It was thus in wrath and in consternation that the party dispersed. Patty stood in the hall, flushed and fierce, with defiance in every look, supported by her aunt, who stood behind her, and gave vent from time to time to murmurs of sympathy and snorts of indignation. Patty had almost forgotten, in her mingled triumph and rage, the anxiously chastened demeanour which she had of late imposed upon herself. She was a great deal more like Patty of the Seven Thorns than she had ever been since her marriage. The opposition and scorn of Lady Hartmore had awakened all her combative tendencies, and made her for the moment careless of consequences. What did she care for those big wigs who looked down upon her? Was she not as good as any of them, herself a county magnate, the lady of Greyshott? better than they were! For the Hartmores were not so rich as comported with their dignity; and Patty was now rich, to her own idea enormously rich, and as great a lady as any in England. Was she not Mrs. Piercey of Greyshott, owning no superior anywhere? It is curious that this conviction should have swept away for the moment all her precautions of behaviour, and restored her to the native level of the country barmaid, as ready to scold as any fishwife, to defy every rule of respect or even politeness. She waited to see Lady Hartmore to the door, having swept out of the room before that astonished lady with a bosom bursting with rage. Truth to tell, Lady Hartmore was much disposed to fight, too. She would have liked, above all things, to give the little upstart what humbler persons call a piece of her mind. Her pulses, too, were beating high, and a flood of words were pressing to her lips. It was intolerable to her to accept the insult to herself and the wrong to her friends without saying anything—without laying the offender low under the tempest of her wrath. As for Lord Hartmore, it must be owned that he was frightened, and only anxious to get his wife away. He held her arm tightly in his, and gave it an additional pressure as he led her past the fierce little adversary who, no doubt, had a greater command of appropriate language than even Lady Hartmore had, whose style was probably less trenchant, though more refined. “Now, Mary, now, my dear,” he said soothingly. The sight of the carriage at the door was delightful to him as a safe port to a sailor. And though the first thing Lady Hartmore did when safely ensconced in her corner, was to turn upon him the flood of her suppressed wrath with a “So this is your interesting little widow, Hartmore!” he was too glad to get away from the sphere of combat to attempt any self-defence. He, too, was saying “the little demon!” under his breath.

Patty still stood there, when Margaret, who had hastily collected the few things she had brought with her, came down to join Colonel Piercey in the hall. He had been standing, as he had been on a previous occasion, carefully examining one of the old portraits. It was not a very interesting portrait, nor was he, I suppose, specially interested in it; but his figure, wrapt in silence and abstraction, made a curious contrast to that of Patty, thrilling with fire and movement. It was evident that she could not long restrain herself, and when Margaret appeared coming down the great stairs, the torrent burst forth.

“Oh, you are there, Meg Osborne: I wonder you didn’t go with your great friends, the first people in the county, as you all think, insulting me in my own house! Ah, and I’ll teach you all it’s my own house! I won’t have nobody here turning their backs to me, or going out and in of my place without as much as a thank you! You’re studying my pictures, Colonel Piercey, are you? They’re my pictures, they’re not yours; and I’ll have you to know that nobody sha’n’t even look at them without my consent.”

Colonel Piercey turned round, almost angry with himself for the fury he felt. “I beg your pardon,” he said, very gravely, yet with a sort of smile.

“Oh, you beg my pardon! and you laugh as if it were a joke! I can tell you it’s no joke. They’re all mine, willed by him as knew best who he wanted them to go to; and I’ll keep them, that I will, against all the beggarly kinsfolk in the world; coming here a-looking as soon as the old man’s in his grave for what they can devour!”

“Are you ready, Margaret?” Colonel Piercey said.

“Don’t you turn it off to her, sir: speak to me! It’s me that has to be considered first. You are going off mighty high: no civility to the head of the house, though I’ve taken you in and given you lodging in my house, at least Meg there, near a week? Oh, you laugh again, do you? And who is the head of the house if it’s not me? I’m Mrs. Piercey of Greyshott. The pictures are mine, and the name’s mine, as well as everything else; and you are nothing but the son of the younger brother, and not got as much to do with it as Pownceby there, the lawyer.”

“My dear Mrs. Piercey,” said Mr. Pownceby, “however much you may despise Pownceby the lawyer, he knows a little more on that subject than you do: a lady is rarely, if ever, the head of a house, and certainly never one who belongs to the family only by marriage. One word, if you please: Colonel Piercey’s father, now Sir Francis Piercey, is the undoubted head of the house.”

“Oh, you’ll say anything, of course, to back them up; you think they’re your only friends and will pay you best. But you’ll find that’s a mistake, Mr. Pownceby the lawyer, just as they’ll find it’s a mistake. What do you want here, Dunning? What business has servants, except my footman to open the door, here? You’ve been a deal too much petted in your time, and you’ll find out the difference now.”

“Mr. Pownceby, sir,” said Dunning, who had suddenly appeared on the scene, exceedingly dark and lowering, “Is it true, sir, what I hear, that none of us old servants, not me, sir, that looked after him night and day, is named in my old master’s will?”

“I am sorry to say it is quite true, Dunning,” Mr. Pownceby said; “but I don’t doubt that Mrs. Piercey will remember your long service, as Sir Giles wished her to do.”

“How do you know what Sir Giles wished? I know best what Sir Giles said I was to do,” cried Patty. “As for long service, yes, if holding on like grim death and taking as little trouble as possible is what you mean.”

“Me take little trouble!” cried Dunning, foaming. “I’ve not had a night’s rest, not an unbroken night, since Lady Piercey died—not one. Oh, I knowed how it would be! when she come about him, flattering him and slavering him, and the poor dear old gentleman thought it was good for Mr. Gervase; and then after, didn’t she put it upon him as she was in the family-way, and she never was in the family-way, no more than I was. Hoh! ask the women! Hoh! look at her where she stands! He thought as there was an heir coming, and there ain’t no more of an heir coming than——”

“Let us go, please, let us go,” cried Margaret, in distress. “Cousin Gerald, Mr. Pownceby, we have nothing, nothing surely, to do with this. Oh, let us get away.”

“Put that fellow out of my house!” cried Patty, “put him out of my house! You’re a nice gentleman, Gerald Piercey, to stand there and encourage a man like that to insult a lady. Robert, take that man by the shoulders and put him out.”

“He had just best try,” said Dunning, squaring his shoulders. But Robert, who was young and slim, knew better than to try. He stood sheepishly fumbling by the door, opening it for the party who were going out. Dunning was not an adversary to be lightly encountered. Colonel Piercey, however, not insensible to the appeal made to him, laid his hand on Dunning’s shoulder.

“This lady is right,” he said; “we must not insult a woman, Dunning. You had better come with us in the meantime. It will do you no good to stay here.”

“Ah, go with them and plot, do,” cried Patty; “I knew that’s how it would end. He knows I can expose him and all his ways—neglecting my dear old father-in-law; he knows he’ll never get another place if people hear what I’ve got to say of him! Oh, yes, go with ’em, do! They thought they were to have it all their own way, and turn me out. But all of you, every one, will just learn the difference. If he had behaved like a gentleman and her like a lady, I might have given them their old rubbish of pictures. I don’t care for that trash; they’re no ornament to the place. I intend to have them all taken down and carted off to the first auction there is anywhere. I don’t believe they’d bring above a few shillings; but all the same they are mine, and I’ll have no strangers meddling with them,” Patty cried. “Oh, for goodness’ sake, Aunt Patience, hold your tongue, and let me manage my affairs myself.”

“The only thing is just this, ladies and gentlemen,” said Miss Hewitt. “She’s got put out, poor thing, and I don’t wonder, seeing all as she’s ’ad to do; but she don’t mean more than a bit of temper, and she’ll soon come round if you’ll have a little patience. This is the gentleman that come to me, and that I first told as my niece was married to Gervase Piercey, and no mistake. ’E is a very civil gentleman, Patty, and, Lord, why should you go and make enemies of ’im and of this lady, as I should say was a-going to be ’is good lady, and both belonging to the family! Nor I would not go and make an enemy of Mr. Pownceby, as ’as all the family papers in his ’ands and knows a deal, and could be of such use to you. I’d ask them all to stay, if I was you, to a nice bit of family dinner, and talk things over. What is the good of making enemies when being friends would be so much more use to you?” said Miss Hewitt, with triumphant logic. But Patty, who had heard with impatience and many attempts to interrupt, turned away before her oration was over, and, turning her back upon her recent guests, walked away as majestically as was possible, with her long train sweeping over the carpet, to the drawing-room, where she shut herself in, slamming the door. Miss Hewitt threw up her hands and eyes. “That’s just ’er,” she cried, “just ’er! Thinks of nothing when ’er temper’s up; but I ’ope you won’t think nothing of it neither. She’ll be as good friends in a hour as if nothing had ’appened; and I’ll go and give her a good talking to,” the aunt said.

When Miss Hewitt reached the drawing-room she found Patty thrown upon the sofa in the second stage of her passion, which was, naturally, tears. But these paroxysms did not last long. “I let you talk, Aunt Patience,” she said. “It pleased you, and it looked well enough. But I know my affairs better than you. Enemies! of course they’re all my enemies, and I don’t blame them. What I said I said on purpose, not in a temper. I had them here on purpose to see the old gentleman before he died, so that they might know for themselves that he was in his right mind, and all that; and old Pownceby knows; and I wanted to show them that I wasn’t afraid of them, not a bit. However, that’s all over, and you needn’t trouble your head about it. I have a deal to do before the trial——”

“The trial!” said Miss Hewitt, in consternation. “Is there going to be a trial?”

“Of course there will be a trial. They won’t let Greyshott go without a try for it, and you’ll see me in all the papers, and the whole story, and I don’t know that there’s anything to be ashamed of. The thing I’ve got to find out now is who to have for my lawyers. I want to have the best—the very best; and some one that will make it all into a story, and tell all I did for the poor old man. I was good to him,” said Patty, with an admiration of herself which was very genuine—“I was indeed. Many a time I’ve wanted to get a little pleasure like other folks—to enjoy myself a bit. Oh, there was one night! when Roger Pearson was here and had been at a dance, and I knew all the girls were at it, and all as jolly as——, and me cooped up, playing backgammon with the old gentleman, and—and worse beside.”

“Good Lord, Patty!” cried Miss Hewitt. “Roger Pearson! where ever did you see Roger Pearson? I thought that was all over and done with!”

“What did you please to mean by that remark?” said Patty, with great dignity. “It doesn’t matter where I saw him. I did see him; and there’s not many girls would have gone on with the backgammon and—the rest, as I did, just that night. Aunt Patience, you may know a few things, but you don’t know the trials of a married woman.”

“The trials!” said Miss Hewitt. “I’ve known a many that have boasted of the advantage it was. But trials—no. You’ll be very willing, I shouldn’t wonder, to have ’em again.”

“That depends upon many things; but I think not,” said Patty.

“You mightn’t be lucky the first time, and yet be lucky the second,” said her aunt; “but it can’t be said to be unlucky, Patty, when it leaves you here, not twenty-five yet, with this grand property all to yourself. Lord! I thought you was lucky at the first, when you got ’im; for I knew they couldn’t put ’im out of ’is rights, Softy or no Softy; but just think the luck you’ve had since; ’is mother dead afore you come home, and that was a blessing, and then ’imself just a blessed release, and then——”

“I’ll thank you, Aunt Patience, not to speak of my husband in that way. A release! Who’d have dared to say a word if Gervase had been here? Oh!” she said, springing up from her seat, and stamping her foot upon the carpet, “and here I am for ever and ever just what I am now, when I would have been my lady all my life, and nobody to stop me, if he had lived but six months more!”

“Dear, and that’s true,” said Miss Hewitt deeply struck with the tragedy of the event. “I do pity you, my pet! my poor darling! That’s true, that’s true!”

While this scene was going on in Greyshott, Gerald and Margaret were jogging on towards Chillfold in their hired chaise. They had a great deal to say, and yet there were long silences between them. Gerald was more angry, Margaret more sad.

“I should have minded nothing else,” the Colonel said, “if he had kept the old house for us, the house that has produced us all—Greyshott, that has never belonged but to a Piercey; and, Meg, if he had done justice to you.”

“There was no justice owing to me,” she said. “I left the house at my own free will. I belong to another house and another name——”

“That might have been true,” said Colonel Piercey, with something of his old stiffness and severity, “if——”

“It is true,” she said, “I am of the family of my child.”

“Oh,” he cried, “what folly, at your age! I was angry to have lost you; but now, I can’t tell how it is, you are Meg Piercey again.”

“You have got used to my changed looks,” she said. “You have accepted the fact that I am no longer in my teens. But this is not worth discussing when there is so much more to think of. What shall you do? or, indeed, what can you do?”

“Fight it, certainly,” he said. “As soon as I have taken you home, I am to meet old Pownceby, and lay the whole case before the best man we can get. Thank Heaven, I am not without means to fight it out. Poor Uncle Giles! It is hard to call him up to a reckoning before all the world; but he could not have meant it; he could never have meant it.”

“I have his little tip for Osy,” said Margaret, with tears in her eyes.

“His little tip! when he ought to have provided for the boy!”

“Poor Uncle Giles! He was never very strong: and I believe she was very kind to him, and he was fond of her.”

“Do you want me to accept this absurd will, this loss to the race, because she was kind to him (granting that)—and an old man, in his dotage, was fond of a scheming woman?”

“Don’t call names,” said Margaret. “He was not in his dotage. We saw him——”

“Ah—called on purpose, that we might help to establish the fact,” said Colonel Piercey, fiercely. “What do you call it but dotage—that tip over which you are inclined to weep; and the reason alleged for it, that you had been the first to tell him something? Yes, I know what that means. Pownceby told me. That’s—how long since? But he believed it, just the same as ever, in the same kind of distant hope. What is that but dotage, Meg?”

“And must it all, everything—the mere foolish hope I expressed to please him, and anything she may have said—must it all be dragged before the public, and poor Uncle Giles’ foolish hopes?”

“Would you like me to throw it all over, and leave that woman to enjoy her ill-gotten gains? Do you say I am to do that, Meg?”

“I—say? Oh, no. What right have I? No, Cousin Gerald, I do not think you should give up your claim. I think”—she paused a moment, and her face lighted up, the words seemed to drop from her lips. Other thoughts flashed up in her eyes—an expectation, the light of happiness and peace. The carriage had turned a corner, and Chillfold, with her cottage in it, and her boy, brought the relief and ease of home to Margaret’s face. Her companion watched her eagerly. He saw the change that came over her. His thoughts followed hers with a quick revulsion of sympathy. He laid his hand upon hers.

“Meg,” he said, “do you know there has never been anybody in the world whose face has lighted up like that for me?”

“You had a mother, Gerald,” she said quickly, almost ashamed of her self-revelation; “but you forget—as Osy also will forget.”

“At my age one wants something different from a mother,” he said, “and one does not forget.”

She did not say anything. She did not meet his look; but she gave a little pressure, scarcely perceptible, to the hand that held hers. Their long duel had come, at least, to peace—if nothing more.