"And he's fond of her. He's frightened of her, but he likes her better than anyone, much better than me. Before she left she told every servant in the house, and the men in the garden. At least, she took Harry round with her and made him say to each one of them, 'This is my wife.' The whole village knows by now. And she has taken the medical evidence about him. She made no secret of it. She said she sent it yesterday to her brother."

"She stole it, in fact."

"She said that as his wife she thought she ought to put it in safe keeping. I told her she need not have been afraid that we should destroy it. She said she knew that, but that those who deceived others never could trust anyone else. Roger, she has done a very wicked and shameless thing, for the sake of a livelihood, but I think she is suffering for it. And I believe, in spite of herself, she had a kind of devotion for mother. She had done so much for her. She never spared herself. She felt leaving her."

"Did she ask about the will?"

"No. I think there was a general feeling of surprise that the will was not read after the funeral."

"Well, my good girl, how could we, when we couldn't find one?"

"I know, I know. But what I mean is, it must soon be known that no will is forthcoming."

"Of course it is bound to come out before long."

"Have you asked Pike and Ditton, d.i.c.k's London men?"

"Yes. I wrote to them days ago. They know of nothing. There is no will, Janey. We have got to make up our minds to it. Pritchard is coming over this morning about the probate, and I shall have to tell him."

Something fierce crept into Janey's gentle face.

"Oh, Roger, it is such a shame!" she stammered. "If ever any man deserved Hulver it is you."

"d.i.c.k once said so," said Roger. "Last time he was here, two years ago, that time he never came to the Dower House though I begged him to, and I went round the park with him, and showed him where I had cut down the oak avenue in the old drive. It went to my heart to do it, but he had left me no choice, insisted on it. And when he saw the old trees all down he was quite taken aback, and he said, 'Roger, it is you who ought to have had Hulver. You'd have kept it together, while I'm just pulling it to pieces stick by stick. I must reform, and come and settle down here, and marry Mary. By G.o.d I must.' That was the last time he was here, just before he sold the Liverpool property."

"Everything seems to be taken from you, Roger," said Janey pa.s.sionately.

"And to think that this unscrupulous woman will have absolute power over everything!"

"She will be able to turn me off," said Roger. "She will get in another agent--put in her brother, I should think. I always disliked her, and she knew it. Now she will be able to pay off old scores."

Roger looked out of the window, and his patient, stubborn face quivered ever so slightly.

It would have been a comfort to Janey to think that she should one day inherit Noyes, if there had been any question of his sharing it with her. But the long-cherished hope that they might some day share a home together had died. It had died hard, it had taken a grievous time to die, but it was dead at last. And Janey had buried it, delved a deep grave for it in the live rock of her heart.

"I don't see how I am ever to marry now," he said hoa.r.s.ely. "I can't count on the two hundred a year from the agency and this cottage. Even that may go to-morrow. It wasn't much. It wasn't enough to set up house on, but even _that_ is as good as gone."

"I have thought lately that you had it in your mind to marry."

A small tear suddenly jumped out of Roger's eye, and got held up in his rough cheek.

"I want to marry Annette," he said.

"Yes, my dear, I guessed it."

"Dreadfully. You don't know, Janey. Dreadfully."

"I know, my poor boy," she said,--"I know all about it." And she came and stood by him and patted his hand.

For a moment Roger sobbed violently and silently against her shoulder.

Then he drew himself away, and rummaged for his pocket-handkerchief.

"You are a brick, Janey," he said gruffly.

CHAPTER x.x.xV

"The thing on the blind side of the heart, On the wrong side of the door; The green plant groweth, menacing Almighty lovers in the spring; There is always a forgotten thing, And love is not secure."

G. K. CHESTERTON.

The news of Harry's marriage, which was convulsing Riff, had actually failed to reach Red Riff Farm by tea-time. The Miss Blinketts, on the contrary, less aristocratically remote than the Miss Nevills, had heard it at midday, when the Dower House gardener went past The Hermitage to his dinner. And they were aware by two o'clock that Janey had had a consultation with Roger in his office, and that the bride had left Riff by the midday express from Riebenbridge.

It was the general opinion in Riff that "she'd repent every hair of her head for enticing Mr. Harry."

In total ignorance of this stupendous event, Aunt Harriet was discussing the probable condition of the soul after death over her afternoon tea, in spite of several attempts on the part of Annette to change the subject.

"Personally, I feel sure I shall not even lose consciousness," she said, with dignity. "With some of us the part.i.tion between this world and the next is hardly more than a veil, but we must not shut our eyes to the fact that a person like Mr. Le Geyt is almost certainly suffering for his culpability in impoverishing the estate; and if what I reluctantly hear is true as to other matters still more reprehensible----"

"We know very little about purgatory, after all," interrupted Aunt Maria wearily.

"Some of us who suffer have our purgatory here," said her sister, helping herself to an apricot. "I hardly think, when we cross the river, that----"

The door opened, and Roger was announced. He had screwed himself up to walk over and ask for Annette, and it was a shock to him to find her exactly as he might have guessed she would be found, sitting at tea with her aunts. He had counted on seeing her alone.

He looked haggard and aged, and his black clothes became him ill. He accepted tea from Annette without looking at her. He was daunted by the little family party, and made short replies to the polite inquiries of the Miss Nevills as to the health of Janey and Lady Louisa. He was wondering how he could obtain an interview with Annette, and half angry with her beforehand for fear she should not come to his a.s.sistance. He was very sore. Life was going ill with him, and he was learning what sleeplessness means, he who had never lain awake in his life.

The door opened again, and contrary to all precedent the Miss Blinketts were announced.

The Miss Blinketts never came to tea except when invited, and it is sad to have to record the fact that the Miss Nevills hardly ever invited them. They felt, however, on this occasion that they were the bearers of such important tidings that their advent could not fail to be welcome, if not to the celebrated auth.o.r.ess, at any rate to Miss Harriet, who was not absorbed in ethical problems like her gifted sister, and whose mind was, so she often said, "at leisure from itself, to soothe and sympathize."

But the Miss Blinketts were quite taken aback by the sight of Roger, in whose presence the burning topic could not be mentioned, and who had no doubt come to recount the disaster himself--a course which they could not have foreseen, as he was much too busy to pay calls as a rule. They were momentarily nonplussed, and they received no a.s.sistance in regaining their equanimity from the lofty remoteness of the Miss Nevills' reception. A paralysing ten minutes followed, which Annette, who usually came to the rescue, made no attempt to alleviate. She busied herself with the tea almost in silence.

Roger got up stiffly to go.

"I wonder, Mr. Manvers, as you are here," said Aunt Maria, rising as he did, "whether you would kindly look at the dairy roof. The rain comes in still, in spite of the new tiling. Annette will show it you." And without further demur she left the room, followed by Annette and Roger.

"I am afraid," said the auth.o.r.ess archly, with her hand on the door of her study, "that I had recourse to a subterfuge in order to escape.

Those amiable ladies who find time hang so heavily on their hands have no idea how much I value mine, nor how short I find the day for all I have to do in it. My sister will enjoy entertaining them. Annette, I must get back to my proofs. I will let you, my dear, show Mr. Manvers the dairy."

Roger followed Annette down the long bricked pa.s.sage to the _laiterie_.

They entered it, and his professional eye turned to the whitewashed ceiling and marked almost unconsciously the stain of damp upon it.

"A cracked tile," he said mechanically. "Two. I'll see to it."

And then, across the bowls of milk and a leg of mutton sitting in a little wire house, his eyes looked in a dumb agony at Annette.