'Look here, Hazel,' said he, in a tone that he intended to be kind but firm--'look here: I'm not angry with you, only you must leave Vessons alone, you know.' 'You want that old fellow more than you want me!' 'Don't be silly! He has his uses; you have yours.' He spoke with a quite unconscious brutality; he voiced the theory of his class and his political party, which tacitly or openly asserted that woman, servants, and animals were in the world for their benefit. 'I'm not grass to be trod on,' said Hazel, 'and if you canna be civil-spoken, I'll go.' 'You can't,' he replied, 'not now.' She knew it was true, and the knowledge that her own physical nature had proved traitorous to her freedom enraged her the more. 'You can't go,' he went on, coming towards her chair to caress her. 'Shall I tell you why?' Hazel sat up and looked at him, her eyes gloomy, her forehead red with crying. He thought she was awaiting for his answer; but Hazel seldom did or said what he expected. She let him kneel by her chair on one knee; then, frowning, asked: 'Who cried in Hunter's Spinney?' He jumped up as if he had knelt on a pin. He had been trying to forget the incident, and hoped that she had. He was bitterly ashamed of that really fine moment of his life. 'Don't Hazel!' he said. He felt quite frightened when he remembered how he had behaved. A strange doubt of himself, born that night, stirred again. Was he all he had thought? Was the world what he had thought? Misgivings seized him. Perhaps he ought not to have brought Hazel here or to the Spinney. An older code than those of Church and State began to flame before him, condemning him. Suddenly he wanted reassurance. 'You did want to come, didn't you? I didn't take advantage of you very much, did I?' he asked. 'You want to stay?' 'No, I didna want to come till you made me. You got the better of me. But maybe you couldna help it. Maybe you were druv to it.' 'Who by?' he asked, with an attempt at flippancy. Hazel's eyes were dark and haunted. 'Summat strong and drodsome, as drives us all,' she said. She had a vision of all the world racing madly round and round, like the exhausted and terrified horse Reddin had that morning lunged. But what power it was that stood in the centre, breaking without an effort the spirit of the mad, fleeing, tethered creature, she could not tell. Reddin sat brooding until Hazel, recovering first in her mercurial way, said: 'Now I've come, I mun bide. D'you think the old fellow'd let me cook summat for supper? It's been pig-food for us to-day.' But when they went to investigate, they found Vessons preparing a tremendous meal, hot and savoury as a victorious and penitent old man could make it. He showed in his manner that bygones were to be bygones, and night came down in peace on Undern. But it was a curious, torrid peace, like the hush before thunder. Chapter 28