That was the old man, the old man. He had made her give him up. But for that, Dorsy would never have left him. She would never have thought of it herself. And she would never have got away if he had been there to stop her. It wasn’t Ned. Ned was going to marry Nancy Peacock down at Morfe. Ned hadn’t done any harm. It was Mr. Greathead who had come between them. He hated Mr. Greathead. His hate became a nausea of physical loathing that never ceased. Indoors he served Mr. Greathead as footman and valet, waiting on him at meals, bringing the hot water for his bath, helping him to dress and undress. So that he could never get away from him. When he came to call him in the morning, Steven’s stomach heaved at the sight of the shrunken body under the bedclothes, the flushed, pinched face with its peaked, finicking nose upturned, the thin silver tuft of hair pricked up above the pillow’s edge. Steven shivered with hate at the sound of the rattling, old-man’s cough, and the “shoob-shoob” of the feet shuffling along the flagged passages. He had once had a feeling of tenderness for Mr. Greathead as the tie that bound him to Dorsy. He even brushed his coat and hat tenderly, as if he loved them. Once Mr. Greathead’s small, close smile—the greyish bud of the lower lip pushed out, the upper lip lifted at the corners—and his kind, thin “Thank you, my lad,” had made Steven smile back, glad to serve Dorsy’s master. And Mr. Greathead would smile again and say, “It does me good to see your bright face, Steven.” Now Steven’s face writhed in a tight contortion to meet Mr. Greathead’s kindliness, while his throat ran dry and his heart shook with hate. At meal-times from his place by the sideboard he would look on at Mr. Greathead eating, in a long contemplative disgust. He could have snatched the plate away from under the slow, fumbling hands that hovered and hesitated. He would catch words coming into his mind: “He ought to be dead. He ought to be dead.” To think that this thing that ought to be dead, this old, shrivelled skin-bag of creaking bones should come between him and Dorsy, should have power to drive Dorsy from him. [Illustration] One day when he was brushing Mr. Greathead’s soft felt hat a paroxysm of hatred gripped him. He hated Mr. Greathead’s hat. He took a stick and struck at it again and again; he threw it on the flags and stamped on it, clenching his teeth and drawing in his breath with a sharp hiss. He picked up the hat, looking round furtively, for fear lest Mr. Greathead or Dorsy’s successor, Mrs. Blenkiron, should have seen him. He pinched and pulled it back into shape and brushed it carefully and hung it on the stand. He was ashamed, not of his violence, but of its futility. Nobody but a damned fool, he said to himself, would have done that. He must have been mad. It wasn’t as if he didn’t know what he was going to do. He had known ever since the day when Dorsy left him. “I shan’t be myself again till I’ve done him in,” he thought.