Marion’s head drooped far back on her throat; her broad, dark face suffused with the bloom of kind, sad passion, and lifted towards her son’s pitying eyes, made Ellen think of a pansy bending back under the rain.  But her mouth, which had been a little open and appealing, as if she were asking Richard not to be bitter but to go on being pitiful, closed suddenly and smiled.  She seemed to will and to achieve some hardening change of substance.  An incomprehensible expression irradiated her face, and she seemed to be brooding sensuously on some private hoard of satisfaction.  Lightly she rose, patting the hand Richard had stretched out to her as if it were a child’s, and went out into the kitchen.

“Richard!” breathed Ellen.

He went on eating.

“Richard,” she insisted, “why did she look like that?  So happy.  Does she want it to be Roger?”

“God knows, God knows,” he said in a cold, sharp-edged voice.  “There are lots of things about her that I don’t understand.”

Some moments passed before Marion came back.  Her face was easy, and she said placidly:  “My purse, my purse.  I want my purse.”

“It’s on the desk,” said Richard, and rose and found it for her.  He stood beside her as she opened it and began taking out the money slowly, coin by coin, while she hummed under her breath.  “Mother!” he burst out suddenly.  “Who is it?”

“A ten-shilling piece is what I want,” she murmured.  “Yes, a ten-shilling piece.  I thought I had one....  Oh, who is it?  Oh, it’s Henry Milford.  Do you remember poor Milford?  He was the last cattleman but one in the old days when we ran the farm.  I had to send him away because he drank so terribly.  Since then he’s gone down and down, and now he’s on the road.  I must give him something, poor creature.  Such a nice wife he had—­he says she’s in Chelmsford workhouse.  I’ll send him on to old Dawkins at Dane End; I’ll get him to give the poor wretch a few days’ work.”

Ellen disliked her as she left the room.  She looked thick and ordinary, and was apparently absorbed in the mildly gross satisfaction of a well-to-do woman at being bountiful.  Moreover, she had in some way hurt Richard, for his face was dark when he came back to the table.

But an amazement struck Ellen as she thought over the scene.  “Richard,” she exclaimed excitedly, “is it not just wonderful that this man should come to your mother for help after she’d put him to the door?  I’m sure she’d make a body feel just dirt if she was putting them to the door.  It would be a quiet affair, but awful uncomfortable.  But she’s such a good woman that, even seeing her like that, he knew she was the one to come to when he was really in trouble.  Do you not think it’s like that?”

“Oh yes,” he almost groaned.  “Even when she’s at her worst you know that she’s still better than anyone else on this earth.”