“I’ll go without it.  I can carry a toothbrush and a comb, and Mummy will have heaps of nightgowns.”

The Vicar leaned forward and hid his face in his hands before that poignant evocation of Robina.

Gwenda saw that she had gone too far.  She had a queer longing to go down on her knees before him and drag his hands from his poor face and ask him to forgive her.  She struggled with and overcame the morbid impulse.

The Vicar lifted his face, and for a moment they looked at each other while he measured, visibly, his forces against hers.

She shook her head at him almost tenderly.  He was purely pathetic to her now.

“It’s no use, Papa.  You’d far better give it up.  You know you can’t do it.  You can’t stop me.  You can’t stop Jim Greatorex.  You can’t even stop Peacock.  You don’t want another scandal in the parish.”

He didn’t.

“Oh, go your own way,” he said, “and take the consequences.”

“I have taken them,” said Gwenda.

She thought, “I wonder what he’d have said if I’d told him the truth?  But, if I had, he’d never have believed it.”

The truth indeed was far beyond the Vicar’s power of belief.  He only supposed (after some reflection) that Gwenda was going off in a huff, because young Rowcliffe had failed to come to the scratch.  He knew what this running up to London and earning her own living meant—­she!  He would have trusted Ally sooner.  Gwenda was capable of anything.

And as he thought of what she might be capable of in London, he sighed, “God help her!”

XL

It was May, five weeks since Gwenda had left Garthdale.

Five Wednesdays came and went and Rowcliffe had not been seen or heard of at the Vicarage.  It struck even the Vicar that considerably more had passed between his daughter and the doctor than Gwenda had been willing to admit.  Whatever had passed, it had been something that had made Rowcliffe desire not to be seen or heard of.

All the same, the Vicar and his daughter Alice were both so profoundly aware of Rowcliffe that for five weeks they had not mentioned his name to each other.  When Mary mentioned it on Friday, in the evening of that disgraceful day, he said that he had had enough of Rowcliffe and he didn’t want to hear any more about the fellow.

Mr. Cartaret had signified that his second daughter’s name was not to be mentioned, either.  But, becoming as his attitude was, he had not been able to keep it up.  In the sixth week after Gwenda’s departure, he was obliged to hear (it was Alice, amazed out of all reticence, who told him) that Gwenda had got a berth as companion secretary to Lady Frances Gilbey, at a salary of a hundred a year.

Mummy had got it for her.

“You may well stare, Molly, but it’s what she says.”

The Vicar, as if he had believed Ally capable of fabricating this intelligence, observed that he would like to see that letter.