'I have been up in the hayloft,' answered Mary, frankly; and, intent on
one idea, she said impetuously, 'Dear grandmother, I want you to do me a
favour--a very great favour. There is a poor old man, a relation of
Steadman's, who lives with him, out of his mind, but quite harmless, and
he is so sad and lonely, so dreadfully sad, and he likes me to sit with
him in the garden, and tell him stories, and recite verses to him, poor
soul, just as if he were a child, don't you know, and it is such a
pleasure to me to be a little comfort to him in his lonely wretched
life, and James Steadman says I mustn't go near him, because he may
change at any moment into a dangerous lunatic, and do me some kind of
harm, and I am not a bit afraid, and I'm sure he won't do anything of
the kind, and, please grandmother, tell Steadman, that I am to be
allowed to go and sit with his poor old prisoner half an hour every
afternoon.'

Carried along the current of her own impetuous thoughts, Mary had talked
very fast, and had not once looked at her grandmother while she was
speaking. But now at the end of her speech her eyes sought Lady
Maulevrier's face in gentle entreaty, and she recoiled involuntarily at
the sight she saw there.

The classic features were distorted almost as they had been in the worst
period of the paralytic seizure. Lady Maulevrier was ghastly pale, and
her eyes glared with an awful fire as they gazed at Mary. Her whole
frame was convulsed, and she, the cripple, whose right limbs lay numbed
and motionless upon the couch, made a struggling motion as she raised
herself a little with the left arm, as if, by very force of angry will,
she would have lifted herself up erect before the girl who had offended
her.