in again, she slid away. And
she would not eat his nuts, if the men bought them for her. And
when the farmers gambled at dominoes for them, she was
angry.

"They are dirty-man's nuts," she cried.

So a revulsion started against Nat, who had not long after to
go to the workhouse.

There grew in Brangwen's heart now a secret desire to make
her a lady. His brother Alfred, in Nottingham, had caused a
great scandal by becoming the lover of an educated woman, a
lady, widow of a doctor. Very often, Alfred Brangwen went down
as a friend to her cottage, which was in Derbyshire, leaving his
wife and family for a day or two, then returning to them. And
no-one dared gainsay him, for he was a strong-willed, direct
man, and he said he was a friend of this widow.

One day Brangwen met his brother on the station.

"Where are you going to, then?" asked the younger
brother.

"I'm going down to Wirksworth."

"You've got friends down there, I'm told."

"Yes."

"I s'll have to be lookin' in when I'm down that road."

"You please yourself."

Tom Brangwen was so curious about the woman that the next
time he was in Wirksworth he asked for her house.

He found a beautiful cottage on the steep side of a hill,
looking clean over the town, that lay in the bottom of the
basin, and away at the old quarries on the opposite side of the
space. Mrs. Forbes was in the garden. She was a tall woman with
white hair. She came up the path taking off her thick gloves,
laying down her shears. It was autumn. She wore a wide-brimmed
hat.

Brangwen blushed to the roots of his hair, and did not know
what to say.

"I thought I might look in," he said, "knowing you were
friends of my brother's. I had to come to Wirksworth."

She saw at once that he was a Brangwen.

"Will you come in?" she said. "My father is lying down."

She took him into a drawing-room, full of books, with a piano
and a violin-stand. And they talked, she simply and easily. She
was full of dignity. The room was of a kind Brangwen had never
known; the atmosphere seemed open and spacious, like a
mountain-top to him.

"Does my brother like reading?" he asked.

"Some things. He has been reading Herbert Spencer. And we
read Browning sometimes."

Brangwen was full of admiration, deep thrilling, almost
reverential admiration. He looked at her with lit-up eyes when
she said, "we read". At last he burst out, looking round the
room:

"I didn't know our Alfred was this way inc