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 She 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.