her pretty loving ways to the children, when he went to the Hall Farm; to listen for her voice as for a recurrent music; to think everything she said and did was just right, and could not have been better.  In spite of his wisdom, he could not find fault with her for her overindulgence of the children, who had managed to convert Dinah the preacher, before whom a circle of rough men had often trembled a little, into a convenient household slave—­though Dinah herself was rather ashamed of this weakness, and had some inward conflict as to her departure from the precepts of Solomon.  Yes, there was one thing that might have been better; she might have loved Seth and consented to marry him.  He felt a little vexed, for his brother’s sake, and he could not help thinking regretfully how Dinah, as Seth’s wife, would have made their home as happy as it could be for them all—­how she was the one being that would have soothed their mother’s last days into peacefulness and rest.

“It’s wonderful she doesn’t love th’ lad,” Adam had said sometimes to himself, “for anybody ’ud think he was just cut out for her.  But her heart’s so taken up with other things.  She’s one o’ those women that feel no drawing towards having a husband and children o’ their own.  She thinks she should be filled up with her own life then, and she’s been used so to living in other folks’s cares, she can’t bear the thought of her heart being shut up from ’em.  I see how it is, well enough.  She’s cut out o’ different stuff from most women:  I saw that long ago.  She’s never easy but when she’s helping somebody, and marriage ’ud interfere with her ways—­that’s true.  I’ve no right to be contriving and thinking it ’ud be better if she’d have Seth, as if I was wiser than she is—­or than God either, for He made her what she is, and that’s one o’ the greatest blessings I’ve ever had from His hands, and others besides me.”

This self-reproof had recurred strongly to Adam’s mind when he gathered from Dinah’s face that he had wounded her by referring to his wish that she had accepted Seth, and so he had endeavoured to put into the strongest words his confidence in her decision as right—­his resignation even to her going away from them and ceasing to make part of their life otherwise than by living in their thoughts, if that separation were chosen by herself.  He felt sure she knew quite well enough how much he cared to see her continually—­to talk to her with the silent consciousness of a mutual great remembrance.  It was not possible she should hear anything but self-renouncing affection and respect in his assurance that he was contented for her to go away; and yet there remained an uneasy feeling in his mind that he had not said quite the right thing—­that, somehow, Dinah had not understood him.