lt that with
Lady Mary her chief duty was to reprove.

CHAPTER XV.

'OF ALL MEN ELSE I HAVE AVOIDED THEE.'

It was afternoon. The white hills yonder and all the length of the
valley were touched here and there with gleams of wintry sunlight, and
Lady Maulevrier was taking her solitary walk in the terrace in front of
her house, a stately figure wrapped in a furred mantle, tall, erect,
moving with measured pace up and down the smooth gravel path. Now and
then at the end of the walk the dowager stopped for a minute or so, and
stood as if in deep thought, with her eyes dreamily contemplating the
landscape. An intense melancholy shadowed her face, as she thus gazed
with brooding eyes on the naked monotony of those wintry hills. So had
she looked in many and many a winter, and it seemed to her that her life
was of a piece with those bleak hills, where in the dismal winter time
nothing living trod. She stood gazing at the sinking sun, a fiery ball
shining at the end of a long gallery of crag and rock, like a lamp at
the end of a corridor; and as she gazed the red round orb dropped
suddenly behind the edge of a crag, as if she had been an enchantress
and had dismissed it with a wave of her wand.

'O Lord, how long, how long?' she said. 'How many times have I seen that
sun go down from this spot, in winter and summer, in spring and autumn!
And now that the one being I loved and cared for is far away, I feel all
the weariness and emptiness of my life.'

As she turned to resume her walk she heard the muffled sound of wheels
in the road below, that road which was completely hidden by foliage in
summer, but which was now visible here and there between the leafless
trees. A carriage with a pair of horses was coming along the road from
Ambleside.

Lady Maulevrier stood and watched until the carriage drew up at the
lodge gate, and then, when the gate had been opened, slowly ascended the
winding drive to the house.

She expected no visitor; indeed, there was no one likely to come to her
from the direction of Ambleside. Her heart began to beat heavily, with
the apprehension of coming evil. What kind of evil she knew not. Bad
news about her granddaughter, perhaps, or about Maulevrier. And yet that
could hardly be. Evil tidings of that kind would have reached her by
telegram.

Perhaps it was Maulevrier himself. His movements were generally erratic.

Lady Maulevrier hurried back to the house. She went through the
conserv