The Postmasters Daughter | Page 2

he said, smiling so pleasantly
that no woman or child could fail to put trust in him.
"You did that, sir," agreed Mrs. Bates, collapsing into the chair Grant
had just vacated.
Like most red-faced people, Mrs. Bates turned a bluish purple when
alarmed, and her aspect was so distressing now that Grant's smile was

banished by a look of real concern.
"I'm very sorry," he said contritely. "I had no notion you were in the
room. Shall I call Minnie?"
Minnie, it may be explained, was Mrs. Bates's daughter and assistant,
the two, plus a whiskered Bates, gardener and groom, forming the
domestic establishment presided over by Grant.
"Nun-no, sir," stuttered the housekeeper. "It's stupid of me. But I'm not
so young as I was, an' me heart jumps at little things."
Grant saw that she was recovering, though slowly. He thought it best
not to make too much of the incident; but asked solicitously if he might
give her some brandy.
Mrs. Bates remarked that she was "not so bad as that," rose valiantly,
and went on with her work. Her employer, who had gone into the
garden again, saw out of the tail of his eye that she vanished with a
half-laden tray. In a couple of minutes the daughter appeared, and
finished the slight task of clearing the table; meanwhile, Grant kept
away from the small window. Being a young man who cultivated the
habit of observation, he noticed that Minnie, too, cast scared glances at
the window. When the girl had finally quitted the room, he laughed in a
puzzled way.
"Am I dreaming, or are there visions about?" he murmured.
Urged, seemingly, by a sort of curiosity, he surveyed the room a second
time through the same pane of glass. Being tall, he had to stoop slightly.
Within, on the opposite side of the ledge, he saw the tiny brass
candlestick with its inch of candle which he had used over-night while
searching for a volume of Scott in the book-case lining the neighboring
wall. Somehow, this simplest of domestic objects brought a thrill of
recollection.
"Oh, dash it all!" he growled good-humoredly, "I'm getting nervy. I
must chuck this bad habit of working late, and use the blessed hours of

daylight."
Yet, as he sauntered down the lawn toward the stream, he knew well
that he would do nothing of the sort. He loved that time of peace
between ten at night and one in the morning. His thoughts ran vagrom
then. Fantasies took shape under his pen which, in the cold light of
morning, looked unreal and nebulous, though he had the good sense to
restrain criticism within strict limits, and corrected style rather than
matter. He was a writer, an essayist with no slight leaven of the poet,
and had learnt early that the everyday world held naught in common
with the brooding of the soul.
But he was no long-haired dreamer of impossible things. Erect and
square-shouldered, he had passed through Sandhurst into the army, a
profession abandoned because of its humdrum nature, when an
unexpectedly "fat" legacy rendered him independent. He looked exactly
what he was, a healthy, clean-minded young Englishman, with a
physique that led to occasional bouts of fox-hunting and Alpine
climbing, and a taste in literature that brought about the consumption of
midnight oil. This latter is not a mere trope. Steynholme is far removed
from such modern "conveniences" as gas and electricity.
At present he had no more definite object in life than to watch the trout
rising in the pool. He held the fishing rights over half a mile of a noted
river, but, by force of the law of hospitality, as it were, the stretch of
water bordering the lawn was a finny sanctuary. Once, he halted, and
looked fixedly at a dormer window in a cottage just visible above the
trees on the opposite slope. Such a highly presentable young man might
well expect to find a dainty feminine form appearing just in that place,
and eke return the greeting of a waved hand. But the window remained
blank--windows refused to yield any information that morning--and he
passed on.
The lawn dipped gently to the water's edge, until the close-clipped turf
gave way to pebbles and sand. In that spot the river widened and
deepened until its current was hardly perceptible in fine weather. When
the sun was in the west the trees and roofs of Steynholme were so
clearly reflected in the mirror of the pool that a photograph of the scene

needed close scrutiny ere one could determine whether or not it was
being held upside down. But the sun shone directly on the water now,
so the shelving bottom was visible, and Grant's quick eye was drawn to
a rope trailing into