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 is bare. They say that all she eats is the little that Rags carries over to her. I met him with a tray. The fellow is nothing but a spy and a tale-bearer. He keeps her thoroughly posted as to all that goes on in the house. Aunt Augusta was for starving her out, forbidding Rags to take food to her; but I couldn't do that. She shut the door in my face just now."

"It's appalling."

They walked in silence for a space, along the passage between stalls, among the sounds and smells they both loved—deep, quiet drinking, peaceful crunching, soft whinnying, clean straw, harness oil, liniment.

Vaughan said: "I've been wondering—in fact, I lay awake half the night wondering—if there is a chance that Meg might take me now. Pheasant being gone, and Jalna in such an upset, and things having reached a sort of deadlock, it would be a way of solving the problem for her. Do you think I'd have a show?"

Renny looked at his friend with amazement.

"Maurice, do you really mean it? Are you still in love with her?"

"You know perfectly well I've never cared for any other woman," he answered, with some irritation. "It's not easy for you Whiteoaks to understand that."

"I quite understand, only—twenty years is a long time between proposals."

"If things had not turned out as they have, I should never have asked her again."

"I hope to God she'll have you!" And then, fearing that his tone had been too fervent, he added: "I hate to see you living such a lonely life, old man."

Meg had come out of the cottage, and was bending over a spray of sweetbriar that had thrust its thorny way up through a mass of dogwood. She loved its wild