Night was drawing near again; she would have to go. He was avoiding her.

But suddenly he came striding into the clearing, in his black oilskin jacket like a chauffeur, shining with wet. He glanced quickly at the hut, half–saluted, then veered aside and went on to the coops. There he crouched in silence, looking carefully at everything, then carefully shutting the hens and chicks up safe against the night.

At last he came slowly towards her. She still sat on her stool. He stood before her under the porch.

‘You come then,’ he said, using the intonation of the dialect.

‘Yes,’ she said, looking up at him. ‘You’re late!’

‘Ay!’ he replied, looking away into the wood.

She rose slowly, drawing aside her stool.

‘Did you want to come in?’ she asked.

He looked down at her shrewdly.

‘Won’t folks be thinkin’ somethink, you comin’ here every night?’ he said.

‘Why?’ She looked up at him, at a loss. ‘I said I’d come. Nobody knows.’

‘They soon will, though,’ he replied. ‘An’ what then?’

She was at a loss for an answer.

‘Why should they know?’ she said.

‘Folks always does,’ he said fatally.

Her lip quivered a little.

‘Well I can’t help it,’ she faltered.

‘Nay,’ he said. ‘You can help it by not comin’—if yer want to,’ he added, in a lower tone.

‘But I don’t want to,’ she murmured.

He looked away into the wood, and was silent.

‘But what when folks finds out?’ he asked at last. ‘Think about it! Think how lowered you’ll feel, one of your husband’s servants.’

She looked up at his averted face.

‘Is it,’ she stammered, ‘is it that you don’t want me?’

‘Think!’ he said. ‘Think what if folks find out Sir Clifford an’ a’—an’ everybody talkin’—’

‘Well, I can go away.’

‘Where to?’

‘Anywhere! I’ve got money of my own. My mother left me twenty thousand pounds in trust, and I know Clifford can’t touch it. I can go away.’

‘But ‘appen you don’t want to go away.’

‘Yes, yes! I don’t care what happens to me.’

‘Ay, you think that! But you’ll care! You’ll have to care, everybody has. You’ve got to remember your Ladyship is carrying on with a game–keeper. It’s not as if I was a gentleman. Yes, you’d care. You’d care.’

‘I shouldn’t. What do I care about my ladyship! I hate it really. I feel people are jeering every time they say it. And they are, they are! Even you jeer when you say it.’

‘Me!’

For the first time he looked straight at her, and into her eyes. ‘I don’t jeer at you,’ he said.

As he looked into her eyes she saw his own eyes go dark, quite dark, the pupils dilating.