He spoke in his usual emotionless voice, but he woke very active phenomena in Mrs. Northover.  Her face grew troubled and she looked into his eyes with a frown.

“Me gone!  What do you mean, Legg?  Me leave ‘The Seven Stars’ after thirty-four years?”

“No doubt your first would turn in his grave if you did,” he admitted; “but what about it?  When you’re mistress of ’The Tiger’—­well, then you’re mistress of ‘The Tiger,’ and you can’t be in two places at once—­clever as you are.”

He had given her something to think about.  The possibility of guile in Mr. Legg had never struck the least, or greatest, of his admirers.  He was held a simple soul of transparent probity, yet, for a moment, it almost seemed as though his last remark carried an inner meaning.  Nelly dismissed the suspicion as unworthy of Job; but none the less, though he had doubtless spoken without any sinister purpose, his opinions gave her pause.  Indeed, they shook her.  She had been too much excited to look ahead.  Now she was called to do so.

Mr. Legg removed the bunch of keys from its nail and prepared to go on his way.

She felt weak.

“To play second fiddle for the rest of your life after playing first for a quarter of a century is a far-reaching thought,” she said.

“Without a doubt it would be,” he admitted.  “Of course, with some men you wouldn’t be called to do it.  With Richard Gurd, you would.”

“To leave ‘The Seven Stars’!  Somehow I’d always regarded our place as a higher class establishment than ’The Tiger’—­along of the tea-gardens and pleasure ground and the class of company.”

“And quite right to do so.  But that’s only your opinion, and mine.  It won’t be his.  Good night.”

He left her deep in thought, then five minutes afterwards thrust his long nose round the door again.

“The English of it is you can’t have anything for nothing—­not in this weary world,” he said.

Then he disappeared.

A week later Sarah Northover came to see her aunt and congratulate her on the great news.

“Now people know it,” said Sarah, “they all wonder how ever ’twas you and Mister Gurd didn’t marry long ago.”

“We’ve been wondering the same, for that matter, and Richard takes the blame—­naturally, since I couldn’t say the word before he asked the question.  But for your ear and only yours, Sarah, I can whisper that this thing didn’t go by rule.  And in sober honesty I do believe if he hadn’t heard another man wanted me, Mister Gurd would never have found out he did.  But such are the strange things that happen in human nature, no doubt.”

“Another!” said Sarah.  “They’re making up for lost time, seemingly.”

“Another, and a good man,” declared her aunt; “but his name is sacred, and you mustn’t ask to know it.”

Sarah related events at Bridetown.