"She told the Doctor"—the girls would never call the Doctor "Father"—"that if Mr. Jones had a million a minute and was the last man left on earth after a second flood, she would rather spend her life in the garden eating worms than marry him!"
"Marjorie's plenty of pluck," I answered, "and is obviously of romantic temperament. Anyone else in the wind?"
"Anyone else?" she said, with a bitter note in her voice, "whom do we ever see? We live as prisoners here, as you very well know, Johnny, and if it were not for you I should long ago have jumped into Thirty Main Creek and ended it all."
I held her close to me. "Dear," I said, "it will all come right, I am certain. Somehow or other, we shall be able to be married soon, and then you need never see Morstone or the Doctor any more."
"I love Morstone," she replied. "I love the lonely marshes and the bird-noises and the great red dawns and the sweet salt air, but"—she shuddered—"that fiend who married my poor dear mother and drove her to death, I would see burnt to-morrow without a pang of remorse. He has been worse lately, John, far worse. Mrs. Gaunt has been put to watch us like a spy. I can't tell whether he suspects anything about you and me. He may or may not. At any rate, there is something going on which frightens me. I've no doubt you will think me quite hysterical, quite foolish, and I feel it rather than know it, but I am frightened. Only this morning, the Doctor said things to dear Marjorie which were awful. He caught her by the arm and twisted it when she defied him, and his voice was so ugly and cruel, it seemed so inhuman, that I felt as if someone had put ice to the back of my neck. Oh, take me away soon, take Marjorie away too!"
She clung to me in a passion of appeal, and then and there I resolved that, come what might, we would marry and leave this ill-omened and mysterious place.
"What a long time they are!" Doris said after a moment or two, when I had soothed her. "Oh, here they come!"
But it wasn't, it was only Lockhart, who knocked at the door loudly and waited for several seconds before coming in with his contribution to the dinner.
"I'll run down and hurry them up, as there is no one about," I said.
"You'll do nothing of the sort!" she replied quickly. "Really, what a babe you are, John!"