Red Money | Page 7

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 the deer which the abbots had
hunted were conspicuous by their absence. Garvington looked after it
about as much as he did after the rest of his estates, which was not
saying much. The fat, round little lord's heart was always in the kitchen,
and he preferred eating to fulfilling his duties as a landlord.
Consequently, the Abbot's Wood was more or less public property,
save when Garvington turned crusty and every now and then cleared
out all interlopers. But tramps came to sleep in the wood, and gypsies
camped in its glades, while summer time brought many artists to rave
about its sylvan beauties, and paint pictures of ancient trees and silent
pools, and rugged lawns besprinkled with rainbow wild flowers. People
who went to the Academy and to the various art exhibitions in Bond
Street knew the Abbot's Wood fairly well, as it was rarely that at least
one picture dealing with it did not appear.
Miss Greeby had explored the wood before and knew exactly where to
find the cottage mentioned by Lady Garvington. On the verge of the
trees she saw the blue smoke of the gypsies' camp fires, and heard the
vague murmur of Romany voices, but, avoiding the vagrants, she took
her way through the forest by a winding path. This ultimately led her to

a spacious glade, in the centre of which stood a dozen or more rough
monoliths of mossy gray and weather-worn stones, disposed in a circle.
Probably these were all that remained of some Druidical temple, and
archaeologists came from far and near to view the weird relics. And in
the middle of the circle stood the cottage: a thatched dwelling, which
might have had to do with a fairy tale, with its whitewashed walls
covered with ivy, and its latticed windows, on the ledges of which
stood pots of homely flowers. There was no fence round this rustic
dwelling, as the monoliths stood as guardians, and the space between
the cottage walls and the gigantic stones was planted thickly with
fragrant English flowers. Snapdragon, sweet-william, marigolds, and
scented clove carnations, were all to be found there: also there was
thyme, mint, sage, and other pot-herbs. And the whole perfumed space
was girdled by trees old and young, which stood back from the emerald
beauty of untrimmed lawns. A more ideal spot for a dreamer, or an
artist, or a hermit, or for the straying prince of a fairy tale, it would
have been quite impossible to find. Miss Greeby's vigorous and coarse
personality seemed to break in a noisy manner--although she did not
utter a single word--the enchanted silence of the solitary place.
However, the intruder was too matter-of-fact to trouble about the
sequestered liveliness of this unique dwelling. She strode across the
lawns, and passing beyond the monoliths, marched like an invader up
the narrow path between the