"You can't understand, Ned; but life's too short for everything. Perhaps you'll have to turn to work someday. Then you'll know."

"You don't work from eight o'clock at night till eleven anyway. Take my tip and come to the show and make a night of it. Waldron's going to be there. He's hunting this morning."

"I know."

The dinner bell had rung and now there came a knock at Raymond's door.

Then Sabina entered and was departing again, but her lover bade her stay.

"Don't go, Sabina. This is my friend, Mr. Motyer--Miss Dinnett."

Motyer, remembering Raymond's recent snub, was exceedingly charming to Sabina. He stopped and chatted another five minutes, then mentioned the smoking concert again and so took his departure. Raymond spoke slightingly of him when he had gone.

"He's no good, really," he said. "An utter waster and only a hanger-on of sport--can't do anything himself but talk. Now he'll tell everybody in Bridport about you coming up here in the dinner-hour. Come and cheer me up. I'm bothered to death."

He kissed her and put his arms round her, but she would not stop.

"I can't stay here," she said. "I want to walk up the hill with you. If you're bothered, so am I, my darling."

He put on his hat and they went out together.

"I've had a nasty jar," she told him. "People are beginning to say things, Raymond--things that you wouldn't like to think are being said."

"I thought we rose superior to the rest of the world, and what it said and what it thought."

"We do and we always have. We're not moral cowards either of us. But there are some things. You don't want me to be insulted. You don't want either of us to lose the respect of people."

"We can't have our cake and eat it too, I suppose," he said rather carelessly. "Personally I don't care a straw whether people respect me, or despise me, as long as I respect myself. The people that matter to me respect me all right."

"Well, the people that matter to me, don't," she answered with a flash of colour. "We'll leave you out, Raymond, since you're satisfied; but I'm not satisfied. It isn't right, or fair, that I should begin to get sour looks from the women here, where I used to have smiles; and looks from the men--hateful looks--looks that no decent woman ought to suffer.

And my mother has heard a lot of lies and is very miserable. So I think it's high time we let everybody know we're engaged. And you must think so, too, after what I've told you, Ray dear."

"Certainly," he answered, "not a shadow of doubt about it. And if I saw any man insult you, I should delight to thrash him on the spot--or a dozen of them. How the devil do people find out about one? I thought we'd been more than clever enough to hoodwink a dead alive place like this."

"Will you let me tell mother, to-day? And Sally Groves, and one or two of my best friends at the Mill? Do, Raymond--it's only fair to me now."

Had she left unspoken her last sentence, he might have agreed; but it struck a wrong note on his ear. It sounded selfish; it suggested that Sabina was concerned with herself and indifferent to the complications she had brought into his life. For a moment he was minded to answer hastily; but he controlled himself.

"It's natural you should feel like that; so do I, of course. We must settle a date for letting it out. I'll think about it. I'd say this minute, and you know I'm looking forward quite as much as you are to letting the world know my luck; but unfortunately you've just raised the question at an impossible moment, Sabina."

"Why? Surely nothing can make it impossible to clear my good name, Raymond?"

"I've got a good name, too. At least, I imagine so."

"Our names are one, or should be."

"Not yet, exactly. I wanted to spare you bothers. I do spare you all the bothers I can; but, of course, I've got my own, too, like everybody else. You see it's rather vital to your future, which you're naturally so keen about, Sabina, that I keep in with my brother. You'll admit that much. Well, for the moment I'm having the deuce of a row with him.

You know what an exacting beggar he is. He will have his pound of flesh, and he has no sympathy for anything on two legs but himself. I asked him for a fortnight's holiday."

"A fortnight's holiday, Raymond!"

"Yes--that's not very wonderful, is it? But, of course, you can't understand what this work is to me, because you look at it from a different angle. Anyway I want a holiday--to get right away and consider things; and he won't let me have it. And finding that, I lost my temper.

And if, at the present moment, Daniel hears that we're engaged to be married, Sabina, it's about fifty to one that he'd chuck me altogether and stop my dirty little allowance also."

They had reached the gate of 'The Magnolias,' and Sabina did a startling thing. She turned from him and went down the path to the back entrance without another word. But this he could not stand. His heart smote him and he called her with such emotion that she also was sorrowful and came back to the gate.

"Good G.o.d! you frightened me," he said. "This is a quarrel, Sabina--our first and last, I hope. Never, never let anything come between us.

That's unthinkable and I won't have it. You must give and take, my precious girl. And so must I. But look at it. What on earth happens to us if Daniel fires me out of the Mill?"

"He's a just man," she answered. "Dislike him as we may, he's a just man and you need not fear him, or anybody else, if you do the right thing."

"You oppose your will to mine, then, Sabina?"

"I don't know your will. I thought I did; I thought I understood you so well by now and was learning better and better how to please you. But now I tell you I am being wronged, and you say nothing can be done."

"I never said so. I'm not a blackguard, Sabina, and you ought to know that as well as the rest of the world. I'm poor, unfortunately, and the poor have got to be politic. Daniel may be just, but it's a narrow-minded, hypocritical justice, and if I tell him I'm engaged to you, he'll sack me. That's the plain English of it."

"I don't believe he would."

"Well, I know he would; and you must at least allow me to know more about him than you do. And so I ask you whether it is common-sense to tell him what's going to happen, for the sake of a few clod-hoppers, who matter to n.o.body, or--"

"But, but, how long is it to go on? Why do you shrink from doing now what you wanted to do at first?"

"I don't shrink from it at all. I only intend to choose the proper time and not give the show away at a moment when to do so will be to ruin me."

"'Give the show away,'" she quoted bitterly. "You can look me in the face and say a thing like that! It's only 'a show' to you; but it's my life to me."

"I'm sorry I used the expression. Words aren't anything. It's my life to me, too. And I've got to think for both of us. In a week, or ten days, I'll eat humble pie and climb down and grovel to Daniel. Then, when I'm pardoned, we'll tell everybody. It won't kill you to wait another fortnight anyway. And in the meantime we'd better see less of each other, since you're getting so worried about what your friends say about us."

Now he had said too much. Sabina would have agreed to the suggestion of a fortnight's waiting, but the proposal that they should see less of each other both hurt and angered her. The quarrel culminated.

"Caution seems to me rather a cowardly thing, Raymond, from you to me. I tell you that your wife's good name is at stake. For, since you've called me your wife so often, I suppose I may do the same. And if you're so careless for my credit, then I must be jealous for it myself."

"And my credit can go to the devil, I suppose?"

Then she flamed, struck to the root of the matter and left him.

"If the fact that you're engaged to me, by every sacred tie of honour, ruins your credit--then tell yourself what you are," she said, and her voice rose to a note he had never heard before.

This time he did not call her back, but went his own way up the hill.

CHAPTER XIII

IN THE FOREMAN'S GARDEN

Mr. Best was a good gardener and cultivated fruit and flowers to perfection. His rambling patch of ground ran beside the river and some of his apple trees bent over it. Pear trees also he grew, and a medlar and a quince. But flowers he specially loved. His house was bowered in roses to the thatched roof, and in the garden grew lilies and lupins, a hundred roses and many bright tracts of shining, scented blossoms. Now, however, they had vanished and on a Sat.u.r.day afternoon John Best was tidying up, tending a bonfire and digging potatoes.