He struck the floor with his cane. “And you think that it will be safe there? Safe, ma’am, safe?” “I hope so,” she faltered. “Hope so, by G—d? Hope so!” he rapped out, honestly amazed. “And that’s all. Hope so! Well, all I can say is that I hope you mayn’t live to regret your folly. Twelve per cent. indeed! Twelve——” He was going to say more, but the silly woman burst into tears and wept with such self-abandonment that she fairly silenced him. After watching her a moment, “Well, there, there, ma’am, it’s no good crying like that,” he said irritably. “But damme, it beats me! It beats me. If that is the way you look at it, why do you do it? Why do you do it? Of course you’ll have the money. But when it’s gone, don’t come to me for more. And don’t say I didn’t warn you! There, there, ma’am!” moved by her grief, “for heaven’s sake don’t go on like that! Don’t—God bless me, if I live to be a hundred, if I shall ever understand women!” He went away, routed by her tears and almost as much perplexed as he was enraged. “If the woman feels like that about it, why does she call up the money?” he asked himself. “Hope that it won’t be lost! Hope, indeed! No, I’ll never understand the silly fools. Never! Hope, indeed! But I suppose that it’s that son of hers has befooled her.” He saw, of course, that it was Arthur who had pushed her to it, and his anger against him and against Ovington grew. He would take his balance from Ovington’s on the very next market day. He would go back to Dean’s, though it meant eating humble pie. He thought of other schemes of vengeance, yet knew that when the time came he would not act upon them. He was in a savage mood as he crossed the stable-yard at Garth, and unluckily his eye fell upon Thomas, who was seated on a shaft in a corner of the cart-shed. The man espied him at the same moment and hurried away a paper—it looked like a newspaper—over which he had been poring. Now, the Squire hated idleness, but he hated still more to see a newspaper in one of his men’s hands. A laborer who could read was, in his opinion, a laborer spoiled, and his wrath blazed up. “You d—d idle rascal!” he roared, shaking his cane at the man. “That’s what you do in my time, is it! Read some blackguard twopenny trash when you should be cleaning harness! Confound you, if I catch you again with a paper, you go that minute! D’you hear? D’you think that that’s what I pay you for?” The worm will turn, and Thomas, who had been spelling out an inspiring speech by one Henry Hunt, did turn. “Pay me? You pay me little enough!” he answered sullenly. The Squire could hardly believe his ears. That one of his men should answer him! “Ay, little enough!” the man repeated impudently. “Beggarly pay, and ’tis time you knew it, Master.”