"Why the devil couldn't I fall in love with a nice girl like that," he muttered to himself, "instead of--"
He pulled up short, set his heel upon that other vision, and braced himself for the immediate task before him. He drove around the park, drew up outside the cottage, and, descending from the car, approached the low hedge. At the further end of the garden he could hear his uncle's sonorous voice. He was seated in a high-backed chair, the Bible upon his knee, reading to himself slowly and with great distinctness the Ten Commandments. On the ground by his side were the remnants of another chair. As David came up the little path, his uncle concluded his reading and laid down the Bible.
"Bring out a chair and sit with me, David," he invited.
"Don't jest," his uncle interrupted. "That chair I have broken to pieces with my own hands because of the woman who sat upon it not many hours since."
"I mean Marcia--the woman who was my daughter," was the stern reply, "the woman of whose visit you warned me."
"Come into the house with me," David begged, turning his back upon Mandeleys. "You sit and look at that great drear building and brood overmuch. I want to talk with you."
Richard Vont rose obediently to his feet and followed his visitor into the little parlour. David looked around him curiously.
"This place seems to have the flavour of many years ago," he said. "Sometimes I can scarcely realise that I have ever eaten my meals off that oak table. Sometimes it seems like yesterday."
"Time passes, but time don't count for much," the old man sighed. "Mary Wells will be up from the village soon, and she'll make us a cup of tea. Sit opposite me, lad. Is there any more news?"
"There will be no change in them," David replied. "In two months' time he will know it."
"And he'll have forty thousand pounds to find, eh?--forty thousand pounds which he will never be able to raise!" Richard Vont muttered, his eyes curiously bright. "There isn't an acre of land here that isn't mortgaged over and over again."
"You'll make him a bankrupt, I suppose," David said thoughtfully.
"Ay, a bankrupt!" his uncle repeated, lingering over the word with a fierce joy. "But there's something more as'll fall to your lot, David," he went on,--"something more--and the time's none so far off."