"You must choose," she said.
"No, no—that's up to you, and you mustn't have small ideas about it either. You're going to live in a jolly good house, I promise you."
This sweetened the parting. He kissed her and turned his face to Bridport, while she followed the road homeward. It took her past the old store—black as the night under a roof silvered by the moon. A strange shiver ran through her as she passed it. She could have prayed for time to turn back.
"Oh, my God, if I was a maiden again!" she said in a low voice to herself.
Then, growing calmer and musing of the past rather than the future, she asked herself whether in that case she would still be caring for Raymond; but she turned from such a thought and smothered the secret indignation still lying red-hot and hidden under the smoke of the things she had said to him that night.
On his way to Bridport, the man also reflected, but of the future, not the past.
"I must be cruel to be kind," he told himself. What he exactly meant by the assurance, he hardly knew. But, in some way, it assisted self-respect and promised a course of action likely to justify his coming life.
CHAPTER XIX
JOB LEGG'S AMBITION
A disquieting and wholly unexpected event now broke into the strenuous days of the mistress of 'The Seven Stars.' It followed another, which was now a thing of the past; but Mrs. Northover had scarcely finished being thankful that the old order was restored again, when that occurred to prove the old order could never be restored.