“He’s going to propose to you,” said Susan bluntly.

“Well, then, we shall get it over,” said Lydia, reluctantly.  “And you don’t imagine that such a golden youth will trouble about such a trifle for long.  Think of all the other things he has to amuse him.  Why, if I broke my heart, you know I should still want to paint,” she added, flippantly.

“I’d give a good deal to see you break your heart!” said the tragedienne, her dark eyes kindling—­“you’d be just splendid!”

“Thanks, awfully!  There’s the pony.”

Susan held her.

“You’re really going to the Tower?”

“I am.  It’s mean of me.  When you hate a man, you oughtn’t to go to his house.  But I can’t help it.  I’m so curious.”

“Yes, but not about Mr. Melrose,” said Susan slowly.

Lydia flushed suddenly from brow to chin.

“Goose! let me go.”

Susan let her go, and then stood a while, absorbed, looking at the mysterious Tower.  Her power of visualization was uncannily strong; it amounted almost to second sight.  She seemed to be in the Tower—­in one of its locked and shuttered rooms; to be looking at a young man stretched on a sofa—­a wizardlike figure in a black cloak standing near—­and in the doorway, Lydia entering, bringing the light on her fair hair....

VIII

Tatham had to open the gate of Threlfall Park for himself.  The lodge beside it, of the same date and architecture as the house, had long ceased to be inhabited.  The gate was a substantial iron affair, and carried a placard, peremptorily directing the person entering to close it behind him.  And on either side of it, the great wall stretched away with which, some ten years before this date, Melrose, at incredible cost, had surrounded the greater part of his property, in consequence of a quarrel with the local hunt, and to prevent its members from riding over his land.

Tatham, having carefully shut the gate, rode slowly through the park, casting a curious and hostile eye over the signs of parsimonious neglect which it presented.  Sheep and cattle were feeding in part of it; part of it was standing for hay; and everywhere the fences were ruinous, and the roads grass-grown.  It was, Tatham knew, let out to various small farmers, who used it as they pleased.  As to the woods which studded it, “the man must be a simple fool who could let them get into such a state!” Tatham prided himself hugely on the admirable forestry with which the large tracts of woodland in his own property were managed.  But then he paid a proper salary to a trained forester, a man of education.  Melrose’s woods, with their choked and ruined timber, were but another proof that a miser is, scientifically, only a species of idiot.