When Marion came back she sat down at the table without noticing what seemed to Ellen his obvious dejection, and began to talk about this man Milford, telling of the power he had over his beasts and how a prize heifer that they then had, by the name of Susan Caraway, had fretted for three weeks after he had left.  She said that he gained this power over animals not by any real love for them, for he was indifferent to them except when he was actually touching them, and would always scamp his work without regard for their comfort, but simply by some physical magnetism, and pointed out that there it resembled the power some men have over women.  It surprised Ellen that she laughed as she said that, and seemed to find pleasure in the thought of such a power.  When the meal was over she sat for a moment, gathering together the breadcrumbs by her plate, and said pensively:  “Yes, it might quite easily have been Roger.”  Ellen wondered how it was that Richard had always spoken of his mother as if she needed his protection, when her voice was so nearly coarse with the sense of being able to outface all encounterable events, and she felt a flash of contempt for his judgment.  She wished, too, that when Marion rose from, the table he had not followed her so closely upstairs and hovered round her as she took up her stand on the hearthrug, with her elbow on the mantelpiece and her foot in the fender, and kept his eyes on her face as she settled down in an armchair.  It was just making himself cheap, dangling after a woman who was perched up on herself like a weathercock.

When she said, “I’m going to walk over to Friar’s End.  Old Butterworth wants me to do some repairs which I don’t feel inclined to do, so I want to have a look at the place for myself,” the announcement was so little tinged by any sense of the persons she was addressing that she might as well have held up a printed placard.  Ellen thought he was a little abject to answer, “So far as I can remember, Butterworth’s rather a rough specimen.  Wouldn’t you like us to come with you?” and almost deserved that she did not hear.  Such deafness argued complete abstraction; and indeed, as she turned towards them and stood looking out towards the river, her face again wore that incomprehensible expression of secret and even furtive satisfaction.  The sight of it fell like a whip on Richard.  He lowered his head and sat staring at the floor.  Ellen cried out to herself, “She’s an aggravating woman if ever there was one.  It’s every bit as bad as not saying what you feel, this not saying what you look,” and tried to pierce with her eyes the dreamy surface of this gloating.  But she could make nothing of it, and looked back at Richard; and shuddered and drew her hands across her eyes when she saw that he had lifted his head and was turning towards her a face that had become the mirror of his mother’s expression.  He, too, was wrapped in some exquisite and contraband contentment.  She raised her brows in enquiry, and mockingly he whispered back words which he knew she could not hear.