It had been renovated, and in part remodelled since its purchase. The walls had been whitewashed and the roof repaired. The fence before the house had been put to rights, and the little garden had been dug up. Brambles that had straggled across the path leading to it, and overswaying boughs, had been pruned back. Jack looked at the house. It was certainly a pleasanter dwelling now than in his father's time. A house in which a woman is at once assumes a neatness and a charm which one occupied by man only does not and cannot possess. A light sprang up in a window. Some one was within, and he saw the shadow of an arm upon the pane that was raised to draw a curtain. He beat a hasty retreat. He recalled how that on the preceding night Winefred had accused him of running after her. He was fearful of being seen near the house by some one either coming out of the door or approaching from the down. It would not be easy for him to account for his presence there. Winefred would be strengthened in her persuasion that he spied on her actions. Then the blood rushed to his temples. She might even conceivably suppose that he had taken a fancy for her, and that it was her charms that drew him to the house. He!――he take a fancy to her! He hurried away, not by the path, lest he should encounter the girl or her mother, but through the bushes, and he stumbled over stones, and caught his foot in briars. He came upon the open space which he had been wont to regard as his garden, and where he had had a brush with Winefred. He stood still there and shook himself, but he could not shake off the thoughts of that girl. The air there was charged with the smell of decayed leaves and mouldering twigs. Every step was upon dead vegetation, and every tread brought out an exhalation of death. In vain did he force his mind to other matters; it would turn with perverse persistency to Winefred, and he saw her in his fancy pursue him with an angry light in her eyes, and every branch that smote him seemed to him to be struck by her hand. On the following day Dench absented himself and asked Jack to mind the ferry. When he had put a passenger across he returned, slightly dipping the oars in the water, to fall into a dream and think of her. On that afternoon he heard a call from the Axmouth side, and on going from the cabin saw that Winefred was waiting to be put across. He flushed crimson, and his heart fluttered. He was angry with himself for feeling excitement. He crossed and held out his hand to assist her on board, but she leaped into the boat unaided. She took her place, and looked resolutely at the Chesil Bank, not once at him, nor did she open her mouth to speak. Again, on reaching the shore, did he offer his hand, and she dropped into it a penny, but would not touch it. In an hour she was back again, with some purchases she had made in Seaton. She looked him in the face now, but with a stony eye, and demanded to be put across.