"No; I will have nothing that looks like being ashamed. You ought not to have come, but you need not run away." Then they walked back to the house together and found Miss Cassewary on the terrace. "We have been to the lake," said Mabel, "and have been talking of old days. I have but one ambition now in the world." Of course Miss Cassewary asked what the remaining ambition was. "To get money enough to purchase this place from the ruins of the Grex property. If I could own the house and the lake, and the paddocks about, and had enough income to keep one servant and bread for us to eat—of course including you, Miss Cass—"
"Thank'ee, my dear; but I am not sure I should like it."
"Yes; you would. Frank would come and see us perhaps once a year. I don't suppose anybody else cares about the place, but to me it is the dearest spot in the world." So she went on in almost high spirits, though alluding to the general decadence of the Grex family, till Tregear took his leave.
"I wish he had not come," said Miss Cassewary when he was gone.
"Why should you wish that? There is not so much here to amuse me that you should begrudge me a stray visitor."
"I don't think that I grudge you anything in the way of pleasure, my dear; but still he should not have come. My Lord, if he knew it, would be angry."
"Then let him be angry. Papa does not do so much for me that I am bound to think of him at every turn."
"But I am,—or rather I am bound to think of myself, if I take his bread."
"Bread!"
"Well;—I do take his bread, and I take it on the understanding that I will be to you what a mother might be,—or an aunt."