e ought to be back from school. It was holiday time indeed. Could she
be away?

He made an effort, and remarked absently that things seemed very
unchanged at Bryngelly.

"You are looking for Beatrice," said Elizabeth, answering his thought
and not his words. "She has gone out walking, but I think she will be
back soon. Excuse me, but I must go and see about your room."

Geoffrey hung about a little, then he lit his pipe and strolled down to
the beach, with a vague unexpressed idea of meeting Beatrice. He did not
meet Beatrice, but he met old Edward, who knew him at once.

"Lord, sir," he said, "it's queer to see you here again, specially when
I thinks as how I saw you first, and you a dead 'un to all purposes,
with your mouth open, and Miss Beatrice a-hanging on to your hair fit
to pull your scalp off. You never was nearer old Davy than you was
that night, sir, nor won't be. And now you've been spared to become a
Parliament man, I hears, and much good may you do there--it will take
all your time, sir--and I think, sir, that I should like to drink your
health."

Geoffrey put his hand in his pocket and gave the old man a sovereign. He
could afford to do so now.

"Does Miss Beatrice go out canoeing now?" he asked while Edward mumbled
his astonished thanks.

"At times, sir--thanking you kindly; it ain't many suvrings as comes my
way--though I hate the sight on it, I do. I'd like to stave a hole in
the bottom of that there cranky concern; it ain't safe, and that's the
fact. There'll be another accent out of it one of these fine days and
no coming to next time. But, Lord bless you, it's her way of pleasuring
herself. She's a queer un is Miss Beatrice, and she gets queerer and
queerer, what with their being so tight screwed up at the Vicarage, no
tithes and that, and one thing and another. Not but what I'm thinking,
sir," he added in a portentous whisper, "as the squire has got summut to
do with it. He's a courting of her, he is; he's as hard after her as a
dog fish after a stray herring, and why she can't just say yes and marry
him I'm sure I don't know."

"Perhaps she doesn't like him," said Geoffrey coldly.

"May be, sir, may be; maids all have their fancies, in whatsoever walk
o' life it has pleased God to stick 'em, but it's a wonderful pity, it
is. He ain't no great shakes, he ain't, but he's a sound man--no girl
can't want a sounder--lived quiet all his days you see, sir, and what's
more he's got the money, a