Viscount Haselden, alias Lord Maulevrier, held a long consultation with Lord Hartfield on the night of his grandmother's death, as to what steps ought to be taken in relation to the real Earl of Maulevrier: and it was only at the end of a serious and earnest discussion that both young men came to the decision that Lady Maulevrier's secret ought to be kept faithfully to the end. Assuredly no good purpose could be achieved by letting the world know of old Lord Maulevrier's existence. A half-lunatic octogenarian could gain nothing by being restored to rights and possessions which he had most justly forfeited. All that justice demanded was that the closing years of his life should be made as comfortable as care and wealth could make them; and Hartfield and Haselden took immediate steps to this end. But their first act was to send the old earl's treasure chest under safe convoy to the India House, with a letter explaining how this long-hidden wealth, brought from India by Lord Maulevrier, had been discovered among other effects in a lumber-room at Lady Maulevrier's country house. The money so delivered up might possibly have formed part of his lordship's private fortune; but, in the absence of any knowledge as to its origin, his grandson, the present Lord Maulevrier, preferred to deliver it up to the authorities of the India House, to be dealt with as they might think fit.
The old earl made no further attempt to assert himself. He seemed content to remain in his own rooms as of old, to potter about the garden, where his solitude was as complete as that of a hermit's cell. The only moan be made was for James Steadman, whose services he missed sorely. Lord Hartfield replaced that devoted servant by a clever Austrian valet, a new importation from Vienna, who understood very little English, a trained attendant upon mental invalids, and who was quite capable of dealing with old Lord Maulevrier.
Lord Hartfield went a step farther; and within a week of those two funerals of servant and mistress, which cast a gloom over the peaceful valley of Grasmere, he brought down a famous mad-doctor to diagnose his lordship's case. There was but little risk in so doing, he argued with his friend, and it was their duty so to do. If the old man should assert himself to the doctor as Lord Maulevrier, the declaration would pass as a symptom of his lunacy. But it happened that the physician arrived at Fellside on one of Lord Maulevrier's bad days, and the patient never emerged from the feeblest phase of imbecility.
'Brain quite gone,' pronounced the doctor, 'bodily health very poor. Take him to the South of France for the winter—Hyères, or any quiet place. He can't last long.'
To Hyères the old man was taken, with Mrs. Steadman as nurse, and the Austrian valet as body-servant and keeper. Mary, for whom, in his brighter hours he showed a warm affection, went with him under her husband's wing.
Lord Hartfield rented a chateau on the slope of an olive-clad hill, where he and his young wife, whose health was somewhat delicate at this time, spent a winter in peaceful seclusion; while Lesbia and her brother travelled together in Italy. The old man's strength improved in that lovely climate. He lived to see the roses and orange blossoms of the early spring, and died in his arm-chair suddenly, without a pang, while Mary sat at his feet reading to him: a quiet end of an evil and troubled life. And now he whom the world had known as Lord Maulevrier was verily the earl, and could hear himself called by his title once more without a touch of shame.
The secret of Lady Maulevrier's sin had been so faithfully kept by the two young men that neither of her granddaughters knew the true story of that mysterious person whom Mary had first heard of as James Steadman's uncle. She and Lesbia both knew that there were painful circumstances of some kind connected with this man's existence, his hidden life in the old house at Fellside; but they were both content to learn no more. Respect for their grandmother's memory, sorrowful affection for the dead, prevailed over natural curiosity.
Early in February Maulevrier sent decorators and upholsterers into the old house in Curzon Street, which was ready before the middle of May to receive his lordship and his young wife, the girlish daughter of a Florentine nobleman, a gazelle-eyed Italian, with a voice whose every tone was music, and with the gentlest, shyest, most engaging manners of any girl in Florence. Lady Lesbia, strangely subdued and changed by the griefs and humiliations of her last campaign, had been her brother's counsellor and confidante throughout his wooing of his fair Italian bride. She was to spend the season under her brother's roof, to help to initiate young Lady Maulevrier in the mysterious rites of London society, and to warn her of those rocks and shoals which had wrecked her own fortunes.
The month of May brought a son and heir to Lord Hartfield; and it was not till after his birth that Mary, Countess of Hartfield, was presented to her sovereign, and began her career as a matron of rank and standing, very much overpowered by the weight of her honours, and looking forward with delight to the end of the season and a flight to Argyleshire with her husband and baby.