The lamps were lighted below; but this upper part of the house was
wrapped in the dull grey twilight of a stormy evening. A single lamp
burned dimly at the further end of the corridor, and all the rest was
shadow.
Mary and her husband walked up and down, talking in subdued tones. He
was explaining the necessity of his being in London next week, and
promising to come back to Fellside directly his business at the House
was over.
'It will be delightful to read your speeches,' said Mary; 'but I am
silly and selfish enough to wish you were a country squire, with no
business in London. And yet I don't wish that either, for I am intensely
proud of you.'
'And some day, before we are much older, you will sit in your robes in
the peeress's gallery.'
'Oh, I couldn't,' cried Mary. 'I should make a fool of myself, somehow.
I should look like a housemaid in borrowed plumes. Remember, I have no
_Anstand_--I have been told so all my life.'
'You will be one of the prettiest peeresses who ever sat in that
gallery, and the purest, and truest, and dearest,' protested her
lover-husband.
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