“I do b’lieve your heart be made o’ moor stone.”
“Good job if ’twas. Ban’t no use being built o’ putty, nor yet o’ pity, ’pon Dartymoor. Now shut your clack, an’ let me go to sleep.”
The woman sighed, and closed her eyes.
“I’ll tell Dick what you say. Good night, master.”
CHAPTER V
Anthony Maybridge had in truth discovered that everything depends upon the point of view. What was a deed past understanding in one woman, appeared to him quite defensible for another. He had grown into a very steady admiration of Jane Stanberry, and he told himself that her attachment to the warrener was a serious error. This he firmly believed, apart from the other question of his personal regard for Jane. He discussed the matter with a grand impartiality, and felt confident that her future must be ruined if shared with such a surly and cross-grained churl as Richard Daccombe.
Presently he expressed the same fear to Jane herself, and she was much astonished to find no great indignation flame up in her mind before such a proposition. She confessed the thought had occurred to her, and asked Anthony how it could have struck him also. Whereupon he declared that his suspicion was awakened solely from disinterested regard for her welfare and future happiness. In brief, a situation stale enough developed, with that brisk growth to be observed in all similar complications when they are exhibited by primitive natures. Such seeds grow in virgin and uncultured hearts with a rapidity not manifest where the subjects are sophisticated and bound about with the etiquette of their order.
Jane Stanberry observed the radical differences between these men; she found Dick’s cloudy spirit and gloomy nature grow daily darker by contrast with the generous and sanguine temperament of Anthony. Indeed, Richard did grow more morose, as was to be expected, while he watched such a play develop and apparently stood powerless as any other spectator to change the plot of it.
But at last his sense of wrong pricked passion, and he stirred himself. Most firmly he believed all fault lay with Maybridge alone, and he attributed to that youth a guile and subtlety quite beyond his real powers of mind. Dick accused his rival of having seduced the love of Jane against her inner will—a thing obviously not possible; and upon that judgement he prepared to act.
For her part, the girl let conscience sting until the stab grew dull and failed to disturb her comfort. Each exhibition of ferocity from Richard lessened her uneasiness, and justified her in her own eyes. She plotted to meet the other man in secret; yet still she played a double part, and outwardly pretended that Dick was all in all to her.