w they were free to go where they pleased--to linger where they
liked--they belonged to each other, and were under no other dominion.

The dogcart, James Steadman's dogcart, which he had rarely used during
the last six months, was put in requisition and Lord Hartfield drove his
wife about the country. They went to the Langdale Pikes, and to Dungeon
Ghyll; and, standing beside the waterfall, Mary told her husband how
miserable she had felt on that very spot a little less than a year ago,
when she believed that he thought her plain and altogether horrid.
Whereupon he had to console her with many kisses and sweet words, for
the bygone pain on her part, the neglect of his.

'I was a wretch,' he said, 'blind, besotted, imbecile.'

'No, no, no. Lesbia is very lovely--and I could not expect you would
care for me till she was gone away. How glad I am that she went,' added
Mary, naively.

The sky, which had been cloudless all day, began to darken as Lord
Hartfield drove back to Fellside, and Mary drew a little closer to the
driver's elbow, as if for shelter from an impending tempest.

'You have no waterproof, of course,' he said, looking down at her, as
the first big drops of a thunder shower dashed upon the splash-board.
'No young woman in the Lake country would think of being without a
waterproof.'

Mary was duly provided, and with the help of the groom put herself into
a snug little tartan Inverness, while Hartfield sent the cart spinning
along twelve miles an hour.

They were at Fellside before the storm developed its full power, but the
sky was leaden, the landscape dull and blotted, the atmosphere heavy and
stifling. The thunder grumbled hoarsely, far away yonder in the wild
gorges of Borrowdale; and Mary and her husband made up their minds that
the tempest would come before midnight.

Lady Maulevrier was suffering from the condition of the atmosphere. She
had gone to bed, prostrate with a neuralgic headache, and had given
orders that no one but her maid should go near her. So Lord Hartfield
and his wife dined by themselves, in the room where Mary had eaten so
many uninteresting dinners _tete-a-tete_ with Fraeulein; and in spite of
the storm which howled, pelted, and lightened every now and then, Mary
felt as if she were in Paradise.

There was no chance of going out after dinner. The lake looked like a
pool of ink, the mountains were monsters of dark and threatening aspect,
the rain rattled against the windows,