‘_Again!_’ repeated Miss Wynter, with emphasis and meaning. ‘Oh, it’s all straight this time. You need not be sneering, Mag; and Eleanor need not turn up her eyes in that lackadaisical fashion. When Crackpot has won the _Grand Prix_, as I intend him to, I shall sell him for—well, a good lot of money. Then I shall be fairly on my legs again. Thorsgarth may stay as it is, yet awhile, and the timber can remain in the woods.’ ‘I should hope so!’ exclaimed Eleanor, in a voice of alarm. ‘And if you’d only marry me now, Magdalen, out of hand, you should have the purse-strings, and keep me in order. Come, let it be a bargain!’ Magdalen’s eyes glittered. It was a bargain she would have clinched that moment if she could. ‘You know it is utterly impossible, Otho, now. But if you’ll come home again before Christmas—well before Christmas, you know, I might be able to settle things.’ ‘Oh, do promise, Otho!’ Eleanor urged him eagerly. ‘If only you and Magdalen could get married at the end of this year or the beginning of next—why, you might go abroad; and when you had got this money that you speak of, you might live abroad.’ Her heart leaped up at the idea that Magdalen, if she once had him in hand, and was as he said mistress of the purse-strings, might have a strong influence over him, and that, having broken from his sporting associates, both here and in London, something different—something a little better, might surely be made of him. ‘If you would marry him, Magdalen,’ she went on, ‘I would spend the rest of the winter myself with Miss Strangforth, if she would have me; or you could find her another niece to come and live with her.’ ‘I would do my best,’ Magdalen said, ‘if he’ll promise to come home before Christmas.’ Otho h’md and ha’d, and said at last, he could not promise more than she did. He would do his best too. ‘It would be very nice,’ Magdalen said, reflectively. ‘Bradstane _is_ dull to the carnally minded. People given up to good works and acts of mercy, like Miss Askam, may find it bearable. I think it is awful. And there is hardly any one left in it now. All my old friends are gone. You away, Otho; Gilbert away; Roger Camm gone.’ ‘Camm lives in Leeds now, doesn’t he?’ asked Otho; and there was something in his voice as he spoke—an inflexion, a shade, which caused Eleanor to glance at him quickly. But he looked as usual, except that he was still haggard and worn-looking, and appeared indifferent about the answer. ‘Yes,’ said his sister. ‘He has a very good post there.’ ‘What has become of that little girl he was going to marry?’ asked Otho; and Magdalen gave a little laugh, saying— ‘Well, that is good, I must say. After the way you behaved to her——’ ‘What?’ stammered Otho, and there was the same look on his face that Eleanor had seen there as he stood in the hall just before Magdalen’s arrival.