"Well," said Miss Hunstan when they were alone, and the little tw.a.n.g Tom always liked had come into her voice, "I think this is a matter that requires some investigation; you know it's my opinion that Lena Lakeman is just a little snake, and that her mother doesn't always know what she's about--still, they're amusing people if you don't see too much of them."

"Oh, they're all right, if you don't take them too seriously," he answered, incapable of thinking ill of any one. He was not in the least alarmed at Margaret's statement to Mrs. Gilman. He knew that Margaret loved him, and that, if any mischief had been made, why, it would soon be explained away. The thing that astonished him was Mrs. Lakeman's visit. "I can't think how she could have been shut up in her room with neuralgia and in London at the same time," he said to himself. "She is certainly mad! However, that doesn't matter. I shall go to Chidhurst this afternoon. I might be of some use, and I want to see Margaret." He knew that, if her mother were ill, she would be unhappy and want him, and, like the kind boy he was, he began casting about in his mind for things he could take Mrs. Vincent. There were heaps of flowers in the Dutch garden, of course; but she might like a box of roses, all the same, and Margaret would remember the first one they had bought together--and peaches and grapes; he didn't remember seeing any gla.s.s at Woodside Farm; perhaps they hadn't any. "I'm awfully fond of Margey," he said to Louise Hunstan, glad to put it into words, "and we shall have a splendid time together. You'll often see us here, you know."

"Of course I shall," she answered; "I am just looking forward to it."

He stopped at Sir George Stringer's house as he drove through Whitehall, but only to find that he had gone to Chidhurst. "Good," he said, absently, to himself, "I'll telegraph to him, and he'll put me up."

Tom remembered all his life the drive from Haslemere to Chidhurst that evening. He enjoyed every yard of it; up the hill and past the cottages, along the road beyond; beside the moor covered with ling, and through Chidhurst village, till he came in sight of the church, and the gates of Sir George Stringer's house just opposite the little gate that led across the fields to the farm. He looked at the box of roses and the basket of peaches and grapes on the driver's seat. "I hope my mother-in-law is better," he thought, with a happy laugh in his eyes. "I believe I shall be fond of her, and Vincent is a brick."

"You know there's a death at the farm, sir?" the driver said, as he got down. "Mrs. Vincent was took last night after two days' illness--she hadn't been herself for some time."

An hour later a little note was brought to Margaret. It ran:

"DEAREST,--I am at Stringer's house, and have just heard. I know how unhappy you must be, and there isn't anything to say except that I love you, which you know already. I am glad I saw her. Send for me when you can see me; I shall be waiting here. Your devoted

"TOM."

And so that trouble was lifted from Margaret's heart; but her tears fell fast while she read the letter.

"If mother were only here," she thought, "and I can't bear to tell Hannah, for she has nothing in her life--nothing to look forward to.

Towsey!" she said, going into the kitchen. Towsey gave a start; she was almost asleep. Margaret sat down on her lap, as she had often done years ago when she was a little girl, and she put her arms round Towsey's neck, and cried for a minute or two softly on her shoulder. "I want you to tell me something," she said, when she looked up; "are you sure that mother smiled when she had the telegram that last day she was alive?"

"Ay, that she did," said Towsey; "it didn't hold much, but she seemed to read a great deal into it, somehow."

"Thank G.o.d! She must have known. It was from Mr. Carringford, Towsey."

"Yes, I know," said Towsey, "and she thought how it'd be."

It was almost more than Margaret could bear. "If I had only not gone away," she cried, "mother, dear!--mother, dear!"

Mr. Vincent, to call him by his old name, did not return nearly so soon as he might have done. There were his brother's affairs to wind up, he said, and his brother's wife to settle down in a house at Melbourne.

Perhaps he dreaded returning to the farm alone. At any rate, he made excuses, and it was nearly four months before he wrote that in another fortnight he would set sail.

All that time Tom and Margaret were waiting to be married. Tom had argued that it would be better to do it quietly and at once, but Margaret refused.

"Not yet," she pleaded; "let us wait the few months till father returns.

We have all our lives to give each other. I don't feel as if I could go into the little church to be married just yet, for it's only--" She stopped, for she did not want him to know that she dreaded lest she should still hear the sound of the heavy, shuffling feet that had carried her mother into it for the last time. She wanted to forget it, to remember only the long, happy years, and the summer mornings she had sat on the arm of the chair in the cool living-place, with her mother leaning against her while they watched the sunshine covering the Dutch garden with glory.

"We might be married at some other church if you liked," he suggested.

"Oh no," she answered, quickly, "I wouldn't for the world. I want to be married near the dear farm--and near her: she would be happy if she knew; she would listen and be so glad. Oh, Tom, you do understand, don't you, darling?" For answer he nodded, took her in his arms and kissed her, which is always the best answer a man can give the woman who loves him.

And so they waited till the winter had gone, a long, silent winter, though it held its whispered happiness. February came cold and clear.

The men were busy in the fields, turning the brown earth over, and here and there, under the hedges, a snowdrop hid, lonely and shivering. Then one day Hannah made a really brilliant remark, or Tom, at any rate, thought it one.

"I don't see how you can get married directly father comes, either," she said; "he'll find it hard enough to come back to an empty house; you can't well fling a wedding in his face. For my part, I think it would be a good thing to get it over beforehand, and go and meet him."

Tom looked at her for a moment, then he shook her hand vigorously, as he always did when anything pleased him mightily. "You are quite right," he said, and the next minute he was striding down the Dutch garden on his way to the cathedral where Margaret was waiting for him. "Look here," he said, when he found her, "Hannah has had a brilliant idea. Some one ought to go and meet your father; he can't come back here alone, you know."

"Oh, Tom," she said, "I have often thought how dreadful it will be for him."

"Of course it will, and we have no business to let him do it. Suppose we went out and picked him up at Naples and brought him home ourselves. You see, Hannah could make everything comfortable here while we are gone--alter things a bit, and so on. And we might keep him two or three days in Stratton Street on the way back, and get Hannah up there." All manner of developments crossed his fertile mind while he spoke. "We must get married before we start," he said, in a business-like tone, as if it were only a matter of convenience, "or we should have to get a chaperon, which would be rather a bore."

And so it came about that they were married very quietly one morning six months after Mrs. Vincent's death. Hannah and Margaret walked across the fields together, and Tom and Sir George Stringer met them at the church gate, but there were no others present.

Tom's sister, Lady Arthur Wanstead, sent Margaret a diamond comb and a long letter, and Mrs. Lakeman sent her a fitted travelling-bag, and Lena sent a full-sized green porcelain cat.

It is just two years since that morning at the church. The Carringfords are at Florence now, and Lord Eastleigh, and Sir George Stringer, who has retired from his office, are with them, and they are looking forward to Louise Hunstan, who is coming out on a six weeks' holiday. Lena Lakeman has married an army doctor and gone to India; and Mrs. Lakeman, who was very angry at Lena's marriage, which she thought a bad one, took to speculating in West African mines, and left England lately in order to look after her ventures. It was said last year that she had made a great fortune; but, even if it is true, she will probably lose it again, and console herself with the thought that the sensation of being a beggar is altogether a new one.

Hannah is at Chidhurst alone, and something that would be almost droll seems possible. One afternoon a stranger appeared at the farm, a loutish-looking man of six-and-thirty, but with more intelligence in him than appeared on the surface. He was a student of agriculture, he explained, second son of a land-owner in Somerset, and had a fancy for renting a property in Surrey. He had heard that Woodside Farm might possibly want a tenant. Hannah a.s.sured him to the contrary with some asperity; but eventually, being overcome by the stranger's manner, she not only showed him over the farm, but, since he had come from a distance, gave him tea with a dish of chicken fried in batter, and scones that had been hurriedly made by Towsey. She explained to him while the meal progressed that she found the farm somewhat difficult to manage single-handed. The stranger felt the truth of this, and she struck him as being a most sensible and capable woman. A farm, he told her, wanted a man to look after it, to which she agreed and invited him to come again.

"The coming of the stranger," said Margaret to Tom when she had read a prim letter in Hannah's spiky writing.

He looked at her for a moment, then her meaning dawned on him. "Good!

good!" he said; "history makes a point of repeating itself, you know. I shouldn't wonder--"

"And I shouldn't," she laughed.

Meanwhile the villagers nod their heads and say that this year spring cleaning was even more thorough than usual at Woodside Farm.

THE END