“He’s a good fellow, Marjorie. Make allowances for him. He’ll need ’em, he’s no angel; but he means well, and he’s a good clean, honest man, is Tom Arundel, and you’ll be a happy girl when you are his wife; please God!” he added, and put his hand on her shoulder, and did not notice that she was weeping silently. He drove her back to Cornbridge in the moonlight, and left her at the gates of the Manor House. “Little girl,” he said, “in this life there’s a good deal of give and take. Don’t expect too much, and don’t be hurt if you don’t get everything that you ask for. Remember this—I—I cared for you very much.” “Cared!” she thought. “Cared?” He spoke in the past—Cared!” “But I gave you up because you loved another man; you loved a man more worthy than I am. I wouldn’t have stood aside if I had felt that the other man was not good enough, that he was a waster and would not make you happy; but I knew Tom better than that. Stick to him, don’t ask for too much. Believe always that he loves you, and that he is built of the stuff that keeps straight and true, and so, God bless you, dear!” He kissed her frankly as a brother might, and sat there watching her up the drive to the house. He did not guess that when she gained the house she slipped in by a garden door and ran up to her own room to indulge in that relief that a woman may ever find when the grief is not too black and too bitter, the relief of tears. “I am worried about her,” Hugh thought to himself; but “her” to him meant Joan, not Marjorie. When he said, “I am worried about her,” he meant that he was worried about Joan. If he said, “She would have liked this,” “She” would mean Joan. “I am worried about her and that blackguard Slotman,” he thought. “There is something about that man—snake—toad—something uncanny. She’s there; she has money and he’s out for money. If I can sit here and tell myself that I have scared Slotman from offending and annoying her again, I am an idiot. When there’s money to be gained, a man like Slotman will want a lot of scaring off it.” A week had passed since Marjorie’s visit. Hugh sent for his housekeeper, Mrs. Morrisey. “Mrs. Morrisey, I am going to London.” “Oh, Mr. Alston, when the men are—” “The men are all right. I have to go to London on business.” “Very queer and restless he’s been,” Mrs. Morrisey thought. “I never known him like it before. When I thought he was in love with that pretty little Miss Linden and wanting to marry her, he was not a bit like he is now. He kept cheerful and smiling, and now; forever on the move. No sooner does he get here than back to London he wants to go.” “Shall you be away for long, sir?” “I don’t know,” said Hugh. “Perhaps; perhaps not, I can’t say.” “I see. Very good, sir. I’ll see to things, of course. And about letters, perhaps you won’t want them forwarded as you didn’t last time, and—” “I shall want every letter forwarded, the very hour it arrives,” said Hugh quickly.