’I have a very great objection, Lady Mary, and that objection is chiefly in your interest,’ answered Steadman, firmly.  ’No one who is not experienced in the ways of lunatics can imagine the danger of any association with them—­their consummate craftiness, their capacity for crime.  Every madman is harmless up to a certain point—­mild, inoffensive, perhaps, up to the very moment in which he commits some appalling crime.  And then people cry out upon the want of prudence, the want of common-sense which allowed such an act to be possible.  No, Lady Mary, I understand the benevolence of your motive, but I cannot permit you to run such a risk.’

‘I am convinced that the poor old creature is perfectly harmless,’ said Mary, with suppressed indignation.  ’I shall certainly ask Lady Maulevrier to speak to you on the subject.  Perhaps her influence may induce you to be a little more considerate to your unhappy relation.’

’Lady Mary, I beg you not to say a word to Lady Maulevrier on this subject.  You will do me the greatest injury if you speak of that man.  I entreat you—­’

But Mary was gone.  She passed Steadman with her head held high and her eyes sparkling with anger.  All that was generous, compassionate, womanly in her nature was up in arms against her grandmother’s steward.  Of all other things, Mary Haselden most detested cruelty; and she could see in Steadman’s opposition to her wish nothing but the most cold-hearted cruelty to a poor dependent on his charity.

She went in at the stable door, shut and locked it, and put the key in her pocket as usual.  But she had little hope that this mode of access would be left open to her.  She knew enough of James Steadman’s character, from hearsay rather than from experience, to feel sure that he would not easily give way.  She was not surprised, therefore, on returning from her ride on the following afternoon, to find the disused harness-room half filled with trusses of straw, and the door of communication completely blocked.  It would be impossible for her to remove that barricade without assistance; and then, how could she be sure that the door itself was not nailed up, or secured in some way?

It was a delicious sunny afternoon, and she could picture the lonely old man sitting in his circle of greenery beside the dial, which for him had registered so many dreary and solitary hours, waiting for the little ray of social sunlight which her presence shed over his monotonous life.  He had told her that she was like the sunshine to him—­better than sunshine—­and she had promised not to forsake him.  She pictured him waiting, with his hand clasped upon his crutch-stick, his chin resting upon his hands, his eyes poring on the ground, as she had seen him for the first time.  And as the stable clock chimed the quarters he would begin to think himself abandoned, forgotten; if, indeed, he took any count of the passage of time of which she was not sure.  His mind seemed to have sunk into a condition which was between dreaming and waking, a state to which the outside world seemed only half real—­a phase of being in which there was neither past nor future, only the insufferable monotony of an everlasting now.