"I would go to-morrow, uncle," Yorke said; "but it would look like running away. I will stay at home for another week, and then I will go. I don't mind whether aunt is displeased with me or not. I am conscious of having done no wrong, and if she shows me that I am no longer welcome I shall tell her quietly that she will only have to put up with me for another week. It may be unpleasant, but I am not going to disappear as if I were a culprit, and afraid of Dirck Jansen."
"All right, Yorke! I can quite understand your feelings. I am heartily sorry, but I feel that you could not hope to be comfortable if you stayed here. I am sorry now that I asked you out here, but at the time I did not foresee that this ill-feeling on the part of the Dutch would become so deep and bitter. Had I done so, I would not have asked you, knowing that my wife is as prejudiced as her neighbours."
"You need not be sorry, uncle, that you invited me here. I have had a pleasant time and I have learned a great deal. If I had not been out here I should be slaving at Greek and mathematics at home, whereas now, if war breaks out, which seems almost certain, I shall have a most exciting time of it, and when it is over I may see some way of making a start for myself."
Mrs. Allnutt did not appear at supper.
"Will you tell her, uncle," Yorke said, after talking the matter over for some time, "that I shall leave this day week, and that if my presence is obnoxious to her I will take my meals apart. I am awfully sorry that my presence here should inconvenience her, but I really cannot go away as if I had been sent off in disgrace, or were afraid to meet Dirck Jansen again."
"Quite right, lad! I hope that your aunt will be in a better state of mind to-morrow morning; but when once she takes a thing into her head she is, between ourselves, as obstinate as a mule. Well, whatever she may think of this quarrel, angry as she may be at it, she cannot but feel, after what Van Laun said, that Dirck brought it upon himself. She is a fair-minded woman when she is cool, and I have no doubt, before you go, she will be really sorry; for although I acknowledge that her affections are very strongly devoted to Dirck, she has certainly during the time you have been here taken to you a good deal, and she has several times said it was wonderful how little trouble you were in the house."
"She has always been very kind, and I am really very sorry that, however innocently, I have incurred her displeasure. You know that this is so, uncle, and if there were any place near which I could go to without seeming to run away, I would leave at once rather than stop here where I am not welcome."
"Don't trouble about it, Yorke. I invited you here, and I ask you to stay. If my wife, in the teeth of what her own friends tell her, chooses to consider you to have been in the wrong, I can't help it, and no one else can. I shall not attempt to argue the matter with her. I know that presently she will see that she has acted very unfairly towards you, and I hope that she will even in time recognize that Dirck Jansen is by no means what she thinks him. It matters not to me whom she leaves the farm to, but I should not like to see it go to him."
"But would you not have it, uncle?"
"No. It was a curious arrangement. The old man left his farm to her, and her children after her if she should have any; if not, she had the power of leaving it at her death to any of the descendants of his married sisters whom she might choose. But it was at her death to be valued, and should it under my management have increased in value, the increase was to be estimated by a firm of Dutch valuers whom he named, in Cape Town, and I was to receive either in cash, or as a mortgage upon the farm, the sum which they fixed as the increase in its value. The old man saw that I had good ideas and that I should improve the place, and he said to me a short time before his death, 'I should not like myself to see all these changes that you tell me you wish to make, but I have no doubt that they will increase its value. It is fair that, if my daughter dies before you, you should have the benefit of the work that you have done, so I have had the farm valued, and it will be valued again by the same firm if she dies before you, and you will receive the difference. Does that seem to you to be fair?'