"Miss Margaret," he said, deferentially, "I want to apologize for what I said just now about your family and about your not going to church—it was my feelings that carried me away. I've just heard who you are. I always said you looked like a somebody; you may remember that I told you so that day going across the fields. And as for not going to church, why, I quite agree with what I believe Mrs. Vincent thinks, that it's what one does outside it that matters, not what one does inside."
"It's very kind of you to say all this, Mr. Garratt, but please let me pass." He walked beside her down the green pathway.
"You know what my feelings have always been," he said, "and if true devotion—" he felt as if this were the right line.
"Please don't say anything more." She was almost distressed, for through the porch in the dim background she could see Hannah's wrathful figure.
"If true devotion counts for anything," he went on, "why, you'd get it from me. I understand there isn't any money to come with this title, and it isn't going to make any difference in anything, and you'll want some one to love you just the same. We all want that, Miss Margaret, and—"
"Margaret, you'd better come in and not keep dinner waiting," Hannah called, shrilly. "I should have thought you had had enough of Mr. Garratt, meeting him up in the wood when other people were in church."
Mr. Garratt was very silent at dinner. He had to decide on his own course of action. He came to the conclusion that the safest plan was to propitiate everybody, but it took his breath away to think that he, Jimmy Garratt, house agent of Petersfield and Guildford, grandson on his mother's side of James Morgan, grocer at Midhurst, wanted to marry Miss Margaret Vincent, as he now described her to himself; still, there would be nothing lost by going on with it; besides, he was a good-looking chap, lots of girls liked him, and, after all, Margaret hadn't any money. It would be a good move, he thought, to get her over to Guildford and let her see the house; it had a real drawing-room and a conservatory going out of it, and he could afford to let her spend a little money; she should do anything she liked, and if people got on in these days it didn't matter what they were in the beginning. There were lots of them in Parliament who were nobodies, why shouldn't he get into Parliament, too, some day—he had always been rather good at speaking, and for matter of that he might get a title of his own in the end? He had only to make money and get his name into the papers, and give a lot to some charity that royalty cared about, and there he'd be.
"You are very absent to-day, Mr. Garratt," Hannah said, as she gave him a large helping of raspberry and currant tart.
"It's very warm, Miss Barton; very warm, indeed."