aking out to you. You know you are
my girl," and Mrs. Bellamy turned and kissed her; "you mustn't, you
really mustn't. I've seen what was coming for a long time. Your mother
and you ain't alike, but you mustn't rebel. I'm a silly old fool, and I
know I haven't got a head, and what is in it is all mixed up somehow, but
you'll be ever so much better if you leave your mother out of it, and
don't, as I've told you before, go on dreaming she came here because you
didn't want to come, or that she set herself up on purpose against you.
And then you can always run over to Chapel Farm just whenever you like,
my pet, and there's your own room always waiting for you."

An hour afterwards, when Mrs. Bellamy had left, Mr. Furze came home. Mrs.
Furze was still upstairs, but consented to be coaxed down to supper. She
passed the drawing-room; the door was wide open, and she reflected
bitterly upon the new carpet, the oleographs, and the schemes erected
thereon. To think on what she had spent and what she had done, and then
that Mrs. Colston should be received by a charwoman with a pail, should
be shown into the room downstairs, and find it like a public-house bar!
If Mr. Furze had been there alone it would not so much have mattered, but
the presence of wife and daughter sanctioned the vulgarity, not to say
indecency. Mrs. Colston would naturally conclude they were accustomed to
that sort of thing--that the pipe, Mrs. Bellamy and the sausages, the
absence of Mr. Furze's coat and waistcoat, were the "atmosphere," as Mrs.
Furze put it, in which they lived.

"That's right; glad to see you are able to come down," said Mr. Furze.

"I must say that Catharine is partly the cause of my suffering. When
Mrs. Colston called here Catharine sat like a statue and said not a word,
but when her friend Mrs. Bellamy came she precipitated herself--yes, I
say precipitated herself--into her arms. I've nothing to say against
Mrs. Bellamy, but Catharine knows perfectly well that Mrs. Colston's
intimacy is desired, and _that's_ the way she chose to behave. Mrs.
Bellamy was the last person I should have wished to see here this
afternoon; an uneducated woman, a woman whom we could not pretend to know
if we moved in Mrs. Colston's circle; and what we have done was all done
for my child's benefit. She, I presume, would prefer decent society to
that of peasants."

Catharine stopped eating.

"Mrs. Bellamy was the last person _I_ should have wished to