GRINDING POVERTY

It was about an hour later. Sir Marmaduke's guests had departed, Dame
Harrison in her rickety coach, Mistress Pyncheon in her chaise, whilst
Squire Boatfield was riding his well-known ancient cob.

Everyone had drunk sack-posset, had eaten turkey pasties, and enjoyed
the luscious fruit: the men had striven to be agreeable to the heiress,
the old ladies to be encouraging to their proteges. Sir Marmaduke had
tried to be equally amiable to all, whilst favoring none. He was an
unpopular man in East Kent and he knew it, doing nothing to
counterbalance the unpleasing impression caused invariably by his surly
manner, and his sarcastic, often violent, temper.

Mistress Amelia Editha de Chavasse was now alone with her brother-in-law
in the great bare hall of the Court, Lady Sue having retired to her room
under pretext of the vapors, and young Lambert been finally dismissed
from work for the day.

"You are passing kind to the youth, Marmaduke," said Mistress de
Chavasse meditatively when the young man's darkly-clad figure had
disappeared up the stairs.

She was sitting in a high-backed chair, her head resting against the
carved woodwork. The folds of her simple gown hung primly round her
well-shaped figure. Undoubtedly she was still a very good-looking woman,
though past the hey-day of her youth and beauty. The half-light caused
by the depth of the window embrasure, and the smallness of the glass
panes through which the summer sun hardly succeeded in gaining
admittance, added a certain softness to her chiseled features, and to
the usually hard expression of her large dark eyes.

She was gazing out of the tall window, wherein the several broken panes
were roughly patched with scraps of paper, out into the garden and the
distance beyond, where the sea could be always guessed at, even when not
seen. Sir Marmaduke had his back to the light: he was sitting astride a
low chair, his high-booted foot tapping the ground impatiently, his
fingers drumming a devil's tattoo against the back of the chair.

"Lambert would starve if I did not provide for him," he said with a
sneer. "Adam, his brother, could do naught for him: he is poor as a
church-mouse, poorer even than I--but nathless," he added with a violent
oath, "it strikes everyone as madness that I should keep a secretary
when I scarce can pay the wages of a serving maid."

"'Twere better you paid your servants' wages, Marmaduke," she retorted
harshly, "