as well as the rest of the world. I'm poor, unfortunately, and the
poor have got to be politic. Daniel may be just, but it's a
narrow-minded, hypocritical justice, and if I tell him I'm engaged to
you, he'll sack me. That's the plain English of it."

"I don't believe he would."

"Well, I know he would; and you must at least allow me to know more
about him than you do. And so I ask you whether it is common-sense to
tell him what's going to happen, for the sake of a few clod-hoppers, who
matter to nobody, or--"

"But, but, how long is it to go on? Why do you shrink from doing now
what you wanted to do at first?"

"I don't shrink from it at all. I only intend to choose the proper time
and not give the show away at a moment when to do so will be to ruin
me."

"'Give the show away,'" she quoted bitterly. "You can look me in the
face and say a thing like that! It's only 'a show' to you; but it's my
life to me."

"I'm sorry I used the expression. Words aren't anything. It's my life to
me, too. And I've got to think for both of us. In a week, or ten days,
I'll eat humble pie and climb down and grovel to Daniel. Then, when I'm
pardoned, we'll tell everybody. It won't kill you to wait another
fortnight anyway. And in the meantime we'd better see less of each
other, since you're getting so worried about what your friends say about
us."

Now he had said too much. Sabina would have agreed to the suggestion of
a fortnight's waiting, but the proposal that they should see less of
each other both hurt and angered her. The quarrel culminated.

"Caution seems to me rather a cowardly thing, Raymond, from you to me. I
tell you that your wife's good name is at stake. For, since you've
called me your wife so often, I suppose I may do the same. And if you're
so careless for my credit, then I must be jealous for it myself."

"And my credit can go to the devil, I suppose?"

Then she flamed, struck to the root of the matter and left him.

"If the fact that you're engaged to me, by every sacred tie of honour,
ruins your credit--then tell yourself what you are," she said, and her
voice rose to a note he had never heard before.

This time he did not call her back, but went his own way up the hill.

CHAPTER XIII

IN THE FOREMAN'S GARDEN

Mr. Best was a good gardener and cultivated fruit and flowers to
perfection. His rambling patch of ground ran beside the river and some
of his apple trees bent over it. Pear trees also he g