now I cannot keep myself from feeling
that she misbehaves herself grievously. She does everything she can
to add to his annoyance."

"That is very bad."

"It is bad. He can turn Mr. Greenwood out of the house if Mr.
Greenwood becomes unbearable. But he cannot turn his wife out."

"Could he not come here?"

"I am afraid not,--without bringing her too. She has taken it into
her stupid head that you and I are disgracing the family. As for me,
she seems to think that I am actually robbing her own boys of their
rights. I would do anything for them, or even for her, if I could
comfort her; but she is determined to look upon us as enemies. My
father says that it will worry him into his grave."

"Poor papa!"

"We can run away, but he can not. I became very angry when I was
there, both with her ladyship and that pestilential old clergyman,
and told them both pretty much what I thought. I have the comfort of
knowing that I have two bitter enemies in the house."

"Can they hurt you?"

"Not in the least,--except in this, that they can teach those little
boys to regard me as an enemy. I would fain have had my brothers
left to me. Mr. Greenwood, and I must now say her ladyship also, are
nothing to me."

It was not till after dinner that the story was told about Crocker.
"Think what I must have felt when I was told that a clerk from the
Post Office wanted to see me!"

"And then that brute Crocker was shown in?" asked Hampstead.

"Do you really know him?"

"Know him! I should rather think so. Don't you remember him at Castle
Hautboy?"

"Not in the least. But he told me that he had been there."

"He never would leave me. He absolutely drove me out of the country
because he would follow me about when we were hunting. He insulted me
so grievously that I had to turn tail and run away from him. What did
he want of me?"

"To intercede for him with George Roden."

"He is an abominable man, irrepressible, so thick-skinned that you
cannot possibly get at him so as to hurt him. It is of no use telling
him to keep his distance, for he does not in the least know what you
mean. I do not doubt that he has left the house with a conviction
that he has gained a sincere friend in you."

* * * * * *

It was now more than a fortnight since Marion Fay had dined at
Hendon, and Hampstead felt that unless he could succeed in carrying
on the attack which he had commenced, any little beginning of a
f