A Damsel in Distress

For the first time since he had set out on his expedition, a

certain chill, a discomforting sinking of the heart, afflicted

George as he gazed down at the grim grey fortress which he had

undertaken to storm. So must have felt those marauders of old when

they climbed to the top of this very hill to spy out the land. And

George's case was even worse than theirs. They could at least hope

that a strong arm and a stout heart would carry them past those

solid walls; they had not to think of social etiquette. Whereas

George was so situated that an unsympathetic butler could put him to

rout by refusing him admittance.

The evening was drawing in. Already, in the brief time he had spent

on the hill-top, the sky had turned from blue to saffron and from

saffron to grey. The plaintive voices of homing cows floated up to

him from the valley below. A bat had left its shelter and was

wheeling around him, a sinister blot against the sky. A sickle moon

gleamed over the trees. George felt cold. He turned. The shadows

of night wrapped him round, and little things in the hedgerows

chirped and chittered mockery at him as he stumbled down the lane.

George's request for a lonely furnished cottage somewhere in the

neighbourhood of the castle did not, as he had feared, strike the

Belpher house-agent as the demand of a lunatic. Every well-dressed

stranger who comes to Belpher is automatically set down by the

natives as an artist, for the picturesqueness of the place has

caused it to be much infested by the brothers and sisters of the

brush. In asking for a cottage, indeed, George did precisely as

Belpher society expected him to do; and the agent was reaching for

his list almost before the words were out of his mouth. In less

than half an hour George was out in the street again, the owner for

the season of what the agent described as a "gem" and the employer

of a farmer's wife who lived near-by and would, as was her custom

with artists, come in the morning and evening to "do" for him. The

interview would have taken but a few minutes, had it not been

prolonged by the chattiness of the agent on the subject of the

occupants of the castle, to which George listened attentively. He

was not greatly encouraged by what he heard of Lord Marshmoreton.

The earl had made himself notably unpopular in the village recently

by his firm--the house-agent said "pig-headed"--attitude in respect

to a certain dispute about a right-of-way. It was Lady Caroline,

and not the easy-going peer, who was really to blame in the matter;

but the impression that George got from the house-agent's

description of Lord Marshmoreton was that the latter was a sort of

Nero, possessing, in addition to the qualities of a Roman tyrant,

many of the least lovable traits of the ghila monster of Arizona.

Hearing this about her father, and having already had the privilege

of meeting her brother and studying him at first hand, his heart

bled for Maud. It seemed to him that existence at the castle in

such society must be little short of torture.