“Oh, dear no. I found out the secret for myself, I assure you. Miss Malcolm has never condescended to tell me anything about her affairs. It is Edward Clare, the vicar’s son, I have seen them a good deal together. He used to be always making some excuse for dropping in at the Manor House to talk to Mr. Treverton about old books, and papers for the Archaeological Society, and so on, and anybody could see that it was for Miss Malcolm’s sake he spent so much of his time there.”
“Do you think she cared about him?”
“Goodness knows. There’s no getting at what she thinks about anyone. I did once ask her the question, but she turned it off in her cold, haughty way, saying that she liked Mr. Clare as a friend, and all that kind of thing.”
Thomas Sampson had looked rather uneasy during this conversation.
“You mustn’t listen to my sister’s foolish gossip, Treverton,” he said; “it’s hard enough to keep women from talking scandal anywhere, but in such a place as this they seem to have nothing else to do.”
John Treverton had taken his part in this conversation with a keener interest than he was prepared to acknowledge himself capable of feeling upon the subject of Laura Malcolm. What was she to him, that he should feel such a jealous anger against this unknown Edward Clare? Were not all his most deeply-rooted feelings in her disfavour? Was she not rendered unspeakably obnoxious to him by the terms of his kinsman’s will?
“There’s something upon that man’s mind, Eliza,” said Mr. Sampson, as he stood upon the hearthrug, warming himself in a thoughtful manner before the fire for a few minutes, after his guest had gone to bed. “Mark my words, Eliza, there’s something on John Treverton’s mind.”
“What makes you think so, Tom?”
“Because he’s not a bit elated about the property that he has come into, or will come into in a year’s time. And it isn’t in human nature for a man to come into fourteen thousand a year which he never expected to inherit, and take it as coolly as this man takes it.”
“What do you mean by a year’s time, Tom? Hasn’t he got the estate now?”
“No, Eliza; that’s the rub.” And Mr. Sampson went on to explain to his sister the terms of Jasper Treverton’s will, duly warning her that she was not to communicate her knowledge of the subject to anyone, on pain of his lasting displeasure.
Sampson was too busy next day to devote himself to his guest; so John Treverton went for a long ramble, with a map of the Treverton Manor estate in his pocket. He skirted many a broad field of arable and pasture land, and stood at the gates of farmhouse gardens, looking at the snug homesteads, the great barns and haystacks, the lazy cattle standing knee-deep in the litter of a straw yard, and wondering whether he should ever be master of these things. He walked a long way, and came home with a slow step and a thoughtful air in the twilight. About a mile from Hazlehurst he emerged from a narrow lane on to a common, across which there was a path leading to the village. As he came out of this lane he saw the figure of a lady in mourning a little way before him. Something in the carriage of the head struck him as familiar: he hurried after the lady, and found himself walking beside Laura Malcolm.
“You are out rather late, Miss Malcolm,” he said, not knowing very well what to say.
“It gets dark so quickly at this time of year. I have been to see some people at Thorley, about a mile and a half from here.”
“You do a good deal of visiting among the poor, I suppose?”
“Yes, I have been always accustomed to spend two or three days a week amongst them. They have come to know me very well, and to understand me, and, much as people are apt to complain of the poor, I have found them both grateful and affectionate.”
John Treverton looked at her thoughtfully. She had a bright colour in her cheeks this evening, a rosy tint which lighted up her dark eyes with a brilliancy he had never seen in them before. He walked by her side all the way back to Hazlehurst, talking first about the villagers she had been visiting, and afterwards about her adopted father, whose loss she seemed to feel deeply. Her manner this evening appeared perfectly frank and natural, and when John Treverton parted from her at the gates of the Manor House, it was with the conviction that she was no less charming than she was beautiful.
And yet he gave a short, impatient sigh as he tuned away from the great iron gates to walk to The Laurels, and it was only by an effort that he kept up an appearance of cheerfulness through the long evening, in the society of the two Sampsons and a bluff red-cheeked gentleman-farmer, who had been invited to dinner, and to take a hand in a friendly rubber afterwards.
John Treverton spent the following day in the dogcart with Mr. Sampson, inspecting more farms, and getting a clearer idea of the extent and nature of the Treverton property that lay within a drive of Hazlehurst. He told his host that he would be compelled to go back to town by an early train on the next morning. After dinner that evening Mr. Sampson had occasion to retire to his office for an hour’s work upon some important piece of business, so John Treverton, not very highly appreciating the privilege of a prolonged tête-à-tête with the fair Eliza, put on his hat and went out of doors to smoke a cigar in the village street.
Some fancy, he scarcely knew what, led him towards the Manor House; perhaps because the lane outside the high garden wall at the side of the house was a quiet place for the
