“It’s no use talking about it, Mr Croft,” said the old lady, moving toward the door.  “I can go to my niece and talk to her, but the first thing I’d know I’d blaze out at her, and then, as like as not, she’d blaze back again, and then the next thing would be that she’d pack up her things and go off to hunt up her fertilizer agent.  And that mustn’t be.  I don’t want to get myself in any snarls, just now.  There is nothing for you to do, Mr Croft, but to wait till it clears off, so that dainty young woman can come out of doors, and then I think I can manage it so that you can get a chance to speak to her.”

“I am very much obliged to you,” said Lawrence.  “I suppose I must wait.”

“I’ll see that Isham brings you a lot of dry hickory, so that you can have a cheerful fire, even if you can’t have cheerful company,” said Mrs Keswick, as she closed the door after her.

Lawrence looked through the window at the sky, which gave no promise of clearing.  And then he gazed into the fire, and considered his case.  He had spent a large portion of his life in considering his case, and, therefore, the operation was a familiar one to him.  This time the case was not a satisfactory one.  Everything in this love affair with Miss March had gone on in a manner in which he had not intended, and of which he greatly disapproved.  No one in the world could have planned the affair more prudently than he had planned it.  He had been so careful not to do anything rash, that he had, at first, concealed, even from the lady herself, the fact that he was in love with her, and nothing could be farther from his thoughts and desires than that any one else should know of it.  And yet, how had it all turned out?  He had taken into his confidence Mr Junius Keswick, Mr Brandon, old Mrs Keswick, Mrs Null, as she wished to be called, and almost lastly, the lady herself.  “If I should lay bare my heart to the colored man, Isham,” he said to himself, “and the old centenarian in the cabin down there, I believe there would be no one else to tell.  Oh, yes, there is Candy, and the anti-detective.  By rights, they ought to know.”  He did not include the good little Peggy in this category, because he was not aware that there was such a person.

After about an hour of these doleful cogitations, he again turned to look out of his front window, which commanded a view of the larger house, when he saw, coming down the steps of the porch, a not very tall figure, wrapped in a waterproof cloak, with the hood drawn over its head.  He did not see the face of the figure, but he thought from the light way in which it moved that it was Mrs Null; and when it stepped upon the grass and turned its head, he saw that he was right.

“Can her aunt have induced her to come to me?” was Lawrence’s first thought.  But his second was very different, for she began to walk toward the large gate which led out of the yard.  Instantly Lawrence rose, and hopped on one foot to the window, where he tapped loudly on the glass.  The lady turned, and then he threw up the sash.