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 Müller, 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 Müller was duly grateful, and owned to a tender longing for the Heimath, and declared herself ready to retire from her post whenever her ladyship pleased.
'I shall go back to Germany directly I leave you, and I shall live and die there, unless I am wanted by one of my old pupils. But should Lady Lesbia or Lady Mary need my services for their daughters, in days to come, they can command me. For no one else will I abandon the Fatherland.'
The Fräulein thus easily disposed of, Lady Mary felt that matrimony would verily mean independence. And yet she was prepared to regard her husband as her master. She meant to obey him in all meekness and reverence of spirit.
She spent the rest of the afternoon and the whole of the evening in her grandmother's sitting-room, dining tête-à-tête with the invalid for the first time since her illness. Lady Maulevrier talked much of Mary's future, and of Lesbia's; but it was evident that she was full of uneasiness upon the latter subject.
'I don't know what Lesbia is going to do with her life,' she said, with a sigh. 'Her letters tell me of nothing but gowns and parties; and Georgina Kirkbank can only expatiate upon Mr. Smithson's wealth, and the grand position he is going to occupy by-and-by. I should like to see both my granddaughters married before I die—yes, I should like to see Lesbia's fate secure, if she were to be only Lady Lesbia Smithson.'
'She cannot fail to make a good match, grandmother,' said Mary.
'I am beginning to lose faith in her future,' answered Lady Maulevrier. 'There seems to be a fatality about the career of particularly attractive girls. They are too confident of their power to succeed in life. They trifle with fortune, fascinate the wrong people, and keep the right people at arm's length. I think if I had been Lesbia's guide in society her first season would have counted for more than it is likely to count for under Lady Kirkbank's management. I should have awakened Lesbia from the dream of dress and dancing—the mere butterfly life of a girl who never looks beyond the present moment. But now go and give orders about your packing, Mary. It is past ten, and Clara had better pack your trunks early to-morrow morning.'
Clara was a modest Easedale damsel, who had been promoted to be Lady Mary's personal attendant, when the more mature Kibble had gone away with Lady Lesbia. Mary required very little waiting upon, but she was not the less glad to have a neat little smiling maiden devoted to her service, ready to keep her rooms neat and trim, to go on errands to the cottagers, to arrange the flowers in the old china bowls, and to make herself generally useful.
It seemed a strange thing to have to furnish a trousseau from the wardrobe of everyday life—a trousseau in which nothing, except half-a-dozen pairs of gloves, a pair of boots, and a few odds and ends of lace and ribbons would be actually new. Mary thought very little of the matter, but the position of things struck her maid as altogether extraordinary and unnatural.
'You should have seen the things Miss Freeman had, Lady Mary,' exclaimed the damsel, 'the daughter of that cotton-spinning gentleman from Manchester, who lives at The Gables—you should have seen her new gowns and things when she was married. Mrs. Freeman's maid keeps company with my brother James—he's in the stables at Freeman's, you know, Lady Mary—and she asked me in to look at the trousseau two days before the wedding. I never saw such beautiful dresses—such hats—such bonnets—such jackets and mantles. It was like going into one of those grand shops at York, and having all the things in the shop pulled out for one to look at—such silks and satins—and trimmed—ah! how those dresses was trimmed. The mystery was how the young lady could ever get herself into them, or sit down when she'd got one of them on.'