er and his friend presently entered.

'How d'ye do, grandmother? how do, Lesbia? This is my very good friend
and Canadian travelling companion, Jack Hammond--Lady Maulevrier, Lady
Lesbia.'

'Very glad to see you, Mr. Hammond,' said the dowager, in a tone so
purely conventional that it might mean anything. 'Hammond? I ought to
remember your family--the Hammonds of----'

'Of nowhere,' answered the stranger in the easiest tone; 'I spring from
a race of nobodies, of whose existence your ladyship is not likely to
have heard.'

CHAPTER VI.

MAULEVRIER'S HUMBLE FRIEND.

That faint interest which Lady Lesbia had felt in the advent of a
stranger dwindled to nothing after Mr. Hammond's frank avowal of his
insignificance. At the very beginning of her career, with the world
waiting to be conquered by her, a high-born beauty could not be expected
to feel any interest in nobodies. Lesbia shook hands with her brother,
honoured the stranger with a stately bend of her beautiful throat, and
then withdrew herself from their society altogether as it were, and
began to explore her basket of crewels, at a distant table, by the soft
light of a shaded lamp, while Maulevrier answered his grandmother's
questions, and Mary stood watching him, hanging on his words, as if
unconscious of any other presence.

Mr. Hammond went over to the window and looked out at the view. The moon
was rising above the amphitheatre of hills, and her rays were silvering
the placid bosom of the lake. Lights were dotted here and there about
the valley, telling of village life. The Prince of Wales's hotel yonder
sparkled with its many lights, like a castle in a fairy tale. The
stranger had looked upon many a grander scene, but on none more lovely.
Here were lake and mountain in little, without the snow-peaks and awful
inaccessible regions of solitude and peril; homely hills that one might
climb, placid English vales in which English poets have lived and died.

'Hammond and I mean to spend a month or six weeks with you, if you can
make us comfortable,' said Maulevrier.

'I am delighted to hear that you can contemplate staying a month
anywhere,' replied her ladyship. 'Your usual habits are as restless as
if your life were a disease. It shall not be my fault if you and Mr.
Hammond are uncomfortable at Fellside.'

There was courtesy, but no cordiality in the reply. If Mr. Hammond was a
sensitive man, touchily conscious of his own obscurity, he must have
f