Hammond had been at Fellside nearly a month, and Maulevrier was beginning to talk about a move further northward.  There was a grouse moor in Argyleshire which the two young men talked about as belonging to some unnamed friend of the Earl’s, which they had thought of shooting over before the grouse season was ended.

‘Lord Hartfield has property in Argyleshire,’ said the dowager, when they talked of these shootings.  ‘Do you know his estate, Mr. Hammond?’

‘Hammond knows that there is such a place, I daresay,’ replied Maulevrier, replying for his friend.

‘But you do not know Lord Hartfield, perhaps,’ said her ladyship, not arrogantly, but still in a tone which implied her conviction that John Hammond would not be hand-in-glove with earls, in Scotland or elsewhere.

’Oh, yes!  I know him by sight every one in Argyleshire knows him by sight.’

’Naturally.  A young man in his position must be widely known.  Is he popular?’

‘Fairly so.’

‘His father and I were friends many years ago,’ said Lady Maulevrier, with a faint sigh.  ‘Have you ever heard if he resembles his father?’

‘I believe not.  I am told he is like his mother’s family.’

’Then he ought to be handsome.  Lady Florence Ilmington was a famous beauty.’

They were sitting in the drawing-room after dinner, the room dimly lighted by darkly-shaded lamps, the windows wide open to the summer sky and moonlit lake.  In that subdued light Lady Maulevrier looked a woman in the prime of life.  The classical modelling of her features and the delicacy of her complexion were unimpaired by time, while those traces of thought and care which gave age to her face in the broad light of day were invisible at night.  John Hammond contemplated that refined and placid countenance with profound admiration.  He remembered how her ladyship’s grandson had compared her with the Sphinx; and it seemed to him to-night, as be studied her proud and tranquil beauty, that there was indeed something of the mysterious, the unreadable in that countenance, and that beneath its heroic calm there might be the ashes of tragic passion, the traces of a life-long struggle with fate.  That such a woman, so beautiful, so gifted, so well fitted to shine and govern in the great world, should have been content to live a long life of absolute seclusion in this remote valley was in itself a social mystery which must needs set an observant young man wondering.  It was all very well to say that Lady Maulevrier loved a country life, that she had made Fellside her earthly Paradise, and had no desire beyond it.  The fact remained that it was not in Lady Maulevrier’s temperament to be satisfied with such an existence; that falcon eye was never meant to gaze for ever upon one narrow range of mountain and lake; that lip was made to speak among the great ones of the world.