"Yes, he'd come to the gate at night and she'd meet him. Her people did not want her to marry him and so they had to meet in secret." "That was a long time ago." "Before you were born," said Phyl. He looked at her. "Aunt is always saying how like you are to her," said he, "but she's mad on family likenesses, and I never thought of it. It may be a want in me but I've never taken much interest in dead relatives; but somehow, finding this little place tucked away here gives one a jog. It's like finding a nest in a tree. How long have you known of it?" "Oh, some time. I found a bundle of her old letters--" she paused. Richard Pinckney had taken his place on the little seat, just as one sits down in an armchair to see if it is comfortable, and was leaning back amidst the bush branches. "This is all right," said he, "sit down, there's lots of room--you found her letter, tell us all about it." Phyl sat down and told the little story. It seemed to interest him. "The Pinckneys lost money," said he, "and that's why the old Mascarene birds were set against her marrying him, I suppose. Makes one wild that sort of thing. What right have people to interfere?" "Money seems everything in this world," said Phyl. "It's not--it seems to be, but it's not. Money can't buy happiness after one is grown up. You remember I told you that over in Ireland; when candy and fishing rods mean happiness money is all right--after that money is useful enough, but it's the making of it and not the spending it that counts,--that and a lot of things that have nothing to do with money. If the Mascarenes hadn't been fools they'd have seen that a poor man with kick in him--and the Pinckneys always had that--was as good as a rich man, and those two might have got married." "No," said Phyl, "they never could have got married, he had to die. He was killed, you know, at the beginning of the war." "You're a fatalist." "Well, things happen." "Yes, but you can stop them happening very often." "How?" "Just by willing it." "Yes," said Phyl meditatively, "but how are you to use your will against what comes unexpectedly. Now that telegram yesterday morning took me to Grangersons with Miss Pinckney. Suppose--suppose I had broken my leg or, say, fallen into a well there and got drowned--that would have been Fate." "No," said Pinckney, "carelessness, the telegram would not have drowned you, but your carelessness in going too close to the well." "Suppose," said Phyl, "instead of that, Mr. Silas Grangerson had shot me by accident with a gun--the telegram would have brought me to that without any carelessness of mine." "No, it couldn't," said Pinckney lightly, "it would still have been your own fault for going near such a hare-brained scamp. Oh, I'm only joking, what I really mean is that nine times out of ten the thing people call Fate is nothing more than want of foresight." "And the tenth time it is Fate," said Phyl rising. CHAPTER V