Penelope had come to Southampton to wait for Ulysses, whose ship had been due for more than a week, and whose white sails might be expected above the horizon at any moment.  James Steadman spent a good deal of his time waiting about at the docks for the earliest news of Greene’s ship, the Hypermnestra; while Lady Maulevrier waited patiently in her sitting-room at the Dolphin, whose three long French windows commanded a full view of the High Street, with all those various distractions afforded by the chief thoroughfare of a provincial town.  Her ladyship was provided with a large box of books, from Ebers’ in Bond Street, a basket of fancy work, and her favourite Blenheim spaniel, Lalla Rookh; but even these sources of amusement did not prevent the involuntary expression of weariness in occasional yawns, and frequent pacings up and down the room, where the formal hotel furniture had a comfortless and chilly look.

Fellside, her ladyship’s place in Westmoreland, was the pleasure house which, among all her possessions, she most valued; but it had hitherto been reserved for summer occupation, or for perhaps two or three weeks at Easter, when the spring was exceptionally fine.  The sudden determination to spend the coming winter in the house near Grasmere was considered a curious freak of Lady Maulevrier’s, and she was constrained to explain her motives to her friends.

‘His lordship is out of health,’ she said, ’and wants perfect rest and retirement.  Now, Fellside is the only place we have in which he is likely to get perfect rest.  Anywhere else we should have to entertain.  Fellside is out of the world.  There is no one to be entertained.’

‘Except your neighbour, Wordsworth.  I suppose you see him sometimes?’

‘Dear simple-minded old soul, he gives nobody any trouble,’ said her ladyship.

‘But is not Westmoreland very cold in winter?’ asked her friend.

Lady Maulevrier smiled benignly, as at an inoffensive ignorance.

‘So sheltered,’ she murmured.  ’We are at the base of the Fell.  Loughrigg rises up like a cyclopean wall between us and the wind.’

‘But when the wind is in the either direction?’

’We have Nabb Scar.  You do not know how we are girdled and defended by hills.’

‘Very pleasant,’ agreed the friend; ’but for my own part I would rather winter in the south.’

Those terrible rumours which had first come upon the world of London last June, had been growing darker and more defined ever since, but still Lady Maulevrier made believe to ignore them; and she acted her part of unconsciousness with such consummate skill that nobody in her circle could be sure where the acting began and where the ignorance left off.  The astute Lord Denyer declared that she was a wonderful woman, and knew more about the real state of the case than anybody else.