nodded, and then was about to go away, when he suddenly stopped, and his dark face grew serious. "One thing tell me, missy, and do not be angry."
"I could never be angry with you, Durban. What is it?"
"Do you love Mr. Paslow, missy?"
"Yes," replied Beatrice without hesitation. She knew that whatever she said to her faithful servant would never be repeated by him.
"And does he love you?"
This time she coloured. "I think so--I am not sure," was her faint reply, as she cast down her eyes.
Durban came a step nearer. "Does he love any one else?" he asked.
Beatrice raised her head sharply, and sent a flaming glance towards the questioner. "What do you mean?"
"If he doesn't love you, does he love any one else?" persisted Durban.
Beatrice twisted her hands. "I am sure he loves me, and no one else!" she cried passionately. "I can see it in his eyes--I can read it in his face. Yet he--yet he--oh!" she broke off, unwilling to remark upon Paslow's strange, wavering wooing, to a servant, even though that servant was one who would readily have died to save her a moment's pain. "Do you think he loves any one else?" she asked evasively.
"No." Durban's eyes were fixed on her face. "I have no reason to think so. If he loves my missy, he can never be fond of other women; but if he plays you false, missy "--Durban's face grew grim and darker than ever--"you have a dog who can bite."
"No! no!" said Beatrice, alarmed--since Durban could make himself unpleasant on occasions, and, from the look on his face, she feared for Vivian--"he loves me, and me only; I am sure of that!"
The man's face cleared. "Then we will go to the Grange this evening, and you can see him."
"But if my stepfather hates him, Durban, he will place some obstacle in the way, should Mr. Paslow ask me to marry him."
"If he asks you to be his wife, you shall marry him, missy."
"But my father----"
"He will say nothing."
"Are you sure? When Mr. Alpenny takes an idea into his head----"
"He will take no idea of stopping your marriage, missy. You shall be happy. I promised him that."
"Promised who?"
"Your real father," said Durban, and departed without another word. It would seem as though he were unwilling to be questioned. Beatrice began to think that there was some mystery connected with her parents, which Durban knew, but which Durban would not reveal.
CHAPTER III
MR. ALPENNY'S PROPOSAL
Shortly after Durban resumed work, Beatrice received a surprise which rather pleased her. This was none other than an invitation to enter the counting-house. She had always desired to do so, being filled with that curiosity which led her grandmother Eve to eat apples, but hitherto Alpenny had declined to admit her. Now the door of the dungeon was open, and Alpenny, standing before it, beckoned that she should come in. In the bright sunshine he looked more decrepit and wicked than usual. He could not have been less than eighty years of age, and his spare figure was bowed with Time. That same Time had also robbed him of every hair on his head, and had even taken away eyebrows and eyelashes. As the old man was clean shaven, his gleaming head and hairless yellow wrinkled face looked rather repulsive. Nor did his dress tend to improve his appearance, for it was a shepherd's-plaid suit cut in the style of the early fifties, when he had been young, and presumably something of a dandy. In spite of the antiquity of the clothes, there was a suggestion of juvenility about them which matched badly with his Methuselah looks. Like an aged ghost he beckoned in the sunshine, and the white-painted erection behind him assumed, in the eyes of Beatrice, the look of a tomb.
Wondering that she should be invited into Mammon's Shrine, the girl walked across the lawn. In her white dress, with her beautiful face shaded by a coarse straw hat, she appeared the embodiment of youth and grace, contrasting markedly with the senile old villain, who croaked out his orders.
"Come in," said Alpenny testily, and with the screech of a peacock, as he pointed to the open door. "I wish to speak to you seriously."
Beatrice, ever sparing of words with crabbed age, nodded and entered the counting-house, glancing comprehensively around to take in her surroundings--as a woman always does--with a single look. The space naturally was limited. All the windows had been boarded up save one, which opened immediately over a rather large desk of mahogany which was piled with papers. The walls were hung with faded red rep. In one corner stood a large green-painted safe; in another stood a pile of tin boxes which reached quite to the roof. A paraffin lamp dangled by brass chains from a somewhat smoky ceiling; and at the far end of the carriage, in front of a dilapidated bookcase, was an oil stove, crudely set on a sheet of galvanised tin. A ragged carpet, disorderly in colour and much faded, covered the floor; and there were only two chairs, one before the desk, and another beside it, probably for the use of clients. The one window was barred, but not covered with any curtain; the others were sheathed in iron and barred strongly outside. From without, as has been said, the carriage looked like a dungeon: within, its appearance suggested the home of a recluse, who cared very little for the pomps and vanities of civilisation. This barren room represented very fairly the bare mind of the miser, who cared more for money itself, than for what money could do.
Motioning Beatrice to the client's chair, Alpenny seated himself before his desk, and from habit presumably, began to fiddle with some legal looking documents. Apparently he had got over the shock caused by Vivian's strange speech, and looked much the same as he always did--cold, unsympathetic, and cunning as an old monkey. In the dungeon Beatrice bloomed like a rose, while Alpenny resembled a cold, clammy toad, uncanny and repulsive. He began to speak almost immediately, and his first words amazed the girl. They were the last she expected to hear from the lips of one who had always treated her with indifference, and almost with hostility.
"Have you ever thought of marriage?" asked the usurer, examining his visitor's face with two small sharp eyes, chilly and grey.
"Marriage!" she gasped, doubting if she had heard aright.
"Yes, marriage. Young girls think of such things, do they not?"
Wishing to find out what he meant, Beatrice fenced. "I have no chance of marrying, father," she observed, regaining her composure.
"I grant that, unless you have fallen in love with Jerry Snow; and I credit you with too much sense, to think you could love a fool."
"Mr. Snow is to marry Miss Paslow," announced Beatrice coldly, and kept her eyes on the wizen face before her.
"Oh," sneered Alpenny, "Hunger wedding Thirst. And how do they intend to live, may I ask?"
"That is their business, and not ours."
"Paslow hasn't a penny to give to his giggling sister, and very soon he won't have a roof over his head."
"What do you mean by that, father?"
"Mean!" The usurer stretched out a skinny hand, which resembled the claw of a bird of preys as he looked like. "Why, I mean, my girl, that
