In the meanwhile Sewell found that Coulthurst, who, it seemed, had gone across to the outpost, had not yet come home. Grace told him so standing in the doorway, with the sweeping lines of her figure cut in black against the light, and though she could see the admiration in his face he could not see her curious little smile. Miss Coulthurst had decided that the struggle between the miners and their rulers had continued long enough, and it was time she made some attempt to put an end to it.
"Still, I really think you might come in," she said. "He will be back before very long."
Sewell came in, and sat down opposite her across the hearth, and Grace glanced covertly at her little watch which hung upon the wall. Major Coulthurst was punctuality in itself, and she realized that she had about twenty minutes in which to do a good deal. Ingleby's devotion to her—and it was, perhaps, significant that she felt that was the best description of it—was evident; but there were points on which he was as unyielding and impervious to suggestion as a rock; while Sewell, with his more delicately balanced nature and wider grasp of comprehension, was, in her hands, at least, as malleable clay.
"How long is this very unpleasant state of affairs to continue, Mr. Sewell?" she asked. "You promised me we should have quietness this winter."
Sewell made a little deprecatory gesture. "Circumstances were too strong for me, but I have done what I could. Unpleasant as things are, they might be worse—considerably."
"It is a little difficult to see how they could be."
She had straightened herself a little, and sat looking at him with a certain quiet and half-scornful imperiousness which she knew became her, and yet was not altogether affected. Sewell, the democrat, understood exactly what she meant, and knew that it was not the loneliness or physical discomfort the blockade entailed that she was thinking of. It was the humbling of the pride of the ruling caste to which she belonged, and the bold denial of its prerogative of authority, that she felt the most. It was curious that he could understand this and sympathize with her as Ingleby, who only saw and did the obvious thing, could not have done.
"Well," he said, "I think this winter might have seen an undreamt-of overturning of constituted authority and the setting up of what you were once pleased to call a visionary Utopia. My comrades were almost ready to undertake it a little while ago. In fact, they only wanted somebody to show them how."
Grace laughed a careless, silvery laugh, which would have been wasted on Ingleby. There was no scorn in it now, only amusement, but Sewell nodded comprehendingly as he looked up at her.
"Your friends would naturally never believe it, but I almost think the inauguration of the Utopia would have been possible," he said. "At least, we could have cleared the ground for it."