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 pass. "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 pass," she said, with contemptuous amusement. "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 God 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."

Sir George looked at her and hesitated. "Humph! He's very well off?"

"Fairly well off," she answered, with a gleam in her blue eyes. "That doesn't matter in the least," she went on, in an off-hand manner. "But I can't play with my child's happiness, George, and I love the boy and want him for my own."

"All right, my dear, all right," he said, and, seeing it was expected of him, he took both her hands in his. "It's always better not to interfere with young people." And so Mrs. Lakeman was satisfied. But Sir George walked away with an uneasy feeling at the back of his head. "I wonder if Hilda Lakeman was lying," he said to himself. "I never understand her, and for the life of me I can never quite believe in her. She is tricky—tricky."

He saw Mr. Garratt at Haslemere station waiting for the Guildford train. "I should like to punch his head," he thought, but this desire, of course, made no difference in any way.

Meanwhile matters had not improved at Woodside Farm. A fierce jealousy was raging in Hannah's virgin heart; she found it difficult even to keep her hands off Margaret. "I should like to box your ears and lock you up in your room," she remarked, spitefully, when she could no longer control herself.

"Hannah, for shame!" Mrs. Vincent said, but even her efforts to keep the peace seemed somewhat futile.

"It's a pity you didn't go to Australia with your father," Hannah went on. "You are only in the way here."

"Oh, if he had but taken me!" Margaret answered, fervently.

"Perhaps he didn't want you. We've only his word for it there is this brother in Australia—and what is that worth, I should like to know?"

Mrs. Vincent looked up quickly from her seat in the porch. "I'll have you speak with respect of the man who is my husband," she said, gently.

"And shame to you, mother, that he is. He has undermined your faith, and made you forget your first husband's child."

"Hannah, you will be silent," Mrs. Vincent answered, with some of her old dignity. "We have each kept to our own way of thinking, and neither has meddled with the other. And I have never forgotten your father, nor what was due to him; but one has to make the best of life, and I was a young woman when he died."

Something in her voice touched Hannah. "I know that, mother," she said, "and I've tried to be a good daughter to you, and if sometimes I've thought I didn't get my share of what you felt, why it's only natural that I should complain. What's come between us and is trying to come between me and what is due to me, is the artfulness that has got no principle to build upon."

"If I could only get away! If Mrs. Lakeman would ask me to stay with her, or if only I were like Miss Hunstan, and could act and live by myself till father comes back," Margaret said to herself, till the idea took deeper and deeper hold upon her.

Why shouldn't she? All things have a beginning, all journeys a starting-point. Mr. Garratt had told her how Miss Hunstan had begun by holding up the train of a princess, and how step by step she had reached her present position. She wished she could see Miss Hunstan. They had only met once, and for a few minutes, but she had told Margaret that she would like to see her again, and, as Tom had said, some people were never strangers. She longed to go to London and ask her advice, and she didn't think her father would be angry or object if he knew all that was going on at Woodside Farm. He saw no harm in theatres, and she was not sophisticated enough to understand the difficulties in the way of a girl who was not yet twenty, going to London with a vague idea that she could "walk on." But for the unfortunate meeting with Mr. Garratt she might have consulted Sir George Stringer. She had hoped that he would come again, but day after day went by without a sign of him. Half a dozen times she went towards his house, wondering if she dared go up to the door and boldly ask for him, and half a dozen times her courage failed her.

"If he doesn't come to-morrow, I'll make myself go to him," Margaret said, when nearly a fortnight had gone and he had not appeared; but again she hesitated. Tom Carringford might be there, and she was afraid to meet him, lest he should have heard of Mr. Garratt and be different. Then a note arrived from Sir George. He was going back to London, was starting when he wrote, and regretted that he had not been able to get to the farm again; he hoped to do so later. And so all hope in that direction vanished. She talked to her mother one day, but nothing was gained by it.

"You couldn't go to London by yourself, Margey," Mrs. Vincent said. "I was never strict in my heart as James Barton was, or as Hannah is, but I shouldn't like you to take a step of that sort out into the world without your father's approval."

"But, mother dear, every one has a life to live, and what is the use of me here? Hannah does all the farm business, and there's nothing that you want me to do. I just read and think and wait, and I don't know for what, unless it's for father's return."

"It's a feeling that comes to us all," Mrs. Vincent answered. "It's the fluttering of the bird trying to leave its nest. Better wait till your father comes and sets you on your way." Then Mrs. Vincent shut her lips—those beautiful, curved lips of hers—and said no more. All her thoughts were with the man in Australia, the man younger than herself, at whom her heart clutched, and all her hours were passed in a dream beside him till she had no energy left for the actual life about her, but let it slip by unheeded.

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