His spiritual powers she rated far higher than those of the Parson, who never fulminated from the pulpit till she felt the fear of hell melting her bones within her.  This the lawyer did, and managed at the same time to make her feel herself a good woman, one of the saved, and the piquancy of the double sensation was the hidden drug of Annie’s life.  She dallied with thoughts of eternal suffering as a Flagellant with imagings of torture, and when her mind was reeling at the very edge of the pit she would pull herself back with a loud outcry on the Almighty, followed by a collapse as sensuous in its utter laxity.

Annie would have been shocked if anyone had tried to force on her the idea, that, in the unacknowledged warfare which enwrapped Ishmael, Tonkin was on her side as against the child; but even she was dimly aware that he and Boase, joint guardians as they were, stood in opposite camps.  But it was towards her, the respectable widow-woman, the owner, but for Ishmael, of the biggest estate in all Penwith, that Tonkin’s current of consideration flowed, whereas hers, after her religion, was perpetually set about Archelaus.  He, the beautiful young man with the round red neck and the white arms and the strong six feet of height, whom she had made and given to the world, to him she would have given the world and all the heavens had it been in her power.  And, as things were, she could not even give him Cloom Manor and its fruitful acres.  Of this impotency Archelaus was even more aware than usual as he sat beside her and glowered down the table at his little brother.

Ishmael was still showing off, though less noisily, for he was feeling very tired and sleepy; the unaccustomed cider and the heavy meal of roast mutton, in a house where there was rarely any meat except occasional rashers, were proving too potent for him.  The room was intensely hot, the prevailing notion of comfort being to shut every window at night, and a large fire, before which the side of mutton had been gravely twirling for hours, was only now beginning to subside.  The candles guttered and grew soft in the warmth, beads of moisture stood out on the faces of the company, and the smell of incompletely-washed bodies reminded the Parson of hot afternoons with his Sunday school.

Phoebe found Ishmael dull since his volubility had begun to desert him, and turning a disdainful shoulder, she tried to draw Jacka’s John-Willy into conversation—­a difficult matter, since, though he had been placed there instead of in the barn for Phoebe’s benefit, he felt the watchful eye of his mother, who was waiting at table, too frequently upon him for his comfort.