He had risen, and the movement brought him face to face with Gwenda.  And as she looked at him it was as if she saw vividly and for the first time the profound unspirituality of her father’s face.  She knew from what source his eyes drew their darkness.  She understood the meaning of the gross red mouth that showed itself in the fierce lifting of the ascetic, grim moustache.  And she conceived a horror of his fatherhood.

“No man ought to say that of his own daughter.  How does he know what’s her own and what’s his?” she said.

Rowcliffe stared at her in a sort of awful admiration.  She was terrible; she was fierce; she was mad.  But it was the fierceness and the madness of pity and of compassion.

She went on.

“You’ve no business to be hard on her.  You must have known.”

“I knew nothing,” said the Vicar.

He appealed to her with a helpless gesture of his hands.

“You did know.  You were warned.  You were told not to shut her up.  And you did shut her up.  You can’t blame her if she got away.  You flung her to Jim Greatorex.  There wasn’t anybody who cared for her but him.”

“Cared for her!” He snarled his disgust.

“Yes.  Cared for her.  You think that’s horrible of her—­that she should have gone to him—­and yet you want to tie her to him when she’s afraid of him.  And I think it’s horrible of you.”

“She must marry him.”  Mary spoke again.  “She’s brought it on herself, Gwenda.”

“She hasn’t brought it on herself.  And she shan’t marry him.”

“I’m afraid she’ll have to,” Rowcliffe said.

“She won’t have to if I take her away somewhere and look after her.  I mean to do it.  I’ll work for her.  I’ll take care of the child.”

“Oh, you—­you——!” The Vicar waved her away with a frantic flapping of his hands.

He turned to his son-in-law.

“Rowcliffe—­I beg you—­will you use your influence?”

“I have none.”

That drew her.  “Steven—­help me—­can’t you see how terrible it is if she’s afraid of him?”

“But is she?”

He looked at her with his miserable eyes, then turned them from her, considering gravely what she had said.  It was then, while Rowcliffe was considering it, that the garden gate opened violently and fell to.

They waited for the sound of the front door bell.

Instead of it they heard two doors open and Ally’s voice calling to
Greatorex in the hall.

As the Vicar flung himself from his study into the other room he saw Alice standing close to Greatorex by the shut door.  Her lover’s arms were round her.

He laid his hands on them as if to tear them apart.

“You shall not touch my daughter—­until you’ve married her.”

The young man’s right arm threw him off; his left arm remained round Alice.

“It’s yo’ s’all nat tooch her, Mr. Cartaret,” he said.  “Ef yo’ coom between her an’ mae I s’all ‘ave t’ kill yo’.  I’d think nowt of it.  Dawn’t yo’ bae freetened, my laass,” he murmured tenderly.