Faversham alone seemed to have no innings with her till he was about to take his departure.  Then Victoria noticed that Lydia made a quick movement toward him, and they stood together a few minutes, talking—­certainly not as strangers.

Gerald Tatham also noticed it.  There were few things, within his powers, that he left unnoticed.

“Now that would be suitable!” he said in Lady Barbara’s ear, nodding toward the pair.  “You saw how they came in together.  But of course it’s a blind.  Any one with half an eye can see that she’s just fishing for Harry!”

XII

Faversham sped home through the winding Cumbrian lanes, driven by the new chauffeur just imported from Manchester.  The hedges were thick with meadow-sweet and its scent, mingled with that of new-mown hay, hung in the hot, still air.  In front of him the Ullswater mountains showed dimly blue.  It was a country he was beginning to love.  His heart rose to it.

Small wonder in that!  For here, in this northern landscape, so strange to him but three months ago, he had first stumbled on Success—­and he had first met Lydia.

Was there any chance for him?  Through all his talks with the country neighbours, or with Lady Tatham, he had been keenly on the watch for anything that might show him what Lydia’s position in the Duddon Castle circle actually was.  That Tatham was in love with her was clear.  Mrs. Penfold’s chatter as to the daily homage paid by the castle to the cottage, through every channel—­courtesies or gifts—­that the Tathams’ delicacy could invent, or the Penfolds’ delicacy accept, had convinced him on that point.  And Faversham had seen for himself at Duddon that Tatham hung upon her every movement and always knew where she was and to whom she was talking; nor had the long conversation in the rose-walk escaped him.

Well, of course, in the case of any other girl in the world than Lydia, such things would be conclusive.  Who was likely to refuse Tatham, plus the Tatham estates?  But unless he had mistaken her altogether—­her detachment, her unworldliness, her high spirit—­Lydia Penfold was not the girl to marry an estate.  And if Tatham himself had touched her heart—­“would she have allowed me the play with her that she has done this last fortnight?” She would have been absorbed, preoccupied; and she had been neither.  He thought of her kind eyes, her frank, welcoming ways, her intense interest in his fortunes.  Impossible—­if she were in love with or on the point of an engagement to Harry Tatham.

She had forgiven him for his touch of jealous ill-temper!  As they stood together at the last in the Duddon garden, she had said, “I must hear about to-night! send me a word!” And he carried still, stamped upon his mind, the vision of her—­half shy, half eager—­looking up.

For the rest, the passion that was rapidly rising in the veins of a man full of life and will, surprised the man himself, excited in him a new complacency and self-respect.  For years he had said to himself that he could only marry money.  He remembered with a blush one or two rather sordid steps in that direction—­happily futile.  But Lydia was penniless; and he could make her rich.  For his career was only beginning; and on wealth, the wealth which is power, he was more than ever determined.