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Phantom Fortune, a Novel by M. E. (Mary Elizabeth) Braddon
page 247 of 654 (37%)

This was planned and discussed in the garden before breakfast. Fräulein
was told that Mary was going for a long walk with her brother and Mr.
Hammond; a walk which might last over the usual luncheon hour; so
Fräulein was not to wait luncheon. Mary went to her grandmother's room
to pay her duty visit. There were no letters for her to write that
morning, so she was perfectly free.

The three pedestrians started an hour after breakfast, in light marching
order. The two young men wore their Argyleshire shooting
clothes--homespun knickerbockers and jackets, thick-ribbed hose knitted
by Highland lasses in Inverness. They carried a couple of hunting flasks
filled with claret, and a couple of sandwich boxes, and that was all.
Mary wore her substantial tailor-gown of olive tweed, and a little toque
to match, with a silver mounted grouse-claw for her only ornament.

It was a delicious morning, the air fresh and sweet, the sun comfortably
warm, a little too warm, perhaps, presently, when they had trodden the
narrow path by the Tongue Ghyll, and were beginning to wind slowly
upwards over rough boulders and last year's bracken, tough and brown and
tangled, towards that rugged wall of earth and stone tufted with rank
grasses, which calls itself Dolly Waggon Pike. Here they all came to a
stand-still, and wiped the dews of honest labour from their foreheads;
and here Maulevrier flung himself down upon a big boulder, with the
soles of his stout shooting boots in running water, and took out his
cigar case.

'How do you like it?' he asked his friend, when he had lighted his
cigarette. 'I hope you are enjoying yourself.'

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