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Updated: June 16, 2025
An hour later Storran came slowly downstairs from the little room where he and Magda had met again for the first time since that moonlight night at Stockleigh met, not as lovers, but as a man and woman who have each sinned and each learned, out of their sinning, how to pardon and forgive. Storran was very quiet and grave when presently he found himself alone with Gillian.
Almost she wished they had never come to Stockleigh, only that it was pure joy to her to see Coppertop's rather thin little cheeks filling out and growing sunburnt and rosy. He had not picked up strength very readily after his attack of croup, and subsequently the intense heat in London had tried him a good deal.
But not lately not since the visitors from London had come to Stockleigh Farm. So June blushed and looked at her husband with eyes that were suddenly sweet and questioning. She knew, though she had not told him yet, that there was a reason now why he should try to save her when his greater strength could do so, and for a moment she wondered shyly if he had guessed. "Why, Dan, Dan " she stammered.
This love which had come to him was a forbidden thing a thing which must be fought and thrust outside his life. For the sake of June he must see no more of Magda. She must go leave Stockleigh. Afterwards he would tear the very memory of her out of his heart. Dan was a very direct person. Having taken his decision he did not stop to count the cost. That could come afterwards.
She had been driven there by an overmastering desire to escape from London for a few weeks, at least, to get right away from her accustomed life and from everyone who knew her. And at Stockleigh she had found Dan Storran.
Being a man as well as a porter he melted at once under Magda's disarming smile, and replied with a sudden accession of amiability. "Be you going to Stockleigh?" he asked. The soft sing-song intonation common to all Devon voices fell very pleasantly on ears accustomed to the Cockney twang of London streets. "Yes, to Storran of Stockleigh," announced Coppertop importantly.
With an effort she dismissed the fresh tangle of thought provoked by the morning's brief scene with Dan Storran, and, dressing quickly, went downstairs to the mid-day dinner which was the order of things at Stockleigh. At first the solid repast, with its plentitude of good farmhouse fare partaken of during the hottest hour of the day, had somewhat appalled Magda.
Hasn't it a nice sound Storran of Stockleigh?" "And did you engage the rooms on those grounds, may I ask? Because the proprietor's name 'had a nice sound'?" Magda regarded her seriously. "Do you know, I really believe that had a lot to do with it," she acknowledged. Gillian went off into a little gale of laughter. "How like you!" she exclaimed.
His voice sounded forced, and Magda waited with a strange feeling of tension for him to continue. "I want to ask you a question," he went on in the same carefully measured accents. "Did you ever stay at a place called Stockleigh Stockleigh Farm at Ashencombe?" Stockleigh!
"Go to hell!" "Magda, how could you?" Gillian's voice was full of blank dismay. "You ought to be thoroughly ashamed of yourself!" Magda perched on the foot of Gillian's bed, her hands clasped round her knees, nodded. "Yes, I suppose I ought. I don't know what made me do it except that he'd suggested I should leave Stockleigh! I'm not used to being shunted!"
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