She went out to walk down her depression before teatime, if possible. She went along a narrow path by the river, then turned into a road that skirted those green pastures which rose sheer till the ragged edge of the topmost boundary seemed to touch the dim, grey sky. She passed the village inn, deadly quiet at this season and at this hour. She passed the half-dozen decent cottages, and the three or four genteeler houses, each in its neatly kept garden, and she walked with quick, light step along the wet road, her useful tailor-gown well clear of the mud, her stick striking the hedgerow now and then, as she swung it to and fro in dreamy thought. A long, lonely winter to look forward to--a winter like the last--with her books and drawing-board, and her cottage piano, and the cat and the fox-terrier, and Tabitha for her daily companions. There were a few neighbours within a radius of half a dozen miles, who had been very civil to her; who called upon her, say once in six weeks; who sometimes invited her to a stately dinner-party, and sometimes at a suspiciously short notice, which made her feel she was wanted to fill a gap; who made her free of their tennis lawns; and who talked to her on Sundays after church, and were always very particular in inquiring for news from India. There was not one among them for whom she cared; not one to whom she would have liked to pour out her thoughts about Keats or Shelley, or to whom she would have confided her opinion of Byron. She was more interested in Bulwer’s “Audley Egerton” than in any of those flesh and blood neighbours. She was happier sitting by her chimney corner with a novel than in the best society available within a drive of Trelasco. She struck off the high road into a lane, a lane that led to the base of a wilder hill than that where the red cattle were grazing. The crest of the hill was common land, and dark fir-trees made a ragged line against the autumn sky, and the view from the summit was wide and varied, with a glimpse of the great brown cliffs and the dark, grey sea far off to the west, to that dim distance where the Dodman shut off the watery way to the new world. On the landward slope of that wild-looking ridge was the Mount, Lord Lostwithiel’s place, uninhabited for the greater part of the year except by servants, his lordship being the very last kind of man to bury himself alive in a remote Cornish fastness, a long day’s journey from the London theatres, and the R.Y.S. Clubhouse at Cowes. Who was Lord Lostwithiel? Well, in the estimation of Trelasco he was the only nobleman in England, or say that he was to all other peers as the sun to the planets. He belonged to Trelasco by reason of his large landed estate and the accident of his birth, which had taken place at the Mount; and, although his character and way of life were not altogether satisfactory to the village mind, Trelasco made the best of him.