Chapter 13 - Page 2

ha' been enchanted--bewitched--
when I gave my consent to this! I only did it to please that dear
good dying nobleman--though why he should have wished it so much I
can't tell!'

'Nor I neither,' said Jim. 'Yes, we've been fooled into it,
Margery,' he said, with extraordinary gravity. 'He's had his way wi'
us, and now we've got to suffer for it. Being a gentleman of
patronage, and having bought several loads of lime o' me, and having
given me all that splendid furniture, I could hardly refuse--'

'What, did he give you that?'

'Ay sure--to help me win ye.'

Margery covered her face with her hands; whereupon Jim stood up from
the gate and looked critically at her. "Tis a footy plot between
you two men to--snare me!' she exclaimed. 'Why should you have done
it--why should he have done it--when I've not deserved to be treated
so. He bought the furniture--did he! O, I've been taken in--I've
been wronged!' The grief and vexation of finding that long ago, when
fondly believing the Baron to have lover-like feelings himself for
her, he was still conspiring to favour Jim's suit, was more than she
could endure.

Jim with distant courtesy waited, nibbling a straw, till her paroxysm
was over. 'One word, Miss Tuck--Mrs.--Margery,' he then recommenced
gravely. 'You'll find me man enough to respect your wish, and to
leave you to yourself--for ever and ever, if that's all. But I've
just one word of advice to render 'ee. That is, that before you go
to Silverthorn Dairy yourself you let me drive ahead and call on your
father. He's friends with me, and he's not friends with you. I can
break the news, a little at a time, and I think I can gain his good
will for you now, even though the wedding be no natural wedding at
all. At any count, I can hear what he's got to say about 'ee, and
come back here and tell 'ee.'

She nodded a cool assent to this, and he left her strolling about the
garden in the sunlight while he went on to reconnoitre as agreed. It
must not be supposed that Jim's dutiful echoes of Margery's regret at
her precipitate marriage were all gospel; and there is no doubt that
his private intention, after telling the dairy-farmer what had
happened, was to ask his temporary assent to her caprice, till, in
the course of time, she should be reasoned out of her whims and
induced to settle down with Jim in a natural manner. He had, it is
true, been somewhat nettled by her firm objection to him, and her
keen sorrow for what she had done to please another; but he hoped for
the best.

But, alas for the astute Jim's calculations! He drove on to the
dairy, whose white walls now gleamed in the morning sun; made fast
the horse to a ring in the wall, and entered the barton. Before