Majendie had a small yacht moored in the creek, near where the path breaks off to Three Elms Farm.  Once, sometimes twice, a week, Majendie came to Three Elms Farm.  Sometimes he came for the week-end, more often for a single night, arriving at six in the evening, and leaving very early the next day.  In winter he took the train to Hesson, tramped seven miles across country, and reached the farm by the Fawlness road.  In summer the yacht brought him from “Hannay & Majendie’s” dock to Fawlness creek.  At Three Elms Farm he found Maggie waiting for him.

This had been going on, once, sometimes twice a week, for nearly three years, ever since he had rented the farm and brought Maggie from Scale to live there.

The change had made the details of his life difficult.  It called for all the qualities in which Majendie was most deficient.  It necessitated endless vigilance, endless harassing precautions, an unnatural secrecy.  He had to make Anne believe that he had taken to yachting for his health, that he was kept out by wind and weather, that the obligations and complexities of business, multiplying, tied him, and claimed his time.  Maggie had to be hidden away, in a place where no one came, lodged with people whose discretion he could trust.  Pearson, the captain of his yacht, a close-mouthed, close-fisted Yorkshireman, had a wife as reticent as himself.  Pearson and his wife and their son Steve knew that their living depended on their secrecy.  And cupidity apart, the three were devoted to their master and his mistress.  Pearson and his son Steve were acquainted with the ways of certain gentlemen of Scale, who sailed their yachts from port to port, up and down the Yorkshire coast.  Pearson was a man who observed life dispassionately.  He asked no questions and answered none.

It was six o’clock in the evening, early in October, just three years after Edith’s death.  Majendie had left the yacht lying in the creek with Pearson, Steve, and the boatswain on board, and was hurrying along the field path to Three Elms Farm.  A thin rain fell, blurring the distances.  The house stood humbly, under its three elms.  A light was burning in one window.  Maggie stood at the garden gate in the rain, listening for the click of the field gate which was his signal.  When it sounded she came down the path to meet him.  She put her hands upon his shoulders, drew down his face and kissed him.  He took her arm and led her, half clinging to him, into the house and into the lighted room.

A fire burned brightly on the hearth.  His chair was set for him beside it, and Maggie’s chair opposite.  The small round table in the middle of the room was laid for supper.  Maggie had decorated walls and chimney-piece and table with chrysanthemums from the garden, and autumn leaves and ivy from the hedgerows.  The room had a glad light and welcome for him.

As he came into the lamplight Maggie gave one quick anxious look at him.  She had always two thoughts in her little mind between their meetings:  Is he ill?  Is he well?