‘We are folk that have got to get their living,’ he said, ‘and such ones mustn’t tell tales about their betters,—Lord forgive the mockery of the word!—but there’s something to be made of it. She’s a nice maid; so, Harriet, do you take the first chance you get for honouring her, before others know what has happened. Since this is done so privately it will be kept private for some time—till after his death, no question;—when I expect she’ll take this house for herself; and blaze out as a widow-lady ten thousand pound strong. You being a widow, she may make you her company-keeper; and so you’ll have a home by a little contriving.’ While this conversation progressed at the gardener’s Margery was on her way out of the Baron’s house. She was, indeed, married. But, as we know, she was not married to the Baron. The ceremony over she seemed but little discomposed, and expressed a wish to return alone as she had come. To this, of course, no objection could be offered under the terms of the agreement, and wishing Jim a frigid good-bye, and the Baron a very quiet farewell, she went out by the door which had admitted her. Once safe and alone in the darkness of the park she burst into tears, which dropped upon the grass as she passed along. In the Baron’s room she had seemed scared and helpless; now her reason and emotions returned. The further she got away from the glamour of that room, and the influence of its occupant, the more she became of opinion that she had acted foolishly. She had disobediently left her father’s house, to obey him here. She had pleased everybody but herself. However, thinking was now too late. How she got into her grandmother’s house she hardly knew; but without a supper, and without confronting either her relative or Edy, she went to bed. CHAPTER XIII. On going out into the garden next morning, with a strange sense of being another person than herself, she beheld Jim leaning mutely over the gate. He nodded. ‘Good morning, Margery,’ he said civilly. ‘Good morning,’ said Margery in the same tone. ‘I beg your pardon,’ he continued. ‘But which way was you going this morning?’ ‘I am not going anywhere just now, thank you. But I shall go to my father’s by-and-by with Edy.’ She went on with a sigh, ‘I have done what he has all along wished, that is, married you; and there’s no longer reason for enmity atween him and me.’ ‘Trew—trew. Well, as I am going the same way, I can give you a lift in the trap, for the distance is long.’ ‘No thank you—I am used to walking,’ she said. They remained in silence, the gate between them, till Jim’s convictions would apparently allow him to hold his peace no longer. ‘This is a bad job!’ he murmured. ‘It is,’ she said, as one whose thoughts have only too readily been identified. ‘How I came to agree to it is more than I can tell!’ And tears began rolling down her cheeks.