’Rose told me quite innocently that she happened to see Fred in the field to-night.’

‘Oh, yes!’ Ethel sneered with cold irony.  ‘I know Rose’s innocence!’

‘My dear girl,’ Leonora tried to reason with her.  ’Why will you talk like that?  You know you promised your father——­’

‘No, I didn’t, ma,’ Ethel interrupted her sharply.  ’Milly did; I never promised father anything.’

Leonora was astonished at the mutinous desperation in Ethel’s tone.  It left her at a loss.

‘I shall have to tell your father,’ she said sadly.

‘Well, of course, mother,’ Ethel managed her voice carefully.  ’You tell him everything.’

‘No, I don’t, my dear,’ Leonora denied the charge like a girl.  ’A week last night I heard Fred Ryley talking to you at your window.  And I have said nothing.’

Ethel flushed hotly at this disclosure.

‘Then why say anything now?’ she murmured, half daunted and half daring.

’Your father must know.  I ought to have told him before.  But I have been wondering how best to act.’

‘What’s the matter with Fred, mother?’ Ethel demanded, with a catch in her throat.

’That isn’t the point, Ethel.  Your father has distinctly said that he won’t permit any’—­she stopped because she could not bring herself to say the words; and then continued:  ’If he had the slightest suspicion that there was anything between you and Fred Ryley he would never have allowed you to go to the works at all.’

’Allowed me to go!  I like that, mother!  As if I wanted to go to the works!  I simply hate the place—­father knows that.  And yet—­and yet——­’ She almost wept.

‘Your father must be obeyed,’ Leonora stated simply.

‘Suppose Fred is poor,’ Ethel ran on, recovering herself.  ’Perhaps he won’t be poor always.  And perhaps we shan’t be rich always.  The things that people are saying——­’ She hesitated, afraid to proceed.

‘What do you mean, dear?’

‘Well!’ the girl exclaimed, and then gave a brief account of the Gardner incident.

‘My child,’ was Leonora’s placid comment, ’you ought to know that Florence Gardner will say anything when she is in a temper.  She is the worst gossip in Bursley.  I only hope Milly wasn’t rude.  And really this has got nothing to do with what we are talking about.’

‘Mother!’ Ethel cried hysterically, ’why are you always so calm?  Just imagine yourself in my place—­with Fred. You say I’m a woman, and I am, I am, though you don’t think so, truly.  Just imagine——­No, you can’t!  You’ve forgotten all that sort of thing, mother.’  She burst into gushing tears at last.  ‘Father can kill me if he likes!  I don’t care!’

She fled out of the room.

‘So I’ve forgotten, have I!’ Leonora said to herself, smiling faintly, as she sat alone at the table waiting for John.