of ever so many seasons? You
+think, perhaps, you will marry a duke, if you wait long enough for his
+Grace to appear; but the number of marrying dukes is rather small, Lady
+Lesbia, and I don't think any of those would care to marry Lord
+Maulevrier's granddaughter.'
+
+Lesbia started to her feet, pale as ashes.
+
+'Why do you fling my grandfather's name in my face--and with that
+diabolical sneer?' she exclaimed. 'When I have asked you about him you
+have always evaded my questions. Why should a man of the highest rank
+shrink from marrying Lord Maulevrier's granddaughter? My grandfather
+was a distinguished man--Governor of Madras. Such posts are not given to
+nobodies. How can you dare to speak as if it were a disgrace to me to
+belong to him?'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+'CLUBS, DIAMONDS, HEARTS, IN WILD DISORDER SEEN.'
+
+
+Lady Kirkbank had considerable difficulty in smoothing Lesbia's ruffled
+plumage. She did all in her power to undo the effect of her rash
+words--declared that she had been carried away by temper--she had spoken
+she knew not what--words of no meaning. Of course Lesbia's grandfather
+had been a great man--Governor of Madras; altogether an important and
+celebrated person--and Lady Kirkbank had meant nothing, could have meant
+nothing to his disparagement.
+
+'My dearest girl, I was beside myself, and talked sheer nonsense,' said
+Georgie. 'But you know really now, dearest, any woman of the world would
+be provoked at your foolish refusal of that dear good Smithson. Only
+think of that too lovely house in Park Lane, a palace in the style of
+the Italian Renaissance--such a house is in itself equivalent to a
+peerage--and there is no doubt Smithson will be offered a peerage before
+he is much older. I have heard it confidently asserted that when the
+present Ministry retires Smithson will be made a Peer. You have no idea
+what a useful man he is, or what henchman's service he has done the
+Ministry in financial matters. And then there is his villa at
+Deauville--you don't know Deauville--a positively perfect place, the
+villa, I mean, built by the Duke de Morny in the golden days of the
+Empire--and another at Cowes, and his palace in Berkshire, a manor, my
+love, with a glorious old Tudor manor-house; and he has a _pied a terre_
+in Paris, in the Faubourg, a ground-floor furnished in the Pompeian
+style, half-a-dozen rooms opening one out of the other, and surrounding
+a small garden, with a fountain in the middle. Some of the greatest
+people in Paris occupy the upper part of the house, and their rooms of
+course are splendid; but Smithson's ground-floor is the gem of the
+Faubourg. However, I suppose there is no use in talking any more; for
+there is the gong for luncheon.'
+
+Lesbia was in no humour for luncheon.
+
+'I would rather have a cup of tea in my own room,' she said. 'This
+Smithson business has given me an abominable headache.'
+
+'But you will go to hear Metzikoff?'
+
+'No, thanks. You detest the Duchess of Lostwithiel, and you don't care
+for pianoforte recitals. Why should I drag you there?'
+
+'But, my dearest Lesbia, I am not such a selfish wretch as to keep you
+at home, when I know you are passionately fond of good music. Forget all
+about your headache, and let me see how that lovely little Catherine of
+Aragon bonnet suits you. I'm so glad I happened to see it in Seraphine's
+hands yesterday, just as she was going to send it to Lady Fonvielle, who
+gives herself such intolerable airs on the strength of a pretty face,
+and always wants to get the _primeures_ in bonnets and things.'
+
+'Another new bonnet!' replied Lesbia. 'What an infinity of things I seem
+to be having from Seraphine. I'm afraid I must owe her a good deal of
+money.'
+
+This was a vague way of speaking about actual facts. Lady Lesbia might
+have spoken with more certainty. Her wardrobes and old-fashioned hanging
+closets and chests of drawers in Arlington Street were crammed to
+overflowing with finery; and then there were all the things that she had
+grown tired of, or had thought unbecoming, and had given away to Kibble,
+her own maid, or to Rilboche, who had in a great measure superseded
+Kibble on all important occasions; for how could a Westmoreland girl
+know how to dress a young lady for London balls and drawing-rooms?
+
+'If you had only accepted Mr. Smithson it would not matter how much
+money you owed people,' said Lady Kirkbank. 'You had better come down to
+lunch. A glass of Heidseck will bring you up to concert pitch.'
+
+Champagne was Lady Kirkbank's idea of a universal panacea; and she had
+gradually succeeded in teaching Lesbia to believe in the sovereign power
+of Heidseck as a restorative for shattered nerves. At Fellside Lesbia
+had drunk only water; but then at Fellside she had never known that
+feeling of exhaustion and prostration which follows days and nights
+spent in society, the wear and tear of a mind forever on the alert, and
+brilliant spirits which are more often forced than real. For her chief
+stimulant Lesbia had recourse to the teapot; but there were occasions
+when she found that something more than tea was needed to maintain that
+indispensable vivacity of manner which Lady Kirkbank called concert
+pitch.
+
+To-day she allowed herself to be persuaded. She went down to luncheon,
+and took a couple of glasses of dry champagne with her cutlet, and, thus
+restored, was equal to putting on the new bonnet, which was so becoming
+that her spirits revived as she contemplated the effect in her glass. So
+Lady Kirkbank carried her off to the musical _matinee_, beaming and
+radiant, having forgotten all about that dark hint of evil glancing at
+the name of her long dead grandfather.
+
+The duchess was not on view when Lady Kirkbank and her _protegee_
+arrived, and a good many people belonging to Georgie's own particular
+set were scattered like flowers among those real music-lovers who had
+come solely to hear the new pianiste. The music-lovers were mostly dowdy
+in their attire, and seemed a race apart. Among them were several young
+women of the Blessed Damozel school, who wore flowing garments of
+sap-green or ochre, or puffed raiment of Venetian red, and among whom
+the cartwheel hat, the Elizabethan sleeve, and the Toby frill were
+conspicuous.
+
+There were very few men except the musical critics in this select
+assemblage, and Lesbia began to think that it was going to be very
+dreary. She had lived in such an atmosphere of masculine adulation while
+under Lady Kirkbank's wing that it was a new thing to find herself in a
+room where there were none to love and very few to praise her. She felt
+out in the cold, as it were. Those ungloved critics, with their shabby
+coats and dubious shirts, snuffy, smoky, everything they ought not to
+be, seemed to her a race of barbarians.
+
+Finding herself thus cold and lonely in the midst of the duchess's
+splendour of peacock-blue velvet and peacock-feather decoration, Lesbia
+was almost glad when in the middle of Madame Metzikoff's opening
+gondolied--airy, fairy music, executed with surpassing delicacy--Mr.
+Smithson crept gently into the _fauteuil_ just behind hers, and leant
+over the back of the chair to whisper an inquiry as to her opinion of
+the pianist's style.
+
+'She is exquisite,' Lesbia murmured softly, but the whispered question
+and the murmured answer, low as they were, provoked indignant looks from
+a brace of damsels in Venetian red, who shook their Toby frills with an
+outraged air.
+
+Lesbia felt that Mr. Smithson's presence was hardly correct. It would
+have been 'better form' if he had stayed away; and yet she was glad to
+have him here. At the worst he was some one--nay, according to Lady
+Kirkbank, he was the only one amongst all her admirers whose offer was
+worth having. All Lesbia's other conquests had counted as barren honour;
+but if she could have brought herself to accept Mr. Smithson she would
+have secured the very best match of the season.
+
+To marry a plain Mr. Smithson--a man who had made his money in iron--in
+cochineal--on the Stock Exchange--had seemed to her absolute
+degradation, the surrender of all her lofty hopes, her golden dreams.
+But Lady Kirkbank had put the question in a new light when she said that
+Smithson would be offered a peerage. Smithson the peer would be
+altogether a different person from Smithson the commoner.
+
+But was Lady Kirkbank sure of her facts, or truthful in her statement?
+Lesbia's experience of her chaperon's somewhat loose notions of truth
+and exactitude made her doubtful upon this point.
+
+Be this as it might she was inclined to be civil to Smithson, albeit she
+was inwardly surprised and offended at his taking her refusal so calmly.
+
+'You see that I am determined not to lose the privilege of your society,
+because I have been foolish!' he said presently, in the pause after the
+first part of the recital. 'I hope you will consider me as much your
+friend to-day as I was yesterday.'
+
+'Quite as much,' she answered sweetly, and then they talked of Raff, and
+Rubenstein, and Henselt, and all the composers about whom it is the
+correct thing to discourse nowadays.
+
+Before they left Belgrave Square Lady Kirkbank had offered Mr. Smithson
+Sir George's place in her box at the Gaiety that evening, and had
+invited him to supper in Arlington Street afterwards.
+
+It was Sarah Bernhardt's first season in London--the
+never-to-be-forgotten season of the Comedie Francaise.
+
+'I should love of all things to be there,' said Mr. Smithson, meekly. He
+had a couple of stalls in the third row for the whole of the season.
+'But how can I be sure that I shall not be turning Sir George out of
+doors?'
+
+'Sir George can never sit out a serious play. He only cares for Chaumont
+or Judie. The Demi-monde is much too prosy for him.'
+
+'The Demi-monde is one of the finest plays in the French language,' said
+Smithson. 'You know it, of course, Lady Lesbia?'
+
+'Alas! no. At Fellside I was not allowed to read French plays or novels:
+or only a novel now and then, which my grandmother selected for me.'
+
+'And now you read everything, I suppose,--including Zola?'
+
+'The books are lying about, and I dip into them sometimes while I am
+having my hair brushed,' answered Lesbia, lightly.
+
+'I believe that is the only time ladies devote to literature during the
+season,' said Mr. Smithson. 'Well, I envy you the delight of seeing the
+Demi-monde without knowing what it is all about beforehand.'
+
+'I daresay there are a good many people who would not take their girls
+to see a play by Dumas,' said Lady Kirkbank, 'but I make a point of
+letting _my_ girls see everything. It widens their minds and awakens
+their intelligence.'
+
+'And does away with a good many silly prejudices,' replied Mr.
+Smithson.
+
+Lady Kirkbank and Lesbia were due at a Kensington garden-party after the
+recital, and from the garden-party, for which any hour sufficed, they
+went to show themselves in the Park, then back to Arlington Street to
+dress for the play. Then a hurried dinner, and they were in their places
+at the theatre in time for the rising of the curtain.
+
+'If it were an English play we would not care for being punctual,' said
+Lady Kirkbank; 'but I should hate to lose a word of Dumas. In his plays
+every speech tells.'
+
+There were Royalties present, and the house was good; but not so full as
+it had been on some other nights, for the English public had been told
+that Sarah Bernhardt was the person to admire, and had been flocking
+sheep-like after that golden-haired enchantress, whereby many of these
+sheep--fighting greedily for Sarah's nights, and ignoring all other
+talent--lost some of the finest acting on the French stage, notably that
+of Croizette, Delaunay and Febvre, in this very Demi-monde. Lesbia, who,
+in spite of her affectations, was still fresh enough to be charmed with
+fine acting and a powerful play, was enthralled by the stage, so wrapt
+in the scene that she was quite unaware of her brother's presence in a
+stall just below Lady Kirkbank's box. He too had a stall at the Gaiety.
+He had come in very late, when the play was half over. Lesbia was
+surprised when he presented himself at the door of the box, after the
+fourth act.
+
+Maulevrier and his sister had met very seldom since the young lady's
+_debut_. The young Earl did not go to many parties, and the society he
+cultivated was chiefly masculine; and as he neither played polo nor shot
+pigeons his masculine pursuits did not bring him in his sister's way.
+Lady Kirkbank had asked him to her house with that wide and general
+invitation which is so easily evaded. He had promised to go, and he had
+not gone. And thus Lesbia and he had pursued their several ways, only
+crossing each other's paths now and then at a race meeting or in a
+theatre.
+
+'How d'ye do, Lady Kirkbank?--how d'ye do, Lesbia? Just caught sight of
+you from below as the curtain was going down,' said Maulevrier, shaking
+hands with the ladies and saluting Mr. Smithson with a somewhat
+supercilious nod. 'Rather surprised to see you and Lesbia here to-night,
+Lady Kirkbank. Isn't the Demi-monde rather strong meat for babes, eh?
+Not _exactly_ the play one would take a young lady to see.'
+
+'Why should a young lady be forbidden to see a fine play, because there
+are some hard and bitter truths told in it?' asked Lady Kirkbank.
+'Lesbia sees Madame d'Ange and all her sisterhood in the Park and about
+London every day of her life. Why should not she see them on the stage,
+and hear their history, and understand how cruel their fate is, and
+learn to pity them, if she can? I really think this play is a lesson in
+Christian charity; and I should like to see that Oliver man strangled,
+though Delaunay plays the part divinely. What a voice! What a manner!
+How polished! How perfect! And they tell me he is going to leave the
+stage in a year or two. What will the world do without him?'
+
+Maulevrier did not attempt to suggest a solution of this difficulty. He
+was watching Mr. Smithson as he leant against the back of Lesbia's chair
+and talked to her. The two seemed very familiar, laughingly discussing
+the play and the actors. Smithson knew, or pretended to know, all about
+the latter. He told Lesbia who made Croizette's gowns--the upholsterer
+who furnished that lovely house of hers in the Bois--the sums paid for
+her horses, her pictures, her diamonds. It seemed to Lesbia, when she
+had heard all, that Croizette was a much-to-be-envied person.
+
+Mr. Smithson had unpublished _bon-mots_ of Dumas at his finger ends; he
+knew Daudet, and Sarcey, and Sardou, and seemed to be thoroughly at home
+in Parisian artistic society. Lesbia began to think that he would hardly
+be so despicable a person as she had at first supposed. No wonder he and
+his wealth had turned poor Belle Trinder's head. How could a rural
+vicar's daughter, accustomed to poverty, help being dazzled by such
+magnificence?
+
+Maulevrier stayed in the box only a short time, and refused Lady
+Kirkbank's invitation to supper. She did not urge the point, as she had
+surprised one or two very unfriendly glances at Mr. Smithson in
+Maulevrier's honest eyes. She did not want an antagonistic brother to
+interfere with her plans. She had made up her mind to 'run' Lesbia
+according to her own ideas, and any counter influence might be fatal.
+So, when Maulevrier said he was due at the Marlborough after the play
+she let him go.
+
+'I might as well be at Fellside and you in London, for anything I see of
+you,' said Lesbia.
+
+'You are up to your eyes in engagements, and I don't suppose you want to
+see any more of me.' Maulevrier answered, bluntly. 'But I'll call to-morrow
+morning, if I am likely to find you at home. I've some news for you.'
+
+'Then I'll stay at home on purpose to see you. News is always
+delightful. Is it good news, by-the-bye?'
+
+'Very good; at least, I think so.'
+
+'What is it about?'
+
+'Oh! that's a long story, and the curtain is just going up. The news is
+about Mary.'
+
+'About Mary!' exclaimed Lesbia, elevating her eyebrows. 'What news can
+there possibly be about Mary?'
+
+'Such news as there generally is about every nice jolly girl, at least
+once in her life.'
+
+'You don't mean that she is engaged--to a curate?'
+
+'No, not to a curate. There goes the curtain. "I'll see you later," as
+the Yankee President used to say when people bothered him, and he didn't
+like to say no.'
+
+Engaged: Mary engaged! The idea of such an altogether unexpected event
+distracted Lesbia's mind all through the last act of the Demi-monde. She
+hardly knew what the actors were talking about. Mary, her younger
+sister! Mary, a good looking girl enough, but by no means a beauty, and
+with manners utterly unformed. That Mary should be engaged to be
+married, while she, Lesbia, was still free, seemed an obvious absurdity.
+
+And yet the fact was, on reflection, easily to be accounted for. These
+unattractive girls are generally the first to bind themselves with the
+vows of betrothal. Lady Kirkbank had told her of many such cases. The
+poor creatures know that their chances will be few, and therefore
+gratefully welcome the first wooer.
+
+'But who can the man be?' thought Lesbia. 'Mary has been kept as
+secluded as a cloistered nun. There are so few families we have ever
+been allowed to mix with. The man must be a curate, who has taken
+advantage of grandmother's illness to force his way into the family
+circle at Fellside--and who has made love to Mary in some of her lonely
+rambles over the hills, I daresay. It is really very wrong to allow a
+girl to roam about in that way.'
+
+Sir George and a couple of his horsey friends were waiting for supper
+when Lady Kirkbank and her party arrived in Arlington Street. The
+dining-room looked a picture of comfort. The oval table, the low lamps,
+the clusters of candles under coloured shades, the great Oriental bowl
+of wild flowers--eglantine, honeysuckle, foxglove, all the sweet hedge
+flowers of midsummer, made a central mass of colour and brightness
+against the subdued and even sombre tones of walls and curtains. The
+room was old, the furniture old. Nothing had been altered since the time
+of Sir George's great grandfather; and the whirligig of time had just
+now made the old things precious. Yes, those chairs and tables and
+sideboards and bookcases and wine-coolers against which Georgie's soul
+had revolted in the early years of her wedded life were now things of
+beauty, and Georgie's friends envied her the possession of indisputable
+Chippendale furniture.
+
+Mr. Mostyn, a distinguished owner of race-horses, with his pretty wife,
+made up the party. The gentleman was full of his entries for Liverpool
+and Chester, and discoursed mysteriously with Sir George and the horsey
+bachelors all supper time. The lady had lately taken up science as a new
+form of excitement, not incompatible with frocks, bonnets, Hurlingham,
+the Ranelagh, and Sandown. She raved about Huxley and Tyndall, and was
+perpetually coming down upon her friends with awful facts about the sun,
+and startling propositions about latent heat, or spontaneous generation.
+She knew all about gases, and would hardly accept a glass of water
+without explaining what it was made of. Drawn by Mr. Smithson for
+Lesbia's amusement, the scientific matron was undoubtedly 'good fun.'
+The racing men were full of talk. Lesbia and Lady Kirkbank raved about
+the play they had just been seeing, and praised Delaunay with an
+enthusiasm which was calculated to make the rest of mankind burst with
+envy.
+
+'Do you know you are making me positively wretched by your talk about
+that man?' said Colonel Delville, one of Sir George's racing friends,
+and an ancient adorer of the fair Georgie's. 'No, I tell you there was
+never anything offered higher than five to four on the mare,'
+interjectionally, to Sir George. 'There was a day when I thought I was
+your idea of an attractive man. Yes, George, a clear case of roping,'
+again interjectionally. 'And to hear you raving about this play-acting
+fellow--it is too humiliating.'
+
+Lady Kirkbank simpered, and then sighed.
+
+'We are getting old together,' she murmured. 'I have come to an age when
+one can only admire the charm of manner in the abstract--the Beautiful
+for the sake of the Beautiful. I think if I were lying in my grave, the
+music of Delaunay's voice would thrill me, under six feet of London
+clay. Will no one take any more wine? No. Then we may as well go into
+the next room and begin our little Nap.'
+
+The adjoining room was Sir George's snuggery; and it was here that the
+cosy little round games after supper were always played. Sir George was
+not a studious person. He never read, and he never wrote, except an
+occasional cheque on account, for an importunate tradesman. His
+correspondence was conducted by the telegraph or telephone; and the
+room, therefore, was absorbed neither by books nor writing desks. It was
+furnished solely with a view to comfort. There was a round table in the
+centre, under a large moderator lamp which gave an exceptionally
+brilliant light. A divan covered with dark brown velvet occupied three
+sides of the room. A few choice pieces of old blue Oriental ware in the
+corners enlivened the dark brown walls. Three or four easy chairs stood
+about near the broad, old-fashioned fireplace, which had been improved
+with a modern-antique brass grate and a blue and white tiled hearth.
+
+'There isn't a room in my house that looks half as comfortable as this
+den of yours, George,' said Mr. Smithson, as he seated himself by
+Lesbia's side at the card table.
+
+They had agreed to be partners. 'Partners at cards, even if we are not
+to be partners for life,' Smithson had whispered, tenderly; and Lesbia's
+only reply had been a modest lowering of lovely eyelids, and a faint,
+faint blush. Lesbia's blushes were growing fainter every day.
+
+'That is because everything in your house is so confoundedly handsome
+and expensive,' retorted Sir George, who did not very much care about
+being called George, _tout court_, by a person of Mr. Smithson's obscure
+antecedents, but who had to endure the familiarity for reasons known
+only to himself and Mr. Smithson. 'No man can expect to be comfortable
+in a house in which every room has cost a small fortune. My wife
+re-arranged this den half-a-dozen years ago when we took to sittin' here
+of an evenin'. She picked up the chairs and the blue pots at Bonham's,
+had everythin' covered with brown velvet--nice subdued tone, suit old
+people--hung up that yaller curtain, just for a bit of colour, and here
+we are.'
+
+'It's the cosiest room in town,' said Colonel Delville, whereupon Mrs.
+Mostyn, while counters were being distributed, explained to the company
+on scientific principles _why_ the room was comfortable, expatiating
+upon the effect of yellow and brown upon the retina, and some curious
+facts relating to the optic machinery of water-fleas, as lately
+discovered by a great naturalist.
+
+Unfortunately for science, the game had now begun, and the players were
+curiously indifferent as to the visual organs of water-fleas.
+
+The game went on merrily till the pearly lights of dawn began to creep
+through the chinks of Lady Kirkbank's yellow curtain. Everybody seemed
+gay, yet everybody could not be winning. Fortune had not smiled upon
+Lesbia's cards, or on those of her partner. The Smithson and Haselden
+firm had come to grief. Lesbia's little ivory purse had been emptied of
+its three or four half-sovereigns, and Mr. Smithson had been
+capitalising a losing concern for the last two hours. And the play had
+been fast and furious, although nominally for small stakes.
+
+'I am afraid to think of how much I must owe you,' said Lesbia, when Mr.
+Smithson bade her good night.
+
+'Oh, nothing worth speaking of--sixteen or seventeen pounds, at most.'
+
+Lesbia felt cold and creepy, and hardly knew whether it was the chill of
+new-born day, or the sense of owing money to Horace Smithson. Those
+three or four half-sovereigns to-night were the end of her last
+remittance from Lady Maulevrier. She had had a great many remittances
+from that generous grandmother; and the money had all gone, somehow. It
+was gone, and yet she had paid for hardly anything. She had accounts
+with all Lady Kirkbank's tradesmen. The money had melted away--it had
+oozed out of her pockets--at cards, on the race-course, in reckless
+gifts to servants and people, at fancy fairs, for trifles bought here
+and there by the way-side, as it were, for the sake of buying. If she
+had been suddenly asked for an account of her stewardship she could not
+have told what she had done with half of the money. And now she must ask
+for twenty pounds more, and immediately, to pay Mr. Smithson.
+
+She went up to her room in the clear early light, and stood like a
+statue, with fixed thoughtful eyes, while Kibble took off her finery,
+the pretty pale yellow gown which set off her dark brown hair, her
+violet eyes. For the first time in her life she felt the keen pang of
+anxiety about money matters--the necessity to think of ways and means.
+She had no idea how much money she had received from her grandmother
+since she had begun her career in Scotland last autumn. The cheques had
+been sent her as she asked for them; sometimes even before she asked for
+them; and she had kept no account. She thought her grandmother was so
+rich that expenditure could not matter. She supposed that she was
+drawing upon an inexhaustible supply. And now Lady Kirkbank had told her
+that Lady Maulevrier was not rich, as the world reckons nowadays. The
+savings of a dowager countess even in forty years of seclusion could be
+but a small fund to draw upon for the expenses of life at high pressure.
+
+'The sums people spend nowadays are positively appalling,' said Lady
+Kirkbank. 'A man with five or six thousand a year is an absolute pauper.
+I'm sure our existence is only genteel beggary, and yet we spend over
+ten thousand.'
+
+Enlightened thus by the lips of the worldly-wise, Lesbia thought
+ruefully of the bills which her grandmother would have to pay for her at
+the end of the season, bills of the amount whereof she could not even
+make an approximate guess. Seraphine's charges had never been discussed
+in her hearing--but Lady Kirkbank had admitted that the creature was
+dear.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+'SWIFT SUBTLE POST, CARRIER OF GRISLY CARE.'
+
+
+Maulevrier called in Arlington Street before twelve o'clock next day,
+and found Lesbia just returning from her early ride, looking as fresh
+and fair as if there had been no such thing as Nap or late hours in the
+story of her life. She was reposing in a large easy chair by the open
+window, in habit and hat, just as she had come from the Row, where she
+had been laughing and chatting with Mr. Smithson, who jogged demurely by
+her side on his short-legged hunter, dropping out envenomed little jokes
+about the passers by. People who saw him riding by her side upon this
+particular morning fancied there was something more than usual in the
+gentleman's manner, and made up their minds that Lady Lesbia Haselden
+was to be mistress of the fine house in Park Lane. Mr. Smithson had
+fluttered and fluttered for the last five seasons; but this time the
+flutterer was caught.
+
+In her newly-awakened anxiety about money matters, Lesbia had forgotten
+Mary's engagement: but the sight of Maulevrier recalled the fact.
+
+'Come over here and sit down,' she said, 'and tell me this nonsense
+about Mary. I am expiring with curiosity. The thing is too absurd.'
+
+'Why absurd?' asked Maulevrier, sitting where she bade him, and
+studiously perusing the name in his hat, as if it were a revelation.
+
+'Oh, for a thousand reasons,' answered Lesbia, switching the flowers in
+the balcony with her light little whip. 'First and foremost it is absurd
+to think of any one so buried alive as poor Mary is finding an admirer;
+and secondly--well--I don't want to be rude to my own sister--but Mary
+is not particularly attractive.'
+
+'Mary is the dearest girl in the world.'
+
+'Very likely. I only said that she is not particularly attractive.'
+
+'And do you think there is no attraction in goodness, in freshness and
+innocence, candour, generosity--?'
+
+'I don't know. But I think that if Mary's nose had been a thought
+longer, and if she had kept her skin free from freckles she would have
+been almost pretty.'
+
+'Do you really? Luckily for Mary the man who is going to marry her
+thinks her lovely.'
+
+'I suppose he likes freckles. I once heard a man say he did. He said
+they were so original--so much character about them. And, pray, who is
+the man?'
+
+'Your old adorer, and my dear friend, John Hammond.'
+
+Lesbia turned as pale as death--pale with rage and mortification. It was
+not jealousy, this pang which rent her shallow soul. She had ceased to
+care for John Hammond. The whirlpool of society had spun that first
+fancy out of her giddy brain. But that a man who had loved the highest,
+who had worshipped her, the peerless, the beautiful, should calmly
+transfer his affections to her younger sister, was to the last degree
+exasperating.
+
+'Your friend Mr. Hammond must be a fickle fool,' she exclaimed, 'who
+does not know his own mind from day to day.'
+
+'Oh, but it was more than a day after you rejected him that he engaged
+himself to Molly. It was all my doing, and I am proud of my work. I took
+the poor fellow back to Fellside last March, bruised and broken by your
+cruel treatment, heartsore and depressed. I gave him over to Molly, and
+Molly cured him. Unconsciously, innocently, she won that noble heart.
+Ah, Lesbia, you don't know what a heart it is which you so nearly
+broke.'
+
+'Girls in our rank of life can't afford to marry noble hearts,' said
+Lesbia, scornfully. 'Do you mean to tell me that Lady Maulevrier
+consented to the engagement?'
+
+'She cut up rather rough at first; but Molly held her own like a young
+lioness--and the grandmother gave way. You see she has a fixed idea that
+Molly is a very second-rate sort of person compared with you, and that a
+husband who was not nearly good enough for you might pass muster for
+Molly; and so she gave way, and there isn't a happier young woman in
+the three kingdoms than Mary Haselden.'
+
+'What are they to live upon?' asked Lesbia, with an incredulous air.
+
+'Mary will have her five hundred a year. And Hammond is a very clever
+fellow. You may be sure he will make his mark in the world.'
+
+'And how are they to live while he is making his mark? Five hundred a
+year won't do more than pay for Mary's frocks, if she goes into
+society.'
+
+'Perhaps they will live without society.'
+
+'In some horrid little hovel in one of those narrow streets off
+Ecclestone Square,' suggested Lesbia, shudderingly. 'It is too dreadful
+to think of--a young woman dooming herself to life-long penury, just
+because she is so foolish as to fall in love.'
+
+'Your days for falling in love are over, I suppose, Lesbia?' said
+Maulevrier, contemplating his sister with keen scrutiny.
+
+The beautiful face, so perfect in line and colour, curiously recalled
+that other face at Fellside; the dowager's face, with its look of marble
+coldness, and the half-expressed pain under that outward calm. Here was
+the face of one who had not yet known pain or passion. Here was the cold
+perfection of beauty with unawakened heart.
+
+'I don't know; I am too busy to think of such things.'
+
+'You have done with love; and you have begun to think of marriage, of
+establishing yourself properly. People tell me you are going to marry
+Mr. Smithson.'
+
+'People tell you more about me than I know about myself.'
+
+'Come now, Lesbia, I have a right to know the truth upon this point.
+Your brother--your only brother--should be the first person to be told.'
+
+'When I am engaged, I have no doubt you will be the first person, or the
+second person,' answered Lesbia, lightly. 'Lady Kirkbank, living on the
+premises, is likely to be the first.'
+
+'Then you are not engaged to Smithson?'
+
+'Didn't I tell you so just now? Mr. Smithson did me the honour to make
+me an offer yesterday, at about this hour; and I did myself the honour
+to reject him.'
+
+'And yet you were whispering together in the box last night, and you
+were riding in the Row with him this morning. I just met a fellow who
+saw you together. Do you think it is right, Lesbia, to play fast and
+loose with the man--to encourage him, if you don't mean to marry him?'
+
+'How can you accuse me of encouraging a person whom I flatly refused
+yesterday morning? If Mr. Smithson likes my society as a friend, must I
+needs deny him my friendship, ask Lady Kirkbank to shut her door against
+him? Mr. Smithson is very pleasant as an acquaintance; and although I
+don't want to marry him, there's no reason I should snub him.'
+
+'Smithson is not a man to be trifled with. You will find yourself
+entangled in a web which you won't easily break through.'
+
+'I am not afraid of webs. By-the-bye, is it true that Mr. Smithson is
+likely to get a peerage?'
+
+'I have heard people say as much. Smithson has spent no end of money on
+electioneering, and is a power in the House, though he very rarely
+speaks. His Berkshire estate gives him a good deal of influence in that
+county; at the last general election he subscribed twenty thou to the
+Conservative cause; for, like most men who have risen from nothing, your
+friend Smithson is a fine old Tory. He was specially elected at the
+Carlton six years ago, and has made himself uncommonly useful to his
+party. He is supposed to be great on financial questions, and comes out
+tremendously on colonial railways or drainage schemes, about which the
+House in general is in profound ignorance. On those occasions Smithson
+scores high. A man with immense wealth has always chances. No doubt, if
+you were to marry him, the peerage would be easily managed. Smithson's
+money, backed by the Maulevrier influence, would go a long way. My
+grandmother would move heaven and earth in a case of that kind. You had
+better take pity on Smithson.'
+
+Lesbia laughed. That idea of a possible peerage elevated Smithson in her
+eyes. She knew nothing of his political career, as she lived in a set
+which ignored politics altogether. Mr. Smithson had never talked to her
+of his parliamentary duties; and it was a new thing for her to hear that
+he had some kind of influence in public affairs.
+
+'Suppose I were inclined to accept him, would you like him as a
+brother-in-law?' she asked lightly. 'I thought from your manner last
+night that you rather disliked him.'
+
+'I don't quite like him or any of his breed, the newly rich, who go
+about in society swelling with the sense of their own importance,
+perspiring gold, as it were. And one has always a faint suspicion of men
+who have got rich very quickly, an idea that there must be some kind of
+juggling. Not in the case of a great contractor, perhaps, who can point
+to a viaduct and docks and railways, and say, "I built that, and that,
+and that. These are the sources of my wealth." But a man who gets
+enormously rich by mere ciphering! Where can his money come from, except
+out of other people's pockets? I know nothing against your Mr. Smithson,
+but I always suspect that class of men,' concluded Maulevrier shaking
+his head significantly.
+
+Lesbia was not much influenced by her brother's notions, she had never
+been taught to think him an oracle. On the contrary, she had been told
+that his life hitherto had been all foolishness.
+
+'When are Mary and Mr. Hammond to be married?' she asked, 'Grandmother
+says they must wait a year. Mary is much too young--and so on, and so
+forth. But I see no reason for waiting.'
+
+'Surely there are reasons--financial reasons. Mr. Hammond cannot be in a
+position to begin housekeeping.'
+
+'Oh, they will risk all that. Molly is a daring girl. He proposed to her
+on the top of Helvellyn, in a storm of wind and rain.'
+
+'And she never wrote me a word about it. How very unsisterly!'
+
+'She is as wild as a hawk, and I daresay she was too shy to tell you
+anything about it.'
+
+'Pray when did it all occur?'
+
+'Just before I came to London.'
+
+'Two months ago. How absurd for me to be in ignorance all this time!
+Well, I hope Mary will be sensible, and not marry till Mr. Hammond is
+able to give her a decent home. It would be so dreadful to have a sister
+muddling in poverty, and clamouring for one's cast-off gowns.'
+
+Maulevrier laughed at this gloomy suggestion.
+
+'It is not easy to foretell the future,' he said, 'but I think I may
+venture to promise that Molly will never wear your cast-off gowns.'
+
+'Oh, you think she would be too proud. You don't know, perhaps, how
+poverty--genteel poverty--lowers one's pride. I have heard stories from
+Lady Kirkbank that would make your hair stand on end. I am beginning to
+know the world.'
+
+'I am glad of that. If you are to live in the world it is better that
+you should know what it is made of. But if I had a voice or a choice in
+the matter I had rather my sisters stayed at Grasmere, and remained
+ignorant of the world and all its ways.'
+
+'While you enjoy your life in London. That is just like the selfishness
+of a man. Under the pretence of keeping his sisters or his wife secure
+from all possible contact with evil, he buries them alive in a country
+house, while he has all the wickedness for his own share in London. Oh,
+I am beginning to understand the creatures.'
+
+'I am afraid you are beginning to be wise. Remember that knowledge of
+evil was the prelude to the Fall. Well, good-bye.'
+
+'Won't you stay to lunch?'
+
+'No, thanks, I never lunch--frightful waste of time. I shall drop in at
+the _Haute Gomme_ and take a cup of tea later on.'
+
+The _Haute Gomme_ was a new club in Piccadilly, which Maulevrier and
+some of his friends affected.
+
+Lesbia went towards the drawing-room door with her brother, and just as
+he reached the door she laid her hand caressingly upon his shoulder. He
+turned and stared at her, somewhat surprised, for he and she had never
+been given to demonstrations of affection.
+
+'Maulevrier, I want you to do me a favour,' she said, in a low voice,
+blushing a little, for the thing she was going to ask was a new thing
+for her to ask, and she had a deep sense of shame in making her demand.
+'I--I lost money at Nap last night. Only seventeen pounds. Mr. Smithson
+and I were partners, and he paid my losses. I want to pay him
+immediately, and----'
+
+'And you are too hard up to do it. I'll write you a cheque this
+instant,' said Maulevrier goodnaturedly; but while he was writing the
+cheque he took occasion to remonstrate with Lesbia on the foolishness of
+card playing.
+
+'I am obliged to do as Lady Kirkbank does,' she answered feebly. 'If I
+were to refuse to play it would be a kind of reproach to her.'
+
+'I don't think that would kill Lady Kirkbank,' replied Maulevrier, with
+a touch of scorn. 'She has had to endure a good many implied reproaches
+in her day, and they don't seem to have hurt her very much. I wish to
+heaven my grandmother had chosen any one else in London for your
+chaperon.'
+
+'I'm afraid Lady Kirkbank's is rather a rowdy set,' answered Lesbia,
+coolly; 'and I sometimes feel as if I had thrown myself away. We go
+almost everywhere--at least, there are only just a few houses to which
+we are not asked. But those few make all the difference. It is so
+humiliating to feel that one is not in quite the best society. However,
+Lady Kirkbank is a dear, good old thing, and I am not going to grumble
+about her.'
+
+'I've made the cheque for five-and-twenty. You can cash it at your
+milliner's,' said Maulevrier. 'I should not like Smithson to know that
+you had been obliged to ask me for the money.'
+
+'_Apropos_ to Mr. Smithson, do you know if he is in quite the best
+society?' asked Lesbia.
+
+'I don't know what you mean by quite the best. A man of Smithson's
+wealth can generally poke his nose in anywhere, if he knows how to
+behave himself. But of course there are people with whom money and fine
+houses have no weight. The Conservatives are all civil to Smithson
+because he comes down handsomely at General Elections, and is useful to
+them in other ways. I believe that Smithson's wife, if she were a
+thorough-bred one, could go into any society she liked, and make her
+house one of the most popular in London. Perhaps that is what you really
+wanted to ask.
+
+'No, it wasn't,' answered Lesbia, carelessly; 'I was only talking for
+the sake of talking. A thousand thanks for the cheque, you best of
+brothers.'
+
+'It is not worth talking about; but, Lesbia, don't play cards any more.
+Believe me, it is not good form.'
+
+'Well, I'll try to keep out of it in future. It is horrid to see one's
+sovereigns melting away; but there's a delightful excitement in
+winning.'
+
+'No doubt,' answered Maulevrier, with a remorseful sigh.
+
+He spoke as a reformed plunger, and with many a bitter experience of the
+race-course and the card-room. Even now, though he had steadied himself
+wonderfully, he could not get on without a little mild gambling--half-crown
+pool, whist with half-guinea points--but when he condescended to such small
+stakes he felt that he had settled down into a respectable middle-aged
+player, and had a right to rebuke the follies of youth.
+
+Lesbia flew to the piano and sang one of her little German ballads
+directly Maulevrier was gone. She felt as if a burden had been lifted
+from her soul, now that she was able to pay Mr. Smithson without waiting
+to ask Lady Maulevrier for the money. And as she sang she meditated upon
+Maulevrier's remarks about Smithson. He knew nothing to the man's
+discredit, except that he had grown rich in a short space of time.
+Surely no man ought to be blamed for that. And he thought that Mr.
+Smithson's wife might make her house the most popular in London. Lesbia,
+in her mind's eye, beheld an imaginary Lady Lesbia Smithson giving
+dances in that magnificent mansion, entertaining Royal personages. And
+the doorways would be festooned with roses, as she had seen them the
+other night at a ball in Grosvenor Square; but the house in Grosvenor
+Square was a hovel compared with the Smithsonian Palace.
+
+Lesbia was beginning to be a little tired of Lady Kirkbank and her
+surroundings. Life taken _prestissimo_ is apt to pall. Lesbia sighed as
+she finished her little song. She was beginning to look upon her
+existence as a problem which had been given to her to solve, and the
+solution just at present was all dark.
+
+As she rose from the piano a footman came in with two letters on a
+salver--bulky letters, such packages as Lesbia had never seen before.
+She wondered what they could be. She opened the thickest envelope first.
+It was Seraphine's bill--such a bill, page after page on creamy Bath
+post, written in an elegant Italian hand by one of Seraphine's young
+women.
+
+Lesbia looked at it aghast with horror. The total at the foot of the
+first page was appalling, ever so much more than she could have supposed
+the whole amount of her indebtedness; but the total went on increasing
+at the foot of every page, until at sight of the final figures Lesbia
+gave a wild shriek, like a wretched creature who has received a telegram
+announcing bitterest loss.
+
+The final total was twelve hundred and ninety-three pounds seventeen and
+sixpence!
+
+Thirteen hundred pounds for clothes in eight weeks!
+
+No, the thing was a cheat, a mistake. They had sent her somebody else's
+bill. She had not had half these things.
+
+She read the first page, her heart beating violently as she pored over
+the figures, her eyes dim and clouded with the trouble of her brain.
+
+Yes, there was her court dress. The description was too minute to be
+mistaken; and the court dress, with feathers, and shoes, and gloves, and
+fan, came to a hundred and thirty pounds. Then followed innumerable
+items. The very simplest of her gowns cost five-and-twenty
+pounds--frocks about which Seraphine had talked so carelessly, as if two
+or three more or less could make no difference. Bonnets and hats, at
+five or seven guineas apiece, swelled the account. Parasols and fans
+were of fabulous price, as it seemed to Lesbia; and the shoes and
+stockings to match her various gowns occurred again and again between
+the more important items, like the refrain of an old ballad. All the
+useless and unnessary things which she had ordered, because she thought
+them pretty or because she was told they were fashionable, rose up
+against her in the figures of the bill, like the record of forgotten
+sins at the Day of Judgment.
+
+She sank into a chair, pallid with consternation, and sat with the bill
+in her lap, turning the pages listlessly, and staring at the figures.
+
+'It cannot be so much,' she cried to herself. 'It must be added up
+wrong;' and then she feebly tried to cast up a column; but arithmetic
+not being one of those accomplishments which Lady Maulevrier deemed
+necessary to a patrician beauty's success in life, Lesbia's education
+had been somewhat neglected upon this point, and she flung the bill from
+her in a rage, unable to hold the figures in her brain.
+
+She opened the second envelope, her jeweller's account. At the very
+first item she gave another scream, fainter than the first, for her mind
+was getting hardened against such shocks.
+
+'To re-setting a suite of amethysts, with forty-four finest Brazilian
+brilliants, three hundred and fifteen pounds.'
+
+Then followed the trifles she had bought at different visits to the
+shop--casual purchases, bought on the impulse of the moment. These
+swelled the account to a little over eight hundred pounds. Lesbia sat
+like a statue, numbed by despair, appalled at the idea of owing over two
+thousand pounds.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+
+'ROSES CHOKED AMONG THORNS AND THISTLES.'
+
+
+Lady Lesbia ate no luncheon that day. She went to her own room and had a
+cup of tea to steady her nerves, and sent to ask Lady Kirkbank to go to
+her as soon as she had finished luncheon. Lady Kirkbank's luncheon was a
+serious business, a substantial leisurely meal with which she fortified
+herself for the day's work. It enabled her to endure all the fatigues of
+visits and park, and to be airily indifferent to the charms of dinner;
+for Lady Kirkbank was not one of those matrons who with advanced years
+take to _gourmandise_ as a kind of fine art. She gave good dinners,
+because she knew people would not come to Arlington Street to eat bad
+ones; but she was not a person who lived only to dine. At luncheon she
+gave her healthy appetite full scope, and ate like a ploughman.
+
+She found Lesbia in her white muslin dressing-gown, with cheeks as pale
+as the gown she wore. She was sitting in an easy chair, with a low
+tea-table at her side, and the two bills were in the tray among the
+tea-things.
+
+'Have you any idea how much I owe Seraphine and Cabochon?' she asked,
+looking up despairingly at Lady Kirkbank.
+
+'What, have they sent in their bills already?'
+
+'Already! I wish they had sent them before. I should have known how
+deeply I was getting into debt.'
+
+'Are they very heavy?'
+
+'They are dreadful! I owe over two thousand pounds. How can I tell Lady
+Maulevrier that? Two thousand one hundred pounds! It is awful.'
+
+'There are women in London who would think very little of owing twice as
+much,' said Lady Kirkbank, in a comforting tone, though the fact,
+seriously considered, could hardly afford comfort. 'Your grandmother
+said you were to have _carte blanche_. She may think that you have been
+just a little extravagant; but she can hardly be angry with you for
+having taken her at her word. Two thousand pounds! Yes, it certainly is
+rather stiff.'
+
+'Seraphine is a cheat!' exclaimed Lesbia, angrily. 'Her prices are
+positively exorbitant!'
+
+'My dear child, you must not say that. Seraphine is positively moderate
+in comparison with the new people.'
+
+'And Mr. Cabochon, too. The idea of his charging me three hundred
+guineas for re-setting those stupid old amethysts.'
+
+'My dear, you _would_ have diamonds mixed with them,' said Lady
+Kirkbank, reproachfully.
+
+Lesbia turned away her head with an impatient sigh. She remembered
+perfectly that it was Lady Kirkbank who had persuaded her to order the
+diamond setting; but there was no use in talking about it now. The thing
+was done. She was two thousand pounds in debt--two thousand pounds to
+these two people only--and there were ever so many shops at which she
+had accounts--glovers, bootmakers, habit-makers, the tailor who made her
+Newmarket coats and cloth gowns, the stationer who supplied her with
+note-paper of every variety, monogrammed, floral; sporting, illuminated
+with this or that device, the follies of the passing hour, hatched by
+penniless Invention in a garret, pandering to the vanities of the idle.
+
+'I must write to my grandmother by this afternoon's post,' said Lesbia,
+with a heavy sigh.
+
+'Impossible. We have to be at the Ranelagh by four o'clock. Smithson
+and some other men are to meet us there. I have promised to drive Mrs.
+Mostyn down. You had better begin to dress.'
+
+'But I ought to write to-day. I had better ask for this money at once,
+and have done with it. Two thousand pounds! I feel as if I were a thief.
+You say my grandmother is not a rich woman?'
+
+'Not rich as the world goes nowadays. Nobody is rich now, except your
+commercial magnates, like Smithson. Great peers, unless their money is
+in London ground-rents, are great paupers. To own land is to be
+destitute. I don't suppose two thousand pounds will break your
+grandmother's bank; but of course it is a large sum to ask for at the
+end of two months; especially as she sent you a good deal of money while
+we were at Cannes. If you were engaged--about to make a really good
+match--you could ask for the money as a matter of course; but as it is,
+although you have been tremendously admired, from a practical point of
+view you are a failure.'
+
+A failure. It was a hard word, but Lesbia felt it was true. She, the
+reigning beauty, the cynosure of every eye, had made no conquest worth
+talking about, except Mr. Smithson.
+
+'Don't tell your grandmother anything about the bills for a week or
+two,' said Lady Kirkbank, soothingly. 'The creatures can wait for their
+money. Give yourself time to think.'
+
+'I will,' answered Lesbia, dolefully.
+
+'And now make haste, and get ready for the Ranelagh. My love, your eyes
+are dreadfully heavy. You _must_ use a little belladonna. I'll send
+Rilboche to you.'
+
+And for the first time in her life, Lesbia, too depressed to argue the
+point, consented to have her eyes doctored by Rilboche.
+
+She was gay enough at the Ranelagh, and looked her loveliest at a dinner
+party that evening, and went to three parties after the dinner, and went
+home in the faint light of early morning, after sitting out a late waltz
+in a balcony with Mr. Smithson, a balcony banked round with hot-house
+flowers which were beginning to droop a little in the chilly morning
+air, just as beauty drooped under the searching eye of day.
+
+Lesbia put the bills in her desk, and gave herself time to think, as
+Lady Kirkbank advised her. But the thinking progress resulted in very
+little good. All the thought of which she was capable would not reduce
+the totals of those two dreadful accounts. And every day brought some
+fresh bill. The stationer, the bootmaker, the glover, the perfumer,
+people who had courted Lady Lesbia's custom with an air which implied
+that the honour of serving fashionable beauty was the first
+consideration, and the question of payment quite a minor point--these
+now began to ask for their money in the most prosaic way. Every straw
+added to Lesbia's burden; and her heart grew heavier with every post.
+
+'One can see the season is waning when these people begin to pester
+with their accounts,' said Lady Kirkbank, who always talked of tradesmen
+as if they were her natural enemies.
+
+Lesbia accepted this explanation of the avalanche of bills, and never
+suspected Lady Kirkbank's influence in the matter. It happened, however,
+that the chaperon, having her own reasons for wishing to bring Mr.
+Smithson's suit to a successful issue, had told Seraphine and the other
+people to send in their bills immediately. Lady Lesbia would be leaving
+London in a week or so, she informed these purveyors, and would like to
+settle everything before she went away.
+
+Mr. Smithson appeared in Arlington Street almost every day, and was full
+of schemes for new pleasures--or pleasures as nearly new as the world of
+fashion can afford. He was particularly desirous that Sir George and
+Lady Kirkbank, with Lady Lesbia, should stay at his Berkshire place
+during the Henley week. He had a large steam launch, and the regatta was
+a kind of carnival for his intimate friends, who were not too proud to
+riot and batten upon the parvenu's luxurious hospitality, albeit they
+were apt to talk somewhat slightingly of his antecedents.
+
+Lady Kirkbank felt that this invitation was a turning point, and that if
+Lesbia went to stay at Rood Hall, her acceptance of Mr. Smithson was a
+certainty. She would see him at his place in Berkshire in the most
+flattering aspect; his surroundings as lord of the manor, and owner of
+one of the finest old places in the county, would lend dignity to his
+insignificance. Lesbia at first expressed a strong disinclination to go
+to Rood Hall. There would be a most unpleasant feeling in stopping at
+the house of a man whom she had refused, she told Lady Kirkbank.
+
+'My dear, Mr. Smithson has forgiven you,' answered her chaperon. 'He is
+the soul of good nature.'
+
+'One would think he was accustomed to be refused,' said Lesbia. 'I don't
+want to go to Rood Hall, but I don't want to spoil your Henley week.
+Could not I run down to Grasmere for a week, with Kibble to take care of
+me, and see dear grandmother? I could tell her about those dreadful
+bills.'
+
+'Bury yourself at Grasmere in the height of the season! Not to be
+thought of! Besides, Lady Maulevrier objected before to the idea of your
+travelling alone with Kibble. No! if you can't make up your mind to go
+to Rood Hall, George and I must make up our minds to stay away. But it
+will be rather hard lines; for that Henley week is quite the jolliest
+thing in the summer.'
+
+'Then I'll go,' said Lesbia, with a resigned air. 'Not for worlds would
+I deprive you and Sir George of a pleasure.'
+
+In her heart of hearts she rather wished to see Rood Hall. She was
+curious to behold the extent and magnitude of Mr. Smithson's
+possessions. She had seen his Italian villa in Park Lane, the perfection
+of modern art, modern skill, modern taste, reviving the old eternally
+beautiful forms, recreating the Pitti Palace--the homes of the
+Medici--the halls of dead and gone Doges--and now she was told that Rood
+Hall--a genuine old English manor-house, in perfect preservation--was
+even more interesting than the villa in Park Lane. At Rood Hall there
+were ideal stables and farm, hot-houses without number, rose gardens,
+lawns, the river, and a deer park.
+
+So the invitation was accepted, and Mr. Smithson immediately laid
+himself at Lesbia's feet, as it were, with regard to all other
+invitations for the Henley festival. Whom should he ask to meet
+her?--whom would she have?
+
+'You are very good,' she said, 'but I have really no wish to be
+consulted. I am not a royal personage, remember. I could not presume to
+dictate.'
+
+'But I wish you to dictate. I wish you to be imperious in the expression
+of your wishes.'
+
+'Lady Kirkbank has a better right than I, if anybody is to be
+consulted,' said Lesbia, modestly.
+
+'Lady Kirkbank is an old dear, who gets on delightfully with everybody.
+But you are more sensitive. Your comfort might be marred by an obnoxious
+presence. I will ask nobody whom you do not like--who is not thoroughly
+_simpatico_. Have you no particular friends of your own choosing whom
+you would like me to ask?'
+
+Lesbia confessed that she had no such friends. She liked everybody
+tolerably; but she had not a talent for friendship. Perhaps it was
+because in the London season one was too busy to make friends.
+
+'I can fancy two girls getting quite attached to each other, out of the
+season,' she said, 'but in May and June life is all a rush and a
+scramble----'
+
+'And one has no time to gather wayside flowers of friendship,'
+interjected Mr. Smithson. 'Still, if there are no people for whom you
+have an especial liking, there _must_ be people whom you detest.'
+
+Lesbia owned that it was so. Detestation came of itself, naturally.
+
+'Then let me be sure I do not ask any of your pet aversions,' said Mr.
+Smithson. 'You met Mr. Plantagenet Parsons, the theatrical critic, at my
+house. Shall we have him?'
+
+'I like all amusing people.'
+
+'And Horace Meander, the poet. Shall we have him? He is brimful of
+conceits and affectations, but he's a tremendous joke.'
+
+'Mr. Meander is charming.'
+
+'Suppose we ask Mostyn and his wife? Her scraps of science are rather
+good fun.'
+
+'I haven't the faintest objection to the Mostyns,' replied Lesbia. 'But
+who are "we"?'
+
+'We are you and I, for the nonce. The invitations will be issued
+ostensibly by me, but they will really emanate from you.'
+
+'I am to be the shadow behind the throne,' said Lesbia. 'How
+delightful!'
+
+'I would rather you were the sovereign ruler, on the throne,' answered
+Smithson, tenderly. 'That throne shall be empty till you fill it.'
+
+'Please go on with your list of people,' said Lesbia, checking this gush
+of sentiment.
+
+She began to feel somehow that she was drifting from all her moorings,
+that in accepting this invitation to Rood Hall she was allowing herself
+to be ensnared into an alliance about which she was still doubtful. If
+anything better had appeared in the prospect of her life--if any
+worthier suitor had come forward, she would have whistled Mr. Smithson
+down the wind; but no worthier suitor had offered himself. It was
+Smithson or nothing. If she did not accept Smithson, she would go back
+to Fellside heavily burdened with debt, and an obvious failure. She
+would have run the gauntlet of a London season without definite result;
+and this, to a young woman so impressed with her own transcendent
+merits, was a most humiliating state of things.
+
+Other people's names were suggested by Mr. Smithson and approved by
+Lesbia, and a house party of about fourteen in all was made up. Mr.
+Smithson's steam launch would comfortably accommodate that number. He
+had a couple of barges for chance visitors, and kept an open table on
+board them during the regatta.
+
+The visit arranged, the next question was gowns. Lesbia had gowns enough
+to have stocked a draper's shop; but then, as she and Lady Kirkbank
+deplored, the difficulty was that she had worn them all, some as many as
+three or four times. They were doubtless all marked and known. Some of
+them had been described in the society papers. At Henley she would be
+expected to wear something distinctly new, to introduce some new fashion
+of gown or hat or parasol. No matter how ugly the new thing might be, so
+long as it was startling; no matter how eccentric, provided it was
+original.
+
+'What am I to do?' asked Lesbia, despairingly.
+
+'There is only one thing that can be done. We must go instantly to
+Seraphine and insist upon her inventing something. If she has no idea
+ready she must telegraph Worth and get him to send something over. Your
+old things will do very well for Rood Hall. You have no end of pretty
+gowns for morning and evening; but you must be original on the race
+days. Your gowns will be in all the papers.'
+
+'But I shall be only getting deeper into debt,' said Lesbia, with a
+sigh.
+
+'That can't be helped. If you go into society you must be properly
+dressed. We'll go to Clanricarde Place directly after luncheon, and see
+what that old harpy has to show us.'
+
+Lesbia had a rather uncomfortable feeling about facing the fair
+Seraphine, without being able to give her a cheque upon account of that
+dreadful bill. She had quite accepted Lady Kirkbank's idea that bills
+never need be discharged in full, and that the true system of finance
+was to give an occasional cheque on account, as a sop to Cerberus. True,
+that while Cerberus fattened on the sops the bill seemed always growing;
+and the final crash, when Cerberus grew savage and sops could be no more
+accepted, was too awful to be thought about.
+
+Lesbia entered Seraphine's Louis-seize drawing-room with a faint
+expectation of unpleasantness; but after a little whispering between
+Lady Kirkbank and the dressmaker, the latter came to Lesbia smiling
+graciously, and seemingly full of eagerness for new orders.
+
+'Miladi says you want something of the most original--_tant soit peu
+risque_--for 'Enley,' she said. 'Let us see now,' and she tapped her
+forehead with a gold thimble which nobody had ever seen her use, but
+which looked respectable. 'There is ze dresses that Chaumont wear in zis
+new play, _Une Faute dans le Passe_. Yes, zere is the watare dress--a
+boating party at Bougival, a toilet of the most new, striking,
+_ecrasant_, what you English call a "screamer."'
+
+'What a genius you are, Fifine,' exclaimed Lady Kirkbank, rapturously.
+'The _Faute dans le Passe_ was only produced last week. No one will have
+thought of copying Chaumont's gowns yet awhile. The idea is an
+inspiration.'
+
+'What is the boating costume like?' asked Lady Lesbia, faintly.
+
+'An exquisite combination of simplicity with _élan_,' answered the
+dressmaker. 'A skin-tight indigo silk Jersey bodice, closely studded
+with dark blue beads, a flounced petticoat of indigo and amber foulard,
+an amber scarf drawn tightly round the hips, and a dark blue toque with
+a large bunch of amber poppies. Tan-coloured mousquetaire gloves, and
+Hessian boots of tan-coloured kid.'
+
+'Hessian boots!' ejaculated Lesbia.
+
+'But, yes, Miladi. The petticoat is somewhat short, you comprehend, to
+escape the damp of the deck, and, after all, Hessians are much less
+indelicate than silk stockings, legs _a cru_, as one may say.'
+
+'Lesbia, you will look enchanting in yellow Hessians,' said Lady
+Kirkbank, 'Let the dress be put in hand instantly, Seraphine.'
+
+Lesbia was inclined to remonstrate. She did not admire the description
+of the costume, she would rather have something less outrageous.
+
+'Outrageous! It is only original,' exclaimed her chaperon. 'If Chaumont
+wears it you may be sure it is perfect.'
+
+'But on the stage, by gaslight, in the midst of unrealities,' argued
+Lesbia. 'That makes such a difference.'
+
+'My dear, there is no difference nowadays between the stage and the
+drawing-room. Whatever Chaumont wears you may wear. And now let us think
+of the second day. I think as your first costume is to be nautical, and
+rather masculine, your second should be somewhat languishing and
+_vaporeux_. Creamy Indian muslin, wild flowers, a large Leghorn hat.'
+
+'And what will Miladi herself wear?' asked the French woman of Lady
+Kirkbank. 'She must have something of new.'
+
+'No, at my age, it doesn't matter. I shall wear one of my cotton frocks,
+and my Dunstable hat.'
+
+Lesbia shuddered, for Lady Kirkbank in her cotton frock was a spectacle
+at which youth laughed and age blushed. But after all it did not matter
+to Lesbia. She would have liked a less rowdy chaperon; but as a foil to
+her own fresh young beauty Lady Kirkbank was admirable.
+
+They drove down to Rood Hall early next week, Sir George conveying them
+in his drag, with a change of horses at Maidenhead. The weather was
+peerless; the country exquisite, approached from London. How different
+that river landscape looks to the eyes of the traveller returning from
+the wild West of England, the wooded gorges of Cornwall and Devon, the
+Tamar and the Dart. Then how small and poor and mean seems silvery
+Thames, gliding peacefully between his willowy bank, singing his lullaby
+to the whispering sedges; a poor little river, a flat commonplace
+landscape, says the traveller, fresh from moorland and tor, from the
+rocky shore of the Atlantic, the deep clefts of the great, red hills.
+
+To Lesbia's eyes the placid stream and the green pastures, breathing
+odours of meadow-sweet and clover, seemed passing lovely. She was
+pleased with her own hat and parasol too, which made her graciously
+disposed towards the landscape; and the last packet of gloves from North
+Audley Street fitted without a wrinkle. The glovemaker was beginning to
+understand her hand, which was a study for a sculptor, but which had its
+little peculiarities.
+
+Nor was she ill-disposed to Mr. Smithson, who had come up to town by an
+early train, in order to lunch in Arlington Street and go back by coach,
+seated just behind Lady Lesbia, who had the box seat beside Sir George.
+
+The drive was delightful. It was a few minutes after five when the coach
+drove past the picturesque old gate-house into Mr. Smithson's Park, and
+Rood Hall lay on the low ground in front of them, with its back to the
+river. It was an old red brick house in the Tudor style, with an
+advanced porch, and four projecting wings, three stories high, with
+picturesque spire roofs overtopping the main building. Around the house
+ran a boldly-carved stone parapet, bearing the herons and bulrushes
+which were the cognisance of the noble race for which the mansion was
+built. Numerous projecting mullioned windows broke up the line of the
+park front. Lesbia was fain to own that Rood Hall was even better than
+Park Lane. In London Mr. Smithson had created a palace; but it was a new
+palace, which still had a faint flavour of bricks and mortar, and which
+was apt to remind the spectator of that wonderful erection of Aladdin,
+the famous Parvenu of Eastern story. Here, in Berkshire, Mr. Smithson
+had dropped into a nest which had been kept warm for him for three
+centuries, aired and beautified by generations of a noble race which had
+obligingly decayed and dwindled in order to make room for Mr. Smithson.
+Here the Parvenu had bought a home mellowed by the slow growth of years,
+touched into poetic beauty by the chastening fingers of time. His artist
+friends told him that every brick in the red walls was 'precious,' a
+mystery of colour which only a painter could fitly understand and value.
+Here he had bought associations, he had bought history. He had bought
+the dust of Elizabeth's senators, the bones of her court beauties. The
+coffins in the Mausoleum yonder in the ferny depths of the Park, the
+village church just outside the gates--these had all gone with the
+property.
+
+Lesbia went up the grand staircase, through the long corridors, in a
+dream of wonder. Brought up at Fellside, in that new part of the
+Westmoreland house which had been built by her grandmother and had no
+history, she felt thrilled by the sober splendour of this fine old
+manorial mansion. All was sound and substantial, as if created
+yesterday, so well preserved had been the goods and chattels of the
+noble race; and yet all wore such unmistakeable marks of age. The deep
+rich colouring of the wainscot, the faded hues of the tapestry, the
+draperies of costliest velvet and brocade, were all sobered by the
+passing of years.
+
+Mr. Smithson had shown his good taste in having kept all things as Sir
+Hubert Heronville, the last of his race, had left them; and the
+Heronvilles had been one of those grand old Tory races which change
+nothing of the past.
+
+Lady Lesbia's bedroom was the State chamber, which had been occupied by
+kings and queens in days of yore. That grandiose four-poster, with the
+carved ebony columns, cut velvet curtains, and plumes of ostrich
+feathers, had been built for Elizabeth, when she deigned to include Rood
+Hall in one of her royal progresses. Charles the First had rested his
+weary head upon those very pillows, before he went on to the Inn at
+Uxbridge, where he was to be lodged less luxuriously. James the Second
+had stayed there when Duke of York, with Mistress Anne Hyde, before he
+acknowledged his marriage to the multitude; and Anne's daughter had
+occupied the same room as Queen of England forty years later; and now
+the Royal Chamber, with adjacent dressing-room, and oratory, and
+spacious boudoir all in the same suite, was reserved for Lady Lesbia
+Haselden.
+
+'I'm afraid you are spoiling me,' she told Mr. Smithson, when he asked
+if she approved of the rooms that had been allotted to her. 'I feel
+quite ashamed of myself among the ghosts of dead and gone queens.'
+
+'Why so? Surely the Royalty of beauty has as divine a right as that of
+an anointed sovereign.'
+
+'I hope the Royal personages don't walk,' exclaimed Lady Kirkbank, in
+her girlish tone; 'this is just the house in which one would expect
+ghosts.'
+
+Whereupon Mrs. Mostyn hastened to enlighten the company upon the real
+causes of ghost-seeing, which she had lately studied in Carpenter's
+'Mental Physiology,' and favoured them with a diluted version of the
+views of that authority.
+
+This was at afternoon tea in the library, where the brass-wired
+bookcases, filled with mighty folios and handsome octavos in old
+bindings, looked as if they had not been opened for a century. The
+literature of past ages furnished the room, and made a delightful
+background. The literature of the present lay about on the tables, and
+testified that the highest intellectual flight of the inhabitants of
+Rood Hall was a dip into the _Contemporary_ or the _Nineteenth Century_,
+or the perusal of the last new scandal in the shape of Reminiscences or
+Autobiography. One large round table was consecrated to Mudie, another
+to Rolandi. On the one side you had Mrs. Oliphant, on the other Zola,
+exemplifying the genius of the two nations.
+
+After tea Mr. Smithson's visitors, most of whom had arrived in Sir
+George's drag, explored the grounds. These were lovely beyond expression
+in the low afternoon light. Cedars of Lebanon spread their broad shadows
+on the velvet lawn, yews and Wellingtonias of mighty growth made an
+atmosphere of gloom in some parts of the grounds. One great feature was
+the Ladies' Garden, a spot apart, a great square garden surrounded with
+a laurel wall, eight feet high, containing a rose garden, where the
+choicest specimens grew and flourished, while in the centre there was a
+circular fish-pond with a fountain. There was a Lavender Walk too,
+another feature of the grounds at Rood Hall, an avenue of tall lavender
+bushes, much affected by the stately dames of old.
+
+Modern manners preferred the river terrace, as a pleasant place on which
+to loiter after dinner, to watch the boats flashing by in the evening
+light, or the sun going down behind a fringe of willows on the opposite
+bank. This Italian terrace, with its statues, and carved vases filled
+with roses, fuchsias, and geraniums, was the great point of rendezvous
+at Rood Hall--an ideal spot whereon to linger in the deepening twilight,
+from which to gaze upon the moonlit river later on in the night.
+
+The windows of the drawing-room, and music-room, and ballroom opened on
+to this terrace, and the royal wing--the tower-shaped wing now devoted
+to Lady Lesbia, looked upon the terrace and the river.
+
+'Lovely as your house is altogether, I think this river view is the
+best part of it,' said Lady Lesbia, as she strolled with Mr. Smithson on
+the terrace after dinner, dressed in Indian muslin which was almost as
+poetical as a vapour, and with a cloud of delicate lace wrapped round
+her head. 'I think I shall spend half of my life at my boudoir window,
+gloating over that delicious landscape.'
+
+Horace Meander, the poet, was discoursing to a select group upon that
+peculiar quality of willows which causes them to shiver, and quiver, and
+throw little lights and shadows on the river, and on the subtle,
+ineffable beauty of twilight, which perhaps, however utterly beautiful
+in the abstract, would have been more agreeable to him personally if he
+had not been surrounded by a cloud of gnats, which refused to be
+buffeted off his laurel-crowned head.
+
+While Mr. Meander poetised in his usual eloquent style, Mrs. Mostyn, as
+a still newer light, discoursed as eloquently to little a knot of women,
+imparting valuable information upon the anatomical structure and
+individual peculiarities of those various insects which are the pests of
+a summer evening.
+
+'You don't like gnats!' exclaimed the lady; 'how very extraordinary. Do
+you know I have spent days and weeks upon the study of their habits and
+dear little ways. They are the most interesting creatures--far superior
+to _us_ in intellect. Do you know that they fight, and that they have
+tribes which are life-long enemies--like those dreadful Corsicans--and
+that they make little sepulchres in the bark of trees, and bury each
+other--alive, if they can; and they hold vestries, and have burial
+boards. They are most absorbing creatures, if you only give yourself up
+to the study of them; but it is no use to be half-hearted in a study of
+that kind. I went without so much as a cup of tea for twenty-four hours,
+watching my gnats, for fear the opening of the door should startle them.
+Another time I shall make the nursery governess watch for me.'
+
+'How interesting, how noble of you,' exclaimed the other ladies; and
+then they began to talk about bonnets, and about Mr. Smithson, to
+speculate how much money this house and all his other houses had cost
+him, and to wonder if he was really rich, or if he were only one of
+those great financial windbags which so often explode and leave the
+world aghast, marvelling at the ease with which it has been deluded.
+
+They wondered, too, whether Lady Lesbia Haselden meant to marry him.
+
+'Of course she does, my dear,' answered Mrs. Mostyn, decisively.
+
+'You don't suppose that after having studied the habits of _gnats_ I
+cannot read such a poor shallow creature as a silly vain girl. Of course
+Lady Lesbia means to marry Mr. Smithson's fine houses; and she is only
+amusing herself and swelling her own importance by letting him dangle in
+a kind of suspense which is not suspense; for he knows as well as she
+does that she means to have him.'
+
+The next day was given up, first to seeing the house, an amusement which
+lasted very well for an hour or so after breakfast, and then to
+wandering in a desultory manner, to rowing and canoeing, and a little
+sailing, and a good deal of screaming and pretty timidity upon the blue
+bright river; to gathering wild flowers and ferns in rustic lanes, and
+to an _al fresco_ luncheon in the wood at Medmenham, and then dinner,
+and then music, an evening spent half within and half without the
+music-room, cigarettes sparkling, like glowworms on the terrace, tall
+talk from Mr. Meander, long quotations from his own muse and that of
+Rossetti, a little Shelley, a little Keats, a good deal of Swinburne.
+The festivities were late on this second evening, as Mr. Smithson had
+invited a good many people from the neighbourhood, but the house party
+were not the less early on the following morning, which was the first
+Henley day.
+
+It was a peerless morning, and all the brasswork of Mr. Smithson's
+launch sparkled and shone in the sun, as she lay in front of the
+terrace. A wooden pier, a portable construction, was thrown out from the
+terrace steps, to enable the company to go on board the launch without
+the possibility of wet feet or damaged raiment.
+
+Lesbia's Chaumount costume was a success. The women praised it, the men
+stared and admired. The dark-blue silken jersey, sparkling with closely
+studded indigo beads, fitted the slim graceful figure as a serpent's
+scales fit the serpent. The coquettish little blue silk toque, the
+careless cluster of gold-coloured poppies, against the glossy brown
+hair, the large sunshade of old gold satin lined with indigo, the
+flounced petticoat of softest Indian silk, the dainty little
+tan-coloured boots with high heels and pointed toes, were all perfect
+after their fashion; and Mr. Smithson felt that the liege lady of his
+life, the woman he meant to marry willy nilly, would be the belle of the
+race-course. Nor was he disappointed. Everybody in London had heard of
+Lady Lesbia Haselden. Her photograph was in all the West-End windows,
+was enshrined in the albums of South Kensington and Clapham, Maida Vale
+and Haverstock Hill. People whose circles were far remote from Lady
+Lesbia's circle, were as familiar with her beauty as if they had known
+her from her cradle. And all these outsiders wanted to see her in the
+flesh, just as they always thirst to behold Royal personages. So when it
+became known that the beautiful Lady Lesbia Haselden was on board Mr.
+Smithson's launch, all the people in the small boats, or on neighbouring
+barges, made it their business to have a good look at her. The launch
+was almost mobbed by those inquisitive little boats in the intervals
+between the races.
+
+'What are the people all staring and hustling one another for?' asked
+Lesbia, innocently. She had seen the same hustling and whispering and
+staring in the hall at the opera, when she was waiting for her carriage;
+but she chose to affect unconsciousness. 'What do they all want?'
+
+'I think they want to see you,' said Mr. Smithson, who was sitting by
+her side. 'A very natural desire.'
+
+Lesbia laughed, and lowered the big yellow sunshade, so as to hide
+herself altogether from the starers.
+
+'How silly!' she exclaimed. 'It is all the fault of those horrid
+photographers: they vulgarise everything and everybody. I will never be
+photographed again.'
+
+'Oh yes, you will, and in that frock. It's the prettiest thing I've seen
+for a long time. Why do you hide yourself from those poor wretches, who
+keep rowing backwards and forwards in an obviously aimless way, just to
+get a peep at you _en passant_? What happiness for us who live near you,
+and can gaze when we will, without all those absurd manoeuvres. There
+goes the signal--and now for a hard-fought race.'
+
+Lesbia pretended to be interested in the racing--she pretended to be
+gay, but her heart was as heavy as lead. The burden of debt, which had
+been growing ever since Seraphine sent in her bill, was weighing her
+down to the dust.
+
+She owed three thousand pounds. It seemed incredible that she should owe
+so much, that a girl's frivolous fancies and extravagances could amount
+to such a sum within so short a span. But thoughtless purchases,
+ignorant orders, had run on from week to week, and the main result was
+an indebtedness of close upon three thousand pounds.
+
+Three thousand pounds! The sum was continually sounding in her ears like
+the cry of a screech owl. The very ripple of the river flowing so
+peacefully under the blue summer sky seemed to repeat the words. Three
+thousand pounds! 'Is it much?' she wondered, having no standard of
+comparison. 'Is it very much more than my grandmother will expect me to
+have spent in the time? Will it trouble her to have to pay those bills?
+Will she be very angry?'
+
+These were questions which Lesbia kept asking herself, in every pause of
+her frivolous existence; in such a pause as this, for instance, while
+the people round her were standing breathless, open-mouthed, gazing
+after the boats. She did not care a straw for the boats, who won, or who
+lost the race. It was all a hollow mockery. Indeed it seemed just now
+that the only real thing in life was those accursed bills, which would
+have to be paid somehow.
+
+She had told Lady Maulevrier nothing about them as yet. She had allowed
+herself to be advised by Lady Kirkbank, and she had taken time to think.
+But thought had given her no help. The days were gliding onward, and
+Lady Maulevrier would have to be told.
+
+She meditated perplexedly about her grandmother's income. She had never
+heard the extent of it, but had taken for granted that Lady Maulevrier
+was rich. Would three thousand pounds make a great inroad on that
+income? Would it be a year's income?--half a year's? Lesbia had no idea.
+Life at Fellside was carried on in an elegant manner--with considerable
+luxury in house and garden--a luxury of flowers, a lavish expenditure of
+labour. Yet the expenditure of Lady Maulevrier's existence, spent always
+on the same spot, must be as nothing to the money spent in such a life
+as Lady Kirkbank's, which involved the keeping up of three or four
+houses, and costly journeys to and fro, and incessant change of attire.
+
+No doubt Lady Maulevrier had saved money; yes, she must have saved
+thousands during her long seclusion, Lesbia argued. Her grandmother had
+told her that she was to look upon herself as an heiress. This could
+only mean that Lady Maulevrier had a fortune to leave her; and this
+being so, what could it matter if she had anticipated some of her
+portion? And yet there was in her heart of hearts a terrible fear of
+that stern dowager, of the cold scorn in those splendid eyes when she
+should stand revealed in all her foolishness, her selfish, mindless,
+vain extravagances. She, who had never been reproved, shrank with a
+sickly dread from the idea of reproof. And to be told that her career as
+a fashionable beauty had been a failure! That would be the bitterest
+pang of all.
+
+Soon came luncheon, and Heidseck, and then an afternoon which was gayer
+than the morning had been, inasmuch as every one babbled and laughed
+more after luncheon. And then there was five o'clock tea on deck, under
+the striped Japanese awning, to the jingle of banjos, enlivened by the
+wit of black-faced minstrels, amidst wherries and canoes and gondolas,
+and ponderous houseboats, and snorting launches, crowding the sides of
+the sunlit river, in full view of the crowd yonder in front of the Red
+Lion, and here on this nearer bank, and all along either shore, fringing
+the green meadows with a gaudy border of smartly-dressed humanity.
+
+It was a gay scene, and Lesbia gave herself up to the amusement of the
+hour, and talked and chaffed as she had learned to talk and chaff in one
+brief season, holding her own against all comers.
+
+Rood Hall looked lovely when they went back to it in the gloaming, an
+Elizabethan pile crowned with towers. The four wings with their conical
+roofs, the massive projecting windows, grey stone, ruddy brickwork,
+lattices reflecting the sunlight, Italian terrace and blue river in the
+foreground, cedars and yews at the back, all made a splendid picture of
+an English ancestral home.
+
+'Nice old place, isn't it?' asked Mr. Smithson, seeing Lesbia's
+admiring gaze as the launch neared the terrace. They two were standing
+in the bows, apart from all the rest.
+
+'Nice! it is simply perfect.'
+
+'Oh no, it isn't. There is one thing wanted yet.'
+
+'What is that?'
+
+'A wife. You are the only person who can make any house of mine perfect.
+Will you?' He took her hand, which she did not withdraw from his grasp.
+He bent his head and kissed the little hand in its soft Swedish glove.
+
+'Will you, Lesbia?' he repeated earnestly; and she answered softly,
+'Yes.'
+
+That one brief syllable was more like a sigh than a spoken word, and it
+seemed to her as if in the utterance of that syllable the three thousand
+pounds had been paid.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+'KIND IS MY LOVE TO-DAY, TO-MORROW KIND.'
+
+
+While Lady Lesbia was draining the cup of London folly and London care
+to the dregs, Lady Mary was leading her usual quiet life beside the
+glassy lake, where the green hill-sides and sheep walks were reflected
+in all their summer verdure under the cloudless azure of a summer sky. A
+monotonous life--passing dull as seen from the outside--and yet Mary was
+very happy, happy even in her solitude, with the grave deep joy of a
+satisfied heart, a mind at rest. All life had taken a new colour since
+her engagement to John Hammond. A sense of new duties, an awakening
+earnestness had given a graver tone to her character. Her spirits were
+less wild, yet not less joyous than of old. The joy was holier, deeper.
+
+Her lover's letters were the chief delight of her lonely days. To read
+them again and again, and ponder upon them, and then to pour out all her
+heart and mind in answering them. These were pleasures enough for her
+young life. Hammond's letters were such as any woman might be proud to
+receive. They were not love-letters only. He wrote as friend to friend;
+not descending from the proud pinnacle of masculine intelligence to the
+lower level of feminine silliness; not writing down to a simple country
+girl's capacity; but writing fully and fervently, as if there were no
+subject too lofty or too grave for the understanding of his betrothed.
+He wrote as one sure of being sympathised with, wrote as to his second
+self: and Mary showed herself not unworthy of the honour thus rendered
+to her intellect.
+
+There was one world which had newly opened to Mary since her
+engagement, and that was the world of politics. Hammond had told her
+that his ambition was to succeed as a politician--to do some good in his
+day as one of the governing body; and of late she had made it her
+business to learn how England and the world outside England were
+governed.
+
+She had no natural leaning to the study of political economy. Instead,
+she had always imagined any question relating to the government of her
+country to be inherently dry-as-dust and uninviting. But had John
+Hammond devoted his days to the study of Coptic manuscripts, or the
+arrow-headed inscriptions upon Assyrian tablets, she would have toiled
+her hardest in the endeavour to make herself a Coptic scholar, or an
+adept in the cuneiform characters. If he had been a student of Chinese,
+she would not have been discomfited by such a trifle as the fifty
+thousand characters in the Chinese alphabet.
+
+And so, as he was to make his name in the arena of public life, she set
+herself to acquire a proper understanding of the science of politics;
+and to this end she gorged herself with English history,--Hume, Hallam,
+Green, Justin McCarthy, Palgrave, Lecky, from the days of Witenagemote
+to the Reform Bill; the Repeal of the Corn Laws, the Disestablishment of
+the Irish Church, Ballot, Trade Unionism, and unreciprocated Free Trade.
+No question was deep enough to repel her; for was not her lover
+interested in the dryest thereof; and what concerned him and his welfare
+must needs be full of interest for her.
+
+To this end she read the debates religiously day by day; and she one day
+ventured shyly to suggest that she should read them aloud to Lady
+Maulevrier.
+
+'Would it not be a little rest for you if I were to read your Times
+aloud to you every afternoon, grandmother?' she asked. 'You read so many
+books, French, English, and German, and I think your eyes must get a
+little tired sometimes.'
+
+Mary ventured the remark with some timidity, for those falcon eyes were
+fixed upon her all the time, bright and clear and steady as the eyes of
+youth. It seemed almost an impertinence to suggest that such eyes could
+know weariness.
+
+'No, Mary, my sight holds out wonderfully for an old woman,' replied
+her ladyship, gently. 'The new theory of the last oculist whose book I
+dipped into--a very amusing and interesting book, by-the-bye--is that
+the sight improves and strengthens by constant use, and that an
+agricultural labourer, who hardly uses his eyes at all, has rarely in
+the decline of life so good a sight as the watchmaker or the student. I
+have read immensely all my life, and find myself no worse for that
+indulgence. But you may read the debates to me if you like, my dear, for
+if my eyes are strong, I myself am very tired. Sick to death, Mary, sick
+to death.'
+
+The splendid eyes turned from Mary, and looked away to the blue sky, to
+the hills in their ineffable beauty of colour and light--shifting,
+changing with every moment of the summer day. Intense weariness, a
+settled despair, were expressed in that look--tearless, yet sadder than
+all tears.
+
+'It must be very monotonous, very sad for you,' murmured Mary, her own
+eyes brimming over with tears. 'But it will not be always so, dear
+grandmother. I hope a time will come when you will be able to go about
+again, to resume your old life.'
+
+'I do not hope, Mary. No, child, I feel and know that time will never
+come. My strength is ebbing slowly day by day. If I live for another
+year, live to see Lesbia married, and you, too, perhaps--well, I shall
+die at peace. At peace, no; not----' she faltered, and the thin,
+semi-transparent hand was pressed upon her brow. 'What will be said of
+me when I am dead?'
+
+Mary feared that her grandmother's mind was wandering. She came and
+knelt beside the couch, laid and her head against the satin pillows,
+tenderly, caressingly.
+
+'Dear grandmother, pray be calm,' she murmured.
+
+'Mary, do not look at me like that, as if you would read my heart. There
+are hearts that must not be looked into. Mine is like a charnel-house.
+Monotonous, yes; my life has been monotonous. No conventual gloom was
+ever deeper than the gloom of Fellside. My boy did nothing to lighten it
+for me, and his son followed in his father's footsteps. You and Lesbia
+have been my only consolation. Lesbia! I was so proud of her beauty, so
+proud and fond of her, because she was like me, and recalled my own
+youth. And see how easily she forgets me. She has gone into a new world,
+in which my age and my infirmities have no part; and I am as nothing to
+her.'
+
+Mary changed from red to pale, so painful was her embarrassment. What
+could she say in defence of her sister? How could she deny that Lesbia
+was an ingrate, when those rare and hurried letters, so careless in
+their tone, expressing the selfishness of the writer in every syllable,
+told but too plainly of forgetfulness and ingratitude?
+
+'Dear grandmother, Lesbia has so much to do--her life is so full of
+engagements,' she faltered feebly.
+
+'Yes, she goes from party to party--she gives herself up heart and mind
+and soul to pleasures which she ought to consider only as the trivial
+means to great ends; and she forgets the woman who reared her, and cared
+for her, and watched over her from her infancy, and who tried to inspire
+her with a noble ambition.--Yes, read to me, child, read. Give me new
+thoughts, if you can, for my brain is weary with grinding the old ones.
+There was a grand debate in the Lords last night, and Lord Hartfield
+spoke. Let me hear his speech. You can read what was said by the man
+before him; never mind the rest.'
+
+Mary read Lord Somebody's speech, which was passing dull, but which
+prepared the ground for a magnificent and exhaustive reply from Lord
+Hartfield. The question was an important one, affecting the well-being
+of the masses, and Lord Hartfield spoke with an eloquence which rose in
+force and fire as he wound himself like a serpent into the heart of his
+subject--beginning quietly, soberly, with no opening flashes of
+rhetoric, but rising gradually to the topmost heights of oratory.
+
+'What a speech!' cried Lady Maulevrier, delighted, her cheeks glowing,
+her eyes kindling; 'what a noble fellow the speaker must be! Oh, Mary, I
+must tell you a secret. I loved that man's father. Yes, my dear, I loved
+him fondly, dearly, truly, as you love that young man of yours; and he
+was the only man I ever really loved. Fate parted us. But I have never
+forgotten him--never, Mary, never. At this moment I have but to close my
+eyes and I can see his face--see him looking at me as he looked the last
+time we met. He was a younger son, poor, his future quite hopeless in
+those days; but it was not my fault we were parted. I would have married
+him--yes, wedded poverty, just as you are going to marry this Mr.
+Hammond; but my people would not let me; and I was too young, too
+helpless, to make a good fight. Oh, Mary, if I had only fought hard
+enough, what a happy woman I might have been, and how good a wife.'
+
+'You were a good wife to my grandfather, I am sure,' faltered Mary, by
+way of saying something consolatory.
+
+A dark frown came over Lady Maulevrier's face, which had softened to
+deepest tenderness just before.
+
+'A good wife to Maulevrier,' she said, in a mocking tone. Well, yes, as
+good a wife as such a husband deserved. 'I was better than Caesar's
+wife, Mary, for no breath of suspicion ever rested upon my name. But if
+I had married Ronald Hollister, I should have been a happy woman; and
+that I have never been since I parted from him.'
+
+'You have never seen the present Lord Hartfield, I think?'
+
+'Never; but I have watched his career, I have thought of him. His father
+died while he was an infant, and he was brought up in seclusion by a
+widowed mother, who kept him tied to her apron-strings till he went to
+Oxford. She idolised him, and I am told she taught herself Latin and
+Greek, mathematics even, in order to help him in his boyish studies,
+and, later on, read Greek plays and Latin poetry with him, till she
+became an exceptional classic for a woman. She was her son's companion
+and friend, sympathised with his tastes, his pleasures, his friendships;
+devoted every hour of her life, every thought of her mind to his
+welfare, his interests, walked with him, rode with him, travelled half
+over Europe, yachted with him. Her friends all declared that the lad
+would grow up an odious milksop; but I am told that there never was a
+manlier man than Lord Hartfield. From his boyhood he was his mother's
+protector, helped to administer her affairs, acquired a premature sense
+of responsibility, and escaped almost all those vices which make young
+men detestable. His mother died within a few months of his majority. He
+was broken-hearted at losing her, and left Europe immediately after her
+death. From that time he has been a great traveller. But I suppose now
+that he has taken his seat in the House of Lords, and has spoken a good
+many times, he means to settle down and take his place among the
+foremost men of his day. I am told that he is worthy to take such a
+place.'
+
+'You must feel warmly interested in watching his career,' said Mary,
+sympathetically.
+
+'I am interested in everything that concerns him. I will tell you
+another secret, Mary. I think I am getting into my dotage, my dear, or I
+should hardly talk to you like this,' said Lady Maulevrier, with a touch
+of bitterness.
+
+Mary was sitting on a stool by the sofa, close to the invalid's pillow.
+She clasped her grandmother's hand and kissed it fondly.
+
+'Dear grandmother, I think you are talking to me like this to-day
+because you are beginning to care for me a little,' she said, tenderly.
+
+'Oh, my dear, you are very good, very sweet and forgiving to care for me
+at all, after my neglect of you,' answered Lady Maulevrier, with a
+sigh. 'I have kept you out in the cold so long, Mary. Lesbia--well,
+Lesbia has been a kind of infatuation for me, and like all infatuations
+mine has ended in disappointment and bitterness. Ambition has been the
+bane of my life, Mary; and when I could no longer be ambitious for
+myself--when my own existence had become a mere death in life, I began
+to dream and to scheme for the aggrandisement of my granddaughter.
+Lesbia's beauty, Lesbia's elegance seemed to make success certain--and
+so I dreamt my dream--which may never be fulfilled.'
+
+'What was your dream, grandmother? May I know all about it?'
+
+'That was the secret I spoke of just now. Yes, Mary, you may know, for I
+fear the dream will never be realised. I wanted my Lesbia to become Lord
+Hartfield's wife. I would have brought them together myself, could I
+have but gone to London; but, failing that, I fancied Lady Kirkbank
+would have divined my wishes without being told them, and would have
+introduced Hartfield to Lesbia; and now the London season is drawing to
+a close, and Hartfield and Lesbia have never met. He hardly goes
+anywhere, I am told. He devotes himself exclusively to politics; and he
+is not in Lady Kirkbank's set. A terrible disappointment to me, Mary!'
+
+'It is a pity,' said Mary. 'Lesbia is so lovely. If Lord Hartfield were
+fancy-free he ought to fall in love with her, could they but meet. I
+thought that in London all fashionable people knew each other, and were
+continually meeting.'
+
+'It used to be so in my day, Mary. Almack's was a common ground, even if
+there had been no other. But now there are circles and circles, I
+believe, rings that touch occasionally, but never break and mingle. I am
+afraid poor Georgie's set is not quite so nice as I could have wished.
+Yet Lesbia writes as if she were in raptures with her chaperon, and with
+all the people she meets. And then Georgie tells me that this Mr.
+Smithson whom Lesbia has refused is a very important personage, a
+millionaire, and very likely to be made a peer.'
+
+'A new peer,' said Mary, making a wry face. 'One would rather have an
+old commoner. I always fancy a newly-made peer must be like a
+newly-built house, glaring, and staring, and arid and uncongenial.'
+
+'_C'est selon_,' said Lady Maulevrier. 'One would not despise a Chatham
+or a Wellington because of the newness of his title; but a man who has
+only money to recommend him----'
+
+Lady Maulevrier left her sentence unfinished, save by a shrug; while
+Mary made another wry face. She had that grand contempt for sordid
+wealth which is common to young people who have never known the want of
+money.
+
+'I hope Lesbia will marry some one better than Mr. Smithson,' she said.
+
+'I hope so too, dear; and yet do you know I have an idea that Lesbia
+means to accept Mr. Smithson, or she would hardly have consented to go
+to his house for the Henley week. Here is a letter from Georgie Kirkbank
+which you will have to answer for me to-morrow--a letter full of
+raptures about Mr. Smithson's place in Berkshire, Rood Hall. I remember
+the house well. I was there nearly fifty years ago, when the Heronvilles
+owned it; and now the Heronvilles are all dead or ruined, and this city
+person is master of the fine old mansion. It is a strange world, Mary.'
+
+From that time forward Mary and her grandmother were on more
+confidential terms, and when, two days later, Fellside was startled into
+life by the unexpected arrival of Lord Maulevrier and Mr. Hammond, the
+dowager seemed almost as pleased as her granddaughter at the arrival of
+the young men.
+
+As for Mary, she was almost beside herself with joy when she heard their
+voices from the lawn, and, rushing to the shrubbery, saw them walk up
+the hill, as she had seen them on that first evening nearly a year ago,
+when John Hammond came as a stranger to Fellside.
+
+She tried to take her joy soberly, though her eyes were dancing with
+delight, as she went to the porch to meet them.
+
+'What extraordinary young men you are,' she said, as she emerged
+breathless from her lover's embrace. 'The idea of your descending upon
+us without a moment's notice. Why did you not write or telegraph, that
+your rooms might be ready?'
+
+'Am I to understand that all the spare rooms at Fellside are kept as
+damp as at the bottom of the lake?' asked Maulevrier. 'I did not
+think any preparation was necessary; but we can go back if we're
+not wanted, can't we, Jack?'
+
+'You darling,' cried Mary, hanging affectionately upon her brother's
+arm. 'You _know_ I was only joking, you _know_ how enraptured I am to
+have you.'
+
+'To have _me_, only me,' said Maulevrier. 'Jack doesn't count, I
+suppose?'
+
+'You know how glad I am, and that I want to hide my gladness,' answered
+Mary, radiant and blushing like the rich red roses in the porch. 'You
+men are so vain. And now come and see grandmother, she will be cheered
+by your arrival. She has been so good to me just lately, so sweet.'
+
+'She might have been good and sweet to you all your life,' said Hammond.
+'I am not prepared to be grateful to her at a moment's notice for any
+crumbs of affection she may throw you.'
+
+'Oh but you must be grateful, sir; and you must love her and pity her,'
+retorted Mary. 'Think how sadly she has suffered. We cannot be too kind
+to her, or too fond of her, poor dear.'
+
+'Mary is right,' said Hammond, half in jest and half in earnest. 'What
+wonderful instincts these young women have.'
+
+'Come and see her ladyship; and then you must have dinner, just as you
+had that first evening,' said Mary. 'We'll act that first evening over
+again, Jack; only you can't fall in love with Lesbia, as she isn't
+here.'
+
+'I don't think I surrendered that first evening, Mary. Though I thought
+your sister the loveliest girl I had ever seen.'
+
+'And what did you think of me, sir? Tell me that,' said Mary.
+
+'Shall I tell you the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the
+truth?'
+
+'Of course.'
+
+'Then I freely confess that I did not think about you at all. You were
+there--a pretty, innocent, bright young maiden, with big brown eyes and
+auburn hair; but I thought no more about you than I did about the
+Gainsborough on the wall, which you very much resemble.'
+
+'That is most humiliating,' said Mary, pouting a little in the midst of
+her bliss.
+
+'No, dearest, it is only natural,' answered Hammond. 'I believe if all
+the happy lovers in this world could be questioned, at least half of
+them would confess to having thought very little about each other at
+first meeting. They meet, and touch hands, and part again, and never
+guess the mystery of the future, which wraps them round like a cloud,
+never say of each other. There is my fate; and then they meet again, and
+again, as hazard wills, and never know that they are drifting to their
+doom.'
+
+Mary rang bells and gave orders, just as she had done in that summer
+gloaming a year ago. The young men had arrived just at the same hour, on
+the stroke of nine, when the eight o'clock dinner was over and done
+with; for a _tete-a-tete_ meal with Fraeulein Mueller was not a feast to
+be prolonged on account of its felicity. Perhaps they had so contrived
+as to arrive exactly at this hour.
+
+Lady Maulevrier received them both with extreme cordiality. But the
+young men saw a change for the worse in the invalid since the spring.
+The face was thinner, the eyes too bright, the flush upon the hollow
+cheek had a hectic tinge, the voice was feebler. Hammond was reminded of
+a falcon or an eagle pining and wasting in a cage.
+
+'I am very glad to see you, Mr. Hammond,' said Lady Maulevrier, giving
+him her hand, and addressing him with unwonted cordiality. 'It was a
+happy thought that brought you and Maulevrier here. When an old woman is
+as near the grave as I am her relatives ought to look after her. I shall
+be glad to have a little private conversation with you to-morrow, Mr.
+Hammond, if you can spare me a few minutes.'
+
+'As many hours, if your ladyship pleases,' said Hammond. 'My time is
+entirely at your service.'
+
+'Oh, no, you will want to be roaming about the hills with Mary,
+discussing your plans for the future. I shall not encroach too much on
+your time. But I am very glad you are here.'
+
+'We shall only trespass on you for a few days,' said Maulevrier, 'just a
+flying visit.'
+
+'How is it that you are not both at Henley?' asked Mary. 'I thought all
+the world was at Henley.'
+
+'Who is Henley? what is Henley?' demanded Maulevrier, pretending
+ignorance.
+
+'I believe Maulevrier has lost so much money backing his college boat
+on previous occasions that he is glad to run away from the regatta this
+year,' said Hammond.
+
+'I have a sister there,' replied his friend. 'That's an all-sufficient
+explanation. When a fellow's women-kind take to going to races and
+regattas it is high time for _him_ to stop away.'
+
+'Have you seen Lesbia lately?' asked his grandmother.
+
+'About ten days ago.'
+
+'And did she seem happy?'
+
+Maulevrier shrugged his shoulders.
+
+'She was vacillating between the refusal or the acceptance of a million
+of money and four or five fine houses. I don't know whether that
+condition of mind means happiness. I should call it an intermediate
+state.'
+
+'Why do you make silly jokes about serious questions? Do you think
+Lesbia means to accept this Mr. Smithson?'
+
+'All London thinks so.'
+
+'And is he a good man?'
+
+'Good for a hundred thousand pounds at half an hour's notice.'
+
+'Is he worthy of your sister?'
+
+Maulevrier paused, looked at his grandmother with a curious expression,
+and then replied--
+
+'I think he is--quite.'
+
+'Then I am content that she should marry him,' said Lady Maulevrier,
+'although he is a nobody.'
+
+'Oh, but he is a very important nobody, a nobody who can get a peerage
+next year, backed by the Maulevrier influence, which I suppose would
+count for something.'
+
+'Most of my friends are dead,' said Lady Maulevrier, 'but there are a
+few survivors of the past who might help me.'
+
+'I don't think there'll be any difficulty or doubt about the peerage.
+Smithson stumped up very handsomely at the last General Election, and
+the Conservatives are not strong enough to be ungrateful. "These have
+no master."'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII.
+
+WAYS AND MEANS.
+
+
+The three days that followed were among the happiest days of Mary
+Haselden's young life. Lady Maulevrier had become strangely indulgent. A
+softening influence of some kind had worked upon that haughty spirit,
+and it seemed as if her whole nature was changed--or it might be, Mary
+thought, that this softer side of her character had always been turned
+to Lesbia, while to Mary herself it was altogether new. Lesbia had been
+the peach on the sunny southern wall, ripening and reddening in a flood
+of sunshine; Mary had been the stunted fruit growing in a north-east
+corner, hidden among leaves, blown upon by cold winds green and hard and
+sour for lack of the warm bright light. And now Mary felt the sunshine,
+and grew glad and gay in those glowing beams.
+
+'Dear grandmother, I believe you are beginning to love me,' she said,
+bending over to arrange the invalid's pillows in the July morning, the
+fresh mountain air blowing in upon old and young from the great open
+window, like a caress.
+
+'I am beginning to know you,' answered Lady Maulevrier, gently.
+
+'I think it is the magic of love, Mary, that has sweetened and softened
+your nature, and endeared you to me. I think you have grown ever so much
+sweeter a girl since your engagement. Or it may be that you were the
+same always, and it was I who was blind. Lesbia was all in all to me.
+All in all--and now I am nothing to her,' she murmured, to herself
+rather than to Mary.
+
+'I am so proud to think that you see an improvement in me since my
+engagement,' said Mary, modestly. 'I have tried very hard to improve
+myself, so that I might be more worthy of him.'
+
+'You are worthy, Mary, worthy of the best and the highest: and I believe
+that, although you are making what the world calls a very bad match, you
+are marrying wisely. You are wedding yourself to a life of obscurity;
+but what does that matter, if it be a happy life? I have known what it
+is to pursue the phantom fortune, and to find youth and hope and
+happiness vanish from the pathway which I followed.'
+
+'Dear grandmother, I wish you had been able to marry the man of your
+choice,' answered Mary, tenderly.
+
+She was ready to weep over that wasted life of her grandmother's; to
+weep for that forced parting of true lovers, albeit the tragedy was half
+a century old.
+
+'I should have been a happier woman and a better woman if fate had been
+kind to me, Mary,' answered Lady Maulevrier, gravely; 'and now that I am
+daily drawing nearer the land of shadows, I will not stand in the way of
+faithful lovers. I have a fancy, Mary, that I have not many months to
+live.'
+
+'Only an invalid's fancy,' said Mary, stooping down to kiss the pale
+forehead, so full of thought and care; 'only a morbid fancy, nursed in
+the monotony of this quiet room. Maulevrier and Jack and I must find
+some way of amusing you.'
+
+'You will never amuse me out of that conviction, my dear. I can see the
+shadows lengthening and the sands running out. There are but a few
+grains left in the glass, Mary; and while those last I should like to
+see you and Mr. Hammond married. I should like to feel that your fate is
+settled before I go. God knows what confusion and trouble may follow my
+death.'
+
+This was said with a sharp ring of despair.
+
+'I am not going to leave you, grandmother,' said Mary.
+
+'Not even for the man you love? You are a good girl, Mary. Lesbia has
+forsaken me for a lesser temptation.'
+
+'Grandmother, that is hardly fair. It was your own wish to have Lesbia
+presented this season,' remonstrated Mary, loyal to the absent.
+
+'True, my dear. I saw she was very tired of her life here, and I thought
+it was better. But I'm sorely afraid London has spoiled her. No, Mary,
+you can stay with me to the end, if you like. There is room enough for
+you and your husband under this roof. I like this Mr. Hammond. His is
+the only face that ever recalled the face of the dead. Yes, I like him;
+and although I know nothing about him except what Maulevrier tells
+me--and that is of the scantiest--still I feel, somehow, that I can
+trust him. Send your lover to me, Mary. I want to have a serious talk
+with him.'
+
+Mary ran off to obey, fluttered, blushing, and trembling. This idea of
+marriage in the immediate future was to be the last degree startling. A
+year had seemed a very long time; and she had been told that she and her
+lover must wait a year at the very least; so that vision of marriage had
+seemed afar off in the dim shadowland of the future. She had been told
+nothing by her lover of where she was to live, or what her life was to
+be like when she was his wife. And now she was told that they were to be
+married almost immediately, that they were to live in the house where
+she had been reared, in that familiar land of hills and waters, that
+they were to roam about the dales and mountains together, they two, as
+man and wife. The whole thing was wonderful, bewildering, impossible
+almost.
+
+This was on the first morning after Mr. Hammond's arrival. Maulevrier
+had gone off to hunt the Rotha for otters, and was up to his waist in
+the water, no doubt, by this time. Hammond was strolling up and down the
+terrace in front of the house, looking at the green expanse of
+Fairfield, the dark bulk of Seat Sandal, the nearer crests of Helm Crag
+and Silver Howe.
+
+'You are to come to her ladyship directly, please,' said Mary, going up
+to him.
+
+He took both her hands, drew her nearer to him, smiling down at her.
+They had been sitting side by side at the breakfast table half-an-hour
+ago, he waiting upon her as she poured out the tea; yet by his tender
+greeting and the delight in his face it might have been supposed they
+had not met for weeks. Such are the sweet inanities of love.
+
+'What does her ladyship want with me, darling? and why are you
+blushing?' he asked.
+
+'I--I think she is going to talk about--our--marriage,' faltered Mary.
+
+'"Why, I will talk to her upon this theme until mine eyelids can no
+longer wag,"' quoted Hammond. 'Take me to her, Mary. I hope her ladyship
+is growing sensible.'
+
+'She is very kind, very sweet. She has changed so much of late.'
+
+Mary went with him to the door of her ladyship's sitting-room, and there
+left him to go in alone. She went to the library--that room over which a
+gloomy shadow seemed to have hung ever since that awful winter afternoon
+when Mary found Lady Maulevrier lying on the floor in the twilight. But
+it was a noble room, and in her studious hours Mary loved to sit here,
+walled round with books, and able to consult or dip into as many volumes
+as she liked. To-day, however, her mind was not attuned to study. She
+sat with a volume of Macaulay open before her: but her thoughts were not
+with the author. She was wondering what those two were saying in the
+room overhead, and finding all attempts at reading futile, she let her
+head sink back upon the cushion of her deep luxurious chair, and sat
+with her dreamy eyes fixed on the summer landscape and her thoughts with
+her lover.
+
+Lady Maulevrier looked very wan and tired in the bright morning light,
+when Mr. Hammond seated himself beside her sofa. The change in her
+appearance since the spring was more marked to-day than it had seemed to
+him last night in the dim lamplight. Yes, there was need here for a
+speedy settlement of all earthly matters. The traveller was nearing the
+mysterious end of the journey. The summons might come at any hour.
+
+'Mr. Hammond, I feel a confidence in your integrity, your goodness of
+heart, and high principle which I never thought I could feel for a man
+of whom I know so little,' began Lady Maulevrier, gravely. 'All I know
+of you or your antecedents is what my grandson has told me--and I must
+say that the information so given has been very meagre. And yet I
+believe in you--and yet I am going to trust you, wholly, blindly,
+implicitly--and I am going to give you my granddaughter, ever so much
+sooner than I intended to give her to you. Soon, very soon, if you will
+have her!'
+
+'I will have her to-morrow, if there is time to get a special licence,'
+exclaimed Hammond, bending down to kiss the dowager's hand, radiant with
+delight.
+
+'You shall marry her very soon, if you like, marry her by special
+licence, in this room. I should like to see your wedding. I have a
+strange impatience to behold one of my granddaughters happily married,
+to know that her future is secure, that come weal, come woe, she is safe
+in the protection of a brave true man. I am not scared by the idea of a
+little poverty. That is often the best education for youth. But while
+you and I are alone we may as well talk about ways and means. Perhaps
+you may hardly feel prepared to take upon yourself the burden of a wife
+this year.'
+
+'As well this year as next. I am not afraid.'
+
+'Young men are so rash. However, as long as I live your responsibilities
+will be only nominal. This house will be Mary's home, and yours whenever
+you are able to occupy it. Of course I should not like to interfere with
+your professional efforts--but if you are cultivating literature,--why
+books can be written at Fellside better than in London. This lakeland of
+ours has been the nursery of deathless writers. But I feel that my days
+are numbered--and when I am dead--well death is always a cause of change
+and trouble of some kind, and Mary will profit very little by my death.
+The bulk of my fortune is left to Lesbia. I have taught her to consider
+herself my heiress; and it would be unjust to alter my will.'
+
+'Pray do not dream of such a thing--there is no need--Mary will be rich
+enough,' exclaimed Hammond, hastily.
+
+'With five hundred a year and the fruits of your industry,' said Lady
+Maulevrier. 'Yes, yes, with modest aspirations and simple habits, people
+can live happily, honourably, on a few hundreds a year. And if you
+really mean to devote yourself to literature, and do not mind burying
+yourself alive in this lake district until you have made your name as a
+writer, why the problem of ways and means will be easily solved.'
+
+'Dear Lady Maulevrier, I am not afraid of ways and means. That is the
+last question which need trouble you. I told Lesbia when I offered
+myself to her nearly a year ago, that if she would trust me, if she
+would cleave to me, poverty should never touch her, sordid care should
+never come near her dwelling. But she could not believe me. She was like
+Thomas the twin. I could show her no palpable security for my
+promise--and she would not believe for the promise' sake. Mary trusted
+me; and Mary shall not regret her confidence.'
+
+'Ah! it was different with Lesbia,' sighed Lady Maulevrier. 'I taught
+her to be ambitious. She had been schooled to set a high price upon
+herself. I know she cared for you--very much, even. But she could not
+face poverty; or, if you like, I will say that she could not face an
+obscure existence--sacrifice her ambition, a justifiable ambition in one
+so lovely, at the bidding of her first wooer. And then, again, she was
+told that if she married you, she would for ever forfeit my regard. You
+must not blame her for obeying me.'
+
+'I do not blame her; for I have won the peerless pearl--the jewel above
+all price--a perfect woman. And now, dear Lady Maulevrier, give me but
+your consent, and I am off to York this afternoon, to interview the
+Archbishop, and get the special licence, which will allow me to wed my
+darling here by your couch to-morrow afternoon.'
+
+'I have no objection to your getting the licence immediately; but you
+must let me write a cheque before you go. A special licence is
+expensive--I believe it costs fifty pounds.'
+
+'If it cost a thousand I should not think it dear. But I have a notion
+that I shall be able to get the licence--cheap. You have made me wild
+with happiness.'
+
+'But you must not refuse my cheque.'
+
+'Indeed I must, Lady Maulevrier. I am not quite such a pauper as you
+think me.'
+
+'But fifty pounds and the expenses of the journey; an outlay altogether
+unexpected on your part. I begin to fear that you are very reckless. A
+spendthrift shall never marry my granddaughter, with my consent.'
+
+'I have never yet spent above half my income.'
+
+Lady Maulevrier looked at him in wonderment and perplexity. Had the
+young man gone suddenly out of his mind, overwhelmed by the greatness of
+his bliss?
+
+'But I thought you were poor,' she faltered.
+
+'It has pleased you to think so, dear Lady Maulevrier; but I have more
+than enough for all my wants, and I shall be able to provide a fitting
+home for my Mary, when you can spare her to preside over her own
+establishment.'
+
+'Establishment' seemed rather a big word, but Lady Maulevrier supposed
+that in this case it meant a cook and housemaid, with perhaps later on a
+boy in buttons, to break windows and block the pantry sink with missing
+teaspoons.
+
+'Well, Mr. Hammond, this is quite an agreeable surprise,' she said,
+after a brief silence. 'I really thought you were poor--as poor as a
+young man of gentlemanlike habits could be, and yet exist. Perhaps you
+will wonder why, thinking this, I brought myself to consent to your
+marriage with my granddaughter.'
+
+'It was a great proof of your confidence in me, or in Providence,'
+replied Hammond, smiling.
+
+'It was no such thing. I was governed by a sentiment--a memory. It was
+my love for the dead which softened my heart towards you, John Hammond.'
+
+'Indeed!' he murmured, softly.
+
+'There was but one man in this world I ever fondly loved--the love of my
+youth--my dearest and best, in the days when my heart was fresh and
+innocent and unambitious. That man was Ronald Hollister, afterwards Lord
+Hartfield. And yours is the only face that ever recalled his to my mind.
+It is but a vague likeness--a look now and then; but slight as that
+likeness is it has been enough to make my heart yearn towards you, as
+the heart of a mother to her son.'
+
+John Hammond knelt beside the sofa, and bent his handsome face over the
+pale face on the pillow, imprinting such a kiss as a son might have
+given. His eyes were full of tears.
+
+'Dear Lady Maulevrier, think that it is the spirit of the dead which
+blesses you for your fidelity to old memories,' he said, tenderly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII.
+
+BY SPECIAL LICENCE.
+
+
+After that interview with John Hammond all the arrangements for the
+marriage were planned by Lady Maulevrier with a calm and business-like
+capacity which seemed extraordinary in one so frail and helpless. For a
+little while after Hammond left her she remained lost in a reverie,
+deeply affected by the speech and manner of her granddaughter's lover,
+as he gave her that first kiss of duty and affection, the affection of
+one who in that act declared the allegiance of a close and holy bond.
+
+Yes, she told herself, this marriage, humble as it might be, was
+altogether satisfactory. Her own feeling towards the man of her
+granddaughter's choice was one of instinctive affection. Her heart had
+yearned to him from the beginning of their acquaintance; but she had
+schooled herself to hide all indications of her liking for him, she had
+made every effort to keep him at a distance, deeming his very merits a
+source of danger in a household where there were two fresh
+impressionable girls.
+
+And despite all her caution and care he had succeeded in winning one of
+those girls: and she was glad, very glad, that he had so succeeded in
+baffling her prudence. And now it was agreeable to discover that he was
+not quite such a pauper as she had supposed him to be.
+
+Her heart felt lighter than it had been for some time when she set about
+planning the wedding.
+
+The first step in the business was to send for James Steadman. He came
+immediately, grave and quiet as of old, and stood with his serious eyes
+bent upon the face of his mistress, awaiting her instructions.
+
+'Lady Mary is going to be married to Mr. Hammond, by special licence, in
+this room, to-morrow afternoon, if it can be managed so soon,' said Lady
+Maulevrier.
+
+'I am very glad to hear it, my lady,' answered Steadman, without the
+faintest indication of surprise.
+
+'Why are you so--particularly glad?' asked his mistress, looking at him
+sharply.
+
+'Because Lady Mary's presence in this house is a source of danger
+to--your arrangements. She is very energetic and enterprising--very
+shrewd--and--well, she is a woman--so I suppose there can be no harm in
+saying she is somewhat inquisitive. Things will be much safer here when
+Lady Mary is gone!'
+
+'But she will not be gone--she is not going away--except for a very
+brief honeymoon. I cannot possibly do without her. She has become
+necessary to my life, Steadman; and there is so little left of that life
+now, that there is no need for me to sacrifice the last gleams of
+sunshine. The girl is very sweet, and loving, and true. I was not half
+fond enough of her in the past; but she has made herself very dear to me
+of late. There are many things in this life, Steadman, which we only
+find out too late.'
+
+'But, surely, my lady, Lady Mary will leave Fellside to go to a home of
+her own after her marriage.'
+
+'No, I tell you, Steadman,' his mistress answered, with a touch of
+impatience; 'Lady Mary and her husband will make this house their home
+so long as I am here. It will not be long.'
+
+'God grant it may be very long before you cease to be mistress here,'
+answered Steadman, with real feeling; and then in a lower tone he went
+on: 'Pardon me, my lady, for the suggestion, but do you think it wise to
+have Mr. Hammond here as a resident?'
+
+'Why should it not be wise? Mr. Hammond is a gentleman.'
+
+'True, my lady; but any accident, such as that which brought Lady Mary
+into the old garden----'
+
+'No such accident need occur--it must not occur, Steadman,' exclaimed
+Lady Maulevrier, with kindling eyes. She who had so long ruled supreme
+was not inclined to have any desire of hers questioned. 'There must have
+been gross carelessness that day--carelessness on your part, or that
+stable door would never have been left open. The key ought to have been
+in your possession. It ought not to have been in the power of the
+stableman to open that door. As to Mr. Hammond's presence at Fellside, I
+cannot see any danger--any reason why harm should come of it, more than
+of Lord Maulevrier's presence here in the past.'
+
+'The two gentlemen are so different, my lady,' said Steadman, with a
+gloomy brow. 'His lordship is so light-hearted and careless, his mind
+taken up with his horses, guns, dogs, fishing, shooting, and all kinds
+of sport. He is not a gentleman to take much notice of anything out of
+his own line. But this Mr. Hammond is different--a very thoughtful
+gentleman, an inquiring mind, as one would say.'
+
+'Steadman, you are getting cowardly in your old age. The danger--such a
+risk as you hint at, must be growing less and less every day. After
+forty years of security----'
+
+'Security' echoed Steadman, with a monosyllabic laugh which expressed
+intense bitterness. 'Say forty years during which I have felt myself
+upon the edge of a precipice every day and every hour. Security! But
+perhaps you are right, my lady, I am growing old and nervous, a feebler
+man than I was a few years ago, feebler in body and mind. Let Mr.
+Hammond make his home here, if it pleases your ladyship to have him. So
+long as I am well and able to get about there can be no danger of
+anything awkward happening.'
+
+Lady Maulevrier looked alarmed.
+
+'But you have no expectation of falling ill, I hope, Steadman; you have
+no premonition of any malady?'
+
+'No, my lady, none--except the malady of old age. I feel that I am not
+the man I once was, that is all. My brain is getting woolly, and my
+sight is clouded now and then. And if I were to fall ill suddenly----'
+
+'Oh, it would be terrible, it would be a dire calamity! There is your
+wife, certainly, to look after things, but----'
+
+'My wife would do her best, my lady. She is a faithful creature, but she
+is not--yes, without any unkindness I must say that Mrs. Steadman is not
+a genius!'
+
+'Oh, Steadman, you must not fail me! I am horror-stricken at the mere
+idea,' exclaimed Lady Maulevrier. 'After forty years--great God! it
+would be terrible. Lesbia, Mary, Maulevrier! the great, malignant,
+babbling world outside these doors. I am hemmed round with perils. For
+God's sake preserve your strength. Take care of your health. You are my
+strong rock. If you feel that there is anything amiss with you, or that
+your strength is failing, consult Mr. Horton--neglect no precaution. The
+safety of this house, of the family honour, hangs upon you.'
+
+'Pray do not agitate yourself, my lady,' entreated Steadman. 'I was
+wrong to trouble you with my fears. I shall not fail you, be sure.
+Although I am getting old, I shall hold out to the end.'
+
+'The end cannot be very far off,' said Lady Maulevrier, gloomily.
+
+'I thought that forty years ago, my lady. But you are right--the end
+must be near now. Yes, it must be near. And now, my lady, your orders
+about the wedding.'
+
+'It will take place to-morrow, as I told you, in this room. You will go
+to the Vicar and ask him to officiate. His two daughters will no doubt
+consent to be Lady Mary's bridesmaids. You will make the request in my
+name. Perhaps the Vicar will call this afternoon and talk matters over
+with me. Lady Mary and her husband will go to Cumberland for a brief
+honeymoon--a week at most--and then they will come back to Fellside.
+Tell Mrs. Power to prepare the east wing for them. She will make one of
+the rooms into a boudoir for Lady Mary; and let everything be as bright
+and pretty as good taste can make it. She can telegraph to London for
+any new furniture that may be wanted to complete her arrangements. And
+now send Lady Mary to me.'
+
+Mary came, fresh from the pine-wood, where she had been walking with her
+lover; her lover of to-day, her husband to-morrow. He had told her how
+he was to start for York directly after luncheon, and to come back by
+the earliest train next day, and how they two were to be married
+to-morrow afternoon.
+
+'It is more wonderful than any dream that I ever dreamt.' exclaimed
+Mary. 'But how can it be? I have not even a wedding gown.'
+
+'A fig for wedding gowns! It is Mary I am to wed, not her gown. Were you
+clad like patient Grisel I should be content. Besides you have no end of
+pretty gowns. And you are to be dressed for travelling, remember; for I
+am going to carry you off to Lodore directly we are married, and you
+will have to clamber up the rocky bed of the waterfall to see the sun
+set behind the Borrowdale hills in your wedding gown. It had better be
+one of those neat little tailor gowns which become you so well.'
+
+'I will wear whatever you tell me,' answered Mary. 'I shall always dress
+to please you, and not the outside world.'
+
+'Will you, my Griselda. Some day you shall be dressed as Grisel was--
+
+    "In a cloth of gold that brighte shone,
+    With a coroune of many a riche stone."
+
+'Yes, you darling, when you are Lord Chancellor; and till that day comes
+I will wear tailor gowns, linsey-wolsey, anything you like,' cried Mary,
+laughing.
+
+She ran to her grandmother's room, ineffably content, without a thought
+of trousseau or finery; but then Mary Haselden was one of those few
+young women for whom life is not a question of fashionable raiment.
+
+'Mary, I am going to send you off upon your honeymoon to-morrow
+afternoon,' said Lady Maulevrier, smiling at the bright, happy face
+which was bent over her. 'Will you come back and nurse a fretful old
+woman when the honeymoon is over?'
+
+'The honeymoon will never be over,' answered Mary, joyously. 'Our wedded
+life is to be one long honeymoon. But I will come back in a very few
+days, and take care of you. I am not going to let you do without me, now
+that you have learnt to love me.'
+
+'And will you be content to stay with me when your husband has gone to
+London?'
+
+'Yes, but I shall try to prevent his going very often, or staying very
+long. I shall try to wind myself into his heart, so that there will be
+an aching void there when we are parted.'
+
+Lady Maulevrier proceeded to tell Mary all her arrangements. Three
+handsome rooms in the east wing, a bedroom, dressing-room, and boudoir,
+were to be made ready for the newly-married couple. Fraeulein Mueller was
+to be dismissed with a retiring pension, in order that Lady Mary and her
+husband might feel themselves master and mistress in the lower part of
+the house.
+
+'And if your husband really means to devote himself to literature, he
+can have no better workshop than the library I have put together,' said
+Lady Maulevrier.
+
+'And no better adviser and guide than you, dear grandmother, you who
+have read everything that has been written worth reading during the last
+half century.'
+
+'I have read a great deal, Mary, but I hardly know if I am any wiser on
+that account,' answered Lady Maulevrier. 'After all, however much of
+other people's wisdom we may devour, it is in ourselves that we are
+thus, or thus. Our past follies rise up against us at the end of life;
+and we see how little our book-learning has helped us to stand against
+foolish impulses, against evil passions. "Be good," Mary, "and let who
+will be wise," as the poet says. A faithful heart is your only anchor in
+the stormy seas of life. My dear, I am so glad you are going to be
+married.'
+
+'It is very sudden,' said Mary.
+
+'Very sudden; yet in your case that does not much matter. You have quite
+made up your mind about Mr. Hammond, I believe.'
+
+'Made up my mind! I began to worship him the first night he came here.'
+
+'Foolish child. Well, there is no need to wait for settlements. You have
+only your allowance as Lord Maulevrier's daughter--a first charge on the
+estate, which cannot be made away with or anticipated, and of which no
+husband can deprive you.'
+
+'He shall have every sixpence of it,' murmured Mary.
+
+'And Mr. Hammond, though he tells me he is better off than I supposed,
+can have nothing to settle. So there will be nothing forfeited by a
+marriage without settlements.'
+
+Mary could not enter upon the question. It was even of less importance
+than the wedding gown.
+
+The gong sounded for luncheon.
+
+'Steadman's dogcart is to take Mr. Hammond to the station at half-past
+two,' said Lady Maulevrier, 'so you had better go and give him his
+luncheon.'
+
+Mary needed no second bidding. She flew downstairs, and met her lover in
+the hall.
+
+What a happy luncheon it was! Fraeulein 'mounched, and mounched, and
+mounched,' like the sailor's wife eating chestnuts: but those two lovers
+lunched upon moonshine, upon each other's little words and little looks,
+upon their own ineffable bliss. They sat side by side, and helped each
+other to the nicest things on the table, but neither could eat, and
+they got considerably mixed in their way of eating, taking chutnee with
+strawberry cream, and currant jelly with asparagus. What did it matter?
+Everything tasted of bliss.
+
+'You have had absolutely nothing to eat,' said Mary, piteously, as the
+dogcart came grinding round upon the dry gravel.
+
+'Oh, I have done splendidly--thanks. I have just had a macaroon and some
+of that capital gorgonzola. God bless you, dearest, and _a revoir, a
+revoir_ to-morrow.'
+
+'And to-morrow I shall be Mary Hammond,' cried Mary, clasping her hands.
+'Isn't it capital fun?'
+
+They were in the porch alone. The servants were all at dinner, save the
+groom with the cart. Miss Mueller was still munching at the well-spread
+table in the dining-room.
+
+John Hammond folded his sweetheart in his arms for one brief embrace;
+there was no time for loitering. In another moment he was springing into
+the cart. A shake of the reins, and he was driving slowly down the steep
+avenue.
+
+'Life is full of partings,' Mary said to herself, as she watched the
+last glimpse of the dogcart between the trees down in the road below,
+'but this one is to be very short, thank God.'
+
+She wondered what she should do with herself for the rest of the
+afternoon, and finally, finding that she was not wanted by her
+grandmother until afternoon tea, she set out upon a round of visits to
+her favourite cottagers, to bid them a long farewell as a spinster.
+
+'You'll be away a long time, I suppose, Lady Mary?' said one of her
+humble friends; 'you'll be going to Switzerland or Italy, or some of
+those foreign parts where great ladies and gentlemen travel for their
+honeymoons?'
+
+But Mary declared that she would be absent a week at longest. She was
+coming back to take care of her invalid grandmother; and she was not
+going to marry a great gentleman, but a man who would have to work for
+his living.
+
+She went back to Fellside, and read the _Times_, and poured out Lady
+Maulevrier's tea, and sat on her low stool by the sofa, and the old and
+the young woman were as happy and confidential together as if they had
+been always the nearest and dearest to each other. Her ladyship had seen
+Miss Mueller, and had informed that excellent person that her services at
+Fellside would no longer be required after Lady Mary's marriage; but
+that her devotion to her duties during the last fourteen years should be
+rewarded by a pension which, together with her savings, would enable her
+to spend the rest of her days in repose. Miss Mueller was duly grateful,
+and owned to a tender longing for the _Heimath_, and declared herself
+ready to retire from her post whenever her ladyship pleased.
+
+'I shall go back to Germany directly I leave you, and I shall live and
+die there, unless I am wanted by one of my old pupils. But should Lady
+Lesbia or Lady Mary need my services for their daughters, in days to
+come, they can command me. For no one else will I abandon the
+Fatherland.'
+
+The Fraeulein thus easily disposed of, Lady Mary felt that matrimony
+would verily mean independence. And yet she was prepared to regard her
+husband as her master. She meant to obey him in all meekness and
+reverence of spirit.
+
+She spent the rest of the afternoon and the whole of the evening in her
+grandmother's sitting-room, dining _tete-a-tete_ with the invalid for
+the first time since her illness. Lady Maulevrier talked much of Mary's
+future, and of Lesbia's; but it was evident that she was full of
+uneasiness upon the latter subject.
+
+'I don't know what Lesbia is going to do with her life,' she said, with
+a sigh. 'Her letters tell me of nothing but gowns and parties; and
+Georgina Kirkbank can only expatiate upon Mr. Smithson's wealth, and the
+grand position he is going to occupy by-and-by. I should like to see
+both my granddaughters married before I die--yes, I should like to see
+Lesbia's fate secure, if she were to be only Lady Lesbia Smithson.'
+
+'She cannot fail to make a good match, grandmother,' said Mary.
+
+'I am beginning to lose faith in her future,' answered Lady Maulevrier.
+'There seems to be a fatality about the career of particularly
+attractive girls. They are too confident of their power to succeed in
+life. They trifle with fortune, fascinate the wrong people, and keep the
+right people at arm's length. I think if I had been Lesbia's guide in
+society her first season would have counted for more than it is likely
+to count for under Lady Kirkbank's management. I should have awakened
+Lesbia from the dream of dress and dancing--the mere butterfly life of a
+girl who never looks beyond the present moment. But now go and give
+orders about your packing, Mary. It is past ten, and Clara had better
+pack your trunks early to-morrow morning.'
+
+Clara was a modest Easedale damsel, who had been promoted to be Lady
+Mary's personal attendant, when the more mature Kibble had gone away
+with Lady Lesbia. Mary required very little waiting upon, but she was
+not the less glad to have a neat little smiling maiden devoted to her
+service, ready to keep her rooms neat and trim, to go on errands to the
+cottagers, to arrange the flowers in the old china bowls, and to make
+herself generally useful.
+
+It seemed a strange thing to have to furnish a trousseau from the
+wardrobe of everyday life--a trousseau in which nothing, except
+half-a-dozen pairs of gloves, a pair of boots, and a few odds and ends
+of lace and ribbons would be actually new. Mary thought very little of
+the matter, but the position of things struck her maid as altogether
+extraordinary and unnatural.
+
+'You should have seen the things Miss Freeman had, Lady Mary,' exclaimed
+the damsel, 'the daughter of that cotton-spinning gentleman from
+Manchester, who lives at The Gables--you should have seen her new gowns
+and things when she was married. Mrs. Freeman's maid keeps company with
+my brother James--he's in the stables at Freeman's, you know, Lady
+Mary--and she asked me in to look at the trousseau two days before the
+wedding. I never saw such beautiful dresses--such hats--such
+bonnets--such jackets and mantles. It was like going into one of those
+grand shops at York, and having all the things in the shop pulled out
+for one to look at--such silks and satins--and trimmed--ah! how those
+dresses was trimmed. The mystery was how the young lady could ever get
+herself into them, or sit down when she'd got one of them on.'
+
+'Instruments of torture, Clara. I should hate such gowns, even if I were
+going to marry a rich man, as I suppose Miss Freeman was.'
+
+'Not a bit of it, Lady Mary. She was only going to marry a Bolton doctor
+with a small practice; but her maid told me she was determined she'd get
+all she could out of her pa, in case he should lose all his money and go
+bankrupt. They said that trousseau cost two thousand pounds.'
+
+'Well, Clara, I'd rather have my tailor gowns, in which I can scramble
+about the ghylls and crags just as I like.' There was a pale yellow
+Indian silk, smothered with soft yellow lace, which would serve for a
+wedding gown; for indifferent as Mary was to the great clothes question,
+she wanted to look in some wise as a bride. A neat chocolate-coloured
+cloth, almost new from the tailor's hands, with a little cloth toque to
+match, would do for the wedding journey. All the details of Mary's
+wardrobe were the perfection of neatness. She had grown very neat and
+careful in her habits since her engagement, anxious to be industrious
+and frugal in all things--a really handy housewife for a hard-worked
+bread-winner. And now she was told that Mr. Hammond was not so poor as
+she had thought. She would not be obliged to stint herself, and manage,
+as she had supposed when she went about among the cottagers, taking
+lessons in household economy. It was almost a disappointment.
+
+She and Clara finished the packing that night, Mary being much too
+excited for the possibility of sleep. There was not much to pack, only
+one roomy American trunk--a trunk which held everything--a Gladstone bag
+for things that might possibly be wanted in a hurry, and a handsome
+dressing-bag, Maulevrier's last birthday gift to his sister.
+
+Mary had received no gifts from her lover, save the plain gold
+engagement ring, and a few new books sent straight from the publishers.
+Clara took care to inform her young mistress that Miss Freeman's
+sweetheart had sent her all manner of splendid presents, scent bottles,
+photograph albums, glove boxes, and other things of beauty, albeit his
+means were supposed to be _nil_. It was evident that Clara disapproved
+of Mr. Hammond's conduct in this matter, and even suspected him of
+meanness.
+
+'He did ought to have sent you his photograph, Lady Mary,' said Clara,
+with a reproachful air.
+
+'I daresay he would have done so, Clara, but he has been photographed
+only once in his life.'
+
+'Lawk a mercy, Lady Mary! Why most young gentlemen have themselves
+photographed in every new place they go to; and as Mr. Hammond has been
+a traveller, like his lordship, I made sure he'd have been photographed
+in knickerbockers and every other kind of attitude.'
+
+Mary had not refrained from asking for her lover's portrait; and he had
+told her that he had carefully abstained from having his countenance
+reproduced in any manner since his fifteenth year, when he had been
+photographed at his mother's desire.
+
+'The present fashion of photographs staring out of every stationer's
+window makes a man's face public property,' he told Mary. 'I don't want
+every street Arab in London to recognise me.'
+
+'But you are not a public man,' said Mary. 'Your photograph would not be
+in all the windows; although, in my humble opinion, you are a very
+handsome man.'
+
+Hammond blushed, laughed, and turned the conversation, and Mary had to
+exist without any picture of her lover.
+
+'Millais shall paint me in his grand Reynolds manner by-and-by,' he told
+Mary.
+
+'Millais! Oh, Jack! When will you and I be able to give a thousand or so
+for a portrait?'
+
+'Ah, when, indeed? But we may as well enjoy our day-dreams, like
+Alnaschar, without smashing our basket of crockery.'
+
+And now Mary, who had managed to exist without the picture, was to have
+the original. He was to be all her own--her master, her lord, her love,
+after to-morrow--unto eternity, in life, and in the grave, and in the
+dim hereafter beyond the grave, they two were to be one. In heaven there
+was to be no marrying or giving in marriage, Mary was told; but her own
+heart cried aloud to her that the happily wedded must remain linked in
+heaven. God would not part the blessed souls of true lovers.
+
+A short sleep, broken by happy dreams, and it was morning, Mary's
+wedding morning, fairest of summer days, July in all her beauty. Mary
+went to her grandmother's room, and waited upon her at breakfast.
+
+Lady Maulevrier was in excellent spirits.
+
+'Everything is arranged, Mary. I have had a telegram from Hammond, who
+has got the licence, and will come at half-past one. At three the Vicar
+will come to marry you, his daughters, Katie and Laura, acting as your
+bridesmaids.'
+
+'Bridesmaids!' exclaimed Mary. 'I forgot all about bridesmaids. Am I
+really to have any?'
+
+'You will have two girls of your own age to bear you company, at any
+rate. I have asked dear old Horton to be present; and he, Fraeulein, and
+Maulevrier will complete the party. It will not be a brilliant wedding,
+Mary, or a costly ceremonial, except for the licence.'
+
+'And poor Jack will have to pay for that,' said Mary, with a long face.
+
+'Poor Jack refused to let me pay for it,' answered Lady Maulevrier. 'He
+is vastly independent, and I fear somewhat reckless.'
+
+'I like him for his independence; but he mustn't be reckless,' said
+Mary, severely.
+
+He was to be the master in all things! and yet she was to exercise a
+restraining influence, she was to guard him against his own weaknesses,
+his too generous impulses. Her voice was to be the voice of prudence.
+This is how Mary understood the marriage tie.
+
+Under ordinary conditions Mary would have been in the avenue, lying in
+wait for her lover, eager to get the very first glimpse of him when he
+arrived, to see him before he had brushed the dust of the journey from
+his raiment. But to-day she hung back. She stayed in her grandmother's
+room and sat beside the sofa, shy, and even a little downcast. This
+lover who was so soon to be transformed into a husband was a formidable
+personage. She dare not rush forth to greet him. Perhaps he had changed
+his mind by this time, and was sorry he had ever asked her to marry him.
+Perhaps he thought he was being hustled into a marriage. He had been
+told that he was to wait at least a year. And now, all in a moment, he
+was sent off to get a special licence. How could she be quite sure that
+he liked this kind of treatment?
+
+If there is any faith to be placed in the human countenance, Mr. Hammond
+was in no wise an unwilling bridegroom; for his face beamed with happy
+light as he came into the room presently, followed by an elderly man
+with grey hair and whiskers, and in a strictly professional frock coat,
+whom the butler announced as Mr. Dorncliffe. Lady Maulevrier looked
+startled, somewhat offended even at this intrusion, and she gave Mr.
+Dorncliffe a very haughty salutation, which was almost more crushing
+than no salutation at all.
+
+Mary stood up by her grandmother's sofa, and looked rather frightened.
+
+'Dear Lady Maulevrier,' said Hammond, 'I ventured to telegraph to my
+lawyer to meet me at York last night, and come on here with me this
+morning. He has prepared a settlement, which I should like you to hear
+him read, and which he will explain to you, if necessary, while Molly
+and I go for a stroll in the grounds.'
+
+He had never called her Molly before. He put his arm round her with a
+proud air of possession, even under her grandmother's eyes. And she
+nestled close up to his side, forgetting everything but the delight of
+belonging to him.
+
+They went downstairs, and through the billiard room to the terrace, and
+from the terrace to the tennis lawn, where John Hammond sat reading
+Heine nearly a year ago, just before he proposed to Lesbia.
+
+'Do you remember that day?' asked Mary, looking at him, solemnly.
+
+'I remember every day and every hour we have spent together since I began
+to love you,' answered Hammond.
+
+'Ah, but this was before you began to love me,' said Mary, with a
+piteous little grimace. 'This was while you were loving Lesbia as hard
+as ever you could. Don't you remember the day you proposed to her--a
+lovely summer day like this, the lake just as blue, the sun shining upon
+Fairfield just as it is shining now, and you sat there reading
+Heine--those sweet, sweet verses, that seemed made of sighs and tears;
+and every now and then you paused and looked up at Lesbia, and there was
+more love in your eyes than in all Heine's poetry, though that brims
+over with love.'
+
+'But how did you know all this, Molly? You were not here.'
+
+'I was not very far off. I was behind those bushes, watching and
+listening. I knew you were in love with Lesbia, and I thought you
+despised me, and I was very, very wretched; and I listened afterwards
+when you proposed to her there--behind the pine trees--and I hated her
+for refusing you, and I am afraid I hated you for proposing to her.'
+
+'When I ought to have been proposing to my Molly, blind fool that I
+was,' said Hammond, smiling tenderly at her, smiling, though his eyes
+were dim with tears. 'My own sweet love, it was a terrible mistake, a
+mistake that might have cost me the happiness of a lifetime. But Fate
+was very good to me, and let me have my Mary after all. And now let us
+sit down under the old red beech and talk till it is time to go and get
+ready for our wedding. I suppose one ought to brush one's hair and wash
+one's hands for that kind of thing, even when the function is not on a
+ceremonious scale.'
+
+Mary laughed.
+
+'I have a prettier gown than this to be married in, although it isn't a
+wedding gown,' she said.
+
+'Oh, by-the-by, I have something for you,' said her lover, 'something in
+the way of ornaments, but I don't suppose you'd care to wear them
+to-day. I'll run and get them.'
+
+He went back to the house, leaving Mary sitting on the rustic bench
+under the fine old copper beech, a tree that had been standing long
+before Lady Maulevrier enlarged the old stone house into a stately
+villa. He returned in a few minutes, bringing a morocco bag about the
+size of those usually carried by lawyers or lawyers' clerks.
+
+'I don't think I have given you anything since we were engaged, Mary,'
+he said, as he seated himself by her side.
+
+Mary blushed, remembering how Clara, the maid, had remarked upon this
+fact.
+
+'You gave me my ring,' she said, looking down at the massive band of
+gold, 'and you have given me ever so many delightful books.'
+
+'Those were very humble gifts, Molly: but to-day I have brought you a
+wedding present.'
+
+He opened the bag and took out a red morocco case, and then half-a-dozen
+more red morocco cases of various shapes and sizes. The first looked
+new, but the others were old-fashioned and passing shabby, as if they
+had been knocking about brokers' shops for the last quarter of a
+century.
+
+'There is my wedding gift, Mary,' he said, handing her the new case.
+
+It contained an exquisitely painted miniature of a very beautiful woman,
+in a large oval locket set with sapphires.
+
+'You have asked me for my portrait, dearest,' he said. 'I give you my
+mother's rather than my own, because I loved her as I never thought to
+love again, till I knew you. I should like you to wear that locket
+sometimes, Mary, as a kind of link between the love of the past and the
+love of the present. Were my mother living, she would welcome and
+cherish my bride and my wife. She is dead, and you and she can never
+meet on earth: but I should like you to be familiar with the face which
+was once the light of my life.'
+
+Mary's eyes filled with tears as she gazed at the face in the miniature.
+It was the portrait of a woman of about thirty--a face of exquisite
+refinement, of calm and pensive beauty.
+
+'I shall treasure this picture always, above all things,' she said: but
+'why did you have it set so splendidly, Jack? No gems were needed to
+give your mother's portrait value in my eyes.'
+
+'I know that, dearest, but I wanted to make the locket worth wearing.
+And now for the other cases. The locket is your lover's free gift, and
+is yours to keep and to bequeath to your children. These are heirlooms,
+and yours only during your husband's lifetime.'
+
+He opened one of the largest cases, and on a bed of black velvet Mary
+beheld a magnificent diamond necklace, with a large pendant. He opened
+another and displayed a set of sprays for the hair. Another contained
+earrings, another bracelets, the last a tiara.
+
+'What are they for?' gasped Mary.
+
+'For my wife to wear.'
+
+'Oh, but I could never wear such things,' she exclaimed, with an idea
+that these must be stage jewellery. 'They are paste, of course--very
+beautiful for people who like that kind of thing--but I don't.'
+
+She felt deeply shocked at this evidence of bad taste on the part of her
+lover. How the things flashed in the sunshine--but so did the crystal
+drops in the old Venetian girandoles.
+
+'No, Molly, they are not paste; they are Brazilian diamonds, and, as
+Maulevrier would say, they are as good as they make them. They are
+heirlooms, Molly. My dear mother wore them in her summer-tide of wedded
+happiness. My grandmother wore them for thirty years before her; my
+great grandmother wore them at the Court of Queen Charlotte, and they
+were worn at the Court of Queen Anne. They are nearly two hundred years
+old; and those central stones in the tiara came out of a cap worn by the
+Great Mogul, and are the largest table diamonds known. They are
+historic, Mary.'
+
+'Why, they must be worth a fortune.'
+
+'They are valued at something over seventy thousand pounds.'
+
+'But why don't you sell them?' exclaimed Mary, opening her eyes wide
+with surprise, 'they would give you a handsome income.'
+
+'They are not mine to sell, Molly. Did not I tell you that they are
+heirlooms? They are the family jewels of the Countesses of Hartfield.'
+
+'Then what are you?'
+
+'Ronald Hollister, Earl of Hartfield, and your adoring lover!'
+
+Mary gave a cry of surprise, a cry of distress even.
+
+'Oh, that is too dreadful!' she exclaimed; 'grandmother will be so
+unhappy. She had set her heart upon Lesbia marrying Lord Hartfield, the
+son of the man _she_ loved.'
+
+'I got wind of her wish more than a year ago,' said Hartfield, 'from
+your brother; and he and I hatched a little plot between us. He told me
+Lesbia was not worthy of his friend's devotion--told me that she was
+vain and ambitious--that she had been educated to be so. I determined to
+come and try my fate. I would try to win her as plain John Hammond. If
+she was a true woman, I told myself, vanity and ambition would be blown
+to the four winds, provided I could win her love. I came, I saw her; and
+to see was to love her. God knows I tried honestly to win her; but I
+had sworn to myself that I would woo her as John Hammond, and I did not
+waver in my resolution--no, not when a word would have turned the scale.
+She liked me, I think, a little; but she did not like the notion of an
+obscure life as the wife of a hardworking professional man. The pomps
+and vanities of this world had it against love or liking, and she gave
+me up. I thank God that the pomps and vanities prevailed; for this happy
+chance gave me Mary, my sweet Wordsworthian damsel, found, like the
+violet or the celandine, by the wayside, in Wordsworth's own country.'
+
+'And you are Lord Hartfield!' exclaimed Mary, still lost in wonder, and
+with no elation at this change in the aspect of her life. 'I always knew
+you were a great man. But poor grandmother! It will be a dreadful
+disappointment to her.'
+
+'I think not. I think she has learned my Molly's value; rather late, as
+I learned it; and I believe she will be glad that one of her
+granddaughters should marry the son of her first lover. Let us go to
+her, love, and see if she is reconciled to the idea, and whether the
+settlement is ready for execution. Dorncliffe and his clerk were working
+at it half through the night.'
+
+'What is the good of a settlement?' asked Mary. 'I'm sure I don't want
+one.'
+
+'Lady Hartfield must not be dependent upon her husband's whim or
+pleasure for her milliner's bill or her private charities,' answered her
+lover, smiling at her eagerness to repudiate anything business-like.
+
+'But I would rather be dependent on your pleasure. I shall never have
+any milliner's bills; and I am sure you would never deny me money for
+charity.'
+
+'You shall not have to ask me for it, except when you have exceeded your
+pin-money. I hope you will do that now and then, just to afford me the
+pleasure of doing you a favour.'
+
+'Hartfield,' repeated Mary, to herself, as they went towards the house;
+'shall I have to call you Hartfield? I don't like the name nearly so
+well as Jack.'
+
+'You shall call me Jack for old sake's sake,' said Hartfield, tenderly.
+
+'How did you think of such a name as Jack?'
+
+'Rather an effort of genius, wasn't it. Well, first and foremost I was
+christened Ronald John--all the Hollisters are christened John--name of
+the founder of the race; and, secondly, Maulevrier and I were always
+plain Mr. Morland and Mr. Hammond in our travels, and always called each
+other Jack and Jim.'
+
+'How nice!' said Mary; 'would you very much mind our being plain Mr. and
+Mrs. Hammond, while we are on our honeymoon trip?'
+
+'I should like it of all things.'
+
+'So should I. People will not take so much notice of us, and we can do
+what we like, and go where we like.'
+
+'Delightful! We'll even disguise ourselves as Cook's tourists, if you
+like. I would not mind.'
+
+They were at the door of Lady Maulevrier's sitting room by this time.
+They went in, and were greeted with smiles.
+
+'Let me look at the Countess of Hartfield that is to be in half an
+hour,' said her ladyship. 'Oh, Mary, Mary, what a blind idiot I have
+been, and what a lucky girl you are! I told you once that you were wiser
+than Lesbia, but I little thought how much wiser you had been.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV.
+
+'OUR LOVE WAS NEW, AND THEN BUT IN THE SPRING.'
+
+
+Henley Regatta was over. It had passed like a tale that is told; like
+Epsom and Ascot, and all the other glories of the London season. Happy
+those for whom the glory of Henley, the grace of Ascot, the fever of
+Epsom, are not as weary as a twice-told tale, bringing with them only
+bitterest memories of youth that has fled, of hopes that have withered,
+of day-dreams that have never been realised. There are some to whom that
+mad hastening from pleasure to pleasure, that rush from scene to scene
+of excitement, that eager crowding into one day and night of gaieties
+which might fairly relieve the placid monotony of a month's domesticity,
+a month's professional work--some there are to whom this Vanity Fair is
+as a treadmill or the turning of a crank, the felon's deepest
+humiliation, purposeless, unprofitable, labour.
+
+The regatta was over, and Lady Kirkbank and her charge hastened back to
+Arlington Street. Theirs was the very first departure; albeit Mr.
+Smithson pleaded hard for a prolongation of their visit. The weather was
+exceptionally lovely, he urged. Water picnics were delightful just
+now--the banks were alive with the colour of innumerable wild flowers,
+as beautiful and more poetical than the gorgeous flora of the Amazon or
+the Paraguay river. And Lady Lesbia had developed a genius for punting;
+and leaning against her pole, with her hair flying loose and sleeves
+rolled up above the elbow, she was a subject for canvas or marble,
+Millais or Adams Acton.
+
+'When we are in Italy I will have her modelled, just in that attitude,
+and that dress,' said Mr. Smithson. 'She will make a lovely companion
+for my Reading Girl: one all repose and reverie, the other all life and
+action. Dear Lady Kirkbank, you really must stay for another week at
+least. Why go back to the smoke and sultriness of town? Here we can
+almost live on the water; and I will send to London for some people to
+make music for us in the evenings, or if you miss your little game at
+"Nap," we will play for an hour or so every night. It shall not be my
+fault if my house is not pleasant for you.'
+
+'Your house is charming, and I shall be here only too often in the days
+to come; you will have more than enough of me _then_, I promise you,'
+replied Georgie, with her girlish laugh, 'but we must not stop a day
+longer now. People would begin to talk. Besides, we have engagements for
+every hour of the week that is coming, and for a fortnight after; and
+then I suppose I ought to take Lesbia to the North to see her
+grandmother, and to discuss all the preparations and arrangements for
+this very serious event in which you and Lesbia are to be the chief
+performers.'
+
+'I shall be very glad to go to Grasmere myself, and to make the
+acquaintance of my future grandmother-in-law,' said Mr. Smithson.
+
+'You will be charmed with her. She belongs to the old school--something
+of a fossil, perhaps, but a very dignified fossil. She has grown old in
+a rustic seclusion, and knows less of _our_ world than a mother abbess;
+but she has read immensely, and is wonderfully clever. I am bound to
+tell you that she has very lofty ideas about her granddaughter; and I
+believe she will only be reconciled to Lesbia's marriage with a commoner
+by the notion that you are sure of a peerage. I ventured to hint as much
+in my letter to Lady Maulevrier yesterday.'
+
+A shade of sullenness crept over Horace Smithson's visage.
+
+'I should hope that such settlements as I am in a position to make will
+convince Lady Maulevrier that I am a respectable suitor for her
+granddaughter, ex peerage,' he said, somewhat haughtily.
+
+'My dear Smithson, did I not tell you that poor Lady Maulevrier is a
+century behind the times,' exclaimed Lady Kirkbank, with an aggrieved
+look. 'If she were one of _us_, of course she would know that wealth is
+the paramount consideration, and that you are quite the best match of
+the season. But she is dreadfully _arrieree_, poor dear thing; and she
+must have amused herself with the day-dream of seeing Lesbia a duchess,
+or something of that kind. I shall tell her that Lesbia can be one of
+the queens of society without having strawberry leaves on her coach
+panels, and that my dear friend Horace Smithson is a much better match
+than a seedy duke. So don't look cross, my dear fellow; in me you have a
+friend who will never desert you.'
+
+'Thanks,' said Smithson, inwardly resolving that, so soon as this
+little transaction of his marriage were over, he would see as little of
+Georgie Kirkbank and her cotton frocks and schoolgirl hats as bare
+civility would allow.
+
+He had promised her that she should be the richer by a neat little
+bundle of fat and flourishing railway stock when his happiness was
+secured, and he was not going to break his promise. But he did not mean
+to give George and Georgie free quarters at Rood Hall, or at Cowes, or
+Deauville; and he meant to withdraw his wife altogether from Lady
+Kirkbank's pinchbeck set.
+
+What were Lesbia's feelings in the early morning after the last day of
+the regatta, as she slowly paced the lavender walk in the Ladies'
+Garden, alone?--for happily Mr. Smithson was not so early a riser as the
+Grasmere-bred damsel, and she had this fresh morning hour to herself. Of
+what was she thinking as she paced slowly up and down the broad gravel
+walk, between two rows of tall old bushes, on which masses of purple
+blossom stood up from the pale grey foliage, silvery where the summer
+breeze touched it?
+
+Well, she was thinking first what a grand old place Rood Hall was, and
+that it was in a manner hers henceforward. She was to be mistress of
+this house, and of other houses, each after its fashion as perfect as
+Rood Hall. She was to have illimitable money at her command, to spend
+and give away as she liked. She, who yesterday had been tortured by the
+idea of owing a paltry three thousand pounds, was henceforward to count
+her thousands by the hundred. Her senses reeled before that dazzling
+vision of figures with rows of ciphers after them, one cipher more or
+less meaning the difference between thousands and millions. Everybody
+had agreed in assuring her that Mr. Smithson was inordinately rich.
+Everybody had considered it his or her business to give her information
+about the gentleman's income; clearly implying thereby that in the
+opinion of society Mr. Smithson's merits as a suitor were a question of
+so much bullion.
+
+Could she doubt--she who had learned in one short season to know what
+the world was made of and what it most valued--could she, steeped to the
+lips in the wisdom of Lady Kirkbank's set, doubt for an instant that she
+was making a better match in the eye of society, than if she had married
+a man of the highest lineage in all England, a peer of the highest rank,
+without large means? She knew that money was power, that a man might
+begin life as a pot-boy or a greengrocer, a knacker or a dust
+contractor, and climb to the topmost pinnacles, were he only rich
+enough. She knew that society would eat such a man's dinners and dance
+at his wife's balls, and pretend to think him an altogether exceptional
+man, make believe to admire him for his own sake, to think his wife most
+brilliant among women, if he were only rich enough. And could she doubt
+that society would bow down to her as Lady Lesbia Smithson? She had
+learned a great deal in her single season, and she knew how society was
+influenced and governed, almost as well as Sir Robert Walpole knew how
+human nature could be moulded and directed at the will of a shrewd
+diplomatist. She knew that in the fashionable world every man and every
+woman, every child even, has his or her price, and may be bought and
+sold at pleasure. She had her price, she, Lesbia, the pearl of Grasmere;
+and the price having been fairly bidden she had surrendered to the
+bidder.
+
+'I suppose I always meant to marry him,' she thought, pausing in her
+promenade to gaze across the verdant landscape, a fertile vale, against
+a background of low hills. All the landscape, to the edge of those
+hills, belonged to Mr. Smithson. 'Yes, I must have meant to give way at
+last, or I should hardly have tolerated his attentions. It would have
+been a pity to refuse such a place as this; and, he is quite
+gentlemanlike; and as I have done with all romantic ideas, I do not see
+why I should not learn to like him very much.'
+
+She dismissed the idea of Smithson lightly, with this conclusion, which
+she believed very virtuous; and then as she resumed her walk her
+thoughts reverted to the Park Lane Palace.
+
+'I hardly know whether I like it,' she mused languidly; 'beautiful as it
+is, it is only a reproduction of bygone splendour, and it is painfully
+excruciating now. For my own part I would much rather have the shabbiest
+old house which had belonged to one's ancestors, which had come to one
+as a heritage, by divine right as it were, instead of being bought with
+newly made money. To my mind it would rank higher. Yet I doubt if
+anybody nowadays sets a pin's value upon ancestors. People ask, Who is
+he? but they only mean, How much has he? And provided a person is not
+absolutely in trade, not actually engaged in selling soap, or matches,
+or mustard, society doesn't care a straw how his money has been made.
+The only secondary question is, How long will it last? And that is of
+course important.'
+
+Musing thus, wordly wisdom personified, the maiden looked up and saw her
+lover entering at the light little iron gate which gave entrance to this
+feminine Eden. She went to meet him, looking all simplicity and
+freshness in her white morning gown and neat little Dunstable hat. It
+seemed to him as he gazed at her almost as if this delicate, sylph-like
+beauty were some wild white flower of the woods personified.
+
+She gave him her hand graciously, but he drew her to his breast and
+kissed her, with the air of a man who was exercising an indisputable
+right. She supposed that it was his right, and she submitted, but
+released herself as quickly as possible.
+
+'My dearest, how lovely you look in this morning light,' he exclaimed,
+'while all the other women are upstairs making up their faces to meet
+the sun, and we shall see every shade of bismuth by-and-by, from pale
+mauve to purple.'
+
+'It is very uncivil of you to say such a thing of your guests,'
+exclaimed Lesbia.
+
+'But they all indulge in bismuth--you must be quite aware of that. They
+call the stuff by different names--Blanc Rosati, Creme de l'Imperatrice,
+Milk of Beauty, Perline, Opaline, Ivorine--but it means bismuth all the
+same. Expose your fashionable beauty to the fumes of sewer-gas, and that
+dazzling whiteness would turn to a dull brown hue, or even black. Thank
+heaven, my Lesbia wears real lilies and roses. Have you been here long?'
+
+'About half an hour'
+
+'I only wish I had known. I should not have dawdled so long over my
+dressing.'
+
+'I am very glad you did not know,' Lesbia answered coolly. 'Do you
+suppose I never want to be alone? Life in London is perpetual turmoil;
+one's eyes grow weary with ever-moving crowds, one's ears ache
+with trying to distinguish one voice among the buzz of voices.'
+
+'Then why go back to town? Why go back to the turmoil and the treadmill?
+It is only a kind of treadmill, after all, though we choose to call it
+pleasure. Stay here, Lesbia, and let us live upon the river, and among
+the flowers,' urged Smithson, with as romantic an air as if he had never
+heard of contango, or bulling and bearing; and yet only half an hour
+ago, while his valet was shaving him, he was debating within himself
+whether he should be bear or bull in his influence upon certain stock.
+
+It was supposed that he never went near the city, that he had shaken the
+dust of Lombard Street and the House off his shoes, that his fortune was
+made, and he had no further need of speculation. Yet the proverb holds
+good with the stock-jobber. 'He who has once drunk will drink again.' Of
+that fountain there is no satiety.
+
+'Stay and hear the last of the nightingales,' he murmured; 'we are famous
+for our nightingales.'
+
+'I wonder you don't order a _fricassee_ of their tongues, like that
+loathsome person in Roman history.'
+
+'I hope I shall never resemble any loathsome person. Why can you not
+stay?'
+
+'Why, because it is not etiquette, Lady Kirkbank says.'
+
+'Lady Kirkbank, eh? _la belle farce_, Lady Kirkbank standing out for
+etiquette.'
+
+'Don't laugh at my chaperon, sir. Upon what rock can a poor girl lean if
+you undermine her faith in her chaperon, sir.'
+
+'I hope you will have a better guardian before you are a month older. I
+mean to be a very strong rock, Lesbia. You do not know how firmly I
+shall stand between you and all the perils of society. You have been but
+poorly guarded hitherto.'
+
+'You talk as if you mean to be an abominable tyrant,' said Lesbia. 'If
+you don't take care I shall change my mind, and recall my promise.'
+
+'Not on that account, Lesbia: every woman likes a man who stands up for
+his own. It is only your invertebrate husband whose wife drifts into the
+divorce court. I mean to keep and hold the prize I have won. When is it
+to be, dearest--our wedding day?'
+
+'Not for ages, I hope--some time next summer, at the earliest.'
+
+'You would not be so cruel as to keep me waiting a year?'
+
+'Why not?'
+
+'You would not ask that if you loved me.'
+
+'You are asking too much,' said Lesbia, with a flash of defiance. 'There
+has been nothing said about love yet. You asked me to be your wife, and
+I said yes--meaning that at some remote period such a thing might be.'
+
+She knew that the man was her slave--slave to her beauty, slave to her
+superior rank--and she was determined not to lessen the weight of his
+chain by so much as a feather.
+
+'Did not that promise imply something like love?' he asked, earnestly.
+
+'Perhaps it implied a little gratitude for your devotion, which I have
+neither courted nor encouraged; a little respect for your talents, your
+perseverance--a little admiration for your wonderful success in life.
+Perhaps love may follow these sentiments, naturally, easily, if you are
+very patient; but if you talk about our being married before next year,
+you will simply make me hate you.'
+
+'Then I will say very little, except to remind you that there is no
+earthly reason why we should not be married next month. October and
+November are the best months for Rome, and I heard you say last night
+you were pining to see Rome.'
+
+'What then--cannot Lady Kirkbank take me to Rome?'
+
+'And introduce you to the rowdiest people in the city,' cried Mr.
+Smithson. 'Lesbia, I adore you. It is the dream of my life to be your
+husband; but if you are going to spend a winter in Italy with Lady
+Kirkbank, I renounce my right, I surrender my hope. You will not be the
+wife of my dreams after that.'
+
+'Do you assert a right to control my life during our engagement?'
+
+'Some little right; above all, the privilege of choosing your friends.
+And that is one reason why I most fervently desire our marriage should
+not be delayed. You would find it difficult, impossible perhaps, to get
+out of Lady Kirkbank's claws while you are single; but once my wife,
+that amiable old person can be made to keep her distance.'
+
+'Lady Kirkbank's claws! What a horrible way in which to speak of a
+friend. I thought you adored Lady Kirkbank.'
+
+'So I do. We all adore her, but not as a guide for youth. As a specimen
+of the elderly female of the latter half of the nineteenth century, she
+is perfect. Such gush, such juvenility, such broad views, such an utter
+absence of starch; but as a lamp for the footsteps of girlhood--no,
+_there_ we must pause.'
+
+'You are very ungrateful. Do you know that poor Lady Kirkbank has been
+most strenuous in your behalf?'
+
+'Oh, yes, I know that.'
+
+'And you are not grateful?'
+
+'I intend to be very grateful, so grateful as to entirely satisfy Lady
+Kirkbank.'
+
+'You are horribly cynical. That reminds me, there was a poor girl whom
+Lady Kirkbank had under her wing one season--a Miss Trinder, to whom I
+am told you behaved shamefully.'
+
+'There was a parson's daughter who threw herself at my head in a most
+audacious way, and who behaved so badly, egged on by Lady Kirkbank, that
+I had to take refuge in flight. Do you suppose I am the kind of man to
+marry the first adventurous damsel who takes a fancy to my town house,
+and thinks it would be a happy hunting ground for a herd of brothers and
+sisters? Miss Trinder was shocking bad style, and her designs were
+transparent from the very beginning! I let her flirt as much as she
+liked; and when she began to be seriously sentimental I took wing for
+the East.'
+
+'Was she pretty?' asked Lesbia, not displeased at this contemptuous
+summing up of poor Belle Trinder's story.
+
+'If you admire the Flemish type, as illustrated by Rubens, she was
+lovely. A complexion of lilies and roses--cabbage roses, _bien entendu_,
+which were apt to deepen into peonies after champagne and mayonaise at
+Ascot or Sandown--a figure--oh--well--a tremendous figure--hair of an
+auburn that touched perilously on the confines of red--large,
+serviceable feet, and an appetite--the appetite of a ploughman's
+daughter reared upon short commons.'
+
+'You are very cruel to a girl who evidently admired you.'
+
+'A fig for her admiration! She wanted to live in my house and spend my
+money.'
+
+'There goes the gong,' exclaimed Lesbia; 'pray let us go to breakfast.
+You are hideously cynical, and I am wofully tired of you.'
+
+And as they strolled back to the house, by lavender walk and rose
+garden, and across the dewy lawn, Lesbia questioned herself as to
+whether she was one whit better or more dignified than Isabella Trinder.
+She wore her rue with a difference, that was all.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV.
+
+'ALL FANCY, PRIDE, AND FICKLE MAIDENHOOD.'
+
+
+The return to Arlington Street meant a return to the ceaseless whirl of
+gaiety. Even at Rood Hall life had been as near an approach to perpetual
+motion as one could hope for in this world; but the excitement and the
+hurrying and scampering in Berkshire had a rustic flavour; there were
+moments that were almost repose, a breathing space between the blue
+river and the blue sky, in a world that seemed made of green fields and
+hanging woods, the plashing of waters, and the song of the lark. But in
+London the very atmosphere was charged with hurry and agitation; the
+freshness was gone from the verdure of the parks; the glory of the
+rhododendrons had faded; the Green Park below Lady Kirkbank's mansion
+was baked and rusty; the towers of the Houses of Parliament yonder were
+dimly seen in a mist of heat. London air tasted of smoke and dust,
+vibrated with the incessant roll of carriages, and the trampling of
+multitudinous feet.
+
+There are women of rank who can take the London season quietly, and live
+their own lives in the midst of the whirl and the riot--women for whom
+that squirrel-like circulation round and round the fashionable wheel has
+no charm--women who only receive people they like, only go into society
+that is congenial. But Lady Kirkbank was not one of these. The advance
+of age made her only more keen in the pursuit of pleasure. She would
+have abandoned herself to despair had the glass over the mantelpiece in
+her boudoir ceased to be choked and littered with cards--had her book of
+engagements shown a blank page. Happily there were plenty of people--if
+not all of them the best people--who wanted Sir George and Lady Kirkbank
+at their parties. The gentleman was sporting and harmless, the lady was
+good-natured, and just sufficiently eccentric to be amusing without
+degenerating into a bore. And this year she was asked almost everywhere,
+for the sake of the beauty who went under her wing. Lesbia had been as a
+pearl of price to her chaperon, from a social point of view; and now
+that she was engaged to Horace Smithson she was likely to be even more
+valuable.
+
+Mr. Smithson had promised Lady Kirkbank, sportively as it were, and upon
+the impulse of the moment, as he would have offered to wager a dozen of
+gloves, that were he so happy as to win her _protegee's_ hand he would
+find her an investment for, say, a thousand, which would bring her in
+twenty per cent.; nay, more, he would also find the thousand, which
+would have been the initial difficulty on poor Georgie's part. But this
+little matter was in Georgie's mind a detail, compared with the
+advantages to accrue to her indirectly from Lesbia's union with one of
+the richest men in London.
+
+Lady Kirkbank had brought about many good matches, and had been too
+often rewarded with base ingratitude upon the part of her _protegees_,
+after marriage; but there was a touch of Arcady in the good soul's
+nature, and she was always trustful. She told herself that Lesbia would
+not be ungrateful, would not basely kick down the ladder by which she
+had mounted to heights empyrean, would not cruelly shelve the friend who
+had pioneered her to high fortune. She counted upon making the house in
+Park Lane as her own house, upon being the prime mover of all Lesbia's
+hospitalities, the supervisor of her visiting list, the shadow behind
+the throne.
+
+There were balls and parties nightly, dinners, luncheons,
+garden-parties; and yet there was a sense of waning in the glory of the
+world--everybody felt that the fag-end of the season was approaching.
+All the really great entertainments were over--the Cabinet dinners, the
+Reception at the Foreign Office, the last of the State balls and
+concerts. Some of the best people had already left town; and senators
+were beginning to complain that they saw no prospect of early
+deliverance. There was Goodwood still to look forward to; and after
+Goodwood the Deluge--or rather Cowes Regatta, about which Lady
+Kirkbank's set were already talking.
+
+Lady Lesbia was to be at Cowes for the Regatta week. That was a settled
+thing. Mr. Smithson's schooner-yacht, the Cayman, was to be her hotel.
+It was to be Lady Kirkbank and Lady Lesbia's yacht for the nonce; and
+Mr. Smithson was to live on shore at his villa, and at that aristocratic
+club to which, by Maulevrier's influence, and on the score of his
+approaching marriage with an earl's daughter, he had been just selected.
+He would be only Lady Kirkbank's visitor on board the Cayman. The severe
+etiquette of the situation would therefore not be infringed; and yet Mr.
+Smithson would have the happiness of seeing his betrothed sole and
+sovereign mistress of his yacht, and of spending the long summer days at
+her feet. Even to Lady Lesbia this idea of the yacht was not without its
+charm. She had never been on board such a yacht as the Cayman; she was a
+good sailor, as testified by many an excursion, in hired sailing boats,
+at Tynemouth, and St. Bees; and she knew that she would be the queen of
+the hour. She accepted Mr. Smithson's invitation for the Cowes week more
+graciously than she was wont to receive his attentions, and was pleased
+to say that the whole thing would be rather enjoyable.
+
+'It will be simple enchantment,' exclaimed the more enthusiastic
+Georgie Kirkbank. 'There is nothing so rapturous as life on board a
+yacht; there is a flavour of adventure, a _sansgene_, a--in short
+everything in the world that I like. I shall wear my cotton frocks, and
+give myself up to enjoyment, lie on the deck and look up at the blue
+sky, too deliciously idle even to read the last horrid thing of Zola's.'
+
+But the Cowes Regatta was nearly three weeks ahead; and in the meantime
+there was Goodwood, and the ravelled threads of the London season had to
+be wound up. And by this time it was known everywhere that the affair
+between Mr. Smithson and Maulevrier's sister was really on. 'It's as
+settled a business as the entries and bets for next year's Derby,' said
+one lounger to another in the smoking-room of the Haute Gomme. 'Play or
+pay, don't you know.'
+
+Lady Kirkbank and Lesbia had both written to Lady Maulevrier, Lesbia
+writing somewhat coldly, very briefly, and in a half defiant tone, to
+the effect that she had accepted Mr. Smithson's offer, and that she
+hoped her grandmother would be pleased with a match which everybody
+supposed to be extremely advantageous. She was going to Grasmere
+immediately after the Cowes week to see her dear grandmother, and to be
+assured of her approval. In the meanwhile she was awfully busy; there
+were callers driving up to the door at that very moment, and her brain
+was racked by the apprehension that she might not get her new gown in
+time for the Bachelor's Ball, which was to be quite one of the nicest
+things of the year, so dearest grandmother must excuse a hurried letter,
+etc., etc., etc.
+
+Georgie Kirkbank was more effusive, more lengthy. She expatiated upon
+the stupendous alliance which her sweetest Lesbia was about to make; and
+took credit to herself for having guided Lesbia's footsteps in the right
+way.
+
+'Smithson is a most difficult person,' she wrote. 'The least error of
+taste on your dear girl's part would have _froissed_ him. Men with that
+immense wealth are always suspicious, ready to imagine mercenary
+motives, on their guard against being trapped. But Lesbia had _me_ at
+her back, and she managed him perfectly. He is positively her slave; and
+you will be able to twist him round your little finger in the matter of
+settlements. You may do what you like with him, for the ground has been
+thoroughly prepared by _me_.'
+
+Lady Maulevrier's reply was not enthusiastic. She had no doubt Mr.
+Smithson was a very good match, according to the modern estimate of
+matrimonial alliances, in which money seemed to be the Alpha and Omega.
+But she had cherished views of another kind. She had hoped to see her
+dear granddaughter wear one of those noble and historic names which are
+a badge of distinction for all time. She had hoped to see her enter one
+of those grand old families which are a kind of royalty. And that Lesbia
+should marry a man whose sole distinction consisted of an immense
+fortune amassed heaven knows how, was a terrible blow to her pride.
+
+'But it is not the first,' wrote Lady Maulevrier. 'My pride has received
+crushing blows in days past, and I ought to be humbled to the dust. But
+there is a stubborn resistance in some natures which stands firm against
+every shock. You and Lesbia will both be surprised to hear that Mary,
+from whom I expected so little, has made a really great match. She was
+married yesterday afternoon in my morning room, by special licence, to
+the Earl of Hartfield, the lover of her choice, whom we at Fellside have
+all known as plain John Hammond. He is an admirable young man, and sure
+to make a great figure in the world, as no doubt you know better than I
+do, for you are in the way of hearing all about him. His courtship of
+Mary is quite an idyll; and the happy issue of this romantic love-affair
+has cheered and comforted me more than anything that has happened since
+Lesbia left me.'
+
+This letter, written in Fraeulein's niggling little hand, Lady Kirkbank
+handed to Lesbia, who read it through in silence; but when she came to
+that part of the letter which told of her sister's marriage, her cheek
+grew ashy pale, her brow contracted, and she started to her feet and
+stared at Lady Kirkbank with wild, dilated eyes, as if she had been
+stung by an adder.
+
+'A strange mystification, wasn't it?' said Lady Kirkbank, almost
+frightened at the awful look in Lesbia's face, which was even worse than
+Belle Trinder's expression when she read the announcement of Mr.
+Smithson's flight.
+
+'Strange mystification! It was base treachery--a vile and wicked lie!'
+cried Lesbia, furiously. 'What right had he to come to us under false
+colours, to pretend to be poor, a nobody--with only the vaguest hope of
+making a decent position in the future?--and to offer himself under such
+impossible conditions to a girl brought up as I had been--a girl
+educated by one of the proudest and most ambitious of women--to force me
+to renounce everything except him? How could he suppose that any girl,
+so placed, could decide in his favour? If he had loved me he would have
+told me the truth--he would not have made it impossible for me to accept
+him.'
+
+'I believe he is a very high flown young man,' said Lady Kirkbank,
+soothingly; 'he was never in _my_ set, you know, dear. And I suppose he
+had some old Minerva-press idea that he would find a girl who would
+marry him for his own sake. And your sister, no doubt, eager to marry
+_anybody_, poor child, for the sake of getting away from that very
+lovely dungeon of Lady Maulevrier's, snapped at the chance; and by a
+mere fluke she becomes a countess.'
+
+Lesbia ignored these consolatory remarks. She was pacing the room like
+a tigress, her delicate cambric handkerchief grasped between her two
+hands, and torn and rent by the convulsive action of her fingers. She
+could have thrown herself from the balcony on to the spikes of the area
+railings, she could have dashed herself against yonder big plate-glass
+window looking towards the Green Park, like a bird which shatters his
+little life against the glass barrier which he mistakes for the open
+sky. She could have flung herself down on the floor and grovelled, and
+torn her hair--she could have done anything mad, wicked, desperate, in
+the wild rage of this moment.
+
+'Loved me!' she exclaimed; 'he never loved me. If he had he would have
+told me the truth. What, when I was in his arms, my head upon his
+breast, my whole being surrendered to him, adoring him, what more could
+he want? He must have known that this meant real love. And why should he
+put it upon me to fight so hard a fight--to brave my grandmother's
+anger--to be cursed by her--to face poverty for his sake? I never
+professed to be a heroine. He knew that I was a woman, with all a
+woman's weakness, a woman's fear of trial and difficulty in the future.
+It was a cowardly thing to use me so.'
+
+'It was,' said Lady Kirkbank, in the same soothing tone; 'but if you
+liked this Hammond-Hartfield creature a little in those old days, I
+know you have outlived that liking long ago.'
+
+'Of course; but it is a hard thing to know one has been fooled, cheated,
+weighed in the balance and found wanting,' said Lesbia, scornfully.
+
+She was taming down a little by this time, ashamed of that outbreak of
+violent passion, feeling that she had revealed too much to Lady
+Kirkbank.
+
+'It was a caddish thing to do,' said Georgie; 'and this Hartfield is
+just what I always thought him--an insufferable prig. However, my
+sweetest girl, there is really nothing to lament in the matter. Your
+sister has made a good alliance, which will score high in your favour
+by-and-by, and you are going to marry a man who is three times as rich
+as Lord Hartfield.'
+
+'Rich, yes; and nothing but rich; while Lord Hartfield is a man of the
+very highest standing, belongs to the flower of English nobility. Rich,
+yes; Mr. Smithson is rich; but, as Lady Maulevrier says, he has made his
+money heaven knows how.'
+
+'Mr. Smithson has not made his money heaven knows how,' answered Lady
+Kirkbank, indignantly. 'He has made it in cochineal, in iron, in
+gunpowder, in coal, in all kinds of commodities. Everybody in the City
+knows how he has made his money, and that he has a genius for turning
+everything into gold. If the gold changes back into one of the baser
+metals, it is only when Mr. Smithson has made all he wanted to make. And
+now he has quite done with the City. The House is the only business of
+his life; and he is becoming a power in the House. You have every reason
+to be proud of your choice, Lesbia.'
+
+'I will try to be proud of it,' said Lesbia, resolutely. 'I will not be
+scorned and trampled upon by Mary.'
+
+'She seemed a harmless kind of girl,' said Lady Kirkbank, as if she had
+been talking of a housemaid.
+
+'She is a designing minx,' exclaimed Lesbia, 'and has set her cap at
+that man from the very beginning.'
+
+'But she could not have known that he was Lord Hartfield.'
+
+'No; but he was a man; and that was enough for her.'
+
+From this time forward there was a change in Lady Lesbia's style and
+manner--a change very much for the worse, as old-fashioned people
+thought; but to the taste of some among Lady Kirkbank's set, the change
+was an improvement. She was gayer than of old, gay with a reckless
+vivacity, intensely eager for action and excitement, for cards and
+racing, and all the strongest stimulants of fashionable life. Most
+people ascribed this increased vivacity, this electric manner, to the
+fact of her engagement to Horace Smithson. She was giddy with her
+triumph, dazzled by a vision of the gold which was soon to be hers.
+
+'Egad, if I saw myself in a fair way of being able to write cheques upon
+such an account as Smithson's I should be as wild as Lady Lesbia,' said
+one of the damsel's military admirers at the Rag. 'And I believe the
+young lady was slightly dipped.'
+
+'Who told you that?' asked his friend.
+
+'A mother of mine,' answered the youth, with an apologetic air, as if he
+hardly cared to own such a humdrum relationship. 'Seraphine, the
+dressmaker, was complaining--wanted to see the colour of Lady Lesbia
+Haselden's money--vulgar curiosity--asked my old mother if she thought
+the account was safe, and so on. That's how I came to know all about
+it.'
+
+'Well, she'll be able to pay Seraphine next season.'
+
+Lord Maulevrier came back to London directly after his sister's wedding.
+The event, which came off so quietly, so happily, filled him with
+unqualified joy. He had hoped from the very first that his Molly would
+win the cup, even while Lesbia was making all the running, as he said
+afterwards. And Molly had won, and was the wife of one of the best young
+men in England. Maulevrier, albeit unused to the melting-mood, shed a
+tear or two for very joy as the sister he loved and the friend of his
+boyhood and youth stood side by side in the quiet room at Grasmere, and
+spoke the solemn words that made them one for ever.
+
+The first news he heard after his return to town was of Lesbia's
+engagement, which was common talk at the clubs. The visitors at Rood
+Hall had come back to London full of the event, and were proud of giving
+a detailed account of the affair to outsiders.
+
+They all talked patronisingly of Smithson, and seemed to think it
+rather a wonderful fact that he did not drop his aspirates or eat peas
+with a knife.
+
+'A man of stirling metal,' said the gossips, 'who can hold his own with
+many a fellow born in the purple.'
+
+Maulevrier called in Arlington Street, but Lady Kirkbank and her
+_protegee_ were out; and it was at a cricket match at the Orleans Club
+that the brother and sister met for the first time after Lord
+Hartfield's wedding, which by this time had been in all the papers; a
+very simple announcement:
+
+'On the 29th inst., at Grasmere, by the Reverend Douglass Brooke, the
+Earl of Hartfield to Mary, younger daughter of the ninth Earl of
+Maulevrier.'
+
+Lesbia was the centre of a rather noisy little court, in which Mr.
+Smithson was conspicuous by his superior reserve.
+
+He did not exert himself as a lover, paid no compliments, was not
+sentimental. The pearl was won, and he wore it very quietly; but
+wherever Lesbia went he went; she was hardly ever out of his sight.
+
+Maulevrier received the coolest possible greeting. Lesbia turned pale
+with anger at sight of him, for his presence reminded her of the most
+humiliating passage in her life; but the big red satin sunshade
+concealed that pale angry look, and nothing in Lesbia's manner betrayed
+emotion.
+
+'Where have you been hiding yourself all this time, and why were you not
+at Henley?' she asked.
+
+'I have been at Grasmere.'
+
+'Oh, you were a witness of that most romantic marriage. The Lady of
+Lyons reversed, the gardener's son turning out to be an earl. Was it
+excruciatingly funny?'
+
+'It was one of the most solemn weddings I ever saw.'
+
+'Solemn! what, with my Tomboy sister as bride! Impossible!'
+
+'Your sister ceased to be a Tomboy when she fell in love. She is a sweet
+and womanly woman, and will make an adorable wife to the finest fellow I
+know. I hear I am to congratulate you, Lesbia, upon your engagement with
+Mr. Smithson.'
+
+'If you think _I_ am the person to be congratulated, you are at liberty
+to do so. My engagement is a fact.'
+
+'Oh, of course, Mr. Smithson is the winner. But as I hope you intend to
+be happy, I wish you joy. I am told Smithson is a really excellent
+fellow when one gets to know him; and I shall make it my business to be
+better acquainted with him.'
+
+Smithson was standing just out of hearing, watching the bowling.
+Maulevrier went over to him and shook hands, their acquaintance hitherto
+having been of the slightest, and very shy upon his lordship's part; but
+now Smithson could see that Maulevrier meant to be cordial.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI.
+
+A RASTAQUOUERE.
+
+
+There was a dinner party in one of the new houses in Grosvenor Place
+that evening, to which Lady Kirkbank and Lesbia had been bidden. The new
+house belonged to a new man, who was supposed to have made millions out
+of railways, and other gigantic achievements in the engineering line;
+and the new man and his wife were friends of Mr. Smithson, and had made
+the simple Georgie's acquaintance only within the last three weeks.
+
+'Of course they are stupid, my dear,' she remarked, in response to some
+slighting remark of Lesbia's, 'but I am always willing to know rich
+people. One drops in for so many good things; and they never want any
+return in kind. It is quite enough for them to be allowed to spend their
+money _upon us._'
+
+The house was gorgeous in all the glory of the very latest fashions in
+upholstery; hall Algerian; dining-room Pompeian; drawing-room Early
+Italian; music-room Louis Quatorze; billiard-room mediaeval English. The
+dinner was as magnificent as dinner can be made. Three-fourths of the
+guests were the _haute gomme_ of the financial world, and perspired
+gold. The other third belonged to a class which Mr. Smithson described
+somewhat contemptuously as the shake-back nobility. An Irish peer, a
+younger son of a ducal house that had run to seed, a political agitator,
+a grass widow whose titled husband was governor of an obscure colony, an
+ancient dowager with hair which was too luxuriant to be anything but a
+wig, and diamonds which were so large as to suggest paste.
+
+Lesbia sat by her affianced at the glittering table, lighted with
+clusters of wax candles, which shone upon a level _parterre_ of tea
+roses, gardenias, and gloire de Malmaison carnations; from which rose at
+intervals groups of silver-gilt dolphins, supporting shallow golden
+dishes piled with peaches, grapes, and all the costliest produce of
+Covent Garden.
+
+Conversation was not particularly brilliant, nor had the guests an
+elated air. The thermometer was near eighty, and at this period of the
+season everybody was tired of this kind of dinner, and would gladly have
+foregone the greatest achievements of culinary art, in favour of a
+chicken and a salad, eaten under green leaves, in a garden at Wargrave
+or Henley, within sound of the rippling river.
+
+On Lesbia's right hand there was a portly personage of Jewish type, dark
+to swarthiness, and somewhat oily, whose every word suggested bullion.
+He and Mr. Smithson were evidently acquaintances of long standing, and
+Mr. Smithson presented him to Lesbia, whereupon he joined in their
+conversation now and then.
+
+His talk was of the usual standard. He had seen everything worth seeing
+in London and in Paris, between which cities he seemed to oscillate with
+such frequency that he might be said to live in both places at once. He
+had his stall at Covent Garden, and his stall at the Grand Opera. He was
+a subscriber at the Theatre Francais. He had seen all the races at
+Longchamps and Chantilly, as well as at Sandown and Ascot. But every now
+and then he and Mr. Smithson drifted from the customary talk about
+operas and races, pictures and French novels, to the wider world of
+commerce and speculation, mines, waterworks, and foreign loans--and
+Lesbia leant back in her chair, and fanned herself languidly, with
+half-closed eyelids, while two or three courses went round, she giving
+the little supercilious look at each _entree_ offered to her, to be
+observed on such occasions, as if the thing offered were particularly
+nasty.
+
+She wondered how long the two men were going to prose about mines and
+shares, in those subdued half-mysterious voices, telling each other
+occult facts in half-expressed phrases, utterly dark to the outside
+world; but, while she was languidly wondering, a change in her lover's
+manner startled her into keenest curiosity.
+
+'Montesma is in Paris,' said Mr. Sampayo, the dark gentleman; 'I dined
+last week with him at the Continental.'
+
+Mr. Smithson's complexion faded curiously, and a leaden darkness came
+over his countenance, as of a man whose heart and lungs suddenly refuse
+their office. But in a few moments he was smiling feebly.
+
+'Indeed! I thought he was played out years ago.'
+
+'A man of that kind is never played out. Don Gomez de Montesma is as
+clever as Satan, as handsome as Apollo, and he bears one of the oldest
+names in Castile. Such a man will always come to the front. _C'est un
+rastaquouere mais rastaquouere de bon genre_. You knew him intimately
+_la bas_, I believe?'
+
+'In Cuba; yes, we were pretty good friends once.'
+
+'And were useful to each other, no doubt,' said Mr. Sampayo, pleasantly.
+'Was that Argentiferous Copper Company in sixty-four yours or his?'
+
+'There were a good many people concerned in it.'
+
+'No doubt; it takes a good many people to work that kind of thing, but I
+fancy you and Montesma were about the only two who came out of it
+pleasantly. And he and you did a little in the shipping line, didn't
+you--African produce? However, that's an old song. You have had so many
+good things since then.'
+
+'Did Montesma talk of coming to London?'
+
+'He did not talk about it; but he would hardly go back to the tropics
+without having a look round on both sides of the Channel. He was always
+fond of society, pretty women, dancing, and amusements of all kinds. I
+have no doubt we shall see him here before the end of the season.'
+
+Mr. Smithson pursued the subject no further. He turned to Lesbia, who had
+been curiously interested in this little bit of conversation--interested
+first because Smithson had seemed agitated by the mention of the
+Spaniard's name; secondly, because of the description of the man, which
+had a romantic sound. The very word tropic suggested a romance. And
+Lesbia, whose mind was jaded by the monotony of a London season, the
+threadbare fabric of society conversation, kindled at any image which
+appealed to her fancy.
+
+Clever as Satan, handsome as Apollo, scion of an old Castilian family,
+fresh from the tropics. Her imagination dwelt upon the ideas which these
+words had conjured up.
+
+Three days after this she was at the opera with her chaperon, her lover
+in attendance as usual. The opera was "Faust," with Nillson as
+Marguerite. After the performance they were to drive down to Twickenham
+on Mr. Smithson's drag, and to dance and sup at the Orleans. The last
+ball of the season was on this evening; and Lesbia had been persuaded
+that it was to be a particular _recherche_ ball, and that only the very
+nicest people were to be present. At any rate, the drive under the light
+of a July moon would be delicious; and if they did not like the people
+they found there they could eat their supper and come away immediately
+after, as Lady Kirkbank remarked philosophically.
+
+The opera was nearly over--that grand scene of Valentine's death was
+on--and Lesbia was listening breathlessly to every note, watching every
+look of the actors, when there came a modest little knock at the door of
+her box. She darted an angry glance round, and shrugged her shoulders
+vexatiously. What Goth had dared to knock during that thrilling scene?
+
+Mr. Smithson rose and crept to the door and quietly opened it.
+
+A dark, handsome man, who was a total stranger to Lesbia, glided in,
+shaking hands with Smithson as he entered.
+
+Till this moment Lesbia's whole being had been absorbed in the
+scene--that bitter anathema of the brother, the sister's cry of anguish
+and shame. Where else is there tragedy so human, so enthralling--grief
+that so wrings the spectator's heart? It needed a Goethe and a Gounod to
+produce this masterpiece.
+
+In an instant, in a flash, Lesbia's interest in the stage was gone. Her
+first glance at the stranger told her who he was. The olive tint, the
+eyes of deepest black, the grand form of the head and perfect chiselling
+of the features could belong only to that scion of an old Castilian race
+whom she had heard described the other evening--'clever as Satan,
+handsome as Apollo.'
+
+Yes, this must be the man, Don Gomez de Montesma. There was nothing in
+Mr. Smithson's manner to indicate that the Spaniard was an unwelcome
+guest. On the contrary, Smithson received him with a cordiality which in
+a man of naturally reserved manner seemed almost rapture. The curtain
+fell, and he presented Don Gomez to Lady Kirkbank and Lady Lesbia;
+whereupon dear Georgie began to gush, after her wont, and to ask a good
+many questions in a manner that was too girlish to seem impertinent.
+
+'How perfectly you speak English!' she exclaimed. 'You must have lived
+in England a good deal.'
+
+'On the contrary, it is my misfortune to have lived here very little,
+but I have known a good many English and Americans in Cuba and in
+Paris.'
+
+'In Cuba! Do you really come from Cuba? I have always fancied that Cuba
+must be an altogether charming place to live in--like Biarritz or Pau,
+don't you know, only further away. Do please tell me where it is, and
+what kind of a place.'
+
+Geographically, Lady Kirkbank's mind was a blank. It was quite a
+revelation to her to find that Cuba was an island.
+
+'It must be a lovely spot!' exclaimed the fervid creature. 'Let me see,
+now, what do we get from Cuba?--cigars--and--and tobacco. I suppose in
+Cuba everybody smokes?'
+
+'Men, women, and children.'
+
+'How delicious! Would that I were a Cuban! And the natives, are they
+nice?'
+
+'There are no aborigines. The Indians whom Columbus found soon perished
+off the face of the island. European civilisation generally has that
+effect. But one of our most benevolent captain-generals provided us with
+an imported population of niggers.'
+
+'How delightful. I have always longed to live among a slave population,
+dear submissive black things dressed in coral necklaces and feathers,
+instead of the horrid over-fed wretches we have to wait upon us. And if
+the aborigines were not wanted it was just as well for them to die out,
+don't you know,' prattled Lady Kirkbank.
+
+'It was very accommodating of them, no doubt. Yet we could employ half a
+million of them, if we had them, in draining our swamps. Agriculture
+suffered by the loss of Indian labour.'
+
+'I suppose they were like the creatures in Pizarro, poor dear yellow
+things with brass bracelets,' said Lady Kirkbank. 'I remember seeing
+Macready as Rolla when I was quite a little thing.'
+
+And now the curtain rose for the last act.
+
+'Do you care about staying for the end?' asked Mr. Smithson of Lesbia.
+'It will make us rather late at the Orleans.'
+
+'Never mind how late we are,' said Lesbia, imperiously. 'I have always
+been cheated out of this last act for some stupid party. Imagine losing
+Gounod and Nillson for the sake of struggling through the mob on a
+stifling staircase, and being elbowed by inane young men, with gardenias
+in their coats.'
+
+Lady Lesbia had a pretty little way of always opposing any suggestion of
+her sweetheart. She was resolved to treat him as badly as a future
+husband could be treated. In consenting to marry him she had done him a
+favour which was a great deal more than such a person had any right to
+expect.
+
+She leant forward to watch and listen, with her elbow resting on the
+velvet cushion--her head upon her hand, and she seemed absorbed in the
+scene. But this was mere outward seeming. All the enchantment of music
+and acting was over. She only heard and saw vaguely, as if it were a
+shadowy scene enacted ever so far away. Every now and then her eyes
+glanced involuntarily toward Don Gomez, who stood leaning against the
+back of the box, pale, languid, graceful, poetic, an altogether
+different type of manhood from that with which she had of late been
+satiated.
+
+Those deep dark eyes of his had a dreamy look. They gazed across the
+dazzling house, into space, above Lady Lesbia's head. They seemed to see
+nothing; and they certainly were not looking at her.
+
+Don Gomez was the first man she ever remembered to have been presented
+to her who did not favour her with a good deal of hard staring, more or
+less discreetly managed, during the first ten minutes of their
+acquaintance. On him her beauty fell flat. He evidently failed to
+recognise her supreme loveliness. It might be that she was the wrong
+type for Cuba. Every nation has its own Venus; and that far away spot
+beyond the torrid zone might have a somewhat barbarous idea of beauty.
+At any rate, Don Gomez was apparently unimpressed. And yet Lesbia
+flattered herself that she was looking her best to-night, and that her
+costume was a success. She wore a white satin gown, short in the skirt,
+for the luxury of freedom in waltzing, and made with Quaker-like
+simplicity, the bodice high to the throat, fitting her like a sheath.
+
+Her only ornaments were a garland of scarlet poppies wreathed from
+throat to shoulder, and a large diamond heart which Mr. Smithson had
+lately given her; 'a bullock's heart,' as Lady Kirkbank called it.
+
+When the curtain fell, and not till then, she rose and allowed herself
+to be clad in a brown velvet Newmarket, which completely covered her
+short satin gown. She had a little brown velvet toque to match the
+Newmarket, and thus attired she would be able to take her seat on the
+drag which was waiting on the quietest side of Covent Garden.
+
+'Why should not you go with us, Don Gomez?' exclaimed Lady Kirkbank, in
+a gush of hospitality. 'The drive will be charming--not equal to your
+tropical Cuba--but intensely nice. And the gardens will be something too
+sweet on such a night as this. I knew them when the dear Duc d'Aumale
+was there. Ay de mi, such a man!'
+
+Lady Kirkbank sighed, with the air of having known his Altesse Royale
+intimately.
+
+'I should be charmed,' said Don Gomez, 'if I thought my friend Smithson
+wanted me. Would you really like to have me, Smithson?'
+
+'I should be enchanted.'
+
+'And there is room on the drag?'
+
+'Room enough for half-a-dozen. I am only taking Sir George Kirkbank and
+Colonel Delville--whom we are to pick up at the Haute Gomme--and Mr. and
+Mrs. Mostyn, who are in the stalls.'
+
+'A nice snug little party,' exclaimed that charming optimist, Lady
+Kirkbank. 'I hate a crowd on a drag. The way some of the members of the
+Four-in-hand Club load their coaches on parade reminds me of a
+Beanfeast!'
+
+They found Lady Kirkbank's footman and one of Mr. Smithson's grooms
+waiting in the hall of the opera house. The groom to conduct them to the
+spot where the drag was waiting; the footman to carry wraps and take his
+mistress's final orders. There was a Bohemian flavour in the little walk
+to the great fruit garden, which was odorous of bruised peaches and
+stale salads as they passed it. Waggon-loads of cabbages and other
+garden stuff were standing about by the old church; the roadway was
+littered with the refuse of the market; and the air was faint and heavy
+with the scent of herbs and flowers.
+
+Lesbia mounted lightly to her place of honour on the box-seat; and Lady
+Kirkbank was hoisted up after her. Mr. and Mrs. Mostyn followed; and
+then Don Gomez took his seat by Lady Kirkbank's side and behind Lesbia,
+a vantage point from which he could talk to her as much as he liked. Mr.
+Smithson seated himself a minute afterwards, and drove off by King
+Street and Leicester Square and on to Piccadilly, steering cleverly
+through the traffic of cabs and carriages, which was at its apogee just
+now, when all the theatres were disgorging their crowds. Piccadilly was
+quieter, yet there were plenty of carriages, late people going to
+parties and early people going home, horses slipping and sliding on
+stones or wood, half the roadway up, and luminous with lanterns. They
+stopped in front of the Haute Gomme, where they picked up Sir George
+Kirkbank and Colonel Delville, a big man with a patriarchal head,
+supposed to be one of the finest whist players in London, and to make a
+handsome income by his play. He had ridden in the Balaclava charge, was
+a favourite everywhere, and, albeit no genius, was much cleverer than
+his friend and school-fellow, George Kirkbank. They had been at Eton
+together, had both made love to the lively Georgie, and had been
+inseparables for the last thirty years.
+
+'Couldn't get on without Delville,' said Sir George; 'dooced smart
+fellow, sir. Knows the ropes; and does all the thinking for both of us.'
+
+And now they were fairly started, and the team fell into a rattling
+pace, with the road pretty clear before them. Hyde Park was one
+umbrageous darkness, edged by long lines of golden light. Coolness and
+silence enfolded all things in the summer midnight, and Lesbia, not
+prone to romance, sank into a dreamy state of mind, as she leaned back
+in her seat and watched the shadowy trees glide by, the long vista of
+lamps and verdure in front of her. She was glad that no one talked to
+her, for talk of any kind must have broken the spell. Don Gomez sat like
+a statue in his place behind her. From Lady Kirkbank, the loquacious,
+came a gentle sound of snoring, a subdued, ladylike snore, breathed
+softly at intervals, like a sigh. Mr. Smithson had his team, and his own
+thoughts, too, for occupation,--thoughts which to-night were not
+altogether pleasant.
+
+At the back of the coach Mrs. Mostyn was descanting on the evolution of
+the nautilus, and the relationship of protoplasm and humanity, to
+Colonel Delville, who sat smiling placidly behind an immense cigar, and
+accepted the most stupendous facts and the most appalling theories with
+a friendly little nod of his handsome head.
+
+Mr. Mostyn frankly slept, as it was his custom to do upon all convenient
+occasions. He called it recuperating.
+
+'Frank ought to be delightfully fresh, for he recuperated all the way
+down,' said his wife, when they alighted in the dewy garden at
+Twickenham, in front of the lamp-lit portico.
+
+'I wouldn't have minded his recuperating if he hadn't snored so
+abominably,' remarked Colonel Delville.
+
+It was nearly one o'clock, and the ball had thinned a little, which made
+it all the better for those who remained. Mr. Smithson's orders had been
+given two days ago, and the very best of the waiters had been told off
+for his especial service. The ladies went upstairs to take off their
+wrappings and mufflings, and Lesbia emerged dazzling from her brown
+velvet Newmarket, while Lady Kirkbank, bending closely over the
+looking-glass, like a witch over a caldron, repaired her complexion with
+cotton wool.
+
+They went through the conservatory to the octagon dining-room, where the
+supper was ready, a special supper, on a table by a window, a table
+laden with exotics and brilliant with glass and silver. The supper was,
+of course, perfect in its way. Mr. Smithson's _chef_ had been down to
+see about it, and Mr. Smithson's own particular champagne and the claret
+grown in his own particular _clos_ in the Gironde, had been sent down
+for the feast. No common cuisine, no common wine could be good enough;
+and yet there was a day when the cheapest gargote in Belleville or
+Montmartre was good enough for Mr. Smithson. There had been days on
+which he did not dine at all, and when the fumes of a _gibelotte_
+steaming from a workman's restaurant made his mouth water.
+
+The supper was all life and gaiety. Everyone was hungry and thirsty, and
+freshened by the drive, except Lesbia. She was singularly silent, ate
+hardly anything, but drank three or four glasses of champagne.
+
+Don Gomez was not a great talker. He had the air of a prince of the
+blood royal, who expects other people to talk and to keep him amused.
+But the little he said was to the point. He had a fine baritone, very
+low and subdued, and had a languor which was almost insolent, but not
+without its charm. There was an air of originality about the manner and
+the man.
+
+He was the typical _rastaquouere_, a man of finished manners, and
+unknown antecedents, a foreigner, apparently rich, obviously
+accomplished, but with that indefinable air which bespeaks the
+adventurer; and which gives society as fair a warning as if the man wore
+a placard on his shoulder with the word _cave_.
+
+But to Lesbia this Spaniard was the first really interesting man she had
+met since she saw John Hammond; and her interest in him was much more
+vivid than her interest in Hammond had been at the beginning of their
+acquaintance. That pale face, with its tint of old ivory, those thin,
+finely-cut lips, indicative of diabolical craft, could she but read
+aright, those unfathomable eyes, touched her fancy as it had never yet
+been touched, awoke within her that latent vein of romance,
+self-abnegation, supreme foolishness, which lurks in the nature of every
+woman, be she chaste as ice and pure as snow.
+
+The supper was long. It was past two o'clock, and the ballroom was
+thinly occupied, when Mr. Smithson's party went there.
+
+'You won't dance to-night, I suppose?' said Smithson, as Lesbia and he
+went slowly down the room arm in arm. It was in a pause between two
+waltzes. The wide window at the end was opened to the summer night, and
+the room was delightfully cool. 'You must be horribly tired?'
+
+'I am not in the least tired, and I mean to waltz, if anyone will ask
+me,' replied Lesbia, decisively.
+
+'I ought to have asked you to dance, and then it would have been the
+other way,' said Smithson, with a touch of acrimony. 'Surely you have
+dancing enough in town, and you might be obliging for once in a way,
+and come and sit with me in the garden, and listen to the nightingales.'
+
+'There are no nightingales after June. There is the Manola,' as the band
+struck up, 'my very favourite waltz.'
+
+Don Gomez was at her elbow at this moment
+
+'May I have the honour of this waltz with you, Lady Lesbia?' he asked;
+and then with a serio-comic glance at his stoutish friend, 'I don't
+think Smithson waltzes?'
+
+'I have been told that nobody can waltz who has been born on this side
+of the Pyrenees,' answered Lesbia, withdrawing her arm from her lover's,
+and slipping, it through the Spaniard's, with the air of a slave who
+obeys a master.
+
+Smithson looked daggers, and retired to a corner of the room glowering.
+Were a man twenty-two times millionaire, like the Parisian Rothschild,
+he could not find armour against the poisoned arrows of jealousy. Don
+Gomez possessed many of those accomplishments which make men dangerous,
+but as a dancer he was _hors ligne_; and Horace Smithson knew that there
+is no surer road to a girl's fancy than the magic circle of a waltz.
+
+Those two were floating round the room in the old slow legato step,
+which recalled to Smithson the picture of a still more spacious room in
+an island under the Southern Cross--the blue water of the bay shining
+yonder under the starlight of the tropics, fire-flies gleaming and
+flashing in the foliage beyond the open windows, fire-flies flashing
+amidst the gauzy draperies of the dancers, and this same Gomez revolving
+with the same slow languid grace, his arm encircling the _svelte_ figure
+of a woman whose southern beauty outshone Lesbia's blonde English
+loveliness as the tropical stars outshine the lamps that light our
+colder skies. Yes, every detail of the scene flashed back into his mind,
+as if a curtain had been suddenly plucked back from a long-hidden
+picture. The Cuban's tall slim figure, the head gently bent towards his
+partner's head, as at this moment, and those dark eyes looking up at
+him, intoxicated with that nameless, indefinable fascination which it is
+the lot of some men to exercise.
+
+'He robbed me of _her_!' thought Smithson, gloomily. 'Will he rob me of
+this one too? Surely not! Havana is Havana--and this one is not a
+Creole. If I cannot trust that lovely piece of marble, there is no woman
+on earth to be trusted.'
+
+He turned his back upon the dancers, and went out into the garden. His
+soul was wrung with jealousy, yet he could watch no longer. There was
+too much pain--there were too many bitter memories of shame, and loss,
+and ignominy evoked by that infernal picture. If he had been free he
+would have asserted his authority as Lesbia's future husband; he would
+have taken her away from the Orleans; he would have told her plainly and
+frankly that Don Gomez was no fit person for her to know; and he would
+have so planned that they two should never meet again. But Horace
+Smithson was not free. He was bound hand and foot by those fetters which
+the chain of past events had forged--stern facts which the man himself
+may forget, or try to forget, but which other people never forget. There
+is generally some dark spot in the history of such men as Smithson--men
+who climb the giddiest heights of this world with that desperate
+rapidity which implies many a perilous leap from crag to crag, many a
+moraine skimmed over, and many an awful gulf spanned by a hair-breadth
+bridge. Mr. Smithson's history was not without such spots; and the
+darkest of all had relation to his career in Cuba. The story had been
+known by very few--perhaps completely known only by one man; and that
+man was Gomez de Montesma.
+
+For the last fifteen years the most fervent desire of Horace Smithson's
+heart had been the hope that tropical nature, in any one of her various
+disagreeable forms, would be obliging enough to make an end of Gomez.
+But the forces of nature had not worked on Mr. Smithson's side. No
+loathsome leprosy had eaten his enemy's flesh; neither cayman nor
+crocodile, neither Juba snake nor poisonous spider had marked him for
+its prey. The tropical sun had left him unsmitten. He had lived and he
+had prospered; and he was here, like a guilty conscience incarnate, to
+spoil Horace Smithson's peace.
+
+'I must be diplomatic,' Smithson said to himself, as he walked up and
+down an avenue of Irish yews, in a solitary part of the grounds, smoking
+his cigarette, and hearing the music swell and sink in the distance. 'I
+will give her a hint as to that man's character, and I will keep them
+apart as much as I can. But if he forces himself upon me there is no
+help for it. I cannot afford to be uncivil to him.'
+
+'Cannot afford' in this instance meant 'dare not,' and Horace Smithson's
+thoughts as he paced the yew-tree walk were full of gloom.
+
+During that long meditation he made up his mind on one point, namely,
+that, let him suffer what pangs he might, he must not betray his
+jealousy. To do that would be to lower himself in Lesbia's eyes, and to
+play into his rival's hand; for a jealous man is almost always
+contemptible in the sight of his mistress. He would carry himself as if
+he were sure of her fidelity; and this very confidence, with a woman of
+honour, a girl reared as Lesbia had been reared, would render it
+impossible for her to betray him. He would show himself high-minded,
+confident, generous, chivalrous, even; and he would trust to chance for
+the issue. Chance was Mr. Smithson's only idea of Divinity; and Chance
+had hitherto been kind to him. There had been dark hours in his life,
+but the darkness had not lasted long; and the lucky accidents of his
+career had been of a nature to beguile him into the belief that among
+the favourites of Destiny he stood first and foremost.
+
+While Mr. Smithson mused thus, alone and in the darkness, Montesma and
+Lady Lesbia were wandering arm in arm in another and lovelier part of
+the grounds, where golden lights were scattered like Cuban fire-flies
+among the foliage of seringa and magnolia, arbutus and rhododendron,
+while at intervals a sudden flush of rosier light was shed over garden
+and river, as if by enchantment, surprising a couple here and there in
+the midst of a flirtation which had begun in darkness.
+
+The grounds were lovely in the balmy atmosphere of a July night, the
+river gliding with mysterious motion under the stars, great masses of
+gloom darkening the stream with an almost awful look where the woods of
+Petersham and Ham House cast their dense shadows on the water. Don Gomez
+and his companion wandered by the river side to a spot where a group of
+magnolias sheltered them from the open lawn, and where there were some
+rustic chairs close to the balustrade which protected the parapet. In
+this spot, which was a kind of island, divided from the rest of the
+grounds by the intervening road, they found themselves quite alone, and
+in the midst of a summer stillness which was broken only by the low,
+lazy ripple of the tide running seawards. The lights of Richmond looked
+far away, and the little town with its variety of levels had an Italian
+air in the distance.
+
+From the ballroom, faint and fitful, came the music of a waltz.
+
+'I'm afraid I've brought you too far,' said Don Gomez.
+
+'On the contrary, it is a relief to get away from the lights and the
+people. How delicious this river is! I was brought up on the shores of a
+lake; but after all a lake is horribly tame. Its limits are always
+staring one in the face. There is no room for one's imagination to
+wander. Now a river like this suggests an infinity of possibilities,
+drifting on and on and on into undiscovered regions, by ever-varying
+shores. I feel to-night as if I should like to step into that little
+boat yonder,' pointing to a light skiff bobbing gently up and down with
+the tide, at the bottom of a flight of steps, 'and let the stream take
+me wherever it chose.'
+
+'If I could but go with you,' said Gomez, in that deep and musical tone
+which made the commonest words seem melody, 'I would ask for neither
+compass nor rudder. What could it matter whither the boat took me? There
+is no place under the stars which would not be a paradise--with you.'
+
+'Please don't make a dreamy aspiration the occasion for a compliment,'
+exclaimed Lesbia, lightly. 'What I said was so silly that I don't wonder
+you thought it right to say something just a little sillier. But
+moonlight and running water have a curious effect upon me; and I, who am
+the most prosaic among women, become ridiculously sentimental.'
+
+'I cannot believe that you are prosaic.'
+
+'I assure you it is perfectly true. I am of the earth, earthy; a woman
+of the world, in my first season, ambitious, fond of pleasure, vain,
+proud, exacting, all those things which I am told a woman ought not to
+be.'
+
+'You pain me when you so slander yourself; and I shall make it the
+business of my life to find out how much truth there is in that
+self-slander. For my own part I do not believe a word of it; but as it
+is rude to contradict a lady I will only say that I reserve my opinion.'
+
+'Are you to stay long in England?' asked Lesbia.
+
+She was leaning against the stone balustrade in a careless attitude, as
+of one who was weary, her elbow on the stone slab, and her head thrown
+back against her arm. The white satin gown, moulded to her figure, had a
+statuesque air, and she looked like a marble statue in the dim light,
+every line of the graceful form expressive of repose.
+
+'That will depend. I am not particularly fond of London. A very little
+of your English Babylon satisfies me, in a general way; but there are
+conditions which might make England enchanting. Where do you go at the
+end of the season?'
+
+'First to Goodwood, and then to Cowes. Mr. Smithson is so kind as to
+place his yacht at Lady Kirkbank's disposal, and I am to be her guest on
+board the Cayman, just as I am in Arlington Street.'
+
+'The Cayman! That name is a reminiscence of Mr. Smithson's South
+American travels.'
+
+'No doubt! Was he long in South America?'
+
+'Three or four years.'
+
+'But not in Cuba all that time, I suppose?'
+
+'He had business relations with Cuba all that time, and oscillated
+between our island and the main. He was rather fortunate in his little
+adventures with us--made almost as much money as General Tacon, of
+blessed memory. But I dare say Smithson has told you all his adventures
+in that part of the world.'
+
+'No, he very rarely talks about his travels: and I am not particularly
+interested in commercial speculations. There is always so much to think
+of and talk about in the business of the moment. Are you fond of Cuba?'
+
+'Not passionately. I always feel as if I were an exile there, and yet
+one of my ancestors was with Columbus when he discovered the island, and
+my race were among the earliest settlers. My family has given three
+Captain-generals to Cuba: but I cannot forget that I belong to an older
+world, and have forfeited that which ought to have been a brilliant
+place in Europe for the luxurious obscurity of a colony.'
+
+'But you must be attached to a place in which your family have lived for
+so many generations?'
+
+'I like the stars and the sea, the mountains and savannas, the tropical
+vegetation, and the dreamy, half-oriental life; but at best it is a kind
+of stagnation, and after a residence of a few months in the island of my
+birth I generally spread my wings for the wider world of the old
+continent or the new.'
+
+'You must have travelled so much,' said Lesbia, with a sigh. 'I have
+been nowhere and seen nothing. I feel like a child who has been shut up
+in a nursery all its life, and knows of no world beyond four walls.'
+
+'Not to travel is not to live,' said Don Gomez.
+
+'I am to be in Italy next November, I believe,' said Lesbia, not caring
+to own that this Italian trip was to be her honeymoon.
+
+'Italy!' exclaimed the Spaniard, contemptuously. 'Once the finishing
+school of the English nobility; now the happy hunting-ground of the
+Cockney tourist and the prosperous Yankee. All the poetry of Italy has
+been dried up, and the whole country vulgarised. If you want romance in
+the old world go to Spain; in the new, try Peru or Brazil, Mexico or
+California.'
+
+'I am afraid I am not adventurous enough to go so far.'
+
+'No: women cling to beaten tracks.'
+
+'We obey our masters,' answered Lesbia, meekly.
+
+'Ah, I forgot. You are to have a master--and soon. I heard as much
+before I saw you to-night.'
+
+Lesbia half rose, as if to leave this cool retreat above the rippling
+tide.
+
+'Yes, it is all settled,' she said; 'and now I think I must go back.
+Lady Kirkbank will be wondering what has become of me.'
+
+'Let her wonder a little longer,' said Don Gomez. 'Why should we hurry
+away from this delightful spot? Why break the spell of--the river? Life
+has so few moments of perfect contentment. If this is one with you--as
+it is with me--let us make the most of it. Lady Lesbia, do you see those
+weeds yonder, drifting with the tide, drifting side by side, touching as
+they drift? They have met heaven knows how, and will part heaven knows
+where, on their way to the sea; but they let themselves go with the
+tide. We have met like those poor weeds. Don't let us part till the tide
+parts us.'
+
+Lesbia gave a little sigh, and submitted. She had talked of women
+obeying their masters; and the implication was that she meant to obey
+Mr. Smithson. But there is a fate in these things; and the man who was
+to be her master, whose lightest breath was to sway her, whose lightest
+look was to rule her, was here at her side in the silence of the summer
+night.
+
+They talked long, but of indifferent subjects; and their talk might have
+been heard by every member of the Orleans Club, and no harm done. Yet
+words and phrases count for very little in such a case. It is the tone,
+it is the melody of a voice, it is the magic of the hour that tells.
+
+The tide came, in the person of Mr. Smithson, and parted these two weeds
+that were drifting towards the great mysterious ocean of fate.
+
+'I have been hunting for you everywhere,' he said, cheerfully. 'If you
+want another waltz, Lady Lesbia, you had better take the next. I believe
+it is to be the last. At any rate our party are clamouring to be driven
+home. I found poor Lady Kirkbank fast asleep in a corner of the
+drawing-room.'
+
+'Will you give me that last waltz?' asked Don Gomez.
+
+Lady Lesbia felt that the long-suffering Smithson had endured enough.
+Womanly instinct constrained her to refuse that final waltz: but it
+seemed to her as if she were making a tremendous sacrifice in so doing.
+And yet she had waltzed to her heart's content during the season that
+was waning, and knew all the waltzes played by all the fashionable
+bands. She gave a little sigh, as she said--
+
+'No, I must not indulge myself. I must go and take care of Lady
+Kirkbank.'
+
+Mr. Smithson offered his arm, and she took it and went away with him,
+leaving Don Gomez to follow at his leisure. There would be some delay no
+doubt before the drag started. The lamps had gone out among the foliage,
+and the stars were waning a little, and there was a faint cold light
+creeping over the garden which meant the advent of morning. Don Gomez
+strolled towards the lighted house, smoking a cigarette.
+
+'She is very lovely, and she is--well--not quite spoiled by her
+_entourage_, and they tell me she is an heiress--sure to inherit a
+fine fortune from some ancient grandmother, buried alive in
+Westmoreland,' he mused. 'What a splendid opportunity it would be if--if
+the business could be arranged on the square. But as it is--well--as it
+is there is the chance of an adventure; and when did a Montesma ever
+avoid an adventure, although there were dagger or poison lurking in the
+background? And here there is neither poison nor steel, only a lovely
+woman, and an infatuated stockbroker, about whom I know enough to
+disgrace and ruin an archbishop. Poor Smithson! How very unlucky that I
+should happen to come across your pathway in the heyday of your latest
+love affair. We have had our little adventures in that line already, and
+we have measured swords together, metaphorically, before to-night. When
+it comes to a question of actual swords my Smithson declines. _Pas si
+bete._'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII.
+
+LORD HARTFIELD REFUSES A FORTUNE.
+
+
+A honeymoon among lakes and mountains, amidst the gorgeous confusion of
+Borrowdale, in a little world of wild, strange loveliness, shut in and
+isolated from the prosaic outer world by the vast and towering masses of
+Skiddaw and Blencathara--a world of one's own, as it were, a world
+steeped in romance and poetry, dear to the souls of poets. There are
+many such honeymoons every summer; indeed, the mountain paths, the
+waterfalls and lakes swarm with happy lovers; and this land of hills and
+waters seems to have been made expressly for honeymoon travellers; yet
+never went truer lovers wandering by lake and torrent, by hill and
+valley, than those two whose brief honeymoon was now drawing to a close.
+
+It was altogether a magical time for Mary, this dawn of a new life. The
+immensity of her happiness almost frightened her. She could hardly
+believe in it, or trust in its continuance.
+
+'Am I really, really, really your wife?' she asked on their last day,
+bending down to speak to her husband, as he led her pony up the rough
+ways of Skiddaw. 'It is all so dreadfully like a dream.'
+
+'Thank God, it is the very truth,' answered Lord Hartfield, looking
+fondly at the fresh young face, brightened by the summer wind, which
+faintly stirred the auburn hair under the neat little hat.
+
+'And am I actually a Countess? I don't care about it one little bit, you
+know, except as a stupendous joke. If you were to tell me that you had
+been only making fun of poor grandmother and me, and that those diamonds
+are glass, and you only plain John Hammond, it wouldn't make the
+faintest difference. Indeed, it would be a weight off my mind. It is an
+awfully oppressive thing to be a Countess.'
+
+'I'm sorry I cannot relieve you of the burden. The law of the land has
+made you Lady Hartfield; and I hope you are preparing your mind for the
+duties of your position.'
+
+'It is very dreadful,' sighed Mary. 'If her ladyship were as well and as
+active as she was when first you came to Fellside, she could have helped
+me; but now there will be no one, except you. And you will help me,
+won't you Jack?'
+
+'With all my heart.'
+
+'My own true Jack,' with a little fervent squeeze of his sunburnt hand.
+'In society I suppose I shall have to call you Hartfield. "Hartfield,
+please ring the bell." "Give me a footstool, Hartfield." How odd it
+sounds. I shall be blurting out the old dear name.'
+
+'I don't think it will much matter. It will pass for one of Lady
+Hartfield's little ways. Every woman is supposed to have little ways,
+don't you know. One has a little way of dropping her friends; another
+has a little way of not paying her dressmaker; another's little way is
+to take too much champagne. I hope Lady Hartfield's little way will be
+her devotion to her husband.'
+
+'I'm afraid I shall end by being a nuisance to you, for I shall love you
+ridiculously,' answered Mary, gaily; 'and from what you have told me
+about society, it seems to me that there can be nothing so unfashionable
+as an affectionate wife. Will you mind my being quite out of fashion,
+Jack?'
+
+'I should very much object to your being in the fashion.'
+
+'Then I am happy. I don't think it is in my nature to become a woman of
+fashion; although I have cured myself, for your sake, of being a hoyden.
+I had so schooled myself for what I thought our new life was to be; so
+trained myself to be a managing economical wife, that I feel quite at
+sea now that I am to be mistress of a house in Grosvenor Square and a
+place in Kent. Still, I will bear with it all; yes, even endure the
+weight of those diamonds for your sake.'
+
+She laughed, and he laughed. They were quite alone among the
+hills--hardy mountaineers both--and they could be as foolish as they
+liked. She rested her head upon his shoulder, and he and she and the
+pony made one as they climbed the hill, close together.
+
+'Our last day,' sighed Mary, as they went down again, after a couple of
+blissful hours in that wild world between earth and sky. 'I shall be
+glad to go back to poor grandmother, who must be sadly lonely; but it is
+so sweet to be quite alone with you.'
+
+They left the Lodore Hotel in an open carriage, after luncheon next day,
+and posted to Fellside, where they arrived just in time to assist at
+Lady Maulevrier's afternoon tea. She received them both with warm
+affection, and made Hartfield sit close beside her sofa; and every now
+and then, in the pauses of their talk, she laid her wasted and too
+delicate fingers upon the young man's strong brown hand, with a
+caressing gesture.
+
+'You can never know how sweet it is to me to be able to love you,' she
+said tenderly. 'You can never know how my heart yearned to you from the
+very first, and how hard it was to keep myself in check and not be too
+kind to you. Oh, Hartfield, you should have told me the truth. You
+should not have come here under false colours.'
+
+'Should I not, Lady Maulevrier? It was my only chance of being loved
+for my own sake; or, at least of knowing that I was so loved. If I had
+come with my rank and my fortune in my hand, as it were--one of the good
+matches of the year--what security could I ever have felt in the
+disinterested love of the girl who chose me? As plain John Hammond I
+wooed and was rejected; as plain John Hammond I wooed and won; and the
+prize which I so won is a pearl above price. Not for worlds, were the
+last year to be lived over again, would I have one day of my life
+altered.'
+
+'Well, I suppose I ought to be satisfied. I wanted you for Lesbia, and I
+have got you for Mary. Best of all, I have got you for myself. Ronald
+Hollister's son is mine; he is of my kin; he belongs to me; he will not
+forsake me in life; he will be near me, God grant, when I die.'
+
+'Dear Lady Maulevrier, as far as in me lies, I will be to you as a son,'
+said Lord Hartfield, very solemnly, stooping to kiss her hand.
+
+Mary came away from her tea-table to embrace her grandmother.
+
+'It makes me so happy to have won a little of your regard,' she
+murmured, 'and to know that I have married a man whom you can love.'
+
+'Of course you have heard of Lesbia's engagement?' Lady Maulevrier said
+presently, when they were taking their tea.
+
+'Maulevrier wrote to us about it.'
+
+'To us.' How nice it sounded, thought Mary, as if they were a firm, and
+a letter written to one was written to both.
+
+'And do you know this Mr. Smithson?'
+
+'Not intimately. I have met him at the Carlton.'
+
+'I am told that he is very much esteemed by your party, and that he is
+very likely to get a peerage when this Ministry goes out of office.'
+
+'That is not improbable. Peerages are to be had if a man is rich enough;
+and Smithson is supposed to be inordinately rich.'
+
+'I hope he has character as well as money,' said Lady Maulevrier,
+gravely. 'But do you think a man can become inordinately rich in a short
+time, with unblemished honour?'
+
+'We are told that nothing is impossible,' answered Hartfield. 'Faith can
+remove a mountain; only one does not often see it done. However, I
+believe Mr. Smithson's character is fairly good as millionaires go. We
+do not inquire too closely into these things nowadays.'
+
+Lady Maulevrier sighed and held her peace. She remembered the day when
+she had protested vehemently, passionately, against Lesbia's marriage
+with a poor man. And now she had an unhappy feeling about Mr. Smithson's
+wealth, a doubt, a dread that all might not be well with those millions,
+that some portion of that golden tide might flow from impure sources.
+She had lived remote from the world, but she had read the papers
+diligently, and she knew how often the splendour of commercial wealth
+has been suddenly obscured behind a black cloud of obloquy. She could
+not rejoice heartily at the idea of Lesbia's engagement.
+
+'I am to see the man early in August,' she said, as if she were talking
+of a butler. 'I hope I may like him. Lady Kirkbank tells me it is a
+brilliant marriage, and I must take her word. What can _I_ do for my
+granddaughter--a useless log--a prisoner in two rooms?'
+
+'It is very hard,' murmured Mary, tenderly, 'but I do not see any reason
+why Lesbia should not be happy. She likes a brilliant life; and Mr.
+Smithson can give her as much gaiety and variety as she can possibly
+desire. And, after all, yachts, and horses, and villas, and diamonds
+_are_ nice things.'
+
+'They are the things for which half the world is ready to cheat or
+murder the other half,' said Lady Maulevrier, bitterly. She had told
+herself long ago that wealth was power, and she had sacrificed many
+things, her own peace, her own conscience among them, in order that her
+children and grandchildren should be rich; and, knowing this, she felt
+it ill became her to be scrupulous, and to inquire too closely as to
+the sources of Mr. Smithson's wealth. He was rich, and the world had no
+fault to find with him. He had attended the last _levee_. He went into
+reputable society. And he could give Lesbia all those things which the
+world calls good.
+
+Fraeulein Mueller had packed her heavy old German trunks, and had gone
+back to the _Heimath_, laden with presents of all kinds from Lady
+Maulevrier; so Mary and her husband felt as if Fellside was really their
+own. They dined with her ladyship, and left her for the night an hour
+after dinner; and then they went down to the gardens, and roamed about
+in the twilight, and talked, and talked, and talked, as only true lovers
+can talk, be they Strephon and Daphne in life's glad morning, or
+grey-haired Darby and Joan; and lastly they went down to the lake, and
+rowed about in the moonlight, and talked of King Arthur's death, and of
+that mystic sword, Excalibur, 'wrought by the lonely maiden of the
+lake.'
+
+They spent three happy days in wandering about the neighbourhood,
+revisiting in the delicious freedom of their wedded life those spots
+which they had seen together, when Mary was still in bondage, and the
+eye of propriety, as represented by Miss Mueller, was always upon her.
+Now they were free to go where they pleased--to linger where they
+liked--they belonged to each other, and were under no other dominion.
+
+The dogcart, James Steadman's dogcart, which he had rarely used during
+the last six months, was put in requisition and Lord Hartfield drove his
+wife about the country. They went to the Langdale Pikes, and to Dungeon
+Ghyll; and, standing beside the waterfall, Mary told her husband how
+miserable she had felt on that very spot a little less than a year ago,
+when she believed that he thought her plain and altogether horrid.
+Whereupon he had to console her with many kisses and sweet words, for
+the bygone pain on her part, the neglect on his.
+
+'I was a wretch,' he said, 'blind, besotted, imbecile.'
+
+'No, no, no. Lesbia is very lovely--and I could not expect you would
+care for me till she was gone away. How glad I am that she went,' added
+Mary, naively.
+
+The sky, which had been cloudless all day, began to darken as Lord
+Hartfield drove back to Fellside, and Mary drew a little closer to the
+driver's elbow, as if for shelter from an impending tempest.
+
+'You have your waterproof, of course,' he said, looking down at her, as
+the first big drops of a thunder shower dashed upon the splash-board.
+'No young woman in the Lake country would think of being without a
+waterproof.'
+
+Mary was duly provided, and with the help of the groom put herself into
+a snug little tartan Inverness, while Hartfield sent the cart spinning
+along twelve miles an hour.
+
+They were at Fellside before the storm developed its full power, but the
+sky was leaden, the landscape dull and blotted, the atmosphere heavy and
+stifling. The thunder grumbled hoarsely, far away yonder in the wild
+gorges of Borrowdale; and Mary and her husband made up their minds that
+the tempest would come before midnight.
+
+Lady Maulevrier was suffering from the condition of the atmosphere. She
+had gone to bed, prostrate with a neuralgic headache, and had given
+orders that no one but her maid should go near her. So Lord Hartfield
+and his wife dined by themselves, in the room where Mary had eaten so
+many uninteresting dinners _tete-a-tete_ with Fraeulein; and in spite of
+the storm which howled, pelted, and lightened every now and then, Mary
+felt as if she were in Paradise.
+
+There was no chance of going out after dinner. The lake looked like a
+pool of ink, the mountains were monsters of dark and threatening aspect,
+the rain rattled against the windows, and ran from the verandah in
+miniature water-spouts. There was nothing to do but stay in doors, in
+the sultry, dusky house.
+
+'Let us go to my boudoir,' said Mary. 'Let me enjoy the full privilege
+of having a boudoir--my very own room. Wasn't it too good of grandmother
+to have it made so smart for me?'
+
+'Nothing can be too good for my Mary,' answered her husband, still in
+the doting stage, 'but it was very nice of her ladyship--and the room is
+charming.'
+
+Delightful as the new boudoir might be, they dawdled in the picture
+gallery, that long corridor on which all the upper rooms opened, and at
+one end of which was the door of Lady Maulevrier's bedroom, at right
+angles with that red-cloth door, which was never opened, except to give
+egress or ingress to James Steadman, who kept the key of it, as if the
+old part of Fellside House had been an enchanted castle. Lord Hartfield
+had not forgotten that summer midnight last year, when his meditations
+were disturbed by a woman's piercing cry. He thought of it this evening,
+as Mary and he lowered their voices on drawing near Lady Maulevrier's
+door. She was asleep within there now, perhaps, that strange old woman;
+and at any moment an awful shriek, as of a soul in mortal agony, might
+startle them in the midst of their bliss.
+
+The lamps were lighted below; but this upper part of the house was
+wrapped in the dull grey twilight of a stormy evening. A single lamp
+burned dimly at the further end of the corridor, and all the rest was
+shadow.
+
+Mary and her husband walked up and down, talking in subdued tones. He
+was explaining the necessity of his being in London next week, and
+promising to come back to Fellside directly his business at the House
+was over.
+
+'It will be delightful to read your speeches,' said Mary; 'but I am
+silly and selfish enough to wish you were a country squire, with no
+business in London. And yet I don't wish that either, for I am intensely
+proud of you.'
+
+'And some day, before we are much older, you will sit in your robes in
+the peeress's gallery.'
+
+'Oh, I couldn't,' cried Mary. 'I should make a fool of myself, somehow.
+I should look like a housemaid in borrowed plumes. Remember, I have no
+_Anstand_--I have been told so all my life.'
+
+'You will be one of the prettiest peeresses who ever sat in that
+gallery, and the purest, and truest, and dearest,' protested her
+lover-husband.
+
+'Oh, if I am good enough for you, I am satisfied. I married _you_, and
+not the House of Lords. But I am afraid your friends will all say,
+"Hartfield, why in heaven's name did you marry that uncultivated
+person?" Look!'
+
+She stopped suddenly, with her hand on her husband's arm. It was growing
+momentarily darker in the corridor. They were at the end near the lamp,
+and that other end by Lady Maulevrier's door was in deeper darkness, yet
+not too dark for Lord Hartfield to see what it was to which Mary
+pointed.
+
+The red-cloth door was open, and a faint glimmer of light showed within.
+A man was standing in the corridor, a small, shrunken figure, bent and
+old.
+
+'It is Steadman's uncle,' said Mary. 'Do let me go and speak to him,
+poor, poor old man.'
+
+'The madman!' exclaimed Hartfield. 'No, Mary; go to your room at once.
+I'll get him back to his own den.'
+
+'But he is not mad--at any rate, he is quite harmless. Let me just say a
+few words to him. Surely I am safe with you.'
+
+Lord Hartfield was not inclined to dispute that argument; indeed, he
+felt himself strong enough to protect his wife from all the lunatics in
+Bedlam. He went towards the end of the corridor, keeping Mary well
+behind him; but Mary did not mean to lose the opportunity of renewing
+her acquaintance with Steadman's uncle.
+
+'I hope you are better, poor old soul,' she murmured, gently, lovingly
+almost, nestling at her husband's side.
+
+'What, is it you?' cried the old man, tremulous with joy. 'Oh,
+I have been looking for you--looking--looking--waiting, waiting for
+you. I have been hoping for you every hour and every minute. Why didn't
+you come to me, cruel girl?'
+
+'I tried with all my might,' said Mary, 'but people blocked up the door
+in the stables, and they wouldn't let me go to you; and I have been
+rather busy for the last fortnight,' added Mary, blushing in the
+darkness, 'I--I--am married to this gentleman.'
+
+'Married! Ah, that is a good thing. He will take care of you, if he is
+an honest man.'
+
+'I thought he was an honest man, but he has turned out to be an earl,'
+answered Mary, proudly. 'My husband is Lord Hartfield.'
+'Hartfield--Hartfield,' the old man repeated, feebly. 'Surely I have
+heard that name before.'
+
+There was no violence in his manner, nothing but imbecility; so Lord
+Hartfield made up his mind that Mary was right, and that the old man was
+quite harmless, worthy of all compassion and kindly treatment.
+
+This was the same old man whom he had met on the Fell in the bleak March
+morning. There was no doubt in his mind about that, although he could
+hardly see the man's face in the shadowy corridor.
+
+'Come,' said the man, 'come with me, my dear. You forgot me, but I have
+not forgotten you. I mean to leave you my fortune. Come with me, and
+I'll show you your legacy. It is all for you--every rupee--every jewel.'
+
+This word rupee startled Lord Hartfield. It had a strange sound from the
+lips of a Westmoreland peasant.
+
+'Come, child, come!' said the man impatiently. 'Come and see what I have
+left you in my will. I make a new will every day, but I leave everything
+to you--every will is in your favour. But if you are married you had
+better have your legacy at once. Your husband is strong enough to take
+care of you and your fortune.'
+
+'Poor old man,' whispered Mary; 'pray let us humour him.'
+
+It was the usual madman's fancy, no doubt. Boundless wealth, exalted
+rank, sanctity, power--these things all belong to the lunatic. He is the
+lord of creation, and, fed by such fancies, he enjoys flashes of wild
+happiness in the midst of his woe.
+
+'Come, come, both of you,' said the old man, eagerly, breathless with
+impatience.
+
+He led the way across the sacred threshold, looking back, beckoning to
+them with his wasted old hand, and Mary for the first time in her life
+entered that house which had seemed to her from her very childhood as a
+temple of silence and mystery. The passage was dimly lighted by a little
+lamp on a bracket. The old man crept along stealthily, looking back,
+with a face full of cunning, till he came to a broad landing, from which
+an old staircase, with massive oak banisters, led down to the square
+hall below. The ceilings were low, the passages were narrow. All things
+in the house were curiously different from that spacious mansion which
+Lady Maulevrier had built for herself.
+
+A door on the landing stood ajar. The old man pushed it open and went
+in, followed by Mary and her husband.
+
+They both expected to see a room humble almost to poverty--an iron
+bedstead, perhaps, and such furniture as the under servants in a
+nobleman's household are privileged to enjoy. Both were alike surprised
+at the luxury of the apartment they entered, and which was evidently
+reserved exclusively for Steadman's uncle.
+
+It was a sitting-room. The furniture was old-fashioned, but almost as
+handsome as any in Lady Maulevrier's apartments. There was a large sofa
+of most comfortable shape, covered with dark red velvet, and furnished
+with pillows and foot rugs, which would have satisfied a Sybarite of the
+first water. Beside the sofa stood a hookah, with all appliances in the
+Oriental fashion; and half a dozen long cherry-wood pipes neatly
+arranged above the mantelpiece showed that Mr. Steadman's uncle was a
+smoker of a luxurious type.
+
+In the centre of the room stood a large writing table, with a case of
+pigeon-holes at the back, a table which would not have disgraced a Prime
+Minister's study. A pair of wax candles, in tall silver candlesticks,
+lighted this table, which was littered with papers, in a wild confusion
+that too plainly indicated the condition of the owner's mind. The oak
+floor was covered with Persian prayer rugs, old and faded, but of the
+richest quality. The window curtains were dark red velvet; and through
+an open doorway Mary and her husband saw a corresponding luxury in the
+arrangements of the adjoining bedroom.
+
+The whole thing seemed wild and strange as a fairy tale. The weird and
+wizened old man, grinning and nodding his head at them. The handsome
+room, rich with dark, subdued colour, in the dim light of four wax
+candles, two on the table, two on the mantelpiece. The perfume of
+stephanotis and tea-roses, blended faintly with the all-pervading odour
+of latakia and Turkish attar. All was alike strange, bearing in mind
+that this old man was a recipient of Lady Maulevrier's charity, a
+hanger-on upon a confidential servant, who might be supposed to be
+generously treated if he had the run of his teeth and the shelter of a
+decent garret. Verily, there was something regal in such hospitality as
+this, accorded to a pauper lunatic.
+
+Where was Steadman, the alert, the watchful, all this time? Mary
+wondered. They had met no one. The house was as mute as if it were under
+the spell of a magician. It was like that awful chamber in the Arabian
+story, where the young man found the magic horse, and started on his
+fatal journey. Mary felt as if here, too, there must be peril; here,
+too, fate was working.
+
+The old man went to the writing table, pushed aside the papers, and then
+stooped down and turned a mysterious handle or winch under the
+knee-hole, and the writing-desk moved slowly on one side, while the
+pigeon-holes sank, and a deep well full of secret drawers was laid open.
+
+From one of these secret drawers the old man took a bunch of keys,
+nodding, chuckling, muttering to himself as he groped for them with
+tremulous hand.
+
+'Steadman is uncommonly clever--thinks he knows everything--but he
+doesn't know the trick of this table. I could hide a regiment of Sepoys
+in this table, my dear. Well, well, perhaps not Sepoys--too big, too
+big--but I could hide all the State papers of the Presidency. There are
+drawers enough for that.'
+
+Hartfield watched him intently, with thoughtful brow. There was a
+mystery here, a mystery of the deepest dye; and it was for him--it must
+needs be his task, welcome or unwelcome, to unravel it.
+
+This was the Maulevrier skeleton.
+
+'Now, come with me,' said the old man, clutching Mary's wrist, and
+drawing her towards the half-open door leading into the bedroom.
+
+She had a feeling of shrinking, for there was something uncanny about
+the old man, something that might be life or death, might belong to this
+world or the next; but she had no fear. In the first place, she was
+courageous by nature, and in the second her husband was with her, a
+tower of strength, and she could know no fear while he was at her side.
+
+The strange old man led the way across his bedroom to an inner chamber,
+oak pannelled, with very little furniture, but holding much treasure in
+the shape of trunks, portmanteaux--all very old and dusty--and two large
+wooden cases, banded with iron.
+
+Before one of these cases the man knelt down, and applied a key to the
+padlock which fastened it. He gave the candle to Lord Hartfield to hold,
+and then opened the box. It seemed to be full of books, which he began
+to remove, heaping them on the floor beside him; and it was not till he
+had cleared away a layer of dingy volumes that he came to a large metal
+strong box, so heavy that he could not lift it out of the chest.
+
+Slowly, tremulously, and with quickened breathing, he unlocked the box
+where it was, and raised the lid.
+
+'Look,' he said eagerly, 'this is her legacy--this is my little girl's
+legacy.'
+
+Lord Hartfield bent down and looked at the old man's treasure, by the
+wavering light of the candle; Mary looking over his shoulder, breathless
+with wonder.
+
+The strong box was divided into compartments. One, and the largest, was
+filled with rouleaux of coin, packed as closely as possible. The others
+contained jewels, set and unset--diamonds, emeralds, rubies,
+sapphires--which flashed back the flickering flame of the candle with
+glintings of rainbow light.
+
+'These are all for her--all--all,' exclaimed the old man. 'They are
+worth a prince's ransom. Those rouleaux are all gold; those gems are
+priceless. They were the dowry of a princess. But they are hers
+now--yes, my dear, they are yours--because you spoke sweetly, and smiled
+prettily, and were very good to a lonely old man--and because you have
+my mother's face, dear, a smile that recalls the days of my youth. Lift
+out the box and take it away with you, if you are strong enough,--you,
+you,' he said, touching Lord Hartfield. 'Hide it somewhere--keep it from
+_her_. Let no one know--no one except your wife and you must be in the
+secret.'
+
+'My dear sir, it is out of the question--impossible that my wife or I
+should accept one of those coins--or the smallest of those jewels.'
+
+'Why not, in the devil's name?'
+
+'First and foremost, we do not know how you came in possession of them;
+secondly, we do not know who you are.'
+
+'They came to me fairly enough--bequeathed to me by one who had the
+right to leave them. Would you have had all that gold left for an
+adventurer to wallow in?'
+
+'You must keep your treasure, sir, however it may have come to you,'
+answered Lord Hartfield firmly. 'My wife cannot take upon herself the
+burden of a single gold coin--least of all from a stranger. Remember,
+sir, to us your possession of this wealth--nay, your whole existence--is
+a mystery.'
+
+'You want to know who I am?' said the old man drawing himself up, with a
+sudden _hauteur_ which was not without dignity, despite his shrunken
+form and grotesque appearence. 'Well, sir. I am----'
+
+He checked himself abruptly, and looked round the room with a scared
+expression.
+
+'No, no, no,' he muttered; 'caution, caution! They have not done with me
+yet; she warned me--they are lying in wait; I mustn't walk into their
+trap.' And then turning to Lord Hartfield, he said, haughtily, 'I shall
+not condescend to tell you who I am, sir. You must know that I am a
+gentleman, and that is enough for you. There is my gift to your
+wife'--pointing to the chest--'take it or leave it.'
+
+'I shall leave it, sir, with all due respect.'
+
+A frightful change came over the old man's face at this determined
+refusal. His eyes glowered at Lord Hartfield under the heavy scowling
+brows; his bloodless lips worked convulsively.
+
+'Do you take me for a thief?' he exclaimed. 'Are you afraid to touch my
+gold--that gold for which men and women sell their souls, blast their
+lives with shame, and pain, and dishonour, all the world over? Do you
+stand aloof from it--refuse to touch it, as if it were infected? And
+you, too, girl! Have you no sense? Are you an idiot?'
+
+'I can do nothing against my husband's wish,' Mary answered, quietly;
+'and, indeed, there is no need for us to take your money. We are rich
+without it. Please leave that chest to a hospital. It will be ever so
+much better than giving it to us.'
+
+'You told me you were going to marry a poor man?'
+
+'I know. But he cheated me, and turned out to be a rich man. He was a
+horrid impostor,' said Mary, drawing closer to her husband, and smiling
+up at him.
+
+The old man flung down the lid of his strong box, which shut with a
+sonorous clang. He locked it, and put the key in his pocket.
+
+'I have done with you.' he said. 'You can go your ways, both of you.
+Fools, fools, fools! The world is peopled with rogues and fools; and, by
+heaven, I would rather have to do with the rogues!'
+
+He flung himself into an arm-chair, one of the few objects of furniture
+in the room, and left them to find their way back alone.
+
+'Good-night, sir,' said Lord Hartfield; but the old man made no reply.
+He sat frowning sullenly.
+
+'Good-night, sir,' said Mary, in her gentle voice, breathing infinite
+pity.
+
+'Good-night, child,' he growled. 'I am sorry you have married an ass.'
+
+This was more than Mary could stand, and she was about to reply with
+some acrimony, when her husband put his hand upon her lips and hurried
+her away.
+
+On the landing they met Mrs. Steadman, a stout, commonplace person, who
+always had the same half-frightened look, as of one who lived in the
+shadow of an abiding terror, obviously cowed and brow-beaten by her
+husband, according to the Fellside household.
+
+At sight of Lord Hartfield and his wife she looked a little more
+frightened than usual.
+
+'Goodness gracious, Lady Mary! how ever did you come here?' she gasped,
+not yet having quite realised the fact that Mary had been promoted.
+
+'We came to please Steadman's uncle--he brought us in here,' Mary
+answered, quietly.
+
+'But where did you find him?'
+
+'In the corridor--just by her ladyship's room.'
+
+'Then he must have taken the key out of Steadman's pocket, or Steadman
+must have left it about somewhere,' muttered Mrs. Steadman, as if
+explaining the matter to herself, rather than to Mary. 'My poor husband
+is not the man he was. And so you met him in the corridor, and he
+brought you in here. Poor old gentleman! He gets madder and madder every
+day.'
+
+'There is method in his madness,' said Lord Hartfield. 'He talked very
+much like sanity just now. Has your husband had the charge of him long?'
+
+Mrs. Steadman answered somewhat confusedly.
+
+'A goodish time, sir. I can't quite exactly say--time passes so quiet in
+a place like this. One hardly keeps count of the years.'
+
+'Forty years, perhaps?'
+
+Mrs. Steadman blenched under Lord Hartfield's steadfast look--a look
+which questioned more searchingly than his words.
+
+'Forty years,' she repeated, with a faint laugh. 'Oh, dear no, sir, not
+a quarter as long. It isn't so many years, after all, since Steadman's
+poor old uncle went a little queer in his head; and Steadman, having
+such a quiet home here, and plenty of spare room, made bold to ask her
+ladyship if he might give the poor old man a home, where he would be in
+nobody's way.'
+
+'And the poor old man seems to have a very luxurious home,' answered
+Lord Hartfield. 'Pray when and where did Mr. Steadman's uncle learn to
+smoke a hookah?'
+
+Simple as the question was, it proved too much for Mrs. Steadman. She
+only shook her head, and faltered some unintelligible reply.
+
+'Where is your husband?' asked Lord Hartfield; 'I should like to have a
+little talk with him, if he is disengaged.'
+
+'He is not very well, my lord,' answered Mrs. Steadman. 'He has been
+ailing off and on for the last six months, but I couldn't get him to see
+the doctor, or to tell her ladyship that he was in bad health. And about
+a week ago he broke down altogether, and fell into a kind of drowsy
+state. He keeps about, and he does his work pretty much the same as
+usual, but I can see that it's too much for him. If you like to come
+downstairs I can let you through the lower door into the hall; and if he
+should have woke up since I have left him he'll be at your lordship's
+service. But I'd rather not wake him out of his sleep.'
+
+'There is no occasion. What I have to say will keep till to-morrow.'
+
+Lord Hartfield and his wife followed Mrs. Steadman downstairs to the low
+dark hall, where an old eight-day clock ticked with hoarse and solemn
+beat, and a fine stag's head over each doorway gave evidence of some
+former Haselden's sporting tastes. The door of a small panelled parlour
+stood half-way open; and within the room Lord Hartfield saw James
+Steadman asleep in an arm-chair by the fire, which burned as brightly as
+if it had been Christmas time.
+
+'He was so chilly and shivery this afternoon that I was obliged to light
+a fire,' said Mrs. Steadman.
+
+'He seems to be sleeping heavily,' said Hartfield. 'Don't awaken him.
+I'll see him to-morrow morning before I go to London.'
+
+'He sleeps half the day just as heavy as that, my lord,' said the wife,
+with a troubled air. 'I don't think it can be right.'
+
+'I don't think so either,' answered Lord Hartfield. 'You had better call
+in the doctor.'
+
+'I will, my lord, to-morrow morning. James will be angry with me, I
+daresay; but I must take upon myself to do it without his leave.'
+
+She led the way along a passage corresponding with the one above, and
+unlocked a door opening into a lobby near the billiard-room.
+
+'Come, Molly, see if you can beat me at a fifty game,' said Lord
+Hartfield, with the air of a man who wants to shake off the impression
+of some dominant idea.
+
+'Of course you will annihilate me, but it will be a relief to play,'
+answered Mary. 'That strange old man has given me a shock. Everything
+about his surroundings is so different from what I expected. And how
+could an uncle of Steadman's come by all that money--and those
+jewels--if they were jewels, and not bits of glass which the poor old
+thing has chopped up, in order to delude himself with an imaginary
+treasure?'
+
+'I do not think they are bits of glass, Molly.'
+
+'They sparkled tremendously--almost as much as my--our--the family
+diamonds,' said Mary, puzzled how to describe that property which she
+held in right of her position as countess regnant; 'but if they are real
+jewels, and all those rouleaux real money, how could Steadman's uncle
+become possessed of such wealth?'
+
+'How, indeed?' said Lord Hartfield, choosing his cue
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII.
+
+ON BOARD THE 'CAYMAN.'
+
+
+Goodwood had come and gone, a brief bright season of loss and gain, fine
+gowns, flirtation, lobster en mayonaise, champagne, sunshine, dust,
+glare, babble of many voices, successes, failures, triumphs,
+humiliations. A very pretty picture to contemplate from the outside,
+this little world in holiday clothes, framed in greenery! but just on
+the Brocken, where the nicest girl among the dancers had the unpleasant
+peculiarity of dropping a little red mouse out of her mouth--so too here
+under different forms there were red mice dropping about among the
+company. Here a hint of coming insolvency; there a whisper of a
+threatened divorce suit, staved off for a while, compromises, family
+secrets, little difficulties everywhere; betrothed couples smilingly
+accepting congratulations, who should never have been affianced were
+truth and honour the rule of life; forsaken wives pretending to think
+their husbands models of fidelity; jovial creatures with ruin staring in
+their faces; households divided and shamming union; almost everybody
+living above his or her means; and the knowledge that nobody is any
+better or any happier than his neighbour society's only fountain of
+consolation.
+
+Lady Lesbia's gowns and parasols had been admired, her engagement had
+furnished an infinity of gossip, and the fact of Montesma's constant
+attendance upon her had given zest to the situation, just that flavour
+of peril and fatality which the soul of society loveth.
+
+'Is she going to marry them both?' asked an ancient dowager of the
+ever-young type.
+
+'No, dear Lady Sevenoaks, she can only marry one, don't you know; but
+the other is nice to go about with; and I believe it is the other she
+really likes.'
+
+'It is always the other that a woman likes,' answered the dowager; 'I am
+madly in love with this Peruvian--no, I think you said Cuban--myself. I
+wish some good-natured creature would present him to me. If you know
+anybody who knows him, tell them to bring him to my next
+afternoon--Saturday. But why does--_chose_--_machin_--Smithson allow
+such a handsome hanger-on? After marriage I could understand that he
+might not be able to help himself; but before marriage a man generally
+has some kind of authority.'
+
+The world wondered a little, just as Lady Sevenoaks wondered, at
+Smithson's complacency in allowing a man so attractive as Montesma to be
+so much in the society of his future wife, yet even the censorious could
+but admit that the Cuban's manner offered no ground for offence. He
+came to Goodwood 'on his own hook,' as society put it: and every man who
+wears a decent coat and is not a welsher has a right to enjoy the
+prettiest race-course in England. He spent a considerable part of the
+day in Lesbia's company; but since she was the centre of a little crowd
+all the time, there could be no offence in this. He was a stranger,
+knowing very few people, and having nothing to do but to amuse himself.
+Smithson was an old and familiar friend, and was in a measure bound to
+give him hospitality.
+
+Mr. Smithson had recognised that obligation, but in a somewhat sparing
+manner. There were a dozen unoccupied bedchambers in the Park Lane
+Renaissance villa; but Smithson did not invite his Cuban acquaintance to
+shift his quarters from the Bristol to Park Lane. He was civil to Don
+Gomez: but anyone who had taken the trouble to watch and study the
+conduct and social relations of these two men would have seen that his
+civility was a forced civility, and that he endured the Spaniard's
+society under constraint of some kind.
+
+And now all the world was flocking to Cowes for the regatta, and Lesbia
+and her chaperon were established on board Mr. Smithson's yacht, the
+_Cayman_; and the captain of the _Cayman_ and all her crew were
+delivered over to Lesbia to be her slaves and to obey her lightest
+breath. The _Cayman_ was to lie at anchor off Cowes for the regatta
+week; and then she was to sail for Hyde, and lie at anchor there for
+another regatta week; and she was to be a floating hotel for Lady Lesbia
+so long as the young lady would condescend to occupy her.
+
+The captain was an altogether exceptional captain, and the crew were a
+picked crew, ruddy faced, sandy whiskered for the most part, Englishmen
+all, honest, hardy fellows from between the Nore and the Wash, talking
+in an honest provincial patois, dashed with sea slang. They were the
+very pink and pattern of cleanliness, and the _Cayman_ herself from stem
+to stern was dazzling and spotless to an almost painful degree.
+
+Not content with the existing arrangements of the yacht, which were at
+once elegant and luxurious, Mr. Smithson had sent down a Bond Street
+upholsterer to refit the saloon and Lady Lesbia's cabin. The dark velvet
+and morocco which suited a masculine occupant would not have harmonised
+with girlhood and beauty; and Mr. Smithson's saloon, as originally
+designed, had something of the air of a _tabagie_. The Bond Street man
+stripped away all the velvet and morocco, plucked up the Turkey carpet,
+draped the scuttle-ports with pale yellow cretonne garnished with orange
+pompons, subdued the glare of the skylight by a blind of oriental silk,
+covered the divans with Persian saddlebags, the floor with a delicate
+Indian matting, and furnished the saloon with all that was most feminine
+in the way of bamboo chairs and tea-tables, Japanese screens and fans
+of gorgeous colouring. Here and there against the fluted yellow drapery
+he fastened a large Rhodes plate; and the thing was done. Lady Lesbia's
+cabin was all bamboo and embroidered India muslin. An oval glass, framed
+in Dresden biscuit, adorned the side, a large white bearskin covered the
+floor. The berth was pretty enough for the cradle of a duchess's first
+baby. Even Lesbia, spoiled by much indulgence and unlimited credit, gave
+a little cry of pleasure at sight of the nest that had been made ready
+for her.
+
+'Really, Mr. Smithson is immensely kind!' she exclaimed.
+
+'Smithson is always kind,' answered Lady Kirkbank, 'and you don't half
+enough appreciate him. He has given me his very own cabin--such a dear
+little den! There are his cigar boxes and everything lovely on the
+shelves, and his own particular dressing-case put open for me to
+use--all the backs of all the brushes _repousse_ silver, and all the
+scent-bottles filled expressly for me. If the yacht would only stand
+quite still, I should think it more delicious than the best house I ever
+stayed in: only I don't altogether enjoy that little way it has of
+gurgling up and down perpetually.'
+
+Mr. Smithson's chief butler, a German Swiss, and a treasure of
+intelligence, had come down to take the domestic arrangements of the
+yacht into his control. The Park Lane _chef_ was also on board, Mr.
+Smithson's steward acting as his subordinate. This great man grumbled
+sorely at the smallness of his surroundings; for the most luxurious
+yacht was a poor substitute for the spacious kitchens and storerooms and
+stillrooms of the London mansion. There was a cabin for Lady Kirkbank's
+Rilboche and Lady Lesbia's Kibble, where the two might squabble at their
+leisure; in a word, everything had been done that forethought could do
+to make the yacht as perfect a place of sojourn as any floating
+habitation, from Noah's Ark to the Orient steamers, had ever been made.
+
+It was between four and five upon a delicious July afternoon that Lady
+Kirkbank and her charge came on board. The maids and the luggage had
+been sent a day in advance, so that everything might be in its place,
+and the empty boxes all stowed away, before the ladies arrived. They had
+nothing to do but walk on board and fling themselves into the low
+luxurious chairs ready for them on the deck, a little wearied by the
+heat and dust of a railway journey, and with that delicious sense of
+languid indifference to all the cares of life which seems to be in the
+very atmosphere of a perfect summer afternoon.
+
+A striped awning covered the deck, and great baskets of roses--pink, and
+red, and yellow--were placed about here and there. Tea was ready on a
+low table, a swinging brass kettle hissing merrily, with an air of
+supreme homeliness.
+
+Mr. Smithson had accompanied his _fiancee_ from town, and now sat
+reading the _Globe_, and meekly waiting for his tea, while Lesbia took a
+languid survey of the shore and the flotilla of boats, little and big,
+and while Lady Kirkbank rhapsodised about the yacht, praising
+everything, and calling everything by a wrong name. He was to be their
+guest all day, and every day. They were to have enough of him, as Lesbia
+had observed to her chaperon, with a spice of discontent, not quite so
+delighted with the arrangement as her faithful swain. To him the idea
+was rapture.
+
+'You have contrived somehow to keep me very much at a distance
+hitherto,' he told Lesbia, 'and I feel sometimes as if we were almost
+strangers; but a yacht is the best place in the world to bring two
+people together, and a week at Cowes will make us nearer to each other
+and more to each other than three months in London;' and Lesbia had said
+nothing, inwardly revolting at the idea of becoming any nearer and
+dearer to this man whom she had pledged herself to marry. She was to be
+his wife--yes, some day--and it was his desire the some day should be
+soon: but in the interval her dearest privilege was the power to keep
+him at a distance.
+
+And yet she could not make up her mind to break with him, to say
+honestly, 'I never liked you much, and now we are engaged I find myself
+liking you less and less every day. Save me from the irrevocable
+wickedness of a loveless marriage. Forgive me, and let me go.' No, this
+she could not bring herself to say. She did not like Mr. Smithson, but
+she valued the position he was able to give her. She wanted to be
+mistress of that infinite wealth--she could not renounce that right to
+which she fancied she had been born, her right to be one of the Queens
+of Society: and the only man who had offered to crown her as queen, to
+find her a palace and a court, was Horace Smithson. Without Mr. Smithson
+her first season would have resulted in dire failure. She might perhaps
+have endured that failure, and been content to abide the chances of a
+second season, had it not been for Mary's triumph. But for Mary to be a
+Countess, and for Lesbia to remain Lesbia Haselden, a nobody, dependent
+upon the caprices of a grandmother whose means might after all be but
+limited--no, such a concatenation as that was not to be endured. Lesbia
+told herself that she could not go back to Fellside to remain there
+indefinitely, a spinster and a dependent. She had learnt the true value
+of money; she had found out what the world was like; and it seemed to
+her that some such person as Mr. Smithson was essential to her
+existence, just as a butler is a necessity in a house. One may not like
+the man, but the post must be filled.
+
+Again, if she were to throw over Mr. Smithson, and speculate upon her
+chances of next year, what hope had she of doing better in her second
+season than in her first? The horizon was blank. There was no great
+_parti_ likely to offer himself for competition. She had seen all that
+the market could produce. Wealthy bachelors, high-born lovers, could not
+drop from the moon. Lesbia, schooled by Lady Kirkbank, knew her peerage
+by heart; and she knew that, having missed Lord Hartfield, there was
+really no one in the Blue Book worth waiting for. Thus, caring only for
+those things which wealth can buy, she had made up her mind that she
+could not do without Horace Smithson's money; and she must therefore
+needs resign herself to the disagreeable necessity of taking Smithson
+and his money together. The great auctioneer Fate would not divide the
+lot.
+
+She told herself that for her a loveless marriage was, after all, no
+prodigious sacrifice. She had found out that heart made but a small
+figure in the sum of her life. She could do without love. A year ago she
+had fancied herself in love with John Hammond. In her seclusion at St.
+Bees, in the long, dull August days, sauntering up and down by the edge
+of the sea, in the melancholy sunset hour, she thought that her heart
+was broken, that life was worthless without the man she loved. She had
+thought and felt all this, but not strongly enough to urge her to any
+great effort, not keenly enough to make her burst her chains. She had
+preferred to suffer this loss than to sacrifice her chances of future
+aggrandisement. And now she looked back and remembered those sunset
+walks by the sea, and all her thoughts and feelings in those silent
+summer hours; and she smiled at herself, half in scorn, half in pity,
+for her own weakness. How easily she had learned to do without him who
+at that hour seemed the better part of her existence. A good deal of
+gaiety and praise, a little mild flirtation at Kirkbank Castle, and lo!
+the image of her first lover began to grow dim and blurred, like a faded
+photograph. A season at Cannes, and she was cured. A week in London, and
+that first love was a thing of the past, a dream from which the dreamer
+awaketh, forgetting the things that he has dreamt.
+
+Remembering all this she told herself that she had no heart, that love
+or no love was a question of very little moment, and that the personal
+qualities of the man whom she chose for a husband mattered nothing to
+her, provided that his lands and houses and social status came up to her
+standard of merit. She had seen Mr. Smithson's houses and lands; and she
+was distinctly assured that he would in due course be raised to the
+peerage. She had, therefore, every reason to be satisfied.
+
+Having thus reasoned out the circumstances of her new life, she accepted
+her fate with a languid grace, which harmonised with her delicate and
+patrician beauty. Nobody could have for a moment supposed from her
+manner that she loved Horace Smithson; but nobody had the right to
+think that she detested him. She accepted all his attentions as a thing
+of course. The flowers which he strewed beneath her footsteps, the
+pearls which he melted in her wine--metaphorically speaking--were just
+'good enough' and no more. This afternoon, when Mr. Smithson asked her
+how she liked the arrangements of the saloon and cabin, she said she
+thought they would do very nicely. 'They would do.' Nothing more.
+
+'It is dreadfully small, of course,' she said, 'when one is accustomed
+to rooms: but it is rather amusing to be in a sort of doll's house, and
+on deck it is really very nice.'
+
+This was the most Mr. Smithson had for his pains, and he seemed to be
+content therewith. If a man will marry the prettiest girl of the year he
+must be satisfied with such scant civility as conscious perfection may
+give him. We know that Aphrodite was not altogether the most comfortable
+wife, and that Helen was a cause of trouble.
+
+Mr. Smithson sat in a bamboo chair beside his mistress, and looked
+ineffably happy when she handed him a cup of tea. Sky and sea were one
+exquisite azure--the colours of the boats glancing in the sunshine as if
+they had been jewels; here an emerald rudder, there a gunwale painted
+with liquid rubies. White sails, white frocks, white ducks made vivid
+patches of light against the blue. The landscape yonder shone and
+sparkled as if it had been incandescent. All the world of land and sky
+and sea was steeped in sunshine. A day on which to do nothing, read
+nothing, think nothing, only to exist.
+
+While they sat basking in the balmy atmosphere, looking lazily at that
+bright, almost insupportable picture of blue sea under blue sky, there
+came the dip of oars, making music, and a sound of coolness with every
+plash of water.
+
+'How good it is of somebody to row about, just to give us that nice
+soothing sound,' murmured Lesbia.
+
+Lady Kirkbank, with her dear old head thrown back upon the cushion of
+her luxurious chair, and her dear little cornflower hat just a thought
+on one side, was sleeping the sleep of the just, and unconsciously
+revealing the little golden arrangements which gave variety to her front
+teeth.
+
+The soothing sound came nearer and nearer, close under the _Cayman's_
+quarter, and then a brown hand clasped the man-ropes, and a light slim
+figure swung itself upon deck, while the boat bobbed and splashed below.
+
+It was Montesma, who had not been expected till the racing, which was
+not to begin for two days. A faint, faint rose bloom flushed Lady
+Lesbia's cheek at sight of him; and Mr. Smithson gave a little look of
+vexation, just one rapid contraction of the eyebrows, which resumed
+their conventional placidity the next instant.
+
+'So good of you,' he murmured. 'I really did not expect you till the
+beginning of the week.'
+
+'London is simply insupportable in this weather--most of all for a man
+born in the Havanas. My soul thirsted for blue water. So I said to
+myself, This good Smithson is at Cowes; he will give me the run of his
+yacht and a room at his villa. Why not go to Cowes at once?'
+
+'The room is at your service. I have only two or three of my people at
+Formosa, but just enough to look after a bachelor friend.'
+
+'I want very little service, my dear fellow,' answered Montesma,
+pleasantly. 'A man who has crossed the Cordilleras and camped in the
+primeval forest on the shores of the Amazon, learns to help himself. So
+this is the _Cayman_? _Muy deleitoso, mi amigo_. A floating Paradise in
+little. If the ark had been like this, I don't think any of the
+passengers would have wanted the flood to dry up.'
+
+He shook hands with Lady Lesbia as he spoke, and with Lady Kirkbank, who
+looked at him as if he were part of her dream, and then he sank into the
+chair on Lesbia's left hand, with the air of being established for the
+rest of the day.
+
+'I have left my portmanteaux at the end of the pier,' he said lazily. 'I
+dare say one of your fellows will be good enough to take them to Formosa
+for me?'
+
+Mr. Smithson gave the necessary order. All the beauty had gone out of the
+sea and the sky for him, all the contentment from his mind; and yet he
+was in no position to rebel against Fate--in no position to say directly
+or indirectly, 'Don Gomez de Montesma, I don't want you here, and I must
+request you to transfer yourself elsewhither.'
+
+Lesbia's feelings were curiously different. The very sight of that
+nervous brown hand upon the rope just now had sent a strange thrill
+through her veins. She who believed herself heartless could scarce trust
+herself to speak for the vehement throbbing of her heart. A sense of joy
+too deep for words possessed her as she reclined in her low chair, with
+drooping eyelids, yet feeling the fire of those dark southern eyes upon
+her face, scorching her like an actual flame.
+
+'Lady Lesbia, may I have a cup of tea?' he asked; not because he wanted
+the tea, but only for the cruel delight of seeing if she were able to
+give it to him calmly.
+
+Her hands shook, fluttered, wandered helplessly, as she poured out that
+cup of tea and handed it to Montesma, a feminine office which she had
+performed placidly enough for Mr. Smithson. The Spaniard took the cup
+from her with a quiet smile, a subtle look which seemed to explore the
+inmost depth of her consciousness.
+
+Yes, this man was verily her master. She knew it, and he know it, as
+that look of his told her. Vain to play her part of languid
+indifference--vain to struggle against her bondage. In heart and spirit
+she was at his feet, an odalisque, recognising and bowing down to her
+sultan.
+
+Happily for the general peace, Mr. Smithson had been looking away
+seaward, with a somewhat troubled brow, while that little cup and saucer
+episode was being enacted. And in the next minute Lesbia had recovered
+her self-command, and resumed that graceful languor which was one of her
+charms. She was weak, but she was not altogether foolish; and she had no
+idea of succumbing to this new influence--of yielding herself up to this
+conqueror, who seemed to take her life into his hand as if it were a bit
+of thistledown. Her agitation of those first few minutes was due to the
+suddenness of his appearance--the reaction from dulness to delight. She
+had been told that he was not to be at Cowes till Monday, and lo! he was
+here at her side, just as she was thinking how empty and dreary life was
+without him.
+
+He dropped into his place so naturally and easily, made himself so
+thoroughly at home and so agreeable to every one, that it was almost
+impossible for Horace Smithson to resent his audacity! Mr. Smithson's
+vitals might be devoured by the gnawing of the green-eyed monster, but
+however fierce that gnawing were, he did not want to seem jealous.
+Montesma was there as the very incarnation of some experiences in Mr.
+Smithson's past career, and he dared not object to the man's presence.
+
+And so the summer day wore on. They had the yacht all to themselves that
+evening, for the racing yachts were fulfilling engagements in other
+waters, and the gay company of pleasure-seekers had not yet fully
+assembled. They were dropping in one by one, all the evening, and Cowes
+roads grew fuller of life with every hour of the summer night.
+
+Mr. Smithson and his guests dined in the saloon, a snug little party of
+four, and sat long over dessert, deep into the dusk; and they talked of
+all things under heaven, things frivolous, things grave, but most of all
+about that fair, strange world in far-off southern waters, the sunny
+islands of the Caribbean Sea, and the dreamy, luxurious life of that
+tropical clime, half Spanish, half Oriental, wholly independent of
+European conventionalities. Lesbia listened, enchanted by the picture.
+What were Park Lane palaces, and Berkshire manors, the petty splendours
+of the architect and the upholsterer, weighed against a world in which
+all nature is on a grander scale? Mr. Smithson might give her fine
+houses and costly upholstery; but only the Tropic of Cancer could give
+her larger and brighter stars, a world of richer colouring, a land of
+perpetual summer, nights luminous with fire-flies, gardens in which the
+fern and the cactus were as forest trees, and where humming-birds
+flashed among the foliage like living flowers; nay, where the flowers
+themselves took the forms of the animal world and seemed instinct with
+life and motion.
+
+'Yes,' said Mr. Smithson, with his gentlemanlike drawl, 'Spanish America
+and the West Indies are delightful places to talk about. There are so
+many things one leaves out of the picture--thieves, niggers, jiggers,
+snakes, mosquitoes, yellow Jack, creeping, crawling creatures of all
+kinds. I always feel very glad I have been to South America.'
+
+'Why?'
+
+'In order that I may never go there again,' replied Mr. Smithson.
+
+'I was beginning to hope you would take me there some day,' said Lesbia.
+
+'Never again, no, not even for your sake. No man should ever leave
+Europe after he is five-and-thirty; indeed, I doubt if after that age he
+should venture beyond the Mediterranean. That is the sea of
+civilisation. Anything outside it means barbarism.'
+
+'I hope we are going to travel by-and-by,' said Lesbia; 'I have been
+mewed up in Grasmere half my life, and if you are going to confine me to
+the shores of the Mediterranean, which is, after all, only a larger
+lake, for the other half of my life, my existence will be a dull piece
+of work after all. I agree with what Don Gomez said the other night:
+"Not to travel is not to live."'
+
+They went on deck presently and sat in the summer darkness, lighted only
+by the stars, and by the lights of the yachts, and the faintly gleaming
+windows of the lighted town, sat long and late, in a state of ineffable
+repose. Lady Kirkbank, fortified by the produce of Mr. Smithson's
+particular _clos_, and by a couple of glasses of green Chartreuse, slept
+profoundly. She had not enjoyed herself so much for the last three
+months. She had been stretched on Society's rack, and she had been
+ground in Society's mill; and neither mind nor body had been her own to
+do what she liked withal. She had toiled early and late, and had spared
+herself in no wise. And now the trouble was over for a space. Here were
+rest and respite. She had done her duty as a chaperon, had provided her
+charge with the very best thing the matrimonial market offered. She had
+paid her creditors something on account all round, and had left them
+appeased and trustful, if not content. Sir George had gone oft alone to
+drink the waters at Spa, and to fortify himself for Scotland and the
+grouse season. She was her own mistress, and she could fold her hands
+and take her rest, eat and drink and sleep and be merry, all at Mr.
+Smithson's expense.
+
+The yachts came flocking in next day, like a flight of white-winged sea
+birds, and Mr. Smithson had enough to do receiving visitors upon the
+_Cayman_. He was fully occupied; but Montesma had nothing to do, except
+to amuse Lady Lesbia and her chaperon, and in this onerous task he
+succeeded admirably. Lesbia found that it was too warm to be on the deck
+when there were perspiring people, whose breath must be ninety by the
+thermometer, perpetually coming on board; so she and Lady Kirkbank sat
+in the saloon, and had the more distinguished guests brought down to
+them as to a Court; and the shrewder of the guests were quick to divine
+that no company beyond that of Don Gomez de Montesma was really wanted
+in that rose-scented saloon.
+
+The Spaniard taught Lady Kirkbank _monte_, which delighted her, and
+which she vowed she would introduce at her supper parties in the half
+season of November, when she should be in London for a week or two, as a
+bird of passage, flitting southwards. He began to teach Lesbia Spanish,
+a language for which she had taken a sudden fancy; and it is curious
+what tender accents, what hidden meanings even a grammar can take from
+such a teacher. Spanish came easily enough to a learner who had been
+thoroughly drilled in French and Italian, and who had been taught the
+rudiments of Latin; so by the end of a lesson, which went on at
+intervals all day, the pupil was able to lisp a passage of Don Quixote
+in the sweetest Castilian, very sweet to the ear of Don Gomez--a kind of
+baby language, precious as the first half-formed syllables of infancy to
+mothers.
+
+Montesma had nothing to do but to amuse himself and his companions all
+day in the saloon, amidst odours of roses and peaches, in a shadowy
+coolness made by striped silken blinds; but Mr. Smithson was not so much
+his own master. That innumerable company of friends which are the
+portion of the rich man given to hospitality would not let the owner of
+the _Cayman_ go scot-free.
+
+At a place like Cowes, on the eve of the regatta week, the freelances of
+society expect to find entertainment; and Mr. Smithson had to maintain
+his character for princely hospitalities at the sacrifice of his
+feelings as a lover. Every ripple of Lesbia's silvery laughter, every
+deep tone of Montesma's voice, from the cabin below, sent a pang to his
+jealous soul; and yet he had to smile, and to order more champagne cup,
+and to be lavish of his best cigars, albeit insisting that his friends
+should smoke their cigars in the bows well to leeward, so that no foul
+breathings of tobacco should pollute his Cleopatra galley.
+
+Cleopatra was very happy meanwhile, sublimely indifferent even to the
+odours of tobacco. She had her Antony at her feet, looking up at her,
+as she recited her lesson, with darkly luminous eyes, obviously
+worshipping her, obviously intent on winning her without counting the
+cost. When had a Montesma ever counted the cost to himself or
+others--the cost in gold, in honour, in human life? The records of Cuba
+in the palmy days of the slave trade would tell how lightly they held
+the last; and for honour, well, the private hells of island and main
+could tell their tale of specially printed playing cards, in which the
+swords or stars on the back of each card had a secret language of their
+own, and were as finger-posts for the initiated player.
+
+Mr. Smithson had business on shore, and was fain to leave the yacht for
+an hour or two before dinner. He invited Don Gomez to go with him, but
+the offer was graciously declined.
+
+'Amigo, I don't care even to look at land in such weather. It is so
+detestably dry,' he pleaded. 'It is only the sound of the sea gurgling
+against the hull that reconciles one to existence. Go, and be happy at
+your club, and send off those occult telegrams of yours, dearest. I
+shall not leave the _Cayman_ till bed-time.'
+
+He looked as fresh and cool as if utterly unaffected by the heat, which
+to a Cuban must have been a merely lukewarm condition of the atmosphere.
+But he affected to be prostrate, and Smithson could not insist. He had
+his cards to play in a game which required extremest caution, and there
+were no friendly indicators on the backs of his kings and aces. He was
+feeling his way in the dark, and did not know how much mischief Montesma
+was prepared to do.
+
+When the owner of the yacht was gone Don Gomez proposed an adjournment
+to the deck for afternoon tea, and the trio sat under the awning,
+tea-drinking and gossiping for the next hour. Lady Kirkbank told the
+steward to say not at home to everybody, just as if she had a street
+door.
+
+'There is a good deal of the _dolce far niente_ about this,' said
+Montesma, presently; 'but don't you think we have been anchored in sight
+of that shabby little town quite long enough, and that it would be
+rather nice to spread our wings and sail round the island before the
+racing begins?'
+
+'It would be exquisite,' said Lesbia. 'I am very tired of inaction,
+though I dearly love learning Spanish,' she added, with a lovely smile,
+and a look that was half submissive, half mutinous. 'But I have really
+been beginning to wonder whether this boat can move.'
+
+'You will see that she can, and at a smart pace, too, if I sail her.
+Shall we circumnavigate the island? We can set sail after dinner.'
+
+'Will Mr. Smithson consent, do you think?'
+
+'Why does Smithson exist, except to obey you?'
+
+'I don't know if Lady Kirkbank would quite like it,' said Lesbia,
+looking at her chaperon, who was waving a big Japanese fan, slowly,
+unsteadily, and with a somewhat drunken air, the while she slid into
+dreamland.
+
+'Quite like what?' she murmured, drowsily.
+
+'A little sail.'
+
+'I should dearly love it, if it didn't make me sea-sick.'
+
+'Sea-sick on a glassy lake like this! Impossible,' said Montesma. 'I
+consider the thing settled. We set sail after dinner.'
+
+Mr. Smithson came back to the yacht just in time to dress for dinner.
+Don Gomez excused himself from putting on his dress suit. He was going
+to sail the yacht himself, and he was dressed for his work,
+picturesquely, in white duck trousers, white silk shirt, and black
+velvet shooting jacket. He dined with the permission of the ladies, in
+this costume, in which he looked so much handsomer than in the livery of
+polite life. He had a red scarf tied round his waist, and when at his
+work by-and-by, he wore a little red silk cap, just stuck lightly on his
+dark hair. The dinner to-day was all animation and even excitement, very
+different from the languorous calm of yesterday. Lesbia seemed a new
+creature. She talked and laughed and flashed and sparkled as she had
+never yet done within Mr. Smithson's experience. He contemplated the
+transformation with wonder not unmixed with suspicion. Never for him had
+she been so brilliant--never in response to his glances had her violet
+eyes thus kindled, had her smile been so entrancingly sweet. He watched
+Montesma, but in him he could find no fault. Even jealousy could hardly
+take objection to the Spaniard's manner to Lady Lesbia. There was not a
+look, not a word that hinted at a private understanding between them, or
+which seemed to convey deeper meanings than the common language of
+society. No, there was no ground for fault-finding; and yet Smithson was
+miserable. He knew this man of old, and knew his influence over women.
+
+Mr. Smithson handed over the management of the yacht without a murmer,
+albeit he pretended to be able to sail her himself, and was in the habit
+of taking the command for a couple of hours on a sunny afternoon, much
+to the amusement of skipper and crew. But Montesma was a sailor born and
+bred--the salt keen breath of the sea had been the first breath in his
+nostrils--he had managed his light felucca before he was twelve years
+old, had sailed every inch of the Caribbean Sea, and northward to the
+furthermost of the Bahamas before he was fifteen. He had lived more on
+the water than on the land in that wild boyhood of his; a boyhood in
+which books and professors had played but small part. Montesma's school
+had been the world, and beautiful women his only professors. He had
+learnt arithmetic from the transactions of bubble companies; modern
+languages from the lips of the women who loved him. He was a crack shot,
+a perfect swordsman, a reckless horseman, and a dancer in whom dancing
+almost rose to genius. Beyond these limits he was as ignorant as dirt;
+but he had a cleverness which served as a substitute for book learning,
+and he seldom failed in impressing the people he met with the idea that
+he, Gomez de Montesma, was no ordinary man.
+
+Directly after dinner the preparations for an immediate start began;
+very much to the disgust of skipper and crew, who were not in the habit
+of working after dinner; but Montesma cared nothing for the short
+answers of the captain, or the black look of the men.
+
+Lesbia wanted to learn all about everything--the name of every sail, of
+every rope. She stood near the helmsman, a slim graceful figure in a
+white gown of some soft material, with never a jewel or a flower to
+relieve that statuesque simplicity. She wore no hat, and the rich
+chesnut hair was rolled in a loose knot at the back of the small
+Greek-looking head. Montesma came to her every now and then to explain
+what was being done; and by-and-by, when the canvas was all up, and the
+yacht was skimming over the water, like a giant swan borne by the
+current of some vast strong river, he came and stayed by her side, and
+they two sat making little baby sentences in Spanish, he as teacher and
+she as pupil, with no one near them but the sailors.
+
+The owner of the _Cayman_ had disappeared mysteriously a quarter of an
+hour after the sails were unfurled, and Lady Kirkbank had tottered down
+to the saloon.
+
+'I am not going--cabin,' she faltered, when Lesbia remonstrated with
+her, 'only--going--saloon--sofa--lie down--little--Smithson take
+care--you,' not perceiving that Smithson had vanished, 'shall be--quite
+close.'
+
+So Lesbia and Don Gomez were alone under the summer stars, murmuring
+little bits of Spanish.
+
+'It is the only true way of learning a language,' he said; 'grammars are
+a delusion.'
+
+It was a very delightful and easy way of learning, at any rate. Lesbia
+reclined in her bamboo chair, and fanned herself indolently, and watched
+the shadowy shores of the island, cliff and hill, down and wooded crest,
+flitting past her like dream-pictures, and her lips slowly shaped the
+words of that soft lisping language--so simple, so musical--a language
+made for lovers and for song, one would think. It was wonderful what
+rapid progress Lesbia made.
+
+She heard a church clock on the island striking, and asked Don Gomez the
+hour.
+
+'Ten,' he said.
+
+'Ten! Surely it must be later. It was past eight before we began dinner,
+and we have been sailing for ever so long. Captain, kindly tell me the
+time,' she called to the skipper, who was lolling over the gunwale near
+the foremast smoking a meditative pipe.
+
+'Twelve o'clock, my lady.'
+
+'Heavens, can I possibly have been sitting here so long. I should like
+to stay on deck all night and watch the sailing; but I must really go
+and take care of poor Lady Kirkbank. I am afraid she is not very well.'
+
+'She had a somewhat distracted air when she went below, but I daresay
+she will sleep off her troubles. If I were you I should leave her to
+herself.'
+
+'Impossible! What can have become of Mr. Smithson?'
+
+'I have a shrewd suspicion that it is with Smithson as with poor Lady
+Kirkbank.'
+
+'Do you mean that he is ill?'
+
+'Precisely.'
+
+'What, on a calm summer night, sailing over a sea of glass. The owner of
+a yacht!'
+
+'Rather ignominious for poor Smithson, isn't it? But men who own yachts
+are only mortal, and are sometimes wretched sailors. Smithson is feeble
+on that point, as I know of old.'
+
+'Then wasn't it rather cruel of us to sail his yacht?'
+
+'Yachts are meant for sailing, and again, sea-sickness is supposed to be
+a wholesome exercise.'
+
+'Good-night.'
+
+'Good-night,' both good nights in Spanish, and with a touch of
+tenderness which the words could hardly have expressed in English.
+
+'Must you really go?' pleaded Montesma, holding her hand just a thought
+longer than he had ever held it before.
+
+'Ah, the little more, and how much it is,' says the poet.
+
+'Really and truly.'
+
+'I am so sorry. I wish you could have stayed on deck all night.'
+
+'So do I, with all my heart. This calm sea under the starlit sky is like
+a dream of heaven.'
+
+'It is very nice, but if you stayed I think I could promise you
+considerable variety. We shall have a tempest before morning.'
+
+'Of all things in the world I should love to see a thunderstorm at sea.'
+
+'Be on the alert then, and Captain Parkes and I will try to oblige you.'
+
+'At any rate you have made it impossible for me to sleep. I shall stay
+with Lady Kirkbank in the saloon. Good-night, again.'
+
+'Good-night.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX.
+
+IN STORM AND DARKNESS.
+
+
+Lesbia found Lady Kirkbank prostrate on a low divan in the saloon,
+sleepless, and very cross. The atmosphere reeked with red lavender,
+sal-volatile, eau de Cologne, and brandy, which latter remedy poor
+Georgie had taken freely in her agonies. Kibble, the faithful Grasmere
+girl, sat by the divan, fanning the sufferer with a large Japanese fan.
+Rilboche had naturally, as a Frenchwoman, succumbed utterly to her own
+feelings, and was moaning in her berth, wailing out every now and then
+that she would never have taken service with Miladi had she suspected
+her to be capable of such cruelty as to take her to live for weeks upon
+the sea.
+
+If this was the state of affairs now while the ocean was only gently
+stirred, what would it be by-and-by if the tempest should really come?
+
+'What can you be thinking of, staying on deck all night with those men?'
+exclaimed Lady Kirkbank, peevishly. 'It is hardly respectable.'
+
+She would have been still more inclined to object had she known that
+Lesbia's companion had been 'that man' rather than 'those men.'
+
+'What do you mean by all night?' Lesbia retorted, contemptuously; 'it is
+only just twelve.'
+
+'Only twelve. I thought we were close upon daylight. I have suffered an
+eternity of agony.'
+
+'I am very sorry you should be ill; but really the sea has been so
+deliciously calm.'
+
+'I believe I should have suffered less if it had been diabolically
+rough. Oh, that monotonous flip-flap of the water, that slow heaving of
+the boat! Nothing could be worse.'
+
+'I am glad to hear you say that, for Don Gomez says we are likely to
+have a tempest.'
+
+'A tempest!' shrieked Georgie. 'Then let him stop the boat this instant
+and put me on shore. Tell him to land me anywhere--on the Needles even.
+I could stop at the lighthouse till morning. A storm at sea will be
+simply my death.'
+
+'Dear Lady Kirkbank, I was only joking,' said Lesbia, who did not want
+to be worried by her chaperon's nervous apprehensions: 'so far the night
+is lovely.'
+
+'Give me a spoonful more brandy, my good creature,'--to Kibble. 'Lesbia,
+you ought never to have brought me into this miserable state. I
+consented to staying on board the yacht; but I never consented to
+sailing on her.'
+
+'You will soon be well, dear Lady Kirkbank; and you will have such an
+appetite for breakfast to-morrow morning.'
+
+'Where shall we be at breakfast time?'
+
+'Off St. Catherine's Point, I believe--just half way round the island.'
+
+'If we are not at the bottom of the sea,' groaned Georgie.
+
+They were now in the open Channel, and the boat dipped and rose to
+larger billows than had encountered her course before. Lady Kirkbank lay
+in a state of collapse, in which life seemed only sustainable by
+occasional teaspoonfuls of cognac gently tilted down her throat by the
+patient Kibble.
+
+Lesbia went to her cabin, but with no intention of remaining there. She
+was firmly convinced that the storm would come, and she meant to be on
+deck while it was raging. What harm could thunder or lightning, hail or
+rain, do to her while he was by to protect her? He would be busy sailing
+the boat, perhaps, but still he would have a moment now and then in
+which to think of her and care for her.
+
+Yes, the storm was coming. There was a livid look upon the waters, and
+the atmosphere was heavy with heat; the sky to windward black as a
+funeral pall. Lesbia was almost fearless, yet she felt a thrill of awe
+as she looked into that dense blackness. To leeward the stars were still
+visible; but that gigantic mass of cloud came creeping slowly, solemnly
+over the sky, while the shadow flitted fast across the water, swallowing
+up that ghastly electric glare.
+
+Lesbia wrapped herself in a white cashmere _sortie de bal_ and stole up
+the companion. Montesma was working at the ropes with his own hands,
+calling directions to the sailors to shorten and take in the canvas,
+urging them to increased efforts by working at the ropes with his own
+hands, springing up the rigging and on deck, flashing backwards and
+forwards amidst the rigging like a being of supernatural power. He had
+taken off his jacket, and was clad from top to toe in white, save for
+that streak of scarlet which tightly girdled his waist. His tall
+flexible form, perfect in line as a Greek statue of Hermes, stood out
+against the background of black night. His voice, with its tones of
+brief imperious command, the proud carriage of his head, the easy grace
+of his rapid movements, all proclaimed the man born to rule over his
+fellow-men. And it is these master spirits, these born rulers, whom
+women instinctively recognise as their sovereign lords, and for whom
+women count no sacrifice too costly.
+
+In the midst of his activity Montesma suddenly saw that white-robed
+figure standing at the top of the companion, and flew to her side. The
+boat was pitching heavily, dipping into the trough of the sea at an
+angle of forty-five degrees, as it seemed to Lesbia.
+
+'You ought not to be here,' said Montesma; 'it is much rougher than I
+expected.'
+
+'I am not afraid,' she answered; 'but I will go back to my cabin if I am
+in your way.'
+
+'In my way' (with deepest tenderness): 'yes, you are in my way, for I
+shall think of nothing else now you are here. But I believe we have done
+all that need be done to the yacht, and I can take care of you till the
+storm is over.'
+
+He put his arm round her as the stem dipped, and led her towards the
+stern, guiding her footsteps, supporting her as her light figure swayed
+against him with the motion of the boat. A vivid flash of lightning
+showed him her face as they stood for an instant leaning against each
+other, his arm encircling her. Ah, what deep feeling in that
+countenance, once so passionless; what a new light in those eyes. It was
+like the awakening of a long dormant soul.
+
+He took the helm from the captain and stood steering the vessel, and
+calling out his orders, with Lesbia close beside him, holding her with
+his disengaged arm, drawing her near him as the vessel pitched
+violently, drawing her nearer still when they shipped a sea, and a great
+fountain of spray enfolded them both in a dense cloud of salt water.
+
+The thunder roared and rattled, as if it began and ended close beside
+them. Forked lightnings zigzagged amidst the rigging. Sheet lightning
+enwrapped those two in a luminous atmosphere, revealing faces that were
+pale with passion, lips that trembled with emotion. There were but scant
+opportunity for speech, and neither of these two felt the need of words.
+To be together, bound nearer to each other than they had ever been yet,
+than they might ever be again, in the midst of thunder and lightning and
+dense clouds of spray. This was enough. Once when the _Cayman_ pitched
+with exceptional fury, when the thunder crashed and roared loudest,
+Lesbia found her head lying on Montesma's breast and his arms round her,
+his lips upon her face. She did not wrench herself from that forbidden
+embrace. She let those lips kiss hers as never mortal man had kissed her
+before. But an instant later, when Montesma's attention was distracted
+by his duties as steersman, and he let her go, she slipped away in the
+darkness, and melted from his sight and touch like a modern Undine. He
+dared not leave the helm and follow her then. He sent one of the sailors
+below a little later, to make sure that she was safe in her cabin; but
+he saw her no more that night.
+
+The storm abated soon after daybreak, and the morning was lovely; but
+Don Gomez and Lady Lesbia did not meet again till the church bells on
+the island were ringing for morning service, and then the lady was safe
+under the wing of her chaperon, with her affianced husband in
+attendance upon her at the breakfast table in the saloon.
+
+She received Montesma with the faintest inclination of the head, and she
+carefully avoided all occasion of speech with him during the leisurely,
+long spun-out meal. She was as white as her muslin gown, and her eyes
+told of a sleepless night. She talked a little, very little to Lady
+Kirkbank and Mr. Smithson; to the Spaniard not at all. And yet Montesma
+was in no manner dashed by this appearance of deep offence. So might
+Francesca have looked the morning after that little scene over the book;
+yet she sacrificed her salvation for her lover all the same. It was a
+familiar stage upon the journey which Montesma knew by heart. Here the
+inclination of the road was so many degrees more or less; for this hill
+you are commanded to put on an extra horse; at this stage it is
+forbidden to go more than eight miles an hour, and so on, and so on.
+Montesma knew every inch of the ground. He put on a melancholy look, and
+talked very little. He had been on deck all night, and so there was an
+excuse for his being quiet.
+
+Lady Kirkbank related her impressions of the storm, and talked enough
+for four. She had suffered the pangs of purgatory, but her natural
+cheeriness asserted itself, and she made no moaning about past agonies
+which had exercised a really delightful influence on her appetite. Mr.
+Smithson also was cheerful. He had paid his annual tribute to Neptune,
+and might hope to go scot-free for the rest of the season.
+
+'If I had stayed on deck I must have had my finger in the pie; so I
+thought it better to go below and get a good night's rest in the
+steward's cabin,' he said, not caring to confess his sufferings as
+frankly as Lady Kirkbank admitted hers.
+
+After breakfast, which was prolonged till noon, Montesma asked Smithson
+to smoke a cigarette on deck with him.
+
+'I want to talk to you on a rather serious matter,' he said.
+
+Lesbia heard the words, and looked up with a frightened glance. Could he
+mean to attempt anything desperate? Was he going to confess the fatal
+truth to Horace Smithson, to tell her affianced lover that she was
+untrue to her bond, that she loved him, Montesma, as fondly as he loved
+her, that their two souls had mingled like two flames fanned by the same
+current, and thence had risen to a conflagration which must end in ruin,
+if she were not set free to follow where her heart had gone, free to
+belong to that man whom her spirit chose for lord and master. Her heart
+leapt at the hope that Montesma was going to do this, that he was strong
+enough to break her bonds for her, powerful and rich enough to secure
+her a brilliant future. Yet this last consideration, which hitherto had
+been paramount, seemed now of but little moment. To be with _him_, to
+belong to _him_, would be enough for bliss. Albeit that in such a
+choice she forfeited all that she had ever possessed or hoped for of
+earthly prosperity. Adventurer, beggar, whatever he might be, she chose
+him, and loved him with all the strength of a weak soul newly awakened
+to passionate feeling.
+
+Unhappily for Lesbia Haselden, Montesma was not at all the kind of man
+to take so direct and open a course as that which she imagined possible.
+
+His business with Mr. Smithson was of quite a different kind.
+
+'Smithson, do you know that you have an utterly incompetent crew?' he
+said, gravely, when they two were standing aft, lighting their
+cigarettes.
+
+'Indeed I do not. The men are all experienced sailors, and the captain
+ranks high among yachtsmen.'
+
+'English yachtsmen are not particularly good judges of sailors. I tell
+you your skipper is no sailor, and his men are fools. If it had not been
+for me the _Cayman_ would have gone to pieces on the rocks last night,
+and if you are to cross to St. Malo, as you talked of doing, for the
+regatta there, you had better sack these men and let me get you a South
+American crew. I know of a fellow who is in London just now--the captain
+of a Rio steamer, who'll send you a crew of picked men, if you give me
+authority to telegraph to him.'
+
+'I don't like foreign sailors,' said Smithson, looking perplexed and
+worried; 'and I have perfect confidence in Wilkinson.'
+
+'Which is as much as to say that you consider me a liar! Go to the
+bottom your own way, _mon ami: ce n'est pas mon affaire,_' said
+Montesma, turning on his heel, and leaving his friend to his own
+devices.
+
+Had he pressed the point, Smithson would have suspected him of some evil
+motive, and would have been resolute in his resistance; but as he said
+no more about it, Smithson began to feel uncomfortable.
+
+He was no sailor himself, knew absolutely nothing about the navigation
+of his yacht, though he sometimes pretended to sail her; and he had no
+power to judge of his skipper's capacity or his men's seamanship. He had
+engaged the captain wholly on the strength of the man's reputation,
+guaranteed by certain certificates which seemed to mean a great deal.
+But after all such certificates might mean very little--such a
+reputation might be no real guarantee. The sailors had been engaged by
+the captain, and their ruddy faces and thoroughly British appearence,
+the exquisite cleanliness which they maintained in every detail of the
+yacht, had seemed to Mr. Smithson the perfection of seamanship.
+
+But it was not the less true that the cleanest of yachts, with deck of
+spotless whiteness, sails of unsullied purity, brasses shining and
+sparkling like gold fresh from the goldsmith's, might be spiked upon a
+rock, or might founder on a sand-bank, or heel over under too much
+canvas. Mr. Smithson was inclined to suspect any proposition of
+Montesma's; yet he was not the less disturbed in mind by the assertion.
+
+The day wore on, and the yacht sailed merrily over a summer sea. Mr.
+Smithson fidgeted about the deck uneasily, watching every movement of
+the sailors. No boat could be sailing better, as it seemed to him; but
+in such weather and over such waters any boat must needs go easily. It
+was in the blackness of night, amidst the fury of the storm, that
+Montesma's opinion had been formed. Smithson began to think that his
+friend was right. The sailors had honest countenances, but they looked
+horribly stupid. Could men with such vacuous grins, such an air of
+imbecile good-nature, be capable of acting wisely in any terrible
+crisis?--could they have nerve and readiness, quickness, decision, all
+those grand qualites which are needed by the seaman who has to contend
+with the fury of the elements?
+
+Mr. Smithson and his guests had breakfasted too late for the possibility
+of luncheon. They were in Cowes Roads by one o'clock. A fleet of yachts
+had arrived during their absence, and the scene was full of life and
+gaiety. Lady Lesbia held a _levee_ at the afternoon tea, and had a crowd
+of her old admirers around her--adorers whose presence in no wise
+disturbed Horace Smithson's peace. He would have been content that his
+wife should go through life with a herd of such worshippers following in
+her footsteps. He knew the aimless innocence, the almost infantine
+simplicity of the typical Johnnie, Chappie, _Muscadin, Petit Creve,
+Gommeux_--call him by what name you will. From these he feared no evil.
+But in that one follower who gave no outward token of his worship he
+dreaded peril. It was Montesma he watched, while dragoons with
+close-cropped hair, and imbecile youths with heads rigid in four-inch
+collars, were hanging about Lady Lesbia's low bamboo chair, and
+administering obsequiously to the small necessities of the tea-table.
+
+It was while this tea-table business was going on that Mr. Smithson took
+the opportunity of setting his mind at rest, were it possible, as to the
+merits of Captain Wilkinson. Among his visitors this afternoon there was
+the owner of three or four racing yachts--a man renowned for his
+victories, at home and abroad.
+
+'I think you knew something of my captain, Wilkinson, before I engaged
+him,' said Smithson, with assumed carelessness.
+
+'I know every skipper on board every boat in the squadron,' answered his
+friend. 'A good fellow, Wilkinson--thoroughly honest fellow.'
+
+'Honest; oh yes, I know all about that. But how about his seamanship?
+His certificates were wonderfully good, but they are not everything.
+
+'Everything, my dear fellow,' cried the other; 'they are next to
+nothing. But I believe Wilkinson is a tolerable sailor.'
+
+This was not encouraging.
+
+'He has never been unlucky, I believe.'
+
+'My dear Smithson, you are a great authority in the City, but you are
+not very well up in the records of the yachting world, or you would know
+that your Captain Wilkinson was skipper on the _Orinoco_ when she ran
+aground on the Chesil Bank, coming home from Cherbourg Regatta, fifteen
+lives lost, and the yacht, in less than half an hour, ground to powder.
+That was rather a bad case, I remember; for though it was a tempestuous
+night, the accident would never have happened if Wilkinson had not
+mistaken the lights. So you see his Trinity House papers didn't prevent
+his going wrong.'
+
+Good heavens! This was the strongest confirmation of Montesma's charge.
+The man was a stupid man, an incapable man, a man to whose intelligence
+and care human life should never be trusted. A fig for his honesty! What
+would honesty be worth in a hurricane off the Chesil Beach? What would
+honesty serve a ship spitted on the Jailors off Jersey? Montesma was
+right. If the _Cayman_ was to make a trip to St. Malo she must be
+navigated by competent men. Horace Smithson hated foreign sailors,
+copper-faced ruffians, with flashing black eyes which seemed to threaten
+murder, did you but say a rough word to them; sleek, raven-haired
+scoundrels, with bowie-knives in their girdles, ready for mutiny. But,
+after all, life is worth too much to be risked for a prejudice, a
+sentiment.
+
+Perhaps that St. Malo business might be avoided; and then there need be
+no change in captain or crew. The yacht must be safe enough lying at
+anchor in the roadstead. By-and-by, when the visitors had departed, and
+Mr. Smithson was reposefully enjoying his tea by Lady Lesbia's side, he
+approached the subject.
+
+'Do you really care about crossing to St. Malo after this--really prefer
+the idea to Ryde?'
+
+'Infinitely,' exclaimed Lesbia, quickly. 'Ryde would only be Cowes ever
+again--a lesser Cowes; and I thought when you first proposed it that the
+plan was rather stupid, though I did not want to be uncivil and say so.
+But I was delighted with Don Gomez de Montesma's amendment, substituting
+St. Malo for Ryde. In the first place the trip across will be
+delicious'--Lady Kirkbank gave a faint groan--'and in the second place I
+am dying to see Brittany.'
+
+'I doubt if you will highly appreciate St. Malo. It is a town of many
+and various smells.'
+
+'But I want to smell those foreign smells of which one hears much. At
+least it is an experience. We need not be on shore any longer than we
+like. And I want to see that fine rocky coast, and Chateaubriand's tomb
+on the what's-its-name. So nice to be buried in that way.'
+
+'Then you have set your heart on going to St. Malo, and would not like
+any change in our plan?'
+
+'Any change will be simply detestable,' answered Lesbia, all the more
+decidedly since she suspected a desire for change on the part of Mr.
+Smithson.
+
+She was in no amiable humour this afternoon. All her nerves seemed
+strained to their utmost tension. She was irritated, tremulous with
+nervous excitement, inclined to hate everybody, Horace Smithson most of
+all. In her cabin a little later on, when she was changing her gown for
+dinner, and Kibble was somewhat slow and clumsy in the lacing of the
+bodice, she wrenched herself from the girl's hands, flung herself into a
+chair, and burst into a flood of passionate tears.
+
+'O God! that I were on one of those islands in the Caribbean Sea--an
+island where Europeans never come--where I might lie down among the
+poisonous tropical flowers, and sleep the rest of my days away. I am
+sick to death of my life here; of the yacht, the people--everything.'
+
+'This air is too relaxing, Lady Lesbia,' the girl murmured, soothingly;
+'and you didn't have your natural rest last night. Shall I get you a
+nice strong cup of tea?'
+
+'Tea! no. I have been living upon tea for the last twenty-four hours. I
+have eaten nothing. My mouth is parched and burning. Oh, Kibble!'
+flinging her head upon the girl's buxom arm, and letting it rest there,
+'what a happy creature you are--not a care--not a care.'
+
+'I'm sure you can't have any cares, Lady Lesbia,' said Kibble, with an
+incredulous smile, trying to smooth the disordered hair, anxious to make
+haste with the unfinished toilet, for it was within a few minutes of
+eight.
+
+'I am full of care. I am in debt--horribly in debt--getting deeper and
+deeper every day--and I am going to sell myself to the only man who can
+pay my debts and give me fine houses, and finery like this,' plucking at
+the _crepe de chine_ gown, with its flossy fringe, its delicate lace, a
+marvel of artistic expenditure; a garment which looked simplicity
+itself, and yet was so cleverly contrived as to cost five-and-thirty
+guineas. The greatest effects in it required to be studied with a
+microscope.
+
+'But surely, dear Lady Lesbia, you won't marry Mr. Smithson, if you
+don't love him?'
+
+'Do you suppose love has anything to do with marriages in society?'
+
+'Oh, Lady Lesbia, it would be so unkind to him, so cruel to yourself.'
+
+'Cruel to myself. Yes, I am cruel to myself. I had the chance of
+happiness a year ago, and I lost it. I have the chance of happiness
+now--yes, of consummate bliss--and haven't the courage to snatch at it.
+Take off this horrid gown, Kibble; my head is splitting: I shan't go to
+dinner.'
+
+'Oh, Lady Lesbia, you are treading on the pearl embroidery,'
+remonstrated poor Kibble, as Lesbia kicked the new gown from under her
+feet.
+
+'What does it matter!' she exclaimed with a bitter little laugh. 'It has
+not been paid for--perhaps it never will be.'
+
+The dinner was silent and gloomy. It was as if a star had been suddenly
+blotted out of the sky. Smithson, ordinarily so hospitable, had been too
+much disturbed in mind to ask any of his friends to stay to dinner; so
+there were only Lady Kirkbank, who was too tired to be lively, and
+Montesma, who was inclined to be thoughtful. Lesbia's absence, and the
+idea that she was ill, gave the feast almost a funereal air.
+
+After dinner Smithson and Montesma sat on deck, smoking their cigars,
+and lazily watching the lights on sea, and the lights on shore; these
+brilliant in the foreground, those dim in the distance.
+
+'You can telegraph to your Rio Janeiro friend to-morrow morning, if you
+like,' said Smithson, presently, 'and tell him to send a first-rate
+skipper and crew. Lady Lesbia has made up her mind to see St. Malo
+Regatta, and with such a sacred charge I can't be too careful.'
+
+'I'll wire before eight o'clock to-morrow,' answered Montesma, 'You have
+decided wisely. Your respectable English Wilkinson is an excellent
+man--but nothing would surprise me less than his reducing your _Cayman_
+to matchwood in the next gale.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL.
+
+A NOTE OF ALARM.
+
+
+That strange scene in the old house at Fellside made a profound
+impression upon Lord Hartfield. He tried to disguise his trouble, and
+did all in his power to seem gay and at perfect ease in his wife's
+company; but his mind was full of anxiety, and Mary loved him too well
+to be for a moment in doubt as to his feelings.
+
+'There is something wrong, Jack,' she said, while they were breakfasting
+at a table in the verandah, with the lake and the bills in front of them
+and the sweet morning air around them. 'You try to talk and to be
+lively, but there is a little perpendicular wrinkle in your forehead
+which I know as well as the letters of the alphabet, and that little
+line means worry. I used to see it in the old days, when you were
+breaking your heart for Lesbia. Why cannot you be frank and confide in
+me. It is your duty, sir, as my husband.'
+
+'Is it my duty to halve my burdens as well as my joys? How do I know if
+those girlish shoulders are strong enough to bear the weight of them?'
+
+'I can bear anything you can bear, and I won't be cheated out of my
+share in your worries. If you were obliged to have a tooth out, I would
+have one out too, for company.'
+
+'I hope the dentist would be too conscientious to allow that.'
+
+'Tell me your trouble, Hartfield,' she said, earnestly, leaning across
+the table, bringing her grave intelligent face near to him.
+
+They were quite alone, he and she. The servants had done their
+ministering. Behind them there was the empty dining-room, in front of
+them the sunlit panorama of lake and hill. There could not be a safer
+place for telling secrets.
+
+'Tell me what it is that worries you,' Mary pleaded again.
+
+'I will, dear. After all perfect trust is the best; nay, it is your due,
+for you are brave enough and true enough to be trusted with secrets that
+mean life and death. In a word, then, Mary, the cause of my trouble is
+that old man we saw the other night.'
+
+'Steadman's uncle?'
+
+'Do you really believe that he is Steadman's uncle?'
+
+'My grandmother told me so,' answered Mary, reddening to the roots of
+her hair.
+
+To this girl, who was the soul of truth, there was deepest shame in the
+idea that her kinswoman, the woman whom of all the world she most owed
+reverence and honour, could be deemed capable of falsehood.
+
+'Do you think my grandmother would tell me an untruth?'
+
+'I do not believe that man is a poor dependent, an old servant's
+kinsman, sheltered and cared for in this house for charity's sake.
+Forgive me, Mary, if I doubt the word of one you love; but there are
+positions in life in which a man must judge for himself. Would Mr.
+Steadman's kinsman be lodged as that old man is lodged; would he talk as
+that old man talks; and last and greatest perplexity of all, would he
+possess a treasure of gold and jewels which must be worth many
+thousands?'
+
+'But you cannot know for certain that those things are valuable; they
+may be rubbish that this poor old man has scraped together and hoarded
+for years, glass jewels bought at country fairs. Those rouleaux may
+contain lead or coppers.'
+
+'I do not think so, Mary. The stones had all the brilliancy of valuable
+gems, and then there were others in the finest filagree
+settings--goldsmith's work which bore the stamp of an Eastern world.
+Take my word for it, that treasure came from India; and it must have
+been brought to England by Lord Maulevrier. It may have existed all
+these years without your grandmother's knowledge. That is quite
+possible; but it seems to me impossible that such wealth should be
+within the knowledge and the power of a pauper lunatic.'
+
+'But if that unhappy old man is not a relation of Steadman's supported
+here by my grandmother's benevolence, who can he be, and why is he
+here?' asked Mary.
+
+'Oh, Molly dear, these are two questions which I cannot answer, and
+which yet ought to be answered somehow. Since that night I have felt as
+if there were a dark cloud lowering over this house--a cloud almost as
+terrible in its menace of danger as the forshadowing of fate in a Greek
+legend. For your sake, for the honour of your race, for my own
+self-respect as your husband, I feel that this mystery ought to be
+solved, and all dark things made light before your grandmother's death.
+When she is gone the master-key to the past will be lost.'
+
+'But she will be spared for many years, I hope, spared to sympathise
+with my happiness, and with Lesbia's.'
+
+My dearest girl, we cannot hope that. The thread of her life is worn
+very thin. It may snap at any moment. You cannot look seriously in your
+grandmother's face, and yet delude yourself with the hope that she has
+years of life before her.'
+
+'It will be very hard to part, just as she has begun to care for me,'
+said Mary, with her eyes full of tears.
+
+'All such partings are hard, and your grandmother's life has been so
+lonely and joyless that the memory of it must always have a touch of
+pain. One cannot say of her as we can of the happy; she has lived her
+life--all things have been given to her, and she falls asleep at the
+close of a long and glorious day. For some reason which I cannot
+understand, Lady Maulevrier's life has been a prolonged sacrifice.'
+
+'She has always given us to understand that she was fond of Fellside,
+and that this secluded life suited her,' said Mary, meditatively.
+
+'I cannot help doubting her sincerity on that point. Lady Maulevrier is
+too clever a woman, and forgive me, dear, if I add too worldly a woman,
+to be content to live out of the world. The bird must have chafed its
+breast against the bars of the cage many and many a time when you
+thought that all was peace. Be sure, Mary, that your grandmother had a
+powerful motive for spending all her days in this place, and I can but
+think that the old man we saw the other night had some part in that
+motive. Do you remember telling me of her ladyship's vehement anger when
+she heard you had made the acquaintance of her pensioner?'
+
+'Yes, she was very angry,' Mary answered, with a troubled look. 'I
+never saw her so angry--she was almost beside herself--said the harshest
+things to me--talked as if I had done some dreadful mischief.'
+
+'Would she have been so moved, do you think, unless there was some fatal
+secret involved in that man's presence here?'
+
+'I hardly know what to think. Tell me everything. What is it that you
+fear?--what is it that you suspect?'
+
+'To tell you my fears and suspicions is to tell you a family secret that
+has been kept from you out of kindness all the years of your life--and I
+hardly think I could bring myself to that if I did not know what the
+world is, and how many good-natured friends Lady Hartfield will meet in
+society, by-and-by, ready to tell her, by hints and innuendoes, that her
+grandfather, the Governor of Madras, came back to England under a cloud
+of disgrace.'
+
+'My poor grandfather! How dreadful!' exclaimed Mary, pale with pity and
+shame. 'Did he deserve his disgrace, poor unhappy creature--or was he
+the victim of false accusation?'
+
+'I can hardly tell you that, Mary, any more than I can tell whether
+Warren Hastings deserved the abuse that was wreaked upon him at one
+time, or the acquittal that gave the lie to his slanderers in after
+years. The events occurred forty years ago--the story was only half
+known then, and like all such stories formed the basis for every kind of
+exaggeration and perversion.'
+
+'Does Maulevrier know?' faltered Mary.
+
+'Maulevrier knows all that is known by the general public, and no more.'
+
+'And you have married the granddaughter of a disgraced man,' said Mary,
+with a piteous look. 'Did you know--when you married me?'
+
+'As much as I know now, dear love. If you had been Jonathan Wild's
+granddaughter you would have been just as dear to me. I married _you_,
+dearest; I love _you_; I believe in _you_. All the grandfathers in
+Christendom would not shake my faith by one tittle.'
+
+She threw herself into his arms, and sobbed upon his breast. But sweet
+as this assurance of his love was to her, she was not the less stricken
+by shame at the thought of possible infamy in the past, a shameful
+memory for ever brooding over her name in the present.
+
+'Society never forgets a scandal,' she said; 'I have heard Maulevrier
+say that.'
+
+'Society has a long memory for other people's sins, but it only avenges
+its own wrongs. Give the wicked fairy Society a bad dinner, or leave her
+out of your invitation list for a ball, and she will twit you with the
+crimes or the misfortunes of a remote ancestor--she will go about
+talking of your grandfather the leper, or your great aunt who ran away
+with her footman. But so long as the wicked fairy gets all she wants out
+of you, she cares not a straw for the misdeeds of past generations.'
+
+He spoke lightly, laughingly almost, and then he ordered the dogcart to
+be brought round immediately, and he drove Mary across the hills towards
+Langdale, to bring the colour back to her blanched cheeks. He brought
+her home in time to give her grandmother an hour for letter-writing
+before luncheon, while he walked up and down the terrace below Lady
+Maulevrier's windows, meditating the course he was to take.
+
+He was to leave Westmoreland next day to take his place in the House of
+Lords during the last important debate of the session. He made up his
+mind that before he left he would seek an interview with Lady
+Maulevrier, and boldly ask her to explain the mystery of that old man's
+presence at Fellside. He was her kinsman by marriage, and he had sworn
+to honour her and to care for her as a son; and as a son he would urge
+her to confide in him, to unburden her conscience of any dark secret,
+and to make the crooked things straight, before she was called away.
+
+While he was forecasting this interview, meeting imaginary objections,
+arguing points which might have to be argued, a servant came out to him
+with an ochre envelope on a little silver tray--that unpleasant-looking
+envelope which seems always a presage of trouble, great or small.
+
+'Lord Maulevrier, Albany, to Lord Hartfield, Fellside, Grasmere.
+
+'For God's sake come to me at once. I am in great trouble; not on my own
+account, but about a relation.'
+
+A relation--except his grandmother and his two sisters Maulevrier had no
+relations for whom he cared a straw. This message must have relation to
+Lesbia. Was she ill--dying, the victim of some fatal accident, runaway
+horses, boat upset, train smashed? There was something; and Maulevrier
+appealed to his nearest and best friend. There was no withstanding such
+an appeal. It must be answered, and immediately.
+
+Lord Hartfield went into the library and wrote his reply message, which
+consisted of six words.
+
+'Going to you by first train.'
+
+The next train left Windermere at three. There was just time to get a
+fresh horse put in the dogcart, and a Gladstone bag packed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI.
+
+PRIVILEGED INFORMATION.
+
+
+Lord Hartfield did not arrive at Euston Square until near eleven o'clock
+at night. A hansom deposited him at the entrance to the Albany just as
+the clock of St. James's Church chimed the hour. He found only
+Maulevrier's valet. His lordship had waited indoors all the evening, and
+had only gone out a quarter of an hour ago. He had gone to the
+Cerberus, and begged that Lord Hartfield would be kind enough to follow
+him there.
+
+Lord Hartfield was not fond of the Cerberus, and indeed deemed that
+lively place of rendezvous a very dangerous sphere for his friend
+Maulevrier; but in the face of Maulevrier's telegram there was no time
+to be lost, so he walked across Piccadilly and down St. James's Street
+to the fashionable little club, where the men were dropping in after the
+theatres and dinners, and where sheafs of bank notes were being
+exchanged for those various coloured counters which represented divers
+values, from the respectable 'pony' to the modest 'chip.'
+
+Maulevrier was in the first room Hartfield looked into, standing behind
+some men who were playing.
+
+'That's something like friendship,' he exclaimed, when he saw Lord
+Hartfield, and then he hooked his arm through his friend's, and led him
+off to the dining room.
+
+'Come and have some supper, old fellow,' he said, 'and I can tell you my
+troubles while you are eating it. James, bring us a grill, and a
+lobster, and a bottle of Mumms, number 27, you know.'
+
+'Yes, my lord.'
+
+'Sorry to find you in this den, Maulevrier,' said Lord Hartfield.
+
+'Haven't touched a card. Haven't done half an hour's punting this
+season. But it's a kind of habit with me to wander in here now and then.
+I know so many of the members. One poor devil lost nine thousand one
+night last week. Rather rough upon him, wasn't it? All ready money at
+this shop, don't you know.'
+
+'Thank God, I know nothing about it. And now, Maulevrier, what is wrong,
+and with whom?'
+
+'Everything is wrong, and with my sister Lesbia.'
+
+'Good heavens! what do you mean?'
+
+'Only this, that there is a fellow after her whose very name means ruin
+to women--a Spanish-American adventurer--reckless, handsome, a gambler,
+seducer, duellist, dare-devil. The man she is to marry seems to have
+neither nous nor spunk to defend her. Everybody at Goodwood saw the game
+that was being played, everybody at Cowes is watching the cards, betting
+on the result. Yes, great God, the men at the Squadron Club are staking
+their money upon my sister's character--even monkeys that she bolts with
+Montesma--five to three against the marriage with Smithson ever coming
+off.'
+
+'Is this true?'
+
+'It is as true as your marriage with Molly, as true as your loyalty to
+me. I was told of it all this morning at the Haute Gomme by a man I can
+rely upon, a really good fellow, who would not leave me in the dark
+about my sister's danger when all the smoking-rooms in Pall Mall were
+sniggering about it. My first impulse was to take the train for Cowes;
+but then I knew if I went alone I should let my temper get the better of
+me. I should knock somebody down--throw somebody out of the window--make
+a devil of a scene. And this would be fatal for Lesbia. I wanted your
+counsel, your cool head, your steady common-sense. "Not a step forward
+without Jack," I said to myself, so I bolted off and sent that telegram.
+It relieved my feeling a little, but I've had a wretched day.'
+
+'Waiter, bring me a Bradshaw, or an A B C,' said Lord Hartfield.
+
+He had eaten nothing but a biscuit since breakfast, but he was ready to
+go off at once, supperless, if there were a train to carry him.
+Unluckily there was no train. The mail had started. Nothing till seven
+o'clock next morning.
+
+'Eat your supper, old fellow,' said Maulevrier. 'After all, the danger
+may not be so desperate as I fancied this morning. Slander is the
+favourite amusement of the age we live in. We must allow a margin for
+exaggeration.'
+
+'A very liberal margin,' answered Hartfield. 'No doubt the man who
+warned you meant honestly, but this scandal may have grown out of the
+merest trifles. The feebleness of the Masher's brain is only exceeded by
+the foulness of the Masher's tongue. I daresay this rumour about Lady
+Lesbia has its beginning and end among the Masher species.'
+
+'I hope so, but--I have seen those two together--I met them at Victoria
+one evening after Goodwood. Old Kirkbank was shuffling on ahead,
+carrying Smithson with her, absorbing his attention by fussification
+about her carriage. Lesbia and that Cuban devil were in the rear. They
+looked as if they had all the world to themselves. Faust and Marguerite
+in the garden were not in it for the expression of intense absorbing
+feeling compared with those two. I'm not an intellectual party, but I
+know something of human nature, and I know when a man and woman are in
+love with each other. It is one of the things that never has been, that
+never can be hidden.'
+
+'And you say this Montesma is a dangerous man?'
+
+'Deadly.'
+
+'Well, we must lose no time. When we are on the spot it will be easy to
+find out the truth; and it will be your duty, if there be danger, to
+warn Lesbia and her future husband.
+
+'I would much rather shoot the Cuban,' said Maulevrier. 'I never knew
+much good come of a warning in such a case: it generally precipitates
+matters. If I could play _ecarte_ with him at the club, find him
+sporting an extra king, throw my cards in his face, and accept his
+challenge for an exchange of shots on the sands beyond Cherbourg--there
+would be something like satisfaction.'
+
+'You say the man is a gambler?'
+
+'Report says something worse of him. Report says he is a cheat.'
+
+'We must not be dependent upon society gossip,' replied Lord Hartfield.
+'I have an idea, Maulevrier. The more we know about this man--Montesma,
+I think you called him----'
+
+'Gomez de Montesma.'
+
+'The more fully we are acquainted with Don Gomez de Montesma's
+antecedents the better we shall be able to cope with him, if we come to
+handy-grips. It's too late to start for Cowes, but it is not too late to
+do something. Fitzpatrick, the political-economist, spent a quarter of a
+century in South America. He is a very old friend--knew my father--and I
+can venture to knock at his door after midnight--all the more as I know
+he is a night-worker. He is very likely to enlighten us about your Cuban
+hidalgo.'
+
+'You shall finish your supper before I let you stir. After that you may
+do what you like. I was always a child in your hands, Jack, whether it
+was climbing a mountain or crossing the Horse-shoe Fall. I consider the
+business in your hands now. I'll go with you wherever you like, and do
+what you tell me. When you want me to kick anybody, or fight anybody,
+you can give me the office and I'll do it. I know that Lesbia's
+interests are safe in your hands. You once cared very much for her. You
+are her brother-in-law now, and, next to me, you are her natural
+protector, taking into account that her future husband is a cad and
+doesn't score.'
+
+'Meet me at Waterloo at ten minutes to seven to-morrow morning, and
+we'll go down to Cowes together. I'm off to find Fitzpatrick. Good
+night.'
+
+So they parted. Lord Hartfield walked across the Park to Great George
+Street, where Mr. Fitzpatrick had chambers of a semi-official character,
+on the first floor of a solemn-looking old house, spacious, gloomy
+without and within, walls sombre with the subdued colouring of
+decorations half a century old.
+
+The lighted windows of those first-floor rooms told Lord Hartfield that
+he was not too late. He rang the bell, which was answered with the
+briefest delay by a sleepy-looking clerk, who had been taking shorthand
+notes for Mr. Fitzpatrick's great book upon 'Protection _versus_ Free
+Trade.' The clerk looked sleepy, but his employer had as brisk an air as
+if he were just beginning the day; although he had been working without
+intermission since nine o'clock that evening, and had done a long day's
+work before dinner. He was walking up and down the spacious unluxurious
+room, half office, half library, smoking a cigar. Upon a large table in
+the centre of the room stood two powerful reading lamps with green
+shades, illuminating a chaotic mass of books and pamphlets, heaped and
+scattered all over the table, save just on that spot between the two
+lamps, which accommodated Mr. Fitzpatrick's blotting pad and inkpot, a
+pewter inkpot which held about a pint.
+
+'How d'ye do, Hartfield? Glad you've looked me up at last,' said the
+Irishman, as if a midnight call were the most natural thing in the
+world. 'Just come from the House?'
+
+'No; I've just come from Westmoreland. I thought I should find you among
+those everlasting books of yours, late as it is. Can I have a few words
+alone with you?'
+
+'Certainly. Morgan, you can go away for a bit.'
+
+'Home, sir?'
+
+'Home--well--yes, I suppose it's late. You look sleepy. I should have
+been glad to finish the chapter on Beetroot Sugar to-night--but it may
+stand over for the morning. Be sure you're early.'
+
+'Yes, sir,' the clerk responded with a faint sigh.
+
+He was paid handsomely for late hours, liberally rewarded for his
+shorthand services; and yet he wished the great Fitzpatrick had not been
+quite so industrious.
+
+'Now, my dear Hartfield, what can I do for you?' asked Fitzpatrick, when
+the clerk had gone. 'I can see by your face that you've something
+serious in hand. Can I help you?'
+
+'You can, I believe, in a very material way. You were five-and-twenty
+years in Spanish America?'
+
+'Rather more than less.'
+
+'Here, there, and everywhere?'
+
+'Yes; there is _not_ a city in South America that I have not lived
+in--for something between a day and a year.'
+
+'You know something about most men of any mark in that part of the
+world, I conclude?'
+
+'It was my business to know men of all kinds. I had my mission from the
+Spanish Government. I was engaged to examine the condition of commerce
+throughout the colony, the working of protection as against free trade,
+and so on. Strange, by-the-bye, that Cuba, the last place to foster the
+slave trade, was of all spots of the earth the first to carry free-trade
+principles into practical effect, long before they were recognised in
+any European country.'
+
+'Strange to me that you should speak of Cuba so soon after my coming
+in,' answered Lord Hartfield. 'I am here to ask you to help me to find
+out the antecedents of a man who hails from that island.'
+
+'I ought to know something about him, whoever he is,' replied Mr.
+Fitzpatrick, briskly. 'I spent six months in Cuba not very long before
+my return to England. Cuba is one of my freshest memories; and I have a
+pretty tight memory for facts, names and figures. Never could remember
+two lines of poetry in my life.'
+
+'Did you ever hear of, or meet with, a man called Montesma--Gomez de
+Montesma?'
+
+'Couldn't have stopped a month in Havana without hearing something about
+that gentleman,' answered Fitzpatrick, 'I hope he isn't a friend of
+yours, and that you have not lent him money?'
+
+'Neither; but I want to know all you can tell me about him.'
+
+'You shall have it in black and white, out of my Cuban note-book,'
+replied the other, unlocking a drawer in the official table; 'I always
+take notes of anything worth recording, on the spot. A man is a fool who
+trusts to memory, where personal character is at stake. Montesma is as
+well known at Havana as the Morro Fort or the Tacon Theatre. I have
+heard stories enough about him to fill a big volume; but all the facts
+recorded there'--striking the morocco cover of the note-book--'have been
+thoroughly sifted; I can vouch for them.'
+
+He looked at the index, found the page, and handed the book to Lord
+Hartfield.
+
+'Read for yourself,' he said, quietly.
+
+Lord Hartfield read three or four pages of plain statement as to various
+adventures by sea and land in which Gomez de Montesma had figured, and
+the reputation which he bore in Cuba and on the Main.
+
+'You can vouch for this?' he said at last, after a long silence.
+
+'For every syllable.'
+
+'The story of his marriage?'
+
+'Gospel truth: I knew the lady.'
+
+'And the rest?'
+
+'All true.'
+
+'A thousand thanks. I know now upon what ground I stand. I have to save
+an innocent, high-bred girl from the clutches of a consummate
+scoundrel.'
+
+'Shoot him, and shoot her, too, if there's no better way of saving her.
+It will be an act of mercy,' said Mr. Fitzpatrick, without hesitation.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII.
+
+'SHALL IT BE?'
+
+
+While Lord Hartfield sat in his friend's office in Great George Street
+reading the life story of Gomez de Montesma, told with the cruel
+precision and the unvarnished language of a criminal indictment, the
+hero of that history was gliding round the spacious ballroom of the
+Cowes Club, with Lady Lesbia Haselden's dark-brown head almost reclining
+on his shoulder, her violet eyes looking up at his every now and then,
+shyly, entrancingly, as he bent his head to talk to her.
+
+The Squadron Ball was in full swing between midnight and the first hour
+of morning. The flowers had not lost their freshness, the odours of dust
+and feverish human breath had not yet polluted the atmosphere. The
+windows were open to the purple night, the purple sea. The stars seemed
+to be close outside the verandah, shining on purpose for the dancers;
+and these two--the man tall, pale, dark, with flashing eyes and short,
+sleek raven hair, small head, noble bearing; the girl divinely lovely in
+her marble purity of complexion, her classical grace of form--these two
+were, as every one avowed and acknowledged, the handsomest couple in the
+room.
+
+'We're none of us in it compared with them,' said a young naval
+commander to his partner, whereupon the young lady looked somewhat
+sourly, and replied that Lady Lesbia's features were undeniably regular
+and her complexion good, but that she was wanting in soul.
+
+'Is she?' asked the sailor, incredulously, 'Look at her now. What do you
+call that, if it isn't soul?'
+
+'I call it simply disgraceful,' answered his partner, sharply turning
+away her head.
+
+Lesbia was looking up at the Spaniard, her lips faintly parted, all her
+face listening eagerly as she caught some whispered word, breathed among
+the soft ripples of her hair, from lips that almost touched her brow.
+People cannot go on waltzing for ten minutes in a dead silence, like
+automatic dancers. There must be conversation. Only it is better that
+the lips should do most of the talking. When the eyes have so much to
+say society is apt to be censorious.
+
+Mr. Smithson was smoking a cigarette on the lawn with a sporting peer. A
+man to whom tobacco is a necessity cannot be always on guard; but it is
+quite possible that in the present state of Lady Lesbia's feelings
+Smithson would have had no restraining influence had he been ever so
+watchful. To what act in the passion drama had her love come to-night as
+she floated round the room, with her head inclined towards her lover's
+breast, the strong pulsation of his heart sounding in her ear, like the
+rhythmical beat of the basses yonder in Waldteufel's last waltz? Was
+there still the uncertainty as to the _denouement_ which marks the third
+act of a good play? or was there the dread foreboding, the sense of
+impending doom which should stir the spectators with pity and terror as
+the fourth act hurries to its passionate close? Who could tell? She had
+been full of life and energy to-day on board the yacht during the
+racing, in which she seemed to take an ardent interest. The _Cayman_ had
+followed the racers for three hours through a freshening sea, much to
+Lady Kirkbank's disgust, and Lesbia had been the soul of the party.
+The same yesterday. The yacht had only got back to Cowes in time for the
+ball, and all had been hurry and excitement while the ladies dressed and
+crossed to the club, the spray dashing over their opera mantles, poor
+Lady Kirkbank's complexion yellow with _mal de mer_, in spite of a
+double coating of _Blanc de Fedora_, the last fashionable cosmetic.
+
+To-night Lesbia was curiously silent, depressed even, as it seemed to
+those who were interested in observing her; and all the world is
+interested in a famous beauty. She was very pale, even her lips were
+colourless, and the large violet eyes and firmly pencilled brows alone
+gave colour to her face. She looked like a marble statue, the eyes and
+eyebrows accentuated with touches of colour. Those lovely eyes had a
+heavy look, as of trouble, weariness; nay, absolute distress.
+
+Never had she looked less brilliant than to-night; never had she looked
+more beautiful. It was the loveliness of a newly-awakened soul. The
+wonderful Pandora-casket of life, with its infinite evil, its little
+good, had given up its secret. She knew what passionate love really
+means. She knew what such love mostly means--self-sacrifice, surrender
+of the world's wealth, severance from friends, the breaking of all old
+ties. To love as she loved means the crossing of a river more fatal than
+the Rubicon, the casting of a die more desperate than that which Caesar
+flung upon the board when he took up arms against the Republic.
+
+The river was not yet crossed, but her feet were on the margin, wet with
+the ripple of the stream. The fatal die was not yet cast, but the
+dice-box was in her hand ready for the throw. Lesbia and Montesma danced
+together--not too often, three waltzes out of sixteen--but when they
+were so waltzing they were the cynosure of the room. That betting of
+which Maulevrier had heard was rife to-night, and the odds upon the
+Cuban had gone up. It was nine to four now that those two would be over
+the border before the week was out.
+
+Mr. Smithson was not neglectful of his affianced. He took her into the
+supper-room, where she drank some Moselle cup, but ate nothing. He sat
+out three or four waltzes with her on the lawn, listening to the murmer
+of the sea, and talking very little.
+
+'You are looking wretchedly ill to-night, Lesbia,' he said, after a
+dismal silence.
+
+'I am sorry that I should put you to shame by my bad looks,' she
+answered, with that keen acidity of tone which indicates irritated
+nerves.
+
+'You know that I don't mean anything of the kind; you are always lovely,
+always the loveliest everywhere; but I don't like to see you so ghastly
+pale.'
+
+'I suppose I am over-fatigued: that I have done too much in London and
+here. Life in Westmoreland was very different,' she added, with a sigh,
+and a touch of wonder that the Lesbia Haselden, whose methodical life
+had never been stirred by a ruffle of passion, could have been the same
+flesh and blood--yes, verily, the same woman, whose heart throbbed so
+vehemently to-night, whose brain seemed on fire.
+
+'Are you sure there is nothing the matter?' he asked, with a faint
+quiver in his voice.
+
+'What should there be the matter?'
+
+'Who can say? God knows that I know no cause for evil. I am honest
+enough, and faithful enough, Lesbia. But your face to-night is like a
+presage of calamity, like the dull, livid sky that goes before a
+thunderstorm.'
+
+'I hope there is no thunderbolt coming,' she answered, lightly. 'What
+very tall talk about a headache, for really that is all that ails me.
+Hark, they have begun "My Queen." I am engaged for this waltz.'
+
+'I am sorry for that.'
+
+'So am I. I would ever so much rather have stayed out here.'
+
+Two hours later, in the steely morning light, when sea and land and sky
+had a metallic look as if lit by electricity, Lady Lesbia stood with her
+chaperon and her affianced husband on the landing stage belonging to the
+club, ready to step into the boat in which six swarthy seamen in red
+shirts and caps were to row them back to the yacht. Mr. Smithson drew
+the warm _sortie de bal_, with its gold-coloured satin lining and white
+fox border, closer round Lesbia's slender form.
+
+'You are shivering,' he said; 'you ought to have warmer wraps.
+
+'This is warm enough for St. Petersburg. I am only tired--very tired.'
+
+'The _Cayman_ will rock you to sleep.'
+
+Don Gomez was standing close by, waiting for his host. The two men were
+to walk up the hill to Formosa, a village with a classic portico,
+delightfully situated above the town.
+
+'What time are we to come to breakfast? asked Mr. Smithson.
+
+'Not too early, in mercy's name. Two o'clock in the afternoon, three,
+four;--why not make it five--combine breakfast with afternoon tea,'
+exclaimed Lady Kirkbank, with a tremendous yawn. 'I never was so
+thoroughly fagged; I feel as if I had been beaten with sticks,
+basti--what's its name.'
+
+She was leaning all her weight upon Mr. Smithson, as he handed her down
+the steps and into the boat. Her normal weight was not a trifle, and
+this morning she was heavy with champagne and sleep. Carefully as
+Smithson supported her she gave a lurch at the bottom of the steps, and
+plunged ponderously into the boat, which dipped and careened under her,
+whereat she shrieked, and implored Mr. Smithson to save her.
+
+All this occupied some minutes, and gave Lesbia and the Cuban just
+time for a few words that had to be said somehow.
+
+'Good-night,' said Montesma, as they clasped hands; 'good-night;' and
+then in a lower voice he said, 'Well, have you decided at last? Shall it
+be?'
+
+She looked at him for a moment or so, pale in the starlight, and then
+murmured an almost inaudible syllable.
+
+'Yes.'
+
+He bent quickly and pressed his lips upon her gloved hand, and when Mr.
+Smithson looked round they two were standing apart, Montesma in a
+listless attitude, as if tired of waiting for his host.
+
+It was Smithson who handed Lesbia into the boat and arranged her wraps,
+and hung over her tenderly as he performed those small offices.
+
+'Now really,' he asked, just before the boat put off, 'when are we to be
+with you to-morrow?'
+
+'Lady Kirkbank says not till afternoon tea, but I think you may come a
+few hours earlier. I am not at all sleepy.'
+
+'You look as if you needed sleep badly,' answered Smithson. 'I'm afraid
+you are not half careful enough of yourself. Good-night.'
+
+The boat was gliding off, the oars dipping, as he spoke. How swiftly it
+shot from his ken, flashing in and out among the yachts, where the lamps
+were burning dimly in that clear radiance of new-born day.
+
+Montesma gave a tremendous yawn as he took out his cigar-case, and he
+and Mr. Smithson did not say twenty words between them during the walk
+to Formosa, where servants were sitting up, lamps burning, a great
+silver tray, with brandy, soda, liqueurs, coffee, in readiness.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIII.
+
+'ALAS, FOR SORROW IS ALL THE END OF THIS'
+
+
+Lady Kirkbank retired to her cabin directly she got on board the
+_Cayman_.
+
+'Good-night, child! I am more than half asleep,' she said; 'and I think
+if there were to be an earthquake an hour hence I should hardly hear it.
+Go to your berth directly, Lesbia; you look positively awful. I have
+seen girls look bad after balls before now, but I never saw such a
+spectre as you look this morning.'
+
+Poor Georgie's own complexion left something to be desired. The _Blanc
+de Fedora_ had been a brilliant success for the first two hours: after
+that the warm room began to tell upon it, and there came a greasiness,
+then a streakiness, and now all that was left of an alabaster skin was a
+livid patch of purplish paint here and there, upon a crow's-foot ground.
+The eyebrows, too, had given in, and narrow lines of Vandyke brown
+meandered down Lady Kirkbank's cheeks. The frizzy hair had gone
+altogether wrong, and had a wild look, suggestive of the witches in
+Macbeth, and the scraggy neck and poor old shoulders showed every year
+of their age in the ghastly morning light.
+
+Lesbia waited in the saloon till Lady Kirkbank had bolted herself into
+her cabin, and then she went up to the deck wrapped in her satin-lined,
+fur-bordered cloak, and coiled herself in a bamboo arm-chair, and
+nestled her bare head into a Turkish pillow, and tried to sleep, there
+with the cool morning breeze blowing upon her burning forehead, and the
+plish-plash of seawater soothing her ear.
+
+There were only three or four sailors on deck, weird, almost
+diabolical-looking creatures, Lesbia thought, in striped shirts, with
+bare arms, of a shining bronze complexion, flashing black eyes, sleek
+raven hair, a sinister look. What species of men they were--Mestizoes,
+Coolies, Yucatekes--she knew not, but she felt that they were something
+wild and strange, and their presence filled her with a vague fear. _He_,
+whose influence now ruled her life, had told her that these men were
+born mariners, and that she was twenty times safer with them than when
+the yacht had been under the control of those honest, grinning
+red-whiskered English Jack Tars. But she liked the English sailors best,
+all the same; and she shrank from the faintest contact with these
+tawny-visaged strangers, plucking away the train of her gown as they
+passed her chair, lest they should brush against her drapery.
+
+On deck this morning, with only those dark faces near, she had a sense
+of loneliness, of helplessness, of abandonment even. Unbidden the image
+of her home at Grasmere flashed into her mind--all things so calm, so
+perfectly ordered, such a sense of safety, of home--no peril, no
+temptation, no fever--only peace: and she had grown sick to death of
+peace. She had prayed for tempest: and the tempest had come.
+
+There was a heavenly quiet in the air in the early summer morning, only
+the creaking of a spar, the scream of a seagull now and then. How pale
+the lamps were growing on board the yachts. Paler still, yellow, and
+dim, and blurred yonder in the town. The eastward facing windows were
+golden with the rising sun. Yes, this was morning. The yachts were
+moving away yonder, majestical, swan-like, white sails shining against
+the blue.
+
+She closed her eyes, and tried to sleep; but sleep would not come. She
+was always listening--listening for the dip of oars, listening for a
+snatch of melody from a mellow baritone whose every accent she knew so
+well.
+
+It came at last, the sound her soul longed for. She lay among her
+cushions with closed eyes, listening, drinking in those rich ripe notes
+as they came nearer and nearer, to the measure of dipping oars, _'La
+donna e mobile--'_
+
+Nearer and nearer, until the little boat ground against the hull. She
+lifted her heavy eyelids as Montesma leapt over the gunwale, almost into
+her arms. He was at her side, kneeling by her low chair, kissing the
+little hands, chill with the freshness of morning.
+
+'My own, my very own,' he murmured, passionately.
+
+He cared no more for those copper-faced Helots yonder than if they had
+been made of wood. He had fate in his own hands now, as it seemed to
+him. He went to the skipper and gave him some orders in Spanish, and
+then the sails were unfurled, the _Cayman_ spread her broad white wings,
+and moved off among those other yachts which were gliding, gliding,
+gliding out to sea, melting from Cowes Roads like a vision that fadeth
+with the broad light of morning.
+
+When the sails were up and the yacht was running merrily through the
+water, Montesma went back to Lady Lesbia, and they two sat side by side,
+gilded and glorified in the vivid lights of sunrise, talking as they had
+never talked before, her head upon his shoulder, a smile of ineffable
+peace upon her lips, as of a weary child that has found rest.
+
+They were sailing for Havre, and at Havre they were to be married by the
+English chaplain, and from Havre they were to sail for the Havana, and
+to live there ever afterwards in a fairy-tale dream of bliss, broken
+only by an annual visit to Paris, just to buy gowns and bonnets.
+Surrendered were all Lesbia's ambitious hopes--forgotten--gone; her
+desire to reign princess paramount in the kingdom of fashion--her thirst
+to be wealthiest among the wealthy--gone--forgotten. Her dreams now were
+of the _dolce far niente_ of a tropical climate, a boudoir giving on the
+Caribbean sea, cigarettes, coffee, nights spent in a foreign opera
+house, the languid, reposeful existence of a Spanish dama--with him,
+with him. It was for his sake that she had modified all her ideas of
+life. To be with him she would have been content to dwell in the tents
+of the Patagonians, on the wild and snow-clad Pampas. A love which was
+strong enough to make her sacrifice duty, the world, her fair fame as a
+well-bred woman, was a love that recked but little of the paths along
+which her lover's hand was to lead. For him, to be with him, she
+renounced the world. The rest did not count.
+
+The summer hours glided past them. The _Cayman_ was far out at sea; all
+the other yachts had vanished, and they were alone amidst the blue,
+with only a solitary three-master yonder, on the edge of the horizon.
+More than once Lesbia had talked of going below to change her ball gown
+for the attire of everyday life; but each time her lover had detained
+her a little longer, had pleaded for a few more words. Lady Kirkbank
+would be astir presently, and there would be no more solitude for them
+till they were married, and could shake her off altogether. So Lesbia
+stayed, and those two drank the cup of bliss, hushed by the monotonous
+sing-song of the sea, the rhythm of the swinging sails. But now it was
+broad morning. The hour when society, however late it may keep its
+revels overnight, is apt to awaken, were it only to call for a cup of
+strong tea and to turn again on the pillow of lassitude, after that
+refreshment, like the sluggard of Holy Writ. At ten o'clock the sun sent
+his golden arrows across the silken coverlet of her berth and awakened
+Lady Kirkbank, who opened her eyes and looked about languidly. The
+little cabin was heaving itself up and down in a curious way; Mr.
+Smithson's cigar-cases were sloping as if they were going to fall upon
+Lady Kirkbank's couch, and the looking-glass, with all its dainty
+appliances, was making an angle of forty-five degrees. There was more
+swirling and washing of water against the hull than ever Georgie
+Kirkbank had heard in Cowes Roads.
+
+'Mercy on me! this horrid thing must be moving,' she exclaimed to the
+empty air. 'It must have broken loose in the night.'
+
+She had no confidence in those savage-looking sailors, and she had a
+vision of the yacht drifting at the mercy of winds and waves, drifting
+for days, weeks, and months; drifting to the German Ocean, drifting to
+the North Pole. Mr. Smithson and Montesma on shore--no one on board to
+exercise authority over those fearful men.
+
+Perhaps they had mutinied, and were carrying off the yacht as their
+booty, with Lesbia and her chaperon, and all their gowns.
+
+'I am almost glad that harpy Seraphine has my diamonds,' thought poor
+Georgie, 'or I should have had them with me on board this hateful boat.'
+
+And then she rapped vehemently against the panel of the cabin, and
+screamed for Rilboche, whose den was adjacent.
+
+Rilboche, who detested the sea, made her appearance after some delay,
+looking even greener than her mistress, who, in rising from her berth,
+already began to suffer the agonies of sea-sickness.
+
+'What does this mean?' exclaimed Lady Kirkbank; 'and where are we
+going?'
+
+'That's what I should like to know, my lady. But I daresay Lady Lesbia
+and Mr. Montesma can tell you. They are both on deck.'
+
+'Montesma! Why, we left him on shore!'
+
+'Yes, my lady, but he came on board at five o'clock this morning. I
+looked at my watch when I heard him land, and he and Lady Lesbia have
+been sitting on deck ever since.'
+
+'And now it is ten. Five hours on deck--impossible!'
+
+'Time doesn't seem long when one is happy, my lady,' murmured Rilboche,
+in her own language.
+
+'Help me to dress this instant,' screamed her mistress: 'that dreadful
+Spaniard is eloping with us.'
+
+Despite the hideous depression of that malady which strikes down Kaiser
+and beggar with the same rough hand, Lady Kirkbank contrived to get
+herself dressed decently, and to stagger up the companion to that part
+of the deck where the Persian carpet was spread, and the bamboo chairs
+and tables were set out under the striped awning. Lesbia and her lover
+were sitting together, he giving her a first lesson in the art of
+smoking a cigarette. He had told her playfully that every man, woman,
+and child in Cuba was a smoker, and she had besought him to let her
+begin, and now, with infinite coquetry, was taking her first lesson.
+
+'You shameless minx!' exclaimed Georgie, pale with anger.
+
+'Where is Smithson--my poor, good Smithson?'
+
+'Fast asleep in his bed at Formosa, I hope, dear Lady Kirkbank,' the
+Cuban answered, with perfect _sang froid_. 'Smithson is out of it, as
+you idiomatic English say. I hope, Lady Kirkbank, you will be as kind to
+me as you have been to Smithson; and depend upon it I shall make Lady
+Lesbia as good a husband as ever Smithson could have done.'
+
+'You!' exclaimed the matron, contemptuously. 'You!--a foreigner, an
+adventurer, who may be as poor as Job, for anything I know about you.'
+
+'Job was once rather comfortably off, Lady Kirkbank; and I can answer
+for it that Montesma's wife will know none of the pangs of poverty.'
+
+'If you were a beggar I would not care,' said Lesbia, drawing nearer to
+him.
+
+They had both risen at Lady Kirkbank's approach, and were standing side
+by side, confronting her. Lesbia had shrunk from the idea of poverty
+with John Hammond; yet, for this man's sake, she was ready to face
+penury, ruin, disgrace, anything.
+
+'Do you mean to tell me that Lord Maulevrier's sister, a young lady
+under my charge, answerable to me for her conduct, is capable of jilting
+the man to whom she has solemnly bound herself, in order to marry you?'
+demanded Lady Kirkbank, turning to Montesma.
+
+'Yes; that is what I am going to do,' answered Lesbia, boldly. 'It would
+be a greater sin to keep my promise than to break it. I never liked that
+man, and you know it. You badgered me into accepting him, against my own
+better judgment. You drifted me so deeply into debt that I was willing
+to marry a man I loathed in order to get my debts paid. _This_ is what
+you did for the girl placed under your charge. But, thank God, I have
+released myself from your clutches. I am going far away to a new world,
+where the memory of my old life cannot follow me. People may be angry or
+pleased! I do not care. I shall be the wife of the man I have chosen out
+of all the world for my husband--the man God made to be my master.'
+
+'You are----' gasped Lady Kirkbank. 'I can't say what you are. I never
+in my life felt so tempted to use improper language.'
+
+'Dear Lady Kirkbank, be reasonable,' pleaded Montesma; 'you can have no
+interest in seeing Lesbia married to a man she dislikes.'
+
+Georgia reddened a little, remembering that she was interested to the
+amount of some thousands in the Smithson and Haselden alliance; but she
+took a higher ground than mercenary considerations.
+
+'I am interested in doing the very best for a young lady who has been
+entrusted to my care, the granddaughter of an old friend,' she answered,
+with dignity. 'I have no objection to you in the abstract, Don Gomez.
+You have always been vastly civil, I am sure----'
+
+'Stand by us in our day of need, Lady Kirkbank, and you will find me the
+staunchest friend you ever had.'
+
+'I am bound in honour to consider Mr. Smithson, Lesbia,' said Lady
+Kirkbank. 'I wonder that a decently-brought up girl can behave so
+abominably.'
+
+'It would be more abominable to marry a man I detest. I have made up my
+mind, Lady Kirkbank. We shall be at Havre to-morrow morning, and we
+shall be married to-morrow--shall we not, Gomez?'
+
+She let her head sink upon his breast, and his arm enfold her. Thus
+sheltered, she felt safe, thus and thus only. She had thrown her cap
+over the mills; snapped her fingers at society; cared not a jot what the
+world might think or say of her. This man would she marry and no other;
+this man's fortune would she follow for good or evil. He had that kind
+of influence with women which is almost 'possession.' It smells of
+brimstone.
+
+'Come, my dear good soul,' said Montesma, smiling at the angry matron,
+'why not take things quietly? You have had a good many girls under your
+wing; and you must know that youth and maturity see life from a
+different standpoint. In your eyes my old friend Smithson is an
+admirable match. You measure him by his houses, his stable, his banker's
+book; but Lesbia would rather marry the man she loves, and take the
+risks of his fate. I am not a pauper, Lady Kirkbank, and the home to
+which I shall take my love is pretty enough for a princess of the blood
+royal, and for her sake I shall grow richer yet,' he added, with his
+eyes kindling; 'and if you care to pay us a visit next February in our
+Parisian apartment I will promise you as pleasant a nest as you can wish
+to occupy.'
+
+'How do I know that you will ever bring her back to Europe?' said Lady
+Kirkbank, piteously. 'How do I know that you will not bury her alive in
+your savage country, among blackamoors, like those horrid sailors, over
+there--kill her, perhaps, when you are tired of her?'
+
+At these words of Lady Kirkbank's, flung out at random, Montesma
+blanched, and his deep black eye met hers with a strangely sinister
+look.
+
+'Yes,' she cried, hysterically--'kill her, kill her! You look as if you
+could do it.'
+
+Lesbia nestled closer to her lover's heart.
+
+'How dare you say such things to him,' she cried, angrily. '_I_ trust
+him, don't you see; trust him with my whole heart, with all my soul. I
+shall be his wife to-morrow, for good or evil.'
+
+'Very much for evil, I'm afraid,' said Lady Kirkbank. 'Perhaps you will
+be kind enough to come to your cabin and take off that ball gown, and
+make yourself just a little less disreputable in outward appearance,
+while I get a cup of tea.'
+
+Lesbia obeyed, and went down to her cabin, where Kibble was waiting with
+a fresh white muslin frock and all its belongings, laid out ready for
+her mistress, sorely perplexed at the turn which affairs were taking.
+She had never liked Horace Smithson, although he had given her tips
+which were almost a provision for her old age; but she had thought it a
+good thing that her mistress, who was frightfully extravagant, should
+marry a millionaire; and now they were sailing over the sea with a lot
+of coloured sailors, and the millionaire was left on shore.
+
+Lady Kirkbank went into the saloon, where breakfast was laid ready, and
+where the steward was in attendance with that air of being absolutely
+unconscious of any domestic disturbance, which is the mark of a
+well-trained servant.
+
+Lesbia appeared in something less than an hour, newly dressed and fresh
+looking, in her pure white gown, her brown hair bound in a coronet round
+her small Greek head. She sat down by Lady Kirkbank's side, and tried to
+coax her into good humour.
+
+'Why can't you take things pleasantly, dear?' she pleaded. 'Do now, like
+a good soul. You heard him say he was well off, and that he will take me
+to Paris next winter, and you can come to us there on your way from
+Cannes, and stay with us till Easter. It will be so nice when the Prince
+and all the best people are in Paris. We shall only stay in Cuba till
+the fuss about my running away is all over, and people have forgotten,
+don't you know. As for Mr. Smithson, why should I have any more
+compunction about jilting him than he had about that poor Miss Trinder?
+By-the-bye, I want you to send him back all his presents for me. They
+are almost all in Arlington Street. I brought nothing with me except my
+engagement ring,' looking down at the half-hoop of diamonds, and pulling
+it off her fingers as she talked. 'I had a kind of presentiment----'
+
+'You mean that you had made up your mind to throw him over.'
+
+'No. But I felt there were breakers ahead. It might have come to
+throwing myself into the sea. Perhaps you would have liked that better
+than what has happened.'
+
+'I don't know, I'm sure. The whole thing is disgraceful. London will
+ring with the scandal. What am I to say to Lady Maulevrier, to your
+brother? And pray how do you propose to get married at Havre? You cannot
+be married in a French town by merely holding up your finger. There are
+no registry offices. I am sure I have no idea how the thing is done.'
+
+'Don Gomez has arranged all that--everything has been thought
+of--everything has been planned. A steamer will take us to St. Thomas,
+and another steamer will take us on to Cuba.'
+
+'But the marriage--the licence?'
+
+'I tell you everything has been provided for. Please take this ring and
+send it to Mr. Smithson when you go back to England.'
+
+'Send it to him yourself. I will have nothing to do with it.'
+
+'How dreadfully disagreeable you are,' said Lesbia, pouting, 'just
+because I am marrying to please myself, instead of to please you. It is
+frightfully selfish of you.'
+
+Montesma came in at this moment. He, too, had dressed himself freshly,
+and was looking his handsomest, in that buccaneer style of costume which
+he wore when he sailed the yacht. He and Lesbia breakfasted at their
+ease, while Lady Kirkbank reclined in her bamboo arm-chair, feeling very
+unhappy in her mind and far from well. Neptune and she could not
+accommodate themselves.
+
+After a leisurely breakfast, enlivened by talk and laughter, the cabin
+windows open, the sun shining, the freshening breeze blowing in, Lesbia
+and Don Gomez went on deck, and he reclined at her feet while she read
+to him from the pages of her favourite Keats, read languidly, lazily,
+yet exquisitely, for she had been taught to read as well as to sing. The
+poetry seemed to have been written on purpose for them; and the sky and
+the atmosphere around them seemed to have been made for the poetry. And
+so, with intervals of strolling on the deck, and an hour or so dawdled
+away at luncheon, and a leisurely afternoon tea, the day wore on to
+sunset, and they went back to Keats, while Lady Kirkbank sulked and
+slept in a corner of the saloon.
+
+'This is the happiest day of my life,' Lesbia murmured, in a pause of
+their reading, when they had dropped Endymion's love to talk of their
+own.
+
+'But not of mine, my angel. I shall be happier still when we are far
+away on broader waters, beyond the reach of all who can part us.'
+
+'Can any one part us, Gomez, now that we have pledged ourselves to each
+other?' she asked, incredulously.
+
+'Ah, love, such pledges are sometimes broken. All women are not
+lion-hearted. While the sea is smooth and the ship runs fair, all is
+easy enough; but when tempest and peril come--that is the test, Lesbia.
+Will you stand by me in the tempest, love?'
+
+'You know that I will,' she answered, with her hand locked in his two
+hands, clasped as with a life-long clasp.
+
+She could not imagine any severe ordeal to be gone through. If
+Maulevrier heard of her elopement in time for pursuit, there would be a
+fuss, perhaps--an angry bother raging and fuming. But what of that? She
+was her own mistress. Maulevrier could not prevent her marrying
+whomsoever she pleased.
+
+'Swear that you will hold to me against all the world,' he said,
+passionately, turning his head to look across the stern of the vessel.
+
+'Against all the world,' she answered, softly.
+
+'I believe your courage will be tested before long,' he said; and then
+he cried to the skipper, 'Crowd on all sail, Tomaso. That boat is
+chasing us.'
+
+Lesbia sprang to her feet, looking as he looked to a spot of vivid white
+on the horizon. Montesma had snatched up a glass and was watching that
+distant spot.
+
+'It is a steam-yacht,' he said. 'They will catch us.'
+
+He was right. Although the _Cayman_ strained every timber so that her
+keel cut through the water like a boomerang, wind and steam beat wind
+without steam. In less than an hour the steam-yacht was beside the
+_Cayman_, and Lord Maulevrier and Lord Hartfield had boarded Mr.
+Smithson's deck.
+
+'I have come to take you and Lady Kirkbank back to Cowes, Lesbia,' said
+Maulevrier. 'I'm not going to make any undue fuss about this little
+escapade of yours, provided you go back with Hartfield and me at once,
+and pledge yourself never to hold any further communication with Don
+Gomez de Montesma.'
+
+The Spaniard was standing close by, silent, white as death, but ready to
+make a good fight. That pallor of the clear olive skin was not from want
+of pluck; but there was the deadly knowledge of the ground he stood
+upon, the doubt that any woman, least of all such a woman as Lady Lesbia
+Haselden, could be true to him if his character and antecedents were
+revealed to her. And how much or how little these two men could tell her
+about himself or his past life was the question which the next few
+minutes would solve.
+
+'I am not going back with you,' answered Lesbia. 'I am going to Havre
+with Don Gomez de Montesma. We are to be married there as soon as we
+arrive.'
+
+'To be married--at Havre,' cried Maulevrier. 'An appropriate place. A
+sailor has a wife in every port, don't you know.'
+
+'We had better go down to the cabin,' said Hartfield, laying his hand
+upon his friend's shoulder. 'If Lady Lesbia will be good enough to come
+with us we can tell her all that we have to tell quietly there.'
+
+Lord Hartfield's tone was unmistakeable. Everything was known.
+
+'You can talk at your ease here,' said Montesma, facing the two men with
+a diabolical recklessness and insolence of manner. 'Not one of these
+fellows on board knows a dozen sentences of English.'
+
+'I would rather talk below, if it is all the same to you, Senor; and I
+should be glad to speak to Lady Lesbia alone.'
+
+'That you shall not do unless she desires it,' answered Montesma.
+
+'No, he shall hear all that you have to say. He shall hear how I answer
+you,' said Lesbia.
+
+Lord Hartfield shrugged his shoulders.
+
+'As you please,' he said. 'It will make the disclosure a little more
+painful than it need have been; but that cannot be helped.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIV.
+
+'OH, SAD KISSED MOUTH, HOW SORROWFUL IT IS!'
+
+
+They all went down to the saloon, where Lady Kirkbank sat, looking the
+image of despair, which changed to delighted surprise at sight of Lord
+Hartfield and his friend.
+
+'Did you give your consent to my sister's elopement with this man, Lady
+Kirkbank?' Maulevrier asked, brusquely.
+
+'I give my consent! Good gracious! no. He has eloped with me ever so
+much more than with your sister. She knew all about it, I've no doubt:
+but the wretch ran away with me in my sleep.'
+
+'I am glad, for your own self-respect, that you had no hand in this
+disgraceful business,' replied Maulevrier; and then turning to Lord
+Hartfield, he said, 'Hartfield, will you tell my sister who and what
+this man is? Will you make her understand what kind of pitfall she has
+escaped? Upon my soul, I cannot speak of it.'
+
+'I recognise no right of Lord Hartfield's to interfere with my actions,
+and I will hear nothing that he may have to say,' said Lesbia, standing
+by her lover's side, with head erect and eyes dark with anger.
+
+'Your sister's husband has the strongest right to control your actions,
+Lady Lesbia, when the family honour is at stake,' answered Hartfield,
+with grave authority. 'Accept me at least as a member of your family, if
+you will not accept me as your disinterested and devoted friend.'
+
+'Friend!' echoed Lesbia, scornfully. 'You might have been my friend
+once. Your friendship then would have been of some value to me, if you
+had told me the truth, instead of approaching me with a lie upon your
+lips. You talk of honour, Lord Hartfield; you, who came to my
+grandmother's house as an impostor, under a false name!'
+
+'I went there as a man standing on his own merits, assuming no rank save
+that which God gave him among his fellow-men, claiming to be possessed
+of no fortune except intellect and industry. If I could not win a wife
+with such credentials, it were better for me never to marry at all, Lady
+Lesbia. But we have no time to speak of the past. I am here as your
+brother's friend, here to save you.'
+
+'To part me from the man to whom I have given my heart. That you cannot
+do. Gomez, why do you not speak? Tell him, tell him!' cried Lesbia, with
+a voice strangled by sobs; 'tell him that I am to be your wife
+to-morrow, at Havre. Your wife!'
+
+'Dear Lady Lesbia, that cannot be,' said Lord Hartfield, sorrowfully,
+pitying her in her helplessness, as he might have pitied a young bird in
+the fowler's net. 'I am assured upon undeniable authority that Senor
+Montesma has a wife living at Cuba; and even were this not so--were he
+free to marry you--his character and antecedents would for ever forbid
+such a marriage.'
+
+'A wife! No, no, no!' shrieked Lesbia, looking wildly from one to the
+other. 'It is a lie--a lie, invented by my brother, who always hated
+me--by you, who fooled and deceived me! It is a lie, an infamous
+invention! Don Gomez, speak to them: for pity's sake answer them! Don't
+you see that they are driving me mad?'
+
+She flung herself into his arms, she buried her dishevelled head upon
+his breast; she clung to him with hands that writhed convulsively in her
+agony.
+
+Maulevrier sprang across the cabin and wrenched her from her lover's
+grasp.
+
+'You shall not pollute her with your touch,' he cried; 'you have
+poisoned her mind already. Scoundrel, seducer, slave-dealer! Do you
+hear, Lesbia? Shall I tell you what this man is--what trade he followed
+yonder, on his native island--this Spanish hidalgo--this
+all-accomplished gentleman--lineal descendant of the Cid--fine flower
+of Andalusian chivalry? It was not enough for him to cheat at cards, to
+float bubble companies, bogus lotteries. His profligate extravagance,
+his love of sybarite luxury, required a larger resource than the petty
+schemes which enrich smaller men. A slave ship, which could earn nearly
+twenty thousand pounds on every voyage, and which could make two runs in
+a year--that was the trade for Don Gomez de Montesma, and he carried it
+on merrily for six or seven years, till the British cruisers got too
+keen for him, and the good old game was played out. You see that scar
+upon the hidalgo's forehead, Lesbia--a token of knightly prowess, you
+think, perhaps. No, my girl, that is the mark of an English cutlass in a
+scuffle on board a slaver. A merry trade, Lesbia--the living cargo
+stowed close under hatches have rather a bad time of it now and
+then--short rations of food and water, yellow Jack. They die like rotten
+sheep sometimes--bad then for the dealer. But if he can land the bulk of
+his human wares safe and sound the profits are enormous. The
+Captain-General takes his capitation fee, the blackies are drafted off
+to the sugar plantations, and everybody is satisfied; but I think,
+Lesbia, that your British prejudices would go against marriage with a
+slave-trader, were he ever so free to make you his wife, which this
+particular dealer in blackamoors is not.'
+
+'Is this true, this part of their vile story?' demanded Lesbia, looking
+at her lover, who stood apart from them all now, his arms folded, his
+face deadly pale, the lower lip quivering under the grinding of his
+strong white teeth.
+
+'There is some truth in it,' he answered, hoarsely. 'Everybody in Cuba
+had a finger in the African trade, before your British philanthropy
+spoiled it. Mr. Smithson made sixty thousand pounds in that line. It was
+the foundation of his fortune. And yet he had his misfortunes in running
+his cargo--a ship burnt, a freight roasted alive. There are some very
+black stories in Cuba against poor Smithson. He will never go there
+again.'
+
+'Mr. Smithson may be a scoundrel; indeed, I believe he is a pretty bad
+specimen in that line,' said Lord Hartfield. 'But I doubt if there is
+any story that can be told of him quite so bad as the history of your
+marriage, and the events that went before it. I have been told the story
+of the beautiful Octoroon, who loved and trusted you, who shared your
+good and evil fortunes for the most desperate years of your life, was
+almost accepted as your wife, and whose strangled corpse was found in
+the harbour while the bells were ringing for your marriage with a rich
+planter's heiress--the lady who, no doubt, now patiently awaits your
+return to her native island.'
+
+'She will wait a long time,' said Montesma, 'or fare ill if I go back to
+her. Lesbia, his lordship's story of the Octoroon is a fable--an
+invention of my Cuban enemies, who hate us old Spaniards with a
+poisonous hatred. But this much is true. I am a married man--bound,
+fettered by a tie which I abhor. Our Havre marriage would have been
+bigamy on my part, a delusion on yours. I could not have taken you to
+Cuba. I had planned our life in a fairer, more civilised world. I am
+rich enough to have surrounded you with all that makes life worth
+living. I would have given you love as true and as deep as ever man gave
+to woman. All that would have been wanting would have been the legality
+of the tie: and as law never yet made a marriage happy which lacked the
+elements of bliss, our lawless union need not have missed happiness.
+Lesbia, you said that you would hold by me, come what might. The worst
+has come, love; but it leaves me not the less your true lover.'
+
+She looked at him with wild despairing eyes, and then, with a hoarse
+strange cry, rushed from the cabin, and up the companion, with a
+desperate swiftness which seemed like the flight of a bird. Montesma,
+Hartfield, Maulevrier, all followed her, heedless of everything except
+the dire necessity of arresting her flight. Each in his own mind had
+divined her purpose.
+
+They were not too late. It was Hartfield's strong arm that caught her,
+held her as in a vice, dragged her away from the edge of the deck, just
+where there was a space open to the waves. Another instant and she would
+have flung herself overboard. She fell back into Lord Hartfield's arms,
+with a wild choking cry: 'Let me go! Let me go!' Another moment, and a
+flood of crimson stained his shirt-front, as she lay upon his breast,
+with closed eyelids and blood-bedabbled lips, in blessed
+unconsciousness.
+
+They carried her on to the steam-yacht, and down to the cabin, where
+there was ample accommodation and some luxury, although not the elegance
+of Bond Street upholstery. Rilboche, Lady Kirkbank, Kibble, luggage of
+all kinds were transferred from one yacht to the other, even to the
+vellum bound Keats which lay face downwards on the deck, just where
+Lesbia had flung it when the _Cayman_ was boarded. The crew of the
+steam-yacht _Philomel_ helped in the transfer: there were plenty of
+hands, and the work was done quickly; while the Meztizoes, Yucatekes,
+Caribs, or whatever they were, looked on and grinned; and while Montesma
+stood leaning against the mast, with folded arms and sombre brow, a
+cigarette between his lips.
+
+When the women and all their belongings were on board the _Philomel_,
+Lord Hartfield addressed himself to Montesma.
+
+'If you consider yourself entitled to call me to account for this
+evening's work you know where to find me,' he said.
+
+Montesma shrugged his shoulders, and threw away his cigarette with a
+contemptuous gesture.
+
+_'Ce n'est pas la peine,'_ he said; 'I am a dead shot, and
+should be pretty sure to send a bullet through you if you gave me
+the chance; but I should not be any nearer winning her if I killed
+you: and it is she and she only that I want. You may think me an
+adventurer--swindler--gambler--slave-dealer--what you will--but I love her
+as I never thought to love a woman, and I should have been true as steel,
+if she had been plucky enough to trust me. But, as I told her an hour ago,
+women have not lion hearts. They can talk tall while the sky is clear and
+the sun shines, but at the first crack of thunder--_va te promener_.'
+
+'If you have killed her--' began Hartfield.
+
+'Killed her! No. Some small bloodvessel burst in the agitation of that
+terrible scene. She will be well in a week, and she will forget me. But
+I shall not forget her. She is the one flower that has sprung on the
+barren plain of my life. She was my Picciola.'
+
+He turned his back on Lord Hartfield and walked to the other end of the
+deck. Something in his face, in the vibration of his deep voice,
+convinced Hartfield of his truth. A bad man undoubtedly--steeped to the
+lips in evil--and yet so far true that he had passionately, deeply,
+devotedly loved this one woman.
+
+It was the dead of night when Lesbia recovered consciousness, and even
+then she lay silent, taking no heed of those around her, in a state of
+utter prostration. Kibble nursed her carefully, tenderly, all through
+the night; Maulevrier hardly left the cabin, and Lady Kirkbank, always
+more or less a victim to the agonies of sea-sickness, still found time
+to utter lamentations and wailings over the ruin of her protegee's
+fortune.
+
+'Never had a girl such a chance,' she moaned. 'Quite the best match in
+society. The house in Park Lane alone cost a fortune. Her diamonds would
+have been the finest in London.'
+
+'They would have been stained with the blood of the niggers he traded in
+out yonder,' answered Maulevrier. 'Do you think I would have let my
+sister marry a slave-dealer?'
+
+'I don't believe a syllable of it,' protested Lady Kirkbank, dabbing her
+brow with a handkerchief steeped in eau de Cologne. 'A vile fabrication
+of Montesma's, who wanted to blacken poor Smithson's character in order
+to extenuate his own crimes.'
+
+'Well, we won't go into that question,' said Maulevrier wearily. 'The
+Smithson match is off, anyhow; and it matters very little to us whether
+he made most money out of niggers or bubble companies, or lotteries or
+gaming hells.'
+
+'I am convinced that Smithson made his fortune in a thoroughly
+gentlemanlike manner,' argued Lady Kirkbank. 'Look at the people who
+visit him, and the houses he goes to. And I don't see why the match need
+be off. I'm sure, if Lesbia plays her cards properly, he will look over
+this--this--little escapade.'
+
+Maulevrier contemplated the worldly old face with infinite scorn.
+
+'Does she look like a girl who will play her cards in your fashion?' he
+asked, pointing to his sister, whose white face upon the pillow seemed
+like a mask cut out of marble. 'Upon my soul, Lady Kirkbank, I consider
+my sister's elopement with this Spanish adventurer, with whom she was
+over head and ears in love, a far more respectable act than her
+engagement to Smithson, for whom she cared not a straw.'
+
+'Well, I hope if you so approve of her conduct you will help her to pay
+her dressmaker, and the rest of them,' retorted Lady Kirkbank. 'She has
+been plunging rather deeply, I believe, under the impression that
+Smithson would pay all her bills when she was married. Your grandmother
+may not quite like the budget.'
+
+'I will do all I can for her,' answered Maulevrier. 'I would do a great
+deal to save her from the degradation to which your teaching has brought
+her.'
+
+Lady Kirkbank looked at him for a moment or so with reproachful eyes,
+and then shrugged her shoulders contemptuously.
+
+'If I ever expected gratitude from people I might feel the
+injustice--the insolence--of your last remark,' she said; 'but as I
+never do expect gratitude, I am not disappointed in this case. And now I
+think if there is a cabin which I can have to myself I should like to
+retire to it,' she added. 'My cares are thrown away here.'
+
+There was a cabin at Lady Kirkbank's disposal. It had been already
+appropriated by Rilboche, and smelt of cognac; but Rilboche resigned her
+berth to her mistress, and laid herself meekly on the floor for the rest
+of the voyage.
+
+They were in Cowes Roads at eight o'clock next morning, and Lord
+Hartfield went on shore for a doctor, whom he brought back before nine,
+and who pronounced Lady Lesbia to be in a very weak and prostrate
+condition, and forbade her being moved within the next two days. Happily
+Lord Hartfield had borrowed the _Philomel_ and her crew from a friend
+who had given him _carte blanche_ as to the use he made of her, and who
+freely left her at his disposal so long as he and his party should need
+the accommodation. Lesbia could nowhere be better off than on the yacht,
+where she was away from the gossip and tittle-tattle of the town.
+
+The roadstead was quiet enough now. All the racing yachts had melted
+away like a dream, and most of the pleasure yachts were off to Ryde.
+Lady Lesbia lay in her curtained cabin, with Kibble keeping watch beside
+her bed, while Maulevrier came in every half-hour to see how she
+was--sitting by her a little now and then, and talking of indifferent
+things in a low kind voice, which was full of comfort.
+
+She seemed grateful for his kindness, and smiled at him once in a way,
+with a piteous little smile; but she had the air of one in whom the
+mainspring of life is broken. The pallid face and heavy violet eyes,
+the semi-transparent hands which lay so listlessly upon the crimson
+coverlet, conveyed an impression of supreme despair. Hartfield, looking
+down at her for the last time when he came to say good-bye before
+leaving for London, was reminded of the story of one whose life had been
+thus rudely broken, who had loved as foolishly and even more fondly, and
+for whom the world held nothing when that tie was severed.
+
+    'She looked on many a face with vacant eye,
+      On many a token without knowing what;
+    She saw them watch her, without asking why,
+      And recked not who around her pillow sat.'
+
+But Lesbia Haselden belonged to a wider and more sophisticated world
+than that of the daughter of the Grecian Isle, and for her existence
+offered wider horizons. It might be prophesied that for her the dark
+ending of a girlish dream would not be a life-long despair. The
+passionate love had been at fever point; the passionate grief must have
+its fever too, and burn itself out.
+
+'Do all you can to cheer her,' said Lord Hartfield to Maulevrier, 'and
+bring her to Fellside as soon as ever she is strong enough to bear the
+journey. You and Kibble, with your own man, will be able to do all that
+is necessary.'
+
+'Quite able.'
+
+'That's right. I must be in the House for the expected division
+to-night, and I shall go back to Grasmere to-morrow morning. Poor Mary
+is horribly lonely.'
+
+Lord Hartfield went off in the boat to catch the Southampton steamer;
+and Maulevrier was now sole custodian of the yacht and of his sister. He
+and the doctor had agreed to keep her on board, in the fresh sea air,
+till she was equal to the fatigue of the journey to Grasmere. There was
+nothing to be gained by taking her on to the island or by carrying her
+to London. The yacht was well found, provided with all things needful
+for comfort, and Lesbia could be nowhere better off until she was safe
+in her old home:--that home she had left so gaily, in the freshness of
+her youthful inexperience, nearly a year ago, and to which she would
+return so battered and broken, so deeply degraded by the knowledge of
+evil.
+
+Lady Kirkbank had started for London on the previous day.
+
+'I am evidently not wanted _here_,' she said, with an offended air; 'and
+I must have everything at Kirkbank ready for a house full of people
+before the twelfth of August, so the sooner I get to Scotland the
+better. I shall make a _detour_ in order to go and see Lady Maulevrier
+on my way down. It is due to myself that I should let her know that _I_
+am entirely blameless in this most uncomfortable business.'
+
+'You can tell her ladyship what you please,' answered Maulevrier,
+bluntly. 'I shall not gainsay you, so long as you do not slander my
+sister; but as long as I live I shall regret that I, knowing something
+of London society, did not interfere to prevent Lesbia being given over
+to your keeping.'
+
+'If I had known the kind of girl she is I would have had nothing to do
+with her,' retorted Lady Kirkbank with exasperation; and so they parted.
+
+The _Philomel_ had been lying off Cowes three days before Mr. Smithson
+appeared upon the scene. He had got wind somehow from a sailor, who had
+talked with one of the foreign crew, of the destination of the _Cayman_,
+and he had crossed from Southampton to Havre on the steamer _Wolf_
+during that night in which Lesbia had been carried back to Cowes on the
+_Philomel_.
+
+He was at Havre when the _Cayman_ arrived, with Montesma and his
+tawny-visaged crew on board, no one else.
+
+'You may examine every corner of your ship,' Montesma cried, scornfully,
+when Smithson came on board and swore that Lesbia must be hidden
+somewhere in the vessel. 'The bird has flown: she will shelter in
+neither your nest nor in mine, Smithson. You have lost her--and so have
+I. We may as well be friends in misfortune.'
+
+He was haggard, livid with grief and anger. He looked ten years older
+than he had looked the other night at the ball, when his dash and
+swagger, and handsome Spanish head had been the admiration of the room.
+
+Smithson was very angry, but he was not a fighting man. He had enjoyed
+various opportunities for distinguishing himself in that line in the
+island of Cuba; but he had always avoided such opportunities. So now,
+after a good deal of bluster and violent language, which Montesma took
+as lightly as if it had been the whistling of the wind in the shrouds,
+poor Smithson calmed down, and allowed Gomez de Montesma to leave the
+yacht, with his portmanteaux, unharmed. He meant to take the first
+steamer for the Spanish Main, he told Smithson. He had had quite enough
+of Europe.
+
+'I daresay it will end in your marrying her,' he said, at the last
+moment. 'If you do, be kind to her.'
+
+His voice faltered, choked by a sob, at those last words. After all, it
+is possible for a man without principle, without morality, to begin to
+make love to a woman in a mere spirit of adventure, in sheer devilry,
+and to be rather hard hit at the last.
+
+Horace Smithson sailed his yacht back to Cowes without loss of time, and
+sent his card to Lord Maulevrier on board the _Philomel_. His lordship
+replied that he would wait upon Mr. Smithson that afternoon at four
+o'clock, and at that hour Maulevrier again boarded the _Cayman_; but
+this time very quietly, as an expected guest.
+
+The interview that followed was very painful. Mr. Smithson was willing
+that this unhappy episode in the life of his betrothed, this folly into
+which she had been beguiled by a man of infinite treachery, a man of
+all other men fatal to women, should be forgotten, should be as if it
+had never been.
+
+'It was her very innocence which made her a victim to that scoundrel,'
+said Smithson, 'her girlish simplicity and Lady Kirkbank's folly. But I
+love your sister too well to sacrifice her lightly, Lord Maulevrier; and
+if she can forget this midsummer madness, why, so can I.'
+
+'She cannot forget, Mr. Smithson,' answered Maulevrier, gravely. 'She
+has done you a great wrong by listening to your false friend's
+addresses; but she did you a still greater wrong when she accepted you
+as her husband without one spark of love for you. She and you are both
+happy in having escaped the degradation, the deep misery of a loveless
+union. I am glad--yes, glad even of this shameful escapade with
+Montesma--though it has dragged her good name through the gutter,--glad
+of the catastrophe that has saved her from such a marriage. You are very
+generous in your willingness to forget my sister's folly. Let your
+forgetfulness go a step further, and forget that you ever met her.'
+
+'That cannot be, Lord Maulevrier. She has ruined my life.'
+
+'Not at all. An affair of a season,' answered Maulevrier, lightly. 'Next
+year I shall hear of you as the accepted husband of some new beauty. A
+man of Mr. Smithson's wealth--and good nature--need not languish in
+single blessedness.'
+
+With this civil speech Lord Maulevrier went back to the _Philomel's_
+gig, and this was his last meeting with Mr. Smithson, until they met a
+year later in the beaten tracks of society.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLV.
+
+'THAT FELL ARREST, WITHOUT ALL BAIL.'
+
+
+It was the beginning of August before Lesbia was pronounced equal to the
+fatigue of a long journey; and even then it was but the shadow of her
+former self which returned to Fellside, the pale spectre of joys
+departed, of trust deceived.
+
+Maulevrier had been very good to her, patient, unselfish as a woman, in
+his ministering to the broken-hearted girl. That broken heart would be
+whole again, no doubt, in the future, as many other broken hearts have
+been; but the grief, the despair, the sense of hopelessness and
+aimlessness in life were very real in the present. If the picturesque
+seclusion of Fellside had seemed dull and joyless to Lesbia in days gone
+by, it was much duller to her now. She was shocked at the change in her
+grandmother, and she showed a good deal of feeling and affection in her
+intercourse with the invalid; but once out of her presence Lady
+Maulevrier was forgotten, and Lesbia's thoughts drifted back into the
+old current. They dwelt obstinately, unceasingly upon Montesma, the man
+whose influence had awakened the slumbering soul from its torpor, had
+stirred the deeps of a passionate nature.
+
+Slave-dealer, gambler, adventurer, liar--his name blackened by the
+suspicion of a still darker crime. She shuddered at the thought of the
+villain from whose snare she had been rescued: and yet, his image as he
+had been to her in the brief golden time when she believed him noble,
+and chivalrous, and true, haunted her lonely days, mixed itself with her
+troubled dreams, came between her and every other thought.
+
+Everybody was good to her. That pale and joyless face, that look of
+patient, hopeless suffering which she tried to disguise every now and
+then with a faint forced smile, and silvery little ripple of society
+laughter, seemed unconsciously to implore pity and pardon. Lady
+Maulevrier uttered no word of reproach. 'My dearest, Fate has not been
+kind to you,' she said, gently, after telling Lesbia of Lady Kirkbank's
+visit. 'The handsomest women are seldom the happiest. Destiny seems to
+have a grudge against them. And if things have gone amiss it is I who am
+most to blame. I ought never to have entrusted you with such a woman as
+Georgina Kirkbank. But you will be happier next season, I hope, dearest.
+You can live with Mary and Hartfield. They will take care of you.'
+
+Lesbia shuddered.
+
+'Do you think I am going back to the society treadmill?' she exclaimed.
+'No, I have done with the world. I shall end my days here, or in a
+convent.'
+
+'You think so now, dear, but you will change your mind by-and-by. A
+fancy that has lasted only a few weeks cannot alter your life. It will
+pass as other dreams have passed. At your age you have the future before
+you.'
+
+'No, it is the past that is always before me,' answered Lesbia. 'My
+future is a blank.'
+
+The bills came pouring in; dressmaker, milliner, glover, bootmaker,
+tailor, stationer, perfumer; awful bills which made Lady Maulevrier's
+blood run cold, so degrading was their story of selfish self-indulgence,
+of senseless extravagance. But she paid them all without a word. She
+took upon her shoulders the chief burden of Lesbia's wrongdoing. It was
+her indulgence, her weak preference which had fostered her
+granddaughter's selfishness, trained her to vanity and worldly pride.
+The result was ignominious, humiliating, bitter beyond all common
+bitterness; but the cup was of her own brewing, and she drank it without
+a murmur.
+
+Parliament was prorogued; the season was over; and Lord Hartfield was
+established at Fellside for the autumn--he and his wife utterly happy in
+their affection for each other, but not without care as to their
+surroundings, which were full of trouble. First there was Lesbia's
+sorrow. Granted that it was a grief which would inevitably wear itself
+out, as other such griefs have done from time immemorial; but still the
+sorrow was there, at their doors. Next, there was the state of Lady
+Maulevrier's health, which gave her old medical adviser the gravest
+fears. At Lord Hartfield's earnest desire a famous doctor was summoned
+from London; but the great man could only confirm Mr. Horton's verdict.
+The thread of life was wearing thinner every day. It might snap at any
+hour. In the meantime the only regime was repose of body and mind, an
+all-pervading calm, the avoidance of all exciting topics. One moment of
+violent agitation might prove fatal.
+
+Knowing this, how could Lord Hartfield call her ladyship to account for
+the presence of that mysterious old man under Steadman's charge?--how
+venture to touch upon a topic which, by Mary's showing, had exercised a
+most disturbing influence upon her ladyship's mind on that solitary
+occasion when the girl ventured to approach the subject?
+
+He felt that any attempt at an explanation was impossible. It was not
+for him to precipitate Lady Maulevrier's end by prying into her secrets.
+Granted that shame and dishonour of some kind were involved in the
+existence of that strange old man, he, Lord Hartfield, must endure his
+portion in that shame--must be content to leave the dark riddle
+unsolved.
+
+He resigned himself to this state of things, and tried to forget the
+cloud that hung over the house of Haselden; but the sense of a mystery,
+a fatal family secret, which must come to light sooner or later--since
+all such secrets are known at last--known, sifted, and bandied about
+from lip to lip, and published in a thousand different newspapers, and
+cried aloud in the streets--the sense of such a secret, the dread of
+such a revelation weighed upon him heavily.
+
+Maulevrier, the restless, was off to Argyleshire for the grouse shooting
+as soon as he had deposited Lady Lesbia comfortably at Fellside.
+
+'I should only be in your way if I stopped,' he said, 'for you and Molly
+have hardly got over the honeymoon stage yet, though you put on the airs
+of Darby and Joan. I shall be back in a week or ten days.'
+
+'In Lady Maulevrier's state of health I don't think you ought to stay
+away very long,' said Hartfield.
+
+'Poor Lady Maulevrier! She never cared much for me, don't you know. But
+I suppose it would seem unkind if I were to be out of the way when the
+end comes. The end! Good heavens! how coolly I talk of it; and a year
+ago I thought she was as immortal as Fairfield yonder.'
+
+He went away, his spirits dashed by that awful thought of death, and
+Lord and Lady Hartfield had the house to themselves, since Lesbia hardly
+counted. She seldom left her own rooms, except to sit with her
+grandmother for an hour. She lay on her sofa--or sat in a low arm-chair
+by the window, reading Keats or Shelley--or only dreaming--dreaming over
+the brief golden time of her life, with its fond delusions, its false
+brightness. Mr. Horton went to see her every day--felt the feeble little
+pulse which seemed hardly to have force enough to beat--urged her to
+struggle against apathy and inertia, to walk a little, to go for a long
+drive every day, to live in the open air--to which instructions she paid
+not the slightest attention. The desire for life was gone. Disappointed
+in her ambition, betrayed in her love, humiliated, duped, degraded--a
+social failure. What had she to live for? She felt as if it would have
+been a good thing, quite the best thing that could happen, if she could
+turn her face to the wall and die. All that past season, its triumphs,
+its pleasures, its varieties, was like a garish dream, a horror to look
+back upon, hateful to remember.
+
+In vain did Mary and Hartfield urge Lesbia to join in their simple
+pleasures, their walks and rides and drives, and boating excursions. She
+always refused.
+
+'You know I never cared much for roaming about these everlasting hills,'
+she told Mary. 'I never had your passion for Lakeland. It is very good
+of you to wish to have me, but it is quite impossible. I have hardly
+strength enough for a little walk in the garden.'
+
+'You would have more strength if you went out more,' pleaded Mary,
+almost with tears. 'Mr. Horton says sun and wind are the best doctors
+for you. Lesbia, you frighten me sometimes. You are just letting
+yourself fade away.'
+
+'If you knew how I hate the world and the sky, Mary, you wouldn't urge
+me to go out of doors,' Lesbia answered, moodily. 'Indoors I can read,
+and get away from my own thoughts somehow, for a little while. But out
+yonder, face to face with the hills and the lake--the scenes I have
+known all my life--I feel a heart-sickness that is worse than death. It
+maddens me to see that old, old picture of mountain and water, the same
+for ever and ever, no matter what hearts are breaking.'
+
+Mary crept close beside her sister's couch, put her arm round her neck,
+laid her cheek--rich in the ruddy bloom of health--against Lesbia's
+pallid and sunken cheek, and comforted her as much as she could with
+tender murmurs and loving kisses. Other comfort, she could give none.
+All the wisdom in the world will not cure a girl's heart-sickness when
+she has flung away the treasures of her love upon a worthless object.
+
+And so the days went by, peacefully, but sadly; for the shadow of doom
+hung heavily over the house upon the Fell. Nobody who looked upon Lady
+Maulevrier could doubt that her days were numbered, that the oil was
+waxing low in the lamp of life. The end, the awful, mysterious end, was
+drawing near; and she who was called was making no such preparations as
+the Christian makes to answer the dread summons. As she had lived, she
+meant to die--an avowed unbeliever. More than once Mary had taken
+courage, and had talked to her grandmother of the world beyond, the
+blessed hope of re-union with the friends we have lost, in a new and
+brighter life, only to be met by the sceptic's cynical smile, the
+materialist's barren creed.
+
+'My dearest, we know nothing except the immutable laws of material life.
+All the rest is a dream--a beautiful dream, if you like--a consolation
+to that kind of temperament which can take comfort from dreams; but for
+anyone who has read much, and thought much, and kept as far as possible
+on a level with the scientific intellect of the age--for such an one,
+Mary, these old fables are too idle. I shall die as I have lived, the
+victim of an inscrutable destiny, working blindly, evil to some, good to
+others. Ah! love, life has begun very fairly for you. May the fates be
+kind always to my gentle and loving girl!'
+
+There was more talk between them on this dark mystery of life and death.
+Mary brought out her poor little arguments, glorified by the light of
+perfect faith; but they were of no avail against opinions which had been
+the gradual growth of a long and joyless life. Time had attuned Lady
+Maulevrier's mind to the gospel of Schopenhauer and the Pessimists, and
+she was contented to see the mystery of life as they had seen it. She
+had no fear, but she had some anxiety as to the things that were to
+happen after she was gone. She had taken upon herself a heavy burden,
+and she had not yet come to the end of the road where her burden might
+be laid quietly down, her task accomplished. If she fell by the wayside
+under her load the consequences for the survivors might be full of
+trouble.
+
+Her anxieties were increased by the fact that her faithful servant and
+adviser, James Steadman, was no longer the man he had been. The change
+in him was painfully evident--memory failing, energy gone. He came to
+his mistress's room every morning, received her orders, answered her
+questions; but Lady Maulevrier felt that he went through the old duties
+in a mechanical way, and that his dull brain but half understood their
+importance.
+
+One evening at dusk, just as Hartfield and Mary were leaving Lady
+Maulevrier's room, after dinner, an appalling shriek ran through the
+house--a cry almost as terrible as that which Lord Hartfield heard in
+the summer midnight just a year ago. But this time the sound came from
+the old part of the house.
+
+'Something has happened,' exclaimed Hartfield, rushing to the door of
+communication.
+
+It was bolted inside. He knocked vehemently; but there was no answer. He
+ran downstairs, followed by Mary, breathless, in an agony of fear. Just
+as they approached the lower door, leading to the old house, it was
+flung open, and Steadman's wife stood before them pale with terror.
+
+'The doctor,' she cried; 'send for Mr. Horton, somebody, for God's sake.
+Oh, my lord,' with a sudden burst of sobbing, 'I'm afraid he's dead.'
+
+'Mary, despatch some one for Horton,' said Lord Hartfield. Keeping his
+wife back with one hand, he closed the door against her, and then
+followed Mrs. Steadman through the long low corridor to her husband's
+sitting-room.
+
+James Steadman was lying upon his back upon the hearth, near the spot
+were Lord Hartfield had seen him sleeping in his arm-chair a month ago.
+
+One look at the distorted face, dark with injected blood, the dreadful
+glassy glare of the eyes, the foam-stained lips, told that all was over.
+The faithful servant had died at his post. Whatever his charge had been,
+his term of service was ended. There was a vacancy in Lady Maulevrier's
+household.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVI.
+
+THE DAY OF RECKONING.
+
+
+Lord Hartfield stayed with the frightened wife while she knelt beside
+that awful figure on the hearth, wringing her hands with piteous
+bewailings and lamentations over the unconscious clay. He had always
+been a good husband to her, she murmured; hard and stern perhaps, but a
+good man. And she had obeyed him without a question. Whatever he did or
+said she had counted right.
+
+'We have not had a happy life, though there are many who have envied us
+her ladyship's favour,' she said in the midst of her lamentations. 'No
+one knows where the shoe pinches but those who have to wear it. Poor
+James! Early and late, early and late, studying her ladyship's
+interests, caring and thinking, in order to keep trouble away from her.
+Always on the watch, always on the listen. That's what wore him out, poor
+fellow!'
+
+'My good soul, your husband was an old man,' argued Lord Hartfield, in
+a consolatory tone, 'and the end must come to all of us somehow.'
+
+'He might have lived to be a much older man if he had had less worry,'
+said the wife, bending her face to kiss the cold dead brow. 'His days
+were full of care. We should have been happier in the poorest cottage in
+Grasmere than we ever were in this big grand house.'
+
+Thus, in broken fragments of speech, Mrs. Steadman lamented over her
+dead, while the heavy pendulum of the eight-day clock in the hall
+sounded the slowly-passing moments, until the coming of the doctor broke
+upon the quiet of the house, with the noise of opening doors and
+approaching footsteps.
+
+James Steadman was dead. Medicine could do nothing for that lifeless
+clay, lying on the hearth by which he had sat on so many winter nights,
+for so many years of faithful unquestioning service. There was nothing
+to be done for that stiffening form, save the last offices for the dead;
+and Lord Hartfield left Mr. Horton to arrange with the weeping woman as
+to the doing of these. He was anxious to go to Lady Maulevrier, to break
+to her, as gently as might be, the news of her servant's death.
+
+And what of that strange old man in the upper rooms? Who was to attend
+upon him, now that the caretaker was laid low?
+
+While Lord Hartfield lingered on the threshold of the door that led from
+the old house to the new, pondering this question, there came the sound
+of wheels on the carriage drive, and then a loud ring at the hall door.
+
+It was Maulevrier, just arrived from Scotland, smelling of autumn rain
+and cool fresh air.
+
+'Dreadfully bored on the moors,' he said, as they shook hands. 'No
+birds--nobody to talk to--couldn't stand it any longer. How are the
+sisters? Lesbia better? Why, man alive, how queer you look! Nothing
+amiss, I hope?'
+
+'Yes, there is something very much amiss. Steadman is dead.'
+
+'Steadman! Her ladyship's right hand. That's rather bad. But you will
+drop into his stewardship. She'll trust your long head, I know. Much
+better that she should look to her granddaughter's husband for advice in
+all business matters than to a servant. When did it happen?'
+
+'Half an hour ago. I was just going to Lady Maulevrier's room when you
+rang the bell. Take off your Inverness, and come with me.'
+
+'The poor grandmother,' muttered Maulevrier. 'I'm afraid it will be a
+blow.'
+
+He had much less cause for fear than Lord Hartfield, who knew of deep
+and secret reasons why Steadman's death should be a calamity of dire
+import for his mistress. Maulevrier had been told nothing of that scene
+with the strange old man--the hidden treasures--the Anglo-Indian
+phrases--which had filled Lord Hartfield's mind with the darkest doubts.
+
+If that half-lunatic old man, described by Lady Maulevrier as a kinsman
+of Steadman's, were verily the person Lord Hartfield believed, his
+presence under that roof, unguarded by a trust-worthy attendant, was
+fraught with danger. It would be for Lady Maulevrier, helpless, a
+prisoner to her sofa, at death's door, to face that danger. The very
+thought of it might kill her. And yet it was imperative that the truth
+should be told her without delay.
+
+The two young men went to her ladyship's sitting room. She was alone, a
+volume of her favourite Schopenhauer open before her, under the light of
+the shaded reading-lamp. Sorry comfort in the hour of trouble!
+
+Maulevrier went over to her and kissed her; and then dropped silently
+into a chair near at hand, his face in shadow. Hartfield seated himself
+nearer the sofa, and nearer the lamp.
+
+'Dear Lady Maulevrier, I have come to tell you some very bad news--'
+
+'Lesbia?' exclaimed her ladyship, with a frightened look.
+
+'No, there is nothing wrong with Lesbia. It is about your old servant
+Steadman.'
+
+'Dead?' faltered Lady Maulevrier, ashy pale, as she looked at him in the
+lamplight.
+
+He bent his head affirmatively.
+
+'Yes. He was seized with apoplexy--fell from his chair to the hearth,
+and never spoke or stirred again.'
+
+Lady Maulevrier uttered no word of sorrow or surprise. She lay, looking
+straight before her into vacancy, the pale attenuated features rigid as
+if they had been marble. What was to be done--what must be told--whom
+could she trust? Those were the questions repeating themselves in her
+mind as she stared into space. And no answer came to them.
+
+No answer came, except the opening of the door opposite her couch. The
+handle turned slowly, hesitatingly, as if moved by feeble fingers; and
+then the door was pushed slowly open, and an old man came with shuffling
+footsteps towards the one lighted spot in the middle of the room.
+
+It was the old man Lord Hartfield had last seen gloating over his
+treasury of gold and jewels--the man whom Maulevrier had never
+seen--whose existence for forty years had been hidden from every
+creature in that house, except Lady Maulevrier and the Steadmans, until
+Mary found her way into the old garden.
+
+He came close up to the little table in front of Lady Maulevrier's
+couch, and looked down at her, a strange, uncanny being, withered and
+bent, with pale, faded eyes in which there was a glimmer of unholy
+light.
+
+'Good-evening to you, Lady Maulevrier,' he said in a mocking voice. 'I
+shouldn't have known you if we had met anywhere else. I think, of the
+two of us, you are more changed than I.'
+
+She looked up at him, her features quivering, her haughty head drawn
+back; as a bird shrinks from the gaze of a snake, recoiling, but too
+fascinated to fly. Her eyes met his with a look of unutterable horror.
+For some moments she was speechless, and then, looking at Lord
+Hartfield, she said, piteously--
+
+'Why did you let him come here? He ought to be taken care of--shut up.
+It is Steadman's old uncle--a lunatic--I sheltered. Why is he allowed to
+come to my room?'
+
+'I am Lord Maulevrier,' said the old man, drawing himself up and
+planting his crutch stick upon the floor; 'I am Lord Maulevrier, and this
+woman is my wife. Yes, I am mad sometimes, but not always. I have my bad
+fits, but not often. But I never forget who and what I am, Algernon,
+Earl of Maulevrier, Governor of Madras.'
+
+'Lady Maulevrier, is this horrible thing true?' cried her grandson,
+vehemently.
+
+'He is mad, Maulevrier. Don't you see that he is mad?' she exclaimed,
+looking from Hartfield to her grandson, and then with a look of loathing
+and horror at her accuser.
+
+'I tell you, young man, I am Maulevrier,' said the accuser; 'there is no
+one else who has a right to be called by that name, while I live. They
+have shut me up--she and her accomplice--denied my name--hidden me from
+the world. He is dead, and she lies there--stricken for her sins.'
+
+'My grandfather died at the inn at Great Langdale, faltered Maulevrier.
+
+'Your grandfather was brought to this house--ill--out of his wits. All
+cloud and darkness here,' said the old man, touching his forehead. 'How
+long has it been? Who can tell? A weary time--long, dark nights, full of
+ghosts. Yes, I have seen him--the Rajah, that copper-faced scoundrel,
+seen him as she told me he looked when she gave the signal to her slaves
+to strangle him, there in the hall, where the grave was dug ready for
+the traitor's carcass. She too--yes, she has haunted me, calling upon me
+to give up her treasure, to restore her son.'
+
+'Yes,' cried the paralytic woman, suddenly lifted out of herself, as it
+were, in a paroxysm of fury, every feature convulsed, every nerve
+strained to its utmost tension; 'yes, this is Lord Maulevrier. You have
+heard the truth, and from his own lips. You, his only son's only son.
+You his granddaughter's husband. You hear him avow himself the
+instigator of a diabolical murder; you hear him confess how his
+paramour's husband was strangled at his false wife's bidding, in his own
+palace, buried under the Moorish pavement in the hall of many arches.
+You hear how he inherited the Rajah's treasures from a mistress who
+died strangely, swiftly, conveniently, as soon so he had wearied of her,
+and a new favourite had begun to exercise her influence. Such things are
+done in the East--dynasties annihilated, kingdoms overthrown, poison or
+bowstring used at will, to gratify a profligate's passion, or pay for a
+spendthrift's extravagances. Such things were done when that man was
+Governor of Madras as were never done by an Englishman in India before
+his time. He went there fettered by no prejudices--he was more Mussulman
+than the Mussulmen themselves--a deeper, darker traitor. And it was to
+hide such crimes as these--to interpose the great peacemaker Death
+between him and the Government which was resolved upon punishing him--to
+save the honour, the fortune of my son, and the children who were to
+come after him, the name of a noble race, a name that was ever stainless
+until he defiled it--it was for this great end I took steps to hide that
+feeble, useless life of his from the world he had offended; it was for
+this end that I caused a peasant to be buried in the vault of the
+Maulevriers, with all the pomp and ceremony that befits the funeral of
+one of England's oldest earls. I screened him from his enemies--I saved
+him from the ignominy of a public trial--from the execration of his
+countrymen. His only punishment was to eat his heart under this roof, in
+luxurious seclusion, his comfort studied, his whims gratified so far as
+they could be by the most faithful of servants. A light penance for the
+dark infamies of his life in India, I think. His mind was all but gone
+when he came here, but he had his rational intervals, and in these the
+burden of his lonely life may have weighed heavily upon him. But it was
+not such a heavy burden as I have borne--I, his gaoler, I who have
+devoted my existence to the one task of guarding the family honour.'
+
+He, whom she thus acknowledged as her husband, had sunk exhausted into a
+chair near her. He took out his gold snuff-box, and refreshed himself
+with a leisurely pinch of snuff, looking about him curiously all the
+while, with a senile grin. That flash of passion which for a few minutes
+had restored him to the full possession of his reason had burnt itself
+out, and his mind had relapsed into the condition in which it had been
+when he talked to Mary in the garden.
+
+'My pipe, Steadman,' he said, looking towards the door; 'bring me my
+pipe,' and then, impatiently, 'What has become of Steadman? He has been
+getting inattentive--very inattentive.'
+
+He got up, and moved slowly to the door, leaning on his crutch-stick,
+his head sunk upon his breast, muttering to himself as he went; and thus
+he vanished from them, like the spectre of some terrible ancestor which
+had returned from the grave to announce the coming of calamity to a
+doomed race. His grandson looked after him, with an expression of
+intense displeasure.
+
+'And so, Lady Maulevrier,' he exclaimed, turning to his grandmother, 'I
+have borne a title that never belonged to me, and enjoyed the possession
+of another man's estates all this time, thanks to your pretty little
+plot. A very respectable position for your grandson to occupy, upon my
+life!'
+
+Lord Hartfield lifted his hand with a warning gesture.
+
+'Spare her,' he said. 'She is in no condition to endure your
+reproaches.'
+
+Spare her--yes. Fate had not spared her. The beautiful face--beautiful
+even in age and decay--changed suddenly as she looked at them--the mouth
+became distorted, the eyes fixed: and then the heavy head fell back upon
+the pillow--the paralysed form, wholly paralysed now, lay like a thing
+of stone. It never moved again. Consciousness was blotted out for ever
+in that moment. The feeble pulses of heart and brain throbbed with
+gradually diminishing power for a night and a day; and in the twilight
+of that dreadful day of nothingness the last glimmer of the light died
+in the lamp, and Lady Maulevrier and the burden of her sin were beyond
+the veil.
+
+Viscount Haselden, _alias_ Lord Maulevrier, held a long consultation
+with Lord Hartfield on the night of his grandmother's death, as to what
+steps ought to be taken in relation to the real Earl of Maulevrier: and
+it was only at the end of a serious and earnest discussion that both
+young men came to the decision that Lady Maulevrier's secret ought to be
+kept faithfully to the end. Assuredly no good purpose could be achieved
+by letting the world know of old Lord Maulevrier's existence. A
+half-lunatic octogenarian could gain nothing by being restored to rights
+and possessions which he had most justly forfeited. All that justice
+demanded was that the closing years of his life should be made as
+comfortable as care and wealth could make them; and Hartfield and
+Haselden took immediate steps to this end. But their first act was to
+send the old earl's treasure chest under safe convoy to the India House,
+with a letter explaining how this long-hidden wealth, brought from India
+by Lord Maulevrier, had been discovered among other effects in a
+lumber-room at Lady Maulevrier's country house. The money so delivered
+up might possibly have formed part of his lordship's private fortune;
+but, in the absence of any knowledge as to its origin, his grandson, the
+present Lord Maulevrier, preferred to deliver it up to the authorities
+of the India House, to be dealt with as they might think fit.
+
+The old earl made no further attempt to assert himself. He seemed
+content to remain in his own rooms as of old, to potter about the
+garden, where his solitude was as complete as that of a hermit's cell.
+The only moan be made was for James Steadman, whose services he missed
+sorely. Lord Hartfield replaced that devoted servant by a clever
+Austrian valet, a new importation from Vienna, who understood very
+little English, a trained attendant upon mental invalids, and who was
+quite capable of dealing with old Lord Maulevrier.
+
+Lord Hartfield went a step farther; and within a week of those two
+funerals of servant and mistress, which cast a gloom over the peaceful
+valley of Grasmere, he brought down a famous mad-doctor to diagnose his
+lordship's case. There was but little risk in so doing, he argued with
+his friend, and it was their duty so to do. If the old man should assert
+himself to the doctor as Lord Maulevrier, the declaration would pass as
+a symptom of his lunacy. But it happened that the physician arrived at
+Fellside on one of Lord Maulevrier's bad days, and the patient never
+emerged from the feeblest phase of imbecility.
+
+'Brain quite gone,' pronounced the doctor, 'bodily health very poor.
+Take him to the South of France for the winter--Hyeres, or any quiet
+place. He can't last long.'
+
+To Hyeres the old man was taken, with Mrs. Steadman as nurse, and the
+Austrian valet as body-servant and keeper. Mary, for whom, in his
+brighter hours he showed a warm affection, went with him under her
+husband's wing.
+
+Lord Hartfield rented a chateau on the slope of an olive-clad hill,
+where he and his young wife, whose health was somewhat delicate at this
+time, spent a winter in peaceful seclusion; while Lesbia and her brother
+travelled together in Italy. The old man's strength improved in that
+lovely climate. He lived to see the roses and orange blossoms of the
+early spring, and died in his arm-chair suddenly, without a pang, while
+Mary sat at his feet reading to him: a quiet end of an evil and troubled
+life. And now he whom the world had known as Lord Maulevrier was verily
+the earl, and could hear himself called by his title once more without a
+touch of shame.
+
+The secret of Lady Maulevrier's sin had been so faithfully kept by the
+two young men that neither of her granddaughters knew the true story of
+that mysterious person whom Mary had first heard of as James Steadman's
+uncle. She and Lesbia both knew that there were painful circumstances of
+some kind connected with this man's existence, his hidden life in the
+old house at Fellside; but they were both content to learn no more.
+Respect for their grandmother's memory, sorrowful affection for the
+dead, prevailed over natural curiosity.
+
+Early in February Maulevrier sent decorators and upholsterers into the
+old house in Curzon Street, which was ready before the middle of May to
+receive his lordship and his young wife, the girlish daughter of a
+Florentine nobleman, a gazelle-eyed Italian, with a voice whose every
+tone was music, and with the gentlest, shyest, most engaging manners of
+any girl in Florence. Lady Lesbia, strangely subdued and changed by the
+griefs and humiliations of her last campaign, had been her brother's
+counsellor and confidante throughout his wooing of his fair Italian
+bride. She was to spend the season under her brother's roof, to help to
+initiate young Lady Maulevrier in the mysterious rites of London
+society, and to warn her of those rocks and shoals which had wrecked her
+own fortunes.
+
+The month of May brought a son and heir to Lord Hartfield; and it was
+not till after his birth that Mary, Countess of Hartfield, was presented
+to her sovereign, and began her career as a matron of rank and standing,
+very much overpowered by the weight of her honours, and looking forward
+with delight to the end of the season and a flight to Argyleshire with
+her husband and baby.
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Phantom Fortune, A Novel, by M. E. Braddon
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