All her pride was lashed alive now; she was utterly astonished, and, in her simplicity, convinced. “I have forced my friendship upon you,” she stammered. “Yes, yes,” said Lovel, driving it home. She stared at him, lovely in her distress. But even in her humiliation she was generous. “Forgive me,” she stammered again. She turned and fled out from amongst the trees, aware,--but not knowing how truly,--that she had left there something which she would never regain. She came out by the osiers, the hurdles, and Lovel’s knife lying upon the ground. The sight of it, in its familiarity, stung tears to her eyes. If he had not wanted her, why had he carved faces from the warts of the beech-trees for her amusement. Why had he tired so suddenly? rebelled so wildly against the slight tie of her friendship? She swung herself on to her pony and galloped away, not seeing where she was going, but only mad to put the greatest possible distance between herself and that wood whence she had escaped indeed, but only with her life. Calladine meanwhile, who knew nothing of Clare’s friendship with Lovel, and who would have stared had he heard it mentioned, had lived in a torment ever since her visit. She had come and gone again, and he felt as though during her brief sojourn she had stirred round the sluggish atmosphere of his house with a wand. His eye became more critical as he surveyed his surroundings from her point of view. He tried to imagine what she would say were she to take his house thoroughly in hand, and began to introduce such alterations as he thought she would approve; he rearranged his books, he re-hung his pictures, he ordered patterns from London and had his leather chairs covered with a flowered chintz. His servant Mrs. Quince was at first at a loss to know what had come over her master, but after she and Martha Sparrow had put their heads together they arrived at the obvious conclusion. “’Tis a woman’s house now, Martha,--dimity in the windows, and what do you think? dried rose leaves and spices among the linen!--though as yet there’s no woman to live in it.” Calladine shut his mind obstinately to the curiosity he knew he must be awaking in Mrs. Quince; he daily informed her of his wishes while inviting no comment, and she, on her part, took advantage of his new mood, and of the good-humour in which, she argued, he must be anxious to keep her, to ask for an extra pair of hands for all the new work she pretended he was creating. “There’s that girl of Farmer Morland’s, sir, casting round for a place.” Calladine agreed at once, without argument or enquiry. Let Farmer Morland’s girl be engaged by all means; and Daisy, with her red head, her freckles, her pale blue eyes, and her frilled Sunday muslins, was installed in the attic. Calladine, in so far as he noticed her at all, disliked her at sight; she dropped a curtsey to him the first time she met him, and tried to ingratiate him with a smile. But he was too deeply bent upon his