"Mr. Garratt, I don't like the way you're talking; it's not a reverent spirit."

"It's not meant to be anything else, I a.s.sure you, Miss Barton," he answered, in an apologetic tone, tapping his right leg with the crop which he still held in his hand. She raised her eyes and saw his new bowler hat, and the white handkerchief in his breast-pocket, and her manner softened.

"When do you think of settling in Guildford, Mr. Garratt?" she asked.

"I shall be over there in another six weeks," he answered; "they're painting the window-frames now. I hope you and Mrs. Vincent will come over some day," he added, after a pause. "I should like to have your opinion of the place."

"I shall be willing to give it to you," she said, demurely, and waited expectantly, but he said nothing more. He was thinking of Margaret again.

"Do you know anything of Vincent's people--has he got any besides this brother out in Australia?" he asked.

"He's never spoken of them--not even of the brother, till last year. I must tell you frankly, Mr. Garratt, that I never liked him. He is a man who has rejected religion, and brought up his child to do the same."

"You know, it strikes me somehow that they are swells," Mr. Garratt said, confidentially, "who have done something shady; or perhaps he did something shady himself, there's never any telling. It may be that he was suddenly afraid of being found out, and has taken himself off altogether. You've only his word for it that he's got a brother, I suppose?"

Hannah looked at him, dismayed. This idea would cover many odd feelings and instincts that she had encouraged in regard to Mr. Vincent. That he should be some sort of criminal in disguise seemed feasible enough when she remembered his opinions, and that he should desert his wife and daughter would be a natural outcome of them.

"He had letters with the Australian postmark," she said, remembering this proof of her step-father's veracity.

"They might be managed," Mr. Garratt answered, in a knowing manner that added to Hannah's consternation.

"There's some one that knows him come to see mother now. I was looking for Margaret, and didn't stay to hear his name."

"It's probably the gent who's taken the house on the hill; we might go and see what he's like," Mr. Garratt said, quickly, and turned towards the house, elated at the thought of meeting on terms of more or less equality some one whom in the ordinary course he would have had to treat with the respect due to a superior.

But Sir George Stringer had been and gone. He was just going when Margaret returned.

"I drove over for the pleasure of calling on your mother and of seeing you again," he had said. "You were evidently having a most interesting conversation as you came across the field--I hope it has not been interrupted," he looked at her curiously, and saw the color rush to her face.

"It's only Mr. Garratt," Mrs. Vincent explained; "he often comes over from Guildford to see us."

"I've no doubt he does," Sir George answered. Margaret had no courage to contradict the mistake, and Mrs. Vincent did not see it. "You would have seen me before," he went on, "but I have had a sister ill at Folkestone.

I fear I can't stay any longer now, but I shall come again in a day or two."

Margaret walked to the gate with him, confused and mortified, but she made an effort to set matters right.

"I didn't know you were here--"

"Don't apologize," he said, good-naturedly. "I'm going to stay a fortnight at least, and you'll see me very often. Are you and your mother here alone?"

"There is Hannah--"

"Oh yes, the sharp-faced woman who let me in, I suppose? She keeps an eye upon you. I saw her in the garden watching your approach with a great deal of anxiety and not much approval." The fly had been waiting in the lane instead of by the porch. He got in before he held out his hand.

"Sir George, I want to tell you--" she began, and stopped, for it was so difficult.

"I know," and he laughed again. "By-the-way, I dare say you'll have Carringford over next week; he's going to Hindhead; he said he should come and see you, and look me up on the way. Good-bye," and in a moment he had started. She stood watching him almost in despair. Suppose he told Tom Carringford about Mr. Garratt! Oh, but when he came again--he said just now that he should come often--she would explain. Only it was such a difficult thing to explain, it wanted so much courage, and why should it matter to Mr. Carringford? Perhaps, too, it would be better to leave it alone, and he would forget about Mr. Garratt; besides, Mr.

Walford, the clergyman, would be sure to call on Sir George, and if by any chance he mentioned Woodside Farm he would probably tell him that Mr. Garratt was walking out with Hannah--he was always at church with her on Sunday mornings. She remembered joyfully that Sir George would see them there together, and in a little place like Chidhurst everything was known and talked about.

"Good Heavens! how lovely she is," Sir George thought as he drove away, "and what a pity that she should be left to those two women!" For he and Mrs. Vincent had spent an awkward ten minutes, not knowing in the least what to say to each other, and he had naturally come to the conclusion that she was a handsome but quite ordinary woman of her cla.s.s. "And then the young tradesman, with the crisp, curling hair showing under the brim of his bowler hat, and the look of a bounder. Vincent ought to be shot for leaving her to him." It was no business of his, of course, but it vexed him so much that he felt as if he could not bring himself to pay another visit to the farm.

XIII

Mr. Garratt hired the mare on which he had made so successful an appearance by the month, and determined to enjoy his long rides across the beautiful Surrey country. He thought matters well over, and came to the conclusion that it would be as well to keep up an appearance of paying attention to Hannah lest he should lose the bird in the hand before he had made sure of catching the one in the bush. But he found it difficult, for her voice set his teeth on edge, and her conversation, which was always harking round to evangelical subjects, and hits at her step-father and Margaret, irritated him till there were times when he could have shaken her. He was fully alive to the charms of the property that would one day be hers, and he saw her thrifty qualities clearly enough; but this was not all a man wanted, he told himself. He wanted besides a woman he could love and look at, and be proud of, and whose possession other men would envy him.

"If Margaret only showed a little common-sense," he thought, "she might be riding beside me two or three times a week. She would look stunning in a habit, and I wouldn't mind standing it--and the nag, too. People would sit up a bit if one day they saw us trotting through Guildford together; as for Hannah, she isn't fit to lick her boots." Even in a worldly sense he had come to the conclusion that Margaret would suit him better. "She'd pull one up," he thought, "for I'm certain she's a swell, though she mayn't know it herself, while t'other would keep one where one is for the rest of one's days." He touched up the mare in his excitement, and went by the church and towards the green lane in a canter.

Sir George Stringer, hidden behind the greenery of his garden, saw him pa.s.s. "That young bounder is going after Vincent's girl again," he said to himself. "I'd rather marry her myself than let him have her--not that she'd look at a grizzly old buffer five years her father's senior. I'll tell Hilda Lakeman about it; perhaps she will ask the girl there and get the nonsense out of her." He went up to town the next day, and made a point of lunching at the Embankment, and of sitting an hour in the flower-scented room afterwards; but Mrs. Lakeman was not as ready to help in the matter as he had imagined she would be.

"Gerald's family has come to a pretty pa.s.s," she said, with contemptuous amus.e.m.e.nt. "I'd do anything for him, dear old boy; but if his girl is in love with this young man, what would be the good of bringing her to town? I couldn't undertake the responsibility of it, I couldn't indeed, old friend."

"Did little Margaret seem fond of her tradesman?" Lena asked, sitting down on a low stool near her mother and looking up at Sir George.

"Well, I saw them get closer together as they crossed the field, and loiter out of sight behind the hedge before they came into the garden, and she blushed when she spoke of him."

"Dear little Margaret," purred Lena, "why shouldn't she marry him and be happy? It would be far better than interfering. I must tell Tom about it; he'll be so amused."

"I wish Tom would marry her," Sir George said, fervently.

"He's coming to-day; I'll tell him what you say."

"Then you'll mull it. I shall have to invite him to Chidhurst, I think."

"I think you had better invite us," said Mrs. Lakeman. "I should like to see Mrs. Gerald."

"Of course I will. You must come for a week-end."

"Later, before we go to Scotland in August," Mrs. Lakeman answered. "Tom is going with us," she added, and looked at Lena out of the tail of her eye.

Lena rose and sauntered towards the curtains. "He is coming at four,"

she said, in a low tone. "I think I will go and wait for him."

Then Mrs. Lakeman put on her most dramatic manner, restrained, but full of feeling. "George Stringer," she said, in a thick, harsh voice, "I loved Gerald Vincent once, and would do anything in the world for him, but I can't give away--even to his girl--my own child's happiness. You won't interfere, will you, old friend? You won't throw Margaret Vincent in his way?"

"I don't understand," he said, slowly. "What do you mean?"

She held out her hands to him.

"May G.o.d forgive me for betraying my child's secret"--she managed to put a heartfelt tone into her words, and was quite pleased with it--"but I think, for I can't give her away more explicitly than that--I think she loves Tom."

"He hasn't proposed?"

"Not yet. But he's devoted to her. He sees her every day of his life, does everything we do, goes everywhere we go. He can't live without her," she said, with a little, crooked smile; "it hasn't yet occurred to him that the end must be the only one for two children who love each other--but it will."