'Good evening to you,' said Mary, rising with a great effort, so strong was her feeling of being spellbound by the uncanny old man, 'I must go indoors now.'
He stretched out his withered old hand, small, semi-transparent, with the blue veins showing darkly under the parchment-coloured skin, and grasped Mary's arm.
'Don't go,' he pleaded. 'I like your face, child; I like your voice—I like to have you here. What do you mean by going indoors? Where do you live?'
'There,' said Mary, pointing to the dead wall which faced them. 'In the new part of Fellside House. I suppose you are staying in the old part with James Steadman.'
She had made up her mind that this crazy old man must be a relation of Steadman's to whom he gave hospitality either with or without her ladyship's consent. All powerful as Lady Maulevrier had ever been in her own house, it was just possible that now, when she was a prisoner in her own rooms, certain small liberties might be taken, even by so faithful a servant as Steadman.
'Staying with James Steadman,' repeated the old man in a meditative tone. 'Yes, I stay with Steadman. A good servant, a worthy person. It is only for a little while. I shall be leaving Westmoreland next week. And you live in that house, do you?' pointing to the dead wall. 'Whose house?'
'Lady Maulevrier's. I am Lady Maulevrier's granddaughter.'
'Lady Mau-lev-rier.' He repeated the name in syllables. 'A good name—an old title—as old as the conquest. A Norman race those Maulevriers. And you are Lady Maulevrier's granddaughter! You should be proud. The Maulevriers were always a proud race.'
'Then I am no true Maulevrier,' answered Mary gaily.
She was beginning to feel more at her ease with the old man. He was evidently mad, as mad as a March hare; but his madness seemed only the harmless lunacy of extreme old age. He had flashes of reason, too. Mary began to feel a friendly interest in him. To youth in its flush of life and vigour there seems something so unspeakably sad and pitiable in feebleness and age—the brief weak remnant of life, the wreck of body and mind, sunning itself in the declining rays of a sun that is so soon to shine upon its grave.