She set her household about its business--her dreams could not live in the atmosphere of antagonistic suspicion in which she had always viewed the younger members of her own sex. She was firmly convinced that neither Nan nor Mene would do a stroke of work if she was not "at them"; the same opinion applied in a lesser degree to the men in the yard. So till Ansdore's early breakfast appeared amid much hustling and scolding, Joanna had no time to think about her lover, or continue the dreams so strangely and gloriously begun in the sunless dawn. Bertie was late for breakfast, and came down apologising for having overslept himself. But he had a warm, sleepy, rumpled look about him which made her forgive him. He was like a little boy--her little boy ... she dropped her eyelids over her tears. After breakfast, as soon as they were alone, she stole into his arms and held close to him, without embrace, her hands just clasped over her breast on which her chin had fallen. He tried to raise her burning, blushing face, but she turned it to his shoulder. Sec.24 Albert Hill went back to London on Tuesday, but he came down again the following week-end, and the next, and the next, and then his engagement to Joanna was made public. In this respect the trick was hers. The affair had ended in a committal which he had not expected, but his own victory was too substantial for him to regret any development of it to her advantage. Besides, he had seen the impossibility of conducting the affair on any other lines, both on account of the circumstances in which she lived and of her passionate distress when she realized that he did not consider marriage an inevitable consequence of their relation. It was his only way of keeping her--and he could not let her go. She was adorable, and the years between them meant nothing--her beauty had wiped them out. He could think of her only as the ageless woman he loved, who shared the passion of his own youth and in it was for ever young. On the practical side, too, he was better reconciled. He felt a pang of regret when he thought of London and its work and pleasures, of his chances of a "rise"--which his superiors had hinted was now imminent--of a head clerkship, perhaps eventually of a partnership and a tight marriage into the business--since his Whitsuntide visit to Ansdore he had met the junior partner's daughter and found her as susceptible to his charms as most young women. But after all, his position as Joanna Godden's husband would be better even than that of a partner in the firm of Sherwood and Son. What was Sherwood's but a firm of carpet-makers?--a small firm of carpet-makers. As Joanna's husband he would be a Country Gentleman, perhaps even a County Gentleman. He saw himself going out with his gun ... following the hounds in a pink coat.... He forgot that he could neither shoot nor ride.