He found her, in a far corner, among close-growing trees and with her usual occupations, her books and her embroidery, beside her. But she was neither reading nor sewing. She sprang up to greet him, and for an hour of summer twilight they held a rapid, low-voiced conversation.
When he pressed her hand at parting they looked at each other, still overshadowed by the doubt and perplexity which had marked the opening of their interview. But he tried to reassure her.
"Put from you all idea of immediate difficulty," he said earnestly. "There really is none--none at all. Stephen is perfectly reasonable, and as for the escapade to-day--"
"She means to marry at the earliest possible moment--simply to escape from Edith--and that house. We sha'n't delay it long. And who knows what may happen if we thwart her too much?"
"We _must_ delay it a year or two, if we possibly can--for her sake--and for yours," said Meynell firmly. "Good night, my dear friend. Try and sleep--put the anxiety away. When the moment comes--and of course I admit it must come--you will reap the harvest of the love you have sown. She does love you!--I am certain of that."
He heard a low sound--was it a sobbing breath?--as Alice Puttenham disappeared in the darkness which had overtaken the garden.
Breakfast at the White House, Upcote Minor, was an affair of somewhat minute regulation.
About a fortnight after Mr. Barron's call on the new tenants of Maudeley Hall, his deaf daughter Theresa entered the dining-room as usual on the stroke of half-past eight. She glanced round her to see that all was in order, the breakfast table ready, and the chairs placed for prayers. Then she went up to a side-table on which was placed a large Bible and prayer-book and a pile of hymn-books. She looked at the lessons and psalms for the day and placed markers in the proper places. Then she chose a hymn, and laid six open hymn-books one upon another. After which she stood for a moment looking at the first verse of the psalm for the day: "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help." The verse was one of her favourites, and she smiled vaguely, like one who recognizes in the distance a familiar musical phrase.
Theresa Barron was nearly thirty. She had a long face with rather high cheek-bones, and timid gray eyes. Her complexion was sallow, her figure awkward. Her only beauty indeed lay in a certain shy and fleeting charm of expression, which very few people noticed. She passed generally for a dull and plain woman, ill-dressed, with a stoop that was almost a deformity, and a deafness that made her socially useless. But the young servants whom she trained, and the few poor people on her father's estate to whom she was allowed to minister, were very fond of "Miss Theresa." But for her, the owner of Upcote Minor Park would have been even more unpopular than he was, indoors and out. The wounds made by his brusque or haughty manner to his inferiors were to a certain extent healed by the gentleness and the good heart of his daughter. And a kind of glory was reflected on him by her unreasoning devotion to him. She suffered under his hardness or his self-will, but she adored him all the time; nor was her ingenuity ever at a loss for excuses for him. He always treated her carelessly, sometimes contemptuously; but he would not have known how to get through life without her, and she was aware of it.