had it not been for the
fits of irritability gave unwonted bitterness to her tongue. There were
days when nothing would please her, when she showed all her common
strain in the taunts she found to fling at Ishmael and the rest of her
little world. Only Archelaus was immune, and in his presence she
maintained a sullen silence, so marked that a third person with them
could, if he were sensitive, feel her ever-deepening resentment
emanating from her.

Archelaus himself was as though unaware of it, for he came to the house
with increasing frequency. About this time he began to walk out with a
Botallack girl, the daughter of a mine captain, and indeed asked
Ishmael's congratulations on the match. But, in his brotherly fashion,
he was always eager to do anything to help Phoebe, whether it were to
ride into Penzance and buy her anything she wished for, or to wait on
her at home, adjusting a hammock at exactly the right height and
carrying out cushions. Only Phoebe knew the taunt that underlay every
word, the subtle scheme for making her uncomfortable that he carried on
under cover of his solicitude. And she was not clever enough to combat
it; when he told her she had ruined his life by marrying Ishmael, she
was not brave enough to retort that he had had opportunity enough to
marry her and never breathed the wish; when she hinted as much, he
retorted that he had only been waiting to make more money so that she
could have a position worthy of her. He declared that all she had
married Ishmael for was to get the position that should by rights have
belonged to him, Archelaus. That there had been a month of terror when
she would, if he had not already left, have begged him to marry her she
never told him. That fear had been groundless and had passed, but she
never forgave it him.

Since his return she could not have told what swelled her resentment the
more--that he should dare to come back at all, or that his fascination
for her, the plainer to her since intimacy with another man had proved
so much less wonderful, should prick at her perpetually in spite of her
dislike of him. Ishmael she still regarded as a superior being whom she
admired, but the touch of Archelaus's casual hand had power over her
that was more intensified than stilled both by her resentment and her
distrust.

So the months went by, and the time drew nearer, and all seemed more
peaceful at Cloom than it had ever been. One day Phoebe happened to be
alone; Ishm