The Reverend Andros Bartrand laughed drily. It was about the first time on record that he had addressed his granddaughter as ‘my love,’ and Marjorie was prompt to recognise latent sarcasm under the endearment. How terrible to reach old age, thought the child of seventeen--to read, to think, and yet outlive the power of loving; intellect surviving heart by many a year, as bodily strength in the end must survive all. What had she ever been to him but a plaything! From the hour she arrived at Tintajeux with her tempers, her four-year-old tongue, her foreign ways, the necessity of keeping a kitten to gambol before the Seigneur’s study fire had possibly been done away with. Just that! She had diverted him. At the present day she might be picturesque, shed the pleasing charm of youth upon his lawn and dinner-table. She understood the arrangement of his books. She could dust his library to admiration. And she was not afraid of him! (Marjorie omitted this, the leading clause, from her mental summing-up of personal virtues.) She was not afraid of him! When did fearlessness fail of carrying weight with a cold, strong nature like the Seigneur’s? Though her colour went and came, though her lips quivered under his irony, the girl was not afraid of him at this moment. ‘I might have known, sir, that if I was distressed it would furnish you with amusement. That is our amiable Bartrand spirit, our way of showing sympathy with others.’ ‘Distressed? You astonish me. Distressed at finding that an intelligent, studious young man is in possession of his freedom? The charade, we may almost call it the Arbuthnot drama, grows mightily puzzling to me, a spectator. Let our worthy Cantab be bachelor or Benedict. What concern is it of ours?’ Marjorie rose from the table, with difficulty choking back her tears. ‘I love gossip as little as any one,’ she said, coldly. ‘You introduced the Arbuthnots’ name, sir, so I chose to mention that the Thornes’ friend and my tutor are two distinct persons. And I have no interest in Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot’s concerns! And if a drama is being acted, let me tell you, grandpapa, that I, for one, play no part in it. Like yourself, I am a spectator only.’