It was an exquisitely touching sight. Mr. Marrapit, greatly moved, went to his room; took out the green knitted slippers with the red knitted blobs. Had he misjudged this woman?
Ten minutes later he again encountered Mrs. Major. Now she was girt against the weather and against exercise. Beneath her chin were firmly knotted the strings of her sober bonnet; a short skirt hid nothing of the stout boots she had donned; her hand grasped the knob of a bludgeon-like umbrella.
The masterly woman had removed all traces of her emotion. In a voice humble yet strong, “I start to search, Mr. Marrapit,” she said. “I will find the Rose if she is to be found.”
So deep sincerity was in her speech, so strong she seemed, so restful in this crisis, that Mr. Marrapit, watching her stride the drive, again fell to pacing and cogitation—had he misjudged her? Almost unconsciously he moved upstairs to his room; drew those green slippers with red blobs from their drawer.
IV.
Had Mr. Marrapit doubted the sincerity of Mrs. Major's search, assuredly he would have misjudged her. In her diary that night the masterly woman inscribed:
“Am here; must stick.”
Her best chance of sticking, as well she knew, lay in finding the Rose. Could she but place that creature's exquisite form in Mr. Marrapit's arms, she felt that her reward would be to win back to the paradise from which Old Tom had driven her.
Therefore most strenuously she scoured the countryside; pried into houses; popped her head into stable doors. This woman nothing spared herself; in the result, at the end of two days, was considerably dejected. For it was clear to her that the Rose had not strayed, but had been stolen; was not concealed in the vicinity of Herons' Holt, but had been spirited to the safety of many miles. She was driven to accept Mr. Brunger's opinion—the Rose had been stolen by some eager and unscrupulous breeder to be used for gross purposes.
It was upon the evening of the second day in paradise that this woman settled upon this gloomy conclusion. Gloomy it was, and desperately, sitting in her bedroom that night, the masterly woman battled for some way to circumvent it. To that entry made in her diary on the night of her arrival she had added two further sentences: