s strange that with her rough common sense she could not grasp this
want. But the thought that Lambert required what she could never
give--namely, the feminine tenderness which strong masculine natures
love--never crossed her very clear and mathematical mind.

So she was bent upon a fool's errand, as she strode towards the Abbot's
Wood, although she did not know it. Her aim was to capture Lambert as
her husband; and her plan, to accomplish her wish by working on the
heart-hunger he most probably felt, owing to the loss of Agnes Pine. If
he loved that lady in a chivalrous fashion--and Miss Greeby believed
that he did--she was absolutely lost to him as the wife of another man.
Lambert would never degrade her into a divorce court appearance. And
perhaps, after all, as Miss Greeby thought hopefully, his love for Sir
Hubert's wife might have turned to scorn that she had preferred money to
true love. But then, again, as Miss Greeby remembered, with a darkening
face, Agnes had married the millionaire so as to save the family estates
from being sold. Rank has its obligation, and Lambert might approve of
the sacrifice, since he was the next heir to the Garvington title. "We
shall see what his attitude is," decided Miss Greeby, as she entered the
Abbot's Wood, and delayed arranging her future plans until she fully
understood his feelings towards the woman he had lost. In the meantime,
Lambert would want a comrade, and Miss Greeby was prepared to sink her
romantic feelings, for the time being, in order to be one.

The forest--which belonged to Garvington, so long as he paid the
interest on the mortgage--was not a very large one. In the old days it
had been of greater size and well stocked with wild animals; so well
stocked, indeed, that the abbots of a near monastery had used it for
many hundred years as a hunting ground. But the monastery had vanished
off the face of the earth, as not even its ruins were left, and the game
had disappeared as the forest grew smaller and the district around
became more populous. A Lambert of the Georgian period--the family name
of Lord Garvington was Lambert--had acquired what was left of the
monastic wood by winning it at a game of cards from the nobleman who had
then owned it. Now it was simply a large patch of green in the middle of
a somewhat naked county, for Hengishire is not remarkable for woodlands.
There were rabbits and birds, badgers, stoats, and such-like wild things
in it still, but th