’Pooh!  What does he care about them?  If I begin letting men off in that way, I shall be laughed at.  There’s an end of my authority.  Don’t bother your head about them.  I must go and get ready for dinner.’

An end of my authority.  Yes, was it not the intelligence of her maiden heart returning to her?  She had no pang from the mere refusal of a request of hers; Richard had never affected tenderness—­not what she understood as tenderness—­and she did not expect it of him.  The union between them had another basis.  But the understanding of his motives was so terribly distinct in her!  It had come all at once; it was like the exposure of something dreadful by the sudden raising of a veil.  And had she not known what the veil covered?  Yet for the poor people’s sake, for his own sake, she must try the woman’s argument.

’Do you refuse me, Richard?  I will be guarantee for him.  I promise you he shall not offend again.  He shall apologise humbly to you for his—­his words.  You won’t really refuse me?’

’What nonsense!  How can you promise for him, Adela?  Ask for something reasonable, and you may be sure I shan’t refuse you.  The fellow has to go as a warning.  It mustn’t be thought we’re only playing at making rules.  I can’t talk any more; I shall keep dinner waiting.’

Pride helped her to show a smooth face through the evening, and in the night she conquered herself anew.  She expelled those crying children from her mind; she hardened her heart against their coming misery.  It was wrong to judge her husband so summarily; nay, she had not judged him, but had given way to a wicked impulse, without leaving herself a moment to view the case.  Did he not understand better than she what measures were necessary to the success of his most difficult undertaking?  And then was it certain that expulsion meant ruin to the Rendals?  Richard would insist on the letter of the regulations, just, as he said, for the example’s sake; but of course he would see that the man was put in the way of getting new employment and did not suffer in the meantime.  In the morning she made atonement to her husband.

‘I was wrong in annoying you yesterday,’ she said as she walked with him from the house to the garden gate.  ’In such things you are far better able to judge.  You won’t let it trouble you?’

It was a form of asceticism; Adela had a joy in humbling herself and crushing her rebel instincts.  She even raised her eyes to interrogate him.  On Richard’s face was an uneasy smile, a look of puzzled reflection.  It gratified him intensely to hear such words, yet he could not hear them without the suspicions of a vulgar nature brought in contact with nobleness.

‘Well, yes,’ he replied, ’I think you were a bit too hasty:  you’re not practical, you see.  It wants a practical man to manage those kind of things.’