"Tom is with Lena," Mrs. Lakeman said, with a confident smile, "and he doesn't miss me; he is too happy. I couldn't humiliate my child in her future husband's eyes"--Margaret quailed at the word--"by letting him know that I had come to beg her life of a woman for whom he had had a passing infatuation. Now," she added, and her manner showed her alertness for practical detail. "Why won't you go to Australia?" "I don't wish to go," Margaret answered, positively. "I don't wish to leave my mother." "Your dear mother," Mrs. Lakeman said, with a funny little twitch. "Go home to her, Margaret; let me drive you to the station and know that you are on your way back to the farm?" "I can't go home now," Margaret answered. "I will do as you wish about Tom, and I will not tell him that you came to me; but you must leave the rest in my hands." "But how is he to know?" said Mrs. Lakeman, feeling in a moment that her house of cards might fall. "How is he to know that you give him up?" "I will write to him," she said, bitterly. "You had better telegraph at once." Margaret felt as if these telegrams were becoming a nightmare; but, at any cost, she must get rid of Mrs. Lakeman. "Oh yes; I will telegraph if you like." She crossed over to the table at which Tom had sat so joyfully only yesterday. "Tell him you are going away," Mrs. Lakeman said. "Oh, Margaret, you don't know how they have loved each other all these years." "You said he'd been infatuated so often?" "He has always laughed at it afterwards." Margaret took up her pen and wrote: "_Stay with Lena; I do not want you. I am going away._--_Margaret._" "You had better put your surname, too," Mrs. Lakeman said, and she wrote it. "I'll take it for you, dear," she said; "you don't want to go out just yet, and you don't want the landlady to see it. Now, tell me what you mean to do?" she asked, in a good, businesslike tone. "I don't know," Margaret answered, gently. "I want to be alone and think. I have done all I could; it has been very hard to do, and I hope Lena will be happy. Please go; I feel as if I couldn't bear it any longer, unless I am alone." Mrs. Lakeman took her in her arms and kissed her, and, though Margaret submitted, she could not help shuddering. "It's rather a desperate game," Mrs. Lakeman thought, as she drove away; "but it's thoroughly amusing. The best way will be to insist on Tom marrying Lena at once--a special license. A man is often caught in a rebound." XXIX