“There’s no reason you should resume your friendship if you don’t like,” she said.  “All the same, I think you ought to be polite to my guests.”

“I can’t pretend.  The house is yours, but I don’t want the fellow here.”

“But why do you dislike him so much?”

“I don’t think you need ask me that.  It’s dangerous ground, but you see——­”

“I have forgiven him,” Helen answered, smiling.  “Indeed, if I hadn’t done so long since, it would be easy to forgive him now.  At first, I did feel dreadfully humiliated, but I soon saw what he had saved me from.  And, of course, if he had kept his promise, I could not have married you.”

Festing looked at her with surprise.  In spite of her refinement, Helen would now and then talk calmly about matters he shrank from mentioning.  But after the lead she had given him he could be frank.

“Well,” he said, “I haven’t forgiven him yet; I couldn’t pretend friendship with anybody who had slighted you.  Besides, when I found out how he had cheated me it was the worst moment of my life.  I thought you would never speak to me again because, through the fellow’s treachery, it was I who hurt you.”

“You’re very nice, Stephen,” Helen replied, coloring.  “But that’s all finished.  Don’t you like Bob’s wife?  I really don’t want to meet her, but one mustn’t be a coward.”

“You couldn’t be a coward.  Sadie has her virtues and is certainly much too good for Bob, but I don’t want her here for all that.  Frankly, she’s not your sort, and she’s meddlesome.  I’m not afraid she’ll make you discontented, but I can’t have a girl like that telling you how your house ought to be run.  Although you’re a beginner, you manage very well, and I’d object to improvements on somebody else’s plan.”

Helen smiled.  “When you talk like that, you’re charming; but we’ll say no more about it.  You look tired.  Are you sure you are not working too hard?  The last time Jasper came he seemed surprised when he saw the ground you had broken.  I imagined he thought you were trying to do too much.”

As she spoke she glanced at the wide belt of plowing that broke the delicate green and silver of the grass.  In the foreground, the rows of clods shone with an oily gleam in the fading light.  Farther off, the rows converged and melted into a sweep of purple-brown that narrowed as it crossed a distant rise.  There were two other belts; one where white grasses broke through the harrow-torn sod, and another flat and smooth where the land-packer had rolled in the seed.  All told of strenuous effort in which sweating men and horses had been aided by tractor machines.

“Jasper’s conservative and I feel I ought to do as much as I can,” Festing replied.  “When you bought the place you rather put me on my mettle.”

Helen gave him a sharp glance.  “I note that you spoke of it as my house when you ought to have said ours.  I don’t like that, Stephen.”