I may confess to you, my dears, that Mr. Gilbert Stair's parting tirade did not move me greatly, since I would set down everything he had said to the one account—the miser's.
Yet when I came to second thoughts upon it, this account balanced but indifferently. Why should he be so eager to make me think small of Margery's love for Richard Jennifer? And why, misliking me, as I made sure he did, should he be so hot to make the shadow marriage a thing of substance? From the miser-father's point of view, Richard, with his goodly heritage of Jennifer House, was a match to be angled for; yet here was the man in whose eye house and lands loomed largest flying into rage because I sought to put his daughter in the way of marrying them.
I was pondering thoughtfully on this, giving the pinching old man credit for any and every motive save that which he had so cursingly avowed, to wit, the furthering of his daughter's happiness, when there came a tap at the door and Mistress Margery entered.
"Dear heart! Do they limit you to a single candle when my back is turned?" she said, in mock pity; and saying it, went to light the candles in the mantel sconces.
The sight of her standing a-tiptoe to touch off the candles on the chimney breast set the old lovespell at work to make my heart beat faster. What if there were a hint of truth in Gilbert Stair's wrathful protest? What if, after all, she cared less for Richard and more for me?
Do not, I pray you, my dears, think too hardly of the man who thus lays bare the secret thoughts of his heart for you. 'Twas but a passing gust of the tempest of disloyalty, and I was not swept wholly from my moorings. Nay, when she came to sit on the hassock at my feet, as she used to do in that other halcyon-time of convalescence, I was myself again and could look upon her sweet face with eyes that saw beyond her to the camp or battle-field where my dear lad was spending himself.
For a time we sat in silence, and 'twas she who spoke first.
"My father has been with you," she said. "I hope you did not quarrel with him."
"No," I denied, salving my conscience with the remembering that it takes two to make a quarrel; and I had done none of the cursing. "He came to give me this," I added, handing her the will.
She opened the folded parchment, reading a line of it here and there softly to herself.