'Ah. The mother as God give you, sir, the very next time the trailer goes by, and the letter wrote and all. And when she goes, I go. For I've kep' myself respectable, and I'll serve no light woman, nor yet live in a house give over to sin.' Edward saw Martha in a new light, as he now saw all things. 'What a filthy mind you have, Martha!' he said in a strange, weary voice. 'The minds of all respectable people are obscene. You are a bad woman!' But Martha, setting up a shriek, had fled from the house. She told her brother that the master was mad, bewitched. She never entered the house again. Edward found his mother in the kitchen. 'Mother, you are not really going?' 'Yes, Edward, unless'--a flicker of hope lit her eyes--'unless you have sent her away.' 'Let me explain, mother. It is not as it seems in the world's eyes.' 'She is an adulteress. And you--oh, Edward, I thought you were a good man, like your father! Not even the common decency to wait till the other man's child is born. Why, the merest ploughman would do that!' If any face could have expressed despair, torture and horror, Edward's face did now. He looked at her for a long while, until she said: 'Don't fix your eyes so, Edward! What are you looking at?' 'The world. So that is what you think of me?' 'What else can I think? Why do you say "The world" so strangely?' 'The world!' he said again. 'A place of black mud and spawning creatures. No soul, no God, no grace. Nothing but lust and foul breath and evil thoughts.' 'I will not hear such talk. I will keep my room till I go.' Mrs. Marston rose and went upstairs. She would not have his arm. And though for the next two days he waited on her with his old tenderness, she barely spoke, and there was between them an estrangement wider than death. She prayed for him night and day, but not as one that had much hope. Meanwhile, Hazel managed the house. She put all her worship of Edward into it, all her passion of tenderness. And she, who had hitherto spoilt all the food she touched, now cooked almost with genius. She found an apron of Martha's and washed it; she read Mrs. Marston's receipts till her head ached; she walked over God's Little Mountain each day to buy dainties. When she asked Edward for money, he gave her the keys of his desk. Four times a day appetizing meals went up to Mrs. Marston, and were brought down again barely touched. Hazel ate them, for the urgent necessity of coming maternity was on her, and she would not waste Edward's money. Four times a day Edward's favourite dishes were set in the parlour by a bright hearth. Edward, as soon as Hazel had returned to the kitchen, threw them into the fire. It was Hazel who packed Mrs. Marston's boxes while the old lady slept, and made up the fire in her room in the middle of the night.