“It really seems to me that the matter rests with Mary—if she doesn’t want to defend herself....”
“Mary must think of her family—it ought to come before her private feelings.”
The words seemed an echo of a far-back argument—they reminded Peter dimly of his own straits last year. The family must come first.... That time it was money, now it was reputation. After all, why not? There was no good holding to the one and letting the other go. But he was sorry for Mary all the same.
“Well, I can’t stay any longer now. I must be getting back to dinner. I’ll bring Vera up tomorrow morning.”
“Mary’s coming down in the afternoon.”
“Oh, is she?”
“Yes—I’ve wired for her. I insist on her listening to reason.”
So Mary would have to face Peter’s choice—family duty against personal inclination.... Well, after all he hadn’t made such a bad thing of it.... He thought of Vera waiting for him at Starvecrow, and in spite of the fret of the last half-hour a smile of childlike satisfaction was on his face as he went home.
§ 3
Peter was out early the next morning, when the first pale sunshine was stealing up the valley of the Tillingham, flooding all the world in a gleam of watery gold. He had awoken to the music of his farm, to the crowing of his cocks, to the stamping of his cattle in their stalls, to the clattering of his workmen’s feet on the cobbles of the yard. Starvecrow was his home, his place for waking up and falling asleep, for eating his food and warming himself at his fire, for finding his wife at the end of the day, for the birth of his children.... He had, as he stood that morning in the yard, a feeling both of proud ownership and proud adoption.