“That is not what I mean,” said Margaret. But her strength seemed suddenly to fail her, and she left him abruptly. Ann Johnson watched her as she hastened to her own room, and she thought she heard a sob as the door closed. She wondered what it meant. She liked the young Squire of Darentdale, and thought him almost good enough for Margaret; but there was no knowing, and she resolved to fortify her against him in case he was not all he seemed; she therefore took an opportunity to relate one of her stories. “I shouldn’t like to travel. I should be afraid it would hurt my morals. I knowed a man who lived abroad, and a nicer man before he went there couldn’t be, nor a kinder. I seen him the day afore he went, and I seen him the day after he come back. He were altered then, for he had a scar on his face. I says to him, ‘How come them beauty spots on you?’ and he says, ‘Oh, it were a bird that scratted me with her sharp tallions’; but whether it were the truth I don’t know. He didn’t always tell the truth; for he pretended to fall in love with a lady as I knows, and he proposed to her, and then he set to work to steal her heart away. And he stole it, too; and they was going to be married—it was almost as close as Miss Wythburn’s wedding—and then a woman come as proved as she were his lawful wedded wife. And all the while he had been that proper—not a bit trivial, nor nothing of that, but pious enough to deceive a saint. My opinion is as few men can stand them foreign parts; so you be careful, dearie.” Ann Johnson’s stories always made Margaret laugh, and they did now, though she was sadly wondering where John was, and what he was thinking of her. CHAPTER XIV. DEFEAT OR VICTORY?