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Updated: April 30, 2025
Hamleigh no Hammond in a day or two, replied her ladyship, placidly; 'and in the meantime we must tolerate him, and be grateful to him if he reconcile Maulevrier to remaining at Fellside for the next six weeks. Lesbia was silent. She did not consider Maulevrier's presence at Fellside an unmitigated advantage, or, indeed, his presence anywhere. Those two were not sympathetic.
She stopped suddenly, with her hand on her husband's arm. It was growing momentarily darker in the corridor. They were at the end near the lamp, and that other end by Lady Maulevrier's door was in deeper darkness, yet not too dark for Lord Hartfield to see what it was to which Mary pointed. The red-cloth door was open, and a faint glimmer of light showed within.
The secret of Lady Maulevrier's sin had been so faithfully kept by the two young men that neither of her granddaughters knew the true story of that mysterious person whom Mary had first heard of as James Steadman's uncle.
Her ladyship's suite was on this occasion limited to three servants her French maid, a footman, and a kind of factotum, a man of no distinct and arbitrary signification in her ladyship's household, neither butler nor steward, but that privileged being, an old and trusted servant, and a person who was supposed to enjoy more of Lady Maulevrier's confidence than any other member of her establishment.
He seemed in his humble way to model his life upon Lady Maulevrier's secluded habits. It was growing dusk when Steadman left his mistress, and she lay for some time looking at the landscape over which twilight shadows were stealing, and thinking of her own life. Over that life, too, the shadows of evening were creeping.
While these plans were being settled, and while Lesbia's future was the all-absorbing subject of Lady Maulevrier's thoughts, Mary contrived to be happier than she had ever been in her life before. It was happiness that grew and strengthened with every day; and yet there was no obvious reason for this deep joy. Her life ran in the same familiar groove.
And I suppose he had some old Minerva-press idea that he would find a girl who would marry him for his own sake. And your sister, no doubt, eager to marry anybody, poor child, for the sake of getting away from that very lovely dungeon of Lady Maulevrier's, snapped at the chance; and by a mere fluke she becomes a countess. Lesbia ignored these consolatory remarks.
'Lady Mary, be good enough to remember to whom you are speaking, said her ladyship, with a frown. 'And now please go, and tell some one to send Steadman to me. Mary retired without a word, gave Lady Maulevrier's message to a footman in the corridor, slipped off to her room, put on her sealskin hat and jacket, took her staff and went out for a long ramble. The hills and valleys were still white.
One of the stories Maulevrier spoke of the other day was of a wicked woman's influence upon the governor a much more likely story than that of any traffic in British interests or British honour, which would have been almost impossible for a man in Lord Maulevrier's position.
He left the sophisticated beauty of the Fellside gardens below him, and climbed higher and higher up the Fell, till he was able to command a bird's-eye view of the lake and village, and just under his feet, as it were, Lady Maulevrier's favourite abode. He was provided with a landscape glass which he always carried in his rambles, and with the aid of this he could see every stone of the building.
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