The lamps were lighted below; but this upper part of the house was wrapped in the dull grey twilight of a stormy evening.  A single lamp burned dimly at the further end of the corridor, and all the rest was shadow.

Mary and her husband walked up and down, talking in subdued tones.  He was explaining the necessity of his being in London next week, and promising to come back to Fellside directly his business at the House was over.

‘It will be delightful to read your speeches,’ said Mary; ’but I am silly and selfish enough to wish you were a country squire, with no business in London.  And yet I don’t wish that either, for I am intensely proud of you.’

’And some day, before we are much older, you will sit in your robes in the peeress’s gallery.’

‘Oh, I couldn’t,’ cried Mary.  ’I should make a fool of myself, somehow.  I should look like a housemaid in borrowed plumes.  Remember, I have no Anstand—­I have been told so all my life.’

’You will be one of the prettiest peeresses who ever sat in that gallery, and the purest, and truest, and dearest,’ protested her lover-husband.

’Oh, if I am good enough for you, I am satisfied.  I married you, and not the House of Lords.  But I am afraid your friends will all say, “Hartfield, why in heaven’s name did you marry that uncultivated person?” Look!’

She stopped suddenly, with her hand on her husband’s arm.  It was growing momentarily darker in the corridor.  They were at the end near the lamp, and that other end by Lady Maulevrier’s door was in deeper darkness, yet not too dark for Lord Hartfield to see what it was to which Mary pointed.

The red-cloth door was open, and a faint glimmer of light showed within.  A man was standing in the corridor, a small, shrunken figure, bent and old.

‘It is Steadman’s uncle,’ said Mary ’Do let me go and speak to him, poor, poor old man.’

‘The madman!’ exclaimed Hartfield.  ’No, Mary; go to your room at once.  I’ll get him back to his own den.’

’But he is not mad—­at any rate, he is quite harmless.  Let me just say a few words to him.  Surely I am safe with you.’

Lord Hartfield was not inclined to dispute that argument; indeed, he felt himself strong enough to protect his wife from all the lunatics in Bedlam.  He went towards the end of the corridor, keeping Mary well behind him; but Mary did not mean to lose the opportunity of renewing her acquaintance with Steadman’s uncle.

‘I hope you are better, poor old soul,’ she murmured, gently, lovingly almost, nestling at her husband’s side.

‘What, is it you?’ cried the old man, tremulous with joy.

’Oh, I have been looking for you—­looking—­looking—­waiting, waiting for you.  I have been hoping for you every hour and every minute.  Why didn’t you come to me, cruel girl?’

‘I tried with all my might,’ said Mary, ’but people blocked up the door in the stables, and they wouldn’t let me go to you; and I have been rather busy for the last fortnight,’ added Mary, blushing in the darkness, ‘I—­I—­am married to this gentleman.’