Down the road came a cart. It lumbered along slowly, the carter trudging at the horse’s head. Slotman looked at the slow-coming figure and cursed under his breath. “When shall I hear?” “I shall think it over, decide how I shall act, whether I shall pay you this money or not,” she said. “In a few days, this day week, not before.” She turned away. “And—and if I go to Buddesby and get talking?” “Then of course I pay you nothing!” she said calmly. That was true. Slotman gritted his teeth. Two minutes later the carter trudging on his way passed a solitary man smoking by a gate, and far down the road a woman walked quickly towards Starden. CHAPTER XXXIV “FOR HER SAKE” Into Hugh Alston’s life had come two women, women he had loved, both now engaged to be married to other men, and Hugh Alston was a sorely worried and perplexed man about both of them. “I’ll go to Cornbridge to-morrow,” said Hugh, and he went. “Where,” asked Lady Linden, “the dickens have you been?” “In the country!” “Isn’t your own country good enough for you?” She looked at him shrewdly. She saw the worry in his face; it was too open and too honest to make concealment of his feelings possible. Marjorie welcomed him with tearful gladness in her eyes. She said nothing, she held his hand tightly. Not till afterwards did she thank him for coming. “I felt you would,” she said. “I knew you would!” And so he was glad he came. And was she? She wondered, better a thousand times for her and her happiness if she never saw him again. So long as she lived she would not forget those four words that had entered like a sword into her heart and had slain for ever the last hope of happiness for her—“Better than my life!” It was odd how women remembered Hugh Alston’s words. How even on this very day another woman was remembering, and was fighting a fight, pride and obstinacy opposed to fear and loneliness and weariness of soul. Hugh noticed a change in Tom. “Hello, Alston,” said Tom, and gripped him by the hand; but it was a weary and dispirited voice and grip, unlike those of Tom Arundel of yore. They walked about Lady Linden’s model farm together, Tom acting as showman with no little pride, and yet behind even the enthusiasm there was a weariness that Hugh detected. “And the wedding, Tom?” Hugh asked him presently. “When is it to be?” Tom looked up. “I don’t know, Alston, sometimes I think never. Alston, you—you’ve seen her. You remember her as she was, the sweetest, dearest girl in the world, her eyes and her heart filled with sunshine, and now...” The lad’s voice trailed off miserably.