‘You ought not to let him be in love with her,’ protested Mary.  ’You know it can only lead to his unhappiness.  You must know what grandmother is, and how she has made up her mind that Lesbia is to marry some great person.  You ought not to have brought Mr. Hammond here.  It is like letting him into a trap.’

‘Do you think it was wrong?’ asked her brother, smiling at her earnestness.  ’I should be very sorry if poor Jack should come to grief.  But still, if Lesbia likes him—­which I think she does—­we ought to be able to talk over the dowager.’

‘Never,’ cried Mary.  ’Grandmother would never give way.  You have no idea how ambitious she is.  Why, once when Lesbia was in a poetical mood, and said she would marry the man she liked best in the world, if he were a pauper, her ladyship flew into a terrible passion, and told her she would renounce her, that she would curse her, if she were to marry beneath her, or marry without her grandmother’s consent.’

‘Hard lines for Hammond,’ said Maulevrier, rather lightly.  ’Then I suppose we must give up the idea of a match between him and Lesbia.’

‘You ought not to have brought him here,’ retorted Mary.  ’You had better invent some plan for sending him away.  If he stay it will be only to break his heart.’

’Dear child, men’s hearts do not break so easily.  I have fancied that mine was broken more than once in my life, yet it is sound enough, I assure you.’

‘Oh!’ sighed Mary, ’but you are not like him; wounds do not go so deep with you.’

The subject of their conversation came out of the rocky cleft in the hills as Mary spoke.  She saw his hat appearing out of the gorge, and then the man himself emerged, a tall well-built figure, clad in brown tweed, coming towards them, with sketch-book and colour-box in his pocket.  He had been making what he called memoranda of the waterfall, a stone or two here, a cluster of ferns there, or a tree torn up by the roots, and yet green and living, hanging across the torrent, a rude natural bridge.

This round by the Langdale Pikes and Dungeon Ghyll was one of their best days; or, at least, Molly and her brother thought so; for to those two the presence of Lesbia and her chaperon was always a restraint.

Mary could walk twice as far as her elder sister, and revelled in hill-side paths and all manner of rough places.  They ordered their luncheon at the inn below the waterfall, and had it carried up on to the furzy slope in front of Wetherlam, where they could eat and drink and be merry to the music of the force as it came down from the hills behind them, while the lights and shadows came and went upon yonder rugged brow, now gray in the shadow, now ruddy in the sunshine.

Mary was as gay as a bird during that rough and ready luncheon.  No one would have suspected her uneasiness about John Hammond’s peril or her own plainness.  She might let her real self appear to her brother, who had been her trusted friend and father confessor from her babyhood; but she was too thorough a woman to let Mr. Hammond discover the depth of her sympathy, the tenderness of her compassion for his woes.  Later, as they were walking home across the hills, by Great Langdale and Little Langdale, and Fox Howe and Loughrigg Fell, she fell behind a few paces with Maulevrier, and said to him very earnestly—­