“Simply that for the present you and I do nothing at all in the affair, but wait and see how matters work themselves out between the young people.”
“Um—um. One can pretty well guess the result of that.”
“If Lisle is the man I take him to be, when he finds Ethel acknowledged as your granddaughter, one of his first acts will be to offer to release her from her engagement.”
“Do you think so? Indeed, I shouldn’t wonder if you are right. Lisle’s a gentleman through and through, or else I was never more mistaken in my life. But in that case, what about the girl?”
John Clare smiled. “Being of the sex she is, who can foretell what she may choose to do, or not to do? But in any case, it appears to me that you and I must abide by the result, whatever it may be.”
“I agree to that. Yes, yes, whatever the dear girl may choose to do shall be fully endorsed by us.”
It seemed to John Clare, although he did not say so, that what Ethel would choose to do in such a contingency admitted of very little doubt. He felt intensely grateful to Everard Lisle, and he had already made up his mind that it should be owing to no fault of his if the young folk were not made happy.
Everard was not at the Chase this morning, it being his day for collecting the rents of sundry outlying farms, but he might be expected there in the course of the afternoon.
CHAPTER XLIX.
PAYMENT IN FULL
It had been one of those softly brilliant days in late October, which sometimes come as if to haunt us with the ghost of the dead and gone summer. The sun had set in a golden haze, and the amber reaches of the upper sky were darkening slowly as the shades of advancing night crept upward from the east, when Ethel and Everard met face to face in the park.