'It is true. It is what every one has been saying; and, as you see, Mark Runham won't have anything to do with you. You thought to catch him, did you? You've been angling for him and the master, and taken the one as bids highest. 'Tis like a Cheap Jack that. You're young, but bold as brass and cankered as iron.' 'Silence, you false-mouthed woman!' 'Can you silence all the tongues in the Fen? There's not a man over his pipe and ale in the tavern ain't jeering at you. There's not a woman over her soapsuds and scrubbing-brush ain't crying shame on you. But what can you expect of a vagabond but vice? I spit at you.' Zita cast the woman from her, and turned and threw herself on her knees at the broken table, buried her face in her hands, and burst into tears. Drownlands waved imperiously to the housekeeper to leave, and the woman withdrew, muttering and casting malignant glances at the broken, prostrate girl. The table was between the master of Prickwillow and Zita. His knuckles rested on the will. He leaned on them, and looked down on the shining head that was laid low before him. Zita's hair was cut short, and her neck showed as well as her rounded cheek. He did not speak. He breathed heavily through his distended nostrils. He waited, not knowing what direction her thoughts might take, what resolve her mind would form. There were but few alternatives among which she might choose. She could not resume her life as Cheap Jack without taking an assistant, and from that course she shrank with maidenly repugnance, rightly estimating its dangers. If she were to throw herself among the wanderers who frequented fairs, it would be to court ruin. Was it not probable that she would maintain her resolution to remain at Prickwillow, with this difference, that she would accept his first offer, and become his wife, to save her fair name from reproach? So far as Drownlands could see, this was the only means whereby she could extricate herself from her difficulties, and his heart swelled within him at the hope that opened before him. But he saw clearly that he must allow her to work to this solution by herself unassisted. A word from him would mar everything. He accordingly stood with bent brows and pale face, the furrows deeply graven on his forehead and seaming his cheek, his lips set, looking steadily at the chestnut-gold head and the delicate bowed neck. There is no agony more terrible than the agony of the soul, and among the many anguishes with which that can be affected none equals in intensity and poignancy that which is caused by the sense of the loss of the respect of men.