itchen
brightness at them.

"Where is your mistress?" Richard asked them, cutting into the girl's
sweet, silly speech. "Has she come back?"

The servants all started making twittering, consequential noises. "No,
sir, she isn't." "We didn't know, any of us, you was out till the lady
and gentleman come."

"What lady and gentleman?"

The two younger women shrunk back and left the cook to answer. "Mr.
Roger Peacey, sir, and the lady." From the hindmost girl there came a
giggle.

That was why they had not heard the knocking at the door. They had all
been sitting laughing at his mother's other son and going over the
family history. Ellen shrank back from the light. Marion's misfortunes
made things very ill to deal with; they seemed to bring out the worst in
everybody. And how the whole affair was hurting Richard! He turned on
his heel and walked back to the trellis arch and went through it without
waiting for her. By the time she had followed him round the corner of
the house he was opening the French window into the dining-room. He
found it quite easy to open; again she thought with rage and contempt of
the way that Marion had fumbled with the handle. She had to run along
the path lest in his forgetfulness he shut her out into the night.

She found him halted just within the room, pulling off his gauntlets
and forcing a white smile towards Roger, who was standing swaying on the
hearthrug, his cheeks dribbled with tears. Poppy stood beside him,
staring sullenly at a blank wall, her mouth a little open with distaste
for him.

"So you're giving us another visit," said Richard, in that hollow
conscientious tone of kindness he had used to them in the afternoon.

Roger opened his mouth but could not speak; then flapped his hands to
make it plain this was an occasion of importance, and cried bleatingly:
"I've come to say that I forgive you all."

"Forgive us!" exclaimed Richard, swept away to the bleak extremity of
rage. Then checked himself. "Oh, for not coming to your meeting. We
hoped you would. Ellen was tired."

"I couldn't bear to think of you p'raps going to bed and feeling that I
was harbouring ill thoughts towards you, not realising that now I've got
Jesus I'll forgive anything that anybody does against me!" His voice
wallowed rhapsodically. "So Poppy and I just nipped in here instead of
going straight back to the Colony."

Poppy wriggled her body about in her clothes in an agony of desire to
disassociate he