"Yes, a deuced good fight. But I chose to let it go. Now don't go on looking as if you didn't understand the thing. It's simple enough."

"But Lady Tristram--your mother--must have known----"

"The question didn't arise as long as my mother lived," said Harry quickly. "Her t.i.tle was all right, of course."

There was another question on the tip of Bob's tongue, but after a glance at Harry's face he did not put it; he could not ask Harry if he had known.

"I'm hanged!" he muttered.

"Yes, but you understand why I came here?"

"Yes. That was kind."

"Oh, no. I want to spike the Major's guns, you know." He laughed a little. "And--well, yes, I think I'm promoting the general happiness too, if you must know. Now I'm off, Bob."

He held out his hand and Bob grasped it. "We'll meet again some day, when things have settled down. Beat Duplay for me, Bob. Good-by."

"That's grit, real grit," muttered Bob, as he returned to the house after seeing Harry Tristram on his way.

It was that--or else the intoxication of some influence whose power had not pa.s.sed away. Whatever it was, it had a marked effect on Bob Broadley. There was an appearance of strength and resolution about it--as of a man knowing what he meant to do and doing it. As he inspected his pigs an hour later, Bob came to the conclusion that he himself was a poor sort of fellow. People who waited for the fruit to fall into their mouths were apt to find that a hand intervened and plucked it. That had happened to him once, and probably he could not have helped it; but he meant to try to prevent its happening again. He was in a ferment all the morning, partly on his own account, as much about the revolution which had suddenly occurred in the little kingdom on the banks of the Blent.

In the afternoon he had his gig brought round and set out for Blentmouth. As he pa.s.sed Blent Hall, he saw a girl on the bridge--a girl in black looking down at the water. Lady Tristram? It was strange to call her by the t.i.tle that had been another's. But he supposed it must be Lady Tristram. She did not look up as he pa.s.sed; he retained a vision of the slack dreariness of her pose. Going on, he met the Iver carriage; Iver and Neeld sat in it, side by side; they waved their hands in careless greeting and went on talking earnestly. On the outskirts of the town he came on Miss Swinkerton and Mrs Trumbler walking together. As he raised his hat, a dim and wholly inadequate idea occurred to him of the excitement into which these good ladies would soon be thrown, a foreshadowing of the wonder, the consternation, the questionings, the bubbling emotions which were soon to stir the quiet backwaters of the villas of Blentmouth. For himself, what was he going to do? He could not tell. He put up his gig at the inn and sauntered out into the street; still he could not tell. But he wandered out to Fairholme, up to the gate, and past it, and back to it, and past it again.

Now would Harry Tristram do that? No; either he would never have come or he would have been inside before this. Bob's new love of boldness did not let him consider whether this was the happiest moment for its display. Those learned in the lore of such matters would probably have advised him to let her alone for a few days, or weeks, or months, according to the subtilty of their knowledge or their views. Bob rang the bell.

Janie was not denied to him, but only because no chance was given to her of denying herself. A footman, unconscious of convulsions external or internal, showed him into the morning-room. But Janie's own att.i.tude was plain enough in her reception of him.

"Oh, Bob, why in the world do you come here to-day? Indeed I can't talk to you to-day." Her dismay was evident. "If there's nothing very particular----"

"Well, you know there is," Bob interrupted.

She turned her head quickly toward him. "I know there is? What do you mean?"

"You've got Harry Tristram's letter, I suppose?"

"What do you know of Harry Tristram's letter?"

"I haven't seen it, but I know what's in it all the same."

"How do you know?"

"He came up to Mingham to-day and told me." Bob sat down by her, uninvited; certainly the belief in boldness was carrying him far. But he did not quite antic.i.p.ate the next development. She sprang up, sprang away from his neighborhood, crying,

"Then how dare you come here to-day? Yes, I've got the letter--just an hour ago. Have you come to--to triumph over me?"

"What an extraordinary idea!" remarked Bob in the slow tones of a genuine astonishment.

"You'd call it to condole, I suppose! That's rather worse."

Bob confined himself to a long look at her. It brought him no enlightenment.

"You must see that you're the very----" She broke off abruptly, and, turning away, began to walk up and down.

"The very what?" asked Bob.

She turned and looked at him; she broke into a peevishly nervous laugh.

Anybody but Bob--really anybody but Bob--would have known! The laugh encouraged him a little, which again it had no right to do.

"I thought you'd be in trouble, and like a bit of cheering up," he said with a diplomatic air that was ludicrously obvious.

She considered a moment, taking another turn about the room to do it.

"What did Harry Tristram say to you?"

"Oh, he told me the whole thing. That--that he's chucked it up, you know."

"I mean about me."

"He didn't say much about you. Just that it was all ended, you know."

"Did he think I should accept his withdrawal?"

"Yes, he seemed quite sure of it," answered Bob. "I had my doubts, but he seemed quite sure of it." Apparently Bob considered his statement rea.s.suring and comforting.

"You had your doubts?"

"Yes. I thought perhaps----"

"You were wrong then, and Harry Tristram was right." She flung the words at him in a fierce hostility. "Now he's not Lord Tristram any longer, I don't want to marry him." She paused. "You believe he isn't, don't you?

There's no doubt?"

"I believe him all right. He's a fellow you can rely on."

"But it's all so strange. Why has he done it? Well, that doesn't matter.

At any rate he's right about me."

Bob sat stolidly in his chair. He did not know at all what to say, but he did not mean to go. He had put no spoke in the Major's wheel yet, and to do that was his contract with Harry Tristram, as well as his own strong desire.

"Have you sympathized--or condoled--or triumphed--enough?" she asked; she was fierce still.

"I don't know that I've had a chance of saying anything much," he observed with some justice.

"I really don't see what you can have to say. What is there to say?"

"Well, there's just this to say--that I'm jolly glad of it."

She was startled by his blunt sincerity, so startled that she pa.s.sed the obvious chance of accusing him of cruelty toward Harry Tristram, and thought only of how his words touched herself.