Head rose, finished his refreshment, and shook Mr. Baskerville's hand.
"And I'm the better for knowing as you've been large-minded enough to forgive me," he said. "And as you can, I suppose Susan here can. I know I'm very much in her black books, and I deserve that too, and I'd make it up to her in any way I can—except to marry her. That I never will do for any woman as long as I live."
"No, and never will get the chance to," replied Susan; "and I only trust to God 'twill all die out, and we hear no more of it."
Head turned at the door and spoke a final word.
"It may interest you to know that everybody have had their money now—everybody but me and Thomas Coode, the drunken farmer at Meavy. 'Tis strange I should be put in the same class with Coode; but so it is. However, I've larned my lesson. I shall say no more about that. Think of it I must, being but mortal, but speak I won't."
"You'll do well to forget it," answered Mr. Baskerville. "The man, or woman if 'twas one, be probably settled in their mind not to pay you or Coode back—since you're so little deserving."
Jack shrugged his shoulders, but kept his recent promise and went out silently.
CHAPTER X
A jay, with flash of azure and rose, fluttered screaming along from point to point of a coppice hard by Hawk House, and Cora Lintern saw it. She frowned, for this bird was associated in her mind with a recent and an unpleasant incident. Her brother Heathman, whose disparate nature striking against her own produced many explosions, had recently told her that the jay was her bird—showy, tuneless, hard-hearted. She remembered the occasion of this attack, but for the moment had no energy at leisure with which to hate him; for difficulties were rampant in her own path, and chance began to treat her much as she had treated other people in the past.