Having come to the only possible arrangement, consistent with the difficult position in which they stood, Lambert and Lady Agnes took their almost immediate departure from The Manor.  The young man had merely come to stay there in response to his cousin’s request, so that his avoidance of her should not be too marked, and the suspicions of Pine excited.  Now that the man was dead, there was no need to behave in this judicious way, and having no great love for Garvington, whom he thoroughly despised, Lambert returned to his forest cottage.  There he busied himself once more with his art, and waited patiently to see what the final decision of Agnes would be.  He did not expect to hear for some weeks, or even months, as the affairs of Garvington, being very much involved, could not be understood in a moment.  But the lovers, parted by a strict sense of duty, eased their minds by writing weekly letters to one another.

Needless to say, Garvington did not at all approve of the decision of his sister, which she duly communicated to him.  He disliked Lambert, both as the next heir to the estates, and because he was a more popular man than himself.  Even had Pine not prohibited the marriage in his will, Garvington would have objected to Agnes becoming the young man’s wife; as it was, he stormed tempests, but without changing the widow’s determination.  Being a remarkably selfish creature, all he desired was that Agnes should live a solitary life as a kind of banker, to supply him with money whenever he chose to ask for the same.  Pine he had not been able to manage, but he felt quite sure that he could bully his sister into doing what he wanted.  It both enraged and surprised him to find that she had a will of her own and was not content to obey his egotistical orders.  Agnes would not even remain under his roof—­as he wanted her to, lest some other person should get hold of her and the desirable millions—­but returned to her London house.  The only comfort he had was that Lambert was not with her, and therefore—­as he devoutly hoped—­she would meet some man who would cause her to forget the Abbot’s Wood recluse.  So long as Agnes retained the money, Garvington did not particularly object to her marrying, as he always hoped to cajole and bully ready cash out of her, but he would have preferred had she remained single, as then she could be more easily plundered.

“And yet I don’t know,” he said to his long-suffering wife.  “While she’s a widow there’s always the chance that she may take the bit between her teeth and marry Noel, in which case she loses everything.  It will be as well to get her married.”

“You will have no selection of the husband this time,” said Lady Garvington, whose sympathies were entirely for Agnes.  “She will choose for herself.”

“Let her,” retorted Garvington, with feigned generosity.  “So long as she does not choose Noel; hang him!”

“He’s the very man she will choose;” replied his wife, and Garvington, uneasily conscious that she was probably right, cursed freely all women in general and his sister in particular.  Meanwhile he went to Paris to look after a famous chef, of whom he had heard great things, and left his wife in London with strict injunctions to keep a watch on Agnes.