Thorn rang the bell and, leaving the box, asked for a railway guide. There was nothing to be gained by stopping in London and he looked up the best train for the north.
CHAPTER VII
GERALD'S RETURN
Thorn went home and waited, confident that Osborn would presently send for him. The estate was heavily mortgaged, Osborn had no rich friends, and when the blow fell would look to Thorn for the aid nobody else could give. In the meantime, Osborn, enjoying a short relief from financial strain, squandered in personal extravagance part of the sum he had borrowed, and then set drainers, carpenters, and builders to work. He liked spending and now tried to persuade himself that the money he was laying out would give him some return. It ought to last until he had finished the renovations his tenants demanded, and although difficulties might arise afterwards, he would wait until they did. Indeed, his wife and daughter found him better humored than he had been for long.
Then, one evening when the hay was harvested and the corn was ripening, his satisfaction was rudely banished. Grace had gone to the lodge with a message and stopped for a few minutes by the gate. The evening was calm and one side of the placid tarn glittered in the light; the other was dark, and soft blue shadows covered the fells behind. She heard the languid splash of ripples on the stones and the murmur of a beck in a distant ghyll. A strange restful tranquillity brooded over the dale.
Grace felt the calm soothing, for her thoughts were not a little disturbed. She had met Thorn in the afternoon and noted a puzzling change in his manner. So far, she had been able to check his cautious advances, but she now remarked a new confidence that seemed to indicate he had some power in reserve. She admitted that she might have imagined this, but it troubled her.
Afterwards she had met Kit and the comfort the meeting gave her had forced her to think. Their friendship had gone far; in fact, it had reached a point friendship could not pass. Kit was not yet her lover, but she thought he waited for a sign that she would acknowledge him when he made his claim. She liked Kit; she had not met a man she liked so much. This, however, did not imply that she was willing to marry him. Although she now and then rebelled against conventions, she had inherited some of Osborn's prejudices, and her mother sprang from old-fashioned land-owning stock. Kit belonged to another class; the life he led was different. She had been taught to enjoy cultivated idleness, broken by outdoor sports and social amusements; but Kit was a worker, farming for money and resolved to make his efforts pay. His wife must help and Grace did not know if this daunted her or not.
Moreover, if she married Kit, she must quarrel with her parents. She knew what Osborn thought about him. Had she been sure she loved Kit, the choice would have been easier, but although she blushed as she mused, this was too much to own. Yet he loved her, and after all—
She let the matter go and looked up, for there were steps in the shadowy road. Then a figure came into the fading light, and she started and ran to the gate.
"Gerald!" she exclaimed. "Why have you come home?"