She didn’t try to pretend she wasn’t aghast at this.  “But what an—­extraordinary letter.  Won’t he be—­furious?  At you for writing?—­Speaking for me in a case like that.  Telling him you knew all about it!”

“Well, that was more or less the idea,” he confessed, with a rueful grin.  “He’ll think I stole you away from him; he’ll think I gave you the nervous prostration I hinted at.  Heaven knows what he won’t think!  But, of course, the more of a villain I am the less you’re to be held responsible.  And there’s nothing insupportable or—­ludicrous about a grievance against another man.  At all events it enables him to get round the statement you demolished him with.  No, you’ll see.  He’ll write you a letter, correctly affectionate but rather chilly, and after that you’ll be off his mind.  And if the pretty sister Sylvia alleges doesn’t exist, there’ll be another one along pretty soon, who will.”

She was obviously a little dazed by all this.  It was the first time they had talked of Graham since that night in his room and he knew the bruise from that experience must still be painful to touch.  So he hastened to produce his other item of news—­also provided by Sylvia.

“This is a perfectly dead secret of hers,” he began.  “Told me in sacred confidence.  She finished, however, by saying that she knew, of course, I’d go straight and tell you.  So to justify her penetration, I will.  Sylvia has accounted for her father’s amazing change of attitude toward Hickory Hill.  It seems she’s persuaded her father to give Graham’s share of it to her.  She told him—­what’s obviously true—­that she’s a better farmer now than Graham would ever be.  She hates town and society and all that, she says, and never will be happy anywhere but on a farm—­anywhere, indeed, but on that farm.  He was very rough and boisterous about the suggestion, she says, for a day or two, but finally he quieted down like a lamb and gave in.  He never has refused her anything, of course.”

“But a partnership between her and Rush!” Mary cried.  “It’s perfectly impossibly mad.  Unless, of course ...  You don’t mean...?”

“Yes, that’s the idea, exactly,” March said.  “Only Rush, as yet, knows nothing about it.  Hence the need for secrecy.  Sylvia acknowledged to her father that she couldn’t possibly own a farm in partnership with a young man of twenty-three unless she married him, but she said she’d intended to marry Rush ever since she was twelve years old.  She’s confident that he’s only waiting for her eighteenth birthday to ask her to marry him, but she says that if he doesn’t, she means to ask him.  And if he refuses, she pointed out to her father, he can’t do less than consent to sell the other half of the farm to her.  She treats that alternative, though, as derisory.—­And I haven’t a doubt she’s right.  Evidently her father has none, either.

“Well, it accounts for the change in Mr. Stannard’s attitude toward the farm, of course,” he concluded.  “A son’s supposed to thrive on adversity.  It wouldn’t be good morals not to make things difficult for him by way of developing his character.  But where a mere daughter is involved he can chuckle and write checks.  Under his tradition, he’s entitled to regard her as a luxury.  Anyhow, your father has nothing more to worry about as far as Rush and Hickory Hill are concerned.”