“In London,” said Gregory, “I hear all women intend to be men; but in the country I thought——­”

“In the country, Grig, all women would like to be men, but they don’t dare to try.  They trot behind.”

As if she had been guilty of thoughts too insightful, Mrs. Pendyce blushed.

Gregory broke out suddenly: 

“I can’t bear to think of women like that!”

Again Mrs. Pendyce smiled.

“You see, Grig dear, you are not married.”

“I detest the idea that marriage changes our views, Margery; I loathe it.”

“Mind my daffodils!” murmured Mrs. Pendyce.

She was thinking all the time:  ‘That dreadful letter!  What am I to do?’

And as though he knew her thoughts, Gregory said: 

“I shall assume that Bellew will not defend the case.  If he has a spark of chivalry in him he will be only too glad to see her free.  I will never believe that any man could be such a soulless clod as to wish to keep her bound.  I don’t pretend to understand the law, but it seems to me that there’s only one way for a man to act and after all Bellew’s a gentleman.  You’ll see that he will act like one!”

Mrs. Pendyce looked at the daffodil in her lap.

“I have only seen him three or four times, but it seemed to me, Grig, that he was a man who might act in one way today and another tomorrow.  He is so very different from all the men about here.”

“When it comes to the deep things of life,” said Gregory, “one man is much as another.  Is there any man you know who would be so lacking in chivalry as to refuse in these circumstances?”

Mrs. Pendyce looked at him with a confused expression—­wonder, admiration, irony, and even fear, struggled in her eyes.

“I can think of dozens.”

Gregory clutched his forehead.

“Margery,” he said, “I hate your cynicism.  I don’t know where you get it from.”

“I’m so sorry; I didn’t mean to be cynical—­I didn’t, really.  I only spoke from what I’ve seen.”

“Seen?” said Gregory.  “If I were to go by what I saw daily, hourly, in London in the course of my work I should commit suicide within a week.”

“But what else can one go by?”

Without answering, Gregory walked to the edge of the orchard, and stood gazing over the Scotch garden, with his face a little tilted towards the sky.  Mrs. Pendyce felt he was grieving that she failed to see whatever it was he saw up there, and she was sorry.  He came back, and said: 

“We won’t discuss it any more.”

Very dubiously she heard those words, but as she could not express the anxiety and doubt torturing her soul, she told him tea was ready.  But Gregory would not come in just yet out of the sun.

In the drawing-room Beatrix was already giving tea to young Tharp and the Reverend Husell Barter.  And the sound of these well-known voices restored to Mrs. Pendyce something of her tranquillity.  The Rector came towards her at once with a teacup in his hand.