They said nothing more until they approached the Range, and as they drove by the outbuildings Agatha glanced about her curiously. It occurred to her that the homestead did not look quite the same as it had done when Wyllard had been there. A waggon stood near the strawpile without one wheel. A door of the barn hung awkwardly open in a manner which suggested that it needed mending, and the snow had blown inside the building. There was a gap in the side of one sod and pole structure which should evidently have been repaired, and all this and several other things she noticed jarred upon her. They suggested slackness and indifference. Then she saw Mrs. Hastings purse her lips up.
"There is a change in the place already," she said.
They got down in another minute or two, and when they entered the house the grey-haired Swedish woman greeted them moodily. She seemed to notice the glance Mrs. Hastings cast around her, and her manner became deprecatory.
"I can't keep things straight now. It is not the same," she said.
Mrs. Hastings asked if Hawtrey was in, and hearing that he was turned to Agatha. "Go along and talk to him. I've something to say to Mrs. Nansen," she said.
CHAPTER XIX.
THE PRIOR CLAIM.
It was with confused feelings among which a sense of repugnance predominated that Agatha walked towards Hawtrey's room. She was not one of the women who take pleasure in pointing out another person's duty, for while she had discovered that this task is apparently an easy one to some people she was quite aware that a duty usually looks much more burdensome when it is laid upon one's self. Indeed, she was conscious just then that one might be shortly thrust upon her which she would find it very hard to bear, and she became troubled with a certain compunction as she remembered how she had of late persistently driven all thought of it out of her mind.
There was no doubt that she was still pledged to Gregory, and that she had loved him once. Both facts must be admitted, and it seemed to her that if he insisted she must marry him. Deep down in her there was an innate sense of right and honesty, and she realised that the fact that he was not the man she had once imagined him to be did not release her. In the meanwhile, it was clear that if he was about to commit a cruel and unjustifiable action she was the one person of all others whose part it was to restrain him.