Mary had fallen into the habit of going for her walk or her ride at five o’clock every day, when she was not in attendance on Lady Maulevrier, and after her walk or ride she slipped through the stable, and joined her ancient friend.  Stables and courtyard were generally empty at this hour, the men only appearing at the sound of a big bell, which summoned them from their snuggery when they were wanted.  Most of Lady Maulevrier’s servants had arrived at that respectable stage of long service in which fidelity is counted as a substitute for hard work.

The old man was not particularly conversational, and was apt to repeat the same things over and over again, with a sublime unconsciousness of being prosy; but he liked to hear Mary talk, and he listened with seeming intelligence.  He questioned her about the world outside his cloistered life—­the wars and rumours of wars—­and, although the names of the questions and the men of the day seemed utterly strange to him, and he had to have them repeated to him again and again, he seemed to take an intelligent interest in the stirring facts of the time, and listened intently when Mary gave him a synopsis of her last newspaper reading.

When the news was exhausted, Mary hit upon a more childish form of amusement, and that was to tell the story of any novel or poem she had been lately reading.  This was so successful that in this manner Mary related the stories of most of Shakespeare’s plays; of Byron’s Bride of Abydos, and Corsair; of Keats’s Lamia; of Tennyson’s Idylls; and of a heterogenous collection of poetry and romance, in all of which stories the old man took a vivid interest.

‘You are better to me than the sunshine,’ he told Mary one day when she was leaving him.  ‘The world grows darker when you leave me.’

Once at this parting moment he took both her hands, and drew her nearer to him, peering into her face in the clear evening light.

‘You are like my mother,’ he said.  ’Yes, you are very like her.  And who else is it that you are like?  There is some one else, I know.  Yes, some one else!  I remember!  It is a face in a picture—­a picture at Maulevrier Castle.’

‘What do you know of Maulevrier Castle?’ asked Mary, wonderingly.

Maulevrier was the family seat in Herefordshire, which had not been occupied by the elder branch for the last forty years.  Lady Maulevrier had let it during her son’s minority to a younger branch of the family, a branch which had intermarried with the world of successful commerce, and was richer than the heads of the house.  This occupation of Maulevrier Castle had continued to the present time, and was likely still to continue, Maulevrier having no desire to set up housekeeping in a feudal castle in the marches.

‘How came you to know Maulevrier Castle?’ repeated Mary.

’I was there once.  There is a picture by Lely, a portrait of a Lady Maulevrier in Charles the Second’s time.  The face is yours, my love.  I have heard of such hereditary faces.  My mother was proud of resembling that portrait.’