"Why not?"

"Because she don't want to hear nothin' about Watson's murder. And
whatever's the good on it, anyhow?" said Mrs. Halsey with sudden
emphasis. "You've told us a good tale, I'll grant ye. But yer might as
well be pullin' the old feller 'isself out of his grave, as goin' round
killin' 'im every night fresh, as you be doin'. Let 'im be. Skelintons is
skelintons."

Dempsey, feeling rather indignantly that his pains had been wasted, and
his audience was not worthy of him, rose to take his departure. Halsey's
face cleared. He turned to look at his wife, and she winked in return.
And when the young forester had taken his departure, Mrs. Halsey stroked
the red flannel round her swollen neck complacently.

"I 'ad to pike 'im out soomhow. It's 'igh time she wor put to bed!"

That same evening, Ellesborough left the Ralstone camp behind him about
six o'clock, and hurried through the late October evening towards Great
End Farm. During the forty-eight hours which had elapsed since his
interview with Rachel he had passed through much suffering, and agonies
of indecision. He had had to reconstruct all his ideas of the woman he
loved. Instead of the proud and virginal creature he had imagined himself
to be wooing, amid the beautiful setting of her harvest fields, he had to
think of her as a woman dimmed and besmirched by an unhappy marriage with
a bad man. For himself, he certainly resented the concealment which had
been practised on him. Yet at the same time he thought he understood the
state of exasperation, of invincible revolt which had led to it. And he
kept reminding himself that, after all, her confession had anticipated
his proposal.

Nevertheless such men as he have ideas of marriage, both romantic and
austere. They are inclined to claim what they give--a clean sheet, and
the first-fruits of body and soul. In Rachel's case the first-fruits
had been wasted on a marriage, of which the ugly and inevitable
incidents haunted Ellesborough's imagination. One moment he shrank from
the thought of them; the next he could not restrain the protesting rush
of passion--the vow that his love should put her back on that pinnacle of
honour and respect from which fate should never have allowed her to fall.

Well, she had promised to tell him her story in full. He awaited it.
As to his own people, they were dear, good women, his mother and
sisters--saints, but not Pharisees.

It was a dark and lowering evening, with tempest gus