It was spoken with a brave carelessness, but he caught the tremor in her voice, and saw her little hand shake as it lay on the table amid her father’s papers.  Without knowing why he should do so, he stepped hastily forward and seized that hand.  Her emotion unmanned him.  He thought he was going to cry; he could not account for himself.

‘Eva,’ he said thickly, ’you know what the business is; you know, don’t you?’

She smiled.  That smile, the softness of her hand, the sparkle in her eye, the heave of her small bosom ... it was the divinest miracle!  Clive, manufacturer of majolica, went hot and then cold, and then his wits were suddenly his own again.

‘That’s all right,’ he murmured, and sighed, and placed on Eva’s lips the first kiss that had ever lain there.

‘Dear boy,’ she said later, ’you should have come up to Pireford, not here, and when father was there.’

‘Should I?’ he answered happily.  ’It just occurred to me all of a sudden this morning that you would be here, and that I couldn’t wait.’

‘You will come up to-night and see father?’

‘I had meant to.’

‘You had better go home now.’

‘Had I?’

She nodded, putting her lips tightly together—­a trick of hers.

‘Come up about half-past eight.’

‘Good!  I will let myself out.’

He left her, and she gazed dreamily at the window, which looked on to a whitewashed yard.  The next moment someone else entered the room with heavy footsteps.  She turned round a little startled.

It was her father.

‘Why!  You are back early, father!  How——­’ She stopped.  Something in the old man’s glance gave her a premonition of disaster.  To this day she does not know what accident brought him from Manchester two hours sooner than usual, and to Machin Street instead of Pireford.

‘Has young Timmis been here?’ he inquired curtly.

‘Yes.’

‘Ha!’ with subdued, sinister satisfaction, ’I saw him going out.  He didna see me.’  Ezra Brunt deposited his hat and sat down.

Intimate with all her father’s various moods, she saw instantly and with terrible certainty that a series of chances had fatally combined themselves against her.  If only she had not happened to tell Clive that her father would be at Manchester this day!  If only her father had adhered to his customary hour of return!  If only Clive had had the sense to make his proposal openly at Pireford some evening!  If only he had left a little earlier!  If only her father had not caught him going out by the side-door on a Thursday afternoon when the place was empty!  Here, she guessed, was the suggestion of furtiveness which had raised her father’s unreasoning anger, often fierce, and always incalculable.

‘Clive Timmis has asked me to marry him, father.’

‘Has he!’

’Surely you must have known, father, that he and I were seeing each other a great deal.’