Hester looked at him with a little astonishment, and without the slightest affectation of hauteur, at the sudden question, and replied, "Always, Mr. Thacker. I was compelled, as you know--who better?--to get up early to go to my pupils; and since I have lost the necessity I have not discontinued the practice."
"That's right; it's a good habit; though, I suppose, one not much indulged in here. However, that's so much the better. I want a quiet half-hour's chat with you. Could you be in the grounds at eight to-morrow morning?"
A properly-regulated young lady would have blushed and exclaimed at this proposition; a flirt would have manipulated her fan, and nodded assent behind it. Hester Gould was neither, and did neither. She simply looked Mr. Thacker straight in the face, and said "Yes."
"All right," said Mr. Thacker. "There's a sun-dial, or something of the kind, I think I noticed, at the end of the house which fronts the bay-window of this room. If you could meet me there at eight, we could stroll on and have our talk without fear of interruption."
To which Hester Gould merely replied: "I know it; I will be there."
Daniel Thacker prided himself on his punctuality; but when, attired in an unmistakably new suit of morning-dress, he arrived at the trysting-place the next morning, he found Miss Gould there before him. After the ordinary salutations they turned their backs on the house, and walked on side by side. Then Mr. Thacker told her that since she had been pleased to honour him with her confidence, and to employ him as her man of business, he had been incessantly turning in his mind a scheme for employing some of the large sums of ready-money which were lying at her command; and that after great cogitation, and while he was even thoroughly undecided what investment to recommend to her, by the merest chance an opportunity had offered which ought not to be missed, and which, unless she was warped by silly sentimentality, she ought certainly to profit by.
Miss Gould listened attentively, and then said: "Unless I am warped by silly sentimentality? I don't think that would ever stand in my way, Mr. Thacker. Of what nature is the investment you propose?"
"A mortgage on an estate, worth at least a third more than the money required to be raised."
"There seems very little sentimentality in that. So far as my small experience of business matters goes, I cannot conceive any thing more safe and prosaic. What can you mean, Mr. Thacker? Is it a case of widow and orphan, or of family estate held since the Conquest passing into the hands of a parvenu? Believe me, I'm adamant on both those points. If husband and father squanders and dissipates, widow and orphan must pay the penalty; if Hugo de Fitzurse is sold up, why should not Jones of Manchester buy Bruin Castle, moat, portcullis, battlements, and all?"
Such a sentiment as this delighted Daniel Thacker amazingly. He looked at his companion with intense admiration, as he said, "Of course; why not? But it's scarcely that sort of sentimentality that I alluded to. Suppose the estate in question, on the mortgage of which the money was to be lent, had belonged to a friend--one whom you had--liked very much; what then?"