She was silent, turning it over in her mind. After a few moments she made him tell it all to her again, how his father had first stormed at him, and then softened towards him; how he had said that he did not care what Bart did once he was dead. At this point she interrupted to say: “That’s queer-seeming to me.”
“Well, as a matter of fact I think the old man’s breaking up,” Bart said.
She was again silent. She was beginning to perceive the purpose behind Penhallow’s apparent unreason. Pondering it, she did not doubt that she was to be kept on at Trevellin, for that would suit Penhallow’s plan admirably. He knew Bart: he was banking on one of two things happening, either fatal to her hopes of becoming Bart’s wife. She guessed, without precisely formulating the thought, that Penhallow expected his son’s impatience to get the better of him. For that reason, then, he would keep her hovering in Bart’s sight. She had been brought up too close to the soil to be trammelled with sentimentality, and her experience taught her to know that if she allowed Bart to enjoy her body outside the bond of wedlock it was unlikely that he would afterwards think it necessary to marry her. If, on the other hand, she denied him, he would sooner or later look elsewhere for a woman, for he was a healthy and a lusty young man, with a passionate and certainly not very profound nature. She did not suppose for a moment that he would always be faithful to her when they were married, but she was quite sure that she could handle him, that whatever favours he might bestow elsewhere he would return to his wife, just as his father had returned to Rachel Penhallow. But that he would accord as much fidelity as that to a woman who was his neither in name nor in deed was beyond the bounds of her expectation.
Hatred of Penhallow surged up in her, for she now perceived that he was fighting her with diabolical cunning. She was tempted to urge Bart to run off with her, and so to be sure of him, but even in her anger she did not quite lose sight of prudence, and when Bart, feeling her tremble in his arms, asked her what was the matter, she said: “Nothing.”
Holding her in his arms made Bart feel that he could not wait to possess her. He said: “Damn the Guv’nor! Let’s take a chance, my little love!”
She shook her head. She wanted him, and loved him with a depth of feeling perhaps exceeding his for her, but she did not believe that he would succeed in making it living if his father’s support were to be withdrawn. Poverty was too real to her to be regarded lightly; she dreaded it and, even more, the effect she dimly felt that it would have on one of Bart’s temperament and upbringing. “We must wait,” she said, “a little while longer. Something may happen.”
“Seems pretty steep to be looking forward to the poor old Guv’nor’s death,” he said, grimacing. “That’s about what it amounts to.”
She did not answer. She had no compassion to waste on Penhallow, and would count his death a blessing.
“At the same time,” continued Bart, “I don’t see why he shouldn’t come round to the idea. He really doesn’t know anything about you, my bird.”
She was sure that Penhallow would remain obdurate, but she did not say so. She wanted time to think the matter over, and so agreed with Bart.