ect for
Lord Bacon's maxim: Knowledge is power. It was a kind of power secondary
to the power of wealth, perhaps; but wealth unprotected by wisdom would
soon dwindle into poverty.

Lady Lesbia sauntered about the lawn, looking very elegant in her
cream-coloured Indian silk gown, very listless, very tired of her lovely
surroundings. Neither lake nor mountain possessed any charm for her. She
had had too much of them. Mary roamed about with a swifter footstep,
looking at the roses, plucking off a dead leaf, or a cankered bud here
and there. Presently she tore across the lawn to the shrubbery which
screened the lawn and flower gardens from the winding carriage drive
sunk many feet below, and disappeared in a thicket of arbutus and Irish
yew.

'What terribly hoydenish manners!' murmured Lesbia, with a languid shrug
of her shoulders, as she strolled back to the drawing-room.

She cared very little for the newspapers, for politics not at all; but
anything was better than everlasting-contemplation of the blue still
water, and the rugged crest of Helm Crag.

'What was the matter with Mary that she rushed off like a mad woman?'
inquired Lady Maulevrier, looking up from the _Times_.

'I haven't the least idea. Mary's movements are quite beyond the limits
of my comprehension. Perhaps she has gone after a bird's-nest.'

Mary was intent upon no bird's-nest. Her quick ear had caught the sound
of manly voices in the winding drive under the pine wood; and surely,
yes, surely one was a clear and familiar voice, which heralded the
coming of happiness. In such a moment she seemed to have wings. She
became unconscious that she touched the earth; she went skimming
bird-like over the lawn, and in and out, with fluttering muslin frock,
among arbutus and bay, yew and laurel, till she stood poised lightly on
the top of the wooded bank which bordered the steep ascent to Lady
Maulevrier's gate, looking down at two figures which were sauntering up
the drive.

They were both young men, both tall, broad-shouldered, manly, walking
with the easy swinging movement of men accustomed to active exercise.
One, the handsomer of the two in Mary's eyes, since she thought him
simply perfection, was fair-haired, blue-eyed, the typical Saxon. This
was Lord Maulevrier. The other was dark, bronzed by foreign travel,
perhaps, with black hair, cut very close to an intelligent-looking head,
bared to the evening breeze.

'Hulloa!' cried Maulevrier. 'There's M