and the books of her own choosing, had done a great deal more in ripening her mind than Fraeulein Mueller and that admirable series of educational works which has been provided for the tuition of modern youth.  Grammars and geographies, primers and elementary works of all kinds, were Mary’s detestation; but she loved books that touched her heart and filled her mind with thoughts wide and deep enough to reach into the infinite of time and space, the mystery of mind and matter, life and death.

Nothing occurred to break the placid monotony of life at Fellside for three long days after that rainy morning; and then came an event which, although commonplace enough in itself, marked the beginning of a new era in the existence of Lady Maulevrier’s granddaughters.

It was evening, and the two girls were dawdling about on the sloping lawn before the drawing-room windows, where Lady Maulevrier read the newspapers in her own particular chair by one of those broad Tudor windows, according to her infallible custom.  Remote as her life had been from the busy world, her ladyship had never allowed her knowledge of public life and the bent of modern thought to fall into arrear.  She took a keen interest in politics, in progress of all kinds.  She was a staunch Conservative, and looked upon every Liberal politician as her personal enemy; but she took care to keep herself informed of everything that was being said or done in the enemy’s camp.  She had an intense respect for Lord Bacon’s maxim:  Knowledge is power.  It was a kind of power secondary to the power of wealth, perhaps; but wealth unprotected by wisdom would soon dwindle into poverty.

Lady Lesbia sauntered about the lawn, looking very elegant in her cream-coloured Indian silk gown, very listless, very tired of her lovely surroundings.  Neither lake nor mountain possessed any charm for her.  She had had too much of them.  Mary roamed about with a swifter footstep, looking at the roses, plucking off a dead leaf, or a cankered bud here and there.  Presently she tore across the lawn to the shrubbery which screened the lawn and flower gardens from the winding carriage drive sunk many feet below, and disappeared in a thicket of arbutus and Irish yew.

‘What terribly hoydenish manners!’ murmured Lesbia, with a languid shrug of her shoulders, as she strolled back to the drawing-room.

She cared very little for the newspapers, for politics not at all; but anything was better than everlasting-contemplation of the blue still water, and the rugged crest of Helm Crag.

‘What was the matter with Mary that she rushed off like a mad woman?’ inquired Lady Maulevrier, looking up from the Times.

’I haven’t the least idea.  Mary’s movements are quite beyond the limits of my comprehension.  Perhaps she has gone after a bird’s-nest.’