n and its insulting expression of outraged common sense, or
of the strangulated contralto in which she would urge that there was no
reason why any sensible gel should not be proud to marry the butler at
Torque House. By sheer noisiness she would make Marion cry. The child
would doubt again.... Since these things would have happened she could
not do other than she did. Her surrender was the price she had to pay
for Richard's life.

How artfully, moreover, it was disguised from her that she was going to
pay any real price! She looked back through the past at Peacey's conduct
of that matter as one might look through the glass doors of a cabinet at
some perfect and obscene work of art. He had laid his hand so
wonderfully across his face while he was speaking of his ugliness, so
that the drooping fingers seemed to tell of humility and the
renunciation of all greeds. And that candid, reverent gaze which he
turned upon her to-day had been so well calculated to speak of purity to
one who had shivered under sidelong leers. He had indeed that supreme
mastery over vice which comes of a complete understanding and dilettante
love of virtues. He knew how the innocent hunger for love and pity, and,
knowing well what these things were, he could speak as one who came as
their messenger. Loathingly and yet giving homage to his workmanship,
she recalled that later scence by which he had added a grace note to his
melody of wickedness and made so sweet a song of it that her will had
failed utterly.

Mrs. Cliffe had come in with a cup of tea and some cake on a tray.
"You'll feel better for this," she said, and while Marion had ate and
drunk she had stood by the window and looked at her. It seemed to Marion
that she had greatly changed of late. Before, she had belonged very
definitely to the shop-assistant class, which differentiated itself from
the women-folk of the village by keeping shapely and live-witted even
after marriage. But now she stood humpishly in her great apron like any
cottager's wife, and her hand, which she set akimbo, looked red and raw
and stupid. The way she stared at Marion's figure, too, was indicative
of a change from her pristine gentility.

"Funny I never heard of you being like this," she said at last.

"It is. I thought everyone was talking about it."

"They may be. But there's times when one doesn't listen to what people
are saying." For a time she was silent. "Ah, well," she meditated
bitterly, "it doesn't p