"I hardly think you were playing the game," she said.
"Why not? I come down here where nobody knows me. It is my whim to keep quiet the fact that Goldney Park belongs to me. As to my dramatic tastes, they don't concern anybody but myself. I take a cottage down here until those tenants of mine are ready to go. They are such utter bounders that I have no desire to disclose my identity to them. And so it falls about that I meet you. Then I recollect all that my uncle has said about you. I cultivate your acquaintance. It wasn't my fault that you took me for a countryman with no idea beyond riding a horse and shooting a pheasant. Your patronage was very pretty and pleasing, and I am one of those men who always laugh or cry inside. It is perhaps a misfortune that I can always joke with a grave face. But don't forget that the man who laughs inside is also the man who bleeds inside, and these feel the worst. Come, Ethel, you are not going to be angry because you have lost the game playing with your own weapons."
The education was finished, the schoolmaster was abroad—very much abroad. In his cool, masterful way Chesney had taken matters into his own hands. He was none the less handsome because he looked so stern, so sure of his ground.
"You are a man and I am a woman," she faltered.
"Of course. How could the comedy proceed otherwise? Now where shall we move these Elizabethan relics? After what you said just now they could not possibly remain here. Among the family archives I dare say——"
Chesney paused; he was conscious of the fact that two large diamond drops were stealing down Ethel's cheeks. It seemed the most natural thing in the world for him to cross over and take her hands in his.
"My dear child, what have I said to pain you," he said. "I am truly sorry."
"You—you take too much for granted," Ethel sobbed. "You make me feel so small and silly. And you have no right to assume that I—I could care for anybody simply because he happens to possess a p—p—place like Goldney Park."
"But, my darling, I didn't. I was delighted when you said just now that you would never marry a man you did not care for, even if he could give you Chippendale for breakfast, so to speak. I watched your face then. I am sure that you were speaking from the bottom of your heart. I have been watching you for the last five weeks, my sweetheart. And they have been the happiest weeks in my life.
"Laughing at me, I suppose! It's all the same if you do laugh inside."