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.