or
the rest, was in common use with Mary, had she to describe anything
that struck her as queer or extravagant. And sitting over her
fancywork, into which, being what Richard called "safe as the grave,"
she sewed more thoughts than most women: sitting thus, she would say to
herself with a half smile and an incredulous shake of the head: "SO
silly!"

But hers was one of those inconvenient natures which trust blindly or
not at all: once worked on by a doubt or a suspicion, they are never
able to shake themselves free of it again. As time went on, she
suffered strange uncertainties where some of Richard's decisions were
concerned. In his good intentions she retained an implicit belief; but
she was not always satisfied that he acted in the wisest way.
Occasionally it struck her that he did not see as clearly as she did;
at other times, that he let a passing whim run away with him and
override his common sense. And, her eyes thus opened, it was not in
Mary to stand dumbly by and watch him make what she held to be
mistakes. Openly to interfere, however, would also have gone against
the grain in her; she had bowed for too long to his greater age and
experience. So, seeing no other way out, she fell back on indirect
methods. To her regret. For, in watching other women "manage" their
husbands, she had felt proud to think that nothing of this kind was
necessary between Richard and her. Now she, too, began to lay little
schemes by which, without his being aware of it, she might influence
his judgment, divert or modify his plans.

Her enforced use of such tactics did not lessen the admiring affection
she bore him: that was framed to withstand harder tests. Indeed, she
was even aware of an added tenderness towards him, now she saw that it
behoved her to have forethought for them both. But into the wife's love
for her husband there crept something of a mother's love for her child;
for a wayward and impulsive, yet gifted creature, whose welfare and
happiness depended on her alone. And it is open to question whether the
mother dormant in Mary did not fall with a kind of hungry joy on this
late-found task. The work of her hands done, she had known empty hours.
That was over now. With quickened faculties, all her senses on the
alert, she watched, guided, hindered, foresaw.

Chapter VIII

Old Ocock failed in health that winter. He was really old now, was two
or three and sixty; and, with the oncoming of the rains and cold, gust