"I certainly," with some hesitation, "said you were a tyrant."
"You did," calmly.
"And that----"
"Do not let us go over such distasteful ground again," interrupts he, impatiently: "you said all you could say,--and you gained your object.
Does not even that satisfy you?"
"I wish I had never interested myself in the matter," she says, angrily, vexed with herself, and with him, and with everything.
"Perhaps your wisdom would have lain in that direction," returns he, coolly. "But as you did interest yourself, and as victory lies with you, you should be the one to rejoice."
"Well, I don"t," she says impulsively. And then she looks at him in a half-defiant, half-penitent, wholly charming way, letting her large soft eyes speak for her, as they rest full upon his face. There is something in her fresh young beauty almost irresistible. Guy, with an angry sigh, acknowledges its power, and going nearer to her, takes both her clasped hands in his.
"What a bad-tempered little girl you are!" he says, in a jesting tone, that is still full of the keenest reproach. "Am I as bad as Brutus and all those terrible Medes and Persians? I confess you made me tremble when you showered upon me all those awful comparisons."
"No, no, I was wrong," she says, hastily, twining her small fingers closely round his; then very softly, "You are always forgiving me, are you not? But yet--tell me, Guardy--are you not really glad you have pardoned that poor Heskett? I cannot be pleased about it myself so long as I think I have only wrung your promise from you against your will.
Say you are glad, if only to make me happy."
"I would do anything to make you happy,--anything," he says, in a strange tone, reading anxiously her lovely _riante_ face, that shows no faintest trace of such tenderness as he would fain see there; then, altering his voice with an effort, "Yes, I believe I am glad," he says, with a short laugh: "your intercession has removed a hateful duty from my shoulders."
"Where is the boy? Is he locked up, or confined anywhere?"
"Nowhere. I never incarcerate my victims," with a slight trace of bitterness still in his manner. "He is free as air, in all human probability poaching at this present moment."
"But if he knows there is punishment in store for him, why doesn"t he make his escape?"
"You must ask him that, because I cannot answer the question. Perhaps he does not consider me altogether such a fiend as you do, and may think it likely I will show mercy at the last moment."
"Or perhaps," says Lilian, "he has made his escape long ago."
"I don"t think so. Indeed, I am almost sure, if you look straight along that field"--pointing in a certain direction--"you will see the young gentleman in question calmly smoking the pipe of peace upon a distant wall."
"It is he," says Lilian, in a low tone, after a careful examination of the youthful smoker. "How little he seems to fear his fate!"
"Yes, just fancy how lightly he views the thought of falling into the clutches of a monster!" remarks Chetwoode, with a mocking smile.
"I think you are a little hard on me," says Lilian, reproachfully.
"Am I?" carelessly preparing to leave her. "If you see that promising _protege_ of yours, Lilian, you can tell him from me that he is quite at liberty to carry on his nightly games as soon as he pleases. You have no idea what a solace that news will be to him; only, if you have any regard for him, advise him not to be caught again."
So saying, he leaves her and continues his interrupted march to the stables.
When Miss Chesney has spent a moment or two inveighing silently against the hardness and uncharitableness of men in general and Sir Guy Chetwoode in particular, she accepts the situation, and presently starts boldly for the hollow in which lies the modest homestead of the venerable Mrs. Heskett.
The unconscious cause of the battle royal that has just taken place has evidently finished his pipe and lounged away through the woods, as he is nowhere to be seen. And Miss Chesney makes up her mind, with a view to killing the time that must elapse before dinner, to go straight to his mother"s cottage, and, by proclaiming Sir Guy"s leniency, restore peace to the bosom of that ancient dame.
And as she walks she muses on all that has pa.s.sed between herself and her guardian during the last half-hour. After all, what did she say that was so very bad?
She had certainly compared him to Brutus, but what of that? Brutus in his day was evidently a shining light among his people, and, according to the immortal Pinnock, an ornament to his s.e.x. Suppose he did condemn his only son to death, what did that signify in a land where the deed was looked upon as meritorious? Weak-minded people of the present day might call him an old brute for so doing, but there are two sides to every question, and no doubt the young man was a regular nuisance at home, and much better out of the way.
Then again she had likened him to the Medes and Persians; and why not?
Who should say the Medes and Persians were not thoroughly respectable gentlemen, polished and refined? and though in this case again there might be some who would prefer the manners of a decent English gentleman to those of the present Shah, that is no reason why the latter should be regarded so ignominiously.
She has reached this highly satisfactory point in her argument when a body dropping from a tree near her, almost at her feet, startles her rudely from her meditations.
"Dear me!" says Lilian, with much emphasis, and then knows she is face to face with Heskett.
He is a tall lad, brown-skinned as an Italian, with eyes and hair of gypsy dye. As he stands before Lilian now, in spite of his daring nature, he appears thoroughly abashed, and with his eyes lowered, twirls uneasily between his hands the rather greasy article that usually adorns his brow.
"I beg your pardon, miss," he says, slowly, "but might I say a word to you?"
"I am sorry to hear such bad accounts of you, Heskett," says Miss Chesney, in return, with all the airs of a dean and chapter.
"Sir Guy has been telling you, miss?" says the lad, eagerly; "and it is about my trouble I wanted to see you. They say you have great weight with the baronet, miss, and once or twice you spoke kindly to me, and I thought maybe you would say a word for me."
"You are mistaken: I have no influence," says Lilian, coloring faintly.
"And besides, Heskett, there would be little use in speaking for you, as you are not to be trusted."
"I am, Miss Chesney, I am indeed, if Sir Guy would only try me again. I don"t know what tempted me last night, but I got my lesson then, and never again, I swear, Miss----"
Here a glance at Lilian"s face checks further protestations. She is not looking at him; her gaze is concentrated upon the left pocket of his coat, though, indeed, there is little worthy of admiration in the cut of that garment. Following the direction of her eyes, Heskett"s fall slowly, until at length they fasten upon the object that has so attracted her.
Sticking up in that luckless left pocket, so as plainly to be seen, is a limp and rather draggled brown wing, the undeniable wing of a young grouse.
"Heskett," says Lilian, severely, "what have you been doing?"
"Nothing, miss," desperately.
"Heskett," still more severely, and with just a touch of scorn in her tone, "speak the truth: what have you got in your pocket?"
"It"s just a grouse, then," says the boy, defiantly, producing the bonny brown bird in question.
"And a fat one," supplements Lilian. "Oh, Heskett, when you know the consequences of poaching, how can you do it?"
""Tis because I do know it,"--recklessly: "it"s all up with me this time because the baronet swore he"d punish me next time I was caught, and he never breaks his word. So I thought, miss, I"d have a last fling, whatever came of it."
"But it isn"t "all up" with you," says Lilian. "I have spoken to Sir Guy, and he has promised to give you one more chance. But I cannot speak again, Heskett, and if you still persist in your evil ways I shall have spoken in vain."
"You spoke for me?" exclaims he, incredulously.
"Yes. But I fear I have done no good."
The boy"s eyes seek the ground.
"I didn"t think the likes of you would care to say a kind word for such as me,--and without the asking," he says, huskily. "Look here, Miss Chesney, if it will please you, I swear I will never again snare a bird."
"Oh, Heskett, will you promise really?" returns Lilian, charmed at her success, "and can I trust you? You know you gave your word before to Sir Guy."