Mrs. Cliffe had come in with a cup of tea and some cake on a tray.  “You’ll feel better for this,” she said, and while Marion had ate and drunk she had stood by the window and looked at her.  It seemed to Marion that she had greatly changed of late.  Before, she had belonged very definitely to the shop-assistant class, which differentiated itself from the women-folk of the village by keeping shapely and live-witted even after marriage.  But now she stood humpishly in her great apron like any cottager’s wife, and her hand, which she set akimbo, looked red and raw and stupid.  The way she stared at Marion’s figure, too, was indicative of a change from her pristine gentility.

“Funny I never heard of you being like this,” she said at last.

“It is.  I thought everyone was talking about it.”

“They may be.  But there’s times when one doesn’t listen to what people are saying.”  For a time she was silent.  “Ah, well,” she meditated bitterly, “it doesn’t pay to do wrong, does it?”

“I haven’t done wrong,” said Marion.

“So you say now,” Mrs. Cliffe told her, “but there’ll come a day when you see you have.”  She drew in her breath with a little gasp as Peacey put his head in at the door.

He looked sharply from one to the other, and then advanced to Marion’s couch, rubbing his hands genially.  “Now then, Trixy,” he said teasingly, “you don’t want me to talk too long to your beloved husband, do you?  I might go telling him things about you, mightn’t I?  You run along and look after him.”  Mrs. Cliffe retired quite taciturnly, nothing in her face responding to this rallying, and he bent quickly over Marion.  “I hope she hasn’t been worrying you?” he asked.  Concern for her?—­it sounded just like concern for her—­made his voice tremble.  “That’s why I hurried back.  Women are so narrow-minded to their poor sisters who haven’t been so fortunate.  I thought she might have been making you feel a bit uncomfortable.”

“Oh no,” said Marion.

The mask of his poor ugly face, which had been grotesque with pitying lines, became smooth.  He sighed with relief, and sat down by her side, very humbly.

“But she was beginning to talk rather strangely,” the poor fool Marion had continued.  “I think she’s altered very much lately.”

“Do you know, I was thinking so myself,” Peacey had answered reflectively.  “I wonder if she’s got anything on her mind.  I wish I could find out.  One doesn’t like a ’ome of friends not to share its worries with you, without giving you a fair chance to ’elp.  I must see whether I can get it out of ’er.”

Oh, he was a kind man.  He was certainly very kind.  She put down her cup and braced her body and her soul, and said, “Mr. Peacey....”