'Yes. I thought you would have come to see me before this, Walter,' said Gladys quietly. 'You need not have thought so. I said I wouldn't come, that nothing would induce me to come,' he answered shortly. 'We are going away into Ayrshire, so I thought I must come to say good-bye,' Gladys said then. 'To your estate?' 'No; to Troon, where the sea is.' 'Oh, and will you stay long?' 'Perhaps all the summer. How are you getting on here all alone, Walter? You must tell me that.' 'Oh, well enough.' 'Does Mrs. Macintyre come to work for you?' 'Yes, morning and night she looks in. I'm going to make this thing pay.' He looked as if he meant it. His square jaw was firmly set, his whole look that of a man determined to succeed. 'I hope you will, Walter. I feel sure of it,' she said brightly. 'It'll be awful drudgery for a while,' he continued, almost in the confidential tones of yore. 'To have so much money, your uncle had the poorest way of doing business. He had the customers all under his thumb, and made them fetch and carry what they wanted themselves; in that way he saved a man's wages. I'm not giving anything on credit, and after they've once freed themselves, and can pay cash for what they get, they'll want it delivered to them, and quite right. Then I'll get a man and a horse and cart, and when I once get that, the thing will grow like a mushroom.' 'How clever you are to think of all that!' said Gladys admiringly. 'I am quite sure you will succeed.' 'I mean to,' he said soberly, but with a quiet determination which convinced Gladys how much in earnest he was. 'But don't let success make you hard, Walter,' she said gently. 'Remember how we used to plan what we should do for the poor if we were rich.' 'Your opportunity is here, then,' he said sharply; 'mine is only to come.' The tone, more than the words, wounded her afresh. Oh, this was not the Walter of old! She rose from the old box a trifle wearily, and looked round her with slightly saddened air. 'Have you heard anything of your sister?' she asked him. 'No, nothing.' 'She has never written to any one?' 'No. I think she has gone to London to join a theatre. The girl who was her chum thinks so too.' 'Are your father and mother well?' 'As well as they deserve to be. They wanted to come here and live. Had they been decent and respectable, it wouldn't have been a bad arrangement. As they are, I simply wouldn't have it; I'd _never_ get on. Of course they cast my pride in my teeth, but God knows I have little enough to be proud of.' His mood cast its dark spell over the girl's sensitive heart, and she turned to go. 'It is all so different,' she said in a low voice, 'but the difference is not in me. Shall we never meet now, Walter?'