Old houses, in the course of their history, see sad sights, and never forget them!  And ever since, in the solemn physiognomy of the triple house of John Baines at the corner of St. Luke’s Square and King Street, have remained the traces of the sight it saw on the morning of the afternoon when Mr. and Mrs. Povey returned from their honeymoon—­the sight of Mrs. Baines getting into the waggonette for Axe; Mrs. Baines, encumbered with trunks and parcels, leaving the scene of her struggles and her defeat, whither she had once come as slim as a wand, to return stout and heavy, and heavy-hearted, to her childhood; content to live with her grandiose sister until such time as she should be ready for burial!  The grimy and impassive old house perhaps heard her heart saying:  “Only yesterday they were little girls, ever so tiny, and now—­” The driving-off of a waggonette can be a dreadful thing.

BOOK II

CONSTANCE

CHAPTER I

REVOLUTION

I

“Well,” said Mr. Povey, rising from the rocking-chair that in a previous age had been John Baines’s, “I’ve got to make a start some time, so I may as well begin now!”

And he went from the parlour into the shop.  Constance’s eye followed him as far as the door, where their glances met for an instant in the transient gaze which expresses the tenderness of people who feel more than they kiss.

It was on the morning of this day that Mrs. Baines, relinquishing the sovereignty of St. Luke’s Square, had gone to live as a younger sister in the house of Harriet Maddack at Axe.  Constance guessed little of the secret anguish of that departure.  She only knew that it was just like her mother, having perfectly arranged the entire house for the arrival of the honeymoon couple from Buxton, to flit early away so as to spare the natural blushing diffidence of the said couple.  It was like her mother’s commonsense and her mother’s sympathetic comprehension.  Further, Constance did not pursue her mother’s feelings, being far too busy with her own.  She sat there full of new knowledge and new importance, brimming with experience and strange, unexpected aspirations, purposes, yes—­and cunnings!  And yet, though the very curves of her cheeks seemed to be mysteriously altering, the old Constance still lingered in that frame, an innocent soul hesitating to spread its wings and quit for ever the body which had been its home; you could see the timid thing peeping wistfully out of the eyes of the married woman.

Constance rang the bell for Maggie to clear the table; and as she did so she had the illusion that she was not really a married woman and a house-mistress, but only a kind of counterfeit.  She did most fervently hope that all would go right in the house—­at any rate until she had grown more accustomed to her situation.