’Twas far enough in the retrospect now so that I could smile at it.  Yet I would not suffer him to bluster me aside.

“It was an ill thing for you to do, none the less, Mr. Stair; the more as you must have known that Mistress Margery’s faith was plighted to Richard Jennifer long before all this came to pass.”

“Did I know it?” he shrilled.  “That lang-legged jackanapes of a Dickie Jennifer?  Light o’ love jade that she is, she never cared the snap of a finger for him.”

“You are talking far enough beside the mark now,” I retorted.  “Your daughter loves Richard Jennifer well and truly; and with this entanglement brushed aside she will marry him when he comes back from the wars.”

“She will, ye say?  And what will become o’ the braw acres of Appleby that gait, I’d like to know?  But ye’re daft, man; clean daft.  Didn’t I speir her giving him his quittance once for all that night when he rode away after they had pitten ye to bed?  She tell’t him flat she loved another man.”

“Another man?” I echoed.  “I—­explain yourself, if you please, Mr. Stair.  What other man—­”

He was at the door by this, and he broke out upon me in such a blast of cursing as I hope never to hear from the lips of such an old man again.

“Ye cold-blooded, crusty devil!” he quavered, when all his breath was spent upon the bigger malisons.  “Has it never come intil your thick numbskull that the poor fule lassie is sick wi’ love for ye, ye dour-faced loon?”

And with that he let himself out and slammed the door behind him, and I heard him go pottering down the corridor, still cursing me by all the choice phrases he could lay tongue to.

LII

WHICH BRINGS US TO THE JOURNEY’S END

I may confess to you, my dears, that Mr. Gilbert Stair’s parting tirade did not move me greatly, since I would set down everything he had said to the one account—­the miser’s.

Yet when I came to second thoughts upon it, this account balanced but indifferently.  Why should he be so eager to make me think small of Margery’s love for Richard Jennifer?  And why, misliking me, as I made sure he did, should he be so hot to make the shadow marriage a thing of substance?  From the miser-father’s point of view, Richard, with his goodly heritage of Jennifer House, was a match to be angled for; yet here was the man in whose eye house and lands loomed largest flying into rage because I sought to put his daughter in the way of marrying them.

I was pondering thoughtfully on this, giving the pinching old man credit for any and every motive save that which he had so cursingly avowed, to wit, the furthering of his daughter’s happiness, when there came a tap at the door and Mistress Margery entered.

“Dear heart!  Do they limit you to a single candle when my back is turned?” she said, in mock pity; and saying it, went to light the candles in the mantel sconces.