The Squire began to walk up and down.

“Is he is he safe now?” he burst out.

Mrs. Pendyce sat down rather suddenly in the nearest chair.

“Yes,” she said with difficulty, “I—­I think so.”

“Think!  What’s the good of that?  What——­Are you feeling faint, Margery?”

Mrs. Pendyce, who had closed her eyes, said: 

“No dear, it’s all right.”

Mr. Pendyce came close, and since air and quiet were essential to her at that moment, he bent over and tried by every means in his power to rouse her; and she, who longed to be let alone, sympathised with him, for she knew that it was natural that he should do this.  In spite of his efforts the feeling of faintness passed, and, taking his hand, she stroked it gratefully.

“What is to be done now, Horace?”

“Done!” cried the Squire.  “Good God! how should I know?  Here you are in this state, all because of that d—–­d fellow Bellew and his d—–­d wife!  What you want is some dinner.”

So saying, he put his arm around her, and half leading, half carrying, took her to her room.

They did not talk much at dinner, and of indifferent things, of Mrs. Barter, Peacock, the roses, and Beldame’s hock.  Only once they came too near to that which instinct told them to avoid, for the Squire said suddenly: 

“I suppose you saw that woman?”

And Mrs. Pendyce murmured: 

“Yes.”

She soon went to her room, and had barely got into bed when he appeared, saying as though ashamed: 

“I’m very early.”

She lay awake, and every now and then the Squire would ask her, “Are you asleep, Margery?” hoping that she might have dropped off, for he himself could not sleep.  And she knew that he meant to be nice to her, and she knew, too, that as he lay awake, turning from side to side, he was thinking like herself:  ‘What’s to be done next?’ And that his fancy, too, was haunted by a ghost, high-shouldered, with little burning eyes, red hair, and white freckled face.  For, save that George was miserable, nothing was altered, and the cloud of vengeance still hung over Worsted Skeynes.  Like some weary lesson she rehearsed her thoughts:  ’Now Horace can answer that letter of Captain Bellow’s, can tell him that George will not—­indeed, cannot—­see her again.  He must answer it.  But will he?’

She groped after the secret springs of her husband’s character, turning and turning and trying to understand, that she might know the best way of approaching him.  And she could not feel sure, for behind all the little outside points of his nature, that she thought so “funny,” yet could comprehend, there was something which seemed to her as unknown, as impenetrable as the dark, a sort of thickness of soul, a sort of hardness, a sort of barbaric-what?  And as when in working at her embroidery the point of her needle would often come to a stop against stiff buckram, so now was the point of her soul brought to a stop against the soul of her husband.  ‘Perhaps,’ she thought, ’Horace feels like that with me.’  She need not so have thought, for the Squire never worked embroideries, nor did the needle of his soul make voyages of discovery.