s man money that he had demanded with covert
threats? And too late she regretted, and would have had the letter back
if she could.

"I have no one, not a soul in the world I can turn to. Even Helen is
almost a stranger," the girl thought. "I cannot confide in her. I seem
to be so--so alone, so utterly alone." She twisted her hands together
and stood thoughtful for some moments in the roadway where she turned
back through the garden gate to the house.

"I feel so--so tired," she whispered, "so tired, so weary of it all. I
have no one to turn to."

CHAPTER XXIII

"UNCERTAIN--COY"

Mr. Tom Arundel, cheerful and happy-go-lucky, filled with an immense
belief in a future which he was sure would somehow shape itself
satisfactorily, felt a little hurt, a little surprised, just a little
disenchanted.

"I can't think what's come over her. She used to be such a ripping
little thing, so sweet and good-tempered, and now--why she snaps a
chap's head off the moment he opens his mouth. Goo-law!" said Tom.
"Supposing she grows up to be like her aunt--maybe it is in the blood!"

The prospect seemed to overwhelm him for a moment. Certainly of late
Marjorie had been uncertain, coy, and very hard to please. Marjorie had
suffered, and was suffering. She was contrasting Tom with Hugh, and Hugh
with Tom, and it made her heart ache and made her angry with herself for
her own previous blindness. And, womanlike, being in a very bad temper
with herself, she snapped at the luckless Tom like an ill-conditioned
terrier, and he never approached her but that she, metaphorically, bared
her pretty white teeth, ready to do battle with him.

"Rum things, girls--never know how to take 'em! She don't seem like the
same," thought Tom. "I wonder--"

There had been a breeze, a distinct breeze. Perhaps Tom, anxious to
propitiate Lady Linden, had been a little more servile than usual. He
did not mean to be servile. Alluding to his attitude afterwards to
Marjorie, he called it "Pulling the old girl's leg." And when Marjorie
had turned on him, her eyes had flashed scorn on him, her little body
had quivered and shaken with indignation.

"If you think it clever currying favour with aunt by--by crawling to
her," she cried, "then I don't! If you want to--to keep my respect,
you'll have to act like a man, a man with self-respect! I--I hate to see
you cringing to aunt, it makes me detest you. What does it matter if she
has money? Do you want her mone