Instead of directly replying, Margery exclaimed in a low voice:
‘O, it is a mistake—I didn’t see it all, owing to not having time to reflect! I agreed, thinking that at least I should get reconciled to father by the step. But perhaps he would as soon have me not married at all as married and parted. I must ha’ been enchanted—bewitched—when I gave my consent to this! I only did it to please that dear good dying nobleman—though why he should have wished it so much I can’t tell!’
‘Nor I neither,’ said Jim. ‘Yes, we’ve been fooled into it, Margery,’ he said, with extraordinary gravity. ‘He’s had his way wi’ us, and now we’ve got to suffer for it. Being a gentleman of patronage, and having bought several loads of lime o’ me, and having given me all that splendid furniture, I could hardly refuse—’
Margery covered her face with her hands; whereupon Jim stood up from the gate and looked critically at her. ‘’Tis a footy plot between you two men to—snare me!’ she exclaimed. ‘Why should you have done it—why should he have done it—when I’ve not deserved to be treated so. He bought the furniture—did he! O, I’ve been taken in—I’ve been wronged!’ The grief and vexation of finding that long ago, when fondly believing the Baron to have lover-like feelings himself for her, he was still conspiring to favour Jim’s suit, was more than she could endure.
Jim with distant courtesy waited, nibbling a straw, till her paroxysm was over. ‘One word, Miss Tuck—Mrs.—Margery,’ he then recommenced gravely. ‘You’ll find me man enough to respect your wish, and to leave you to yourself—for ever and ever, if that’s all. But I’ve just one word of advice to render ’ee. That is, that before you go to Silverthorn Dairy yourself you let me drive ahead and call on your father. He’s friends with me, and he’s not friends with you. I can break the news, a little at a time, and I think I can gain his good will for you now, even though the wedding be no natural wedding at all. At any count, I can hear what he’s got to say about ’ee, and come back here and tell ’ee.’
She nodded a cool assent to this, and he left her strolling about the garden in the sunlight while he went on to reconnoitre as agreed. It must not be supposed that Jim’s dutiful echoes of Margery’s regret at her precipitate marriage were all gospel; and there is no doubt that his private intention, after telling the dairy-farmer what had happened, was to ask his temporary assent to her caprice, till, in the course of time, she should be reasoned out of her whims and induced to settle down with Jim in a natural manner. He had, it is true, been somewhat nettled by her firm objection to him, and her keen sorrow for what she had done to please another; but he hoped for the best.