No rancour could be detected in her voice. Grimshaw wondered what she was feeling. Her perfect manners might have misled a less acute observer, but he divined somehow that she, also, was intensely affected, blind for the moment because a cataract had been torn from her eyes.
“Be you prepared to die, my lady?”
At this the parson raised a protesting finger. To break through his privet fence was a grave misdemeanour; to trespass upon his spiritual domain in his presence palsied a tongue apter at asking rather than answering such direct questions. However, Lady Selina replied courteously:
“Why do you put such a question?”
“I puts it to ’ee. We brings nothing into this world, and we takes nothing out. But the reckonin’ must be paid. What ha’ you done, my lady, wi’ us? We’ve worked for ’ee . . . crool hard, at a low wage.”
He stretched out his rough hands, palms uppermost, revealing the scars and callouses, but quite unconscious of them.
“You could have left my service, Timothy Farleigh, if you thought the work too hard and the wage too low.”
“Aye. Fair warning I had fifteen years ago, when my lil’ maids died. I might ha’ gone then, but someways I couldn’t leave the old land, and so—God forgi’ me—I stayed. We pore souls, my lady, bain’t free. . . . We be, seemin’ly, just beasts o’ burden, your beasts—under your yoke.”
Lady Selina never flinched from his intent gaze. Grimshaw was unable to decide whether indeed her clear blue eyes were fixing upon the trembling speaker or upon herself. Could she see him as he thus revealed himself? Could she see herself with anything approximating to true definition? She said firmly enough:
“My yoke has not been heavy; you know that.”