It was a lovely morning, sultry, summer-like, albeit September had just begun.  The tennis lawn, which had been levelled on one side of the house, was surrounded on three sides by shrubberies planted forty years ago, in the beginning of Lady Maulevrier’s widowhood.  All loveliest trees grew there in perfection, sheltered by the mighty wall of the mountain, fed by the mists from the lake.  Larch and mountain ash, and Lawsonian cyprus,—­deodara and magnolia, arbutus, and silver broom, acacia and lilac, flourished here in that rich beauty which made every cottage garden in the happy district a little paradise; and here in a semi-circular recess at one end of the lawn were rustic chairs and tables and an umbrella tent.  This was Lady Lesbia’s chosen retreat on summer mornings, and a favourite place for afternoon tea.

Mr. Hammond followed the two ladies to their bower.

‘This is to be my last morning,’ he said, looking at Lesbia.  ’Will you think me a great bore if I spend it with you?’

‘We shall think it very nice of you,’ answered Lesbia, without a vestige of emotion; ‘especially if you will read to us.’

‘I will do any thing to make myself useful.  What shall I read?’

‘Anything you like.  What do you say to Tennyson?’

’That he is a noble poet, a teacher of all good; but too philosophical for my present mood.  May I read you some of Heine’s ballads, those songs which you sing so exquisitely, or rather some you do not sing, and which will be fresher to you.  My German is far from perfect, but I am told it is passable, and Fraeulein Mueller can throw her scissors at me when my accent is too dreadful.’

‘You speak German beautifully,’ said Fraeulein.  ’I wonder where you learned it?’

’I have been a good deal in Germany, and I had a Hanoverian valet who was quite a gentleman, and spoke admirably, I think I learned more from him than from grammars or dictionaries.  I’ll go and fetch Heine.’

‘What a very agreeable person Mr. Hammond is,’ said Fraeulein, when he was gone.  ‘We shall quite miss him.’

‘Yes, I have no doubt we shall miss him,’ said Lesbia, again without the faintest emotion.

The governess began to think that the ordeal of an agreeable young man’s presence at Fellside had been passed in safety, and that her pupil was unscathed.  She had kept a close watch on the two, as in duty bound.  She knew that Hammond was in love with Lesbia; but she thought Lesbia was heart-whole.

Mr. Hammond came back with a shabby little book in his hand and established himself comfortably in one of the two Beaconsfield chairs.

He opened his book at that group of short poems called Heimkehr, and read here and there, as fancy led him.  Sometimes the strain was a love-song, brief, passionate as the cry of a soul in pain; sometimes the verses were bitter and cynical; sometimes full of tenderest simplicity, telling of childhood, and youth and purity; sometimes dark with hidden meanings, grim, awful, cold with the chilling breath of the charnel-house.  Sometimes Lesbia’s heart beat a little faster as Mr. Hammond read, for it seemed as if it was he who was speaking to her, and not the dead poet.