He had no fear that she would forsake him. He felt, in every fibre of his body that he was a match, and more than a match for Badger. Having once attained her he knew that he could keep her; and in this he was not deceived, for Susie, having looked on him and found that he was good, had taken a fancy to him and now kept pace with his passion, asking as much as he could give. Every evening, as was already his custom, he would go to the Pound House and take his seat beside Gunner Eve; but now he no longer needed to follow Susie with his eyes, was no longer tortured with vague jealousies, for when she passed him he could feel her soften and respond to his presence. Sometimes, when no one was looking, she would turn her head in his direction and for a moment their eyes would meet. He did not care when men spoke to her lightly or placed their hands upon her arm, for now he knew that she belonged to him and could be his for the asking. The events of the first night were repeated many times. Now a single whisper was enough to ensure that when the alehouse was empty and Mr Hind safely in bed, the kitchen door would be opened softly and Susie waiting for him in the warm darkness. It amused Abner to see the coldness that she now showed toward Badger. The keeper was puzzled, for all their love-making was secret and nocturnal, and Susie and Abner never appeared in public together. Badger knew that for some unknown reason he had lost her, and this made him more persistent than ever in his attentions, being far too important in his own estimation to be discarded without good reason. Abner laughed to see his irritation. He and Susie laughed together in the night. ‘I can’t imagine whatever I saw in him,’ she said. At the end of November Susie went away for a week to stay with her grandparents in Hereford. Without her the Pound House meant nothing to Abner, and without considering that his absence might be noticed, he drifted back into his old habit of returning to Wolfpits in the evening. It was now more than a month since he had done this, and in the interval he had scarcely spoken to Mary Malpas. Returning, and expecting to pick up the threads of the old life exactly as he had left them, he was surprised to find the atmosphere of Wolfpits curiously changed. The attitude of Mary herself was cold and unfriendly. He found it difficult to make headway against it, for she scarcely spoke to him, and even the children seemed to have become infected with their mother’s distrust. It was true that they had seen so little of him as almost to have forgotten him, but it seemed strange that his old favourite, Gladys, no longer came instinctively to his arms. He could not accept the change without a protest. One evening, finding Mary alone, he tackled her. ‘What’s come over you?’ he said. ‘Nothing’s come over me. What do you mean?’ she replied coldly. ‘Yo’m different . . . like you was scared of me. What have I done?’