do you accuse me of
doing it wilfully, selfishly?"

"That's where I can't make you out," he said. "I can't even make out your
doing wrong at all. Thinks I sometimes, ''Tis all a mistake. Go, look at
her face, all made for goodness if ever a face was; try her once more, an'
you'll be sorry for thinkin' ill of her.' That's the way of it. But then
I come and find you mixed up in this miserable business, and all that's
kind in you seems to harden, and all that's straight to run crooked.
There's times I think you couldn't do wrong if you weren't so sure of
doing right; and there's times, when I hear of your being kind to the
school-children, I think it must be some curst ill-luck of my own that
brings us always ath'art-hawse."

Beneath the lamplight his eyes searched hers appealingly, as a child's
might; yet Hester wondered rather at the note of manliness in his voice--a
new note to her, but an assured one. Whatever the cause, Tom Trevarthen
was a lad no longer.

"Why should you suppose," she asked, "that I have power over Mr.
Rosewarne?"

"Haven't you?"

The simple question confounded her, and she blushed again, as one detected
in an untruth. It was as Tom said; some perverse fate impelled her at
every turn to show at her worst before him.

"Good Lord!" he said slowly, watching her face. "You don't tell me you're
going to marry him!"

She should have obeyed her first impulse and said 'No' hotly. The word
was on her lips when a second wave of indignation swelled within her and
swept over the first, drowning it, and, with it, her speech. What right
had he to question her, or what concern with her affairs? She threw back
her head proudly, to look him in the face and ask him this. But he had
turned from her.

His disgust angered her, and once more she changed her impulse for the
worse.

"It seems," said she contemptuously, "that you reserve the right of making
terms with Mr. Rosewarne."

He turned at the door of the inner office and regarded her for a moment
with a dark frown.

"What do you mean by that?" His voice betrayed the strain on his
self-command.

"Mr. Rosewarne owns the _One-and-All_, does he not? If, after what has
happened, you accept his wages, you might well be a little less censorious
of other folk's conduct."

If the shaft hit, he made no sign for the moment. "I reckon," he
answered, with queer deliberateness, "your knowledge of ships and
shipowners don't amount to much, else y