Then she huddled forward towards the fire, which no longer seemed to heat her, and Susan’s letter fell from her lap into the fender.  She picked it up, crying, “Oh, my baby, how little I care for you!” and struck herself on the forehead as she reflected how many expedients would have suggested themselves to her if it had been Richard who was being maltreated down at Dawlish.  She sat down and wrote a lying letter to Peacey, threatening him with the disclosure of the secret she did not know, and then, because the grandfather clock twanged out three and she knew the post was collected five minutes past, she ran out into the windy afternoon bareheaded.  The last part of the distance, down the High Street, she ran, but she got into the grocer’s shop too late and found Mr. Hemming just about to seal the bag.  “Oh, Mr. Hemming!” she gasped.  The three women in the shop turned round and looked at her curiously, and she perceived that if she betrayed her agony now she would lose all the ground she had gained during the past few years by her affectation of well-being.  If it leaked out, as it certainly would, unless she at once lowered the present temperature of the moment, that a few days after Harry’s death she had been excitedly sending a letter to Peacey, the village people would go through her story all over again to try to find out what this could possibly mean, and would remember that it was a tragedy, and once more she would be the victim of that hostility which the happy feel for the unhappy.  Yet she found herself making a queer distraught mask of her face and saying theatrically, “Oh, Mr. Hemming, please, please let this letter go ...” and, when he granted the favour, as she knew quite well he would have done to just half as much imploration, she went out of the shop breathing heavily and audibly.

“Why am I like this?” she asked herself.  “Ah, I see!  So that I can say afterwards that I did everything I could to get him back, even to the extent of turning people against me, and can settle down to being happy with Richard.  Oh, Roger, I am a cold devil to you....”  She was indeed.  For when she received Peacey’s letter saying blandly that there was nothing in his life of which he need feel ashamed, and realised that the game was up and she was powerless, she was glad.  She sat down and wrote her bluffing answer, a warning that if the child was not sent back within a week she would come down to Dawlish and fetch it, with an infamous fear lest it might be efficacious.  And when Peacey wrote back, pointing out that Richard was legally his child, and that he would be taken out of her custody if she went on making this fuss about Roger, she chose immediately.  She tore the letter into small pieces and dropped them into the heart of the fire, and knelt by the grate until the flame died.  Though the boy was still out at school she lifted up her voice and cried out seductively, serenely, “Richard!  Richard!”