Mary read that, and one passage further back about kings and queens. It was addressed to the masters of hired labourers. "You, who think you hold suzerainty over men, beware lest you find that time has robbed you of dominion. For those alone are kings and queens who sit enthroned above their generation and rule circumstance."
He had said something like that to her, standing by the mantelpiece in the Anderby dining-room, smiling at her with wistful, half-humorous eyes. Here it seemed a direct appeal to her understanding. Did he mean her to read it and remember?
She put down the paper. A man and a girl passed the shelter linked arm in arm. The girl wore a dark hat, trimmed with bright little scarlet wings. She looked up, laughing, in the man's face. He bent towards her, and Mary could not hear what he murmured, though they passed so close that the girl's skirt brushed her knee.
Their footsteps died away along the pavement. Mary was left alone with the wheeling gulls, and the sound of the wind striking the shelter.
David had said very little, but it was enough. She knew now what he thought about her.
David and his kind, the man and girl who had just passed her, the young labourers at Anderby, Jack Greenwood and Fred Stephens, they were the heirs of the future. They wanted to go forward because "there shall be no contentment but proceeding."
But Mary had placed herself in the ranks of the older generation who would have time leaden-footed. She cherished no longing to proceed. "Her restlesse and perpetuall desire for power after power" had taken her as far as she dared go.
She had John. She had Anderby.
Further progress could bring her no increase of power, only enforced abdication from the only dominion she could hold.
"Those alone are kings and queens who sit enthroned above their generation and rule circumstance."