‘There can, I think, be very little doubt what you should do,’ said Priscilla, after a pause, during which she had got up from her seat under the thorn bush.

‘What should I do?’ asked Mrs Trevelyan.

‘Go back to him.’

’I will to-morrow if he will write and ask me.  Nay; how could I help myself?  I am his creature, and must go or come as he bids me.  I am here only because he has sent me.’

‘You should write and ask him to take you.’

‘Ask him to forgive me because he has ill-treated me?’

‘Never mind about that,’ said Priscilla, standing over her companion, who was still lying under the bush.  ’All that is twopenny-halfpenny pride, which should be thrown to the winds.  The more right you have been hitherto the better you can afford to go on being right.  What is it that we all live upon but self-esteem?  When we want praise it is only because praise enables us to think well of ourselves.  Every one to himself is the centre and pivot of all the world.’

‘It’s a very poor world that goes round upon my pivot,’ said Mrs Trevelyan.

‘I don’t know how this quarrel came up,’ exclaimed Priscilla, ’and I don’t care to know.  But it seems a trumpery quarrel as to who should beg each other’s pardon first, and all that kind of thing.  Sheer and simple nonsense!  Ask him to let it all be forgotten.  I suppose he loves you?’

‘How can I know?  He did once.’

‘And you love him?’

‘Yes.  I love him certainly.’

’I don’t see how you can have a doubt.  Here is Jack with the carriage, and if we don’t mind he’ll pass us by without seeing us.’

Then Mrs Trevelyan got up, and when they had succeeded in diverting Jack’s attention for a moment from the horse, they called to Nora, who was still moving about from one knoll to another, and who showed no desire to abandon the contemplations in which she had been engaged.

It had been mid-day before they left home in the morning, and they were due to be at home in time for tea, which is an epoch in the day generally allowed to be more elastic than some others.  When Mrs Stanbury lived in the cottage her hour for tea had been six; this had been stretched to half-past seven when she received Mrs Trevelyan at the Clock House; and it was half-past eight before Jack landed them at their door.  It was manifest to them all as they entered the house that there was an air of mystery in the face of the girl who had opened the door for them.  She did not speak, however, till they were all within the passage.  Then she uttered a few words very solemnly.  ’There be a gentleman come,’ she said.

‘A gentleman!’ said Mrs Trevelyan, thinking in the first moment of her husband, and in the second of Colonel Osborne.

‘He be for you, miss,’ said the girl, bobbing her head at Nora.

Upon hearing this Nora sank speechless into the chair which stood in the passage.