He left the door and went across to her.  They shook hands and opened a conversation instantly; for Constance, while retaining all her modesty, had lost all her shyness in the shop, and could chatter with anybody.  She sidled towards her corner, precisely as Sophia had done on another occasion, and Mr. Scales put his chin over the screening boxes, and eagerly prosecuted the conversation.

There was absolutely nothing in the fact of the interview itself to cause alarm to a mother, nothing to render futile the precautions of Mrs. Baines on behalf of the flower of Sophia’s innocence.  And yet it held danger for Mrs. Baines, all unconscious in her parlour.  Mrs. Baines could rely utterly on Constance not to be led away by the dandiacal charms of Mr. Scales (she knew in what quarter sat the wind for Constance); in her plan she had forgotten nothing, except Mr. Povey; and it must be said that she could not possibly have foreseen the effect on the situation of Mr. Povey’s character.

Mr. Povey, attending to his customer, had noticed the bright smile of Constance on the traveller, and his heart did not like it.  And when he saw the lively gestures of a Mr. Scales in apparently intimate talk with a Constance hidden behind boxes, his uneasiness grew into fury.  He was a man capable of black and terrible furies.  Outwardly insignificant, possessing a mind as little as his body, easily abashed, he was none the less a very susceptible young man, soon offended, proud, vain, and obscurely passionate.  You might offend Mr. Povey without guessing it, and only discover your sin when Mr. Povey had done something too decisive as a result of it.

The reason of his fury was jealousy.  Mr. Povey had made great advances since the death of John Baines.  He had consolidated his position, and he was in every way a personage of the first importance.  His misfortune was that he could never translate his importance, or his sense of his importance, into terms of outward demeanour.  Most people, had they been told that Mr. Povey was seriously aspiring to enter the Baines family, would have laughed.  But they would have been wrong.  To laugh at Mr. Povey was invariably wrong.  Only Constance knew what inroads he had effected upon her.

The customer went, but Mr. Scales did not go.  Mr. Povey, free to reconnoitre, did so.  From the shadow of the till he could catch glimpses of Constance’s blushing, vivacious face.  She was obviously absorbed in Mr. Scales.  She and he had a tremendous air of intimacy.  And the murmur of their chatter continued.  Their chatter was nothing, and about nothing, but Mr. Povey imagined that they were exchanging eternal vows.  He endured Mr. Scales’s odious freedom until it became insufferable, until it deprived him of all his self-control; and then he retired into his cutting-out room.  He meditated there in a condition of insanity for perhaps a minute, and excogitated a device.  Dashing back into the shop, he spoke up, half across the shop, in a loud, curt tone: