"I know," and he laughed again. "By-the-way, I dare say you'll have Carringford over next week; he's going to Hindhead; he said he should come and see you, and look me up on the way. Good-bye," and in a moment he had started. She stood watching him almost in despair. Suppose he told Tom Carringford about Mr. Garratt! Oh, but when he came again—he said just now that he should come often—she would explain. Only it was such a difficult thing to explain, it wanted so much courage, and why should it matter to Mr. Carringford? Perhaps, too, it would be better to leave it alone, and he would forget about Mr. Garratt; besides, Mr. Walford, the clergyman, would be sure to call on Sir George, and if by any chance he mentioned Woodside Farm he would probably tell him that Mr. Garratt was walking out with Hannah—he was always at church with her on Sunday mornings. She remembered joyfully that Sir George would see them there together, and in a little place like Chidhurst everything was known and talked about.
"Good Heavens! how lovely she is," Sir George thought as he drove away, "and what a pity that she should be left to those two women!" For he and Mrs. Vincent had spent an awkward ten minutes, not knowing in the least what to say to each other, and he had naturally come to the conclusion that she was a handsome but quite ordinary woman of her class. "And then the young tradesman, with the crisp, curling hair showing under the brim of his bowler hat, and the look of a bounder. Vincent ought to be shot for leaving her to him." It was no business of his, of course, but it vexed him so much that he felt as if he could not bring himself to pay another visit to the farm.
XIII
Mr. Garratt hired the mare on which he had made so successful an appearance by the month, and determined to enjoy his long rides across the beautiful Surrey country. He thought matters well over, and came to the conclusion that it would be as well to keep up an appearance of paying attention to Hannah lest he should lose the bird in the hand before he had made sure of catching the one in the bush. But he found it difficult, for her voice set his teeth on edge, and her conversation, which was always harking round to evangelical subjects, and hits at her step-father and Margaret, irritated him till there were times when he could have shaken her. He was fully alive to the charms of the property that would one day be hers, and he saw her thrifty qualities clearly enough; but this was not all a man wanted, he told himself. He wanted besides a woman he could love and look at, and be proud of, and whose possession other men would envy him.
"If Margaret only showed a little common-sense," he thought, "she might be riding beside me two or three times a week. She would look stunning in a habit, and I wouldn't mind standing it—and the nag, too. People would sit up a bit if one day they saw us trotting through Guildford together; as for Hannah, she isn't fit to lick her boots." Even in a worldly sense he had come to the conclusion that Margaret would suit him better. "She'd pull one up," he thought, "for I'm certain she's a swell, though she mayn't know it herself, while t'other would keep one where one is for the rest of one's days." He touched up the mare in his excitement, and went by the church and towards the green lane in a canter.
Sir George Stringer, hidden behind the greenery of his garden, saw him pass. "That young bounder is going after Vincent's girl again," he said to himself. "I'd rather marry her myself than let him have her—not that she'd look at a grizzly old buffer five years her father's senior. I'll tell Hilda Lakeman about it; perhaps she will ask the girl there and get the nonsense out of her." He went up to town the next day, and made a point of lunching at the Embankment, and of sitting an hour in the flower-scented room afterwards; but Mrs. Lakeman was not as ready to help in the matter as he had imagined she would be.
"Gerald's family has come to a pretty pass," she said, with contemptuous amusement. "I'd do anything for him, dear old boy; but if his girl is in love with this young man, what would be the good of bringing her to town? I couldn't undertake the responsibility of it, I couldn't indeed, old friend."
"Did little Margaret seem fond of her tradesman?" Lena asked, sitting down on a low stool near her mother and looking up at Sir George.