would admit their pony-carriage to some of the private drives of the park, wild enchanted ways which led up to the very eastern heart of Blencathra.  That was not quite so successful, because both Lydia and her mother were out, and his call had been made chiefly on Susan, who had been even queerer than usual.  After taking the key, she had let it fall absently into a waste-paper basket, while she talked to him about Ibsen; and he had been forced to rescue it himself, lest Lydia should never know of his visit.  On all other occasions he had found Lydia, and she had been charming—­always charming—­but as light and inaccessible as mountain birds.  He had been allowed to see the drawing she was now busy on—­the ravines of Blencathra, caught sideways through a haze of light, edge beyond edge, distance behind distance; a brave attempt on the artist’s part at poetic breadth and selection.  She had been much worried about the “values,” whatever they might be.  “They’re quite vilely wrong!” she had said, impatiently.  “And I don’t know how to get them right.”  And all he could do was to stand like an oaf and ask her to explain.  Nor could he ignore the fact—­so new and strange to a princeling!—­that her perplexities were more interesting to her than his visit.

Yet of course Tatham had his own natural conceit of himself, like any normal young man, in the first bloom of prosperous life.  He was accustomed to be smiled on; to find his pleasure consulted, and his company welcome, whether as the young master of Duddon, or as a comrade among his equals of either sex.  The general result indeed of his happy placing in the world had been to make him indifferent to things that most men desire.  No merit in that!  As he truly said, he had so much of them!  But he was proud of his health and strength—­his shooting and the steady lowering of his golf handicap.  He was proud also of certain practical aptitudes he possessed, and would soon allow no one to interfere with him—­hardly to advise him—­in the management of his estate.  He liked nothing better than to plan the rebuilding of a farm, or a set of new cottages.  He was a fair architect, of a rough and ready sort, and a decent thatcher and bricklayer.  All the older workmen on the estate had taught him something at one time or another; and of these various handicrafts he was boyishly vain.

None of these qualifications, however, gave him the smallest confidence in himself, with regard to Lydia Penfold.  Ever since he had first met her, he had realized in her the existence of standards just as free as his own, only quite different.  Other girls wished to be courted; or they courted him.  Miss Penfold gave no sign that she wished to be courted; and she certainly had never courted anybody.  Many pretty girls assert themselves by a kind of calculated or rude audacity, as though to say that gentleness and civility are not for the likes of them.  Lydia was always gentle—­kind, at least—­even when she laughed at you.  Unless she got upon