the
fells, the copses white with wind flowers. Everywhere, softness and
austerity side by side--the "cheerful silence of the fells," the high
exhilarating air, dark tortured crags and ghylls--then a soft and
laughing scene, gentle woods, blue water, lovely outlines, and
flower-carpeted fields.

'The exquisite _colour_ of Westmoreland in May! The red of the autumn
still on the hills,--while the bluebells are rushing over the copses.'

The little cottage of Robin Ghyll, where the first chapters were
written, stands, sheltered by its sycamore, high on the fell-side,
above the road that leads to the foot of the Langdale Pikes. But--in
the dream-days when the Fenwicks lived there!--it was the _old_
cottage, as it was up to ten or fifteen years ago;--a deep-walled,
low-ceiled labourer's cottage of the sixteenth century, and before any
of the refinements and extensions of to-day were added.

The book was continued at Stocks, during a quiet summer. Then with
late September came fatigue and discouragement. It was imperative to
find some stimulus, some complete change of scene both for the tale
and its writer. Was it much browsing in Saint-Simon that suggested
to me Versailles? I cannot remember. At any rate by the beginning of
October we were settled in an apartment on the edge of the park and a
stone's throw from the palace. Some weeks of quickened energy and more
rapid work followed--and the pleasures of that chill golden autumn are
reflected in the later chapters of the book. Each sunny day was
more magnificent than the last. Yet there was no warmth in the
magnificence. The wind was strangely bitter; it was winter before the
time. And the cold splendour of the weather heightened the spell of
the great, dead, regal place; so that the figures and pageants of a
vanished world seemed to be still latent in the sharp bright air--a
filmy multitude.

This brilliance of an incomparable _decor_ followed me back to
Hertfordshire, and remained with me through winter days. But when the
last pages came, in December, I turned back in spirit to the softer,
kinder beauty amid which the little story had taken its rise, and I
placed the sad second spring of the two marred lives under the dear
shelter of the fells.

MARY A. WARD.

PART I

WESTMORELAND

'Who can contemplate Fame through clouds unfold
The star which rises o'er her steep, nor climb?'

CHAPTER I

Really, mother, I can't sit any more. I'm that stiff!