“Why, bless my ’eart, there’s Miss Layton,” said Mrs. Crowe.

“What a fine little boy this is!” exclaimed Brett, stooping over a curly-haired urchin.  “Is he the oldest?”

“Good gracious, sir, no.  He’s the youngest.”

“Dear me, I would not have thought so.  You must have been married very early.  Here, my little man, see what you can buy for half-a-crown.”

“What a nice gentleman he is, to be sure,” thought the lodge-keeper’s wife, when Brett passed through the smaller gate, assured that the struggle in the park had ended.

“Just fancy ‘im a-thinkin’ Jimmy was the eldest, when I will be a grandmother come August if all goes well wi’ Kate.”

The barrister signed to the groom to wait, and joined the young couple, who now appeared in the roadway.  A haggard, dishevelled, and furious man burst through the avenue hedge and ran across the drive.

“Mrs. Crowe,” he almost screamed, “do you see those two men there?”

“Yes, sir.”

The good woman was startled by her master’s sudden appearance and his excited state.

“They are never to be admitted to the grounds again.  Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

Capella turned to rush away up the avenue, but he was compelled to limp.  Mrs. Crowe watched him wonderingly, and tried to piece together in her mind the queer sounds and occurrences of the last two minutes.

She had not long been in the cottage when the butler arrived.

“You let two gentlemen in a while ago ?” he said.

“I did.”

“One was Mr. David and the other a Mr. Brett?”

“Oh, was that the tall gentleman’s name?”

“I expect so.  Well, here’s the missus’s written order that whenever they want to come to the ’ouse or go anywheres in the park it’s O.K.”

Mrs. Crowe was wise enough to keep her own counsel, but when the butler retired, she said: 

“Then I’ll obey the missus, an’ master can settle it with her.  I don’t hold by Eye-talians, anyhow.”

CHAPTER VI

AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE

Helen was very much upset by the painful scene which had just been enacted.  Its vulgarity appalled her.  In a little old-world hamlet like Sleagill, a riotous cow or frightened horse supplied sensation for a week.  What would happen when it became known that the rector’s daughter had been attacked by the Squire of Beechcroft in the park meadow, and saved from his embraces only after a vigorous struggle, in which her defender was David Hume-Frazer, concerning whom the villagers still spoke with bated breath?

Of course, the girl imagined that many people must have witnessed the occurrence.  The appearance of Brett, of the waiting groom, and of a chance labourer who now strode up the village street, led her to think so.

She did not realise that the whole affair had barely lasted a minute, that Brett was Hume’s friend, the man-servant a stranger who had seen nothing and heard little, whilst the villager only wondered, when he touched his cap, “why Miss Layton was so flustered like.”