‘I wish thou wouldn’t come here troubling me on a Sabbath day wi’ thy vanity and thy worldly talk.  I’d liefer by far be i’ that world wheere there’s neither marrying nor giving in marriage, for it’s all a moithering mess here.’  She turned to the closed Bible lying on the dresser, and opened it with a bang.  While she was adjusting her spectacles on her nose, with hands trembling with passion, she heard Philip say,—­

‘I ask yo’r pardon, I’m sure.  I couldn’t well come any other day.’

‘It’s a’ t’ same—­I care not.  But thou might as well tell truth.  I’ll be bound thou’s been at Haytersbank Farm some day this week?’

Philip reddened; in fact, he had forgotten how he had got to consider his frequent visits to the farm as a regular piece of occupation.  He kept silence.

Alice looked at him with a sharp intelligence that read his silence through.

’I thought so.  Next time thou thinks to thyself, ’I’m more knowledgeable than Coulson,’ just remember Alice Rose’s words, and they are these:—­If Coulson’s too thick-sighted to see through a board, thou’rt too blind to see through a window.  As for comin’ and speakin’ up for Coulson, why he’ll be married to some one else afore t’ year’s out, for all he thinks he’s so set upon Hester now.  Go thy ways, and leave me to my Scripture, and come no more on Sabbath days wi’ thy vain babbling.’

So Philip returned from his mission rather crestfallen, but quite as far as ever from ‘seeing through a glass window.’

Before the year was out, Alice’s prophecy was fulfilled.  Coulson, who found the position of a rejected lover in the same house with the girl who had refused him, too uncomfortable to be endured, as soon as he was convinced that his object was decidedly out of his reach, turned his attention to some one else.  He did not love his new sweetheart as he had done Hester:  there was more of reason and less of fancy in his attachment.  But it ended successfully; and before the first snow fell, Philip was best man at his partner’s wedding.

CHAPTER XXII

DEEPENING SHADOWS

But before Coulson was married, many small events happened—­small events to all but Philip.  To him they were as the sun and moon.  The days when he went up to Haytersbank and Sylvia spoke to him, the days when he went up and she had apparently no heart to speak to any one, but left the room as soon as he came, or never entered it at all, although she must have known that he was there—­these were his alternations from happiness to sorrow.