Notely turned his own face away a little, jingling the free coin in his pockets. "Why, I have been making money on my own account, Mrs. Gurdon Rafe," he cried gayly, "since I opened the quarry. And no man, nor no woman either, now says to me, Do this or do that, go here or go there. From all accounts, moreover, my wife and mother are enjoying themselves extremely well as ever during my absence. As for Fluke Rafe, he is a good fellow, but he was always wild as a hawk."
"O Notely! if you would only help such men, as you might, instead of being as wild as a hawk with them!"
"It takes a hawk to catch a hawk, my dear: all the ministers will tell you that."
"Is that what you are doing it for?"
"Well, no; since you are a Basin, and only truth avails, there has been hitherto no deep moral design in my merry orgies at the Neck. But to-night, Vesty, is my grand affair; to be hallowed by the presence of all the Basins: my feast and ball to them, you know—my oldest and best friends. And you—why, Vesty," he went on, in another tone, "you remember we had always a dance a week at the Basin, and you and I led them off together. Come, then, for the sake of old times and the feeling of the rest, though you may enjoy it yourself no more."
He spoke with reckless meaning, and his eyes, that had such fatal power of expression in them, looked deep into hers. She paled; the baby threw up a sleeping hand against her face.
"There is another thing, Notely," she said. "Gurdon does not like it that you come here for an hour or more every day to sit and talk alone with me while they are at the fishing. He is not much to suspect, and he was always fond of you and trusted you; but it is not doing right by Gurdon."
Her eyes looked infinitely sorrowful into his; blushes, like pain, dyed her cheeks.
"O Vesty, my pure one!—then tell me that you love me still—love me as you used to do—and I'll go away content, and not come any more. Touch my head as you used to do; kiss me once more, with those words, and——"
The baby's white, sleeping palm pressed hard against the mother's burning cheek.