"What's Miss Waycott to do with it?" he asked. "Naught. Nobody's got nothing to do with it but master. And he's got everything to do with it; and he's a tyrant and a damned slave-driver, and treats her no better than a plough, or a turnip cutter." They were silent and Thomas asked a question. "Have you ever heard tell they port-wine marks be handed down from generation to generation, worse and worse?" "No, I never did." "I heard Stockman tell Melindy Bamsey they was." "I dare say it might be so." "And yet again, when the subject come up at Ashburton, a publican there said that if a man or woman suffered from such a thing they was doomed never to have no children at all. He said he'd known a good few cases." "A woman might," answered Lawrence, "because, if they're afflicted that way, they'd be pretty sure to bide single. But it would be a nice question if a marked man couldn't get childer. I wouldn't believe anybody but a doctor on that subject." Thomas turned this over for ten minutes without answering. Then the subject faded from his mind and he flushed another. "What about our rise?" he said. "We'll hear after Easter." They discussed the probable figure. Maynard seemed not deeply interested; but Palk declared that his own future movements largely depended upon Mr. Stockman's decision. CHAPTER XXIII IN A SICK-ROOM Dinah could not think of her foster-father all the way home. Though deeply concerned, her thoughts left him fitfully to concentrate on Lawrence Maynard. She felt a little puzzled at a streak of mental helplessness that seemed to have appeared in him. Just where it appeared most vital that he should know his own mind, she could not help feeling he did not. He groped, instead of seeing the way as clearly as she did. For him, what he had to tell her seemed serious; for her, as she now considered it, the fact that Mr. Stockman knew Maynard was married sank in significance. She found that it was only because Lawrence regarded it as grave, that she had done so. That it made a simple situation more complex she granted; but it did not alter the situation; and if it was impossible to be married at Buckland, there would be no difficulty, so far as she could see, in being married elsewhere. She had examined the situation more deeply, however, before she reached home and perceived that Lawrence, after all, was not groping, but rather standing still before a very definite obstacle. They could not be married at Buckland; but could they be married anywhere else without first vanishing far beyond reach and hearing of Buckland? For him that was easy; for her impossible, unless she deliberately cut herself off from her foster-father and, not only that, but prevented him from knowing where she might be. For it was idle to tell him, or anybody, that she had married Maynard, while Mr. Stockman could report from Maynard's own lips that he was already married.