“‘Do?’ I says to him; ‘do you think I’ve forgotten that you shot me down out there in the fir wood that night?’
“‘It was an accident,’ he says.
“‘It was no accident,’ I says. ‘There was light enough for me to see you take aim at me; and then, when I was lying half dead there in my bed, you took advantage of it to lead my child away. It’s no use for you to pretend you didn’t know. She told you fast enough that I was lying there, and that made it safe.’
“‘Look here, sir,’ I says at last, ‘there shall be no more shilly-shally between you and me. As I say, I’ll let bygones be bygones, if you’ll do the right thing. If you don’t—well, p’r’aps it won’t be this year, nor next year. My chance will come some day, and then—’”
There was a pause, and Oldroyd marked the strange glare in the keeper’s eyes as he drew in his breath with a loud hiss.
“Yes, doctor,” he said, after looking round him for a few moments, as if in search of the object he named, “he’d have been like so much varmin to me, and if he hadn’t married my poor lass, I should have shot him as I would a stoat.”
Time ran on after its fashion, but few changes took place at Brackley. Sir John Day used to thank Oldroyd for introducing to him the best keeper who ever stepped, for Hayle was the higher in favour from his being a man who was a capital judge of stock, and one who could keep a good eye upon the farm when the squire went away year by year for a long stay abroad. When at home, Glynne was her uncle’s constant companion in his botanical walks, and these generally ended in her being left at the cottage where Mrs Alleyne, widowed of son as well as husband, took up her residence in full view of the gloomy old Firs, lately taken by a famous astronomer, who vastly altered the former occupant’s position by his eagerness to acquire Moray Alleyne’s costly instruments which had been carefully cared for by his mother’s hands.
At The Warren, Mrs Rolph, grown careworn and grey, resided still with her niece for companion, her son never having been there since Marjorie was left to her despair. The servants were not above talking, and rumours reached Brackley Hall that Mrs Rolph had cursed her son, and was never going to see him again, that it was a place no servant could stop in, for the old lady’s temper was awful, and Miss Marjorie as mad as a March hare; while even Oldroyd hinted to his wife, after being called in, that Miss Emlin was rather flighty and strange.
“They never go out anywhere,” he said; “and from what I saw, I should say they are always either quarrelling or making it up. Seem fond of one another though, all the same.”
“But what do you mean by flighty and strange?” said Lucy. “You don’t mean ready to flirt with men?”