“And you knew about my thinking of buying Greystone?” he said regretfully.
“Yes,” she replied. “It was a most kind thought. But I have understood since that it would not be considered a profitable purchase for you—you don’t want more land about here?”
“No, I don’t care about it. And I don’t care about another house either. I have Barnstay up in the north, you know—the lease is nearly run out; in case Trevor ever marries, he may live there if he likes. No, I don’t want Greystone; but if you would still like the idea of my having it, if there were the ghost of a chance of things ever coming straight again between you and Trevor—”
“There is not the ghost of a chance, dear Sir Thomas,” replied Cicely. “Do not let any thought of us influence you in the matter. Greystone will be dead to me from the day we leave it.”
“That means you will never come back eh?” said Sir Thomas. Cicely did not contradict him. “Ah! well, then, I think I’ll give up the idea. It was different when I thought of keeping it together for poor Philip’s grandchildren.”
He kissed Cicely when he left her, and there were tears in his eyes, but the subjects they had discussed were never alluded to again. Some weeks later when his consent to Trevor’s marriage was asked; he gave it without difficulty. But he thought his own thoughts, nevertheless; and it came to be generally noticed that the old gentleman never “favoured” his pretty daughter-in-law as much as might have been expected. “Not like it would have been with our Miss Cicely,” the people about used to say.
But time went on. Greystone Abbey was sold to strangers, and the desolate widow and daughter of its last owner left it for ever.
[CHAPTER VI.]
A NEW TERROR.
“It is not for what he would be to me now,
If he still were here, that I mourn him so:
It is for the thought of a broken vow,
And for what he was to me long ago.”