"O mistress of many wiles, I understand! But is Lacey to share the impression?"
"I should like him to—up to the last possible minute. And then—the fairy godmother! It's all on the old-fashioned lines—but I like it." Her voice dropped. "The old, mischievous, none-too-respectable fairy godmother, Austin!"
"Suppose the fairy godmother seemed not so very old herself—that mischief proved attractive—that——?"
"Impossible—with her here! Oh, you really think so, only you're always so polite. But anything short of—of that—would be quite within the four corners of the scheme." She laughed at me, at her schemes, at herself; yet about the two last she was in deadly earnest. So she grew grave again in a moment. "He'd have to get over so much to make that seem even possible."
Well, that was true enough. Fillingford's son—the accomplice of my evening expedition to Hatcham Ford! There was something to get over, certainly. But there was something to get over in the other plan, too.
"Still, I don't mind its seeming—just possible," said Jenny. She looked at me with an air of wondering how I should take what she was going to say. "It might just be made to seem—a danger!"
"This is walking on a razor's edge, isn't it?"
"Yes—it is rather. Mr. Dormer's got to help a little. I don't like him, Austin."
"No more do I—since you mention it. And you'd have no pity for him either?"
"I shall get his bit of land, but he won't get all mine," said Jenny, serenely pitiless. "He plays his game—I'll play mine. We neither of us stake our hearts, I think. You can't stake what you've never had—or what you've lost." She stood silent for a minute, looking down to where the smoke of busy Catsford rose in a blue mist between us and the horizon. "He's just ridiculous, but he serves my turn. No need to talk any more about him!"