id of all that which was up
against him. He had loved his mother.

After this, Effie and he quarrelled fiercely. They meant a
very great deal to each other, but they were both under a
strange, unnatural tension. He stayed out of the house as much
as possible. He got a special corner for himself at the "Red
Lion" at Cossethay, and became a usual figure by the fire, a
fresh, fair young fellow with heavy limbs and head held back,
mostly silent, though alert and attentive, very hearty in his
greeting of everybody he knew, shy of strangers. He teased all
the women, who liked him extremely, and he was very attentive to
the talk of the men, very respectful.

To drink made him quickly flush very red in the face, and
brought out the look of self-consciousness and unsureness,
almost bewilderment, in his blue eyes. When he came home in this
state of tipsy confusion his sister hated him and abused him,
and he went off his head, like a mad bull with rage.

He had still another turn with a light-o'-love. One
Whitsuntide he went a jaunt with two other young fellows, on
horseback, to Matlock and thence to Bakewell. Matlock was at
that time just becoming a famous beauty-spot, visited from
Manchester and from the Staffordshire towns. In the hotel where
the young men took lunch, were two girls, and the parties struck
up a friendship.

The Miss who made up to Tom Brangwen, then twenty-four years
old, was a handsome, reckless girl neglected for an afternoon by
the man who had brought her out. She saw Brangwen and liked him,
as all women did, for his warmth and his generous nature, and
for the innate delicacy in him. But she saw he was one who would
have to be brought to the scratch. However, she was roused and
unsatisfied and made mischievous, so she dared anything. It
would be an easy interlude, restoring her pride.

She was a handsome girl with a bosom, and dark hair and blue
eyes, a girl full of easy laughter, flushed from the sun,
inclined to wipe her laughing face in a very natural and taking
manner.

Brangwen was in a state of wonder. He treated her with his
chaffing deference, roused, but very unsure of himself, afraid
to death of being too forward, ashamed lest he might be thought
backward, mad with desire yet restrained by instinctive regard
for women from making any definite approach, feeling all the
while that his attitude was ridiculous, and flushing deep with
confusion. She, however, became hard and daring as he beca