s challenge ended in a little struggle for a kiss, the sincerity of
which was doubtful. Polly resisted vigorously, to be sure, but briefly,
and, having given in, returned it.

One day she told him Sir Charles had met her plump, and had given a
great start.

This made Bassett very uneasy. "Confound it, he will turn you away. He
will say, 'This girl knows too much.'"

"How simple you be!" said the girl. "D'ye think I let him know? Says
he, 'I think I have seen you before.' 'Yes, sir,' says I, 'I was
housemaid here before my lady had me to dress her.' 'No,' says he, 'I
mean in London--in Mayfair, you know.' I declare you might ha' knocked
me down wi' a feather. So I looks in his face, as cool as marble, and I
said, 'No, sir; I never had the luck to see London, sir,' says I. 'All
the better for you,' says he; and he swallowed it like spring water, as
sister Rhoda used to say when she told one and they believed it."

"You are a clever girl," said Bassett. "He would have turned you out of
the house if he had known who you were."

She disappointed him in one thing; she was bad at answering questions.
Morally she was not quite so great an egotist as himself, but
intellectually a greater. Her volubility was all egotism. She could
scarcely say ten words, except about herself. So, when Bassett
questioned her about Sir Charles and Lady Bassett, she said "Yes," or
"No," or "I don't know," and was off at a tangent to her own sayings
and doings.

Bassett, however, by great patience and tact, extracted from her at
last that Sir Charles and Lady Bassett were both sore at not having
children, and that Lady Bassett bore the blame.

"That is a good joke," said he. "The smoke-dried rake! Polly, you might
do me a good turn. You have got her ear; open her eyes for me. What
might not happen?" His eyes shone fiendishly.

The young woman shook her head. "Me meddle between man and wife! I'm
too fond of my place."

"Ah, you don't love me as I love you. You think only of yourself."

"And what do you think of? Do you love me well enough to find me a
better place, if you get me turned out of Huntercombe Hall?"

"Yes, I will; a much better."

"That is a bargain."

Mary Wells was silly in some things, but she was very cunning, too; and
she knew Richard Bassett's hobby. She told him to mind himself, as well
as Sir Charles, or perhaps he would die a bachelor, and so his flesh
and blood would never inherit Huntercombe. This remark entered