iliar and
intimate. But probably he was one of those able men who have little
to say to the young girl, and keep their real minds for the older
and experienced woman.

At any rate, Elizabeth dismissed from her mind whatever vague notion
or curiosity as to a possible love-affair for Pamela in that
direction might have been lurking in it. And that being so, she
promptly, and without _arriere pensee_ of any sort, allowed herself
the pleasant recollection of half an hour's conversation which had
put her intellectually on her mettle, and quickened those infant
ambitions of a practical and patriotic kind which were beginning to
rise in her.

But the Squire's coming escapade! How to stop it?--for Desmond's
sake chiefly.

Dear boy! It was on a tender, almost maternal thought of him that
she at last turned to sleep. But the footstep pursued her ear. What
was the meaning of this long nocturnal pacing? Had the Squire, after
all, a heart, or some fragment of one? Was it the parting from
Desmond that thus kept him from his bed? She would have liked to
think it--but did not quite succeed!

CHAPTER VII

A week or two had passed.

The Squire was on his way to inspect his main preparations for the
battle at the park gates, which he expected on the morrow. He had
been out before breakfast that morning, on horseback, with one of
the gardeners, to see that all the gates on the estate, except the
Chetworth gate, were locked and padlocked. For the Chetworth gate,
which adjoined the land to be attacked, more serious defences were
in progress.

All his attempts to embarrass the action of the Committee had been
so far vain. The alternatives he had proposed had been refused.
Fifty acres at the Chetworth end of Mannering Park, besides goodly
slices elsewhere, the County Committee meant to have. As the Squire
would not plough them himself, and as the season was advancing, he
had been peremptorily informed that the motor plough belonging to
the County Committee would be sent over on such a day, with so many
men, to do the work; the land had been surveyed; no damage would be
done to the normal state of the property that could be avoided; et
cetera.

So the crisis was at hand. The Squire felt battle in his blood.

As he walked along through his domain, exhilarated by the bright
frosty morning, and swinging his stick like a boy, he was in the
true Quixotic mood, ready to tilt at any wind-mill in his path. The
state of the countr