When Mary Bolitho returned to Howden Clough that evening she went straight to her own room. She wanted to be alone. Under ordinary circumstances she would have, girl-like, sought out her friend, Emily Wilson, and given her a full report of what had taken place, but her desire was for silence rather than for speech. In spite of her anger she felt that there was something sacred in what this young man had said to her. There could be no doubt that he felt strongly, and she knew, by the tones of his voice and the look in his eyes, that he was greatly moved. Of course, she felt indignant that he should dare to speak to her at all, and she wondered why she had resolved to say nothing to her father about their meeting. When all allowances had been made, he had been rude in the extreme. He had stopped her in a lonely part of the countryside, and had roughly commanded her to listen to him! And Mary Bolitho was a proud girl, and was not accustomed to being dictated to. All the same, she felt much interested in what he had said, and she found herself thinking of him again and again. There was something romantic, too, in his story which, in spite of its improbability, she could not help believing, and although she felt very angry with him, she sympathised with the feelings he had expressed. Months before she had been annoyed at the thought that her father should have been opposed by one who was little removed from the working classes. She remembered him as she had first seen him, at the shop in Market Street, pale, angry, and, as it seemed to her, coarse. He spoke as one of his own class, too, and he was rough and rude. But that view had become somewhat corrected, and she had to admit to herself that Paul Stepaside was no awkward, ignorant, ill-dressed clown. Indeed, for that matter, he had the advantage of most young men of her acquaintance. His coal-black eyes and hair, his pale face and stalwart figure, would be noticed anywhere. Besides, he was well-dressed, and although he knew but little of the ways of her world, she knew that he would never be passed without notice. Besides all this, there was a suggestion of strength in nearly every word he said, in every tone of his voice, and Mary Bolitho had a great admiration for strong men. Young Edward Wilson, whose pointed attentions she could not mistake, seemed but as a pigmy compared with him. Still, she felt angry, and she rejoiced in the thought that, on his own admission, she was helping towards his defeat.