“Oh, you have?” said I, being so far out-brazened as to be incapable of saying more.

“I have that—­every plack and bawbee.  ’Tis ten years come Michaelmas since I took over the charge o’ Appleby Hundred, and I’m ready to account to ye for every season’s crop—­when ye’ll pay down the bit steward’s fee.”

“Truly,” said I; “you are an honest man, Mr. Stair.”  Then, to humor him to the top of his bent:  “Haphazarding a guess, now; would this accounting leave a balance in my favor, or in yours?”

He gave me a look like that of a costermonger weighing and measuring the gullibility of his customer.

“Oh, aye; I’m no saying there mightn’t be a bit siller coming to me; a few hundred pounds, more or less—­sterling, man, sterling; not Scots,” he added hastily.  And then, as if it were best to leave this nail as it was driven, he changed the subject abruptly.  “I’ve brought ye that last will and testament ye signed,” handing me the parchment.  “No doubt you’ll let it stand; but when the bairns come, ye’ll want to be adding a codicil or two.”

Leaving the matter of the estate, I thought it high time to cut to the marrow of the bigger bone.  So I said:  “Let us be frank with each other in this, Mr. Stair.  How much has your daughter told you of the matter between us?”

“She’s a jade!” he rasped, lapsing for a moment into his real self.  But he recovered his self-control instantly.  “Ye’d no expect a romantic bit lassie wi’ French blood in her veins to be confidencing wi’ her old dried-up wisp of a father, now, would ye?  She’s no tell’t me everything, I daresay.”

“Then I will tell you the plain truth of it,” I said.  “This marriage was never anything more than the form we all agreed it should be at the time; a makeshift to serve a purpose.  If you think I would hold your daughter to it—­”

“Hut, tut, man! what will ye be havering about!  Ye’ll never cast the poor bit lassie off that way!  Ye canna, if ye would; her Church will have a word to say to that.”

For all his aping the manner of the ignored father, I shrewdly suspected that he knew more about the ins and outs of our affair than he owned to.  Nevertheless, I was forced to meet him on his own ground.

“There is no ‘casting off’ about it, Mr. Stair; and as to the Church, there is good ground for an appeal to Rome.  The marriage as it stands is little more than a formal betrothal, as you well know, sound enough legally to make Mistress Margery my heir-at-law, mayhap, but still lacking everything of—­”

He could not wait to let me finish.

“Lacking, d’ye say?” he rapped out, wrathfully.  “And whose fault is that, ye cold-blooded stick?  Tell me this; did I no bundle ye neck and heels into your own wife’s bed-room?  And how do you thank me?  I’m to suppose ye quarrel wi’ her like the dour-faced imp o’ Sawtan that ye are, and presently ye come raging out, swearing most shamefully at a man old enough to be your father!”