"Ah yes, to be sure, to be sure!" Mr. Dalabey said. "To be sure," he added, "well! sold it be and, strangest of all, to a young gentleman, leastways his father, which be all the same, of the name of Homewood. There, what do 'ee think of that now? Homewood Manor sold to a Homewood, curious, eh? Well, well, I must be getting along!"
"Sold it be and a dratted good job too!" Mrs. Hanson said.
Betty crept away to her attic room under the thatched roof. Sold! Her garden sold and for ever now barred against her! No more rambles in the enchanted garden by moonlight, no more dreams in which she peopled the old garden with all those strange folk, of whom she had seen visions. And He—she would never see Him more, bending over the flower beds at his work. He whose face she had hardly seen, and yet somehow she knew that He meant so much to her. So the little maid crept to her room with bursting heart.
"Sold it be, sold it be," she whispered to herself.
CHAPTER VI
"I HATE HIM—HATE HIM I DU!"
Allan sat on the old stone seat in the warm sunshine. He watched the rioting weeds, the broken sundial, the long pathway of flagged stone leading to the grim desolate house.
He closed his eyes and opened them again, hoping to see that vision he had seen, but it came to him no more. No! there were only the weeds and the decay and the green moss.
So he sat there for a full hour and tried to force that which would not come. He could see her, in fancy, tripping down the flagged path to him, with love and tenderness in her blue eyes, that dainty little figure with the head of flaming gold and the white neck. But it was a vision that could not be forced.
So presently, disheartened and hopeless, he rose and went to the lake and stared hard at the broken stone nymph and watched the great idle fish and the sense of loss grew stronger and yet stronger on him.