It was a few days later. Mrs. Oscar Dalrymple, who had been spending the afternoon with her mother and Mary Lynn, was preparing to return to the Grange. Alice had just come home again, a brilliant hectic on her cheeks, but weaker, as it seemed to them all. Alice was happier than she had been for years, in her sweet unselfishness. The trouble which had divided Colonel Hope and his nephew was at an end; Gerard had been reinstated in his uncle's favour, and was to marry Frances Chenevix. Lying on the sofa by the window, in the fading light, Alice had been giving them various particulars of this; and Selina, greatly interested, lingered longer than she had intended. But she had to go.
Rising hurriedly, she put on her bonnet and cloak. Mrs. Dalrymple rang the bell. It was to tell Reuben to be in readiness to attend her daughter.
"As if I wanted old Reuben with me, mamma!" exclaimed Selina. "Why, I shall run home in no time!"
"He had better be with you," sighed Mrs. Dalrymple: the sigh given to the disturbed state of things abroad. "The neighbourhood is not very quiet today, as you know, Selina, and it is growing dusk."
It was not quiet at all. The summary process, eviction, had been resorted to by Pinnett, as regarded the tenants of the Mill Cottages. He had forced them out with violence. One of them, named Thoms, had resisted to the last. Go out he would not, and the assailants could not get him out.
A meeting was to be held this same evening at Farmer Lee's. It could not be called a secret meeting; the farmer would have disdained the name; but those about to attend it waited until the dusk should shelter them, conscious that they were likely to speak treason against their landlord.
"Thoms is out," cried Farmer Bumford, as he entered Mr. Lee's house in excitement.
"How did they get him out?"
"Unroofed him, Lee. Pulled his place to pieces bit by bit, and so forced him out. He is now with the rest of the unfortunate lot."
"I thought such practices were confined to Ireland," said the honest farmer. "It's time something was done to protect us. Oscar Dalrymple will have his sins to answer for."