meanwhile, pursued her way towards Ambleside, her thoughts much more
occupied with the young couple than with her lost companion. The little
thing was a beauty, certainly. Easy to see what had attracted William
Farrell! An uncommon type--and a very artistic type; none of your
milk-maids. She supposed before long William would be proposing to draw
her--hm!--with the husband away? It was to be hoped some watch-dog would
be left. William was a good fellow--no real malice in him--had never
_meant_ to injure anybody, that she knew of--but--

Miss Martin's cogitations however went no farther in exploring that
'but.' She was really very fond of her cousin William, who bore an
amount of discipline from her that no one else dared to apply to the
owner of Carton. Tragic, that he couldn't fight! That would have brought
out all there was in him.




CHAPTER IV


'Glorious!'

Nelly Sarratt stood lost in the beauty of the spectacle commanded by Sir
William Farrell's cottage. It was placed in a by-road on the western
side of Loughrigg, that smallest of real mountains, beloved of poets and
wanderers. The ground dropped sharply below it to a small lake or tarn,
its green banks fringed with wood, while on the further side the purple
crag and noble head of Wetherlam rose out of sunlit mist,--thereby
indefinitely heightened--into a pearl and azure sky. To the north also,