Stephen moved forward as if he would follow the vicar, then as if he would not, and in absolute perplexity whither to turn himself, went awkwardly to the door. Elfride followed lingeringly behind him. Before he had receded two yards from the doorstep, Unity and Ann the housemaid came home from their visit to the village.
'Have you heard anything about John Smith? The accident is not so bad as was reported, is it?' said Elfride intuitively.
'Oh no; the doctor says it is only a bad bruise.'
'I thought so!' cried Elfride gladly.
'He says that, although Nat believes he did not check the beetle as it came down, he must have done so without knowing it--checked it very considerably too; for the full blow would have knocked his hand abroad, and in reality it is only made black-and-blue like.'
'How thankful I am!' said Stephen.
The perplexed Unity looked at him with her mouth rather than with her eyes.
'That will do, Unity,' said Elfride magisterially; and the two maids passed on.
'Elfride, do you forgive me?' said Stephen with a faint smile. 'No man is fair in love;' and he took her fingers lightly in his own.
With her head thrown sideways in the Greuze attitude, she looked a tender reproach at his doubt and pressed his hand. Stephen returned the pressure threefold, then hastily went off to his father's cottage by the wall of Endelstow Park.
'Elfride, what have you to say to this?' inquired her father, coming up immediately Stephen had retired.
With feminine quickness she grasped at any straw that would enable her to plead his cause. 'He had told me of it,' she faltered; 'so that it is not a discovery in spite of him. He was just coming in to tell you.'
'COMING to tell! Why hadn't he already told? I object as much, if not more, to his underhand concealment of this, than I do to the fact itself. It looks very much like his making a fool of me, and of you too. You and he have been about together, and corresponding together, in a way I don't at all approve of--in a most unseemly way. You should have known how improper such conduct is. A woman can't be too careful not to be seen alone with I-don't-know-whom.'
'You saw us, papa, and have never said a word.'
'My fault, of course; my fault. What the deuce could I be thinking of! He, a villager's son; and we, Swancourts, connections of the Luxellians. We have been coming to nothing for centuries, and now I believe we have got there. What shall I next invite here, I wonder!'