Viscount Haselden, alias Lord Maulevrier, held a long consultation with Lord Hartfield on the night of his grandmother’s death, as to what steps ought to be taken in relation to the real Earl of Maulevrier:  and it was only at the end of a serious and earnest discussion that both young men came to the decision that Lady Maulevrier’s secret ought to be kept faithfully to the end.  Assuredly no good purpose could be achieved by letting the world know of old Lord Maulevrier’s existence.  A half-lunatic octogenarian could gain nothing by being restored to rights and possessions which he had most justly forfeited.  All that justice demanded was that the closing years of his life should be made as comfortable as care and wealth could make them; and Hartfield and Haselden took immediate steps to this end.  But their first act was to send the old earl’s treasure chest under safe convoy to the India House, with a letter explaining how this long-hidden wealth, brought from India by Lord Maulevrier, had been discovered among other effects in a lumber-room at Lady Maulevrier’s country house.  The money so delivered up might possibly have formed part of his lordship’s private fortune; but, in the absence of any knowledge as to its origin, his grandson, the present Lord Maulevrier, preferred to deliver it up to the authorities of the India House, to be dealt with as they might think fit.

The old earl made no further attempt to assert himself.  He seemed content to remain in his own rooms as of old, to potter about the garden, where his solitude was as complete as that of a hermit’s cell.  The only moan be made was for James Steadman, whose services he missed sorely.  Lord Hartfield replaced that devoted servant by a clever Austrian valet, a new importation from Vienna, who understood very little English, a trained attendant upon mental invalids, and who was quite capable of dealing with old Lord Maulevrier.

Lord Hartfield went a step farther; and within a week of those two funerals of servant and mistress, which cast a gloom over the peaceful valley of Grasmere, he brought down a famous mad-doctor to diagnose his lordship’s case.  There was but little risk in so doing, he argued with his friend, and it was their duty so to do.  If the old man should assert himself to the doctor as Lord Maulevrier, the declaration would pass as a symptom of his lunacy.  But it happened that the physician arrived at Fellside on one of Lord Maulevrier’s bad days, and the patient never emerged from the feeblest phase of imbecility.

‘Brain quite gone,’ pronounced the doctor, ’bodily health very poor.  Take him to the South of France for the winter—­Hyeres, or any quiet place.  He can’t last long.’

To Hyeres the old man was taken, with Mrs. Steadman as nurse, and the Austrian valet as body-servant and keeper.  Mary, for whom, in his brighter hours he showed a warm affection, went with him under her husband’s wing.