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Martin's conduct during the day was not reassuring. He had lost all his ferocity and bitterness; he was very quiet, speaking to no one, lying on a sofa that over-looked the moor, watching. Mrs. Bolitho's really soft heart was touched by his pallor and weakness, but she could not deny that there was something queer here. Maggie almost wished that his old mood of truculence would return.
What did she want him to do to say? Mrs. Bolitho could see that the girl's hands were clenched, as though she had reached, at last, the very limits of her endurance. He did not see. His back was half turned to her. He did not speak, but stood there drumming with his hands on the glass. "Oh, I could shake him," thought Mrs. Bolitho's impatience.
Maggie and Martin stood there looking out into the mist. The woman could see Maggie's face, dim though the light was, and a certain haunting desire in it tugged at Mrs. Bolitho's tender heart. "Poor worm," she thought to herself, "she's longing for him to say something to her and he won't." They were talking. Then there was a pause and Martin turned away. Maggie's eyes passionately besought him.
Bolitho's son, Jacob, now in London engineering, and the apple of her eye, about many things but never about herself, the past history nor her feeling for Martin. The girl never "let on" that she was suffering, and yet "suffering she must be." You could see that she was just holding herself "tight" like a wire. The strange intensity of her determination was beautiful but also dangerous.
For a time Maggie waited, never stirring, her eyes fixed, her body taut. Then she seemed suddenly to break, as though the moment of endurance was past. She turned sharply round, looking directly out of her window into Mrs. Bolitho's room but she didn't see Mrs. Bolitho. That good woman saw her smile, a strange little smile of defiance, pathos, loneliness, cheeriness defeated.
"He doesn't want her to know it," she said. "Why shouldn't he?" asked James. "Now you're asking," said Mrs. Bolitho. "Nice kind of courtin' that be," said James; "good thing you was a bit different, missus. Lovin' a lass and not speaking shouldn't like!" Mrs. Bolitho's heart grew very tender towards Maggie. Married or not, the child was in a "fiery passion of love."
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