"By George, she's a beauty!" said the Captain to himself as he turned away. "Nothing wrong with her that I can see. But there are some strange tales going about. I wonder who that other woman is. Marvell—Gertrude Marvell?—I seem to have heard the name somewhere.—Hullo, Masham, how are you?" He greeted the leading local solicitor who had just entered the station, a man with a fine ascetic face, and singularly blue eyes. Masham looked like a starved poet or preacher, and was in reality one of the hardest and shrewdest men of business in the southern counties.
"Well, did you see Miss Blanchflower?" said the Captain, as Masham joined him on the platform, and they entered the up train together.
"I did. A handsome young lady! Have you heard the news?"
"No."
"Your neighbor, Mr. Winnington—Mark Winnington—is named as her guardian under her father's will—until she is twenty-five. He is also trustee, with absolute power over the property."
The Captain shewed a face of astonishment.
"Gracious! what had Winnington to do with Sir Robert Blanchflower!"
"An old friend, apparently. But it is a curious will."
The solicitor's abstracted look shewed a busy mind. The Captain had never felt a livelier desire for information.
"Isn't there something strange about the girl?"—he said, lowering his voice, although there was no one else in the railway carriage. "I never saw a more beautiful creature! But my mother came home from London the other day with some very queer stories, from a woman who had met them abroad. She said Miss Blanchflower was awfully clever, but as wild as a hawk—mad about women's rights and that kind of thing. In the hotel where she met them, people fought very shy of her."