"Yes; grandfather was in the garden; but he didn't come near him."
"What part of the garden? In sight of the door?"
"I won't tell you another word!" she exclaimed, turning away. "And I think you'd better go."
When she glanced back again, the man had disappeared. She felt uneasy and regretful. Something was going on which she did not understand, and it seemed to her that she had done harm in answering those questions.
"I wish I had gone into the house when I saw the prying creature," she said to herself; "or I wish I had held my tongue. He's got what he came for, I can see that."
He had got what he came for, or very nearly.
"Shall I waylay the old man, and question him?" he thought; and concluded not to. "If he knows anything, he will tell it at the proper time."
The green boughs brushed him with their tender leaves, as if they would have brushed away some cobwebs from his sight, and opened his eyes to the peace and charity of the woods; but he was too much absorbed in one ignoble pursuit to be accessible to gentler influences. What he sought was not to uphold the law; what he felt was not that charity to the many which sometimes makes severity to the few a necessity. His object was money, and charity lay dead in his heart with a coin over each eye.
That evening Miss Ferrier and Lawrence Gerald talked over their matrimonial affairs quite freely, and in the most business-like manner in the world. They discussed the ceremony, the guests, the breakfast, and the toilette, and Annette displayed her lace dress.
"It is frightfully costly," she owned; "but I had a purpose in making it so. I shall never wear it but once, and some day or other it will go to trim a priest's surplice. You see, I ordered the pattern to that end, as nearly as I could get it, and not have it made for me. There was no time for that. The ferns are neutral; but the wheat is perfect, you see, and that vine is quite like a grape-vine. I shall wear a tulle veil."