She thought, “He will pass in another minute.  I shall see him.”

But she did not see him.  All the way up Rathdale to Morfe the sound of the wheels and of the clanking hoofs pursued her, and Rowcliffe still hung back.  He did not want to pass her.

“Well,” said Peacock, “thot beats mae.  I sud navver a thought thot t’ owd maare could a got away from t’ doctor’s horse.  Nat ef e’d a mind t’ paass ’er.”

“No,” said Gwenda.  She was thinking, “It’s Mary.  It’s Mary.  How could she, when she knew, when she was on her honor not to think of him?”

And she remembered a conversation she had had with her stepmother two months ago, when the news came. (Robina had seized the situation at a glance and she had probed it to its core.)

“You wanted him to marry Ally, did you?  It wasn’t much good you’re going away if you left him with Mary.”

“But,” she had said, “Mary knew.”

And Robina had answered, marvelously.  “You should never have let her.  It was her knowing that did it.  You were three women to one man, and Mary was the one without a scruple.  Do you suppose she’d think of Ally or of you, either?”

And she had tried to be loyal to Mary and to Rowcliffe.  She had said, “If we were three, we all had our innings, and he made his choice.”

And Robina, “It was Mary did the choosing.”

She had added that Gwenda was a little fool, and that she ought to have known that though Mary was as meek as Moses she was that sort.

She went on, thinking, to the steady clanking of the hoofs.

“I suppose,” she said to herself, “she couldn’t help it.”

The lights of Morfe shone through the November darkness.  The little slow mare crawled up the winding hill to the top of the Green; Rowcliffe’s horse was slower.  But no sooner had Peacock’s trap passed the doctor’s house on its way out of the village square, than the clanking hoofs went fast.

Rowcliffe was free to go his own pace now.

* * * * *

“Which of you two is going to hook me up?” said Mary.

She was in the Vicar’s room, putting on her wedding-gown before the wardrobe glass.  Her two sisters were dressing her.

“I will,” said Gwenda.

“You’d better let me,” said Alice.  “I know where the eyes are.”

Gwenda lifted up the wedding-veil and held it ready.  And while Alice pulled and fumbled Mary gazed at her own reflection and at Alice’s.

“You should have done as Mummy said and had your frock made in London, like Gwenda.  They’d have given you a decent cut.  You look as if you couldn’t breathe.”

“My frock’s all right,” said Alice.

Her fingers trembled as she strained at the hooks and eyes.

And in the end it was Gwenda who hooked Mary up while Alice held the veil.  She held it in front of her.  The long streaming net shivered with the trembling of her hands.