ed to get
away from the beautiful luxurious rooms, and to go roving by hill-side
and force, away to Easedale Tarn, to bask for hours on the grassy margin
of the deep still water, or to row round and round the mountain lake in
a rotten boat. It was here, or in some kindred spot, that Molly got
through most of her reading--here that she read Shakespeare, Byron, and
Shelley, and Wordsworth--dwelling lingeringly and lovingly upon every
line in which that good old man spoke of her native land. Sometimes she
climbed to higher ground, and felt herself ever so much nearer heaven
upon the crest of Silver Howe, or upon the rugged stony steep of Dolly
Waggon pike, half way up the dark brow of Helvellyn; sometimes she
disappeared for hours, and climbed to the summit of the hill, and
wandered in perilous pathways on Striding Edge, or by the dark still
water of the Red Tarn. This had been her life ever since she had been
old enough to have an independent existence; and the hills and the
lakes, and the books of her own choosing, had done a great deal more in
ripening her mind than Fraeulein Mueller and that admirable series of
educational works which has been provided for the tuition of modern
youth. Grammars and geographies, primers and elementary works of all
kinds, were Mary's detestation; but she loved books that touched her
heart and filled her mind with thoughts wide and deep enough to reach
into the infinite of time and space, the mystery of mind and matter,
life and death.

Nothing occurred to break the placid monotony of life at Fellside for
three long days after that rainy morning; and then came an event which,
although commonplace enough in itself, marked the beginning of a new era
in the existence of Lady Maulevrier's granddaughters.

It was evening, and the two girls were dawdling about on the sloping
lawn before the drawing-room windows, where Lady Maulevrier read the
newspapers in her own particular chair by one of those broad Tudor
windows, according to her infallible custom. Remote as her life had been
from the busy world, her ladyship had never allowed her knowledge of
public life and the bent of modern thought to fall into arrear. She took
a keen interest in politics, in progress of all kinds. She was a staunch
Conservative, and looked upon every Liberal politician as her personal
enemy; but she took care to keep herself informed of everything that was
being said or done in the enemy's camp. She had an intense resp