Clare recoiled on the threshold; she had known that Daisy Morland was in the house, but had not expected to come face to face with her. Nor had Daisy expected to see Clare,--whose arrival with Calladine she had watched on tiptoe from her little dormer window,--thus ushered into her room. The mischievous eye of Mrs. Quince superintended the clash between the two girls. She had manœuvred ably; she congratulated herself. Daisy,--Daisy was curtseying,--had recovered herself so far as to remember her curtsey,--what gall, what mockery, was in that curtsey!--Miss Warrener,--Miss Warrener was nodding to her,--saying something about “nice little room,” and looking sideways all the time at the pieces of linen fallen on the floor. Mrs. Quince folded her arms and superintended. She wore a smile,--outwardly benevolent, inwardly immensely ironical. The two girls,--much of an age. Daisy, blowsy and flustered, hardly able to repress her jeer; Clare, cool and wounded, but too proud to betray her wound. A lady: Mrs. Quince paid her that grudging acknowledgment. Well, Daisy had got the gipsy fellow, and Miss Warrener had got Mr. Calladine. As it should be. They came out of the room together, Clare and Mrs. Quince. Mrs. Quince drew back a little, respectfully, to let her go first, and closed the door gently behind her. “I wouldn’t have taken you in there miss,” she began, “if I’d known what that shameless baggage was to be at,--stitching away at her own baby’s clothes a fortnight before her marriage. Perhaps I should not say such things to you,--but there, you’ll be married yourself before the month’s out. And I wouldn’t have kept Daisy Morland here, knowing about her what I do know now, but that I wanted to have the house well set to rights against your coming, and, thought I, why not make use of a pair of hands that’ll never do a turn of work again for honest folks, but only for herself and a shame-begotten brat and a ’scape-the-gallows husband. It’s a hard bit of luck for Farmer Morland and his wife,” continued Mrs. Quince as she followed Clare down the stairs, “after they brought their girl up decent; but what can you expect with such poachers and loafers and gipsy-like stuff hanging about the village? ’Twas the easiest thing in the world for Daisy to go sweethearting on the hills, and what with shepherds’ huts and hurdles handy there was all the chance of a bit of trouble. Well, and now she’s got it, and lucky for her, _I_ say, that Lovel’s ready to turn her into an honest woman, for there’s many stouter bred than him that hasn’t stuck to their girls, and I always say....” Here Calladine had come out of the sitting-room, hearing the sound of voices; he came pleasantly towards them, rubbing his hands together and bending towards Clare, “Tired, my dear? tired? a little bit, I think,--too bad, too bad, Mrs. Quince, we’ve tired her out between us; well, come in here and rest in this big chair....” he pressed her into the sitting-room, and Mrs.