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Updated: April 30, 2025
The journey, protracted by Lord Maulevrier's languor and ill-health, dragged its slow length along for nearly a fortnight; until it seemed to Lady Maulevrier as if they had been travelling upon those dismal, flat, unpicturesque roads for months. Each day was so horribly like yesterday. The same hedgerows and flat fields, and passing glimpse of river or canal.
'No, it is the past that is always before me, answered Lesbia. 'My future is a blank. The bills came pouring in; dressmaker, milliner, glover, bootmaker, tailor, stationer, perfumer; awful bills which made Lady Maulevrier's blood run cold, so degrading was their story of selfish self-indulgence, of senseless extravagance. But she paid them all without a word.
One evening at dusk, just as Hartfield and Mary were leaving Lady Maulevrier's room, after dinner, an appalling shriek ran through the house a cry almost as terrible as that which Lord Hartfield heard in the summer midnight just a year ago. But this time the sound came from the old part of the house. 'Something has happened, exclaimed Hartfield, rushing to the door of communication.
'I would wait for her twice seven years, as Jacob waited, and toil for her, as Jacob toiled, answered Hammond, 'but I should like to call her my own to-morrow, if it were possible. Nothing could be happier or gayer than the tea-drinking in Lady Maulevrier's room on the following afternoon. Her ladyship having once given way upon a point knew how to make her concession gracefully.
Hammond's presence at Fellside, I cannot see any danger any reason why harm should come of it, more than of Lord Maulevrier's presence here in the past. 'The two gentlemen are so different, my lady, said Steadman, with a gloomy brow. 'His lordship is so light-hearted and careless, his mind taken up with his horses, guns, dogs, fishing, shooting, and all kinds of sport.
The house was approached by a winding carriage drive that led up and up and up from the road beside the lake, so screened and sheltered by shrubberies and pine woods, that the stranger knew not whither he was going, till he came upon an opening in the wood, and the stately Italian garden in front of a massive stone porch, through which he entered a spacious oak-panelled hall, and anon, descending a step or two, he found himself in Lady Maulevrier's drawing-room, and face to face with that divine view of the everlasting hills, the lake shining below him, bathed in sunlight.
Carried along the current of her own impetuous thoughts, Mary had talked very fast, and had not once looked at her grandmother while she was speaking. But now at the end of her speech her eyes sought Lady Maulevrier's face in gentle entreaty, and she recoiled involuntarily at the sight she saw there.
In the dining-room the men drew closer together over their wine, and tore Lord Maulevrier's character to rags. Yea, they rent him with their teeth and gnawed the flesh from his bones, until there was not so much left of him as the dogs left of Jezebel. He had been a scamp from his cradle, a spendthrift at Eton and Oxford, a blackleg in his manhood. False to men, false to women. Clever?
He thought it likely that Lady Maulevrier's maid might occupy a room in this half-deserted wing. As he pushed open the door he saw an elderly man coming towards him, with a candle in his hand, and with the appearance of having huddled on his clothes hastily. 'You heard that scream? said Hammond. 'Yes. It was her ladyship, I suppose. Nightmare. She is subject to nightmare. 'It is very dreadful.
He was in a manner Lady Maulevrier's mouthpiece, and although treated with a respect that verged upon awe, he was not a favourite with the household. And now the house in Mayfair was given over to the charge of caretakers.
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