"But I sha'nt," she replied, with laconic indifference. "I value my
looks too much to spoil 'em. She wants my hair to get another lover
with; though if stories are true she's broke the heart of many a noble
gentleman already."
"Lord, it's wonderful how you guess things, Marty," said the barber.
"I've had it from them that know that there certainly is some foreign
gentleman in her eye. However, mind what I ask."
"She's not going to get him through me."
Percombe had retired as far as the door; he came back, planted his cane
on the coffin-stool, and looked her in the face. "Marty South," he
said, with deliberate emphasis, "YOU'VE GOT A LOVER YOURSELF, and
that's why you won't let it go!"
She reddened so intensely as to pass the mild blush that suffices to
heighten beauty; she put the yellow leather glove on one hand, took up
the hook with the other, and sat down doggedly to her work without
turning her face to him again. He regarded her head for a moment, went
to the door, and with one look back at her, departed on his way
homeward.
Marty pursued her occupation for a few minutes, then suddenly laying
down the bill-hook, she jumped up and went to the back of the room,
where she opened a door which disclosed a staircase so whitely scrubbed
that the grain of the wood was wellnigh sodden away by such cleansing.
At the top she gently approached a bedroom, and without entering, said,
"Father, do you want anything?"
A weak voice inside answered in the negative; adding, "I should be all
right by to-morrow if it were not for the tree!"
"The tree again--always the tree! Oh, father, don't worry so about
that. You know it can do you no harm."
"Who have ye had talking to ye down-stairs?"
"A Sherton man called--nothing to trouble about," she said, soothingly.
"Father," she went on, "can Mrs. Charmond turn us out of our house if
she's minded to?"
"Turn us out? No. Nobody can turn us out till my poor soul is turned
out of my body. 'Tis life-hold, like Ambrose Winterborne's. But when
my life drops 'twill be hers--not till then." His words on this subject
so far had been rational and firm enough. But now he lapsed into his
moaning strain: "And the tree will do it--that tree will soon be the
death of me."