been in our service?”
“A many years, ma’am,” said the keeper gravely; and then he read the cheque over as Mrs Rolph placed it in his hands. “Ah! ‘Pay to Benjamin Hayle or bearer, fifty pounds. – Constantia Rolph.’ A good deal of money, ma’am. And now, I think I’ll call Judith down.”
“Yes – yes, do. I must say a few words to her. Poor girl, I wish her well.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” said the keeper quietly.
“Yes: it is not all her fault.”
“Judith – Judith, my girl,” said the keeper, opening the door at the foot of the stairs. “Come down.”
There was the quick rustling of a dress, and Judith came down, red-eyed, pale and wild-looking, to lay her hand on her father’s arm.
“Ah, Judith, my dear,” began Mrs Rolph, hastily. “Your father and I have been discussing this unhappy affair, and, sorry as we are, we feel obliged to come to the conclusion – the same conclusion that you will, as a good, sensible girl, when you have well thought it out – that this silly flirtation cannot go on. It is for your sake as well as my son’s that I speak.”
Hayle felt his child’s hand tremble on his arm.
“You are too wise and too good to wish to injure my son’s prospects for life, and so we have decided that it will be better for your father to leave the place, and take you right away, where all this little trouble will soon be forgotten.”
“And,” interposed the keeper, “the missus has given me this, my dear – a cheque for fifty pounds, to pay all our expenses. What shall I do with it, my dear?”
“Burn it, father,” said Judith, slowly. “It is to buy us off.”
“Hah!” said the keeper, with a smile full of satisfaction, “that’s well said;” and he placed the end of the cheque to the glowing ashes. It burst into flame and he held it till it was nearly burned away, tossing the scrap he had held into the fire.
“Hayle, you must be mad!” cried Mrs Rolph, astonishment having at first closed her lips.
“Nay, ma’am, we’re not mad, either of us,” said the keeper, gravely. “There are some things money can buy, and some things it can’t, ma’am. What you want is one of the things it can’t buy. Judith and I are going away from the cottage – right away, ma’am. I’m only a keeper, but there’s a bit of independence in me; and as for my girl here, whom you made a lady, she’s going to act like what you have made her. She owns to me, in her looks if not in words, that she loves young master, and she’s too proud to come to you and be his wife, till you come to her, and beg her to. Am I right, Judith?”
The girl gave him a quick look, and then drew herself up, and clung to him.
“Yes, father,” she said, in a whisper which caused her intense suffering “you are right.”
“There, ma’am, are you satisfied?”
“No,” said Mrs Rolph in a husky voice, “I am not satisfied, but it cannot be. My son’s welfare is at stake.”
She rose, and tried to speak again, but unable to utter another word, she left the cottage, father and daughter watching her till she disappeared among the dark aisles of the firs.
Volume One – Chapter Eight.
Mars in the Ascendant
“Better get it over,” said Captain Rolph, the next day, as he indulged himself in what he called a short “spin” down the lane by the side of The Warren, and in the direction of the Alleynes’ home, which stood up, grim and bleak, out of the sandy desert land. “What with the old man, and the major, and the mater, and Madge, and – oh, hang it all! I’m not going to stand any humbug from Judy, and so I tell her. There, I’ll go and get it over at once.”
He stopped running, braced himself up, and marched in regular military fashion, back to The Warren, to see Marjorie seated at one of the front windows, ready to give him a smile in response to his short nod.
The next moment he stopped short, gazing sharply down the avenue at the broad, bent back of the keeper, who, with head down, was striding away toward the gate.
“What’s he been here for? – to see me?”
Rolph entered the house, walked noisily into his study – a gun-room, for the study of fowling-pieces and fishing rods, with a museum-like collection of prize cups and belts dotted about, in company with trophies of the chase, heads, horns and skins. Here he rang the bell, which was very promptly answered by the butler, Captain Rolph being a follower of the celebrated Count Shucksen, and using so much military drill-sergeant powder with his orders that they went home at once.
“Hayle been to see me, Smith?” he asked, sharply.
“No, sir. Came to bring up your guns after my mistress had been down to the keeper’s lodge this morning.”
“Brought up my guns,” said Rolph, wonderingly. “What for?”
The man looked at him rather curiously in silence.
“Well, idiot, why don’t you speak?”
“Not my business, sir. In trouble, I suppose. Benjamin Hayle and me has never been friends, and so he said nothing, on’y one word as he went out.”
“And what was that?”
“Sack, sir – sack!”
“That’ll do.”
“Yes, sir – I knew it would come some day,” said the butler to himself. “Sticking up a notorious poacher on a level with respectable servants, and putting his daughter over ’em, making my lady of her. But pride always did have a fall.”
“Humph!” muttered Rolph, with a laugh, “the old girl strikes first blow without knowing what was coming. All right. Now for it. Just as well, perhaps. But he was a good keeper.”
He went out into the hall just in time to meet Marjorie, who was tripping blithely down the stairs, singing the while.
“What a lovely day it is, Rob,” she said.
“Is it?” he said grimly.
“Isn’t it, dear? Why, what’s the matter? Are you going in to see auntie on business?”
“Yes, on that business. Did you and my mother hatch up that dodge between you?”
“I don’t know what you mean, Rob.”
“Of course not, my clever little schemer. Come in, too, and hear how I’ve flanked you both.”
A sudden change came over the girl’s smiling countenance, with its air of wonder, and it was with a vindictive flash of her eyes that she suddenly caught Rolph by the arm.
“Not married?” she said in a harsh whisper.
“No; not yet.”
“Hah!”
It was a catching sigh of relief as Rolph threw open the drawing-room door, and,
