Presently she noticed the flat-bottomed boat usually kept on the pond for the convenience of fishers; it was being propelled over the stream in her direction. A minute later, a man seated in the boat ran it against the bank and stepped out, fastened the point to a willow stump, and came towards her.
"What—is this the Squiress?"
She looked up and recognized him.
The man who came to her and addressed her was Mr. Markham, the young barrister, who had been to the Punch-Bowl to obtain the assistance of Jonas in wild-duck shooting.
She recalled his offensively familiar manner, and was troubled to see him again. And yet she remembered his last remark on leaving, when he had offered his services to help her to free herself from her bondage to Jonas. The words might have been spoken in jest, yet now, she caught at them.
He stood looking at her, and he saw both how pale she was, with a hectic flame in her cheek, and a feverish glitter in her eye, and also how beautiful she thus was.
"Why," said he, "what brings you here?"
"I have been to the silk mill in quest of work."
"Work! Broom-Squiress, one such as you should not work. You missed your vocation altogether when you left the Ship. Jonas told me you had been there."
"I was happy then."