’Oh, no, you will want to be roaming about the hills with Mary, discussing your plans for the future.  I shall not encroach too much on your time.  But I am very glad you are here.’

‘We shall only trespass on you for a few days,’ said Maulevrier, ’just a flying visit.’

‘How is it that you are not both at Henley?’ asked Mary.  ’I thought all the world was at Henley.’

‘Who is Henley? what is Henley?’ demanded Maulevrier, pretending ignorance.

’I believe Maulevrier has lost so much money backing, his college boat on previous occasions that he is glad to run away from the regatta this year,’ said Hammond.

‘I have a sister there,’ replied his friend.  ’That’s an all-sufficient explanation.  When a fellow’s women-kind take to going to races and regattas it is high time for him to stop away.’

‘Have you seen Lesbia lately?’ asked his grandmother.

‘About ten days ago.’

‘And did she seem happy?’

Maulevrier shrugged his shoulders.

’She was vacillating between the refusal or the acceptance of a million of money and four or five fine houses.  I don’t know whether that condition of mind means happiness.  I should call it an intermediate state.’

’Why do you make silly jokes about serious questions?  Do you think Lesbia means to accept this Mr. Smithson?’

‘All London thinks so.’

‘And is he a good man?’

‘Good for a hundred thousand pounds at half an hour’s notice.’

‘Is he worthy of your sister?’

Maulevrier paused, looked at his grandmother with a curious expression, and then replied—­

‘I think he is—­quite.’

‘Then I am content that she should marry him,’ said Lady Maulevrier, ‘although he is a nobody.’

’Oh, but he is a very important nobody, a nobody who can get a peerage next year, backed by the Maulevrier influence, which I suppose would count for something.’

‘Most of my friends are dead,’ said Lady Maulevrier, ’but there are a few survivors of the past who might help me.’

’I don’t think there’ll be any difficulty or doubt about the peerage.  Smithson stumped up very handsomely at the last General Election, and the Conservatives are not strong enough to be ungrateful.  “These have, no master."’

CHAPTER XXXII.

WAYS AND MEANS.

The three days that followed were among the happiest days of Mary Haselden’s young life.  Lady Maulevrier had become strangely indulgent.  A softening influence of some kind had worked upon that haughty spirit, and it seemed as if her whole nature was changed—­or it might be, Mary thought, that this softer side of her character had always been turned to Lesbia, while to Mary herself it was altogether new.  Lesbia had been the peach on the sunny southern wall, ripening and reddening in a flood of sunshine; Mary had been the stunted fruit growing in a north-east corner, hidden among leaves, blown upon by cold winds green and hard and sour for lack of the warm bright light.  And now Mary felt the sunshine, and grew glad and gay in those glowing beams.