A general scrambling movement followed this brief exordium.  With shy awkwardness each young fellow lifted his cap as he shambled sheepishly past Maryllia, who acknowledged these salutes smilingly,- -Bainton assisted Spruce to rise to his feet, and then took him off under his personal escort,—­and only Leach remained, convulsively gripping his dog-whip which he had picked up from the ground where the lads had thrown it,—­and anon striking it against his boot with a movement of impatience and irritation.

“Good-morning, Mr. Leach!” said Walden pointedly.  But Leach stood still, looking askance at Maryllia.

“Miss Vancourt,” he said, hoarsely; “Am I to understand that you meant what you said just now?”

She glanced at him coldly.

“That I dismiss you from my service?  Of course I meant it!  Of course I mean it!”

“I am bound to have fair notice,” he muttered.  “I cannot collect all my accounts in a moment—­”

“Whatever else you may do, you will leave this place at, once;” said Maryllia, firmly,—­“I will communicate my decision to the solicitors and they will settle with you.  No more words, please!”

She turned her mare slowly round on the grassy knoll, looking up meanwhile at the lovely canopy of tremulous young green above her head.  John Walden watched her.  So did Oliver Leach,—­and with a sudden oath, rapped out like a discordant bomb bursting in the still air, he exclaimed savagely: 

“You shall repent this, my fine lady!  By God, you shall!  You shall rue the day you ever saw Abbot’s Manor again!  You had far better have stayed with your rich Yankee relations than have made such a home-coming as this for yourself, and such an outgoing for me!  My curse on you!”

Shaking his fist threateningly at her, he sprang down the knoll, and plunging through the grass and fern was soon lost to sight.

The soft colour in Maryllia’s cheeks paled a little and a slight tremor ran through her frame.  She looked at Walden,—­then laughed carelessly.

“Guess I’ve given him fits!” she said, relapsing into one of her Aunt Emily’s American colloquialisms, with happy unconsciousness that this particular phrase coming from her pretty lips sent a kind of shock through John’s sensitive nerves.  “He’s not a very pleasant man to meet anyway!  And it isn’t altogether agreeable to be cursed on the first morning of my return home.  But, after all, it doesn’t matter much, as there’s a clergyman present!” And her blue eyes. danced mischievously; “Isn’t it lucky you came?  You can stop that curse on its way and send it back like a homing pigeon, can’t you?  What do you say when you do it?  ‘Retro me Sathanas,’ or something of that kind, isn’t it?  Whatever it is, say it now, won’t you?”

Walden laughed,—­he could not help laughing.  She spoke, with such a whimsical flippancy, and she looked so bewitchingly pretty.