her--if to get this thing done were indeed
against Fillingford. Nor had he any idea that his scruples about family
loyalty were to be annihilated by the intervention of a fairy godmother.
Jenny had stuck to the romantic color of her scheme. She sent him forth
to meet his father with no plea in extenuation, with no proffer of gold
wherewith to gild the hated name of Octon. His fight was to be
single-handed. So she chose to prove his metal--with, perhaps, a
side-thought that the fairy godmother's intervention, coming later,
might be more effective--and would certainly gain in picturesqueness!
That notion, unflattering maybe, one could not easily dismiss when the
workings of her mind were in question. Yet it might be that a finer idea
was there--that it was not only Lacey's metal which was to be proved
that night. She had said that she was ready to bribe, that she might
have to bully--and implied that she was prepared to do both at once, if
need be. But had it come across her thoughts that, by divine chance, she
might have to do neither? She knew Fillingford's love for his son; she
had sent Margaret to met Fillingford that he might see her as she was.
She might be minded now to prove if love alone would not serve the turn.
The battalions might all be held in leash--and the God of Love himself
sent forth as herald to a parley. If Fillingford surrendered to that
pleading, the victory would not be so purely Jenny's: but she would, I
believed, have the grace to like it better. That it was a less
characteristic mode of proceeding had to be admitted: but to-day there
would be an atmosphere at the Priory which might incline her to it. She
would not force Fillingford, if she need not--neither by threats nor by
bribes. Being myself, I suppose, somewhat touched by Amyas Lacey's
exaltation, I found myself hoping that she would try--first--the appeal
of heart to heart. That she would accept it as final--I knew too much to
look for that.

The case could not, in its nature, be so simple. With the appeal of love
must come that relief from a greater fear which she had carefully
implanted, on which she certainly reckoned. That was in the very marrow
of her plan; no romantic fancies could get rid of it. The best excuse
for it lay in the fact that it would certainly be useful, and was
probably necessary. When things are certainly useful and probably
necessary, the world is apt to exhibit toward them a certain leniency of
judgment. Jenny did