‘Lor’,’ said his wife, as he disappeared, ‘the way father do stick up for the Owens is wonderful. Not that I’ve a word to say against them, but I should have looked higher for Hetty myself. William is a good lad, but not more than a labourer on his father’s farm, and John Nelson at the post-office proposed twice for her, but she wouldn’t look at him, though he makes three hundred a year in hard cash. But I won’t hear of any farm-hand for you, Nell. You’ve got the looks to make a good marriage, my girl, and I hope you’ll make it. You’re rather peaky now, and your eyes are sunken and dark underneath. I shouldn’t wonder if your liver wasn’t out of order, but country fare and air will soon set you right again, and then there won’t be a prettier girl for miles round. It was time you came back to us, for you’d have lost all your good looks if you’d remained in London much longer.’
Nell had listened to this lengthy discourse almost in silence. She had been thinking all the time, ‘Oh, if they knew—if they only knew!’ She had tried to pull herself together several times, and laugh and chat as she had done the night before, but she had found it impossible. It was as if some weight had been attached to all her mental powers and dragged them down. She had a horrible feeling that if she spoke at all she should blurt out the truth and tell them everything. So she remained silent and miserable, wishing that she had never come back to Usk, but been drowned in the deep bosom of the Thames.
‘I’m afraid you’ve got a bit of a headache still, my dear,’ remarked her voluble mother, as she rose from the breakfast-table, ‘and so I won’t ask you to come round the dairy with me this morning. You’d rather rest on the sofa and read a book, I daresay?’
‘No, no,’ cried Nell, rousing herself, ‘I’d rather go where you go, mother. I should go mad—I mean, I should feel my headache much more sitting here by myself. Let me come and see all over the dear old house with you. It will do me good—I must keep stirring, or I shall feel things—my headache, so much worse for thinking of it.’
So she made a great effort, and followed her mother on her various vocations, and made the dairymaids open their eyes to hear the refinement of her speech and to see her graceful movements and the daintiness with which her clothes were made and worn. Had they but been able to read her mind they would have seen with amazement that she shrunk from contact with them, because her dread secret was eating into her very soul and making her feel unfit to associate with her fellow-men. She had only realised the truth, and what her love for Lord Ilfracombe had made her, by fits and starts in London, but here, in the heart of God’s country, it was borne in upon her to such an extent that she felt as if every innocent animal, and fresh, modest, wild blossom must proclaim it to the world. So she went moodily about the farmhouse all day, and her mother believed that she was ill, and ransacked her brain to think of a remedy for her. In the evening, as they were all sitting quietly together (for Mrs Llewellyn had been asking her husband for some money to get Nell a new outfit, which had recalled to his mind the impoverished condition in which his daughter had returned home), who should walk in amongst them, to the general surprise, but Hugh Owen. He looked rather conscious as he entered the room, but excused his visit on the score of asking how Nell had borne her journey, and to bring her a book which he thought she might like to read.
‘You need no excuses for coming to Panty-cuckoo Farm, my lad!’ exclaimed the farmer; ‘you’re always welcome here. What’s the day? Tuesday? Ah, then to-morrow’s the grand field-night, which accounts for your having the time to come over this evening.’
The young man blushed, and looked at Nell.
‘Yes,’ he answered, ‘to-morrow is my field night, as you call it, farmer. I hope it may prove a harvest field.’
‘Now, just tell me how you do it, lad,’ said the old man. ‘Do you lie awake of nights, and make up all you’re going to say, or do you wait till the people are before you, and then just tell ’em what’s in your mind? I’m curious to know, for your flow of words is wonderful, and I can’t understand how any man can talk for two mortal hours as you did last Wednesday, unless he’s stored it all up beforehand. It beats me altogether. I never heard the like before.’
He had got Hugh astride his hobby, and the young man found his tongue at once.