"I can't help worrying about it. You'd take him back if I wasn't here." "You _are_ here." "But if I weren't?" "Come, come. You mustn't talk to me like that." She went away and talked to Fanny. "I can't bear doing him out of his job. If he'll come back--" "My dear, you don't know Ralph. He'd die rather than come back. They've made it impossible between them." "Mr. Waddington says he'd take him back if I wasn't here." "He wouldn't. He only thinks he would, because it makes him feel magnanimous. He offered Ralph half a year's salary if he'd go at once. And Ralph went at once and wouldn't touch the salary. That made him come out top dog, and Horatio didn't like it. Not that he supposed he could score off Ralph with money. He isn't vulgar." No. He wasn't vulgar. But she wondered how he would camouflage it to himself--that insult to his pride. And there was Ralph's pride that was so fiery and so clean. Yet-- "Yet Mr. Bevan comes and dines," she said. "Yes, he comes and dines. He'll always be my cousin, though he won't be Horatio's secretary. He's got a very sweet nature and he keeps the issues clear." "But what will he _do_? He can't live on his sweet nature." "Oh, he's got enough to live on, though not enough to--to do what he wants on. But he'll get a job all right. You needn't bother your dear little head about Ralph." Fanny said to herself: "I'll tell him, then he'll adore her more than ever. If only he adores her _enough_ he'll buck up and get something to do." VI 1 Mr. Waddington did not approve of Mrs. Levitt's intimacy with her sister, Bertha Rickards. He would have approved of it still less if he had heard the conversation which Mrs. Trinder heard and reported to Miss Gregg, the governess at the rectory, who told the Rector's wife, who told the Rector, who told Colonel Grainger, who told Ralph Sevan, who kept it to himself. "What did you say to the old boy, Elise?" "Don't ask me what I _said_!" "Well--have you got the cottage?" "Of course I've got it, silly cuckoo. I can get anything out of him I like. He wasn't going to turn those Ballingers out, but I made him." "Did he say when Mrs. Waddington was going to call?" Bertha couldn't resist the temptation of pinching where she knew the flesh was tender. "I didn't ask him." "She can't very well be off it, now he's your landlord." That was what Mrs. Levitt thought. And if Mrs. Waddington called, Lady Corbett couldn't very well be off it either. They were the only ones in Wyck who had not called; but it would be futile to pretend that they didn't matter, that they were not the ones who mattered more than anybody.