“Well, your hard-heartedness has done for him, Rachel Frost.  It has drove him away from his native home, and sent him, a exile, to rough it in foreign lands.  You may fix upon one as won’t do for you and be your slave as Luke would.  He could have kept you well.”

“I heard he had gone to London,” she remarked.

“London!” returned the bailiff slightingly.  “That’s only the first halt on the journey.  And you have drove him to it!”

“I can’t help it,” she replied, turning to the house.  “I had no natural liking for him, and I could not force it.  I don’t believe he has gone away for that trifling reason, Mr. Roy.  If he has, he must be very foolish.”

“Yes, he is foolish,” muttered the bailiff to himself, as he strode away.  “He’s a idiot, that’s what he is! and so be all men that loses their wits a-sighing after a girl.  Vain, deceitful, fickle creatures, the girls be when they’re young; but once let them get a hold on you, your ring on their finger, and they turn into vixenish, snarling women!  Luke’s a sight best off without her.”

Rachel Frost proceeded indoors.  The door of the steward’s room stood open, and she turned into it, fancying it was empty.  Down on a chair sat she, a marked change coming over her air and manner.  Her bright colour had faded, her hands hung down listless; and there was an expression on her face of care, of perplexity.  Suddenly she lifted her hands and struck her temples, with a gesture that looked very like despair.

“What ails you, Rachel?”

The question came from Frederick Massingbird, who had been standing at the window behind the high desk, unobserved by Rachel.  Violently startled, she sprang up from her seat, her face a glowing crimson, muttering some disjointed words, to the effect that she did not know anybody was there.

“What were you and Roy discussing so eagerly in the yard?” continued Frederick Massingbird.  But the words had scarcely escaped his lips, when the housekeeper, Mrs. Tynn, entered the room.  She had a mottled face and mottled arms, her sleeves just now being turned up to the elbow.

“It was nothing particular, Mr. Frederick,” replied Rachel.

“Roy is gone, is he not?” he continued to Rachel.

“Yes, sir.”

“Rachel,” interposed the housekeeper, “are those things not ready yet, in the laundry?”

“Not quite.  In a quarter of an hour, they say.”

The housekeeper, with a word of impatience at the laundry’s delay, went out and crossed the yard towards it.  Frederick Massingbird turned again to Rachel.

“Roy seemed to be grumbling at you.”

“He accused me of being the cause of his son’s going away.  He thinks I ought to have noticed him.”

Frederick Massingbird made no reply.  He raised his finger and gently rubbed it round and round the mark upon his cheek:  a habit he had acquired when a child, and they could not entirely break him of it.  He was seven-and-twenty years of age now, but he was sure to begin rubbing that mark unconsciously, if in deep thought.  Rachel resumed, her tone a covert one, as if the subject on which she was about to speak might not be breathed, even to the walls.