‘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.