"Providence, Mr. Rotherson----" Gabriel began, then stopped. His spiritual arguments grew tangled, for his carnal ear had detected the swish-swish of skirts along the passage. "So this is Gabriel's lady," thought Lomax, as Greta came in, with a pretty bashfulness that suited her well. "There seems more excuse for his lunacy than there did." "This is my little girl, Mr. Lomax," said the miller, with an explanatory wave of his churchwarden pipe. Gabriel Hirst watched the girl's unformed bow, and the shy uplifting of her eyes to Griff's. A sudden pang struck through him, taking him unawares. Not till this moment had he seen his friend in the light of a possible rival. Greta was perverse to-night. Instinctively she fell to comparing the little points of manner, dress, speech, in which the two men differed. She grew angry with the preacher for compelling such comparison; now and then she blushed for Gabriel Hirst, as she had not blushed when he came upon her with her little bare feet paddling in the water. She had taken the only vacant chair, which chanced to be close to Griff's: Hirst sat by the miller at the other side of the room, and tried to talk, listening eagerly the while for scraps of the conversation that was passing between the other two. "And how do you like our wild country?" asked Griff, by way of making idle chit-chat. Gabriel was in the middle of a polemical discussion with old Rotherson, but he paused for Greta's answer. She glanced across at the preacher and saw that he was listening. "Well enough," she said, with a toss of the head. "But the people are like the country--rather too wild, don't you think?" The preacher writhed in his chair; it was a girl's unbalanced coquetry, yet it cut straight to his simple heart. And the two on the other side of the fireplace went on with their light talk, and Greta let no chance of a stab go by, knowing well that the man who presumed to care for her would hear her every word. Lomax, seeing by the man's face how things were going, strove to lead his companion into quieter channels; but her wit was nimble, and, no matter what the topic might be, she made it good for a covert gibe at Gabriel. "Greta, lass, it's about time we had some glasses in," said the miller at length. "Smoking's dry work without a drop of whisky to help it down. You take a dram now and then, Mr. Lomax?" "That I do." "I thought you looked that sort, somehow," said the miller, with an involuntary glance at Gabriel.