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I shall stay in Dunfield till I am able to see her. 'Very well. In that case you will not refuse our hospitality. The longer you stay the better pleased I shall be. She would hear of no difficulties. 'I wouldn't ask you, she said, 'if I were not able to promise you any degree of privacy you like. A sitting-room is at your disposal begging to be occupied since my boy Charlie went away.
The wholesome colour of his cheeks had changed almost to sallowness those who met him in Dunfield looked at him with surprise and asked what illness he had been suffering. At the mill, they did not welcome his re-appearance; his temper was worse than it had been since the ever-memorable week which witnessed his prosecution for assault and battery.
Miss Hanmer had impressed him as no other woman had done, simply because she had graces and accomplishments of a kind hitherto unknown to him; Richard felt that for the first time in his life he was in familiar intercourse with a 'lady. Her refined modes of speech, her little personal delicacies, her unconscious revelation of knowledge which he deemed the result of deep study, even her pretty and harmless witticisms at the expense of Dunfield dignitaries, touched his slumbering imagination with singular force.
The reputation he had in Dunfield for brutality of behaviour dated from his prosecution for violent assault by a groom, whom, in one of his fits of rage, he had all but pounded to a jelly. The incident occurred early in his married life, and was, no doubt, the origin of the very prevalent belief that he had ruled his wife by similar methods.
The last half mile of the walk from Dunfield was always a struggle with exhaustion. He had to sit several minutes before he was able to go upstairs to refresh himself with cold water. 'I met Mrs. Cartwright, he said, when an unexpected cup of tea from Emily's hands had put him into good spirits. 'Jessie got home on Saturday, and wants you to go and see her, Emily.
There were things in him of which he was beginning to be conscious, which would lead him he could not yet see whither. Dunfield was no home for Emily; he knew it, and felt that he, too, would henceforth have need of a larger circle of life. He was rich enough, and by transferring his business to other hands he could become yet richer, gaining freedom at the same time.
'To be sure, said his aunt; 'she comes from Dunfield, in Yorkshire. Do you think you can have met her there? 'Ah, that explains it, Beatrice cried eagerly. 'I knew I had seen her, and I know now where it was. She gave lessons to my uncle's children. I saw her when I was staying there the last time, three no, four years ago.
The exquisite fingers touched his own redder and coarser ones. 'Have you friends in Dunfield? he asked. 'Friends? 'Any real friend, I mean any girl who gives you real companionship? 'Scarcely that. 'How shall you spend your time when you are not deep in electrics? What do you mean to read these holidays? 'Chiefly German, I think. I have only just begun to read it.
Nothing of the past should be sacrificed, and the future was their own. It was an unusual thing for the middle of August to find Richard Dagworthy still in Dunfield. Through all the other months of the year he stuck closely to the mill, but the best three weeks of August were his holiday; as a rule, he went to Scotland, sometimes in company with a friend, more often alone.
Legge, the partner, pooh-poohed the idea that Dagworthy was secretly married. But Mr. Legge might know as little as other people. There were circles in Dunfield in which another and quite a different myth grew up around the name of Emily Hood. The Cartwrights originated it.
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