"She will be able to turn me off," said Roger. "She will get in another agent--put in her brother, I should think. I always disliked her, and she knew it. Now she will be able to pay off old scores." Roger looked out of the window, and his patient, stubborn face quivered ever so slightly. It would have been a comfort to Janey to think that she should one day inherit Noyes, if there had been any question of his sharing it with her. But the long-cherished hope that they might some day share a home together had died. It had died hard, it had taken a grievous time to die, but it was dead at last. And Janey had buried it, delved a deep grave for it in the live rock of her heart. "I don't see how I am ever to marry now," he said hoarsely. "I can't count on the two hundred a year from the agency and this cottage. Even that may go to-morrow. It wasn't much. It wasn't enough to set up house on, but even _that_ is as good as gone." "I have thought lately that you had it in your mind to marry." A small tear suddenly jumped out of Roger's eye, and got held up in his rough cheek. "I want to marry Annette," he said. "Yes, my dear, I guessed it." "Dreadfully. You don't know, Janey. Dreadfully." "I know, my poor boy," she said,--"I know all about it." And she came and stood by him and patted his hand. For a moment Roger sobbed violently and silently against her shoulder. Then he drew himself away, and rummaged for his pocket-handkerchief. "You are a brick, Janey," he said gruffly. CHAPTER XXXV "The thing on the blind side of the heart, On the wrong side of the door; The green plant groweth, menacing Almighty lovers in the spring; There is always a forgotten thing, And love is not secure." G. K. CHESTERTON. The news of Harry's marriage, which was convulsing Riff, had actually failed to reach Red Riff Farm by tea-time. The Miss Blinketts, on the contrary, less aristocratically remote than the Miss Nevills, had heard it at midday, when the Dower House gardener went past The Hermitage to his dinner. And they were aware by two o'clock that Janey had had a consultation with Roger in his office, and that the bride had left Riff by the midday express from Riebenbridge. It was the general opinion in Riff that "she'd repent every hair of her head for enticing Mr. Harry." In total ignorance of this stupendous event, Aunt Harriet was discussing the probable condition of the soul after death over her afternoon tea, in spite of several attempts on the part of Annette to change the subject.