Sir Hervey rose. "Then let be," he said. And he wandered across the room, taking up things and setting them down again as if he did not think it quite polite to leave her, yet had nothing more to say. Sophia watched him with growing soreness. Was it fancy, or was it the fact that she had never seen him so cold, so indifferent, so little concerned for her, so well satisfied with himself as now? A change, so subtle she could not define it, had come over him. Or was it that a change had come over her? She wondered, and at length plunged desperately into speech. "Is it true," she asked, "that the people who treated us so ill yesterday are coming to see you to-day?" "Those of them who are householders are coming," he answered soberly. "At four o'clock. But I do not wish you to see them." "You will not be--too severe with them?" "I shall not be more severe, I hope, than the occasion requires," he answered. But his tone was hard, and she felt that what she had heard was true. "Will you grant me a favour?" she blurted out, her voice trembling a little. "I would like to grant you many," he answered, smiling at her. "It's only that you will not send them away," she said. "Send them away?" "I mean, send them off their farms," she explained hurriedly. "I was told--Tom told me that you were going to do so; and that some had held the land for generations, and would be heartbroken as well as ruined." He did not answer at once, and his silence confirmed her in her fears. "I don't say that they have not deserved to be punished," she urged. "But--but I should not like my coming here to be remembered by this. And it seems out of proportion to the crime, since they did me no harm." "Whatever they intended?" "Yes." He looked at her gravely. "What led you to think," he said, "that I had it in my mind to punish them in that way?" "Well, Tom told me," she explained in growing confusion, "that you might do it to--that you might think it would please me. He said that any one in your place--I mean----" "Any one newly married?" Sophia's face flamed. "I suppose so," she murmured"--would do it." "To please his bride? And you agreed with him, Sophia? You thought it was probable?" "I thought it was possible," she said.