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Updated: May 15, 2025
She saw that Rowcliffe's eyes never moved from the deep top paragraph on the left-hand page. She noted the light pressure of his thumbs on the margins. He wasn't reading at all; he was only pretending to read. He had set up his book as a barrier between them, and he was holding on to it for dear life. Rowcliffe moved irritably under Mary's eyes.
The Vicar bore himself like a man profoundly aggrieved, not to say outraged, in his own house, who nevertheless was observing a punctilious courtesy towards the offending guest. Rowcliffe's shoulders and his jaw were still squared in the antagonism that had closed their interview. He too observed the most perfect courtesy.
So he had formed another habit of asking them back to tea in his orchard. He had had no idea what a pleasant place his orchard could be too. Now, though Rowcliffe nearly always had tea alone with Mary at the Vicarage, Mary never came to tea at Rowcliffe's house alone. She always brought Alice with her. And Rowcliffe found that a nuisance.
Her way, the way she had caught him, was the way she would keep him. She had always known her power, even unpracticed. She had always known by instinct how she could enthrall him when her moment came. Here Mary's complacency betrayed her. She had fallen into the error of all innocent and tranquil sensualists. She trusted to the present. She had reckoned without Rowcliffe's future or his past.
Today she had visited all the sick people in the village, though it was not Wednesday, Dr. Rowcliffe's day. She had done her shopping in Morfe to such good purpose that she had concealed even from herself the fact that she had gone into Morfe, surreptitiously, to fetch the doctor. Of course Mary was aware that she had fetched him. She had been driven to that step by sheer terror.
Then she said to herself, "I must end it somehow. It's horrible to go on caring like this. He was right. It would be better not to see him at all." And she began counting the days and the hours till Wednesday when she would see him. Wednesday was still the Vicar's day for visiting his parish. It was also Rowcliffe's day for visiting his daughter.
Things had happened in Rowcliffe's family. His mother had died and his wife had had a son. Rowcliffe's son was the image of Rowcliffe. The doctor had no brothers or sisters, and by his mother's death he came into possession both of his father's income and of hers. He had now more than a thousand a year over and above what he earned.
And Steven Rowcliffe's eyes, so disastrous to the young ladies in Leeds, saw nobody in Morfe whom he could possibly want to marry. The village of Morfe is built in a square round its green.
He laid his own over it gently. Its grip slackened then. It lay lax under the sheltering hand. "Don't worry about that, my dear," he said. "It's been all right " "It hasn't. It hasn't." Rowcliffe's nerves winced before her fierce intensity. He withdrew his sheltering hand. "Just at first," she said, "it was all right. But you see it's broken down. You said it would."
Except living with your father." Gwenda had no feeling in her as she left Rowcliffe's house. Her heart hid in her breast. It was so mortally wounded as to be unaware that it was hurt. But at the turn of the white road her heart stirred in its hiding-place. It stirred at the sight of Karva and with the wind that brought her the smell of the flowering thorn-trees.
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