He had now time to think about Mary, and the unreasonable obstinacy she had shown in leaving him on the steps of the court and later avoiding him both at Shrewsbury and Llandwlas. He felt a little concerned that she should have chosen to walk so many miles cross-country through the dark rather than submit to his company. After all it would have been only natural for them to go home together; he had always treated her with respect, and there was nothing in the history of their acquaintance that should have made her shy of him, nothing—unless it were perhaps that one curious moment on the night when they had carried George upstairs between them and put him to bed. Then he had told her, in George’s defence, of his own intimacy with Susie Hind, and this revelation, instead of putting her at ease, as it should have done, had actually seemed to embarrass her. This knowledge, however, gave her no reason for her present behaviour. Indeed, if she knew him to be so thick with Susie, there was surely less cause than ever for her to be shy with him herself. He gave women up—you never knew where you were with them. He supposed that nothing but fear of Mrs Malpas was at the bottom of Mary’s queer behaviour. ‘I don’t want you to be with me: she’s watching us,’ she had said when she gave him the slip at Shrewsbury. Another memory of Mrs Malpas returned to him: the end of her outburst at Wolfpits when she had come in search of her money. ‘You and your fancy lodger!’ she had screamed. Abner laughed to himself. It was clear that Mary hadn’t much of a fancy for him at present. All the same he couldn’t entirely dismiss Mrs Malpas from his thoughts. She had shown herself definitely hostile to him, and his last vision of her clearing the bar of the Buffalo, a puny figure with white cheeks, burning eyes, and nodding plume of jet, showed him her fanatical strength, stronger for the fact that she regarded herself in her most violent moments as a representative of the right and the rest of the world as inspired by the devil. Yet he couldn’t get away from the ludicrous side of her, and found himself chuckling in the dark, ‘Poor old soul’ he thought. ‘She dain’t know what she wants, and that’s the truth!’ But Mrs Malpas did know what she wanted. Mary had gone to bed when he reached Wolfpits, but she had left his supper ready on the kitchen table. He ate his bread and cheese and drank his beer. That night, exhausted with the strain of the day, he slept heavily.