ncomfortable, sleepless, timid, and
all-pervading. Not the less may it be passionate, constant, and
faithful. He had been angered by Rachel's letter to him,--greatly
angered. Of a truth when Mrs. Ray met him in Exeter he had no
message to send back to Cawston. He had done his part, and had been
rejected;--had been rejected too clearly because on the summing up of
his merits and demerits at the cottage, his demerits had been found
to be the heavier. He did not suspect that the calculation had been
made by Rachel herself; and therefore he had never said to himself
that all should be over between them. He had never determined that
there should be a quarrel between them. But he was angered, and he
would stand aloof from her. He would stand aloof from her, and would
no longer acknowledge that he was in any way bound by the words he
had spoken. All such bonds she had broken. Nevertheless I think he
loved her with a surer love after receiving that letter than he had
ever felt before.

He had been here, at this spot, every evening since his return
to Baslehurst; and here had thought much of his future life, and
something, too, of the days that were past. Looking to the left he
could see the trees that stood in front of the old brewery, hiding
the building from his eyes. That was the house in which old Bungall
had lived, and there Tappitt had lived for the last twenty years.
"I suppose," said he, speaking to himself, "it will be my destiny to
live there too, with the vats and beer barrels under my nose. But
what farmer ever throve who disliked the muck of his own farm-yard?"
Then he had thought of Tappitt and of the coming battle, and had
laughed as he remembered the scene with the poker. At that moment
his eye caught the bright colours of women's bonnets coming into the
field beneath him, and he knew that the Tappitt girls were returning
home from their walk. He had retired quickly round the chancel of the
church, and had watched, thinking that Rachel would be with them. But
Rachel, of course, was not there. He said to himself that they had
thrown her off; and said also that the time should come when they
should be glad to win from her a kind word and an encouraging smile.
His love for Rachel was as true and more strong than ever; but it was
of that nature that he was able to tell himself that it had for the
present moment been set aside by her act, and that it became him to
leave it for a while in abeyance.

"What on earth