Then she turned housewards. She put down her guttering candle on the great oak table of the kitchen, and sank herself upon the settle.
"Soa—that's him!" she said to herself; and her peasant mind in a dull heat, like that of the peat fire beside her, went wandering back over the hatreds of twenty years.
CHAPTER III
As the dog-cart reached the turning of the lane, Mr. Helbeck said to his companion:
"Would you kindly take the cart through? I must shut the gate."
He jumped down. Laura with some difficulty—for the high wind coming from the fell increased her general confusion of brain—passed the gate and took the pony safely down a rocky piece of road beyond.
His first act in rejoining her was to wrap the rugs which he had brought more closely about her.
"I had no idea in coming," he said—"that the wind was so keen. Now we face it."
He spoke precisely in the same voice that he might have used, say, to Polly Mason had she been confided to him for a night journey. But as he arranged the rug, his hand for an instant had brushed Laura's; and when she gave him the reins, she leant back hardly able to breathe.
With a passionate effort of will, she summoned a composure to match his own.