you. He is patron of three or four livings.'

'You are too good even to think of such a thing,' said Hammond; 'but I
have set my heart upon a political career. I must swim or sink in that
sea.'

Lady Maulevrier looked at him with a compassionate smile Poor young man!
No doubt he thought himself a genius, and that doors which had remained
shut to everybody else would turn on their hinges directly he knocked at
them. She was sincerely sorry for him. Young, clever, enthusiastic, and
doomed to bitterest disappointment.

'You have parents, perhaps, who are ambitious for you--a mother who
thinks her son a heaven-born statesman!' said her ladyship, kindly.

'Alas, no! that incentive to ambition is wanting in my case. I have
neither father nor mother living.'

'That is very sad. No doubt that fact has been a bond of sympathy
between you and Maulevrier?'

'I believe it has.'

'Well, I hope Providence will smile upon your path.'

'Come what may, I shall never forget the happy weeks I have spent at
Fellside,' said Hammond, 'or your ladyship's gracious hospitality.'

He took up the beautiful hand, white to transparency, showing the
delicate tracing of blue veins, and pressed his lips upon it in
chivalrous worship of age and womanly dignity.

Lady Maulevrier smiled upon him with her calm, grave smile. She would
have liked to say, 'You shall be welcome again at Fellside,' but she
felt that the man was dangerous. Not while Lesbia remained single could
she court his company. If Maulevrier brought him she must tolerate his
presence, but she would do nothing to invite that danger.

There was no music that evening. Maulevrier and Mary were playing
billiards; Fraeulein Mueller was sitting in her corner working at a
high-art counterpane. Lesbia came in from the verandah presently, and
sat on a low stool by her grandmother's arm-chair, and talked to her in
soft, cooing accents, inaudible to John Hammond, who sat a little way
off turning the leaves of the _Contemporary Review_: and this went on
till eleven o'clock, the regular hour for retiring, when Mary came in
from the billiard-room, and told Mr. Hammond that Maulevrier was waiting
for a smoke and a talk. Then candles were lighted, and the ladies all
departed, leaving John Hammond and his friend with the house to
themselves.

They played a fifty game, and smoked and talked till the stroke of
midnight, by which time it seemed as if there were not another creature
awake in th