Therefore she clung to Starvecrow. “An uncouth name,” said Calladine discontentedly, after relishing it for years; “shall we change it?” But she begged him not to, without clearly knowing why. “Very well, we keep it,” said Calladine, smiling down at her, “as a contrast to the snug life we live beneath that uncomfortable label.” She smiled back; she could smile, always; it had become mechanical, costing her little. She clung to Starvecrow, without affection, but also without anything so precise as distaste; it, like Calladine, was negligible really, and she had never gone back on her first opinion of it,--that it was not austere enough to excuse its barrenness, and merely mean in its lack of comfort. It was no different from the Manor House, which, although at first sight incongruous perhaps in the midst of the village and its barbarous temple, was in truth no more incongruous than her old father, who pottered in his big hat about the garden, or peered through his big spectacles at the shards set out upon his desk. But still she clung to Starvecrow; it was just bleak enough to match the bleak, small disaster of her life; just comfortless enough to accord with the blank at the root of her life with Calladine. There had been the days of her engagement, when convention demanded that she should go over and at least appear to take an interest in her future home. She had gone, driven by Calladine himself through the village in the high dog-cart; holding on to her hat she had gone, rattling along the lanes behind the raw-boned animal, the gig rocking slightly from side to side, and the low branches of the trees almost sweeping against her as they passed. Calladine had looked fondly down upon her holding on to her hat, and in response to his murmur as he bent down towards her, she had looked up, and thought, in a detached way, that he was agreeable to look at, very gentlemanly and rather interesting, with his sallow, high-bred face, his many-caped driving coat, and his fine skilful hands encased in his gauntlets. She wondered, in the same detached fashion, what it would feel like when he stood tall by her side, and she could say “my husband.” Already she had had little foretastes of it, when he accompanied her to the village shops, and the shopkeepers said, in their familiar, respectful way, with an admiring gaze at the couple, “Here’s our best wishes, I’m sure, Miss Clare, to you and your gentleman.” And they had come to Starvecrow, where Mrs. Quince was waiting to receive them, and for all the smiles and curtseys and the insistence that Clare should inspect every cupboard, Clare had been conscious of the hostility of the elderly woman. But she had gone,--gone all over the house under the escort of Mrs. Quince, accompanied by Calladine as far as the first floor, where with his elaborate deferential manner he had retired, conveying by all that he left unsaid, that women were best left to themselves over household matters. There was in the manner of