Urith was left alone looking at the broken token. It did not bring to her the cynical consolation that her uncle intended it to convey. It was not even poor comfort, it was no sort of comfort whatever to learn that others had been unhappy in the same way as herself—that there had been discord between her father and mother. The broken token was to her a token of universal breakage—of broken trust, broken ambitions, broken words, broken hearts—but that all the world was in wreck was no relief to Urith, whose only world for which she cared was contained within the bounds of Willsworthy.

She had dreamed with reverence of her father; but Uncle Sol had shown her that this father had been false in heart to her mother. Her own story was that of her mother. Each had married one whose heart had been pre-engaged. After a little while, no doubt of sincere struggle, the heart swung back to its eldest allegiance. As Urith sat in the hall window, looking out into the court, her eyes rested on the vane over the stables. Now that arrow pointed to the west! Sometimes it veered to other quarters, but the prevailing winds came from the Atlantic, and that vane, though for a few days it may have swerved to north or south, though for a whole month, nay—a whole spring it may have pointed east, as though nailed in that aspect, yet round it swung eventually, and for the rest of the year hardly deviated from west. So was it with the heart of Anthony; so had it been with the heart of her father. Each had had a first love; then there had come a sway towards another point, and eventually a swing round into the direction that had become habitual.

Fox's words at the dance in the house of the Cakes returned to her:—"You cannot root out old love with a word." With Anthony it had been old love. Since childhood he and Julian had known each other, and had looked on each other in the light of lovers. It was a love that had ramified in its roots throughout his heart and mind. It was with this love as with the coltsfoot in the fields. When once the weed was there, it was impossible to eradicate it; the spade that cut it, the pick that tore it up, the sickle that reaped it down, only multiplied it; every severed fibre became a fresh plant—every lopped head seeded on the ground and dispersed its grain. For a while a crop of barley or oats appeared, and the coltsfoot was lost in the upright growth; but the crop was cut and carried, and the coltsfoot remained.

Was this a justification for Anthony? Urith did not stay to inquire. She considered herself, her anguish of disappointment, her despair of the future—not him. With all the freshness and vehemence of youth, she had given herself wholly to Anthony. She had loved—cared for—no one before; and when she loved and cared for him it was with a completeness to which nothing lacked. Hers was a love infinite as the ocean, and now she found that his had been but a love, in comparison with hers, like a puddle that is dried up by the July sun.

She did not consider the matter with regard to Anthony's justification, only as affecting herself—as darkening her entire future. The coltsfoot must go on growing, and spread throughout the field. It could not be extirpated, only concealed for a while. She could never look into Anthony's face—never kiss him again, never endure a word of love from him any more, because of that hateful, hideous, ever-spreading, all-absorbing, only temporarily-coverable weed of first love for Julian. An indescribable horror of the future filled her—an inexpressible agony contracted her heart as with a cramp. She threw up her hands and clutched in the air at nothing; she gasped for breath as one drowning, but could inhale nothing contenting. Everything was gone from her with Anthony, not only everything that made life happy, but endurable. Down the stream belonging to the manor was a little mill, furnished with small grinding-stones, and a wheel that ever turned in the stream that shot over it. No miller lived at the mill. When rye, barley, or wheat had to be ground, some person from the house went down, set the mill, and poured in the grain. Night and day the wheel went round, and now in her brain was set up some such a mill—there was a whirl within, and a noise in her ears. The little manor-mill could be unset, so that, though the wheel turned, the stones did not grind unless needed; but to this inner mill in her head there was no relaxation. It would, grind, grind as long as the stream of life ran—grind her heart, grind up her trust, her hopes, her love, her faith in God, her belief in men—grind up all that was gentle in her nature, till it ground all her nobler nature up into an arid dust.

The day declined, and she was still looking at the broken token.

The mill was grinding, and was turning out horrible thoughts of jealousy, it ground her love and poured forth hate, it ground up confidence and sent out suspicion. She sprang to her feet. Where was Anthony now? What was he doing all this while? He had been away a long time; with whom had he been tarrying?

The mill was grinding, and now, as she threw in the jealous thoughts, the hate, the suspicions, it had just turned out, it ground them over again, and sent forth a wondrous series of fancies in a magic dust that filled her eyes and ears; in her eyes it made her see Anthony in Julian's society, in her ears it made her hear what they said to each other. The dust fell into her blood, and made it boil and rage; it fell on her brain, and there it caught fire and spluttered. She was as one mad in her agony—so mad that she caught at the stanchions of the window and strove to tear them out of the solid granite in which they were set, not that she desired to burst through the window, but that she must tear at and break something.

Why had Anthony marred her life, blistered her soul? She had started from girlhood in simplicity, prepared to be happy in a quiet way, rambling over the moors in a desultory fashion, attending to the farm and garden and the poultry yard. She would have been content, if left alone, never to have seen a man. Her years would have slipped away free from any great sorrow, without any great cares. Willsworthy contented her where wants were few. She loved and was proud of the place; but Anthony, since he had been there had found fault with it, had undervalued it, laughed at it; had shown her how bleak it was, how ungenerous was the soil, how out of repair its buildings, how lacking in all advantages.

Anthony had taught her to depreciate what she had highly esteemed. Why need he have done that?

The wheel and the grindstones were turning, and out ran the bitter answer—because Willsworthy was hers, that was why he scorned it, why he saw in it only faults.

She paced the little hall, every now and then clasping her hands over her burning temples, pressing them in with all her force, as though by main strength to arrest the churn of those grindstones. Then she put them to her ears to shut out the sound of the revolving wheel.

On the mantel-shelf was a brass pestle for crushing spices. She took it down. Into it were stuffed the old gloves of Julian Crymes. It was a characteristic trait of the conduct of the house; nothing was put where it ought to be, or might be expected to be. After these gloves had lain about, at one time in the window, at another on the settle, then upon the table, Urith had finally thrust them out of the way into the pestle, and there they had remained forgotten till now. In the train of her thoughts Urith was led to the challenge of Julian, when she recalled where the gloves were, and these she now took from the place to which she had consigned them.

She unfolded them and shook the dust from them. Then she stood with one foot on the hearthstone, her burning head resting against the granite upper stone of the fireplace, looking at the gloves. Had Julian made good her threat? Was she really, deliberately, with determinate malice, winding Anthony off Urith's hand on to her own? And if so—to what would this lead? How would she—Urith—be tortured between them? Every hair of her head was a nerve, and each suffering pain.

She lifted her brow from the granite, then dashed it back again, and felt no jar, so acute was the inner suffering she endured. It were better that Anthony, or she—were dead. Such a condition of affairs as that of which the mill in her head ground out a picture, was worse than death. She could not endure it, she knew—she must go mad with the torment. Oh, would! oh—would that Fox's fuse had been left to take its effect in the ear of Anthony's horse, and dash him to pieces against the rocks of the Walla!

She could no longer bear the confinement of the house. She gasped and her bosom laboured. She put the gloves between her teeth, and her hands again to her head, but her dark hair fell down about her shoulders. She did not heed it. Her mind was otherwise occupied. In a dim way she was aware of it, and her hands felt for her hair, how to bind it together and fasten it again, but her mind was elsewhere, and her fingers only dishevelled her hair the more.

The air of the room oppressed her; the walls contracted on her; the ceiling came down like lead upon her brain. She plucked the gloves out of her mouth and threw them on the table, then went forth.

The rain had ceased. Evening had set in, dark for June, because the twilight could not struggle through the dense vapours overhead.

"Where is Anthony? I must see Anthony!" Her words were so hoarse, so strange that they startled her. It is said that when one is possessed, the evil spirit in the man speaks out of him in a strange voice, utterly unlike that which is natural. It might be so now. The old demon in Urith that had gone to sleep was awaking, refreshed with slumber, to reassert his power.

Where was Anthony? What delayed his return? Had he on leaving Willsworthy gone direct to Julian to pour out into her sympathetic ear the story of his domestic troubles? Was he telling her of his wife's shortcomings?—of her temper?—her untidiness?—her waywardness? Were they jeering together in confidence at poor little moorland Willsworthy? Were they talking over the great mistake Anthony had made in taking Urith in the place of Julian? Were they laughing over that scene when Anthony led out Urith for the dance at the Cakes? She saw their hands meet, and their eyes—their eyes—as at the Cakes.

Then there issued from her breast a scream—a scream of unendurable pain; it came from her involuntarily; it was forced from her by the stress of agony within, but the voice was hoarse and inhuman. She was aware of it, and grasped her hair and thrust it into her mouth to gnaw at, and to stifle the cries of pain which might burst from her again.

She had descended the hill a little way when she thought she discerned a figure approaching, mounting the rough lane. It might be Anthony—it might be Solomon Gibbs. She was unprepared to meet either, so she slipped aside into the little chapel. The portion of wall by the door was fallen, making a gap, but further back grew a large sycamore, out of the floor of the sacred building, near the angle formed by the south and west walls. Behind this she retreated, and thence could see the person who ascended the path, unobserved.

She was startled when Fox Crymes stepped through the gap where had been the door. There was sufficient light for her to distinguish him, but he could not observe her, as the shadows thrown by the dense foliage of the sycamore from above, and the side shadows from the walls, made the corner where Urith stood thoroughly obscure.

She supposed at first that Fox had stopped there for a moment to shake out his wet cloak and readjust it; he did, in fact, rearrange the position of the mantle, but it was not so as more effectually to protect himself from rain as to leave his right arm free. Moreover, after that he had fitted his cloak to suit his pleasure, he did not resume his ascent of the lane to Willsworthy.

For a while Urith's thoughts were turned into a new channel. She wondered, in the first place, why Fox should come to Willsworthy at that hour; and next, why Fox, if Willsworthy should be his destination, halted where he was, without attempting to proceed.

His conduct also perplexed her. He seated himself on a stone and whistled low to himself through a broken tooth in front that he had—a whistle that was more of a hiss of defiance than a merry pipe. Then he took out his hunting-knife, and tried the point on his fingers. This did not perfectly satisfy him, and he whetted it on a piece of freestone moulding still in position, that formed a jamb of the old door, of which the arch and the other jamb were fallen.

This occupied Fox for some time, but not continuously, for every now and then he stood up, stole to the lane, and cautiously peered down it, never exposing himself so as to be observed by any person ascending the rough way.

The air was still, hardly any wind stirred, but what little there was came in sudden puffs that shook the foliage of the sycamore burdened with wet, and sent down a shower upon the floor. Urith could not feel the wind, and when it came it was as though a shudder went through the tree, and it tossed off the burden of water oppressing it, much as would a long-haired spaniel on emerging from a bath.

Bats were abroad. One swept up and down the old chapel, noiseless, till it came close to the ear, when the whirr of the wings was as that of the sails of a mill.

An uneasy peewhit was awake and awing, flitting and uttering its plaintive, desolate cry. It was not visible in the grey night-sky, and was still for a minute; then screamed over the ruins; then wheeled away, and called, as an echo from a distance, an answer to its own cry.

Fox stood forward again in the road, and strained his eyes down the lane; then stole a little way along it to where he could, or thought he could, see a longer stretch of it; then came back at a run, and stood snorting in the ruins once more. Again, soft and still, came on a comminuted rain—the very dust of rain—so fine and so light that it took no direction, but floated on the air, and hardly fell.

Fox turned to the sycamore-tree. No shelter could be had beneath its water-burdened leaves, that gathered the moisture and shot it down on the ground. But he did not look at it as wanting its shelter. He stepped toward it, then drew back; exclaimed, "Ah! Anthony. Here's one for Urith," and struck his knife into the bole. The blade glanced through the bark, sheering off a long strip, that rolled over and fell to the ground attached to the tree at the bottom. "You took her and Willsworthy from me," said Fox, drawing back. Then he aimed another blow at the tree, cursing, "And here is for my eye!"

Urith started back; each blow seemed to be aimed at and to hit her, who was behind the tree. She felt each stroke as a sharp spasm in her heart.

Fox dragged at his knife, worked it up, down, till he had loosened it; then withdrew it. Then he laid his left hand, muffled in his cloak, against the sycamore trunk, and raised his knife again. "That is not enough," he whispered, and it was to Urith as though he breathed it into her ear. He struck savagely into the side of the tree, as though into a man, under the ribs, and said, "And this for Julian."

Before he could release his blade, Urith had stepped forth and had laid her hand on him.

"Answer me," she said: "What do you mean by those words, 'And this for Julian?'"