mother grew briefer--mere hurried scrawls
dashed off while the carriage was at the door, or while her maid was
brushing her hair. Lady Maulevrier divined, with the keen instinct of
love, that she counted for very little in Lesbia's life, now that the
whirligig of society, the fret and fever of fashion, had begun.

One afternoon in May, at that hour when Hyde Park is fullest, and the
carriages move slowly in triple rank along the Lady's Mile, and the
mounted constables jog up and down with a business-like air which sets
every one on the alert for the advent of the Princess of Wales, just at
that hour when Lesbia sat in Lady Kirkbank's barouche, and distributed
gracious bows and enthralling smiles to her numerous acquaintance, Mary
rode slowly down the Fell, after a rambling ride on the safest and most
venerable of mountain ponies. The pony was grey, and Mary was grey, for
she wore a neat little homespun habit made by the local tailor, and a
neat little felt hat with, a ptarmigan's feather.

All was very quiet at Fellside as she went in at the stable gate. There
was not an underling stirring in the large old stable-yard which had
remained almost unaltered for a century and a half; for Lady Maulevrier,
whilst spending thousands on the new part of the house, had deemed the
existing stables good enough for her stud. They were spacious old
stables, built as solidly as a Norman castle, and with all the virtues
and all the vices of their age.

Mary looked round her with a sigh. The stillness of the place was
oppressive, and within doors she knew there would be the same stillness,
made still more oppressive by the society of the Fraeulein, who grew
duller and duller every day, as it seemed to Mary.

She took her pony into the dusky old stable, where four other ponies
began rattling their halters in the gloom, by way of greeting. A bundle
of purple tares lay ready in a corner for Mary to feed her favourites;
and for the next ten minutes or so she was happily employed going from
stall to stall, and gratifying that inordinate appetite for green meat
which seems natural to all horses.

Not a groom or stable-boy appeared while she was in the stable; and she
was just going away, when her attention was caught by a flood of
sunshine streaming into an old disused harness-room at the end of the
stable--a room with one small window facing the Fell.

Whence could that glow of western light come? Assuredly not from the
low-latticed win