On going out into the garden next morning, with a strange sense of being another person than herself, she beheld Jim leaning mutely over the gate.

He nodded. ‘Good morning, Margery,’ he said civilly.

‘Good morning,’ said Margery in the same tone.

‘I beg your pardon,’ he continued. ‘But which way was you going this morning?’

‘I am not going anywhere just now, thank you. But I shall go to my father’s by-and-by with Edy.’ She went on with a sigh, ‘I have done what he has all along wished, that is, married you; and there’s no longer reason for enmity atween him and me.’

‘Trew — trew. Well, as I am going the same way, I can give you a lift in the trap, for the distance is long.’

‘No thank you — I am used to walking,’ she said.

They remained in silence, the gate between them, till Jim’s convictions would apparently allow him to hold his peace no longer. ‘This is a bad job!’ he murmured.

‘It is,’ she said, as one whose thoughts have only too readily been identified. ‘How I came to agree to it is more than I can tell!’ And tears began rolling down her cheeks.

‘The blame is more mine than yours, I suppose,’ he returned. ‘I ought to have said No, and not backed up the gentleman in carrying out this scheme. ’Twas his own notion entirely, as perhaps you know. I should never have thought of such a plan; but he said you’d be willing, and that it would be all right; and I was too ready to believe him.’

‘The thing is, how to remedy it,’ said she bitterly. ‘I believe, of course, in your promise to keep this private, and not to trouble me by calling.’

‘Certainly,’ said Jim. ‘I don’t want to trouble you. As for that, why, my dear Mrs. Hayward —’

‘Don’t Mrs. Hayward me!’ said Margery sharply. ‘I won’t be Mrs. Hayward!’

Jim paused. ‘Well, you are she by law, and that was all I meant,’ he said mildly.

‘I said I would acknowledge no such thing, and I won’t. A thing can’t be legal when it’s against the wishes of the persons the laws are made to protect. So I beg you not to call me that anymore.’

‘Very well, Miss Tucker,’ said Jim deferentially. ‘We can live on exactly as before. We can’t marry anybody else, that’s true; but beyond that there’s no difference, and no harm done. Your father ought to be told, I suppose, even if nobody else is? It will partly reconcile him to you, and make your life smoother.’

Instead of directly replying, Margery exclaimed in a low voice:

‘O, it is a mistake — I didn’t see it all, owing to not having time to reflect! I agreed, thinking that at least I should get reconciled to father by the step. But perhaps he would as soon have me not married at all as married and parted. I must ha’ been enchanted — bewitched — when I gave my consent to this! I only did it to please that dear good dying nobleman — though why he should have wished it so much I can’t tell!’

‘Nor I neither,’ said Jim. ‘Yes, we’ve been fooled into it, Margery,’ he said, with extraordinary gravity. ‘He’s had his way wi’ us, and now we’ve got to suffer for it. Being a gentleman of patronage, and having bought several loads of lime o’ me, and having given me all that splendid furniture, I could hardly refuse —’

‘What, did he give you that?’

‘Ay sure — to help me win ye.’

Margery covered her face with her hands; whereupon Jim stood up from the gate and looked critically at her. ‘’Tis a footy plot between you two men to — snare me!’ she exclaimed. ‘Why should you have done it — why should he have done it — when I’ve not deserved to be treated so. He bought the furniture — did he! O, I’ve been taken in — I’ve been wronged!’ The grief and vexation of finding that long ago, when fondly believing the Baron to have lover-like feelings himself for her, he was still conspiring to favour Jim’s suit, was more than she could endure.

Jim with distant courtesy waited, nibbling a straw, till her paroxysm was over. ‘One word, Miss Tuck — Mrs. — Margery,’ he then recommenced gravely. ‘You’ll find me man enough to respect your wish, and to leave you to yourself — for ever and ever, if that’s all. But I’ve just one word of advice to render ‘ee. That is, that before you go to Silverthorn Dairy yourself you let me drive ahead and call on your father. He’s friends with me, and he’s not friends with you. I can break the news, a little at a time, and I think I can gain his good will for you now, even though the wedding be no natural wedding at all. At any count, I can hear what he’s got to say about ‘ee, and come back here and tell ‘ee.’

She nodded a cool assent to this, and he left her strolling about the garden in the sunlight while he went on to reconnoitre as agreed. It must not be supposed that Jim’s dutiful echoes ............