re
considerate if you had any tendencies in an opposite direction. But--" he
paused a moment, then smiled grimly,--"well, you may as well have the
truth even if it is slightly unpalatable, and you can remember that I did
not know you as a man. I was not sure of you. If you had known I was up
here, and you had got an inkling of the game I was playing, what was to
prevent you from playing your own game for the year, I argued, in fact
pretending to a sympathy with the tenants which you did not feel. I have
never had the highest opinion of human nature. On that account I
conceived the idea of dying. It was easily carried out. The folk around
were amazingly gullible; the report spread like wild-fire,--through the
village, that is to say. I don't for a moment suppose it went much beyond
it. The solicitors were in our confidence, and no obituary notice
appeared in the papers. The villagers were not likely to notice the
omission. Gateley is in Australia. Yes; it was easy enough to manage. But
I see the weakness in the business now. You might quite well have
imagined Hilary to be the watch-dog, and have played your game to him,
and if I'd died suddenly before the year was up, and you had disclosed
your true hand, matters would not have been as I had intended them to be.
It was a mad idea, I have no doubt, though on the whole I am not sure
that it wasn't its very madness that most appealed to me." He stopped.

"And what," said Antony, "is to be the outcome of this confidence now?"
There was a certain stiffness in the question. The odd feeling of
resentment was returning. He suddenly saw the whole business as a stupid
child's game, a game in which he had given his word of honour with no
smallest advantage to any single human being, and with quite enormous
disadvantages to himself.

"The main outcome," said Nicholas, "is that I wish to offer you--Antony
Gray--the post of agent on my estate for the remainder of my lifetime. At
my death the will I have already drawn up holds good. The year's
probation for you therein mentioned is not likely to be long exceeded,
even if it is exceeded at all. At least such is Doctor Hilary's
opinion."

There was a silence. Nicholas was watching Antony from under his shaggy
eyebrows. The man was actually hesitating, debating! What in the name of
wonder did the hesitation mean? Surely the offer of the post of agent was
infinitely preferable to that of under-gardener? If the latter had been
accepted,