What a happy luncheon it was!  Fraeulein ’mounched, and mounched, and mounched,’ like the sailor’s wife eating chestnuts:  but those two lovers lunched upon moonshine, upon each other’s little words and little looks, upon their own ineffable bliss.  They sat side by side, and helped each other to the nicest thing’s on the table, but neither could eat, and they got considerably mixed in their way of eating, taking chutnee with strawberry cream, and currant jelly with asparagus.  What did it matter?  Everything tasted of bliss.

‘You have had absolutely nothing to eat,’ said Mary, piteously, as the dogcart came grinding round upon the dry gravel.

’Oh, I have done splendidly—­thanks.  I have just had a macaroon and some of that capital gorgonzola.  God bless you, dearest, and a revoir, a revoir to-morrow.’

‘And to-morrow I shall be Mary Hammond,’ cried Mary, clasping her hands.  ‘Isn’t it capital fun?’

They were in the porch alone.  The servants were all at dinner, save the groom with the cart, Miss Mueller was still munching at the well-spread table in the dining-room.

John Hammond folded his sweetheart in his arms for one brief embrace; there was no time for loitering.  In another moment he was springing into the cart.  A shake of the reins, and he was driving slowly down the steep avenue.

‘Life is full of partings,’ Mary said to herself, as she watched the last glimpse of the dogcart between the trees down in the road below, ‘but this one is to be very short, thank God.’

She wondered what she should do with herself for the rest of the afternoon, and finally, finding that she was not wanted by her grandmother until afternoon tea, she set out upon a round of visits to her favourite cottagers, to bid them a long farewell as a spinster.

‘You’ll be away a long time, I suppose, Lady Mary?’ said one of her humble friends; ’you’ll be going to Switzerland or Italy, or some of those foreign parts where great ladies and gentlemen travel for their honeymoons?’

But Mary declared that she would be absent a week at longest She was coming back to take care of her invalid grandmother; and she was not going to marry a great gentleman, but a man who would have to work for his living.

She went back to Fellside, and read the Times, and poured out Lady Maulevrier’s tea, and sat on her low stool by the sofa, and the old and the young woman were as happy and confidential together as if they had been always the nearest and dearest to each other.  Her ladyship had seen Miss Mueller, and had informed that excellent person that her services at Fellside would no longer be required after Lady Mary’s marriage; but that her devotion to her duties during the last fourteen years should be rewarded by a pension which, together with her savings, would enable her to spend the rest of her days in repose.  Miss Mueller was duly grateful, and owned to a tender longing for the Heimath, and declared herself ready to retire from her post whenever her ladyship pleased.