'One can see the season is waning when these people begin to pester with their accounts,' said Lady Kirkbank, who always talked of tradesmen as if they were her natural enemies.

Lesbia accepted this explanation of the avalanche of bills, and never suspected Lady Kirkbank's influence in the matter. It happened, however, that the chaperon, having her own reasons for wishing to bring Mr. Smithson's suit to a successful issue, had told Seraphine and the other people to send in their bills immediately. Lady Lesbia would be leaving London in a week or so, she informed these purveyors, and would like to settle everything before she went away.

Mr. Smithson appeared in Arlington Street almost every day, and was full of schemes for new pleasures—or pleasures as nearly new as the world of fashion can afford. He was particularly desirous that Sir George and Lady Kirkbank, with Lady Lesbia, should stay at his Berkshire place during the Henley week. He had a large steam launch, and the regatta was a kind of carnival for his intimate friends, who were not too proud to riot and batten upon the parvenu's luxurious hospitality, albeit they were apt to talk somewhat slightingly of his antecedents.

Lady Kirkbank felt that this invitation was a turning point, and that if Lesbia went to stay at Rood Hall, her acceptance of Mr. Smithson was a certainty. She would see him at his place in Berkshire in the most flattering aspect; his surroundings as lord of the manor, and owner of one of the finest old places in the county, would lend dignity to his insignificance. Lesbia at first expressed a strong disinclination to go to Rood Hall. There would be a most unpleasant feeling in stopping at the house of a man whom she had refused, she told Lady Kirkbank.

'My dear, Mr. Smithson has forgiven you,' answered her chaperon. 'He is the soul of good nature.'

'One would think he was accustomed to be refused,' said Lesbia. 'I don't want to go to Rood Hall, but I don't want to spoil your Henley week. Could not I run down to Grasmere for a week, with Kibble to take care of me, and see dear grandmother? I could tell her about those dreadful bills.'

'Bury yourself at Grasmere in the height of the season! Not to be thought of! Besides, Lady Maulevrier objected before to the idea of your travelling alone with Kibble. No! if you can't make up your mind to go to Rood Hall, George and I must make up our minds to stay away. But it will be rather hard lines; for that Henley week is quite the jolliest thing in the summer.'

'Then I'll go,' said Lesbia, with a resigned air. 'Not for worlds would I deprive you and Sir George of a pleasure.'

In her heart of hearts she rather wished to see Rood Hall. She was curious to behold the extent and magnitude of Mr. Smithson's possessions. She had seen his Italian villa in Park Lane, the perfection of modern art, modern skill, modern taste, reviving the old eternally beautiful forms, recreating the Pitti Palace—the homes of the Medici—the halls of dead and gone Doges—and now she was told that Rood Hall—a genuine old English manor-house, in perfect preservation—was even more interesting than the villa in Park Lane. At Rood Hall there were ideal stables and farm, hot-houses without number, rose gardens, lawns, the river, and a deer park.

So the invitation was accepted, and Mr. Smithson immediately laid himself at Lesbia's feet, as it were, with regard to all other invitations for the Henley festival. Whom should he ask to meet her?—whom would she have?

'You are very good,' she said, 'but I have really no wish to be consulted. I am not a royal personage, remember. I could not presume to dictate.'

'But I wish you to dictate. I wish you to be imperious in the expression of your wishes.'

'Lady Kirkbank has a better right than I, if anybody is to be consulted,' said Lesbia, modestly.

'Lady Kirkbank is an old dear, who gets on delightfully with everybody. But you are more sensitive. Your comfort might be marred by an obnoxious presence. I will ask nobody whom you do not like—who is not thoroughly simpatico. Have you no particular friends of your own choosing whom you would like me to ask?'

Lesbia confessed that she had no such friends. She liked everybody tolerably; but she had not a talent for friendship. Perhaps it was because in the London season one was too busy to make friends.

'I can fancy two girls getting quite attached to each other, out of the season,' she said, 'but in May and June life is all a rush and a scramble——'

'And one has no time to gather wayside flowers of friendship,' interjected Mr. Smithson. 'Still, if there are no people for whom you have an especial liking, there must be people whom you detest.'

Lesbia owned that it was so. Detestation came of itself, naturally.

'Then let me be sure I do not ask any of your pet aversions,' said Mr. Smithson. 'You met Mr. Plantagenet Parsons, the theatrical critic, at my house. Shall we have him?'

'I like all amusing people.'

'And Horace Meander, the poet. Shall we have him? He is brimful of conceits and affectations, but he's a tremendous joke.'

'Mr. Meander is charming.'

'Suppose we ask Mostyn and his wife? Her scraps of science are rather good fun.'

'I haven't the faintest objection to the Mostyns,' replied Lesbia. 'But who are "we"?'

'We are you and I, for the nonce. The invitations will be issued ostensibly by me, but they will really emanate from you.'

'I am to be the shadow behind the throne,' said Lesbia. 'How delightful!'

'I would rather you were the sovereign ruler, on the throne,' answered Smithson, tenderly. 'That throne shall be empty till you fill it.'

'Please go on with your list of people,' said Lesbia, checking this gush of sentiment.

She began to feel somehow that she was drifting from all her moorings, that in accepting this invitation to Rood Hall she was allowing herself to be ensnared into an alliance about which she was still doubtful. If anything better had appeared in the prospect of her life—if any worthier suitor had come forward, she would have whistled Mr. Smithson down the wind; but no worthier suitor had offered himself. It was Smithson or nothing. If she did not accept Smithson, she would go back to Fellside heavily burdened with debt, and an obvious failure. She would have run the gauntlet of a London season without definite result; and this, to a young woman so impressed with her own transcendent merits, was a most humiliating state of things.

Other people's names were suggested by Mr. Smithson and approved by Lesbia, and a house party of about fourteen in all was made up. Mr. Smithson's steam launch would comfortably accommodate that number. He had a couple of barges for chance visitors, and kept an open table on board them during the regatta.

The visit arranged, the next question was gowns. Lesbia had gowns enough to have stocked a draper's shop; but then, as she and Lady Kirkbank deplored, the difficulty was that she had worn them all, some as many as three or four times. They were doubtless all marked and known. Some of them had been described in the society papers. At Henley she would be expected to wear something distinctly new, to introduce some new fashion of gown or hat or parasol. No matter how ugly the new thing might be, so long as it was startling; no matter how eccentric, provided it was original.

'What am I to do?' asked Lesbia, despairingly.

'There is only one thing that can be done. We must go instantly to Seraphine and insist upon her inventing something. If she has no idea ready she must telegraph Worth and get him to send something over. Your old things will do very well for Rood Hall. You have no end of pretty gowns for morning and evening; but you must be original on the race days. Your gowns will be in all the papers.'

'But I shall be only getting deeper into debt,' said Lesbia, with a sigh.

'That can't be helped. If you go into society you must be properly dressed. We'll go to Clanricarde Place directly after luncheon, and see what that old harpy has to show us.'

Lesbia had a rather uncomfortable feeling about facing the fair Seraphine, without being able to give her a cheque upon account of that dreadful bill. She had quite accepted Lady Kirkbank's idea that bills never need be discharged in full, and that the true system of finance was to give an occasional cheque on account, as a sop to Cerberus. True, that while Cerberus fattened on the sops the bill seemed always growing; and the final crash, when Cerberus grew savage and sops could be no more accepted, was too awful to be thought about.

Lesbia entered Seraphine's Louis-seize drawing-room with a faint expectation of unpleasantness; but after a little whispering between Lady Kirkbank and the dressmaker, the latter came to Lesbia smiling graciously, and seemingly full of eagerness for new orders.

'Miladi says you want something of the most original—tant soit peu risque—for 'Enley,' she said. 'Let us see now,' and she tapped her forehead with a gold thimble which nobody had ever seen her use, but which looked respectable. 'There is ze dresses that Chaumont wear in zis new play, Une Faute dans le Passe. Yes, zere is the watare dress—a boating party at Bougival, a toilet of the most new, striking, ecrasant, what you English call a "screamer."'

'What a genius you are, Fifine,' exclaimed Lady Kirkbank, rapturously. 'The Faute dans le Passe was only produced last week. No one will have thought of copying Chaumont's gowns yet awhile. The idea is an inspiration.'

'What is the boating costume like?' asked Lady Lesbia, faintly.

'An exquisite combination of simplicity with vlan,' answered the dressmaker. 'A skin-tight indigo silk Jersey bodice, closely studded with dark blue beads, a flounced petticoat of indigo and amber foulard, an amber scarf drawn tightly round the hips, and a dark blue toque with a largo bunch of amber poppies. Tan-coloured mousquetaire gloves, and Hessian boots of tan-coloured kid.'

'Hessian boots!' ejaculated Lesbia.

'But, yes, Miladi. The petticoat is somewhat short, you comprehend, to escape the damp of the deck, and, after all, Hessians are much less indelicate than silk stockings, legs a cru, as one may say.'

'Lesbia, you will look enchanting in yellow Hessians,' said Lady Kirkbank, 'Let the dress be put in hand instantly, Seraphine.'

Lesbia was inclined to remonstrate. She did not admire the description of the costume, she would rather have something less outrageous.

'Outrageous! It is only original,' exclaimed her chaperon. 'If Chaumont wears it you may be sure it is perfect.'

'But on the stage, by gaslight, in the midst of unrealities,' argued Lesbia. 'That makes such a difference.'

'My dear, there is no difference nowadays between the stage and the drawing-room. Whatever Chaumont wears you may wear. And now let us think of the second day. I think as your first costume is to be nautical, and rather masculine, your second should be somewhat languishing and vaporeux. Creamy Indian muslin, wild flowers, a large Leghorn hat.'

'And what will Miladi herself wear?' asked the French woman of Lady Kirkbank. 'She must have something of new.'

'No, at my age, it doesn't matter. I shall wear one of my cotton frocks, and my Dunstable hat.'

Lesbia shuddered, for Lady Kirkbank in her cotton frock was a spectacle at which youth laughed and age blushed. But after all it did not matter to Lesbia. She would have liked a less rowdy chaperon; but as a foil to her own fresh young beauty Lady Kirkbank was admirable.

They drove down to Rood Hall early next week, Sir George conveying them in his drag, with a change of horses at Maidenhead. The weather was peerless; the country exquisite, approached from London. How different that river landscape looks to the eyes of the traveller returning from the wild West of England, the wooded gorges of Cornwall and Devon, the Tamar and the Dart. Then how small and poor and mean seems silvery Thames, gliding peacefully between his willowy bank, singing his lullaby to the whispering sedges; a poor little river, a flat commonplace landscape, says the traveller, fresh from moorland and tor, from the rocky shore of the Atlantic, the deep clefts of the great, red hills.

To Lesbia's eyes the placid stream and the green pastures, breathing odours of meadow-sweet and clover, seemed passing lovely. She was pleased with her own hat and parasol too, which made her graciously disposed towards the landscape; and the last packet of gloves from North Audley Street fitted without a wrinkle. The glovemaker was beginning to understand her hand, which was a study for a sculptor, but which had its little peculiarities.

Nor was she ill-disposed to Mr. Smithson, who had come up to town by an early train, in order to lunch in Arlington Street and go back by coach, seated just behind Lady Lesbia, who had the box seat beside Sir George.

The drive was delightful. It was a few minutes after five when the coach drove past the picturesque old gate-house into Mr. Smithson's Park, and Rood Hall lay on the low ground in front of them, with its back to the river. It was an old red brick house in the Tudor style, with an advanced porch, and four projecting wings, three stories high, with picturesque spire roofs overtopping the main building. Around the house ran a boldly-carved stone parapet, bearing the herons and bulrushes which were the cognisance of the noble race for which the mansion was built. Numerous projecting mullioned windows broke up the line of the park front. Lesbia was fain to own that Rood Hall was even better than Park Lane. In London Mr. Smithson had created a palace; but it was a new palace, which still had a faint flavour of bricks and mortar, and which was apt to remind the spectator of that wonderful erection of Aladdin, the famous Parvenu of Eastern story. Here, in Berkshire, Mr. Smithson had dropped into a nest which had been kept warm for him for three centuries, aired and beautified by generations of a noble race which had obligingly decayed and dwindled in order to make room for Mr. Smithson. Here the Parvenu had bought a home mellowed by the slow growth of years, touched into poetic beauty by the chastening fingers of time. His artist friends told him that every brick in the red walls was 'precious,' a mystery of colour which only a painter could fitly understand and value. Here he had bought associations, he had bought history. He had bought the dust of Elizabeth's senators, the bones of her court beauties. The coffins in the Mausoleum yonder in the ferny depths of the Park, the village church just outside the gates—these had all gone with the property.

Lesbia went up the grand staircase, through the long corridors, in a dream of wonder. Brought up at Fellside, in that new part of the Westmoreland house which had been built by her grandmother and had no history, she felt thrilled by the sober splendour of this fine old manorial mansion. All was sound and substantial, as if created yesterday, so well preserved had been the goods and chattels of the noble race; and yet all wore such unmistakeable marks of age. The deep rich colouring of the wainscot, the faded hues of the tapestry, the draperies of costliest velvet and brocade, were all sobered by the passing of years.

Mr. Smithson had shown his good taste in having kept all things as Sir Hubert Heronville, the last of his race, had left them; and the Heronvilles had been one of those grand old Tory races which change nothing of the past.

Lady Lesbia's bedroom was the State chamber, which had been occupied by kings and queens in days of yore. That grandiose four-poster, with the carved ebony columns, cut velvet curtains, and plumes of ostrich feathers, had been built for Elizabeth, when she deigned to include Rood Hall in one of her royal progresses. Charles the First had rested his weary head upon those very pillows, before he went on to the Inn at Uxbridge, where he was to be lodged less luxuriously. James the Second had stayed there when Duke of York, with Mistress Anne Hyde, before he acknowledged his marriage to the multitude; and Anne's daughter had occupied the same room as Queen of England forty years later; and now the Royal Chamber, with adjacent dressing-room, and oratory, and spacious boudoir all in the same suite, was reserved for Lady Lesbia Haselden.

'I'm afraid you are spoiling me,' she told Mr. Smithson, when he asked if she approved of the rooms that had been allotted to her. 'I feel quite ashamed of myself among the ghosts of dead and gone queens.'

'Why so? Surely the Royalty of beauty has as divine a right as that of an anointed sovereign.'

'I hope the Royal personages don't walk,' exclaimed Lady Kirkbank, in her girlish tone; 'this is just the house in which one would expect ghosts.'

Whereupon Mrs. Mostyn hastened to enlighten the company upon the real causes of ghost-seeing, which she had lately studied in Carpenter's 'Mental Physiology,' and favoured them with a diluted version of the views of that authority.

This was at afternoon tea in the library, where the brass-wired bookcases, filled with mighty folios and handsome octavos in old bindings, looked as if they had not been opened for a century. The literature of past ages furnished the room, and made a delightful background. The literature of the present lay about on the tables, and testified that the highest intellectual flight of the inhabitants of Rood Hall was a dip into the Contemporary or the Nineteenth Century, or the perusal of the last new scandal in the shape of Reminiscences or Autobiography. One large round table was consecrated to Mudie, another to Rolandi. On the one side you had Mrs. Oliphant, on the other Zola, exemplifying the genius of the two nations.

After tea Mr. Smithson's visitors, most of whom had arrived in Sir George's drag, explored the grounds. These were lovely beyond expression in the low afternoon light. Cedars of Lebanon spread their broad shadows on the velvet lawn, yews and Wellingtonias of mighty growth made an atmosphere of gloom in some parts of the grounds. One great feature was the Ladies' Garden, a spot apart, a great square garden surrounded with a laurel wall, eight feet high, containing a rose garden, where the choicest specimens grew and flourished, while in the centre there was a circular fish-pond with a fountain. There was a Lavender Walk too, another feature of the grounds at Rood Hall, an avenue of tall lavender bushes, much affected by the stately dames of old.

Modern manners preferred the river terrace, as a pleasant place on which to loiter after dinner, to watch the boats flashing by in the evening light, or the sun going down behind a fringe of willows on the opposite bank. This Italian terrace, with its statues, and carved vases filled with roses, fuchsias, and geraniums, was the great point of rendezvous at Rood Hall—an ideal spot whereon to linger in the deepening twilight, from which to gaze upon the moonlit river later on in the night.

The windows of the drawing-room, and music-room, and ballroom opened on to this terrace, and the royal wing—the tower-shaped wing now devoted to Lady Lesbia, looked upon the terrace and the river.

'Lovely, as your house is altogether, I think this river view is the best part of it,' said Lady Lesbia, as she strolled with Mr. Smithson on the terrace after dinner, dressed in Indian muslin which was almost as poetical as a vapour, and with a cloud of delicate lace wrapped round her head. 'I think I shall spend half of my life at my boudoir window, gloating over that delicious landscape.'

Horace Meander, the poet, was discoursing to a select group upon that peculiar quality of willows which causes them to shiver, and quiver, and throw little lights and shadows on the river, and on the subtle, ineffable beauty of twilight, which perhaps, however utterly beautiful in the abstract, would have been more agreeable to him personally if he had not been surrounded by a cloud of gnats, which refused to be buffeted off his laurel-crowned head.

While Mr. Meander poetised in his usual eloquent style, Mrs. Mostyn, as a still newer light, discoursed as eloquently to little a knot of women, imparting valuable information upon the anatomical structure and individual peculiarities of those various insects which are the pests of a summer evening.

'You don't like gnats!' exclaimed the lady; 'how very extraordinary. Do you know I have spent days and weeks upon the study of their habits and dear little ways. They are the most interesting creatures—far superior to us in intellect. Do you know that they fight, and that they have tribes which are life-long enemies—like those dreadful Corsicans—and that they make little sepulchres in the bark of trees, and bury each other—alive, if they can; and they hold vestries, and have burial boards. They are most absorbing creatures, if you only give yourself up to the study of them; but it is no use to be half-hearted in a study of that kind. I went without so much as a cup of tea for twenty-four hours, watching my gnats, for fear the opening of the door should startle them. Another time I shall make the nursery governess watch for me.'

'How interesting, how noble of you,' exclaimed the other ladies; and then they began to talk about bonnets, and about Mr. Smithson, to speculate how much money this house and all his other houses had cost him, and to wonder if he was really rich, or if he were only one of those great financial windbags which so often explode and leave the world aghast, marvelling at the ease with which it has been deluded.

They wondered, too, whether Lady Lesbia Haselden meant to marry him.

'Of course she does, my dear,' answered Mrs. Mostyn, decisively.

'You don't suppose that after having studied the habits of gnats I cannot read such a poor shallow creature as a silly vain girl. Of course Lady Lesbia means to marry Mr. Smithson's fine houses; and she is only amusing herself and swelling her own importance by letting him dangle in a kind of suspense which is not suspense; for he knows as well as she does that she means to have him.'

The next day was given up, first to seeing the house, an amusement which lasted very well for an hour or so after breakfast, and then to wandering in a desultory manner, to rowing and canoeing, and a little sailing, and a good deal of screaming and pretty timidity upon the blue bright river; to gathering wild flowers and ferns in rustic lanes, and to an al fresco luncheon in the wood at Medmenham, and then dinner, and then music, an evening spent half within and half without the music-room, cigarettes sparkling, like glowworms on the terrace, tall talk from Mr. Meander, long quotations from his own muse and that of Rossetti, a little Shelley, a little Keats, a good deal of Swinburne. The festivities were late on this second evening, as Mr. Smithson had invited a good many people from the neighbourhood, but the house party were not the less early on the following morning, which was the first Henley day.

It was a peerless morning, and all the brasswork of Mr. Smithson's launch sparkled and shone in the sun, as she lay in front of the terrace. A wooden pier, a portable construction, was thrown out from the terrace steps, to enable the company to go on board the launch without the possibility of wet feet or damaged raiment.

Lesbia's Chaumount costume was a success. The women praised it, the men stared and admired. The dark-blue silken jersey, sparkling with closely studded indigo beads, fitted the slim graceful figure as a serpent's scales fit the serpent. The coquettish little blue silk toque, the careless cluster of gold-coloured poppies, against the glossy brown hair, the large sunshade of old gold satin lined with indigo, the flounced petticoat of softest Indian silk, the dainty little tan-coloured boots with high heels and pointed toes, were all perfect after their fashion; and Mr. Smithson felt that the liege lady of his life, the woman he meant to marry willy nilly, would be the belle of the race-course. Nor was he disappointed. Everybody in London had heard of Lady Lesbia Haselden. Her photograph was in all the West-End windows, was enshrined in the albums of South Kensington and Clapham, Maida Vale and Haverstock Hill. People whose circles were far remote from Lady Lesbia's circle, were as familiar with her beauty as if they had known her from her cradle. And all these outsiders wanted to see her in the flesh, just as they always thirst to behold Royal personages. So when it became known that the beautiful Lady Lesbia Haselden was on board Mr. Smithson's launch, all the people in the small boats, or on neighbouring barges, made it their business if have a good look at her. The launch was almost mobbed by those inquisitive little boats in the intervals between the races.

'What are the people all staring and hustling one another for?' asked Lesbia, innocently. She had seen the same hustling and whispering and staring in the hall at the opera, when she was waiting for her carriage; but she chose to affect unconsciousness. 'What do they all want?'

'I think they want to see you,' said Mr. Smithson, who was sitting by her side. 'A very natural desire.'

Lesbia laughed, and lowered the big yellow sunshade, so as to hide herself altogether from the starers.

'How silly!' she exclaimed. 'It is all the fault of those horrid photographers: they vulgarise everything and everybody. I will never be photographed again.'

'Oh yes, you will, and in that frock. It's the prettiest thing I've seen for a long time. Why do you hide yourself from those poor wretches, who keep rowing backwards and forwards in an obviously aimless way, just to get a peep at you en passant? What happiness for us who live near you, and can gaze when we will, without all those absurd manoeuvres. There goes the signal—and now for a hard-fought race.'

Lesbia pretended to be interested in the racing—she pretended to be gay, but her heart was as heavy as lead. The burden of debt, which had been growing ever since Seraphine sent in her bill, was weighing her down to the dust.

She owed three thousand pounds. It seemed incredible that she should owe so much, that a girl's frivolous fancies and extravagances could amount to such a sum within so short a span. But thoughtless purchases, ignorant orders, had run on from week to week, and the main result was an indebtedness of close upon three thousand pounds.

Three thousand pounds! The sum was continually sounding in her ears like the cry of a screech owl. The very ripple of the river flowing so peacefully under the blue summer sky seemed to repeat the words. Three thousand pounds! 'Is it much?' she wondered, having no standard of comparison. 'Is it very much more than my grandmother will expect me to have spent in the time? Will it trouble her to have to pay those bills? Will she be very angry?'

These were questions which Lesbia kept asking herself, in every pause of her frivolous existence; in such a pause as this, for instance, while the people round her were standing breathless, open-mouthed, gazing after the boats. She did not care a straw for the boats, who won, or who lost the race. It was all a hollow mockery. Indeed it seemed just now that the only real thing in life was those accursed bills, which would have to be paid somehow.

She had told Lady Maulevrier nothing about them as yet. She had allowed herself to be advised by Lady Kirkbank, and she had taken time to think. But thought had given her no help. The days were gliding onward, and Lady Maulevrier would have to be told.

She meditated perplexedly about her grandmother's income. She had never heard the extent of it, but had taken for granted that Lady Maulevrier was rich. Would three thousand pounds make a great inroad on that income? Would it be a year's income?—half a year's? Lesbia had no idea. Life at Fellside was carried on in an elegant manner—with considerable luxury in house and garden—a luxury of flowers, a lavish expenditure of labour. Yet the expenditure of Lady Maulevrier's existence, spent always on the same spot, must be as nothing to the money spent in such a life as Lady Kirkbank's, which involved the keeping up of three or four houses, and costly journeys to and fro, and incessant change of attire.

No doubt Lady Maulevrier had saved money; yes, she must have saved thousands during her long seclusion, Lesbia argued. Her grandmother had told her that she was to look upon herself as an heiress. This could only mean that Lady Maulevrier had a fortune to leave her; and this being so, what could it matter if she had anticipated some of her portion? And yet there was in her heart of hearts a terrible fear of that stern dowager, of the cold scorn in those splendid eyes when she should stand revealed in all her foolishness, her selfish, mindless, vain extravagances. She, who had never been reproved, shrank with a sickly dread from the idea of reproof. And to be told that her career as a fashionable beauty had been a failure! That would be the bitterest pang of all.

Soon came luncheon, and Heidseck, and then an afternoon which was gayer than the morning had been, inasmuch as every one babbled and laughed more after luncheon. And then there was five o'clock tea on deck, under the striped Japanese awning, to the jingle of banjos, enlivened by the wit of black-faced minstrels, amidst wherries and canoes and gondolas, and ponderous houseboats, and snorting launches, crowding the sides of the sunlit river, in full view of the crowd yonder in front of the Red Lion, and here on this nearer bank, and all along either shore, fringing the green meadows with a gaudy border of smartly-dressed humanity.

It was a gay scene, and Lesbia gave herself up to the amusement of the hour, and talked and chaffed as she had learned to talk and chaff in one brief season, holding her own against all comers.

Rood Hall looked lovely when they went back to it in the gloaming, an Elizabethan pile crowned with towers. The four wings with their conical roofs, the massive projecting windows, grey stone, ruddy brickwork, lattices reflecting the sunlight, Italian terrace and blue river in the foreground, cedars and yews at the back, all made a splendid picture of an English ancestral home.

'Nice old place, isn't it?' asked Mr. Smithson, seeing Lesbia's admiring gaze as the launch neared the terrace. They two were standing in the bows, apart from all the rest.

'Nice! it is simply perfect.'

'Oh no, it isn't. There is one thing wanted yet.'

'What is that?'

'A wife. You are the only person who can make any house of mine perfect. Will you?' He took her hand, which she did not withdraw from his grasp. He bent his head and kissed the little hand in its soft Swedish glove.

'Will you, Lesbia?' he repeated earnestly; and she answered softly, 'Yes.'

That one brief syllable was more like a sigh than a spoken word, and it seemed to her as if in the utterance of that syllable the three thousand pounds had been paid.



CHAPTER XXXI.

'KIND IS MY LOVE TO-DAY, TO-MORROW KIND.'

While Lady Lesbia was draining the cup of London folly and London care to the dregs, Lady Mary was leading her usual quiet life beside the glassy lake, where the green hill-sides and sheep walks were reflected in all their summer verdure under the cloudless azure of a summer sky. A monotonous life—passing dull as seen from the outside—and yet Mary was very happy, happy even in her solitude, with the grave deep joy of a satisfied heart, a mind at rest. All life had taken a new colour since her engagement to John Hammond. A sense of new duties, an awakening earnestness had given a graver tone to her character. Her spirits were less wild, yet not less joyous than of old. The joy was holier, deeper.

Her lover's letters were the chief delight of her lonely days. To read them again and again, and ponder upon them, and then to pour out all her heart and mind in answering them. These were pleasures enough for her young like. Hammond's letters were such as any woman might be proud to receive. They were not love-letters only. He wrote as friend to friend; not descending from the proud pinnacle of masculine intelligence to the lower level of feminine silliness; not writing down to a simple country girl's capacity; but writing-fully and fervently, as if there were no subject too lofty or too grave for the understanding of his betrothed. He wrote as one sure of being sympathised with, wrote as to his second self: and Mary showed herself not unworthy of the honour thus rendered to her intellect.

There was one world which had newly opened to Mary since her engagement, and that was the world of politics. Hammond had told her that his ambition was to succeed as a politician—to do some good in his day as one of the governing body; and of late she had made it her business to learn how England and the world outside England were governed.

She had no natural leaning to the study of political economy. Instead, she had always imagined any question relating to the government of her country to be inherently dry-as-dust and uninviting. But had John Hammond devoted his days to the study of Coptic manuscripts, or the arrow headed inscriptions upon Assyrian tablets, she would have toiled her hardest in the endeavour to make herself a Coptic scholar, or an adept in the cuneiform characters. If he had been a student of Chinese, she would not have been discomfited by such a trifle as the fifty thousand characters in the Chinese alphabet.

And so, as he was to make his name in the arena of public life, she set herself to acquire a proper understanding of the science of politics; and to this end she gorged herself with English history,—Hume, Hallam, Green, Justin McCarthy, Palgrave, Lecky, from the days of Witenagemote to the Reform Bill; the Repeal of the Corn Laws, the Disestablishment of the Irish Church, Ballot, Trade Unionism, and unreciprocated Free Trade. No question was deep enough to repel her; for was not her lover interested in the dryest thereof; and what concerned him and his welfare must needs be full of interest for her.

To this end she read the debates religiously day by day; and she one day ventured shyly to suggest that she should read them aloud to Lady Maulevrier.

'Would it not be a little rest for you if I were to read your Times aloud to you every afternoon, grandmother?' she asked. 'You read so many books, French, English, and German, and I think your eyes must get a little tired sometimes.'

Mary ventured the remark with some timidity, for those falcon eyes were fixed upon her all the time, bright and clear and steady as the eyes of youth. It seemed almost an impertinence to suggest that such eyes could know weariness.

'No, Mary, my sight, holds out wonderfully for an old woman,' replied her ladyship, gently. 'The new theory of the last oculist whose book I dipped into—a very amusing and interesting book, by-the-bye—is that the sight improves and strengthens by constant use, and that an agricultural labourer, who hardly uses his eyes at all, has rarely in the decline of life so good a sight as the watchmaker or the student. I have read immensely all my life, and find myself no worse for that indulgence. But you may read the debates to me if you like, my dear, for if my eyes are strong, I myself am very tired. Sick to death, Mary, sick to death.'

The splendid eyes turned from Mary, and looked away to the blue sky, to the hills in their ineffable beauty of colour and light—shifting, changing with every moment of the summer day. Intense weariness, a settled despair, were expressed in that look—tearless, yet sadder than all tears.

'It must be very monotonous, very sad for you,' murmured Mary, her own eyes brimming over with tears. 'But it will not be always so, dear grandmother. I hope a time will come when you will be able to go about again, to resume your old life.'

'I do not hope, Mary. No, child, I feel and know that time will never come. My strength is ebbing slowly day by day. If I live for another year, live to see Lesbia married, and you, too, perhaps—well, I shall die at peace. At peace, no; not——' she faltered, and the thin, semi-transparent hand was pressed upon her brow. 'What will be said of me when I am dead?'

Mary feared that her grandmother's mind was wandering. She came and knelt beside the couch, laid and her head against the satin pillows, tenderly, caressingly.

'Dear grandmother, pray be calm,' she murmured.

'Mary, do not look at me like that, as if you would read my heart. There are hearts that must not be looked into. Mine is like a charnel-house. Monotonous, yes; my life has been monotonous. No conventual gloom was ever deeper than the gloom of Fellside. My boy did nothing to lighten it for me, and his son followed in his father's footsteps. You and Lesbia have been my only consolation. Lesbia! I was so proud of her beauty, so proud and fond of her, because she was like me, and recalled my own youth. And see how easily she forgets me. She has gone into a new world, in which my age and my infirmities have no part; and I am as nothing to her.'

Mary changed from red to pale, so painful was her embarrassment. What could she say in defence of her sister? How could she deny that Lesbia was an ingrate, when those rare and hurried letters, so careless in their tone, expressing the selfishness of the writer in every syllable, told but too plainly of forgetfulness and ingratitude?

'Dear grandmother, Lesbia has so much to do—her life is so full of engagements,' she faltered feebly.

'Yes, she goes from party to party—she gives herself up heart and mind and soul to pleasures which she ought to consider only as the trivial means to great ends; and she forgets the woman who reared her, and cared for her, and watched over her from her infancy, and who tried to inspire her with a noble ambition.—Yes, read to me, child, read. Give me new thoughts, if you can, for my brain is weary with grinding the old ones. There was a grand debate in the Lords last night, and Lord Hartfield spoke. Let me hear his speech. You can read what was said by the man before him; never mind the rest.'

Mary read Lord Somebody's speech, which was passing dull, but which prepared the ground for a magnificent and exhaustive reply from Lord Hartfield. The question was an important one, affecting the well-being of the masses, and Lord Hartfield spoke with an eloquence which rose in force and fire as he wound himself like a serpent into the heart of his subject—beginning quietly, soberly, with no opening flashes of rhetoric, but rising gradually to the topmost heights of oratory.

'What a speech!' cried Lady Maulevrier, delighted, her cheeks glowing, her eyes kindling; 'what a noble fellow the speaker must be! Oh, Mary, I must tell you a secret. I loved that man's father. Yes, my dear, I loved him fondly, dearly, truly, as you love that young man of yours; and he was the only man I ever really loved. Fate parted us. But I have never forgotten him—never, Mary, never. At this moment I have but to close my eyes and I can see his face—see him looking at me as he looked the last time we met. He was a younger son, poor, his future quite hopeless in those days; but it was not my fault we were parted. I would have married him—yes, wedded poverty, just as you are going to marry this Mr. Hammond; but my people would not let me; and I was too young, too helpless, to make a good fight. Oh, Mary, if I had only fought hard enough, what a happy woman I might have been, and how good a wife.'

'You were a good wife to my grandfather, I am sure,' faltered Mary, by way of saying something consolatory.

A dark frown came over Lady Maulevrier's face, which had softened to deepest tenderness just before.

'A good wife to Maulevrier,' she said, in a mocking tone. Well, yes, as good a wife as such a husband deserved. 'I was better than Caesar's wife, Mary, for no breath of suspicion ever rested upon my name. But if I had married Ronald Hollister, I should have been a happy woman; and that I have never been since I parted from him.'

'You have never seen the present Lord Hartfield, I think?'

'Never; but I have watched his career, I have thought of him. His father died while he was an infant, and he was brought up in seclusion by a widowed mother, who kept him tied to her apron-strings till he went to Oxford. She idolised him, and I am told she taught herself Latin and Greek, mathematics even, in order to help him in his boyish, studies, and, later on, read Greek plays and Latin poetry with him, till she became an exceptional classic for a woman. She was her son's companion and friend, sympathised with his tastes, his pleasures, his friendships; devoted every hour of her life, every thought of her mind to his welfare, his interests, walked with him, rode with him, travelled half over Europe, yachted with him. Her friends all declared that the lad would grow up an odious milksop; but I am told that there never was a manlier man than Lord Hartfield. From his boyhood he was his mother's protector, helped to administer her affairs, acquired a premature sense of responsibility, and escaped almost all those vices which make young men detestable. His mother died within a few months of his majority. He was broken-hearted at losing her, and left Europe immediately after her death. From that time he has been a great traveller. But I suppose now that he has taken his seat in the House of Lords, and has spoken a good many times, he means to settle down and take his place among the foremost men of his day. I am told that he is worthy to take such a place.'

'You must feel warmly interested in watching his career,' said Mary, sympathetically.

'I am interested in everything that concerns him. I will tell you another secret, Mary. I think I am getting into my dotage, my dear, or I should hardly talk to you like this,' said Lady Maulevrier, with a touch of bitterness.

Mary was sitting on a stool by the sofa, close to the invalid's pillow. She clasped her grandmother's hand and kissed it fondly.

'Dear grandmother, I think you are talking to me like this to-day because you are beginning to care for me a little,' she said, tenderly.

'Oh, my dear, you are very good, very sweet and forgiving to care for me at all, after my neglect of you,' answered Lady Maulevrier, with a sigh. 'I have kept you out in the cold so long, Mary. Lesbia—well, Lesbia has been a kind of infatuation for me, and like all infatuations mine has ended in disappointment and bitterness. Ambition has been the bane of my life, Mary; and when I could no longer be ambitious for myself—when my own existence had become a mere death in life, I began to dream and to scheme for the aggrandisement of my granddaughter. Lesbia's beauty, Lesbia's elegance seemed to make success certain—and so I dreamt my dream—which may never be fulfilled.'

'What was your dream, grandmother? May I know all about it?'

'That was the secret I spoke of just now. Yes, Mary, you may know, for I fear the dream will never be realised. I wanted my Lesbia to become Lord Hartfield's wife. I would have brought them together myself, could I have but gone to London; but, failing that, I fancied Lady Kirkbank would have divined my wishes without being told them, and would have introduced Hartfield to Lesbia; and now the London season is drawing to a close, and Hartfield and Lesbia have never met. He hardly goes anywhere, I am told. He devotes himself exclusively to politics; and he is not in Lady Kirkbank's set. A terrible disappointment to me, Mary!'

'It is a pity,' said Mary. 'Lesbia is so lovely. If Lord Hartfield were fancy-free he ought to fall in love with her, could they but meet. I thought that in London all fashionable people knew each other, and were continually meeting.'

'It used to be so in my day, Mary. Almack's was a common ground, even if there had been no other. But now there are circles and circles, I believe, rings that touch occasionally, but never break and mingle. I am afraid poor Georgie's set is not quite so nice as I could have wished. Yet Lesbia writes as if she were in raptures with her chaperon, and with all the people she meets. And then Georgie tells me that this Mr. Smithson whom Lesbia has refused is a very important personage, a millionaire, and very likely to be made a peer.'

'A new peer,' said Mary, making a wry face. 'One would rather have an old commoner. I always fancy a newly-made peer must be like a newly-built house, glaring, and staring, and arid and uncongenial.'

'C'est selon,' said Lady Maulevrier. 'One would not despise a Chatham or a Wellington because of the newness of his title; but a man who has only money to recommend him——'

Lady Maulevrier left her sentence unfinished, save by a shrug; while Mary made another wry face. She had that grand contempt for sordid wealth which is common to young people who have never known the want of money.

'I hope Lesbia will marry some one better than Mr. Smithson,' she said.

'I hope so too, dear; and yet do you know I have an idea that Lesbia means to accept Mr. Smithson, or she would hardly have consented to go to his house for the Henley week. Here is a letter from Georgie Kirkbank which you will have to answer for me to-morrow—a letter full of raptures about Mr. Smithson's place in Berkshire, Rood Hall. I remember the house well. I was there nearly fifty years ago, when the Heronvilles owned it; and now the Heronvilles are all dead or ruined, and this city person is master of the fine old mansion. It is a strange world, Mary.'

From that time forward Mary and her grandmother were on more confidential terms, and when, two days later, Fellside was startled into life by the unexpected arrival of Lord Maulevrier and Mr. Hammond, the dowager seemed almost as pleased as her granddaughter at the arrival of the young men.

As for Mary, she was almost beside herself with joy when she heard their voices from the lawn, and, rushing to the shrubbery, saw them walk up the hill, as she had seen them on that first evening nearly a year ago, when John Hammond came as a stranger to Fellside.

She tried to take her joy soberly, though her eyes were dancing with delight, as she went to the porch to meet them.

'What extraordinary young men you are,' she said, as she emerged breathless from her lover's embrace. 'The idea of your descending upon us without a moment's notice. Why did you not write or telegraph, that your rooms might be ready?'

'Am I to understand that all the spare rooms at Fellside are kept as damp as at the bottom of the lake?' asked Maulevrier.

'I did not think any preparation was necessary; but we can go back if we're not wanted, can't we, Jack?'

'You darling,' cried Mary, hanging affectionately upon her brother's arm. 'You know I was only joking, you know how enraptured I am to have you.'

'To have me, only me,' said Maulevrier. 'Jack doesn't count, I suppose?'

'You know how glad I am, and that I want to hide my gladness,' answered Mary, radiant and blushing like the rich red roses in the porch. 'You men are so vain. And now come and see grandmother, she will be cheered by your arrival. She has been so good to me just lately, so sweet.'

'She might have been good and sweet to you all your life,' said Hammond. 'I am not prepared to be grateful to her at a moment's notice for any crumbs of affection she may throw you.'

'Oh but you must be grateful, sir; and you must love her and pity her,' retorted Mary. 'Think how sadly she has suffered. We cannot be too kind to her, or too fond of her, poor dear.'

'Mary is right,' said Hammond, half in jest and half in earnest. 'What wonderful instincts these young women have.'

'Come and see her ladyship; and then you must have dinner, just as you had that first evening,' said Mary. 'We'll act that first evening over again, Jack; only you can't fall in love with Lesbia, as she isn't here.'

'I don't think I surrendered that first evening, Mary. Though I thought your sister the loveliest girl I had ever seen.'

'And what did you think of me, sir? Tell me that,' said Mary.

'Shall I tell you the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?'

'Of course.'

'Then I freely confess that I did not think about you at all. You were there—a pretty, innocent, bright young maiden, with big brown eyes and auburn hair; but I thought no more about you than I did about the Gainsborough on the wall, which you very much resemble.'

'That is most humiliating,' said Mary, pouting a little in the midst of her bliss.

'No, dearest, it is only natural,' answered Hammond. 'I believe if all the happy lovers in this world could be questioned, at least half of them would confess to having thought very little about each other at first meeting. They meet, and touch hands, and part again, and never guess the mystery of the future, which wraps them round like a cloud, never say of each other, There is my fate; and then they meet again, and again, as hazard wills, and never know that they are drifting to their doom.'

Mary rang bells and gave orders, just as she had done in that summer gloaming a year ago. The young men had arrived just at the same hour, on the stroke of nine, when the eight o'clock dinner was over and done with; for a tete-a-tete meal with Fraeulein Mueller was not a feast to be prolonged on account of its felicity. Perhaps they had so contrived as to arrive exactly at this hour.

Lady Maulevrier received them both with extreme cordiality. But the young men saw a change for the worse in the invalid since the spring. The face was thinner, the eyes too bright, the flush upon the hollow cheek had a hectic tinge, the voice was feebler. Hammond was reminded of a falcon or an eagle pining and wasting in a cage.

'I am very glad to see you, Mr. Hammond,' said Lady Maulevrier, giving him her hand, and addressing him with unwonted cordiality. 'It was a happy thought that brought you and Maulevrier here. When an old woman is as near the grave as I am her relatives ought to look after her. I shall be glad to have a little private conversation with you to-morrow, Mr. Hammond, if you can spare me a few minutes.'

'As many hours, if your ladyship pleases,' said Hammond. 'My time is entirely at your service.'

'Oh, no, you will want to be roaming about the hills with Mary, discussing your plans for the future. I shall not encroach too much on your time. But I am very glad you are here.'

'We shall only trespass on you for a few days,' said Maulevrier, 'just a flying visit.'

'How is it that you are not both at Henley?' asked Mary. 'I thought all the world was at Henley.'

'Who is Henley? what is Henley?' demanded Maulevrier, pretending ignorance.

'I believe Maulevrier has lost so much money backing, his college boat on previous occasions that he is glad to run away from the regatta this year,' said Hammond.

'I have a sister there,' replied his friend. 'That's an all-sufficient explanation. When a fellow's women-kind take to going to races and regattas it is high time for him to stop away.'

'Have you seen Lesbia lately?' asked his grandmother.

'About ten days ago.'

'And did she seem happy?'

Maulevrier shrugged his shoulders.

'She was vacillating between the refusal or the acceptance of a million of money and four or five fine houses. I don't know whether that condition of mind means happiness. I should call it an intermediate state.'

'Why do you make silly jokes about serious questions? Do you think Lesbia means to accept this Mr. Smithson?'

'All London thinks so.'

'And is he a good man?'

'Good for a hundred thousand pounds at half an hour's notice.'

'Is he worthy of your sister?'

Maulevrier paused, looked at his grandmother with a curious expression, and then replied—

'I think he is—quite.'

'Then I am content that she should marry him,' said Lady Maulevrier, 'although he is a nobody.'

'Oh, but he is a very important nobody, a nobody who can get a peerage next year, backed by the Maulevrier influence, which I suppose would count for something.'

'Most of my friends are dead,' said Lady Maulevrier, 'but there are a few survivors of the past who might help me.'

'I don't think there'll be any difficulty or doubt about the peerage. Smithson stumped up very handsomely at the last General Election, and the Conservatives are not strong enough to be ungrateful. "These have, no master."'



CHAPTER XXXII.

WAYS AND MEANS.

The three days that followed were among the happiest days of Mary Haselden's young life. Lady Maulevrier had become strangely indulgent. A softening influence of some kind had worked upon that haughty spirit, and it seemed as if her whole nature was changed—or it might be, Mary thought, that this softer side of her character had always been turned to Lesbia, while to Mary herself it was altogether new. Lesbia had been the peach on the sunny southern wall, ripening and reddening in a flood of sunshine; Mary had been the stunted fruit growing in a north-east corner, hidden among leaves, blown upon by cold winds green and hard and sour for lack of the warm bright light. And now Mary felt the sunshine, and grew glad and gay in those glowing beams.

'Dear grandmother, I believe you are beginning to love me,' she said, bending over to arrange the invalid's pillows in the July morning, the fresh mountain air blowing in upon old and young from the great open window, like a caress.

'I am beginning to know you,' answered Lady Maulevrier, gently.

'I think it is the magic of love, Mary, that has sweetened and softened your nature, and endeared you to me. I think you have grown ever so much sweeter a girl since your engagement. Or it may be that you were the same always, and it was I who was blind. Lesbia was all in all to me. All in all—and now I am nothing to her,' she murmured, to herself rather than to Mary.

'I am so proud to think that you see an improvement in me since my engagement,' said Mary, modestly. 'I have tried very hard to improve myself, so that I might be more worthy of him.'

'You are worthy, Mary, worthy of the best and the highest: and I believe that, although you are making what the world calls a very bad match, you are marrying wisely. You are wedding yourself to a life of obscurity; but what does that matter, if it be a happy life? I have known what it is to pursue the phantom fortune, and to find youth and hope and happiness vanish from the pathway which I followed.'

'Dear grandmother, I wish you had been able to marry the man of your choice,' answered Mary, tenderly.

She was ready to weep over that wasted life of her grandmother's; to weep for that forced parting of true lovers, albeit the tragedy was half a century old.

'I should have been a happier woman and a better woman if fate had been kind to me, Mary,' answered Lady Maulevrier, gravely; 'and now that I am daily drawing nearer the land of shadows, I will not stand in the way of faithful lovers. I have a fancy, Mary, that I have not many months to live.'

'Only an invalid's fancy,' said Mary, stooping down to kiss the pale forehead, so full of thought and care; 'only a morbid fancy, nursed in the monotony of this quiet room. Maulevrier and Jack and I must find some way of amusing you.'

'You will never amuse me out of that conviction, my dear. I can see the shadows lengthening and the sands running out. There are but a few grains left in the glass, Mary; and while those last I should like to see you and Mr. Hammond married. I should like to feel that your fate is settled before I go. God knows what confusion and trouble may follow my death.'

This was said with a sharp ring of despair.

'I am not going to leave you, grandmother,' said Mary.

'Not even for the man you love? You are a good girl, Mary. Lesbia has forsaken me for a lesser temptation.'

'Grandmother, that is hardly fair. It was your own wish to have Lesbia presented this season,' remonstrated Mary, loyal to the absent.

'True, my dear. I saw she was very tired of her life here, and I thought it was better. But I'm sorely afraid London has spoiled her. No, Mary, you can stay with me to the end, if you like. There is room enough for you and your husband under this roof. I like this Mr. Hammond. His is the only face that ever recalled the face of the dead. Yes, I like him; and although I know nothing about him except what Maulevrier tells me—and that is of the scantiest—still I feel, somehow, that I can trust him. Send your lover to me, Mary. I want to have a serious talk with him.'

Mary ran off to obey, fluttered, blushing, and trembling. This idea of marriage in the immediate future was to be the last degree startling. A year had seemed a very long time; and she had been told that she and her lover must wait a year at the very least; so that vision of marriage had seemed afar off in the dim shadowland of the future. She had been told nothing by her lover of where she was to live, or what her life was to be like when she was his wife. And now she was told that they were to be married almost immediately, that they were to live in the house where she had been reared, in that familiar land of hills and waters, that they were to roam about the dales and mountains together, they two, as man and wife. The whole thing was wonderful, bewildering, impossible almost.

This was on the first morning after Mr. Hammond's arrival. Maulevrier had gone off to hunt the Rotha for otters, and was up to his waist in the water, no doubt, by this time. Hammond was strolling up and down the terrace in front of the house, looking at the green expanse of Fairfield, the dark bulk of Seat Sandal, the nearer crests of Helm Crag and Silver Howe.

'You are to come to her ladyship directly, please,' said Mary, going up to him.

He took both her hands, drew her nearer to him, smiling down at her. They had been sitting side by side at the breakfast table half-an-hour ago, he waiting upon her as she poured out the tea; yet by his tender greeting and the delight in his face it might have been supposed they had not met for weeks. Such are the sweet inanities of love.

'What does her ladyship want with me, darling? and why are you blushing?' he asked.

'I—I think she is going to talk about—our—marriage,' faltered Mary.

'"Why, I will talk to her upon this theme until mine eyelids can no longer wag,"' quoted Hammond. 'Take me to her, Mary. I hope her ladyship is growing sensible.'

'She is very kind, very sweet. She has changed so much of late.'

Mary went with him to the door of her ladyship's sitting-room, and there left him to go in alone. She went to the library—that room over which a gloomy shadow seemed to have hung ever since that awful winter afternoon when Mary found Lady Maulevrier lying on the floor in the twilight. But it was a noble room, and in her studious hours Mary loved to sit here, walled round with books, and able to consult or dip into as many volumes as she liked. To-day, however, her mind was not attuned to study. She sat with a volume of Macaulay open before her: but her thoughts were not with the author. She was wondering what those two were saying in the room overhead, and finding all attempts at reading futile, she let her head sink back upon the cushion of her deep luxurious chair, and sat with her dreamy eyes fixed on the summer landscape and her thoughts with her lover.

Lady Maulevrier looked very wan and tired in the bright morning light, when Mr. Hammond seated himself beside her sofa. The change in her appearance since the spring was more marked to-day than it had seemed to him last night in the dim lamplight. Yes, there was need hero for a speedy settlement of air earthly matters. The traveller was nearing the mysterious end of the journey. The summons might come at any hour.

'Mr. Hammond, I feel a confidence in your integrity, your goodness of heart, and high principle which I never thought I could feel for a man of whom I know so little,' began Lady Maulevrier, gravely. 'All I know of you or your antecedents is what my grandson has told me—and I must say that the information so given has been very meagre. And yet I believe in you—and yet I am going to trust you, wholly, blindly, implicitly—and I am going to give you my granddaughter, ever so much sooner than I intended to give her to you. Soon, very soon, if you will have her!'

'I will have her to-morrow, if there is time to get a special licence,' exclaimed Hammond, bending down to kiss the dowager's hand, radiant with delight.

'You shall marry her very soon, if you like, marry her by special licence, in this room. I should like to see your wedding. I have a strange impatience to behold one of my granddaughters happily married, to know that her future is secure, that come weal, come woe, she is safe in the protection of a brave true man. I am not scared by the idea of a little poverty. That is often the best education for youth. But while you and I are alone we may as well talk about ways and means. Perhaps you may hardly feel prepared to take upon yourself the burden of a wife this year.'

'As well this year as next. I am not afraid.'

'Young men are so rash. However, as long as I live your responsibilities will be only nominal. This house will be Mary's home, and yours whenever you are able to occupy it. Of course I should not like to interfere with your professional efforts—but if you are cultivating literature,—why books can be written at Fellside better than in London. This lakeland of ours has been the nursery of deathless writers. But I feel that my days are numbered—and when I am dead—well death is always a cause of change and trouble of some kind, and Mary will profit very little by my death. The bulk of my fortune is left to Lesbia. I have taught her to consider herself my heiress; and it would be unjust to alter my will.'

'Pray do not dream of such a thing—there is no need—Mary will be rich enough,' exclaimed Hammond, hastily.

'With five hundred a year and the fruits of your industry,' said Lady Maulevrier. 'Yes, yes, with modest aspirations and simple habits, people can live happily, honourably, on a few hundreds a year. And if you really mean to devote yourself to literature, and do not mind burying yourself alive in this lake district until you have made your name as a writer, why the problem of ways and means will be easily solved.'

'Dear Lady Maulevrier, I am not afraid of ways and means. That is the last question which need trouble you. I told Lesbia when I offered myself to her nearly a year ago, that if she would trust me, if she would cleave to me, poverty should never touch her, sordid care should never come near her dwelling. But she could not believe me. She was like Thomas the twin. I could show her no palpable security for my promise—and she would not believe for the promise' sake. Mary trusted me; and Mary shall not regret her confidence.'

'Ah! it was different with Lesbia,' sighed Lady Maulevrier. 'I taught her to be ambitious. She had been schooled to set a high price upon herself. I know she cared for you—very much, even. But she could not face poverty; or, if you like, I will say that she could not face an obscure existence—sacrifice her ambition, a justifiable ambition in one so lovely, at the bidding of her first wooer. And then, again, she was told that if she married you, she would for ever forfeit my regard. You must not blame her for obeying me.'

'I do not blame her; for I have won the peerless pearl—the jewel above all price—a perfect woman. And now, dear Lady Maulevrier, give me but your consent, and I am off to York this afternoon, to interview the Archbishop, and get the special licence, which will allow me to wed my darling here by your couch to-morrow afternoon.'

'I have no objection to your getting the licence immediately; but you must let me write a cheque before you go. A special licence is expensive—I believe it costs fifty pounds.'

'If it cost a thousand I should not think it dear. But I have a notion that I shall be able to get the licence—cheap. You have made me wild with happiness.'

'But you must not refuse my cheque.'

'Indeed I must, Lady Maulevrier. I am not quite such a pauper as you think me.'

'But fifty pounds and the expenses of the journey; an outlay altogether unexpected on your part. I begin to fear that you are very reckless. A spendthrift shall never marry my granddaughter, with my consent.'

'I have never yet spent above half my income.'

Lady Maulevrier looked at him in wonderment and perplexity. Had the young man gone suddenly out of his mind, overwhelmed by the greatness of his bliss?

'But I thought you were poor,' she faltered.

'It has pleased you to think so, dear Lady Maulevrier; but I have more than enough for all my wants, and I shall be able to provide a fitting home for my Mary, when you can spare her to preside over her own establishment.'

'Establishment' seemed rather a big word, but Lady Maulevrier supposed that in this case it meant a cook and housemaid, with perhaps later on a boy in buttons, to break windows and block the pantry sink with missing teaspoons.

'Well, Mr. Hammond, this is quite an agreeable surprise,' she said, after a brief silence. 'I really thought you were poor—as poor as a young man of gentlemanlike habits could be, and yet exist. Perhaps you will wonder why, thinking this, I brought myself to consent to your marriage with my granddaughter.'

'It was a great proof of your confidence in me, or in Providence,' replied Hammond, smiling.

'It was no such thing. I was governed by a sentiment—a memory. It was my love for the dead which softened my heart towards you, John Hammond.'

'Indeed!' he murmured, softly.

'There was but one man in this world I ever fondly loved—the love of my youth—my dearest and best, in the days when my heart was fresh and innocent and unambitious. That man was Ronald Hollister, afterwards Lord Hartfield. And yours is the only face that ever recalled his to my mind. It is but a vague likeness—a look now and then; but slight as that likeness is it has been enough to make my heart yearn towards you, as the heart of a mother to her son.'

John Hammond knelt beside the sofa, and bent his handsome face over the pale face on the pillow, imprinting such a kiss as a son might have given. His eyes were full of tears.

'Dear Lady Maulevrier, think that it is the spirit of the dead which blesses you for your fidelity to old memories,' he said, tenderly.



CHAPTER XXXIII.

BY SPECIAL LICENCE.

After that interview with John Hammond all the arrangements for the marriage were planned by Lady Maulevrier with a calm and business-like capacity which seemed extraordinary in one so frail and helpless. For a little while after Hammond left her she remained lost in a reverie, deeply affected by the speech and manner of her granddaughter's lover, as he gave her that first kiss of duty and affection, the affection of one who in that act declared the allegiance of a close and holy bond.

Yes, she told herself, this marriage, humble as it might be, was altogether satisfactory. Her own feeling towards the man of her granddaughter's choice was one of instinctive affection. Her heart had yearned to him from the beginning of their acquaintance; but she had schooled herself to hide all indications of her liking for him, she had made every effort to keep him at a distance, deeming his very merits a source of danger in a household where there were two fresh impressionable girls.

And despite all her caution and care he had succeeded in winning one of those girls: and she was glad, very glad, that he had so succeeded in baffling her prudence. And now it was agreeable to discover that he was not quite such a pauper as she had supposed him to be.

Her heart felt lighter than it had been for some time when she set about planning the wedding.

The first step in the business was to send for James Steadman. He came immediately, grave and quiet as of old, and stood with his serious eyes bent upon the face of his mistress, awaiting her instructions.

'Lady Mary is going to be married to Mr. Hammond, by special licence, in this room, to-morrow afternoon, if it can be managed so soon,' said Lady Maulevrier.

'I am very glad to hear it, my lady,' answered Steadman, without the faintest indication of surprise.

'Why are you so—particularly glad?' asked his mistress, looking at him sharply.

'Because Lady Mary's presence in this house is a source of danger to—your arrangements. She is very energetic and enterprising—very shrewd—and—well, she is a woman—so I suppose there can be no harm in saying she is somewhat inquisitive. Things will be much safer here when Lady Mary is gone!'

'But she will not be gone—she is not going away—except for a very brief honeymoon. I cannot possibly do without her. She has become necessary to my life, Steadman; and there is so little left of that life now, that there is no need for me to sacrifice the last gleams of sunshine. The girl is very sweet, and loving, and true. I was not half fond enough of her in the past; but she has made herself very dear to me of late. There are many things in this life, Steadman, which we only find out too late.'

'But, surely, my lady, Lady Mary will leave Fellside to go to a home of her own after her marriage.'

'No, I tell you, Steadman,' his mistress answered, with a touch of impatience; 'Lady Mary and her husband will make this house their home so long as I am here. It will not be long.'

'God grant it may be very long before you cease to be mistress here,' answered Steadman, with real feeling; and then in a lower tone he went on: 'Pardon me, my lady, for the suggestion, but do you think it wise to have Mr. Hammond here as a resident?'

'Why should it not be wise? Mr. Hammond is a gentleman.'

'True, my lady; but any accident, such as that which brought Lady Mary into the old garden——'

'No such accident need occur—it must not occur, Steadman,' exclaimed Lady Maulevrier, with kindling eyes. She who had so long ruled supreme was not inclined to have any desire of hers questioned. 'There must have been gross carelessness that day—carelessness on your part, or that stable door would never have been left open. The key ought to have been in your possession It ought not to have been in the power of the stableman to open that door. As to Mr. Hammond's presence at Fellside, I cannot see any danger—any reason why harm should come of it, more than of Lord Maulevrier's presence here in the past.'

'The two gentlemen are so different, my lady,' said Steadman, with a gloomy brow. 'His lordship is so light-hearted and careless, his mind taken up with his horses, guns, dogs, fishing, shooting, and all kinds of sport. He is not a gentleman to take much notice of anything out of his own line. But this Mr. Hammond is different—a very thoughtful gentleman, an inquiring mind, as one would say.'

'Steadman, you are getting cowardly in your old age. The danger—such a risk as you hint at, must be growing less and less every day. After forty years of security——'

'Security' echoed Steadman, with a monosyllabic laugh which expressed intense bitterness. 'Say forty years during which I have felt myself upon the edge of a precipice every day and every hour. Security! But perhaps you are right, my lady, I am growing old and nervous, a feebler man than I was a few years ago, feebler in body and mind. Let Mr. Hammond make his home here, if it pleases your ladyship to have him. So long as I am well and able to get about there can be no danger of anything awkward happening.'

Lady Maulevrier looked alarmed.

'But you have no expectation of falling ill, I hope, Steadman; you have no premonition of any malady?'

'No, my lady, none—except the malady of old age. I feel that I am not the man I once was, that is all. My brain is getting woolly, and my sight is clouded now and then. And if I were to fall ill suddenly——'

'Oh, it would be terrible, it would be a dire calamity! There is your wife, certainly, to look after things, but——'

'My wife would do her best, my lady. She is a faithful creature, but she is not—yes, without any unkindness I must say that Mrs. Steadman is not a genius!'

'Oh, Steadman, you must not fail me! I am horror-stricken at the mere idea,' exclaimed Lady Maulevrier. 'After forty years—great God! it would be terrible. Lesbia, Mary, Maulevrier! the great, malignant, babbling world outside these doors. I am hemmed round with perils. For God's sake preserve your strength. Take care of your health. You are my strong rock. If you feel that there is anything amiss with you, or that your strength is failing, consult Mr. Horton—neglect no precaution. The safety of this house, of the family honour, hangs upon you.'

'Pray do not agitate yourself, my lady,' entreated Steadman. 'I was wrong to trouble you with my fears. I shall not fail you, be sure. Although I am getting old, I shall hold out to the end.'

'The end cannot be very far off,' said Lady Maulevrier, gloomily.

'I thought that forty years ago, my lady. But you are right—the end must be near now. Yes, it must be near. And now, my lady, your orders about the wedding.'

'It will take place to-morrow, as I told you, in this room. You will go to the Vicar and ask him to officiate. His two daughters will no doubt consent to be Lady Mary's bridesmaids. You will make the request in my name. Perhaps the Vicar will call this afternoon and talk matters over with me. Lady Mary and her husband will go to Cumberland for a brief honeymoon—a week at most—and then they will come back to Fellside. Tell Mrs. Power to prepare the east wing for them. She will make one of the rooms into a boudoir for Lady Mary; and let everything be as bright and pretty as good taste can make it. She can telegraph to London for any new furniture that may be wanted to complete her arrangements. And now send Lady Mary to me.'

Mary came, fresh from the pine-wood, where she had been walking with her lover; her lover of to-day, her husband to-morrow. He had told her how he was to start for York directly after luncheon, and to come back by the earliest train next day, and how they two were to be married to-morrow afternoon.

'It is more wonderful than any dream that I ever dreamt.' exclaimed Mary. 'But how can it be? I have not even a wedding gown.'

'A fig for wedding gowns! It is Mary I am to wed, not her gown. Were you clad like patient Grisel I should be content. Besides you have no end of pretty gowns. And you are to be dressed for travelling, remember; for I am going to carry you off to Lodore directly we are married, and you will have to clamber up the rocky bed of the waterfall to see the sun set behind the Borrowdale hills in your wedding gown. It had better be one of those neat little tailor gowns which become you so well.'

'I will wear whatever you tell me,' answered Mary. 'I shall always dress to please you, and not the outside world.'

'Will you, my Griselda. Some day you shall be dressed as Grisel was—

"In a cloth of gold that brighte shone, With a coroune of many a riche stone."

'Yes, you darling, when you are Lord Chancellor: and till that day comes I will wear tailor gowns, linsey-wolsey, anything you like,' cried Mary, laughing.

She ran to her grandmother's room, ineffably content, without a thought of trousseau or finery; but then Mary Haselden was one of those few young women for whom life is not a question of fashionable raiment.

'Mary, I am going to send you off upon your honeymoon to-morrow afternoon,' said Lady Maulevrier, smiling at the bright, happy face which was bent over her. 'Will you come back and nurse a fretful old woman when the honeymoon is over?'

'The honeymoon will never be over,' answered Mary, joyously 'Our wedded life is to be one long honeymoon. But I will come back in a very few days, and take care of you. I am not going to let you do without me, now that you have learnt to love me.'

'And will you be content to stay with me when your husband has gone to London?'

'Yes, but I shall try to prevent his going very often, or staying very long. I shall try to wind myself into his heart, so that there will be an aching void there when we are parted.'

Lady Maulevrier proceeded to tell Mary all her arrangements. Three handsome rooms in the east wing, a bedroom, dressing-room, and boudoir, were to be made ready for the newly-married, couple. Fraeulein Mueller was to be dismissed with a retiring pension, in order that Lady Mary and her husband might feel themselves master and mistress in the lower part of the house.

'And if your husband really means to devote himself to literature, he can have no better workshop than the library I have put together,' said Lady Maulevrier.

'And no better adviser and guide than you, dear grandmother, you who have read everything that has been written worth reading during the last half century.'

'I have read a great deal, Mary, but I hardly know if I am any wiser on that account,' answered Lady Maulevrier. 'After all, however much of other people's wisdom we may devour, it is in ourselves that we are thus, or thus. Our past follies rise up against us at the end of life; and we see how little our book-learning has helped us to stand against foolish impulses, against evil passions. "Be good," Mary, "and let who will be wise," as the poet says. A faithful heart is your only anchor in the stormy seas of life. My dear, I am so glad you are going to be married.'

'It is very sudden,' said Mary.

'Very sudden; yet in your case that does not much matter. You have quite made up your mind about Mr. Hammond, I believe.'

'Made up my mind! I began to worship him the first night he came here.'

'Foolish child. Well, there is no deed to wait for settlements. You have only your allowance as Lord Maulevrier's daughter—a first charge on the estate, which cannot be made away with or anticipated, and of which no husband can deprive you.'

'He shall have every sixpence of it,' murmured Mary.

'And Mr. Hammond, though he tells me he is better off than I supposed, can have nothing to settle. So there will be nothing forfeited by a marriage without settlements.'

Mary could not enter upon the question. It was even of less importance than the wedding gown.

The gong sounded for luncheon.

'Steadman's dogcart is to take Mr. Hammond to the station at half-past two,' said Lady Maulevrier, 'so you had better go and give him his luncheon.'

Mary needed no second bidding. She flew downstairs, and met her lover in the hall.

What a happy luncheon it was! Fraeulein 'mounched, and mounched, and mounched,' like the sailor's wife eating chestnuts: but those two lovers lunched upon moonshine, upon each other's little words and little looks, upon their own ineffable bliss. They sat side by side, and helped each other to the nicest thing's on the table, but neither could eat, and they got considerably mixed in their way of eating, taking chutnee with strawberry cream, and currant jelly with asparagus. What did it matter? Everything tasted of bliss.

'You have had absolutely nothing to eat,' said Mary, piteously, as the dogcart came grinding round upon the dry gravel.

'Oh, I have done splendidly—thanks. I have just had a macaroon and some of that capital gorgonzola. God bless you, dearest, and a revoir, a revoir to-morrow.'

'And to-morrow I shall be Mary Hammond,' cried Mary, clasping her hands. 'Isn't it capital fun?'

They were in the porch alone. The servants were all at dinner, save the groom with the cart, Miss Mueller was still munching at the well-spread table in the dining-room.

John Hammond folded his sweetheart in his arms for one brief embrace; there was no time for loitering. In another moment he was springing into the cart. A shake of the reins, and he was driving slowly down the steep avenue.

'Life is full of partings,' Mary said to herself, as she watched the last glimpse of the dogcart between the trees down in the road below, 'but this one is to be very short, thank God.'

She wondered what she should do with herself for the rest of the afternoon, and finally, finding that she was not wanted by her grandmother until afternoon tea, she set out upon a round of visits to her favourite cottagers, to bid them a long farewell as a spinster.

'You'll be away a long time, I suppose, Lady Mary?' said one of her humble friends; 'you'll be going to Switzerland or Italy, or some of those foreign parts where great ladies and gentlemen travel for their honeymoons?'

But Mary declared that she would be absent a week at longest She was coming back to take care of her invalid grandmother; and she was not going to marry a great gentleman, but a man who would have to work for his living.

She went back to Fellside, and read the Times, and poured out Lady Maulevrier's tea, and sat on her low stool by the sofa, and the old and the young woman were as happy and confidential together as if they had been always the nearest and dearest to each other. Her ladyship had seen Miss Mueller, and had informed that excellent person that her services at Fellside would no longer be required after Lady Mary's marriage; but that her devotion to her duties during the last fourteen years should be rewarded by a pension which, together with her savings, would enable her to spend the rest of her days in repose. Miss Mueller was duly grateful, and owned to a tender longing for the Heimath, and declared herself ready to retire from her post whenever her ladyship pleased.

'I shall go back to Germany directly I leave you, and I shall live and die there, unless I am wanted by one of my old pupils. But should Lady Lesbia or Lady Mary need my services for their daughters, in days to come, they can command me. For no one else will I abandon the Fatherland.'

The Fraeulein thus easily disposed of, Lady Mary felt that matrimony would verily mean independence. And yet she was prepared to regard her husband as her master. She meant to obey him in all meekness and reverence of spirit.

She spent the rest of the afternoon and the whole of the evening in her grandmother's sitting-room, dining tete-a-tete with the invalid for the first time since her illness. Lady Maulevrier talked much of Mary's future, and of Lesbia's; but it was evident that she was full of uneasiness upon the latter subject.

'I don't know what Lesbia is going to do with her life,' she said, with a sigh. 'Her letters tell me of nothing but gowns and parties; and Georgina Kirkbank can only expatiate upon Mr. Smithson's wealth, and the grand position he is going to occupy by-and-by. I should like to see both my granddaughters married before I die—yes, I should like to see Lesbia's fate secure, if she were to be only Lady Lesbia Smithson.'

'She cannot fail to make a good match, grandmother,' said Mary.

'I am beginning to lose faith in her future,' answered Lady Maulevrier. 'There seems to be a fatality about the career of particularly attractive girls. They are too confident of their power to succeed in life. They trifle with fortune, fascinate the wrong people, and keep the right people at arm's length. I think if I had been Lesbia's guide in society her first season would have counted for more than it is likely to count for under Lady Kirkbank's management. I should have awakened Lesbia from the dream of dress and dancing—the mere butterfly life of a girl who never looks beyond the present moment. But now go and give orders about your packing, Mary. It is past ten, and Clara had better pack your trunks early to-morrow morning.'

Clara was a modest Easedale damsel, who had been promoted to be Lady Mary's personal attendant, when the more mature Kibble had gone away with Lady Lesbia. Mary required very little waiting upon, but she was not the less glad to have a neat little smiling maiden devoted to her service, ready to keep her rooms neat and trim, to go on errands to the cottagers, to arrange the flowers in the old china bowls, and to make herself generally useful.

It seemed a strange thing to have to furnish a trousseau from the wardrobe of everyday life—a trousseau in which nothing, except half-a-dozen pairs of gloves, a pair of boots, and a few odds and ends of lace and ribbons would be actually new. Mary thought very little of the matter, but the position of things struck her maid as altogether extraordinary and unnatural.

'You should have seen the things Miss Freeman had, Lady Mary,' exclaimed the damsel, 'the daughter of that cotton-spinning gentleman from Manchester, who lives at The Gables—you should have seen her new gowns and things when she was married. Mrs. Freeman's maid keeps company with my brother James—he's in the stables at Freeman's, you know, Lady Mary—and she asked me in to look at the trousseau two days before the wedding. I never saw such beautiful dresses—such hats—such bonnets—such jackets and mantles. It was like going into one of those grand shops at York, and having all the things in the shop pulled out for one to look at—such silks and satins—and trimmed—ah! how those dresses was trimmed. The mystery was how the young lady could ever get herself into them, or sit down when she'd got one of them on.'

'Instruments of torture, Clara. I should hate such gowns, even if I were going to marry a rich man, as I suppose Miss Freeman was.'

'Not a bit of it, Lady Mary. She was only going to marry a Bolton doctor with a small practice; but her maid told me she was determined she'd get all she could out of her pa, in case he should lose all his money and go bankrupt. They said that trousseau cost two thousand pounds.'

'Well, Clara, I'd rather have my tailor gowns, in which I can scramble about the ghylls and crags just as I like.' There was a pale yellow Indian silk, smothered with soft yellow lace, which would serve for a wedding gown; for indifferent as Mary was to the great clothes question, she wanted to look in some wise as a bride. A neat chocolate-coloured cloth, almost new from the tailor's hands, with a little cloth toque to match, would do for the wedding journey. All the details of Mary's wardrobe were the perfection of neatness. She had grown very neat and careful in her habits since her engagement, anxious to be industrious and frugal in all things—a really handy housewife for a hard-worked bread-winner. And now she was told that Mr. Hammond was not so poor as she had thought. She would not be obliged to stint herself, and manage, as she had supposed when she went about among the cottagers, taking lessons in household economy. It was almost a disappointment.

She and Clara finished the packing that night, Mary being much too excited for the possibility of sleep. There was not much to pack, only one roomy American trunk—a trunk which held everything—a Gladstone bag for things that might possibly be wanted in a hurry, and a handsome dressing-bag, Maulevrier's last birthday gift to his sister.

Mary had received no gifts from her lover, save the plain gold engagement ring, and a few new books sent straight from the publishers. Clara took care to inform her young mistress that Miss Freeman's sweetheart had sent her all manner of splendid presents, scent bottles, photograph albums, glove boxes, and other things of beauty, albeit his means were supposed to be nil. It was evident that Clara disapproved of Mr. Hammond's conduct in this matter, and even suspected him of meanness.

'He did ought to have sent you his photograph, Lady Mary,' said Clara, with a reproachful air.

'I daresay he would have done so, Clara, but he has been photographed only once in his life.'

'Lawk a mercy, Lady Mary! Why most young gentlemen have themselves photographed in every new place they go to; and as Mr. Hammond has been a traveller, like his lordship, I made sure he'd have been photographed in knickerbockers and every other kind of attitude.'

Mary had not refrained from asking for her lover's portrait; and he had told her that he had carefully abstained from having his countenance reproduced in any manner since his fifteenth year, when he had been photographed at his mother's desire.

'The present fashion of photographs staring out of every stationer's window makes a man's face public property,' he told Mary. 'I don't want every street Arab in London to recognise me.'

'But you are not a public man,' said Mary. 'Your photograph would not be in all the windows; although, in my humble opinion, you are a very handsome man.'

Hammond blushed, laughed, and turned the conversation, and Mary had to exist without any picture of her lover.

'Millais shall paint me in his grand Reynolds manner by-and-by,' he told Mary.

'Millais! Oh, Jack! When will you and I be able to give a thousand or so for a portrait?'

'Ah, when, indeed? But we may as well enjoy our day-dreams, like Alnaschar, without smashing our basket of crockery.'

And now Mary, who had managed to exist without the picture, was to have the original. He was to be all her own—her master, her lord, her love, after to-morrow—unto eternity, in life, and in the grave, and in the dim hereafter beyond the grave, they two were to be one. In heaven there was to be no marrying or giving in marriage, Mary was told; but her own heart cried aloud to her that the happily wedded must remain linked in heaven. God would not part the blessed souls of true lovers.

A short sleep, broken by happy dreams, and it was morning, Mary's wedding morning, fairest of summer days, July in all her beauty. Mary went to her grandmother's room, and waited upon her at breakfast.

Lady Maulevrier was in excellent spirits.

'Everything is arranged, Mary, I have had a telegram from Hammond, who has got the licence, and will come at half-past one. At three the Vicar will come to marry you, his daughters, Katie and Laura, acting as your bridesmaids.'

'Bridesmaids!' exclaimed Mary. 'I forgot all about bridesmaids. Am I really to have any?'

'You will have two girls of your own age to bear you company, at any rate. I have asked dear old Horton to be present; and he, Fraeulein, and Maulevrier will complete the party. It will not be a brilliant wedding, Mary, or a costly ceremonial, except for the licence.'

'And poor Jack will have to pay for that,' said Mary, with a long face.

'Poor Jack refused to let me pay for it,' answered Lady Maulevrier. 'He is vastly independent, and I fear somewhat reckless.'

'I like him for his independence; but he mustn't be reckless,' said Mary, severely.

He was to be the master in all things! and yet she was to exercise a restraining influence, she was to guard him against his own weaknesses, his too generous impulses. Her voice was to be the voice of prudence. This is how Mary understood the marriage tie.

Under ordinary conditions Mary would have been in the avenue, lying in wait for her lover, eager to get the very first glimpse of him when he arrived, to see him before he had brushed the dust of the journey from his raiment. But to-day she hung back. She stayed in her grandmother's room and sat beside the sofa, shy, and even a little downcast. This lover who was so soon to be transformed into a husband was a formidable personage. She dare not rush forth to greet him. Perhaps he had changed his mind by this time, and was sorry he had ever asked her to marry him. Perhaps he thought he was being hustled into a marriage. He had been told that he was to wait at least a year. And now, all in a moment, he was sent off to get a special licence. How could she be quite sure that he liked this kind of treatment?

If there is any faith to be placed in the human countenance, Mr. Hammond was in no wise an unwilling bridegroom; for his face teamed with happy light as he came into the room presently, followed by an elderly man with grey hair and whiskers, and in a strictly professional frock coat, whom the butler announced as Mr. Dorncliffe. Lady Maulevrier looked startled, somewhat offended even at this intrusion, and she gave Mr. Dorncliffe a very haughty salutation, which was almost more crushing than no salutation at all.

Mary stood up by her grandmother's sofa, and looked rather frightened.

'Dear Lady Maulevrier,' said Hammond, 'I ventured to telegraph to my lawyer to meet me at York last night, and come on here with me this morning. He has prepared a settlement, which I should like you to hear him read, and which he will explain to you, if necessary, while Molly and I go for a stroll in the grounds.'

He had never called her Molly before. He put his arm round her with a proud air of possession, even under her grandmother's eyes. And she nestled close up to his side, forgetting everything but the delight of belonging to him.

They went downstairs, and through the billiard room to the terrace, and from the terrace to the tennis lawn, where John Hammond sat reading Heine nearly a year ago, just before he proposed to Lesbia.

'Do you remember that day?' asked Mary, looking at him, solemnly.

'I remember every day and every hour we have spent together since I began to love you,' answered Hammond.

'Ah, but this was before you began to love me,' said Mary, with a piteous little grimace. 'This was while you were loving Lesbia as hard as ever you could. Don't you remember the day you proposed to her—a lovely summer day like this, the lake just as blue, the sun shining upon Fairfield just as it is shining now, and you sat there reading Heine—those sweet, sweet verses, that seemed made of sighs and tears; and every now and then you paused and looked up at Lesbia, and there was more love in your eyes than in all Heine's poetry, though that brims over with love.'

'But how did you know all this, Molly? You were not here.'

'I was not very far off. I was behind those bushes, watching and listening. I knew you were in love with Lesbia, and I thought you despised me, and I was very, very wretched; and I listened afterwards when you proposed to her there—behind the pine trees—and I hated her for refusing you, and I am afraid I hated you for proposing to her.'

'When I ought to have been proposing to my Molly, blind fool that I was,' said Hammond, smiling tenderly at her, smiling, though his eyes were dim with tears. 'My own sweet love, it was a terrible mistake, a mistake that might have cost me the happiness of a lifetime. But Fate was very good to me, and let me have my Mary after all. And now let us sit down under the old red beech and talk till it is time to go and get ready for our wedding. I suppose one ought to brush one's hair and wash one's hands for that kind of thing, even when the function is not on a ceremonious scale.'