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Updated: June 29, 2025
"We are going to dine next Friday night at Little Beeding to meet Stella Ballantyne." Mr. Pettifer was startled but he held his tongue. "The invitation came this morning after you had left for London," she added. "And you accepted it at once?" "Yes." Pettifer was certain that she had before she opened her mouth to answer him.
He had not lost hope that between now and dinner-time explanations would be given which would banish Stella Ballantyne altogether from Little Beeding. But he had no excuse ready and he stammered out: "Of course, my dear. Didn't I ask you? I must have forgotten. I certainly expect you to dine with us to-night. Margaret will no doubt be here."
Hazlewood took up his pen and wrote the letter to Henry Thresk at last, as Robert Pettifer had always been sure that he would do. It was the simplest kind of letter and took but a minute in the writing. It mentioned only his miniatures and invited Henry Thresk to Little Beeding to see them, as more than one stranger had been asked before. The reply came by return of post.
Dick came at half-past four from a village cricket match to fetch her. "You are ready, Stella? Right! For we can't spare very much time. I have a surprise for you." Stella asked him what it was and he answered: "There's a house for sale in Great Beeding. I think that you would like it." Stella's face softened with a smile. "Anywhere, Dick," she said, "anywhere on earth."
'There! you see we are quarrelling already; I did wrong to come home. 'It was not to please me that you came home. You were afraid if you didn't you mightn't find another tenant for the Beeding farm. You were afraid you might have it on your hands. It was self-interest that brought you home. Don't try to make me believe it wasn't. Then the conversation drifted into angry discussion.
At Upper Beeding the Priory of Sele once stood where is now the vicarage; the Early English church is of small interest and need not detain us. The stronghold antedates by many centuries the great Norman with whose name it is always coupled.
Hazlewood was utterly disconcerted. After all, then, the marriage must take place; the plot had ignominiously failed, the great questions which were to banish Stella Ballantyne from Little Beeding had been put and answered. He sat like a man stricken by calamity. He stammered out reluctantly a few words to which Thresk paid little heed.
"Yes," she answered after a pause. "I will come. I'll bring Robert too." "Good. We'll fix up a date and write to you. Goodbye." Dick went back to Little Beeding and asked for his father. The old gentleman added to his other foibles that of a collector.
He built it indeed as a chapel to his Castle, and to serve it he founded there a small college of secular canons under a dean, and endowed it with the church of Beeding and many tithes, among them those of Shoreham.
There are you and I, rich people, and no one to leave our money to no one to carry on your name no one we care a rap about to benefit by my work and your brother's fortune no one of the family to hand over Little Beeding to." Both of them were silent after he had spoken. He had touched upon their one great sorrow. Margaret herself had her roots deep in the soil of Little Beeding.
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