Felicia, when the thing was settled, danced about Victoria’s room, kissed her mother and ran off at once, with Victoria’s permission, to ask the old coachman who ruled the Duddon stables to give her riding-lessons.  Victoria noticed that she carefully avoided consulting Tatham in any way about her lessons.  Indeed the earlier, half-childish, half-audacious efforts she had made to attract his attention entirely ceased about this time.

And he, as soon as it was evident that Mrs. Melrose would not take his advice, and that legal proceedings must be renounced, felt a natural slackening of interest in his mother’s guests.  He was perfectly kind and polite to them but Netta’s cowardice disgusted him; and it was a personal disappointment to be thus balked of that public campaign against Melrose’s enormities which would have satisfied the just and long-baffled feelings of a whole county; and—­incidentally—­would surely have unmasked a greedy and unscrupulous adventurer.

Meanwhile the whole story of Mrs. Melrose and her daughter had spread rapidly through the neighbourhood.  The local papers, now teeming with attacks on Melrose, and the management of the Melrose property, had fastened with avidity on the news of their arrival.  “Mrs. Edmund Melrose and her daughter, after an absence of twenty years have arrived in Cumbria.  They are now staying at Duddon Castle with Countess Tatham.  Mr. Claude Faversham is at Threlfall Tower.”  These few sentences served as symbols of a dramatic situation which was being discussed in every house of the district, in the farms and cottages no less eagerly than by the Andovers and the Bartons.  The heiress of Threlfall was not dead!  After twenty years she and her mother had returned to claim their rights from the Ogre; and Duddon Castle, the headquarters of all that was powerful and respected in the county, had taken up their cause.  Meanwhile the little heiress had been, it seemed, supplanted.  Claude Faversham was in possession at Threlfall, and was being treated as the heir.  Mr. Melrose had flatly refused even to see his wife and daughter whom he had left in poverty and starvation for twenty years.

Upon these facts the twin spirit of romance and hatred swooped vulturelike.  Any story of inheritance, especially when charm and youth are mixed up with it, kindles the popular mind.  It was soon known that Miss Melrose was pretty, and small; though, said report, worn to a skeleton by paternal ill-usage.  Romance likes its heroines small.  The countryside adopted the unconscious Felicia, and promptly married her to Harry Tatham.  What could be more appropriate?  Duddon could afford to risk a dowry; and what maiden in distress could wish for a better Perseus than the splendid young man who was the general favourite of the neighbourhood?