all, hardly
significant part of the immense thought of Rowcliffe.

"How pleased he'll be when he knows what I've done!"

And her pure joy had a strain in it that was not so pure. It pleased
her to please Rowcliffe, but it pleased her also that he should
realise her as a woman who could cajole men into doing for her what
they didn't want to do.

* * * * *

"I've got him! I've got him!" she cried as she came, triumphant, into
the dining-room where her father and her sisters still sat round the
table. "No, thanks. I've had tea."

"Where did you get it?" the Vicar asked with his customary suspicion.

"At Upthorne. Jim Greatorex gave it me."

The Vicar was appeased. He thought nothing of it that Greatorex should
have given his daughter tea. Greatorex was part of the parish.

XXV

Rowcliffe was coming to the concert. Neither floods nor tempests, he
declared, would keep him away from it.

For hours, night after night, of the week before the concert, Jim
Greatorex had been down at Garth, in the schoolhouse, practicing with
Alice Cartaret until she assured him he was perfect.

Night after night the schoolhouse, gray in its still yard, had a door
kept open for them and a light in the solemn lancet windows. The tall
gray ash tree that stood back in the angle of the porch knew of their
coming and their going. The ash tree was friendly. When the north wind
tossed its branches it beckoned to the two, it summoned them from up
and down the hill.

And now the tables and blackboards had been cleared out of the big
schoolroom. The matchboarding of white pine that lined the lower half
of its walls had been hung with red twill, with garlands of ivy and
bunches of holly. Oil lamps swung from the pine rafters of the ceiling
and were set on brackets at intervals along the walls. A few boards
raised on joists made an admirable platform. One broad strip of red
felt was laid along the platform, another hid the wooden steps that
led to it. On the right a cottage piano was set slantwise. In the
front were chairs for the principal performers. On the left, already
in their places, were the glee-singers chosen from the village choir.
Behind, on benches, the rest of the choir.

Over the whole scene, on the chalk white of the dado, the blond yellow
of varnished pinewood, the blazing scarlet of the hangings, the dark
glitter of the ivy and the holly; on the faces, ruddy and sallow,
polished with cle