Gertrude, left alone, was weeping silently and bitterly beside the child’s cot, when she was aware of a little short laugh almost at her elbow, and a familiar voice said in sharp accents: 

“Good child!  I like a woman with a spirit of her own.  Go on as you have begun, and don’t let him think he is to have it all his own way.  Lovers are all very well, but husbands soon show their wives how cheap they hold them when they have won them all too cheap.  Throw him aside in scorn!  Let him not think or see that you care a snap of the fingers for him.  That will rivet the fetters all the faster; and when you have got him like a tame bear at the end of a chain—­why then you can make up your mind at leisure what you will end by doing.”

Gertrude sprang up suddenly, and faced Lady Scrope with flushed cheeks and glowing eyes.

The little witch-like woman with her black-handled stick and her mobcap was no unfrequent visitor to this shut-up house.  There was a communication between the two dwellings by means of a door in the cellars, and all this while curiosity, or some better motive, had prompted the eccentric old woman to come to and fro between her own luxurious house and this, paying visits to the devoted girls, and by turns terrifying and charming the children.  Gertrude had been interested from the first by the piquant individuality of the old aristocrat, and was a decided favourite with her.  It was plain now that she had been listening to the conversation between father and daughter, a thing so characteristic of her curiosity and even of her benevolence that Gertrude hardly so much as resented it.  Nevertheless, having a spirit of her own, and being by no means prepared to be dictated to in these matters, some hot words escaped her lips almost before she knew, and were answered by Lady Scrope by an amused peal of her witch-like laughter.

“Tut! tut! tut!  Hoity toity! but she is in a temper, is she, my lady?  Well a good thing too.  Your saints are insipid unless they can call up a spice of the devil on occasion!  Oh, don’t you be afraid of me, child.  I’ve known all about you and young Harmer this long time.  I agree with your late mother, that you could do better; but with all the world topsy turvy as it is now, we must take what we can get; and that young man is estimable without doubt, and a bit of a hero in his way.  I don’t blame you for loving him.  It’s the way with maids, and will be to the end of time, I take it.  All I say is, don’t throw yourself away too fast.  Show a proper pride.  Keep him dangling and fearing, rather than hoping too much.  Show him that he can’t have you just for the asking.  Why, child, I have kept a dozen fools hanging round me for a twelvemonth together sometimes; but I only married when I was tired of the game, and when I knew I had made sure of a captive who would not rebel.  I swore in church to obey poor Scrope; but, bless you, he obeyed me like a lamb to the last day of his life—­and was all the better for it.”