the possible
advent of "Countess Tatham" cast a faint ray on the future.

A few days later Lady Tatham appeared. Melrose had been particularly perverse and uncommunicative on the subject. "Like her audacity!"—so Netta had understood his muttered comment, when she took him the cards. He admitted that the lady and he were cousins—the children of first cousins; and that he had once seen a good deal of her. He called her "an audacious woman"; but Mrs. Melrose noticed that he did not forbid her the house; nay, rather that he listened with some attention to Thyrza's report that the lady had promised to call again.

On the afternoon of the call, the skies were clear of rain, though not of cloud. The great gashed mountain to the north which Dixon called Saddleback, while a little Cumbria "guide," produced by Tyson, called it Blencathra, showed sombrely in a gray light; and a November wind was busy stripping what leaves still remained from the woods by the stream and in the hollows of the mountain. Landscape and heavens were of an iron bracingness and bareness; and the beauty in them was not for eyes like Netta's. She had wandered out forlornly on the dank paths descending to the stream. Edmund as usual was interminably busy fitting up one of the lower rooms for some of his minor bric-à-brac—ironwork, small bronzes, watches, and clocks. Anastasia and the baby were out.

Would Anastasia stay? Already she looked ill; she complained of her chest. She had made up her mind to come with the Melroses for the sake of her mother and sister in Rome, who were so miserably poor. Netta felt that she—the mistress—had some security against losing her, in the mere length and cost of the journey. To go home now, before the end of her three months, would swallow up all the nurse had earned; for Edmund would never contribute a farthing. Poor Anastasia! And yet Netta felt angrily toward her for wishing to desert them.

"For of course I shall take her home—in March. We shall all be going then," she said to herself with an emphasis, almost a passion, which yet was full of misgiving.

Suddenly, just as she had returned by a steep path to the dilapidated terrace on the north side of the house—a sound of horses' feet and wheels. Evidently a carriage—a caller. Netta's pulse fluttered. She ran into the house by a side door, and up to her room, where she smoothed her hair anxiously, and lightly powdered her face. There was no time to change her dress, but she took out a feather boa which she kept for great occasions, and prepared to descend with dignity. Oh the stairs she met Mrs. Dixon, who announced "Lady Tatham."

"Find Mr. Melrose, please."

"Oh, he's there, Ma'am, awready."

Netta entered the drawing-room to see her husband pacing up and-down before a strange lady, who sat in one of the crimson armchairs, entirely at her ease.

"So this is your wife, Edmund," said Lady Tatham, as she rose.

"It is. You'll make mock of her no doubt—as you do of me."

"Nonsense! I never make mock of anybody," said a musical voice, rich however through all its music in a rather formidable significance. The owner of it turned toward Netta.

"I hope, Mrs. Melrose, that you will like Cumbria?"

Netta, accustomed to Edmund's "queerness," and determined to hold her own, settled herself deliberately opposite her visitor, and was soon complaining in her shrill voice of the loneliness of the place and the damp of the climate. Melrose never once looked at his wife. He was paler than usual, with an eager combative aspect, quite new to Netta. He seemed for once to be unsure of his ground—both to expect attack, even to provoke it—and to shrink from it. His eyes were fixed upon Lady Tatham, and followed her every movement.

Attention was certainly that lady's due; and it failed her rarely. She had beauty—great beauty; and a personality that refused to be overlooked. Her dress showed in equal measure contempt for mere fashion, and a close study of effect. The lines of her long cloak of dull blue cloth, with its garnishings of sable, matched her stately slenderness well; and the close-fitting cap over the coiled hair conveyed the same impression of something perfectly contrived and wholly successful. Netta thought at first that she was "made up," so dazzling was the white and pink, and then doubted. The beauty of the face reminded one, perhaps, of the beauty of a boy—of some clear-eyed, long-chinned athlete—masterfully simple—a careless conqueror.