“Yes!” said Mabyn, quite delighted.

“But suppose you’ve bothered and worried the girl until you feel ashamed of yourself, and she begs of you to leave her, aren’t you bound in fair manliness to go?”

“I don’t know,” said Mabyn doubtfully.

“Well, I do.  It would be very mean to pester her.  I’m off as soon as these people leave the Hall.  But then there are other things.  There is your sister engaged to this fellow out in Jamaica—­”

“Isn’t he a horrid wretch?” said Mabyn between her teeth.

“Oh, I quite agree with you.  If I could have it out with him now!  But, after all, what harm has the man done?  Is it any wonder he wanted to get Wenna for a wife?”

“Oh, but he cheated her,” said Mabyn warmly.  “He persuaded her and reasoned with her, and argued her into marrying him.  And what business had he to tell her that love between young people is all bitterness and trial, and that a girl is only safe when she marries a prudent and elderly man who will look after her?  Why, it is to look after him that he wants her.  Wenna is going to him as a housekeeper and a nurse.  Only—­only, Mr. Trelyon, she hasn’t gone to him just yet!”

“Oh, I don’t think he did anything unfair,” the young man said gloomily.  “It doesn’t matter, anyhow.  What I was going to say is, that my grandmother’s notion of what one of our family ought to do in such a case can’t be carried out:  whatever you may think of a man, you can’t go and try to rob him of his sweetheart behind his back.  Even supposing she were willing to break with him—­which she is not—­you’ve at least got to wait to give the fellow a chance.”

“There I quite disagree with you, Mr. Trelyon,” Mabyn said warmly.  “Wait to give him a chance to make our Wenna miserable!  Is she to be made the prize of a sort of fight?  If I were a man I’d pay less attention to my own scruples and try what I could do for her—­Oh, Mr. Trelyon—­I—­I beg your pardon.”

Mabyn suddenly stopped on the road, overwhelmed with confusion.  She had been so warmly thinking of her sister’s welfare that she had been hurried into something worse than an indiscretion.

“What then, Mabyn?” said he, profoundly surprised.

“I beg your pardon:  I have been so thoughtless.  I had no right to assume that you wished—­that you wished for the—­for the opportunity—­”

“Of marrying Wenna?” said he with a great stare.  “But what else have we been speaking about?  Or rather, I suppose we did assume it.  Well, the more I think over it, Mabyn, the more I am maddened by all these obstacles, and by the notion of all the things that may happen.  That’s the bad part of my going away.  How can I tell what may happen?  He might come back and insist on her marrying him right off.”

“Mr. Trelyon,” said Mabyn, speaking very clearly, “there’s one thing you may be sure of.  If you let me know where you are, nothing will happen to Wenna that you don’t hear of.”