She took them now and glanced at them, and the old man watched her covertly, with a curious expression on his face.

“I’m sure I don’t know how you will pay them,” he said, as if she alone were responsible.

“I can’t pay all of them at once,” she replied, cheerfully.  “But I can some, and the rest must wait.  I can send four—­perhaps five—­of the steers to the monthly market, and then there are the sheep—­Oh, father, I did not tell; you about the gentleman I saw fishing in the dale—­”

She stopped, for she saw that he was not listening.  He had opened a local paper and was reading it intently, and presently he looked up with an eager flush on his face and a sudden lightening of the dull eyes.

“Have you seen this—­this house—­they call it a palace—­which that man has built on the lake side?” he asked, his thin voice quavering with resentment.

“Do you mean the big white house by Brae Wood?”

“Yes.  Judging by the description of it here, it must be a kind of gim-crack villa like those one sees in Italy, built by men resembling this—­this parvenu.”

“It is a large place,” said Ida; “but I don’t think it is gim-crack, father.  It looks very solid though it is white and, yes, Continental.  It is something between a tremendous villa and a palace.  Why are you so angry?  I know you don’t like to have new houses built in Bryndermere; but this is some distance from us—­we cannot see it from here, or from any part of the grounds, excepting the piece by the lake.”

“It is built on our land,” he said, more quietly, but with the flush still on his face, the angry light in his eyes.  “It was bought by fraud, obtained under false pretences.  I sold it to one of the farmers, thinking he wanted it and would only use it for grazing.  I did not know until the deeds were signed that he was only the jackal for this other man.”

“What other man, father?”

“This Stephen Orme.  He’s Sir Stephen Orme now.  They knighted him.  They knight every successful tradesman and schemer; and this man is a prince of his tribe; a low-born adventurer, a parvenu of the worst type.”

“I think I have read something about him in the newspapers,” said Ida, thoughtfully.

Mr. Heron emitted a low snarl.

“No doubt; he is one whom the world delights to honour; it bows before the successful charlatan, and cringes to his ill-gotten wealth.  I’m told that such a man is received, yes, and welcomed by society.  Society!  The word is a misnomer.  In my time a man of that class was kept at arm’s-length, was relegated to his proper place—­the back hall; but now”—­he gazed angrily at the paper—­“here is a whole column describing Sir Stephen Orme’s new ‘palatial villa,’ and giving an account of his achievements, the success of his great undertakings.  And this man has chosen to build his eyesore on Heron lands, within sight of the house which—­which he would not have been permitted to enter.  If I had known, I would not have sold the land.”