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.