’You are wrong, Jack.  I do know what poverty means.  I have studied the ways of the poor, tried to console them, and help them a little in their troubles; and I know there is no pain that want of money can bring which I would not share willingly with you.  Do you suppose my happiness is dependent on a fine house and powdered footmen?  I should like to go to the Red River with you, and wear cotton gowns, and tuck up my sleeves and clean our cottage.’

’Very pretty sport, dear, for a summer day; but my Mary shall have a sweeter life, and shall occasionally walk in silk attire.’

That tea-drinking by the fireside in the inn parlour was the most delicious thing within John Hammond’s experience.  Mary was a bewitching compound of earnestness and simplicity, so humble, so confiding, so perplexed and astounded at her own bliss.

’Confess, now, in the summer, when you were in love with Lesbia, you thought me a horrid kind of girl,’ she said, presently, when they were standing side by side at the window, waiting for the coach.

’Never, Mary.  My crime is to have thought very little about you in those days.  I was so dazzled by Lesbia’s beauty, so charmed by her accomplishments and girlish graces, that I forgot to take notice of anything else in the world.  If I thought of you at all it was as another Maulevrier—­a younger Maulevrier in petticoats, very gay, and good-humoured, and nice.’

’But when you saw me rushing about with the terriers—­I must have seemed utterly horrid.’

’Why, dearest There is nothing essentially horrible in terriers, or in a bright lively girl running races with them.  You made a very pretty picture in the sunlight, with your hat hanging on your shoulder, and your curly brown hair and dancing hazel eyes.  If I had not been deep in love with Lesbia’s peerless complexion and Grecian features, I should have looked below the surface of that Gainsborough picture, and discovered what treasures of goodness, and courage, and truth and purity those frank brown eyes and that wide forehead betokened.  I was sowing my wild oats last summer, Mary, and they brought me a crop of sorrow But I am wiser now—­wiser and happier.

‘But if you were to see Lesbia again would not the old love revive?’

’The old love is dead, Mary.  There is nothing left of it but a handful of ashes, which I scatter thus to the four winds,’ with a wave of his hand towards the open casement.  ’The new love absorbs and masters my being.  If Lesbia were to re-appear at Fellside this evening, I could offer her my hand in all brotherly frankness, and ask her to accept me as a brother.  Here comes the coach.  We shall be at Fellside just in time for dinner.’

CHAPTER XXII.

WISER THAN LESBIA.