“This is a kind of thing that a man can’t stand,” said the young farmer sulkily.  “Good night, Mr. Masters” Then he walked off home to Chowton Farm meditating on his own condition and trying to make up his mind to leave the scornful girl and become a free man.  But he couldn’t do it.  He couldn’t even quite make up his mind that he would try to do it.  There was a bitterness within as he thought of permanent fixed failure which he could not digest.  There was a craving in his heart which he did not himself quite understand, but which made him think that the world would be unfit to be lived in if he were to be altogether separated from Mary Masters.  He couldn’t separate himself from her.  It was all very well thinking of it, talking of it, threatening it; but in truth he couldn’t do it.  There might of course be an emergency in which he must do it.  She might declare that she loved some one else and she might marry that other person.  In that event he saw no other alternative but,—­ as he expressed it to himself,—­“to run a mucker.”  Whether the “mucker” should be run against Mary, or against the fortunate lover, or against himself, he did not at present resolve.

But he did resolve as he reached his own hall door that he would make one more passionate appeal to Mary herself before she started for Cheltenham, and that he would not make it out on a public path, or in the Masters’ family parlour before all the Masters’ family;—­ but that he would have her secluded, by herself, so that he might speak out all that was in him, to the best of his ability.

CHAPTER XX

There are Convenances

Before the Monday came the party to Rufford Hall had become quite a settled thing and had been very much discussed.  On the Saturday the Senator had been driven to the meet, a distance of about ten miles, on purpose that he might see Lord Rufford and explain his views about Goarly.  Lord Rufford had bowed and stared, and laughed, and had then told the Senator that he thought he would “find himself in the wrong box.”  “That’s quite possible, my Lord.  I guess, it won’t be the first time I’ve been in the wrong box, my Lord.  Sometimes I do get right.  But I thought I would not enter your lordship’s house as a guest without telling you what I was doing.”  Then Lord Rufford assured him that this little affair about Goarly would make no difference in that respect.  Mr. Gotobed again scrutinised the hounds and Tony Tuppett, laughed in his sleeve because a fox wasn’t found in the first quarter of an hour, and after that was driven back to Bragton.

The Sunday was a day of preparation for the Trefoils.  Of course they didn’t go to church.  Arabella indeed was never up in time for church and Lady Augustus only went when her going would be duly registered among fashionable people.  Mr. Gotobed laughed when he was invited and asked whether anybody was ever known to go to church two Sundays running at Bragton.  “People have been known to refuse with less acrimony,” said Morton.  “I always speak my mind, sir,” replied the Senator.  Poor John Morton, therefore, went to his parish church alone.