They continued, however, to observe Lovel’s house for some time, glancing at intervals between the lace curtains which decked their own windows, and saw a light spring up in the room they assumed to be Daisy’s, and a gigantic shadow passing to and fro upon the blind. Evening had come, swiftly to be followed by night; the snow had begun to fall again in large flakes; very soon the street was white, unbroken by footmarks, since every soul was within doors. The women idly watching between their curtains saw Lovel emerge from his house, close the door behind him, and pass down the alley between two houses to the shed where he kept his horse. They saw him emerge again, leading the horse; they saw him swing himself into the saddle and ride away, his coat collar turned up high against the snow, tall and spare as he disappeared silently into the thick dusk. The women said, “He’s off to Marlborough to find the midwife. Things can’t be going,” they added with relish, “as well as they should.” The men only growled, “He must be crazed to think he can find the road to Marlborough on a night like this; he’ll break his own neck and his horse’s legs.” But the women had a curious faith in Lovel’s efficiency. Few village confinements were honoured with so much interest. The darkness in the street was now intense, heightened by the snow that continued to float down in large, soft flakes; only the little yellow lights in the windows broke it, all on the ground-floor level but for the significant exception of Daisy’s window, whose lighted rectangle on the upper storey threw its beams out against the falling snow. All was silent in the Lovels’ house; ever Mrs. Blagdon seemed to have fallen into the clandestine habits of her hosts, for she had not once run out across the street in an interval for a moment’s gossip with a neighbour; only the shadow passed upon the blind, enormous and suggestive, to show that any life stirred within the house. The snow fell thicker; the few black holes left by the hoofs of Lovel’s horse had been long since blotted out, and Lovel himself had disappeared into the night as completely as though he had no intention of ever coming back. Hours had passed, suppers were finished and cleared away in all the little lighted kitchens, still the good wives were reluctant to move upstairs to bed, while careful to conceal their reluctance from the men. And Mrs. Blagdon, when she finally threw up a window in spite of the steely cold, to call out in an irritable and impatient voice, “Anybody seen anything of Lovel?” was answered by a dozen voices in negation. “How’s things, Mrs. Blagdon?” “Turned round the wrong way,” came the reply laconically.