‘What would he think of me if I went scrambling down the ivy?’ she asked herself; ’and after he has approved of Steadman’s heartless restrictions, it would be rank rebellion against him if I were to do it.  Poor old man, “Thou art so near and yet so far,” as Lesbia’s song says.’

She blew a kiss on the tips of her fingers towards that sad solitary figure, and then dropped back into the dusty duskiness of the loft.  But although her new ideas upon the subject of ’Anstand’—­or good behaviour—­prevented her getting the better of Steadman by foul means, she was all the more intent upon having her own way by fair means, now that the impression of the old man’s sadness and solitude had been renewed by the sight of the drooping figure by the sundial.

She went back to the house, and walked straight to her grandmother’s room.  Lady Maulevrier’s couch had been placed in front of the open window, from which she was watching the westward-sloping sun above the long line of hills, dark Helvellyn, rugged Nabb Scarr, and verdant Fairfield, with its two giant arms stretched out to enfold and shelter the smiling valley.

‘Heavens! child, what an object you are;’ exclaimed her ladyship, as Mary drew near.  ’Why, your gown is all over dust, and your hair is—­why your hair is sprinkled with hay and clover.  I thought you had learnt to be tidy, since your engagement.  What have you been doing with yourself?’

‘I have been up in the hayloft,’ answered Mary, frankly; and, intent on one idea, she said impetuously, ’Dear grandmother, I want you to do me a favour—­a very great favour.  There is a poor old man, a relation of Steadman’s, who lives with him, out of his mind, but quite harmless, and he is so sad and lonely, so dreadfully sad, and he likes me to sit with him in the garden, and tell him stories, and recite verses to him, poor soul, just as if he were a child, don’t you know, and it is such a pleasure to me to be a little comfort to him in his lonely wretched life, and James Steadman says I mustn’t go near him, because he may change at any moment into a dangerous lunatic, and do me some kind of harm, and I am not a bit afraid, and I’m sure he won’t do anything of the kind, and, please grandmother, tell Steadman, that I am to be allowed to go and sit with his poor old prisoner half an hour every afternoon.’

Carried along the current of her own impetuous thoughts, Mary had talked very fast, and had not once looked at her grandmother while she was speaking.  But now at the end of her speech her eyes sought Lady Maulevrier’s face in gentle entreaty, and she recoiled involuntarily at the sight she saw there.

The classic features were distorted almost as they had been in the worst period of the paralytic seizure.  Lady Maulevrier was ghastly pale, and her eyes glared with an awful fire as they gazed at Mary.  Her whole frame was convulsed, and she, the cripple, whose right limbs lay numbed and motionless upon the couch, made a struggling motion as she raised herself a little with the left arm, as if, by very force of angry will, she would have lifted herself up erect before the girl who had offended her.