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Updated: May 22, 2025
I am afraid there is nothing interesting to tell you about the Osierfield, things are going on so regularly there, and so well." How exactly like Christopher to begin to talk about business when she had given him the chance to talk about more interesting subjects herself, for instance, Elisabeth thought; but he never had a mind above sordid details!
She said but little to him, and he said still less to her, and what they did say was usually limited to the affairs of the Osierfield; nevertheless Elisabeth persistently weighed herself in Christopher's balances, and measured herself according to Christopher's measures; and, as she did so, wrote Tekel opposite her own name. And for this she refused to forgive him.
Although it never seriously occurred to Elisabeth to hold her peace upon this matter and so keep her fortune to herself, she was still human enough not altogether to despise a course of action which enabled her to be rich and righteous at the same time, and to go on with her old life at the Willows and her work among the people at the Osierfield, even after George Farringdon's son had come into his own.
So it came to pass that the Farringdons were the royal family of Sedgehill; and the Osierfield Works was the circle wherein the inhabitants of that place lived and moved. It was as natural for everybody born in Sedgehill eventually to work at the Osierfield, as it was for him eventually to grow into a man and to take unto himself a wife.
He would be glad to see her dethroned at last, she supposed, as that was what he had striven for all those years ago; but, perhaps, when he saw a stranger reigning at the Willows and the Osierfield in her stead, he would be sorry to find the new government so much less beneficial to the work-people than the old one had been; for Elisabeth knew Cecil quite well enough to be aware that he would spend all his money on himself and his own pleasures; and she could not help indulging in an unholy hope that, whereas she had beaten Christopher with whips, her successor would beat him with scorpions.
She had long ago succeeded in convincing herself that the grapes of his affection were too sour to be worth fretting after; but she still wanted to make him admire her in spite of himself, and to realize that Miss Elisabeth Farringdon of the Osierfield was a more important personage than he had considered her to be.
Christopher was fast becoming one of the most influential men in Mershire; and his able management of the Osierfield had raised those works to a greater height of prosperity than they had ever attained before, even in the days of William and John Farringdon. But now the shadows were darkening around Alan Tremaine, as day by day Willie gradually faded away.
"Through finding out that you loved me. It seems to me that my love was always lying in the bank at your account, but until you gave a cheque for it you couldn't get at it. And the cheque was my knowing that you cared for me." "And how did you find that out, Betty?" "I was rummaging in the safe just now for the plans of the Osierfield, and I came upon your letter."
"You're right there, Bateson," agreed the master of the Osierfield; and his eyes grew very tender as they rested upon Elisabeth. "And if he don't have no objection to cleverness and a pale complexion, who shall gainsay him?" added Mrs. Hankey.
The following morning Elisabeth received a letter from one of the clerks at the Osierfield, informing her that Mr. Thornley returned from his tour in Germany a week ago; and that immediately on his return he was seized with a severe attack of pneumonia the result of a neglected cold and was now lying seriously ill at his house in Sedgehill.
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