Even if she defied her father and married Jim Greatorex in spite of him there would be almost as much shame in it as if, like Essy, she had never married him at all.
And she couldn't live without him.
Ally had suffered profoundly from the shock that had struck her down under the arcades on the road to Upthorne. It had left her more than ever helpless, more than ever subject to infatuation, more than ever morally inert. Ally's social self had grown rigid in the traditions of her class, and she was still aware of the unsuitability of her intimacy with Jim Greatorex; but disaster had numbed her once poignant sense of it. She had yielded to his fascination partly through weakness, partly in defiance, partly in the sheer, healthy self-assertion of her suffering will and her frustrated senses. But she had not will enough to defy her father. She credited him with an infinite capacity to crush and wound. And for a day and a half the sight of Mary's happiness—a spectacle which Mary did not spare her—-had made Ally restless. Under the incessant sting of it her longing for Greatorex became insupportable.
On Sunday the Vicar was still too deeply afflicted by the same circumstance to notice Ally's movements, and Ally took advantage of his apathy to excuse herself from Sunday school that afternoon. And about three o'clock she was at Upthorne Farm. She and Greatorex had found a moment after morning service to arrange the hour.
* * * * *
And now they were standing together in the doorway of the Farmhouse.
In the house behind them, in the mistal and the orchard, in the long marshes of the uplands and on the brooding hills there was stillness and solitude.
Maggie had gone up to her aunt at Bar Hill. The farm servants were scattered in their villages.
Alice had just told Greatorex of Mary's engagement and the Vicar's opposition.
"Eh, I was lookin' for it," he said. "But I maade sure it was your oother sister."