hould be cheered.
He bent forward himself and put out his ancient, veined and knotted,
gnarled and trembling hand, to timorously touch the arm of her he
worshipped and adored.

"God bless ye!" he said, his high, cracked voice even more shrill and
thin than usual. "God bless ye!" And as she let her hands slip down,
and, turning, gently looked at him, he nodded to her speakingly, because
out of the dimness of his being, some part of Nature's working had
strangely answered and understood.

CHAPTER XLVI

LISTENING

On her way back to the Court her eyes saw only the white road before
her feet as she walked. She did not lift them until she found herself
passing the lych-gate at the entrance to the churchyard. Then suddenly
she looked up at the square grey stone tower where the bells hung, and
from which they called the village to church, or chimed for weddings--or
gave slowly forth to the silent air one heavy, regular stroke after
another. She looked and shuddered, and spoke aloud with a curious,
passionate imploring, like a child's.

"Oh, don't toll! Don't toll! You must not! You cannot!" Terror had
sprung upon her, and her heart was being torn in two in her breast. That
was surely what it seemed like--this agonising ache of fear. Now from
hour to hour she would be waiting and listening to each sound borne on
the air. Her thought would be a possession she could not escape. When
she spoke or was spoken to, she would be listening--when she was silent
every echo would hold terror, when she slept--if sleep should come to
her--her hearing would be awake, and she would be listening--listening
even then. It was not Betty Vanderpoel who was walking along the white
road, but another creature--a girl whose brain was full of abnormal
thought, and whose whole being made passionate outcry against the thing
which was being slowly forced upon her. If the bell tolled--suddenly,
the whole world would be swept clean of life--empty and clean. If the
bell tolled.

Before the entrance of the Court she saw, as she approached it, the
vicarage pony carriage, standing as it had stood on the day she had
returned from her walk on the marshes. She felt it quite natural that it
should be there. Mrs. Brent always seized upon any fragment of news,
and having seized on something now, she had not been able to resist the
excitement of bringing it to Lady Anstruthers and her sister.

She was in the drawing-room with Rosalie, and was full of her s