Meanwhile, from that letter, or rather in subtle connection with it, her thoughts at last went wandering off with a natural zest to her new realm of Mellor, and to all that she would and could do for the dwellers therein.

CHAPTER IV.

It was a bleak east-wind day towards the end of March.  Aldous was at work in the library at the Court, writing at his grandfather’s table, where in general he got through his estate and county affairs, keeping his old sitting-room upstairs for the pursuits that were more particularly his own.

All the morning he had been occupied with a tedious piece of local business, wading through endless documents concerning a dispute between the head-master of a neighbouring grammar-school and his governing body, of which Aldous was one.  The affair was difficult, personal, odious.  To have wasted nearly three hours upon it was, to a man of Aldous’s type, to have lost a day.  Besides he had not his grandfather’s knack in such things, and was abundantly conscious of it.

However, there it was, a duty which none but he apparently could or would do, and he had been wrestling with it.  With more philosophy than usual, too, since every tick of the clock behind him bore him nearer to an appointment which, whatever it might be, would not be tedious.

At last he got up and went to the window to look at the weather.  A cutting wind, clearly, but no rain.  Then he walked into the drawing-room, calling for his aunt.  No one was to be seen, either there or in the conservatory, and he came back to the library and rang.

“Roberts, has Miss Raeburn gone out?”

“Yes, my lord,” said the old butler addressed.  “She and Miss Macdonald have gone out driving, and I was to tell your lordship that Miss Raeburn would drop Miss Macdonald at Mellor on her way home.”

“Is Sir Frank anywhere about?”

“He was in the smoking-room a little while ago, my lord.”

“Will you please try and find him?”

“Yes, my lord.”

Aldous’s mouth twitched with impatience as the old servant shut the door.

“How many times did Roberts manage to be-lord me in a minute?” he asked himself; “yet if I were to remonstrate, I suppose I should only make him unhappy.”

And walking again to the window, he thrust his hands into his pockets and stood looking out with a far from cheerful countenance.

One of the things that most tormented him indeed in this recent existence was a perpetual pricking sense of the contrast between this small world of his ancestral possessions and traditions, with all its ceremonial and feudal usage, and the great rushing world outside it of action and of thought.  Do what he would, he could not un-king himself within the limits of the Maxwell estate.  To the people living upon it he was the man of most importance within their ken, was inevitably their potentate and earthly providence.