‘OF ALL MEN ELSE I HAVE AVOIDED THEE.’

It was afternoon.  The white hills yonder and all the length of the valley were touched here and there with gleams of wintry sunlight, and Lady Maulevrier was taking her solitary walk in the terrace in front of her house, a stately figure wrapped in a furred mantle, tall, erect, moving with measured pace up and down the smooth gravel path.  Now and then at the end of the walk the dowager stopped for a minute or so, and stood as if in deep thought, with her eyes dreamily contemplating the landscape.  An intense melancholy shadowed her face, as she thus gazed with brooding eyes on the naked monotony of those wintry hills.  So had she looked in many and many a winter, and it seemed to her that her life was of a piece with those bleak hills, where in the dismal winter time nothing living trod.  She stood gazing at the sinking sun, a fiery ball shining at the end of a long gallery of crag and rock, like a lamp at the end of a corridor; and as she gazed the red round orb dropped suddenly behind the edge of a crag, as if she had been an enchantress and had dismissed it with a wave of her wand.

‘O Lord, how long, how long?’ she said.  ’How many times have I seen that sun go down from this spot, in winter and summer, in spring and autumn!  And now that the one being I loved and cared for is far away, I feel all the weariness and emptiness of my life.’

As she turned to resume her walk she heard the muffled sound of wheels in the road below, that road which was completely hidden by foliage in summer, but which was now visible here and there between the leafless trees.  A carriage with a pair of horses was coming along the road from Ambleside.

Lady Maulevrier stood and watched until the carriage drew up at the lodge gate, and then, when the gate had been opened, slowly ascended the winding drive to the house.

She expected no visitor; indeed, there was no one likely to come to her from the direction of Ambleside.  Her heart began to beat heavily, with the apprehension of coming evil.  What kind of evil she knew not.  Bad news about her granddaughter, perhaps, or about Maulevrier.  And yet that could hardly be.  Evil tidings of that kind would have reached her by telegram.

Perhaps it was Maulevrier himself.  His movements were generally erratic.

Lady Maulevrier hurried back to the house.  She went through the conservatory, where the warm whiteness of azalia, and spirea, and arum lilies contrasted curiously with the cold white snow out of doors, to the hall, where a stranger was standing talking to the butler.

He was a man of foreign appearance, wearing a cloak lined with sables, and a sable cap, which he removed as Lady Maulevrier approached.  He was thin and small, with a clear olive complexion, olive inclining to pale bronze, sleek raven hair, and black almond-shaped eyes.  At the first glance Lady Maulevrier knew that he was an Oriental.  Her heart sank within her, and seemed to grow chill as death at sight of him.  Anything associated with India was horrible to her.