Janey turned the letter over. "It's a bill." The boys' faces fell. "How dull," said Leonard, "and how immoral, Janet!--another of those ten-guinea hats, I suppose." "And you promised us solemnly," said Nigel, "not to buy any more." "It's dreadful of me," said Janet. The boys glanced at her in surprise--for she looked as if she meant it. CHAPTER IV FATE'S AFTERTHOUGHT Janet did not open her bill till her brothers had gone out to the farm. Then she tore the envelope. The bill ran-- "JANEY SWEET, "Curse it!--I have to go to Brighton on Saturday. It's for my father, so I daren't object, in case he should ask too many questions. But I must see you, dear one--it's nearly a month since we met, and I'm dying for the sight of you and the touch of you. Can't you come to-day? I'm sure you can get away for an hour or two--your brothers must not take you from me. I'll be waiting in Furnace Wood, in the old place down by the hedge, at five. Come to me, Janey sweet. I dreamed of you last night--dreamed of you with your hands full of flowers. "Your lover, "QUENTIN." Janey stuffed the letter into her pocket. "It's dreadful of me," she repeated, in the same tone as she had said it to the boys. Those poor boys! How innocently and trustfully they had swallowed her lie--it was like deceiving children. But she could not tell them--though Nigel's strange new reserve made her long all the more to be frank and without secret--they would be furious if they knew her story, now the story of three years. Once she had tried hinting it to Len, but though he had not half understood her, he had made his feelings about Quentin Lowe pretty plain, and Janet had been only too glad to change the subject before the danger line was passed. Nigel would, of course, side with Leonard. They would look upon her love as treachery, for though there was no outward breach between the Furlongers and the Lowes, the former had always suspected the latter of sharp dealing over the Kent land--old Lowe would never have offered that absurd price if he had not known that the Furlongers were absolutely obliged to sell. Old Lowe was a retired clergyman who had come with his son to Redpale Farm, just over the Kentish border. From the first he had cast a longing eye on the Furlonger acres, which touched his on the Surrey side. A row of cottages in obvious disrepair and insanitation had given his longing the necessary smack of righteousness. At that time Nigel was in prison on remand, and the news soon trickled through the neighbourhood that his brother and sister were in desperate money difficulties, and would have to sell most of their land. Lowe at once came forward with what he considered a fair offer, which the Furlongers, as no one else seemed inclined to bid, were bound to accept. The negotiations had been carried on chiefly through a solicitor, but young Lowe had paid two or three visits to Sparrow Hall.