A blue gauze of smoke floated over the chimney, as if somebody was living there; round towards the side some empty hen-coops were piled away; while under the hollies were divers frameworks of wire netting and sticks, showing that birds were kept here at some seasons of the year.

Being lady of all she surveyed, Ethelberta crossed the leafy sward, and knocked at the door.  She was interested in knowing the purpose of the peculiar little edifice.

The door was opened by a woman wearing a clean apron upon a not very clean gown.  Ethelberta asked who lived in so pretty a place.

‘Miss Gruchette,’ the servant replied.  ‘But she is not here now.’

‘Does she live here alone?’

‘Yes—­excepting myself and a fellow-servant.’

‘Oh.’

’She lives here to attend to the pheasants and poultry, because she is so clever in managing them.  They are brought here from the keeper’s over the hill.  Her father was a fancier.’

’Miss Gruchette attends to the birds, and two servants attend to Miss Gruchette?’

’Well, to tell the truth, m’m, the servants do almost all of it.  Still, that’s what Miss Gruchette is here for.  Would you like to see the house?  It is pretty.’  The woman spoke with hesitation, as if in doubt between the desire of earning a shilling and the fear that Ethelberta was not a stranger.  That Ethelberta was Lady Mountclere she plainly did not dream.

‘I fear I can scarcely stay long enough; yet I will just look in,’ said Ethelberta.  And as soon as they had crossed the threshold she was glad of having done so.

The cottage internally may be described as a sort of boudoir extracted from the bulk of a mansion and deposited in a wood.  The front room was filled with nicknacks, curious work-tables, filigree baskets, twisted brackets supporting statuettes, in which the grotesque in every case ruled the design; love-birds, in gilt cages; French bronzes, wonderful boxes, needlework of strange patterns, and other attractive objects.  The apartment was one of those which seem to laugh in a visitor’s face and on closer examination express frivolity more distinctly than by words.

‘Miss Gruchette is here to keep the fowls?’ said Ethelberta, in a puzzled tone, after a survey.

‘Yes.  But they don’t keep her.’

Ethelberta did not attempt to understand, and ceased to occupy her mind with the matter.  They came from the cottage to the door, where she gave the woman a trifling sum, and turned to leave.  But footsteps were at that moment to be heard beating among the leaves on the other side of the hollies, and Ethelberta waited till the walkers should have passed.  The voices of two men reached herself and the woman as they stood.  They were close to the house, yet screened from it by the holly-bushes, when one could be heard to say distinctly, as if with his face turned to the cottage—­

‘Lady Mountclere gone for good?’