he asked again.

'I told you my name just now. I am Mary Haselden.'

'Haselden--that is a name I knew--once. Mary? I think my mother's name
was Mary. Yes, yes, I remember that. You have a sweet face, Mary--like
my mother's. She had brown eyes, like yours, and auburn hair. You don't
recollect her, perhaps?'

'Alas! poor maniac,' thought Mary, 'you have lost all count of time.
Fifty years to you in the confusion of your distraught brain, are but as
yesterday.'

'No, of course not, of course not,' he muttered; 'how should she
recollect my mother, who died while I was a boy? Impossible. That must
be half a century ago.'

'Good evening to you,' said Mary, rising with a great effort, so strong
was her feeling of being spellbound by the uncanny old man, 'I must go
indoors now.'

He stretched out his withered old hand, small, semi-transparent, with
the blue veins showing darkly under the parchment-coloured skin, and
grasped Mary's arm.

'Don't go,' he pleaded. 'I like your face, child; I like your voice--I
like to have you here. What do you mean by going indoors? Where do you
live?'

'There,' said Mary, pointing to the dead wall which faced them. 'In the
new part of Fellside House. I suppose you are staying in the old part
with James Steadman.'

She had made up her mind that this crazy old man must be a relation of
Steadman's to whom he gave hospitality either with or without her
ladyship's consent. All powerful as Lady Maulevrier had ever been in her
own house, it was just possible that now, when she was a prisoner in her
own rooms, certain small liberties might be taken, even by so faithful a
servant as Steadman.

'Staying with James Steadman,' repeated the old man in a meditative
tone. 'Yes, I stay with Steadman. A good servant, a worthy person. It is
only for a little while. I shall be leaving Westmoreland next week. And
you live in that house, do you?' pointing to the dead wall. 'Whose
house?'

'Lady Maulevrier's. I am Lady Maulevrier's granddaughter.'

'Lady Mau-lev-rier.' He repeated the name in syllables. 'A good name--an
old title--as old as the conquest. A Norman race those Maulevriers. And
you are Lady Maulevrier's granddaughter! You should be proud. The
Maulevriers were always a proud race.'

'Then I am no true Maulevrier,' answered Mary gaily.

She was beginning to feel more at her ease with the old man. He was
evidently mad, as mad as a March hare; but his madness seemed only the
harmless lunac