He turned and went into the house, and Phoebe stood alone with her husband.

“Theer!” cried Will.  “You’ve heard un.  That was in his heart when he spoke me so fair.  An’ if you think like he do, say it.  Lard knaws I doan’t want ’e no more, if you doan’t want me!”

“Will!  How can you!  An’ us not met since our marriage-day.  But you’m cruel, cruel to poor faither.”

“Say so, an’ think so; an’ b’lieve all they tell ’e ’gainst your lawful husband; an’ gude-bye.  If you’m so poor-spirited as to see your man do thicky work, you choosed wrong.  Not that ’tis any gert odds.  Stop along wi’ your faither as you loves so much better ‘n me.  An’ doan’t you fear I’ll ever cross his threshold again to anger un, for I’d rather blaw my brains out than do it.”

He shook and stuttered with passion; his eyes glowed, his lips changed from their natural colour to a leaden blue.  He groped for the gate when he reached it, and passed quickly out, heedless of Phoebe’s sorrowful cry to him.  He heard her light step following and only hastened his speed for answer.  Then, hurrying from her, a wave of change suddenly flowed upon his furious mind, and he began to be very sorry.  Presently he stopped and turned, but she had stayed her progress by now, and for a moment’s space stood and watched him, bathed in tears.  At the moment when he hesitated and looked back, however, his wife herself had turned away and moved homewards.  Had she been standing in one place, Will’s purposes would perchance have faded to air, and his arm been round her in a moment; but now he only saw Phoebe retreating slowly to Monks Barton; and he let her go.

Blanchard went home to breakfast, and though Chris discovered that something was amiss, she knew him too well to ask any questions.  He ate in silence, the past storm still heaving in a ground-swell through his mind.  That his wife should have stood up against him was a sore thought.  It bewildered the youth utterly, and that she might be ignorant of all details did not occur to him.  Presently he told his wrongs to Chris, and grew very hot again in the recital.  She sympathised deeply, held him right to be angry, and grew angry herself.

“He ‘m daft,” she said, “an’ I’d think harder of him than I do, but that he’s led by the nose.  ’Twas that auld weasel, Billy Blee, gived him the wink to set you on a task he knawed you’d never carry through.”

“Theer’s truth in that,” said Will; then he recollected his last meeting with the miller’s man, and suddenly roared with laughter.

“‘Struth!  What a picter he was!  He agged an’ agged at me till I got fair mad, an’—­well, I spiled his meal, I do b’lieve.”

His merriment died away slowly in a series of long-drawn chuckles.  Then he lighted his pipe, watched Chris cleaning the cups and plates, and grew glum again.

“‘Twas axin’ me—­a penniless chap; that was the devil of it.  If I’d been a moneyed man wi’out compulsion to work, then I’d have been free to say ‘No,’ an’ no harm done.  De’e follow?”