“Then m’appen we’ll stay on in the old place,” she considered; “But if we doos those things which we ought not to have done, as they sez in the prayer-book, we’ll get the sack in no time, for all that she looks so smilin’ and girlie-like.”

And so profound were her cogitations on this point that she actually forgot to give her husband the sound rating she had prepared for him concerning the part he had taken in bringing Josey Letherbarrow up to the Manor.  Returning from the village in some trepidation, that harmless man was allowed to go to bed and sleep in peace, with no more than a reminder shrilled into his ears to be ’up with the dawn, as Miss Maryllia would be about early.’

Maryllia herself, meanwhile, quite unconscious that her small personality had made any marked or tremendous effect upon her domestics, retired to rest in happy mood.  She was glad to be in her own home, and still more glad to find herself needed there.

“I’ve been an absolutely useless creature up till now,” she said, shaking down her hair, after the maid Nancy had disrobed her and left her for the night.  “The fact is, there never was a more utterly idle and nonsensical creature in the world than I am!  I’ve done nothing but dress and curl my hair, and polish my face, and dance, and flirt and frivol the time away.  Now, if I only am able to save five historical old trees, I shall have done something useful;—­ something more than half the women I know would ever take the trouble to do.  For, of course, I suppose I shall have a row,—­or as Aunt Emily would say ’words,’—­with the agent.  All the better!  I love a fight,—­especially with a man who thinks himself wiser than I am!  That is where men are so ridiculous,—­they always think themselves wiser than women, even though some of them can’t earn their own living except through a woman’s means.  Lots of men will take a woman’s money, and sneer at her while spending it!  I know them!” And she nestled into her bed, with a little cosy cuddling movement of her soft white shoulders; “‘Take all and give nothing!’ is the motto of modern manhood;—­I don’t admire it,—­I don’t endorse it; I never shall!  The true motto of love and chivalry should be ’Give all—­take nothing’!”

Midnight chimed from the courtyard turret.  She listened to the mellow clang with a sense of pleased comfort and security.

“Many people would think of ghosts and all sorts of uncanny things in an old, old house like this at midnight;” she thought; “But somehow I don’t believe there are any ghosts here.  At any rate, not unpleasant ones;—­only dear and loving ‘home’ ghosts, who will do me no harm!”

She soon sank into a restful slumber, and the moonlight poured in through the old latticed windows, forming a delicate tracery of silver across the faded rose silken coverlet of the bed, and showing the fair face, half in light, half in shade, that rested against the pillow, with the unbound hair scattered loosely on either side of it, like a white lily between two leaves of gold.  And as the hours wore on, and the silence grew more intense, the slow and somewhat rusty pendulum of the clock in the tower could just be heard faintly ticking its way on towards the figures of the dawn.  “Give all—­take nothing—­Give—­all—­take—­no—­thing!” it seemed to say;—­the motto of love and the code of chivalry, according to Maryllia.