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.