“How did you come?—­through the Glendarra woods?” he asked of Lydia.  The delight in his eyes as he turned them upon her was already evident to his mother.

Lydia assented.

“Then you saw the rhododendrons?  Jolly, aren’t they?”

Lydia replied with ardour.  There is a place in the Glendarra woods, where the oaks and firs fall away to let a great sheet of rhododendrons sweep up from the lowland into a mountain boundary of gray crag and tumbling fern.  Rose-pink, white and crimson, the waves of colour roll among the rocks, till Cumbria might seem Kashmir.  Lydia’s looks sparkled, as she spoke of it.  The artist in her had feasted.

“Won’t you come and paint it?” said Tatham bending forward eagerly.  “You’d make a glorious thing of it.  Mother could send a motor for you so easily.  Couldn’t you, mother?”

“Delighted,” said Lady Tatham, rather perfunctorily.  “They are just in their glory—­they ought to be painted.”

“Thank you so much!”—­Lydia’s tone was a little hurried—­“but I have so many subjects on hand just now.”

“Oh, but nothing half so beautiful as that, Lydia!” cried her mother, “or so uncommon.  And they’ll be over directly.  If Lady Tatham would really send the motor for you—­”

Lydia murmured renewed thanks.  Tatham, observing her, retreated, with a laugh and a flush.

“I say, we mustn’t bother you to paint what we like.  That would be too bad.”

Lydia smiled upon him.

“I’m so busy with a big view of the river and Threlfall.”

“Threlfall?  Oh, do you know—­mother! do you know what’s been happening at
Threlfall.  Undershaw told me.  The most marvellous thing!” He turned to
Mrs. Penfold.  “You’ve heard the stories they tell about here of old
Melrose?”

Lydia laughed softly.

“Mother collects them!”

Mrs. Penfold confessed that, being a timid person, she went in fear, sometimes of Mr. Melrose, sometimes of his bloodhounds.  She did not like passing the gate of Threlfall, and the high wall round the estate made her shudder.  Of course the person that put up that wall must be mad.

“A queer sort of madman!” said Tatham, with a shrug.  “They say he gets richer every year in spite of the state of the property.  And meanwhile no human being, except himself or the Dixons, has ever slept in that house, or taken bite or sup in it for at least twenty years.  And as for his behaviour to everybody round about—­well, I can tell you all about that whenever you want to know!  However, now they’ve stormed him—­they’ve smoked him out like a wasp’s nest.  My goodness—­he did buzz!  Undershaw found a man badly hurt, lying on the road by the bridge—­bicycle accident—­run over too, I believe—­and carried him into the Tower, willy-nilly!” The speaker chuckled.  “Melrose was away.  Old Dixon said they should only come in over his body—­but was removed.  Undershaw got four labourers to help