When Lydia asked that Medora might come to stop at the farm, Mary and Tom spoke simultaneously, for each hastened to be the first to accord permission.

They had suffered acute anxieties concerning Mrs. Trivett’s possible departure, and when she told them that she had determined to remain, nothing was good enough for her.

In their joy and relief they grovelled before Lydia, heaped compliments upon her, and declared that never for a moment had they entertained the least doubt concerning her decision, even while, with every thankful word and exultant exclamation, they revealed the depth of their past anxiety and height of their vanished fear. She saw through it, and only left them uneasy in one particular.

Mr. Knox, so Lydia explained, had taken his disappointment in a spirit of great self-restraint, and behaved with such magnanimity and understanding that when he desired the continued friendship of Mrs. Trivett, she could not deny it.

“For that matter, I’m proud to have him for a friend,” she said. “He’s full of sense, and as he’s prepared to offer friendship to me and mine, I’m prepared to accept it, and you mustn’t mind if he comes to tea of a Sunday sometimes, and such like.”

“He wouldn’t allude to the past, or anything like that, I hope?” asked Mr. Dolbear doubtfully. “Because, in his rage at his loss, he might be tempted to give me and my wife the blame; and if he did that, I should round on him, and there’d be a scene.”“Fear nothing of the sort,” replied his sister. “You may take it from me it won’t happen. In fact, I went into it, and I’ve got his undertaking never to say one word to you or Polly on the subject. And he’s a man you may say whose word is his bond.”

“Then let him come,” decided Tom. “If he’s got that bee out of his bonnet, I don’t want to quarrel with him. I never doubted his sense, save in that fatal matter.”

“He’s got a nice hand with the children, too,” said Mary. “I will say that for him; and where a child of mine takes, you may generally trust the party.”

In the matter of Medora, there was no difficulty; nor did Jordan make any. Medora, in fact, felt a shadow of disappointment that he agreed so willingly. It was only a lesser grievance than refusal had been.

She made a great business of her petition, but he made no business whatever of granting it.

“You’ve got the lecture through now,” he said, “and there won’t be no need for another copy yet, if at all, and you’ve heard me deliver it so often that I’ll be glad for you to go and get a rest. Then you’ll come back all the fresher to it, and to the actual night, when I give it at Totnes a fortnight hence. Go, by all means, and I’ll come over to tea on Sunday.”

So Medora, who would have wearied Heaven with her griefs, had he questioned the plan, now flushed that he approved it.

“One would think you was glad to get rid of me,” she said.

“Who’d think so?” he asked. “It’s a good idea, and will give you a bit of a rest.”

“And you, too, perhaps?”

“I don’t want a rest; but life’s been getting on your nerves above a bit lately, and the calm of the farm and the fun of the children, and being with your mother, and so on—it’s to the good, Medora. And soon, I hope, we’ll know something definite, so that this suspense can end. It’s bad for you, and I should think the man was enough of a man to know he’s doing a mean and cowardly thing to hang it up like this any longer. So you go, and rest quietly; and as I told you, if he doesn’t proceed soon, I shall approach him again with an ultimatum.”

“It’s him that will have the ultimatum, I should think.”

So Medora went to Priory Farm, and since she knew very well how to please her aunt, made a point of doing so. Indeed, Mrs. Dolbear considered she was much improved.

“I never thought she would rise to children,” said Mary to her sister-in-law, “but of late, I may say, there’s hope in that direction. She’s more patient and quicker to see danger threatening a child. There was a time I wouldn’t have trusted her too far with Milly or Bobby, let alone Jenny; but all that’s altered. She may even be a good mother herself yet in fulness of time.”

Indeed, Medora shone at the farm, and displayed consideration for other people that might hardly have been predicted even by the sanguine. Mary Dolbear was one who gave everybody ample opportunities to be unselfish, and Medora not only perceived these opportunities, but took them. She had changed, and none realised how much better than Lydia. But still the wisdom of any meeting between her daughter and Ned seemed doubtful. She hesitated to bring it about, and was still hesitating when chance accomplished it.

Medora had been at Cornworthy for ten days and once Jordan came to tea during that time. He was full of some alterations in his lecture, but brought no news of interest to his future wife.

Then she went for a walk by the ponds above the Mill, where emerald reflections of alder and willow and birch were washed over the silver surface of the little mere, and a great wealth of green leapt again above the mats and tussocks of the sedge and rush. Golden kingcups flashed along the shallows, and bluebells wove their light into the banks above the water.Medora was actually engaged in the innocent business of picking flowers when she came plump upon Ned. They met at a narrow beach running into the lake under a limestone crag; and he, too, was there on pleasure, for he was fishing. Strangely enough, each was possessed with the same idea, and seemed to think it necessary to explain to the other the situation in which they stood revealed.

Ned scowled and started; Medora blushed. While he stared, she spoke, without any preliminaries and as though no terrific events separated them. It seemed as if the trivial accident of being there picking flowers demanded first consideration.

“You mustn’t think I’m here for pleasure,” she said. “I’m only killing time. We’ve got to wait your will, and I’ve got to go on living as best as I can. We’re at your mercy.”

He, too, fastened on the moment.

“As to that, same here. It’s true I’m fishing, but only to kill time, same as you. I’m not in any mood for pleasure, I can tell you, woman.”

“I dare say not,” she answered. “People often fall back on little things when big things are hanging over them. I know how you feel, because I feel the same.”

“You don’t know how I feel,” he answered. “And don’t you dare to say you do, please. What do you know about feeling? You’re the senseless rubbish that can hurt others, but you’re not built to suffer yourself more than a stinging nettle.”

She felt no pang of anger at his rough challenge. After Kellock’s steadfast voice, the ferocious accents of Ned were rather agreeable than not. His tone for once was deep, as an angry bull. She liked it, and thought he looked exceedingly well.

“As long as he don’t throw me in the water, I’ll speak to him,” thought Medora.

Ned expected a stinging reply to his preliminary challenge, but she did not answer it. Instead, she spoke of an utter triviality.

“What d’you think’s in my mind—to show how little things get hold on you? The first thing that come in it when I saw you so close was pleasure, because I was wearing a pink sunbonnet—that being your favourite colour for me. But Mr. Kellock don’t know what I wear.”

He started with genuine astonishment.

“What in thunder be women made of? You can babble like that and pick flowers, and be a hen devil all the time?”

“If I am a hen devil, then I’m in the proper place for devils, and that’s hell,” she said. “D’you think a woman can’t pick flowers and wear pink and yet be broken to pieces heart and soul?”

“So you ought to be. You was always playing at being a martyr, and now you damned well can be one. And I hope you are. The trouble with you was that I spoiled you and fooled you to the top of your bent, and let you bully-rag me, and never turned round and gave you a bit of the naked truth yourself.”

“I know it,” she said. “You were a great deal too fond of me for my good, Ned, and if you hadn’t loved me so well, I dare say you’d have been a better husband.”

“I couldn’t have been a better husband,” he answered, “and if you’d been made of decent stuff, you’d have known it. Not that I didn’t see the ugly truth about you—I did; but I hoped and hoped that with time you’d get more sense, and so I held my tongue and held on.”

“How I wish you’d told me my faults, Ned.”

“You oughtn’t to want telling. If you’d got any conscience, which you never had, you’d have seen your faults and suffered from ’em, as you ought. For one thing, you were greedy as the grave, and that envious that you didn’t like anybody else to have anything you lacked. If you saw a worm on the ground, you wished you was a bird. ’Twas always so. Everybody else was better off than you, and had got nicer cats and gardens and husbands and everything. A filthy jealousy it was that made you miserable, when you ought to have been happy, and tempted you off to try your luck with this thing, that’s only a machine, not a man. Some chaps would have took you two and smashed your heads together like egg-shells, as you deserved; but I’m above anything like that. You thought I was a fool; but I wasn’t such a fool as to do that. You wrecked me, but I wasn’t going to wreck you.”

“I’ve wrecked myself, more likely,” said Medora.

“I don’t know nothing about that. Whatever you get won’t be half what you deserve.”

Ned appeared to have changed for the better in Medora’s eyes. The harsher were his words, the better she liked them. Here was real martyrdom. The emotion of this suffering became a luxury. She wept, but was not in the least unhappy.

“I’ve ruined two very fine men—that’s what I’ve done,” said Medora. She flung down her kingcups and bluebells, and sat on a stone and covered her face with her pocket-handkerchief.

He looked at her fiercely, and rated her from a savage heart.

“Crocodile tears! You never even cried like a decent woman, from your heart, because you haven’t got a heart.”

“Don’t say that,” she said. “Your heart can’t break if you haven’t got one, and mine’s broken all right now. With all my dreadful faults, I’m human—only too much so. I know what I’ve done, and what I’ve lost.”

“And what you’ve won, too—a lunatic, that will very likely end on the gallows as a traitor to the country, or some such thing.”

“No, he won’t,” she replied. “He’s too dull for that.”

“You can call him dull, can you?”

“You’ve no right to make me talk about him,” answered she; “all the same, honesty’s no crime, and I say he’s a dull man, because anybody with only one idea is dull.”“Yes, no doubt; if you’re not his one idea yourself, you find him dull. And when you were my only idea, you still wanted more—always wanted more—more than you had of everything but trouble; and now you’ve brewed that for yourself. And what d’you mean, when you say you’ve ruined his life as well as mine?”

Medora enjoyed the lash of his scornful voice.

“You’ll kill me if you speak so harsh,” she said. “I meant—I meant—I don’t know what I meant. Only it’s clear to me that I shan’t make him the wife he thinks I shall.”

“That’s true for once. You’re no wife for any man. And as for him, he don’t want a flesh and blood woman for his partner, and if you hadn’t thrown yourself at his head, like a street-walker, he’d never have taken you. The shamelessness—the plotting—the lies. When you grasp hold of what you’ve done, you ought to want to drown yourself.”

“I may do it sooner than you think for,” she answered. “Rub it in—I deserve it; but don’t fancy I’m not being paid worse coin than any word of yours. I’m only a woman—not much more than a girl, you may say; and I’ve done you bitter wrong, but there’s always two sides to everything, and justice will be done to me—in fact, it’s begun. You say Kellock never wanted a flesh and blood woman, and that’s true—truer than you know. So you can see what my future’s going to be. Once you’re free, you can find a better and prettier and wiser creature than me to-morrow; but I’m done for to the end of my life. He’s much too good for me—I know that—so were you—far too good; but there it is. I’m done for—down and out, as you would say. He’ll go and live in a town presently. Think of me in a town!”

“Sorry for yourself always—and never for nobody else.”

“I’m sorry for everybody that ever I was born. I don’t want to bring any more trouble on people; and very like, I may find the best way is to drop into the water some night, and let the river carry my poor dust out to sea.”

“You haven’t the pluck to do that,” he said. “Anyway, you belong to him now, and have got to play the game and stick to him.”

They argued for some time, the man minatory and harsh, the woman resigned. But once he amused her. Then Ned harked back to her threat.

“You talk of being down on your luck, and suicide, and all that twaddle. But you never looked better in your life. You’re bursting with health.”

“I’m not,” she cried indignantly. “You’ve no right to say it. And if I am, what about you? You’re a lot fatter and handsomer than ever you was in my time.”

“That’s a lie,” he said, “and you needn’t think I’m made of stone, though you are.”

“If I’m a stone, ’tis a rolling one,” she answered, “and that sort don’t gather no moss. I’m glad I’ve met you, Ned, because I’m very wishful for you to know, for your peace of mind, I’m not happy—far, far from it. You deserve to know that. You made me laugh just now, I grant, and that’s the first time I’ve laughed since I left you—God judge me, if it isn’t. The very first time, and the sound was so strange that it made me jump.”

“Laugh? You haven’t got much to laugh at I should say.”

“That’s true. I’ll never laugh no more. I wouldn’t laugh when I might—now it’s too late.”

“It’s never too late for anything for one of your sort. And when you say you’re a rolling stone, I reckon you tell the truth for once. And things that roll go down hill, remember that. Hell knows where you’ll roll to before you finish.”

“It won’t be your fault, Ned. You’ve got nothing to blame yourself with,” she answered humbly, and he judged wrongly of what was in her mind.“You’d better send Kellock along to me,” he said. “The business is in hand, and I may tell you, I meant to hit him as hard as I knew how. But there’s two sides to that, and in the long run what kept me from getting a gallows out of him is the same that’s going to keep me from getting damages. And that’s you.”

“I’m not worthy to black your boots, Ned,” declared Medora.

“No, and more’s he—more’s he; mind that. You thought he was the clever, strong man—the sort of man would be a tower of strength to any woman, and all the rest of it; and now you know, or you jolly soon will know, that he’s only a tower of strength for himself—not for you. A man like him wants a woman to match him, and if you ask yourself if you match him, and answer yourself honest, if you can, then you’ll answer that you don’t and never will. You can send him to me at my convenience. He can call o’ Monday at half-after eight—then I’ll decide about it.”

“Thank you, Ned. It’s more than we deserve, I dare say. I don’t care much what happens now if you can forgive me. I suppose you can’t, but it would mean a lot to me if you could.”

“You think I’ve got something to forgive, then? That’s surprising. I thought ’twas all the other way.”

“So did I,” she answered, “but I know better now. I shouldn’t be suffering like I am if I’d done right.”

“You can do right and still suffer,” he answered, “and now be off, and send the man to me.”

Medora, again weeping freely, and leaving her bunch of flowers on the ground at his feet, departed without any more words. For once, her tears were real and her sorrows genuine. They were genuine, yet contained a measure of sweetness, and comforted her by their reality. This was an order of grief that she had not known. She persisted in it for a long time, after she had gone out of his sight, and found a sunny spot among the bluebells. There she sat and heaped reproaches on her head; and self-blame was a sensation so novel that it soothed instead of crushed her. But this phase passed in contemplation of Ned. He had changed in some mysterious way. He was formidable, masculine—a thing infinitely superior to herself. Could she dare to say that Ned was now superior to Kellock? She fled from that thought as from chaos; but it pursued her; it made to itself feet and wings, and clung to her mind. She resisted, but it stuck like a burr. Ned was surely translated into something fine and admirable; while Kellock, now about to be a conqueror, had waned almost to a second-rate being in Medora’s vision.

A sensation of physical sickness overtook her before this horrible discovery; for what could such a conclusion do but wreck her future utterly and hopelessly? If Kellock were to fall from his pedestal, who was left?

And a hundred yards off, still buried in the thoughts sprung from this remarkable conversation, Ned set up his rod, cast out ground bait, and began to fish for dace and perch. His mind, however, was far from his float, and presently his eyes followed Medora, as she moved pensively along the road on the other side of the pond. She would tell Kellock to come and see him, and then Ned would—he did not know what he would do.

His thoughts turned to Philander Knox and their last interview. Medora had said nothing to contradict the vatman’s assurances. Indeed, she had implicitly supported them. And she was obviously changed. She had apparently enough proper feeling to be miserable; but whether that misery was pretended, or sprang from her conscience, or arose from her futile conjunction with Kellock under the present unsupportable conditions, Ned could not determine. He examined his own emotions respecting Medora, and found that she had slightly modified them. He despised her, and began even to pity her, since, on her own showing, she was having a bad time. But was she ever built to have a good time? Dingle doubted it.