"You haven't. You're going to stay for dinner now you're here."
"I can't, really, Mary."
But Mary was obstinate. Whether her sister stayed or went she made it hard for her. She kept it up on the stairs and at the door and at the garden gate.
"Perhaps you'll come some night when Steven's here. You know he's always glad to see you."
The sting of it was in Mary's watching eyes. For, when you came to think of it, there was nothing else she could very well have said.
LXI
That year, when spring warmed into summer, Gwenda's strength went from her.
She was always tired. She fought with her fatigue and got the better of it, but in a week or two it returned. Rowcliffe told her to rest and she rested, for a day or two, lying on the couch in the dining-room where Ally used to lie, and when she felt better she crawled out on to the moor and lay there.
One day she said to herself, "There's Ally. I'll go and see how she's getting on."
She dragged herself up the hill to Upthorne.