‘Will you come with us, Lady Lesbia?  We’ll suppress the cigarettes!’

‘Thanks, no,’ she said, becoming suddenly frigid.  ’I am going to practice.’

‘Do you never walk in the morning—­on such a lovely morning as this?’

‘Not very often.’

She had re-entered those frozen regions from which his attentions had lured him for a little while.  She had reminded herself of the inferior social position of this person, in whose conversation she had allowed herself to be interested.

‘Filons!’ cried Maulevrier from below, and they went.

Mary would have very much liked to go with them, but she did not want to be intrusive; so she went off to the kennels to see the terriers eat their morning and only meal of dog biscuit.

CHAPTER VIII.

THERE IS ALWAYS A SKELETON.

The two young men strolled through the village, Maulevrier pausing to exchange greetings with almost everyone he met, and so to the rustic churchyard, above the beck.

The beck was swollen with late rains, and was brawling merrily over its stony bed; the churchyard grass was deep and cool and shadowy under the clustering branches.  The poet’s tomb was disappointing in its unlovely simplicity, its stern, slatey hue.  The plainest granite cross would have satisfied Mr. Hammond, or a cross in pure white marble, with a sculptured lamb at the base.  Surely the lamb, emblem at once pastoral and sacred, ought to enter into any monument to Wordsworth; but that gray headstone, with its catalogue of dates, those stern iron railings—­were these fit memorials of one whose soul so loved nature’s loveliness?

After Mr. Hammond had seen the little old, old church, and the medallion portrait inside, had seen all that Maulevrier could show him, in fact, the two young men went back to the place of graves, and sat on the low parapet above the beck, smoking their cigarettes, and talking with that perfect unreserve which can only obtain between men who are old and tried friends.  They talked, as it was only natural they should talk, of that household at Fellside, where all things were new to John Hammond.

‘You like my sister Lesbia?’ said Maulevrier.

’Like her! well, yes.  The difficulty with most men must be not to worship her.’

‘Ah, she’s not my style.  And she’s beastly proud.’

’A little hauteur gives piquancy to her beauty; I admire a grand woman.’

’So do I in a picture.  Titian’s Queen of Cyprus, or any party of that kind; but for flesh and blood I like humility—­a woman who knows she is human, and not infallible, and only just a little better than you or me.  When I choose a wife, she will be no such example of cultivated perfection as my sister Lesbia.  I want no goddess, but a nice little womanly woman, to jog along the rough and tumble road of life with me.’

’Lady Maulevrier’s influence, no doubt, has in a great measure determined the bent of your sister’s character:  and from what you have told me about her ladyship, I should think a fixed idea of her own superiority would be inevitable in any girl trained by her.’