, taking chutnee with
strawberry cream, and currant jelly with asparagus. What did it matter?
Everything tasted of bliss.

'You have had absolutely nothing to eat,' said Mary, piteously, as the
dogcart came grinding round upon the dry gravel.

'Oh, I have done splendidly--thanks. I have just had a macaroon and some
of that capital gorgonzola. God bless you, dearest, and _a revoir, a
revoir_ to-morrow.'

'And to-morrow I shall be Mary Hammond,' cried Mary, clasping her hands.
'Isn't it capital fun?'

They were in the porch alone. The servants were all at dinner, save the
groom with the cart, Miss Mueller was still munching at the well-spread
table in the dining-room.

John Hammond folded his sweetheart in his arms for one brief embrace;
there was no time for loitering. In another moment he was springing into
the cart. A shake of the reins, and he was driving slowly down the steep
avenue.

'Life is full of partings,' Mary said to herself, as she watched the
last glimpse of the dogcart between the trees down in the road below,
'but this one is to be very short, thank God.'

She wondered what she should do with herself for the rest of the
afternoon, and finally, finding that she was not wanted by her
grandmother until afternoon tea, she set out upon a round of visits to
her favourite cottagers, to bid them a long farewell as a spinster.

'You'll be away a long time, I suppose, Lady Mary?' said one of her
humble friends; 'you'll be going to Switzerland or Italy, or some of
those foreign parts where great ladies and gentlemen travel for their
honeymoons?'

But Mary declared that she would be absent a week at longest She was
coming back to take care of her invalid grandmother; and she was not
going to marry a great gentleman, but a man who would have to work for
his living.

She went back to Fellside, and read the _Times_, and poured out Lady
Maulevrier's tea, and sat on her low stool by the sofa, and the old and
the young woman were as happy and confidential together as if they had
been always the nearest and dearest to each other. Her ladyship had seen
Miss Mueller, and had informed that excellent person that her services at
Fellside would no longer be required after Lady Mary's marriage; but
that her devotion to her duties during the last fourteen years should be
rewarded by a pension which, together with her savings, would enable her
to spend the rest of her days in repose. Miss Mueller was duly grateful,
and