‘Of course, they must have dinner,’ said her ladyship, resignedly, as if the whole thing were an infliction; and Mary ran out and interviewed the butler, begging that all things might be made particularly comfortable for the travellers.  It was nine o’clock, and the servants were enjoying their eventide repose.

Having given her orders, Mary went back to the drawing-room, impatiently expectant of her brother’s arrival, for which event Lesbia and her grandmother waited with perfect tranquillity, the dowager calmly continuing the perusal of her Times, while Lesbia sat at her piano in a shadowy corner, and played one of Mendelssohn’s softest Lieder.  To these dreamy strains Maulevrier and his friend presently entered.

’How d’ye do, grandmother? how do, Lesbia?  This is my very good friend and Canadian travelling companion, Jack Hammond—­Lady Maulevrier, Lady Lesbia.’

‘Very glad to see you, Mr. Hammond,’ said the dowager, in a tone so purely conventional that it might mean anything.  ’Hammond?  I ought to remember your family—­the Hammonds of——­’

‘Of nowhere,’ answered the stranger in the easiest tone; ’I spring from a race of nobodies, of whose existence your ladyship is not likely to have heard.’

CHAPTER VI.

MAULEVRIER’S HUMBLE FRIEND.

That faint interest which Lady Lesbia had felt in the advent of a stranger dwindled to nothing after Mr. Hammond’s frank avowal of his insignificance.  At the very beginning of her career, with the world waiting to be conquered by her, a high-born beauty could not be expected to feel any interest in nobodies.  Lesbia shook hands with her brother, honoured the stranger with a stately bend of her beautiful throat, and then withdrew herself from their society altogether as it were, and began to explore her basket of crewels, at a distant table, by the soft light of a shaded lamp, while Maulevrier answered his grandmother’s questions, and Mary stood watching him, hanging on his words, as if unconscious of any other presence.

Mr. Hammond went over to the window and looked out at the view.  The moon was rising above the amphitheatre of hills, and her rays were silvering the placid bosom of the lake.  Lights were dotted here and there about the valley, telling of village life.  The Prince of Wales’s hotel yonder sparkled with its many lights, like a castle in a fairy tale.  The stranger had looked upon many a grander scene, but on none more lovely.  Here were lake and mountain in little, without the snow-peaks and awful inaccessible regions of solitude and peril; homely hills that one might climb, placid English vales in which English poets have lived and died.

’Hammond and I mean to spend a month or six weeks with you, if you can make us comfortable,’ said Maulevrier.

’I am delighted to hear that you can contemplate staying a month anywhere,’ replied her ladyship.  ’Your usual habits are as restless as if your life were a disease.  It shall not be my fault if you and Mr. Hammond are uncomfortable at Fellside.’