Now and then the kind gentleman came to visit her, with gifts of chocolates (as became her new estate), which she accepted meekly, though in her heart she regretted the peppermint bull's-eyes of fuller and more satisfying flavour. She learned in course of time that he was the husband of the woman whose image still brought sweating fright into her dreams. To save her from waking terror, Lady Blount spent much time and tact, enlisting her sympathy for John by convincing her that he himself had received barbarous usage from the same abhorred hands. Unity, whose habit of mind was to translate conceptions into terms of the objective, wondered what form of physical torture was applied to John. She pitied him immensely, but consoled herself by the reflection that as he was very big and strong, his probable sufferings were not inordinate. That so big and strong a man, however, should have suffered unresistingly she could not understand. “Why did n't he wipe her over the 'ed, m' lady?” she asked simply. The “m' lady” was the result of the maid's instructions. Lady Blount administered the necessary linguistic corrections, and, proceeding to the sociological side, informed her that gentlemen never struck women, no matter how great the provocation. Unity was quick to apply the proposition personally. “Then Mr. Risca will never beat me, even if I do wrong?” “Good Heavens! no, child,” cried Lady Blount, horrified. “Mr. Risca is as gentle as a kitten. You should see him with Miss Stella.” “Miss Stella loves him very much, m' lady?” “Of course she does.” “And he loves her, too?” “Everybody loves her,” said Lady Blount, tenderly. The next time that John came to Southcliff he found a convalescent Unity. Dressmakers and other fabricators of feminine raiment had been at work, and she was clad in blouse and short serge skirt and her scanty, brown hair, instead of being screwed up in a diminutive bun at the back of her head, was combed and brushed and secured, after the manner of hair of young persons of sixteen, with bows of ribbon. She stood gawkily before him, confused in her own metamorphosis. At the orphanage she had worn the same uniform from early childhood. During her excursion into the world she had masqueraded as the grown woman. In the conventional attire of the English school-girl she did not recognize herself. Her coarse hands, scarcely refined by illness, hung awkwardly by her side. An appeal for mercy hovered at the back of her dull and patient eyes. Despite the trim dress and hair, she looked hopelessly unprepossessing, with her snub nose, wide mouth, weak chin, and bulgy and shiny forehead. Scragginess, too, had marked her for its own. “Well, Unity,” said John, “so you 're up at last. Have you been in the garden?” She made the bob taught at the orphanage. “Yes, sir.” “And you 're feeling well and strong?” “Yes, sir.” “And don't you think it's a very lovely place?” “Yes, sir,” said Unity.