The gong--one of her civilized institutions--was beaten. Edred came humming down the shallow stairs. The three took their seats at the low, narrow table--Jethro on the high master’s stool at one end, Pamela on the other, Edred modestly at the side. Both men ate and talked heartily, Pamela childishly crumbled bread in her soup. When the meal was over she left them; decanters on the table, the smoke of tobacco mingling with the smoke from the fire. She went into the gay drawing-room and stretched flat on the sofa. She looked at the trivial vanities which she had brought home so joyfully from Liddleshorn. She looked, as Gainah had looked, with somber eyes. Her life was wrecked too. She would never be the mistress of Folly Corner now. Through the stout doors came the men’s laughter. Edred’s became more roystering as the minutes ticked on. She could hear in the intervals the steady stroke of the clock, the rumbling groan it gave before it delivered itself of the quarters. Her arms were above her head, her widely-opened eyes looked across the hot purple furrows of the field. She could see a long way, over hedges, across copses. She saw stretches of pasture, dotted with cows; saw verdant fields of rye-grass; fields of turnips half devoured by sheep, which were shut in by hurdles. The sun shone, the birds sang, one or two adventurous bees came in at the window. Every now and then that laugh of license, of reckless disregard, pierced the thick doors, and she blenched. She could no longer see the future. CHAPTER IX. AUNT SOPHY was giving her first garden party of the season--to her second-best set. That meant a family gathering, with the Jeremy Crisps left out. Maria Furlonger drew the line at the Jeremy Crisps, and said she did her duty to them as a relative by buying groceries at their father’s shop. Edred was to go with Pamela. He was already a local favorite. He had all the qualities which commend themselves to country society. He could sing, play tennis, do conjuring tricks at the local entertainments. Jethro wasn’t going; men with a serious occupation were never even asked. Aunt Sophy collected her men painfully; a town failure or so, who happened to be trying poultry farming or fruit culture--having tried everything else of which he knew anything whatever; the curate; one or two old gentlemen who had retired from something or the other, one or two young ones who admired a particular girl. Pamela ran out to the barn before she started. Jethro was at the door, with a couple of half-bred retrievers at his heels and a trio of mongrel pups that he was training for sheep-dogs gamboling in the muck of the yard.