“Not intellectually.”
“Perhaps not. I’m not sure that I am entertained by intellectual entertainment. He is a man in the clay stage. I’m not sure that that isn’t the most interesting—it certainly is the most natural. He might be anything that a woman might choose to make him.”
“Of course we’ll tell them at home what happened,” said Rosa, after a long pause.
“Why should we not? We would do well to be an hour or two in advance of Mrs. Pearce,” said Priscilla.
They got upon the road, and were forced to pay attention to its condition of muddiness rather than to the delight of breathing the sweet scents of the rain-drenched hedges on each side. They parted at the cross-roads, and only at that moment remembered that they had left their primroses in the porch.
Rosa went in the direction of the town, and Priscilla set her face toward the slope of the Down in front of her. Before she had gone for more than half a mile on her way to the farm, she saw a man approaching her—a middle-aged man in a black coat and leggings rather the worse for wear. He held up his hand to her while they were still far apart.
“Something has happened,” she said. “It cannot be that he became uneasy at my absence.” Then they met. “What is it, father?” she asked quickly.
“Dead—he is dead—the man is dead!” he said in a low voice.
“Dead—Marcus Blaydon—dead—are you sure?”
“Quite sure,” he replied.