’Alas, no! that incentive to ambition is wanting in my case.  I have neither father nor mother living.’

’That is very sad.  No doubt that fact has been a bond of sympathy between you and Maulevrier?’

‘I believe it has.’

‘Well, I hope Providence will smile upon your path.’

’Come what may, I shall never forget the happy weeks I have spent at Fellside,’ said Hammond, ‘or your ladyship’s gracious hospitality.’

He took up the beautiful hand, white to transparency, showing the delicate tracing of blue veins, and pressed his lips upon it in chivalrous worship of age and womanly dignity.

Lady Maulevrier smiled upon him with her calm, grave smile.  She would have liked to say, ‘You shall be welcome again at Fellside,’ but she felt that the man was dangerous.  Not while Lesbia remained single could she court his company.  If Maulevrier brought him she must tolerate his presence, but she would do nothing to invite that danger.

There was no music that evening.  Maulevrier and Mary were playing billiards; Fraeulein Mueller was sitting in her corner working at a high-art counterpane.  Lesbia came in from the verandah presently, and sat on a low stool by her grandmother’s arm-chair, and talked to her in soft, cooing accents, inaudible to John Hammond, who sat a little way off turning the leaves of the Contemporary Review:  and this went on till eleven o’clock, the regular hour for retiring, when Mary came in from the billiard-room, and told Mr. Hammond that Maulevrier was waiting for a smoke and a talk.  Then candles were lighted, and the ladies all departed, leaving John Hammond and his friend with the house to themselves.

They played a fifty game, and smoked and talked till the stroke of midnight, by which time it seemed as if there were not another creature awake in the house.  Maulevrier put out the lamps in the billiard-room, and then they went softly up the shadowy staircase, and parted in the gallery, the Earl going one way, and his friend the other.

The house was large and roomy, spread over a good deal of ground, Lady Maulevrier having insisted upon there being only two stories.  The servants’ rooms were all in a side wing, corresponding with those older buildings which had been given over to Steadman and his wife, and among the villagers of Grasmere enjoyed the reputation of being haunted.  A wide panelled corridor extended from one end of the house to the other.  It was lighted from the roof, and served as a gallery for the display of a small and choice collection of modern art, which her ladyship had acquired during her long residence at Fellside.  Here, too, in Sheraton cabinets, were those treasures of old English china which Lady Maulevrier had inherited from past generations.

Her ladyship’s rooms were situated at the southern end of this corridor, her bed-chamber being at the extreme end of the house, with windows commanding two magnificent views, one across the lake and the village of Grasmere to the green slopes of Fairfield, the other along the valley towards Rydal Water.  This and the adjoining boudoir were the prettiest rooms in the house, and no one wondered that her ladyship should spend so much of her life in the luxurious seclusion of her own apartments.