'You have parents, perhaps, who are ambitious for you—a mother who thinks her son a heaven-born statesman!' said her ladyship, kindly.
'Alas, no! that incentive to ambition is wanting in my case. I have neither father nor mother living.'
'That is very sad. No doubt that fact has been a bond of sympathy between you and Maulevrier?'
'I believe it has.'
'Well, I hope Providence will smile upon your path.'
'Come what may, I shall never forget the happy weeks I have spent at Fellside,' said Hammond, 'or your ladyship's gracious hospitality.'
He took up the beautiful hand, white to transparency, showing the delicate tracing of blue veins, and pressed his lips upon it in chivalrous worship of age and womanly dignity.
Lady Maulevrier smiled upon him with her calm, grave smile. She would have liked to say, 'You shall be welcome again at Fellside,' but she felt that the man was dangerous. Not while Lesbia remained single could she court his company. If Maulevrier brought him she must tolerate his presence, but she would do nothing to invite that danger.
There was no music that evening. Maulevrier and Mary were playing billiards; Fräulein Müller was sitting in her corner working at a high-art counterpane. Lesbia came in from the verandah presently, and sat on a low stool by her grandmother's arm-chair, and talked to her in soft, cooing accents, inaudible to John Hammond, who sat a little way off turning the leaves of the Contemporary Review: and this went on till eleven o'clock, the regular hour for retiring, when Mary came in from the billiard-room, and told Mr. Hammond that Maulevrier was waiting for a smoke and a talk. Then candles were lighted, and the ladies all departed, leaving John Hammond and his friend with the house to themselves.
They played a fifty game, and smoked and talked till the stroke of midnight, by which time it seemed as if there were not another creature awake in the house. Maulevrier put out the lamps in the billiard-room, and then they went softly up the shadowy staircase, and parted in the gallery, the Earl going one way, and his friend the other.