“Well;—­I rather think he is.”

“But a blackguard may have a good cause.  Put it in your own case, Mr. Runce.  If his Lordship’s pheasants ate up your wheat—­”

“They’re welcome;—­they’re welcome!  The more the merrier.  But they don’t.  Pheasants know when they’re well off.”

“Or if a crowd of horsemen rode over your fences, don’t you think—­”

“My fences!  They’d be welcome in my wife’s bedroom if the fox took that way.  My fences!  It’s what I has fences for,—­to be ridden over.”

“You didn’t exactly hear what I have to say, Mr. Runce.”

“And I don’t want.  No offence, sir, if you be a friend of my Lord’s; but if his Lordship was to say himself that Goarly was right, I wouldn’t listen to him.  A good cause,—­and he going about at dead o’ night with his pockets full of p’ison!  Hounds and foxes all one!—­or little childer either for the matter o’ that, if they happened on the herrings!”

“I have not said his cause was good, Mr. Runce.”

“I’ll wish you good evening, Sir George,” said the farmer, reining his pony round.  “Good evening to you, sir.”  And Mr. Runce trotted or rather ambled off, unable to endure another word.

“An honest man, I dare say,” said the Senator.

“Certainly; and not a bad specimen of a British farmer.”

“Not a bad specimen of a Briton generally;—­but still, perhaps, a little unreasonable.”  After that Sir George said as little as he could, till he had brought the Senator back to the hall.

“I think it’s all over now,” said Lady Penwether to Miss Penge, when the gentlemen had left them alone in the afternoon.

“I’m sure I hope so,—­for his sake.  What a woman to come here by herself, in that way!”

“I don’t think he ever cared for her in the least.”

“I can’t say that I have troubled myself much about that,” replied Miss Penge.  “For the sake of the family generally, and the property, and all that, I should be very very sorry to think that he was going to make her Lady Rufford.  I dare say he has amused himself with her.”

“There was very little of that, as far as I can learn;—­very little encouragement indeed!  What we saw here was the worst of it.  He was hardly with her at all at Mistletoe.”

“I hope it will make him more cautious;—­that’s all,” said Miss Penge.  Miss Penge was now a great heiress, having had her lawsuit respecting certain shares in a Welsh coal-mine settled since we last saw her.  As all the world knows she came from one of the oldest Commoner’s families in the West of England, and is, moreover, a handsome young woman, only twenty-seven years of age.  Lady Penwether thinks that she is the very woman to be mistress of Rufford, and I do not know that Miss Penge herself is averse to the idea.  Lord Rufford has been too lately wounded to rise at the bait quite immediately; but his sister knows that her brother is impressionable and that a little patience will go a long way.  They have, however, all agreed at the hall that Arabella’s name shall not again be mentioned.