On some occasions the two girls and Miss Mueller were of the party, and then it seemed to John Hammond as if nothing were needed to complete the glory of earth and sky.  There were other days—­rougher journeys—­when the men went alone, and there were days when Lady Mary stole away from her books and music, and all those studies which she was supposed still to be pursuing—­no longer closely supervised by her governess, but on parole, as it were—­and went with her brother and his friend across the hills and far away.  Those were happy days for Mary, for it was always delight to her to be with Maulevrier; yet she had a profound conviction of John Hammond’s indifference, kind and courteous as he was in all his dealings with her, and a sense of her own inferiority, of her own humble charms and little power to please, which was so acute as to be almost pain.  One day this keen sense of humiliation broke from her unawares in her talk with her brother, as they two sat on a broad heathy slope face to face with one of the Langdale pikes, and with a deep valley at their feet, while John Hammond was climbing from rock to rock in the gorge on their right, exploring the beauties of Dungeon Ghyll.

‘I wonder whether he thinks me very ugly?’ said Mary, with her hands clasped upon her knees, her eyes fixed on Wetherlam, upon whose steep brow a craggy mass of brown rock clothed with crimson heather stood out from the velvety green of the hill-side.

‘Who thinks you ugly?’

‘Mr. Hammond.  I’m sure he does.  I am so sunburnt and so horrid!’

‘But you are not ugly.  Why, Molly, what are you dreaming about?’

’Oh, yes, I am ugly.  I may not seem so to you, perhaps, because you are used to me, but I know he must think me very plain compared with Lesbia, whom he admires so much.’

‘Yes, he admires Lesbia.  There is no doubt of that.’

‘And I know he thinks me plain,’ said Molly, contemplating Wetherlam with sorrowful eyes, as if the sequence were inevitable.

’My dearest girl, what nonsense!  Plain, forsooth?  Ugly, quotha?  Why, there are not a finer pair of eyes in Westmoreland than my Molly’s, or a prettier smile, or whiter teeth.’

‘But all the rest is horrid,’ said Mary, intensely in earnest.  ’I am sunburnt, freckled, and altogether odious—­like a haymaker or a market woman.  Grandmother has said so often enough, and I know it is the truth.  I can see it in Mr. Hammond’s manner.’

‘What! freckles and sunburn, and the haymaker, and all that?’ cried Maulevrier, laughing.  ’What an expressive manner Jack’s must be, if it can convey all that—­like Lord Burleigh’s nod, by Jove.  Why, what a goose you are, Mary.  Jack thinks you a very nice girl, and a very pretty girl, I’ll be bound; but aren’t you clever enough to understand that when a man is over head and ears in love with one woman, he is apt to seem just a little indifferent to all the other women in the world? and there is no doubt Jack is desperately in love with Lesbia.’