The sky was still cloudless when John Hammond strolled slowly up the leafy avenue at Fellside. He had been across the valley and up the hill to Easedale Tarn, and then by rough untrodden ways, across a chaos of rock and heather, into a second valley, long, narrow, and sterile, known as Far Easedale, a desolate gorge, a rugged cleft in the heart of the mountains. The walk had been long and laborious; but only in such clambering and toiling, such expenditure of muscular force and latent heat, could the man’s restless soul endure those long hours of suspense.
‘How will she answer me? Oh, my God! how will she answer?’ he said within himself, as he walked up the romantic winding road, which made so picturesque an approach to Lady Maulevrier’s domain, ‘Is my idol gold or clay? How will she come through the crucible? Oh, dearest, sweetest, loveliest, only be true to the instinct of your womanhood, and my cup will be full of bliss, and all my days will flow as sweetly as the burden of a song. But if you prove heartless, if you love the world’s. wealth better than you love me — ah! then all is over, and you and I are lost to each other for ever. I have made up my mind.’
His face settled into an expression of indomitable determination, as of a man who would die rather than be false to his own purpose. There was no glow of hope in his heart. He had no deep faith in the girl he loved; indeed in his heart of hearts he knew that this being to whom he had trusted his hopes of bliss was no heroine. She was a lovely, loveable girl, nothing more. How would she greet him when they met presently on the tennis lawn? With tears and entreaties, and pretty little deprecating speeches, irresolution, timidity, vacillation, perhaps; hardly with heroic resolve to act and dare for his sake.
There was no one on the tennis lawn when he went there, though the hour was close at hand at which Lesbia had promised to give him his answer. He sat down in one of the low chairs, glad to rest after his long ramble having had no refreshment but a bottle of soda-water and a biscuit at the cottage by Easedale Tarn. He waited, calmly as to outward seeming, but with a heavy heart.
‘If it were Mary now whom I loved, I should have little fear of the issue,’ he thought, weighing his sweetheart’s character, as he weighed his chances of success. ‘That young termagant would defy the world for her lover.’
He sat in the summer silence for nearly half-an-hour, and still there was no sign of Lady Lesbia. Her satin-lined workbasket, with the work thrown carelessly across it, was still on the rustic table, just as she had left it when they went to the pine wood. Waiting was weary work when the bliss of a lifetime trembled in the balance; and yet he did not want to be impatient. She might find it difficult to get away from her family, perhaps. She was closely watched and guarded, as the most precious thing at Fellside.
At last the clock struck five, and Hammond could endure delay no longer. He went round by the flower garden to the terrace before the drawing-room windows, and through an open window to the drawing-room.
Lady Maulevrier was in her accustomed seat, with her own particular little table, magazines, books, newspapers at her side. Lady Mary was pouring out the tea, a most unusual thing; and Maulevrier was sitting on a stool at her feet, with his knees up to his chin, very warm and dusty, eating pound cake.
‘Where the mischief have you been hiding yourself all day, Jack?’ he called out as Hammond appeared, looking round the room as he entered, with eager, interrogating eyes, for that one figure which was absent.
‘I have been for a walk.’
‘You might have had the civility to announce your design, and Molly and I would have shared your peregrinations.’
‘I am sorry that I lost the privilege of your company.’
‘I suppose you lost your luncheon, which was of more importance,’ said Maulevrier.
‘Will you have some tea?’ asked Mary, who looked more womanly than usual in a cream-coloured surah gown — one of her Sunday gowns.
She had a faint hope that by this essentially feminine apparel she might lessen the prejudicial effect of Maulevrier’s cruel story about the fox-hunt.
Mr. Hammond answered absently, hardly looking at Mary, and quite unconscious of her pretty gown.
‘Thanks, yes,’ he said, taking the cup and saucer, and looking at the door by which he momently expected Lady Lesbia’s entrance, and then, as the door did not open, he looked down at Mary, very busy with china teapots and a brass kettle which hissed and throbbed over a spirit lamp.
‘Won’t you have some cake,’ she asked, looking up at him gently, grieved at the distress and disappointment in his face. ‘I am sure you must be dreadfully hungry.’
‘Not in the least, thanks. How came you to be entrusted with those sacred vessels, Lady Mary? What has become of Fr?ulein and your sister?’
‘They have rushed off to St. Bees. Grandmother thought Lesbia looking pale and out of spirits, and packed her off to the seaside at a minute’s notice.’
‘What! She has left Fellside?’ asked Hammond, paling suddenly, as if a man had struck him. ‘Lady Maulevrier, do I understand that Lady Lesbia has gone away?’
He asked the question in an authoritative tone, with the air of a man who had a right to be answered. The dowager wondered at his surpassing insolence.
‘My granddaughter has gone to the seaside with her governess,’ she said, haughtily.
‘At a minute’s notice?’
‘At a minute’s notice. I am not in the habit of hesitating about any step which I consider necessary for my grandchildren’s welfare.’
She looked him full in the face, with those falcon eyes of hers; and he gave her back a look as resolute, and every whit as full of courage and of pride.
‘Well,’ he said, after a very perceptible pause, ‘no doubt your ladyship has done wisely, and I must submit to your jurisdiction. But I had asked Lady Lesbia a question, and I had been promised an answer.’
‘Your question has been answered by Lady Lesbia. She left a note for you,’ replied Lady Maulevrier.
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