Mr. Germaine looked at his comfortable fire, his cosy room, his book, though he had not been reading, and then at the cold road, the dreary changes of the train, the sleepless night. After a time he said, ‘I’ll take your offer, Brown. I’ll go with you and see you off.’ ‘If you like, you can give me into custody on the way for going off with Mrs. Blencarrow’s money. Mrs. Blencarrow’s money? not even that!’ he cried, with a laugh of bitterness. ‘She is Mrs. Brown; and the money’s the boy’s, not hers, or else it would be lawfully mine.’ ‘Brown,’ said the Vicar tremulously, ‘you are doing a sort of generous act--God help us!--which I can’t help consenting to, though it’s utterly wrong; but you speak as if you had not a scrap of feeling for her or anyone.’ ‘I haven’t!’ he cried fiercely, ‘after three years of it. Half the time and more she’s been ashamed of me, disgusted with me. Do you think a man can stand that? By----! I neither can nor will. I’m going,’ he continued, buttoning his coat hastily; ‘you can come or not, as you please.’ ‘You had better have some supper first,’ said the Vicar. ‘Ah! that’s the most sensible word you have said,’ cried Brown. Was it bravado, was it bitterness, was it relief in escaping, or the lightness of despair? Mr. Germaine could never tell. It was something of all of these feelings, mingled with the fierce pride of a peasant slighted, and a certain indignant contemptuous generosity to let her go free--the woman who was ashamed of him. All these were in Brown’s thoughts. CHAPTER X. ‘HE HAS GONE--FOR EVER!’ Mrs. Blencarrow spent that evening with her children; she made no attempt to leave them after dinner. A lull had come into her heart after the storm. She was aware that it was only temporary, nothing real in it; but in the midst of a tempest even a few minutes of stillness and tranquillity are dear. She had found on the mantelpiece of the business-room the intimation, ‘Away on business till Monday,’ and though it perplexed, it also soothed her. And the brothers returning with the proof of Kitty’s statement, the extract which no doubt they would bring from those books to confound her, could now scarcely arrive to-night. A whole evening undisturbed among the children, who might so soon be torn from her, in her own familiar place, which might so soon be hers no longer; an evening like the past, perhaps the last before the coming of that awful future when she must go forth to frame her life anew, loveless and hopeless and ashamed. It was nothing but ‘the torrent’s smoothness ere it dash below,’ the moment of calm before the storm; and yet it was calm, and she was thankful for that one soft moment before the last blow fell.