"I was afraid you might be vexed. We met quite by chance as I came to seek you, and he stopped, and would be talking. He said he ban't going to be a long-lived man, and I told him he wants a wife; and then he said if he could get another like me he might think of it."
"Be damned to him!" said Brendon violently. "I can't stand no more of this. I won't have this talking between you. 'Tisn't right or seemly, and you ought to know it, if you're a sane woman."
"He's never said one syllable to me you couldn't hear," she answered, believing herself, but forgetting a word or two. "All the same, I'll avoid him more, Daniel, when he comes back. He may fetch along a wife with him. But don't you be angered, dear heart. I'd rather up and away from Ruddyford at cocklight to-morrow for evermore, than you should frown. 'Tis silly to be jealous of the sun for throwing my shadow, or the wind for buffeting me."
"I am jealous. I'm a raging fire where you be concerned, and always shall be—for your soul first. I won't insult you to speak of any other thing. Any other thing's not speakable. You know I'm built so, and you don't strive to lessen it, but just the contrary. I wish you was more religious-minded and more alive to the sacredness of the married state."
"I'm myself, Dan—for good or bad."
The man was gloomy for some days after this scene, and Sarah Jane went her way with patience and unfailing good humour. She felt no anger with him on her side. She understood him a little; but jealousy was a condition of mind so profoundly foreign to her own nature, that her imagination quite failed to fathom its significance and its swift power of growth in congenial soil.
Hilary Woodrow kept his word, and presently left home for an indefinite period. He told himself that he was going away to escape temptation; in reality he went to seek it. His object was simple: to learn whether the arrival of Brendon's wife at Ruddyford had merely awakened his old interest in women generally, or whether it was she herself, and only she, who had roused him out of a long sexual apathy.
CHAPTER VII
IN COMMITTEE
Hilary Woodrow's departure from Ruddyford made no difference to the course of events. Routine work progressed according to the prescribed custom of Dartmoor husbandry. Oats were sown during the last week of March; potatoes followed; then the seed of mangold went to ground, and lastly, in June, with the swedes, this protracted planting of crops ended.