n of
that odious villa of unpleasant memories. It made inroads on Cartmell's
money-bags till--what with it, and Margaret's great endowment, to say
nothing of Dormer's fields--rich Miss Driver was for two or three months
positively hard up for ready money! But the result was to be
magnificent; with every fresh brick and every additional sovereign,
Catsford grew more loyal, and the prospect of catching that prince more
promising. "And I'm going to get Mr. Bindlecombe made Mayor again next
year, and Amyas must pull all the wires in London town to get him a
knighthood. With Margaret and Amyas married, the Institute opened, and
Mr. Bindlecombe Sir John, I think I may sing _Nunc Dimittis_, Austin!"

"We might perhaps look forward to a short period of peace," I admitted
cautiously.

"Come down and look at the old place once more, before it's changed
quite out of recognition. Just you and I together!"

We went down together one evening in the dusk. Architects and surveyors,
clerks, masons, and laborers had all gone home to their rest. The place
was quiet for the night, though the rents in the ground and the rising
walls spoke loud of the toils of the day. The old house stood unchanged
in the middle of it all; unchanged, too, was the path down which Jenny
had passed after she begged the loan of Lord Fillingford's carriage. She
took a key from her purse and opened the door of the house. "Let's go in
for a minute."

She led me into the room where once I had waited for her--where, another
time, I had found her holding Powers's head, where Fillingford had come
upon us in the very instant when I had hailed safety as in sight. The
room was just as Octon had left it--his heavy dining table, his ugly
dining chairs, the two old leather ones on each side of the fireplace,
his spears and knives on the wall. And there, too, on the mantelpiece,
was the picture of the beautiful child which I had marked as missing
when I reached the house that night.

"You've been here before," I said to Jenny, pointing at the picture.

"I found it among his papers after he was at peace," she answered,
sitting down in one of the old leather chairs. "I knew this was its
place; it has returned to it. And there it will stay, so long as I or
Margaret have a voice here. Yes, I have been here before--and I shall be
here often. This is to be my room--sacred to me. From here I shall pull
the wires!" She smiled at me in a humorous sadness.

"Not the wires of me