“Goodbye, then, for a little while,” said Claud.  “You don’t want me to come in, do you?”

“Certainly not,” said she coldly.

“You know that it is totally against my judgment—­and my wishes—­that you go in yourself, Deb?”

“Yes.  But one’s own judgment must be one’s guide.”

Thus they parted, each with a grievance against the other—­a root of bitterness to be nourished by much thinking about it, and by the circumstance that poor Mary neither died nor was repudiated.  Claud drove on to the hotel, to be further disgusted with his accommodation and his dinner; Deb walked into the house which hitherto she had visited in a spirit of kindly condescension, to be revolted by the new aspect which her changed relations with it now gave to its every feature.  Ruby, neglected, with a jam-smeared face—­the flustered maid, tousled, grubby, her frock gaping—­the horrible hall, with its imitation-marble paper and staring linoleum—­the prim, trivial, unaired, unused drawing-room, with its pathetic attempts at elegance—­ Deb inwardly curled up at the sight of these things as things now belonging to the family.  When the master of the house came hurrying in to her, rusty, unshaven, abject, she would have changed places with a Christian of old Rome facing a lion of the amphitheatre.

“Oh, this is good of you!  This is kind indeed!” Mr Goldsworthy greeted her, and threatened in his grateful emotion to fall at her feet.  “I did not dare to hope—­”

But Deb shudderingly swept him aside, with his gratitude and his excuses and his timid justifications.  He could stand up before his other critics—­he had a clear conscience, he said; but before her he knew himself for what he was.  He followed her like a dog to Mary’s room, obeyed her directions like a slave, wept when she consented to “say no more”, and stooped to beg from him a solemn vow and promise that he would be good to his wife.  This was after the doctors had refused to permit his wife’s removal to Redford to be nursed, and after Redford had practically been in command of his establishment for seven weeks.

Christmas is the time for reconciliations, and by Christmas Mary was convalescent—­pale as she had never been since childhood, and wearing a little cap over her shaved head; very humble and gentle, and strangely docile in her attitude towards her captor, who now gave himself all the airs of a husband of his class.  He was the benevolent despot of his women-kind—­the god of the machine; she was as properly submissive as if born in the ranks.  Negatively so, that is to say; positively, her manifestations of duty to him took the form of services and endearments bestowed upon his child and sister.  Her first occupation after she could use her hands was to improve Ruby’s wardrobe —­the little girl, now her own, appealed to her motherly heart, a saving interest in her wrecked life.  The poor old ex-housekeeper was the other prop to which she clung for a footing