"Pardon me," said Margaret, putting a violent strain upon herself. "I am not laughing for amusement; indeed, I am scarcely in a gay mood. I summoned you here, Lady Julie, because I hoped, through you, to settle a certain question; but I now see that it is not within your power."
Lady Juliana looked at her with intense curiosity. She had a vague idea that she had allowed something to slip through her fingers by her carelessness, and she determined, vindictively, that it should not be St. Udo Brand.
"I'll have him fast as ever bound to my sleeve," she inwardly vowed: "and I am very much mistaken if this eccentric creature does not give us Seven-Oak Waaste."
My lady drove away next morning from gloomy Castle Brand, had a coquettish half-hour of farewell at the station with Colonel Brand, who was lounging there casually, did as much mischief as she could to Margaret's cause, and went back to London, her head full of new ambitions.
And that was the end of Margaret's experiment.
It was some time after Lady Julie's useless visit, and Margaret was walking on the Waaste with Mrs. Chetwode.
She had discontinued her solitary walks since the evening by the mere, and invariably begged the housekeeper's company, or had a man-servant to keep her in sight whenever she took the air.
They wandered aimlessly over the frosty snow, side by side, and scarce speaking a word, a lowering sky overhead, and a bleak wind in their faces.
Margaret had mused over her next step until her thoughts were madness to her; and, as yet, no solution had come of the way out of her position. She had not gathered bravery enough to set another snare for her enemy, and had nervously avoided seeing him since her last discomfiture; and, too, she had heard that he was away in London, basking in the smiles of Lady Juliana. But, while revolving the next step to be taken, she was doomed to meet her enemy face to face at a time she imagined him in London.
At a turn of the path the two women came full upon the colonel, shuffling along, with his head bent, and his eyes on a book.