To-day she could not pin
her mind to pages which might have interested her at another time. Her
thoughts were with Lord Maulevrier, that fondly-loved only brother, just
seven years her senior, who had taken to race-horses and bad ways, and
seemed to be trying his hardest to dissipate the splendid fortune which
his grandmother, the dowager Countess, had nursed so judiciously during
his long minority. Maulevrier and Mary had always been what the young
man called 'no end of chums.'
He called her his own brown-eyed Molly, much to the annoyance of Lady
Maulevrier and Lesbia; and Mary's life was all gladness when Maulevrier
was at Fellside. She devoted herself wholly to his amusements, rode and
drove with him, followed on her pony when he went otter hunting, and
very often abandoned the pony to the care of some stray mountain youth
in order to join the hunters, and go leaping from stone to stone on the
margin of the stream, and occasionally, in moments of wild excitement,
when the hounds were in full cry, splashing in and out of the water,
like a naiad in a neat little hunting-habit.
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