iled him. "Surely you must see!" he
protested.

"I see a dear beautiful girl and a charming handsome young man of high
degree," answered Jenny in gay mischief, "and they look very much in
love with one another. Is that dreadful?"

"It's quite a different case, of course--but really, really, just as
hopeless!"

"You'd better not call this hopeless--neither you nor anybody else who
has anything to say to it!"

"Octon's daughter!" He ejaculated the words in a low murmur, flinging
his hands out wide.

"Yes, that's it!" said Jenny, her smile getting harder, and with a
rather vicious look in her eyes. "That's why, isn't it? That's why she's
not good enough for Amyas Lacey, not good enough to be mistress of
Fillingford Manor! There's nothing else against her? Only--she's Leonard
Octon's daughter! Well, now, I say to you that that shall not be against
her. It shall be for her--mightily for her. To that she shall owe
everything; that shall give her all she wants. If you have any
influence, don't use it against her. Use it for her, back her up. It
will be wiser in the interests of the friends whom you're so concerned
for." She left the piano and came into the middle of the room, facing
him. "Because it's the alternative to that unnatural hideous thing of
which you came here to speak--and spoke so plainly. If I'm not much
mistaken, I can turn this thing the way I choose. And I tell you that in
spite of all you've said, and in spite of all I've said, your friends
will be wise to accept the lesser evil. Margaret is better than me, at
all events!"

She was on her high horse now. Very handsome she looked, with a glowing
color in her cheeks; her voice was full of temper, hard-held. It was the
turning point of the scheme which she was working out; through Alison
she launched her ultimatum to Fillingford: "Margaret or myself--there is
no other alternative."

Alison was recovering himself. He dropped into a chair and looked up at
her commanding figure with a smile of kindness--with an admiration wrung
from him by her _coup_.

"You're really wonderful," he told her. "I'll say that for you--and I'll
be as worldly as you like for a minute."

"Yes, do try for once. There is such a thing as this world."

"Then--even setting aside the obvious objection, the objection our
friends at the Manor are bound to feel--Lacey is Lacey, and will be
Fillingford. The girl--I think her as charming as you do--comes from
nowhere and has, I suppos