He was in love, heart and soul, and Dinah understood that well enough. No hope of any revelation existed for him. He poured all his energy and quality into his plans for her future happiness. If he could be unselfish, it was with her; if he could be modest, it was with her. She awoke the best of him and influenced him as no other power on earth was able to do. He saw her pleasant face beautiful; he heard her pleasant voice as music; he held her laugh sweeter than a blackbird's song. She knew his adoration and it increased the threatening difficulties. But he was changing now, and the recent evidence of his irritation on Hazel Tor, Dinah recognised as perfectly natural and reasonable.
Still she hesitated before the melancholy conviction that she could not marry John, and the vision of the family when they heard it. She was waiting now in rare indecision; but she knew that such inaction could only be a matter of a very short time. The problem touched many, and she was aware that her change of mind would bring hard words to her ears from various quarters. She began to be sorry, but not for herself. She was concerned, first for John, and then for her foster-father. She was also in a lesser degree regretful for Mrs. Bamsey, and even for Jane; but she judged that their tribulation would be allayed by two things: first, in the conviction that John was well out of it; secondly, at the knowledge that Dinah herself would leave Green Hayes, Ben Bamsey's farm. She could not stop after the events now foreshadowed, and she felt tolerably certain that none would desire her to do so. Thus she hung on the verge, but had not taken the inevitable step upon a Sunday when Lawrence Maynard visited Lower Town according to his promise and came to tea.
Green Hayes was "a welcoming sort of place," as the owner always declared, though at first glance it did not seem so. The farmhouse was built of granite and faced with slate, which caused it to look sulky, but made it snug. A wide farmyard extended before the face of the dwelling, and pigeons and poultry lent liveliness and movement to it. A great barn, with a weathered roof of slate, extended on one side of the yard, and orchards and large kitchen gardens arose behind it; for fruit and vegetables were a feature of Mr. Bamsey's production. He better loved planting trees than rearing stock. Indeed, his neighbours denied him title to be farmer at all. But he did great things with pigs and poultry, and he grew plenty of corn in Dart Vale a mile below his home.
Maynard was welcomed and found that Dinah had made more of his past succour than seemed necessary. He discovered also whence the young woman had derived her directness of speech and clear vision, for Mr. Bamsey displayed these qualities, though in a measure tempered by age and experience. On the subject of himself he could be specially clear. He did not mind who knew his failings.
He was a man of moderate height, grey bearded and grey headed. His nose had been flattened by an accident in youth, but his face was genial and his eyes, behind spectacles, of a pleasant expression. He enjoyed humour, and a joke against himself always won his heartiest laugh. His wife was larger than himself—a ponderous woman, credited with the gift of second sight. She had been beautiful and was still handsome, with regular features, a clear skin, and large, cow-like eyes. Jane Bamsey, her daughter, a girl of eighteen, rejoiced in more than the beauty of youth. She was lovely, but she had a disposition that already made her beautiful mouth pout oftener than it laughed. She was jealous of Dinah, though the elder girl entertained no unfriendly emotion towards Jane. She admired her exceedingly and loved to look at her for the satisfaction of her fine curves, round, black eyebrows, lustrous, misty blue eyes and delicate, dainty nose. It was not her fault that she pleased Benjamin Bamsey better than his own child. Jane was spiteful, and Dinah's direct methods, which often defeated the younger in argument, never convinced her, but increased a general, vague feeling of resentment, the more painful to Jane, because she was no fool, and knew, at the bottom of her heart, that honest grounds of complaint against Dinah did not exist. The real grievance lay in the fact of her father's preference; but when, in a moment of passion, she had flung this truth at Dinah, the elder disarmed her by admitting it and also explaining it.
"If you thought for foster-father like I do, and loved him half as well as what I do, you'd have nothing to grumble about, and he'd love you so well as he loves me," said Dinah; "but you don't."
"I'd do all you do for him, and more, if you wasn't here," declared Jane, and met an uncompromising answer.
"No, you wouldn't, or anything like what I do; and well you know it, you pretty dear."
Mr. Bamsey thanked Lawrence heartily for his good offices in the past on Dinah's behalf, and Faith Bamsey, his wife, echoed him.
"The blessing is she ain't marked," said Ben. "I much feared she would be, for 'twas an evil cut, but such is the health of her blood that she healed instanter, and now, you see nought but a red mark that grows fainter every day."