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‘'Yes, I know,” he said quietly. “But I am employed on the estate you see! This is where I am to live!”

Judith stood her ground and Charles was conscious of genuine admiration for her courage. If he had not been what he actually was, but, instead, a trespasser out for what he could get, she might have been in considerable danger, but she never seemed to give a thought to that consideration.

“Nonsense!” she said crisply. “You’ve chosen the wrong person to tell a tale of that sort to! You see, Windygates happens to belong to me! Consequently, I know all my employees! And you are certainly not one of them!”

“Then you are Miss Judith Ravensdale?” he asked quietly.

She stared uncomprehendingly.

“I am, though I don’t know how you—” she paused and looked at him more narrowly. “Now I recognise you,” she said slowly. “You are the man who was so insolent to me in Wyford ”

Charles looked at her thoughtfully. An arrogant child this! Quite deliberately, he believed, she had used the word “insolent” as "if to make him realise quite clearly what a gulf was fixed between their social ranks. Of an equal she would far more likely have used the word “rude.”

“Was I?” he said quietly. “That was not my intention. I thought that I saw an opportunity of preventing trouble and I took it. That was all!”

“You saw an opportunity of humiliating—” she began impetuously and stopped, evidently realising that she was only, as she probably expressed it, lowering herself to his level by arguing. She made a gesture as if dismissing the whole incident. “Now then, what is all this about being employed here? Who engaged you and in what capacity?”

“I was engaged by Miss Harriet Ravensdale.” Charles was watching her face narrowly to. see how she took it. “As bailiff, agent—whichever you like to call it—to run the farm.”

He saw the sudden blenching of her sunburned face, the flaring of her nostrils, and braced himself for the storm.

“I prefer to call it neither!” she said cuttingly. “You must please understand that there has been some mistake!
I
am the owner of Windygates, and consequently I choose my assistants. Surely you can see that for yourself?”

“But I understood from Miss Ravensdale—” Charles began.

Judith interrupted him.

“Whatever my aunt has said is beside the point. I absolutely refuse to have you here in any capacity whatsoever, so I suggest that you get into your car and take yourself off as quickly as possible!”

“But I can’t do that, Miss Ravensdale,” Charles protested quietly.

“Oh?” she said stonily, “and why not?”

“Well,” Charles said slowly. "For one thing, I want work and this seems very suitable to me. And for another, I understand from your aunt that she is your guardian—that at present you are not of age ”

“So that’s it!” Her voice was so low that he could hardly hear what she said. Without another word she went over to her car and got into it. As she was about to let the clutch in she hesitated and turned round.

“At the moment,” she said clearly, “you seem to have won the first round! But don’t be too pleased with yourself! And don’t settle yourself in too thoroughly at the cottage! Because I am determined that you shall go.”

“And I,” Charles said quietly, “am just as determined to stay!”

For a moment the blue eyes and the brown clashed. And it was Judith’s that fell first.

She let in the clutch with a bang and drove recklessly off up the drive.

Charles drew a long breath. He felt as if he had been swimming for a very long time against an almost overpoweringly strong current.

*

Half an hour later Judith drove away from the house again. But this time, in order that she might not pass the cottage, she went out by the other gates.

It had been a stormy interview between aunt and niece—and Judith had come off worst because, if she had only realised it, it was her uncontrolled rage at the situation which confirmed Miss Ravensdale in her belief that what she was doing was right. And in that belief she could stand up to all Judith’s onslaughts.

And, wisely, Miss Ravensdale kept to arguments that were irrefutable.

“You agreed that there was too much work for you and that we needed someone. You have taken no steps to find an agent, so I have had to. If you do not like my choice, you have only yourself to blame!”

At that, Judith had shifted her angle of attack. She questioned her aunt’s right to interfere in her affairs when she was so nearly of age.

“My dear Judith,” Miss Ravensdale said rather wearily. “Do you think that I have not gone into that? I consulted Mr. Bellairs not only about this, but other plans—” she checked herself, but Judith faced her resolutely.

“You’d better tell me everything that you have planned,” she said stonily. “And then I shall go and see Mr. Bellairs myself!”

“A good idea!” her aunt agreed. “Well, for a month or so I want you to work with Mr. Saxilby so that he can take over from you, and then—I want you to come abroad with me for a few months!”

“The South of France?” Judith asked scornfully. “I’d rather die!”

“That’s rather an extreme statement,” Miss Ravensdale said mildly. “But as a matter of fact, I had not thought of France—for one thing it will be rather too hot for comfort at that time of year.”

Judith scowled. She knew quite well that her aunt disagreed with the way in which she had been brought up, and that several times there had been arguments about sending her to a finishing school or at least bringing her out properly, and now she suspected Miss Ravensdale of deliberately pointing out her ignorance—as if she didn’t know that it was hot along the Mediterranean shores in the summer.

“I had thought—Canada. We have got relatives there—they farm. It would be interesting for you ”

The scowl deepened.

“You’re trying to marry me off, aren’t you?” Judith asked bluntly. “I know you are the sort of woman who thinks no woman is happy unless she is married.”

If her aunt winced Judith did not notice it, and Miss Ravensdale said quietly:

“No, I wasn’t thinking of that. I certainly hope that you will marry one day ”

“Of course I shall!” Judith interrupted impatiently. “There must be someone to look after Windygates when I die. I shall have a son ”

Miss Ravensdale ignored the bland assumption and went on as if she had not heard.

“—but you are still far too young to think of that yet! No, what I want is for you to meet people of your own age and have a good time with them. I want you to have the fun of going out to parties and dressing up for dances. And more than that, I want you to have more than one thing to fill your mind. Don’t you see, Judith, life is such a complex thing. It is impossible for you to be able to cope with it if you meet only one tiny corner of it. So—take this opportunity, dear. I— I wouldn’t insist on it if I was not convinced that it is for your good! Now, what about it?”

She put a gentle hand on Judith’s arm, but it was roughly shaken off.

“I am going to see Mr. Bellairs—now!” Judith said passionately. “If you are right—if you can do this to me, then we will talk about it. But I am going to fight every inch of the way! I won’t be turned out of Windygates by a stranger!”

“But there is no question—” Miss Ravensdale stopped. There was no point in talking to the empty air, and she could already hear Judith’s small but workmanlike shoes scrunching on the gravel outside. A 'moment or two later she heard the car go roaring off.

Judith drove as if she were possessed. If she had not been an exceptionally good driver she would almost certainly have had a spill at more than one corner, but as it was she came to a halt outside Mr. Bellair’s private residence in perfect safety an incredibly short time later.

The solicitor—an elderly man who had looked after the Ravensdales’ affairs for many years, as had his father before him—was at home and came almost immediately into the room to which she had been shown.

“My dear Judith,” he said anxiously, taking her hand in his. “I hope there is nothing wrong?”

“But there is—something very much wrong!” she blurted out.

Mr. Bellairs looked at her intently. Yes, he could certainly believe that. The child was shaking with some sort of nervous strain.

Had she been a little older he would have offered her sherry, hoping that the brief delay would quieten her down, but for the young there was only one thing. Whatever their troubles might be, they had to get them off their chests as quickly as possible.

He indicated a chair and sat down himself in such a position that he could see her face clearly in the light of the table lamp.

“You had better tell me,” he suggested.

He listened in silence to her story. Just as he had listened to Miss Ravensdale’s. And when Judith had finished he said quietly:

“Yes, it is quite true. Your aunt did consult me, and I told her what it was my duty to. Namely, that if she believed it was in your interests that an agent should be brought in, then she had no choice but to take the necessary steps to bring it about.”

“But it isn’t in my interests—or the interests of Windygates!” Judith stormed. “Who can possibly know as well as I do how it ought to be run? Why, Daddy used to say that I was a second brain to him— and if he was willing to trust me, why can’t everybody else?”

The man of experience looked at her pitifully. How these young things ran their heads against brick walls! And how sure they were that they knew best! For a moment he hesitated, then he came to a decision.

“But did he?” he asked quietly.

Judith stared at him uncomprehendingly for a moment.

“Did he—what?” she enquired. And then, as she realised what he meant she said indignantly: “Do you mean, did he trust me? Why, of course he did!”

“Your father never trusted any woman in his life!” Mr. Bellairs said bluntly, “and you were no exception! More than once he confided his anxiety about the situation in which you would be left were he to die ”

“You mean, he didn’t like making Aunt Harriet my guardian?” she said eagerly.

Mr. Bellairs frowned.

“No, I mean nothing of the sort! His anxiety was because he knew just how difficult it would be for you to do a man’s job with no man to back you up! That was why he was so anxious to get you married. It may be a surprise to you to know that your aunt’s plan for you to go abroad is actually -your father’s. He and I had discussed it several times.”

Judith was silent. She knew perfectly well that he was speaking the truth. For one thing, there was no reason why he should not be, and for another, there was a ring of truth in every word. She stood up.

“There doesn’t seem much that I can do, does there?” she said dully. “Why didn’t Aunt Harriet tell me this?”

“I advised her to,” Mr. Bellairs admitted. “Because I thought that it would mean less fuss, but she was anxious to spare your feelings ”

“She need not have worried,” Judith said harshly. “I haven’t any! I just feel—numbed.”

The solicitor got up and took her hands in his. He, like Harriet Ravensdale, had often argued with Mark about the way in which he was bringing Judith up, but he would never listen—until it occurred to him one day, not that he was doing his daughter a wrong, but that the estate might suffer. But that, as it turned out, was not very long before his unexpected death.

“Will it not make everything easier for you that you know now it was your father’s wish?” he asked gently.

Judith shook her head.

“No. You see, I thought—I really did think—I had come to mean, as much to him as a son could have done! Now—I know I was just deceiving myself.”

Mr. Bellairs was silent. He knew, as Miss Ravensdale did, that not only could Judith never really have taken the place with Mark of the son he had wanted so badly, but also that she had been' robbed of the opportunity of being what a daughter should be to a father.

“Poor child,” he said gently, but Judith pulled her hand from his friendly grasp.

“No!” she gasped. “Don’t pity me—I—I can’t bear ”

She fled our of the room and Mr. Bellairs made no attempt to follow her. Instead he went to the telephone and called up Miss Ravensdale.

“Oh Hugh, I’ve made such a terrible mess of it!” Miss Ravensdale said despondently. “And I’d have given all I had ”

“You don’t need to tell me that!” he interrupted her sadly. “Haven’t I good cause to know it?”

Judith woke the next morning with the feeling that an intolerable burden was weighing her-down. She propped herself up on one elbow and gazed out of the wide open window with none of the joy that a new-born morning usually brought Her. Instead, she pondered over the problems that the day would bring.

Late into the night she had turned over what she had heard from Mr. Bellairs, and she had made up her mind. No matter what it cost her, she would follow out her father’s wishes—but Charles should go. Not that she would ask her aunt to send him away. Pride forbade that. But she had no such faith in him as Miss Ravensdale had, and even in such a short time as a month there would surely be time to prove that he had made mistakes too bad for him to be left in charge of Windygates.

Slowly she got out of bed and slipped into the boyish dressing-gown that lay at the foot of the bed. Then she went out to the bathroom and took the cold bath that she had been trained to have as long as she could remember. She shivered a little, and out of the past came a voice that said, as it had said so many times of so many things:' “A boy would not do that!”

Stony-faced, she went downstairs. Miss Ravensdale was already seated at the table, and she looked up as the girl came in.

“Good morning, Judith!” she said cheerfully.

“Good morning,” Judith responded curtly as she slipped into her seat. As usual, she was wearing riding breeches and thick stockings, with a severe, man-tailored shirt. It was, as a matter of fact, the only outfit she ever wore except on Sundays when she went to church, and in the evenings. Even then," though she was properly dressed, her clothes were of the simplest. One could not imagine Judith in frills and delicate fabrics.

Miss Ravensdale, taking the bull by the horns, said quietly: