Each day Dr. Sugg would trudge up to the priory and make inquiries after Richard Jeffray’s health. For Bess it was the culminating moment in the day when she unlocked the front-door for the rector—for they kept the door locked—saw him hang his hat in the hall, and heard him remark with a twinkle that “Mr. Jeffray was doing very well.” Bess would turn back, in her red petticoat, white cap and apron, into the kitchen and sing softly to herself as she turned the joint on the spit, polished the pewter, or peeled apples for a tart. As yet she knew nothing of Jeffray’s betrothal to Miss Hardacre, and in her simple and passionate way she let her imagination roam at will. It was more a rare and sensuous dream with the girl, a passing and repassing of mysterious and alluring visions. Practical as she was in the trivialities of life, she became a desirous-eyed child of nature when love opened the gates of the sunset and of the dawn. As for Miss Mary Sugg, she was a very modest creature, and had grown to regard the passionate intoxications of life as bordering on indecency. Like many inevitable spinsters, she had become ashamed, as it were, of her own sex, and the very reading of the banns in church made her mouth straighten primly and her hands clasp each other more chastely in her lap. The parson’s daughter appeared sincerely disturbed when Bess spoke to her of her life in Pevensel. Prudence and propriety! The very thought of such savagery as Dan’s sent a pious shiver through Miss Sugg’s frame. She admired Bess for her courage, and even looked up to her with some sort of awe as to one who had survived terrible temptings of the devil. Bess grew to trust the prim, kindly little creature in the course of a few days. She felt greatly moved to pet Miss Sugg, to stroke her gentle face, and caress her as a child might caress some smiling and delightful grandmother. Poor Mary took Bess’s attentions with blushes and a secret sense of pleasure. It had been her lot to be one of the odd women in the world, slighted by every one with the exception of Richard Jeffray and her father. It has been said that Mary Sugg regarded matrimony with suspicion, and though Miss Sugg had not the remotest hope of marrying Richard Jeffray herself, she had no liking for his betrothal to Jilian Hardacre. Mary, like all women of sense, was something of a gossip, and it was at Rodenham parsonage that Bess learned at last of Jeffray’s entanglement at Hardacre. Mary was helping Bess to clean the silver and the pewter in the pantry when she let the truth slip casually into the girl’s ears. Bess started, reddened, and went on polishing Dr. Sugg’s tankard as though the news had no concern for her heart. “I did not know Mr. Jeffray was to be married,” she said, frowning a little, and staring out of the narrow window. Miss Sugg, lost in her own reflections for the moment, noticed nothing strained or unnatural in Bess’s manner.