"It's my opinion that I made a fool of myself in going up to London," Mrs. Lakeman said. Her energy had flagged, and she wondered at her own nerve in going to Margaret; she scoffed at Dawson Farley and his proposal of marriage; she felt Tom to be in the way at Pitlochry. There were some people staying at Kingussie--she had heard of them from an acquaintance she met on the platform at Euston--she wanted to get over to Pitlochry. They were rich people and full of enterprise; a couple of grown-up sons, too; the elder infinitely better off than Tom Carringford. It was quite possible that he would fall in love with Lena. The worst of it was that Tom was here; besides, she had set herself a task and had to go through with it. After all, it might afford her some amusement, and she was always eager for that; better begin and get it over. She took him into the garden after breakfast to a seat in a secluded corner under a pear-tree; the glen and the rushing, gurgling brook were behind it, and made an accompaniment to their interview. "Well, what about Margaret Vincent?" she asked him. "I have had no letter from her. I don't understand it." "I didn't think there would be one," she answered, significantly, and with an insolence in her manner that put him on the defensive. "Why didn't you?" Mrs. Lakeman smiled and said nothing. "You got my telegram," he inquired--"telling you we were engaged?" Lena had spoken of it two or three times yesterday, but he could hardly believe that so important a communication had been received in the cavalier fashion in which it was apparently treated. "Of course." "I can't think what your telegram meant," he said. "Lena isn't dangerously ill, or anything like it." Then Mrs. Lakeman tried to pump up a little dramatic energy. "Tom Carringford," she said, "do you know that I am the best friend you ever had?" "I know that you have been awfully good to me." "Shall I tell you why I telegraphed as I did?" "I wish you would, for I can't make it out." "Dawson Farley told me about Margaret Vincent--I have heard a great deal about Margaret Vincent lately, from a good many sources. Tom," she went on, in a suddenly tragic voice, "I loved Gerald Vincent; I have never really cared for anybody else, but this girl is different; she has been brought up by a common mother." "She is not at all common," he answered, indignantly. "I saw her--" "And a half-sister who, twenty years ago, would have been in respectable service instead of wasting her time at home, for the mother looks after the farm herself. Margaret belongs to her mother's people and not to her father's; you can hear that in her provincial accent"--the accent, of course, was invented on the spur of the moment--"and she was quite content to marry her Guildford grocer, or whatever he is, until she became stage-struck."