"You've no right to impute any such immoral doctrine to me."
"By now, I think I have," she laughed. "I wonder how soon Lady Sarah will tell Margaret all about me!"
"I don't think she will—and, if she did, you'd never know it."
Jenny smiled. "Yes, I should. Some day—for no apparent reason—Margaret would come and kiss me extraordinarily often." She gave a shake of her head. "I'd rather it didn't happen, though."
It is not to be supposed that, during her Fillingford campaign, Jenny had neglected her Institute. No day had passed without talk or correspondence about it, and she had been in constant consultation with Bindlecombe, Chairman of the Committee of the Corporation in whose charge the scheme was. Fruits of the activity had now appeared. The gardens of Hatcham Ford had been laid waste. (O Bindlecombe, what of your deceitful promises to spare them?) Only the shrubberies in front (where Lacey had once hidden) remained of the old pleasure grounds. Everywhere else were excavations, or lines that marked foundations to be laid; already in some spots actual buildings poked their noses out of the earth, their raw red brick shamed by the mellow beauty of the old house which still stood and was to stand as the center of the architectural scheme. Like all things with which Jenny had to do, the plan had grown larger and larger as it progressed, took more ground, embraced more projects, swallowed more money. It spread across the road, absorbed the garden of Ivydene, and happily involved the destruction of that odious villa of unpleasant memories. It made inroads on Cartmell's money-bags till—what with it, and Margaret's great endowment, to say nothing of Dormer's fields—rich Miss Driver was for two or three months positively hard up for ready money! But the result was to be magnificent; with every fresh brick and every additional sovereign, Catsford grew more loyal, and the prospect of catching that prince more promising. "And I'm going to get Mr. Bindlecombe made Mayor again next year, and Amyas must pull all the wires in London town to get him a knighthood. With Margaret and Amyas married, the Institute opened, and Mr. Bindlecombe Sir John, I think I may sing Nunc Dimittis, Austin!"
"We might perhaps look forward to a short period of peace," I admitted cautiously.
"Come down and look at the old place once more, before it's changed quite out of recognition. Just you and I together!"
We went down together one evening in the dusk. Architects and surveyors, clerks, masons, and laborers had all gone home to their rest. The place was quiet for the night, though the rents in the ground and the rising walls spoke loud of the toils of the day. The old house stood unchanged in the middle of it all; unchanged, too, was the path down which Jenny had passed after she begged the loan of Lord Fillingford's carriage. She took a key from her purse and opened the door of the house. "Let's go in for a minute."
She led me into the room where once I had waited for her—where, another time, I had found her holding Powers's head, where Fillingford had come upon us in the very instant when I had hailed safety as in sight. The room was just as Octon had left it—his heavy dining table, his ugly dining chairs, the two old leather ones on each side of the fireplace, his spears and knives on the wall. And there, too, on the mantelpiece, was the picture of the beautiful child which I had marked as missing when I reached the house that night.
"You've been here before," I said to Jenny, pointing at the picture.