"What--what are you telling me? You going too? You ungrateful devil! You thankless, selfish toad! What have I done--what on God's earth have I done--to be turned down and flouted and tormented at every step of my life in this way? A man whose every act and thought be kindness for other people; and now every man's hand be against me! Persecution I call it; and you--you, who have had to thank me for far more than goes between master and man; you, as I have offered friendship to, and trusted and treated more like a son than a servant! You ought to be shamed to the marrow in your bones to think to leave me--an old, careworn, ill-used wretch with one foot in the grave and all the world turning its back on him." "Don't--don't!" said Lawrence. "Don't take on like that. There's no hurry for a few months. I've been very proud and grateful for all you've done for me, Mr. Stockman." "Get out of my sight," answered the other. "There's no honesty, nor honour, nor plain dealing left in man or woman, so far as I can see. It's a hell of a world, and I wish a good few people as I could name, yourself included, had never come into it. My lines have fallen in shameful places, and if I wasn't too old, I'd shake the dust off my shoes against Buckland and everybody in it." Then Maynard retreated and left Joe panting heavily and staring into the kitchen fire. He had gone to bed when Susan returned, and she and Tom and Maynard mumbled in low voices for an hour while the latter described his experience. To Stockman's daughter this outburst signified far more than it did to either of the men, for she guessed upon what business her father had been employed that afternoon, and now knew that a terrible disappointment must have overtaken him. She wept half the night on his account and mourned not a little on her own; for Joe's failure must inevitably increase her personal difficulties and double the future problems of Thomas and herself. CHAPTER XXXII JANE AND JERRY