On the day following I met Frank Forrester in the lane by the vicarage.  
I verily believe I had forgotten all about him during the past few days, but that very morning I had remembered that he was most likely at the Priory for that garden-party to which father had so annoyingly forbidden us to go; and I in my heart that, by hook or by , my sister should see him before he left the neighborhood. It was a regular piece of good-luck my meeting him thus; but I thought, when he first saw me, that he was going to avoid me. He seemed, however, to think better of it, and came striding towards me, swaying his tall, body, and welcoming me even from a distance with the pleasant smile, without which one would scarcely have known his handsome face. I was glad he had thought better of it, for I should certainly not have allowed him to pass me.
 
"Holloa, Miss Margaret," said he, when we were within ear-shot; "this is . I was afraid I shouldn't get a chance of seeing any of you, as I am forbidden the house. How are you?"
 
"I am very well," said I, looking at him.
 
I fancied he had grown smarter in his appearance than he used to be; there was nothing that I could take hold of, and yet somehow he seemed to me to be changed.
 
"Why weren't you at the garden-party yesterday?" asked he. "It was quite gay."
 
"Yesterday! Was it yesterday?" said I, half disappointed. "We weren't allowed to go, you know. We wanted to go very much."
 
He looked at me in that open-eyed way of his for a moment, and then he shifted his glance away from my face and laughed a little uneasily.
 
"Was I the cause?" he asked.
 
"Oh, dear no," cried I, eagerly, although in my heart I knew well enough that, with mother, he had been. "But you know father never did like the Thornes. They belong to that class that he dislikes so. What do you call it—capitalists? Why, he hates them ever so much worse than landed , and they are bad enough."
 
I said this jokingly, feeling that, as of course Frank sympathized with all these views and convictions of father's, he would understand, even though he might not himself feel just as strongly towards those members of the class who had been his friends from his youth upward. But a shadow of or uneasiness—I did not know which—passed over his face like a little summer cloud, although the full, changeful mouth still kept its smile.
 
"And Mr. Thorne has done something special to him," I continued. "He has closed the right-of-way over the common by Dead Man's Lane. So now father has forbidden us to go to the house."
 
The slightest possible touch of scorn curled Frank's lip under the silky brown mustache.
 
"That's a pity," said he.
 
"Well," said I, "you would feel just the same, of course, if these people didn't happen to be old friends of yours, and they never were friends of father's. He disliked them buying the property from the very first."
 
"It makes things rather uncomfortable to drive a theory as far as that," laughed Frank.
 
Of course it was what I often felt myself, but somehow it me to hear him say so; if he was the friend to father that he seemed to be, he had no business to say it, and to me.
 
"Well, anyhow, it's the reason we didn't go to the garden-party," said I, shortly. And then I repeated again, and in a pleasanter tone, "But we wanted to go very much, of course."
 
"Ah yes," answered he, glancing at me and then away again, and referring, I suppose, to the pronoun I had used, "your sister is home again now. Of course I heard it in the village. What a pity you couldn't come! We had a dance afterwards—altogether a delightful evening, and you would have enjoyed it immensely. Besides," he began, and then stopped, and then ended , "every one missed you."
 
 
 
I laughed. "That means to say every one missed Joyce," I said. "I am not so silly as to think people mean me when they mean Joyce—some people, of course, more particularly than others."
 
It was rather a foolish remark, and he took no notice of it.
 
"Your sister is well, I hope," was all he said.
 
"Oh yes, she's well," I answered.
 
And then there was an awkward pause. I wondered why in the world he did not ask any of the innumerable questions that must be in his mind about her, and yet I felt that it was natural he should be awkward, natural that he should not want to talk to me about her.
 
I did not know exactly what to say, and yet I would not let this golden opportunity slip.
 
"You must come and see for yourself," said I, boldly, without in the least considering what this course of action laid me open to from mother. "She's prettier and sweeter than ever, Joyce is, since she's been to London."
 
He turned quickly, and looked at me with his wildest gaze.
 
"Come and see her! Why, Miss Margaret, you know that's impossible!" ejaculated he.
 
"You came to see us the last time you were in Marshlands," said I. "You don't come to see Joyce, you come to see father. Father would be dreadfully hurt to think you were in Marshlands and didn't see him. He doesn't know you are here." This was true, but whether father would have wished me to run so against mother's wishes, I did not stop to think.
 
"Your sister was not at home when last I came to the Grange," said he, softly.
 
I almost stamped my foot with vexation at the lack of recklessness in this lover of Joyce's, whose devotion I had begun by envying her once upon a time. But I reflected that it was both foolish and unfair to be vexed, because Frank Forrester was only keeping to the word of his agreement.
 
"You come to see father, not to see Joyce," I repeated, dogmatically. "Father doesn't seem to be happy about the way that notion of his is turning out."
 
"That notion?" repeated the young man, in an inquiring tone of voice.
 
I looked at him.
 
"Yes," said I. "I don't know exactly what it is, but something or other that father and you have got up between yourselves."
 
 
 
Still he looked puzzled.
 
"Some school, or something for poor children," explained I, I think a trifle impatiently.
 
"Oh, of course, of course," cried Frank. "I didn't quite understand what you were referring to, and one has so many of those things on hand, so many sad cases, there is so much to be done. But I remember all about it. We must push it. It's a fine scheme, but it will need a great deal of pushing, a great deal of interest. It's not the kind of thing that will float in a day. Your father, of course, is apt to be over-."
 
I did not answer. It crossed my mind that three months ago it had been father who had said that Frank was apt to be over-sanguine; or rather, who had given it so to be understood, in words spoken with a smile and some sort of an expression of praise for the of youth. "It's to the young ones that we must look to fly high," he had said, or words to that effect.
 
"Well, you must come and talk it over with father," said I, somewhat puzzled. "He thinks a great deal of you."
 
"Ah! And so do I think a great deal of him, I assure you," cried Frank. "He's a delightful old man! So bright and fresh and full of enthusiasm! One would never believe he had lived all his life in a place like this, looking after cows and sheep. There are very few men of better position who can talk as he talks."
 
I suppose I ought to have been pleased at this, but instead of that it made me unaccountably angry for a moment. I thought it a great liberty on the part of a young fellow like Captain Forrester to speak like that of an old man like my father. But one could not be exactly angry with Frank. In the first place, he was so pleasant and good-natured and sympathetic that one felt the fault must be on one's own side; and then it would have been waste of time, for he would either never have perceived it, or he would have been so surprised that one would have been ashamed to continue it.
 
However, I tried to speak in an off-hand way as I said, "Yes, he doesn't often get any one here whom he cares to talk to, so of course he is very glad of whoever it is that will look at things a bit as he does." And then, afraid lest I should have said too much, and prevent him from coming to the Grange after all, I added, "But he's really fond of you, and if he thinks you have been so near the place and haven't been to see him, I'm afraid he'll be hurt."
 
Frank looked undecided a moment, and I glanced at him anxiously. Truly, I was very eager that day to secure a companion for my father.
 
 
 
"Father is depressed," I added. "I don't think he's quite so cheerful and hopeful as he used to be, and I am sure you would do him good."
 
Frank laughed. "Very well," said he, turning down the lane with me, "if your mother is , Miss Margaret, let it be on your head."
 
"Oh, I'm not afraid of mother," I said, although in truth I was very much afraid of her. "She will be pleased enough if you cheer up father. And if you tell him some good news of his plan about the poor little children, you will cheer him up."
 
"He mustn't set his heart too much upon that just at present," said Frank, in a cool, business-like kind of way. "There's a deal of hard, patient work to be done at that before it'll take any shape, you know."
 
"Yes, I understand," said I; "but who is going to do the work?"
 
He looked a bit put out for the moment, but he said, cheerily: "Ah, that's just it. We must find the proper man—the man for the place—then it'll go like a house on fire." And then he turned and his brown eyes on me, as was his , and said, "But how is it that this bailiff hasn't roused your father's heart in his own work more, and made him forget these outside schemes?"
 
I flushed with anger; I thought the remark unjustifiable.
 
"I hear he's a clever fellow," continued the captain. "That's it, I suppose. He prefers to go his own gait. Although they tell me"—he said this as if he were paying me a compliment—"they tell me you can twist him round your little finger."
 
"Who are they?" cried I, my lip trembling. "They had best mind their own business."
 
He laughed gayly. "The same as ever, I see," he said. "But you might well be proud of such a . He struck me as a tough customer the only time I saw him."
 
I set my lips tight together and refused to answer another word; but when we had left the pines, and turned out of the lane into the road, I was sorry for him, and forgave him; for glancing at him, I saw that his cheek was quite pale.
 
"I'm dreadfully afraid of your parents," laughed he. "Your mother won't to shake hands with me, and your father will be hurt because I haven't brought a train of little London waifs at my heels."
 
Of course it was neither the of mother's cold welcome nor the thought of father's disappointment at the of the scheme which had really made his cheek white. I understood things better than that; it was that he was going to see Joyce, whom he had not seen for three months. I was sorry for the poor fellow, in spite of his having offended me.
 
On the top of my original plan, which had only been to get him to the Grange, another took sudden shape. It was a Thursday—dairy morning. But as we had come down the street I had seen mother's tall back beside the counter of the village grocer's shop, and I to risk Deborah's presence, and to bring Frank straight in through the back door to the milk-pans and Joyce's face.
 
Luck favored me. Deborah had gone outside to some not quite to her mind, and Joyce stood alone with a fresh pink frock and a fres............