in a
voice that seemed to him to tremble:

"Well, Gyp?"

"Thank you for my toys; I like them."

He held out his hand, and she gravely put her small hand into it. A sense
of solace, as if some one had slipped a finger in and smoothed his heart,
came over Winton. Gently, so as not to startle her, he raised her hand a
little, bent, and kissed it. It may have been from his instant
recognition that here was one as sensitive as child could be, or the way
many soldiers acquire from dealing with their men--those simple, shrewd
children--or some deeper instinctive sense of ownership between them;
whatever it was, from that moment, Gyp conceived for him a rushing
admiration, one of those headlong affections children will sometimes take
for the most unlikely persons.

He used to go there at an hour when he knew the squire would be asleep,
between two and five. After he had been with Gyp, walking in the park,
riding with her in the Row, or on wet days sitting in her lonely nursery
telling stories, while stout Betty looked on half hypnotized, a rather
queer and doubting look on her comfortable face--after such hours, he
found it difficult to go to the squire's study and sit opposite him,
smoking. Those interviews reminded him too much of past days, when he
had kept such desperate check on himself--too much of the old inward
chafing against the other man's legal ownership--too much of the debt
owing. But Winton was triple-proofed against betrayal of feeling. The
squire welcomed him eagerly, saw nothing, felt nothing, was grateful for
his goodness to the child. Well, well! He had died in the following
spring. And Winton found that he had been made Gyp's guardian and
trustee. Since his wife's death, the squire had muddled his affairs, his
estate was heavily mortgaged; but Winton accepted the position with an
almost savage satisfaction, and, from that moment, schemed deeply to get
Gyp all to himself. The Mount Street house was sold; the Lincolnshire
place let. She and Nurse Betty were installed at his own hunting-box,
Mildenham. In this effort to get her away from all the squire's
relations, he did not scruple to employ to the utmost the power he
undoubtedly had of making people feel him unapproachable. He was never
impolite to any of them; he simply froze them out. Having plenty of
money himself, his motives could not be called in question. In one year
he had isolated her from all except stout Betty. He had no qual