“Then just content yourself with satisfying your young master, sir, and mind, that girl’s not for you, so let’s have no more of it. Now go.”
“But look here,” said Humphrey. “I told you to go,” said Mrs Lloyd, pointing. “Your place is at the keeper’s lodge. Go and stay there, and don’t go thinking you can influence Master Dick—Mr Trevor—to keep you, because even if you could, the girl should go away, and you should see her no more. Now go.”
“Poor little lassie,” muttered Humphrey, as, in obedience to Mrs Lloyd’s pointing finger, he slowly left the room, walked heavily along the passage, and out into the dark evening, to pass round the house, and cross the lawn, where he could see through the open windows into the dining-room.
“Nice for me,” he muttered. “Forbidden to go near her—girl in my own station. What does the old woman mean?”
He stood gazing in at the merry, laughing party of young, well-dressed men.
“Nice to be you,” he thought; “plenty of money to spend; people to do all you tell them to; nobody to thwart you. But I wonder what the old lady means.”
He laughed to himself directly after, in a low, bitter fashion.
“No, not so bad as that,” he said, half aloud. “She’s ambitious, and scheming, but that would be going too far.”