"I wish you would, for I can't make it out."

"Dawson Farley told me about Margaret Vincent--I have heard a great deal about Margaret Vincent lately, from a good many sources. Tom," she went on, in a suddenly tragic voice, "I loved Gerald Vincent; I have never really cared for anybody else, but this girl is different; she has been brought up by a common mother."

"She is not at all common," he answered, indignantly. "I saw her--"

"And a half-sister who, twenty years ago, would have been in respectable service instead of wasting her time at home, for the mother looks after the farm herself. Margaret belongs to her mother's people and not to her father's; you can hear that in her provincial accent"--the accent, of course, was invented on the spur of the moment--"and she was quite content to marry her Guildford grocer, or whatever he is, until she became stage-struck."

"Look here," said Tom; "you are a good soul, and have been very kind to me, but you mustn't talk to me in this way, for I'm engaged to Margaret, and I mean to marry her."

"You'll pay dearly for it if you do." She stopped a minute, then she lowered her voice, but she was becoming excited; after all, there was some interest left in the situation, and she offered up her child's dignity to its dramatic possibility. "There was something more in the telegram than I have told you," she said. "You are killing Lena, and not behaving as an honorable gentleman."

"What do you mean?" he asked, bewildered, but remembering uncomfortably Lena's manner of yesterday.

"I mean," said Mrs. Lakeman, indignantly--for it was a theory of hers that a claim was always stronger than a plea, and gained more consideration--"that you have no right to marry Margaret Vincent, or anybody else. I mean that you have made my child love you, that you are all the world to her, and you made her believe that she was all the world to you."

"We have never been anything but friends!" He was aghast.

"Outwardly. At heart you have been lovers, and you can't deny it. She has given you the one love of her life, dear"--Mrs. Lakeman was becoming sentimental--"and I never dreamed that you had not given her yours. You can go back to Margaret Vincent, if you like, but you have killed my child--my one, only child. You must see how ill she looks, how changed she is."

"But this is ghastly," he said; "I'm not a bit in love with Lena. I never cared for any one in that way but Margaret, and I want to marry her."

"Go and marry her," Mrs. Lakeman answered, in a low voice; "Lena will not be alive to see it. Do you suppose that I would give away my own child's secret, or bring myself to speak to you as I'm doing now, if it were not a case of life and death?" She said the last words with a thrill.

He looked at her in despair.

"What are you going to do?" she asked, after a pause.

He turned away and followed the course of the stream with his eyes as it rushed through the glen. This was very awkward, he thought, but for the life of him he didn't believe in it.

"You have been very kind to me," he said; "but it's no good not telling the truth about a thing of this sort--I couldn't marry Lena. I'm very fond of her, but she isn't the kind of girl that I could fall in love with; she flops about and you never know where you have her, and as for her being desperately in love with me, why, I don't believe it. We should worry each other to death if we were married; besides, I mean to marry Margaret Vincent."

"If the grocer hasn't stolen a march on you."

"Look here," he answered, turning very red, "if you say that sort of thing we shall quarrel."

"I don't care," she answered, defiantly; "if you can't behave like a gentleman, it doesn't matter whether we quarrel or not."

"You know," he said, "I don't believe in this business--I mean in Lena's being in love with me."

"I should have thought you might have seen it yesterday." She stopped for a moment, then almost demanded, "What are you going to do?"

"I am going back to town at once; but it's no good not being straight in a matter of this sort, and first I shall have it out with Lena."

"It will be thoroughly indecent of you."

"Can't help it; I'm going," and he marched towards the house and into the morning-room again.

Lena was lying on the sofa; he went up to her and sat down on the chair beside her, determined to have it over and be done with it.

"Look here, I want to talk to you," he said; "this place has become a sort of nightmare, and I want you to wake me up from it like a sensible girl."

"Tell me about it, Tom, dear," she said, and wriggled towards the edge of the sofa. "You wouldn't say things to me yesterday."

"Too much worried. Now, then," he went on, drawing back a little and looking her well in the face, "I have fallen in love with Margaret Vincent. She has been in London for the last three weeks, and we have seen each other every day--perhaps you didn't know that? It's all nonsense to suppose that she's in love with Mr. Garratt; I have found out the truth of that business. He is merely a bounder who went to look after Hannah, the half-sister, then found out he liked Margaret better--I don't wonder. Hannah bothered her about it, and she went up to town. Louise Hunstan wired me from Bayreuth that Margaret was in Great College Street, and I went and looked after her. If this hadn't happened--your wires, I mean--I dare say I should have got a special license by this time. I want you to be good to Margaret," and he put his hand affectionately on Lena's. "I love her and don't mean to marry anybody else. Now, then, how is it going to be?"

"Poor little Margaret; I shall love her," said Lena, "because you do."

Tom blinked his eyes to make sure he was awake; either Mrs. Lakeman was as mad as a March hare, he thought, or he was dreaming, for there was not a sign of disappointment in Lena's manner.

"Oh," he said, helplessly.

"It will be nice for her to marry you, dear," she went on; "you are so different from Mr. Garratt."

"Mr. Garratt has nothing to do with it. But unless you take kindly to the marriage, of course we shall have to cut each other afterwards.

Well, then, is it all right?"

"Of course it is," she said, and wriggled closer to him.

"Good, good! Now I am going," he said, with determination.

"But where are you going?" she asked, anxiously.

"Over to Aviemore; I know some people there. But I shall take the train back to London this evening. It's all right," he said to Mrs. Lakeman, who had sauntered up to the window with a newspaper in her hand; "Lena's a sensible girl; I knew she was."

Mrs. Lakeman looked at him almost vacantly; she had ceased to take the slightest interest in his love affairs. "Have you seen the _Scotsman_?"

she asked; "the boy has just come with it."

"No; why?"

"Cyril is dead, and Gerald is Lord Eastleigh."

"Good! he'll be coming back," Tom answered; "I'm off in half an hour,"

he added.

"Oh!" She was too much preoccupied even to ask him to stay; but when he had gone, as if with a jerk she remembered the excitement of the morning. "We made a nice fiasco over Tom," she said to Lena; "I don't know which is the greater idiot, you or I."

"It was very interesting," Lena answered. "But I should never have energy enough for the life he likes. I can't bear coa.r.s.e effects or strong lights or exercise, or any of the things he cares for--people should always be restful."

"You had better marry a minor poet," Mrs. Lakeman answered, grimly, "or an inferior painter, and live in a Chelsea studio."

x.x.xV

Tom Carringford went straight to Great College Street the next morning.

Margaret, of course, was not there; but Louise Hunstan had arrived, and from her and Mrs. Gilman together he heard of Mrs. Lakeman's visit; of Margaret's a.s.sertion that her engagement was broken off; of how Sir George Stringer and Dawson Farley had been to see her, and of Margaret's hurried departure to Chidhurst.