“That’s what you think of me?”

“That’s what I think of you.”

“Then it’s all right,” he said.  “For what I think of you is that you’d never say a thing you didn’t really mean.”

They parted at the turn of the road, where, as he again reminded her, he had seen her first.

Going home by himself over the moor, Rowcliffe wondered whether he hadn’t missed his opportunity.

He might have told her that he cared for her.  He might have asked her if she cared.  If he hadn’t, it was only because there was no need to be precipitate.  He felt rather than knew that she was sure of him.

Plenty of time.  Plenty of time.  He was so sure of her.

XXX

Plenty of time.  The last week of January passed.  Through the first weeks of February Rowcliffe was kept busy, for sickness was still in the Dale.

Whether he required it or not, Rowcliffe had a respite from decision.  No opportunity arose.  If he looked in at the Vicarage on Wednesdays it was to drink a cup of tea in a hurry while his man put his horse in the trap.  He took his man with him now on his longer rounds to save time and trouble.  Once in a while he would meet Gwenda Cartaret or overtake her on some road miles from Garth, and he would make her get up and drive on with him, or he would give her a lift home.

It pleased her to be taken up and driven.  She liked the rapid motion and the ways of the little brown horse.  She even loved the noise he made with his clanking hoofs.  Rowcliffe said it was a beastly trick.  He made up his mind about once a week that he’d get rid of him.  But somehow he couldn’t.  He was fond of the little brown horse.  He’d had him so long.

And she said to herself.  “He’s faithful then.  Of course.  He would be.”

It was almost as if he had wanted her to know it.

Then April came and the long spring twilights.  The sick people had got well.  Rowcliffe had whole hours on his hands that he could have spent with Gwenda now, if he had known.

And as yet he did not altogether know.

There was something about Gwenda Cartaret for which Rowcliffe with all his sureness and all his experience was unprepared.  Their whole communion rested and proceeded on undeclared, unacknowledged, unrealised assumptions, and it was somehow its very secrecy that made it so secure.  Rather than put it to the test he was content to leave their meetings to luck and his own imperfect ingenuity.  He knew where and at what times he would have the best chance of finding her.  Sometimes, returning from his northerly rounds, he would send the trap on, and walk back to Morfe by Karva, on the chance.  Once, when the moon was up, he sighted her on the farther moors beyond Upthorne, when he got down and walked with her for miles, while his man and the trap waited for him in Garth.

Once, and only once, driving by himself on the Rathdale moors beyond Morfe, he overtook her, picked her up and drove her through Morfe (to the consternation of its inhabitants) all the way to Garth and to the very gate of the Vicarage.