The Grower was a man who judged a man very much by eyesight. He had found out so many rogues, by means of that “keen Kentish look,” for which the Sidneys, and some other old families, were famous. And having well applied this to Sir Roland, he had no longer any doubt of him. And yet, with his shrewd common-sense, he was not sorry to button up his coat with the money once more inside it, in the sample-bag, which had sampled so much love, and trust, and loyalty. Money is not so light to come by as great landlords might suppose; and for a girl to be known to have it is the best of all strings to her bow. So Master Lovejoy grasped his staff; and it would have been a hard job for even the famous Black Robin, the highwayman of the time, to have wrested the trust-fund from him.
Covering the ground at an active pace, and crossing the Woeburn by a tree-bridge (rudely set up where the old one had been) he strode through West Lorraine and Steyning, and over the hills to Pyecombe corner, where he took the Reigate coach; and he slept that night at Reigate.
Meanwhile the Chapmans gathered their forces for perfect conquest of Alice. Father and son had quite agreed that the final stroke of victory might best be made by occupying the commanding fortress Valeria. They knew that this stronghold was only too ready, for the sake of the land below it to surrender at discretion; and the guns thereof being turned on the castle, the whole must lie at their mercy.
Yet there were two points which these besiegers had not the perception to value duly and seize to their own advantage. One was the character of Sir Roland; the other was the English courage and Norman spirit of Alice. “It is all at our mercy now,” they thought; “we have only to hammer away; and the hammer of gold is too heavy for anything.” They did not put it so clearly as that—for people of that sort do not put their views to themselves very clearly; still, if they had looked inside their ideas, they would have found them so.
“Steenie, let me see him first,” said Sir Remnant, meeting his son, by appointment, at the sun-dial in the eastern walk, which for half the year possessed a sinecure office, and a easy berth even through the other half. “Steenie, you will make a muddle; you have been at your flask again.”
“Well, what can I do? That girl is enough to roll anybody over. I wish I had never seen her—oh, I wish I had never seen her! She dis-dis-dis——”
“Dislikes you, Steenie! She can never do that. Of all I have settled with, none have said it. They are only too fond of you, Steenie; just as they were of your father before you. And now you are straight, and going on so well! After all you have done for the women, Steenie, no girl can dislike you.”
“That is the very thing I try to think. And I know that it ought to be so, if only from proper jealousy. But she never seems to care when I talk of girls; and she looks at me so that I scarcely dare speak. And it scarcely makes any difference at all what girls have been in love with me!”
“Have you had the sense to tell her of any of the royal family?”
“Of course I did. I mentioned two or three, with good foundation. But she never inquired who they were, and nothing seems to touch her. I think I must give it up, after all. I never cared for any girl before. And it does seem so hard, after more than a score of them, when one is in downright earnest at last, not to be able to get a chance of the only one I ever lov-lov-loved!”