He assented to the wisdom of her proposition, and as footsteps were heard approaching from without, moved quickly to the farther side of the room, and as the master of the house came in, seemed very much engaged with the county paper which he found lying on the window-sill.
Belinda was stooping over the fire, stirring something stewing in a pan.
“Supper not ready?” Himes asked, in a surly tone. Then, catching sight of the new-comer, “Ah! so you’re here, O’Rourke! Well, set up to the table. I guess we’ll have something to eat after a bit.”
By previous arrangement, Teddy McManus was to temporarily supply Phelim’s place with Bangs, thus leaving Phelim at liberty to stay away as long as should seem advisable for their common interest. He accordingly spent several weeks in the employ of Farmer Himes, felling trees and cutting wood all day in company with the old man, and often, in the long evenings, enjoying a stolen interview with Belinda when a call upon some neighbor or a visit to the nearest town had taken her husband out of the way.
The woman’s conscience troubled her sorely at times; she knew she was doing very wrong, now that she was the wife of another man, to let this one talk to her in the old lover-like way; that was proper enough while she was free to bestow her heart and hand upon him. But she stifled the reproaches of the inward monitor, and went on in the evil course that must end in sorrow and shame.
But O’Rourke had a purpose in coming there aside from his passion for her and wish to obtain the money paid him for his work. He was in Bangs’s employ still, though in a new capacity.
“I’ve a little job on hand that mabbe you cud help me wid, me jewel,” he said to Belinda one evening in the second week of his stay.
“What’s that?” she asked, looking up from her sewing in some surprise and apprehension.
“Nothin’ to fright ye,” he returned, laughing. “It’s jist this, me darlint. There’s a gintleman as wants to foind out, fer some raison o’ his own, if yer ould man’s got a margage—I belave that’s what they call it—on Lakeside, the farm belongin’ till the Heaths.”
“How should I know if he has?” she returned. “He never tells me nothin’ about his business, and I don’t know what a margage is.”