“I tell you, sir, you don’t know what you are talking about!”
Thus the gentlemen jangled on; but their bickering had become an unimportant incident to Tregenna.
He made rather a nice picture himself in his smart uniform, with his well-powdered wig surmounting a handsome, clean-cut face, his gray hawks’ eyes, now filled with the light of the young and ardent, his mouth softened by the suspicion of a smile. He held his sword with one hand, that its clanking should not startle her; and his smart three-cornered hat was cocked jauntily under his arm.
Suddenly she turned; and by this time he was half inside the kitchen door. Joan uttered a little cry; and, as if taking it for an invitation, Tregenna hopped right in and came up to her.
“Sir,” said she, “what business have you with me?”
But she was not angry; she crossed her hands, one of which held a rolling-pin, demurely in front of her, and looked down in a stately fashion, not at all disturbed at being discovered in the act of making a pudding, for those were domestic days.
“Much the same business, Miss Joan, that the brigadier has with your father,” said Tregenna. “There is no pretense, as you know, betwixt you and me. We are foes avowed. I ask you no questions about your visit to the farm this morning, because I know what took you thither. Neither will you need to ask why I am going again to Rede Hall, to inquire into this mystery concerning the Gray Barn.”
“You are going again?” said Joan, with interest, in which he thought he detected fear also.
“Yes. And I make no secret of saying I am not going to be fooled by the innocent appearance of the place. I am going again and again, until I have cleared them all out, like wasps out of a hole. Mistress Ann Price and her confederates must find a fresh field for their practises; I swear they shall not continue to carry them on in that part of the coast that is under my vigilance.”
“And you do not fear to tell me this, believing, as you do, that I am in league with them myself?”