"By George, she's a beauty!" said the Captain to himself as he turned away. "Nothing wrong with her that I can see. But there are some strange tales going about. I wonder who that other woman is. Marvell--Gertrude Marvell?--I seem to have heard the name somewhere.--Hullo, Masham, how are you?" He greeted the leading local solicitor who had just entered the station, a man with a fine ascetic face, and singularly blue eyes. Masham looked like a starved poet or preacher, and was in reality one of the hardest and shrewdest men of business in the southern counties. "Well, did you see Miss Blanchflower?" said the Captain, as Masham joined him on the platform, and they entered the up train together. "I did. A handsome young lady! Have you heard the news?" "No." "Your neighbor, Mr. Winnington--Mark Winnington--is named as her guardian under her father's will--until she is twenty-five. He is also trustee, with absolute power over the property." The Captain shewed a face of astonishment. "Gracious! what had Winnington to do with Sir Robert Blanchflower!" "An old friend, apparently. But it is a curious will." The solicitor's abstracted look shewed a busy mind. The Captain had never felt a livelier desire for information. "Isn't there something strange about the girl?"--he said, lowering his voice, although there was no one else in the railway carriage. "I never saw a more beautiful creature! But my mother came home from London the other day with some very queer stories, from a woman who had met them abroad. She said Miss Blanchflower was awfully clever, but as wild as a hawk--mad about women's rights and that kind of thing. In the hotel where she met them, people fought very shy of her." "Oh, she's a militant suffragist," said the solicitor quietly--"though she's not had time yet since her father's death to do any mischief. That--in confidence--is the meaning of the will." The adjutant whistled. "Goodness!--Winnington will have his work cut out for him. But he needn't accept." "He has accepted. I heard this morning from the London solicitor." "Your firm does the estate business down here?" "For many years. I hope to see Mr. Winnington to-morrow or next day. He is evidently hurrying home--because of this." There was silence for a few minutes; then the Captain said bluntly: "It's an awful pity, you know, that kind of thing cropping up down here. We've escaped it so far." "With such a lot of wild women about, what can you expect?" said the solicitor briskly. "Like the measles--sure to come our way sooner or later." "Do you think they'll get what they want?" "What--the vote? No--not unless the men are fools." The refined, apostolic face set like iron. "None of the womanly women want it," said the Captain with conviction. "You should hear my mother on it." The solicitor did not reply. The adjutant's mother was not in his eyes a model of wisdom. Nor did his own opinion want any fortifying from outside.