Mr. Vincent and his daughter drew very near together as the time came when each from a different stand-point unconsciously hankered after companionship. She read books with him, and did tasks that she found delightful, since they kept her a prisoner in the window-seat of the best parlor, whence, looking up, she could see him bending over his papers. He even arranged to take her to Guildford twice a week, so that she might have a music-lesson from the doctor's widow, who earned a modest living by teaching. And on her seventeenth birthday he gave her a piano. Its arrival was quite an event at Woodside Farm.

"It will be a rare thing to hear Margaret play," Mrs. Vincent said, as she watched it being put into place.

But Hannah was half contemptuous. "It would have been better to have bought a good harmonium," she snorted; "it might have been useful some day—" She broke off abruptly, for none knew of her secret store towards the chapel; and there was no occasion to speak of it, since it had not yet reached the modest sum of twenty pounds. Money had perplexed Hannah a good deal of late; there was the desire to put it away for the pious dream of her soul, and the womanly impulse to spend it on finery—hard, prim finery. For at Petersfield there dwelt a thriving young house agent, in a good way of business, smart-looking and fair mustached, and possessed of a far-seeing mother, who had suggested that Hannah would have the farm and a bit of money some day, and make a thrifty wife into the bargain. This accounted for what might be called an investigation visit that Mr. Garratt paid her grandparents one Sunday afternoon when Hannah was at Petersfield, and his asking her to take him across the field to see a tree that had been struck by lightning the previous fortnight. Afterwards he had been pressed to stay for tea, and his tone was significant when he remarked on leaving that he had enjoyed himself very much, and hoped to get over to Chidhurst one Sunday for the morning service, and to see the grave of his aunt Amelia, who was buried there. Hannah being too grim—it was counted for shyness—to say anything pleasant for herself, old Mrs. Barton had told him, in a good business-like tone, that when he went he had better look out for Hannah and her mother, and walk back with them for dinner at the farm. This was two months ago, but still Hannah waited patiently, thinking that if he appeared it might be as well to hear what he had to say, since by this time she was well on in her twenties—at the fag end of them, in fact—and marriage was one of the possibilities to be considered in life. Thus every week brought its excitement to her, and as yet its disappointment.

Sunday brought its excitement for Margaret, too; but it was a happy one. For when the country folk were sheltered in the church or busy with those things that kept them out of sight she and her father had their best time together. Then it was that they loitered about the deserted fields and out-buildings, or went up to the great beech woods standing high behind the farm, and watched the still landscape round them, just as in the first years of his coming Gerald Vincent had watched it alone from the porch. They called the beech wood their cathedral—the great elms and beeches and closely knit oak-trees made its roof and the columns of its aisles—and it seemed as if in their hearts they celebrated a silent service there to a mysterious God who had made joy and sorrow and all the beauty of the earth and given it to humanity for good or ill. In a sense, Margaret had no other religion. Her father said that when she was old enough to understand and think for herself she could make her own beliefs or unbeliefs, meanwhile she need only remember to tell the truth, to do nothing that would cause another pain, and to help those nearest to her, never considering their deserts, but only their needs.

Gradually Mr. Vincent grew uneasy concerning life at the farm. For himself he was content enough, a little longer he could be content for Margaret; but afterwards? Besides, a reaction comes to all things, and now and then when he saw the far-off look in her eyes and heard the eager note in her voice—a sweet, eager note like that of a bird at dawn—he felt the ghost of old desires stirring within him, and an uneasy longing to see the world again, so that he might know what manner of place Margaret would some day find it. It came upon him with dismay that she was growing up, that this tall girl of over seventeen would soon be a woman, and that she was going to be beautiful. Pale generally, and almost haughty looking, dreams in her eyes, and gold in the brown of her hair, and a mouth that had her mother's sweet, curved lips. A girl's face and simple, but eager and even thoughtful, the impulses of youth characterized her still, but womanhood was on its way, and now and then, in spite of her happy laugh, her blue eyes looked as if unconsciously they knew that tragedy dwelt somewhere in the world, and feared lest they should meet it. But as yet Hannah's scoldings were the only trouble that had beset her. These were not to be taken lightly, for as she grew older Hannah's tone became harsher, her manner more dominant, and the shrinking from Margaret and her father, that she had always felt, did not grow less. Margaret bore it all fairly well, sometimes resisting or passionately protesting that she would run away from the farm and the scold who had taken its whole direction into her hands, and at others hiding herself in one of the lofts till the storm had passed. When it was over she crept out to her mother—always to her mother at those times—to be soothed and caressed. Even Mr. Vincent felt that Hannah was a hard nut to crack; but he contented himself with the thought that some day Margaret would break away from her present surroundings—a beautiful girl, who had read a good deal and was cultivating the habit of thinking, was not likely to make Woodside Farm her whole share of the world.

The beginning of the end came one October morning in a letter from his brother in Australia. It had been sent under cover to his lawyers; for, though in a general way, the brothers knew each other's whereabouts, in detail they knew nothing. Cyril Vincent (he was now, of course, Lord Eastleigh) was ill of an incurable disease, and though he had no intention of returning, his thoughts were reaching out to England. His early career had been a disgrace, his marriage had proved a ghastly failure, and the least he could do was to cover it up, together with his own life, on the other side of the world. Gradually he had developed a strong sense of social and moral obligation that had made him hate himself when he remembered the advantages to which he had been born. Of what use had he been with his dissipated habits, he thought bitterly, or could he be now that he saw the folly of them, with his health permanently ruined, his wife vulgar and often drunken? If birth or accident had given such people the right to be counted as aristocracy, then, by every law of Heaven, and for the sake of those things that make for the salvation of the race, they ought to be stamped out.

The letter came at breakfast-time. Mr. Vincent was still thinking it over when Hannah pushed back her chair with a grating noise along the tiled floor, and said in a rasping voice:

"I shall be driving to Liphook this afternoon if anything is wanted."

He hesitated on his way to the best parlor. "You might call at the post-office and ask when the Australian mail goes," he said.

Mrs. Vincent and Margaret looked after him; then, as was their custom, they gathered up the breakfast things and carried them to the kitchen. Hannah was there already, searching round the shelves and cupboards as if she expected to come upon a hidden crime.

"I've no time to iron those muslins to-day," she said; "you had better do them, Margaret. I never see why you shouldn't help with things. Mother and I have enough to do."

"But of course I will; and I like ironing, especially in cold weather."

"There isn't a curtain fit to put to a window, and my hands are full enough," Hannah went on, as if she had not heard. "Towsey will put down the irons. Till they are hot, perhaps you had better run out a bit," she added, impatiently; "you always make so much of the air. For my part, I find it better to look after one's work than after one's health; one brings the other is what I think."

Mrs. Vincent had gone slowly towards the best parlor. She opened the door and looked in. "Shall I come to you for a minute, father?" she asked him. Since Margaret's birth she had generally called him "father"; his Christian name had never come very easily to her.

"If you like," he answered, without looking up from his papers.

"I thought you were worried a bit with your letter." She stood behind him and touched his shoulder. Time had accentuated the difference in years between them, and the caress had something maternal in it.

"I meant to talk to you about it presently," he said, and turned reluctantly towards her. "It is from my brother in Australia."

"Is he in any trouble?"

"Yes, he's in trouble, I suppose."

They were silent for a moment, then she spoke, and he loved her for the firmness in her voice. "If it's money, we can help him. There's a good bit saved from the farm these last years. I had no idea milk was going to pay so well."

"It isn't money. He is ill, and not likely to be better." He stopped, and then went on quickly: "He made a foolish marriage before he left England; but I don't know that there is any use in our discussing that." It seemed as if he were closing an open book.

"Has he no children to look after him?"

"No."

She was silent for a moment, as if she were trying to face something that had to be done, and nerving herself to speak. "It isn't for me to know what's best. I never knew any of your people, or saw any one belonging to you—"

"That's true," he answered, awkwardly.

"—Every one has a right to his own history, and I don't hold with giving it out just for the sake of talking. Many lives have been upset by things there was no need to tell—" She stopped again, and then went on bravely. "But what I am coming to is that if your brother is ill and has nobody but his wife, who isn't any good, you might like to go out to him?"

"To go out to him!" The thought made his heart leap. The quiet years had ranged themselves round him lately like the walls of a prison—a friendly prison, in which he was well content—but it seemed as if he had suddenly come in sight of a door-way through which he might go outwards for a little while and come back when he had seen once more the unforgotten tracks.

"It might comfort him," she went on without flinching. "And you wouldn't be more than a year gone, I expect. It must be terribly dull for you here sometimes. I've often thought how good you've been."

He put his hand tenderly on her arm while he answered, "All the goodness has been yours."

She turned her eyes to the window lest he should see the happiness in them, for she had always been half ashamed of loving him as she did—a staid woman of middle age, with homely matters to concern her. "I don't see that I have done anything out of the way," she said.

"Did it never occur to you that you have not seen any one belonging to me, and that really you know nothing about me? I was a stranger when I came, and you took me in."

"One knows a good deal without being told. I've always felt that your family was what it should be; and there's been all your life here to judge you by."

He looked at her and felt like an impostor. He knew that the fact of his father having been a lord, or his brother being one now, would not uplift her as it would a vulgar woman. On the contrary, it would probably be an embarrassment to her, and a reason for being silent regarding them, since she would think it unlikely that people who were her superiors in education and knowledge of the world would desire any kinship with her. On her own side, too, there was a certain pride of race, of the simple life that she and generations of her people before her had lived—that and no other. Strangers might come into it, might be welcomed, served, and cared for, even loved; but she herself did not want to go beyond its boundaries, and though she treated all people with deference, it was deference given to their strangerhood and bearing, and to the quality of their manners, rather than to their social standing. Her husband knew it and respected her for it, and felt ashamed to remember that his father had been a spendthrift and a company promoter, and that his brother had made a hideous marriage. People who did these things were plentiful enough in London, but they were unknown at Chidhurst. All that she definitely knew about him was that he had been at Oxford—at college, as she always put it—and afterwards that he had been in the Church and left it on account of scruples; but concerning the scruples, and what they meant precisely, she was always vague. If she had been asked to describe her husband's character she would probably have said, as if it were a paradox, that he was a good man, though he didn't go to church on Sundays.

They had stood silently together for a minute, busy with their own thoughts, then he spoke. "I fear Hannah doesn't think much of my life," he said.

"She means well, but she's been brought up strict. James's people were always strict, and he was, too, though he reproached himself at the end for not being strict enough. That's why I feel I ought to give in to her a bit, and let her do what she thinks is right, when it doesn't clash with you. I wouldn't be surprised if she married some day; Mr. Garratt's written saying he'll be at Chidhurst soon, and he'd like to pay his respects to me, having known James's people so many years."

Mr. Vincent was amused. "Oh, well, if Hannah's going to have a young man about the place, I'd better get out of the way," he said. "I'll write to Cyril by the next post and tell him of your suggestion."

---