“You can ride to the 'Woodman's Rest,' my lady, and it is scarce a stone's-throw from there; but 'tis baddish traveling for the likes of you.”
She appointed an hour, rode with her groom to the public-house, and thence was conducted through bush, through brier, to the place where her husband had been so annoyed.
Moss's comments became very intelligible to her the moment she saw the place. She said very little, however, and rode home.
Next day she blushed high, and asked Sir Charles for a hundred pounds to spend upon herself.
Sir Charles smiled, well pleased, and gave it her, and a kiss into the bargain.
“I am glad of it. You spend too little money on yourself--a great deal too little.”
“That is a complaint you won't have long to make. I want to cut down a few trees. _May_ I?”
“That is enough. Cut down every stick on the estate if you like. The barer it leaves us the better.”
“Ah, Charles, you promised me not. I shall cut with great discretion, I assure you.”
“As you please,” said Sir Charles. “If you want to make me happy, deny yourself nothing. Mind, I shall be angry if you do.”
Soon after this a gaping quidnunc came to Sir Charles and told him Lady Bassett was felling trees in North Wood.
“And pray who has a better right to fell trees in any wood of mine?”
“And who has a better right to build a wall?”
With the delicacy of a gentleman he would not go near the place after this till she asked him; and that was not long, She came into his study, all beaming, and invited him to a ride. She took him into North Wood, and showed him her work. Richard Bassett's plantation, hitherto divided from North Wood only by a boundary scarcely visible, was now shut off by a brick wall: on Sir Charles's side of that wall every stick of timber was felled and removed for a distance of fifty yards, and about twenty yards from the wall a belt of larches was planted, a little higher than cabbages.
Sir Charles looked amazed at first, but soon observed how thoroughly his enemy was defeated. “My poor Bella,” said he, “to think of your taking all this trouble about such a thing!” He stopped to kiss her very tenderly, and she shone with joy and innocent pride. “And I never thought of this! You astonish me, Bella.”