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His voice now broke and the tears, welling in his eyes, rolled down his cheeks and he turned and laid his head on Maria's shoulders. She, patting his head with one hand, held up the other and warded her family off, and, her own voice breaking, she said, "Enough. Enough.

The weeks of mourning have passed. We must go on living. As Dada says, he is still here. We will talk about him as if he hadn't gone from us in the flesh. Now, not one of us has eaten today and I'm sure you boys and Dada, here too, could do with a meal. So, come on, and rest assured that nothing that can happen in life from now on can hurt us more than Ben's going."

As Anna rose to go to the table she thought, Strange, the things people say. Rest assured that nothing that can happen in life from now can hurt us more than Ben's going. That was assuredly tempting providence and her Dada had said Ben had known his time was short, yet he had insinuated that it was she who had brought his end about by going to that house. Yes, yes, he had. He had voiced what she knew had been in his mind for weeks now, and she wasn't mistaken when she imagined she had caught a look of censure in his eyes.

It was a full fortnight later and Anna was at the wood-pile when she saw the rider coming across the moor, and she would have turned and hurried towards the house except that she knew, were he to follow her, her father would order him away, and in no small voice. She had wondered over the last few weeks how she would have taken her father's attitude to Simon if her own feelings hadn't changed towards him.

She went on sawing until he dismounted and came towards the railings, and only then she looked at him when he said, "How are you?"

"I'm quite well, thank you."

"Come here; I want to talk to you."

To this she answered, "I'd rather you didn't. We have nothing to say to each other."

"I don't agree with you; we have a lot to say to each other. I will tether the horse here and come in by the gate."

She saw there was no way of stopping him, and so she resumed her sawing until he reached her side, when his voice had a curt note to it as he said, "Stop that for a moment, for goodness sake!"

She stopped, took out the saw from its cut and laid it against the wood-pile; then turned to him, saying harshly, "What do you want of me?"

He smiled now as he said. That's a silly question for an intelligent young woman to ask. You know what I want of you, Anna, what I've wanted of you from the first time I saw you. You remember? The day you lost your position through the Songs of Solomon. I knew that morning that something had happened to me. You must have, too. "

"I did not." Her words were emphatic.

"Even if you had not been married I would not have thought what you suggest."

"Well, all I can say, my dear, is, you are much stronger than I am."

When he put his hand out towards her she stepped back from him, saying,

"You are still as you were that morning, a married man with a child'; then she paused before adding, " Whether he is your son or not, he is your responsibility. "

When she saw the dull red colour flood over his face like a blush, she turned her head away, saying, "I am sorry. I am sorry, but I've got to make things plain to you."

It was some seconds before, so it seemed, he could speak, and then he said in a low voice, "All I'm asking is that you give me some hope, and that in the meantime until ... until I can get a divorce we can be friends. You have no hesitation in being friends with Timothy, so why not with me?"

"There's all the difference in the world: Timothy is not asking for a closer association."

"Oh, isn't he!"

Her eyes widened, and after a moment she said, "How can you suggest such a thing? He is an ... an invalid, he is ..."

"He's a man and he's not an invalid, he is subject to fits, but so was Caesar and many other men in the past, and they had their women.

And why do you think he is never off your doorstep? The least excuse and he is over here. Oh, I know what I know. "

Slowly, she said, "I'm sorry to hear you have such a low opinion of him."

"I have no low opinion of him. You take me up wrongly. I've a very high opinion of Tim. I am very fond of him. I'm only pointing out to you that he is a man and he sees you as a beautiful girl."

"He is seventeen years my senior."

He closed his eyes for a moment, then said, "I want to say to you again, don't be silly, but I won't. I will only point out to you that there's a very large number of the male population of forty or more who marry young women, many still in their teens. Why is it that a female in her mid-twenties is beginning to be looked upon as an old maid? It is because girls marry young and many seem to prefer much older men."

Her answer was: "Well, by my next birthday I shall have reached twenty and so I'll then be bordering on the age for old maids, and I can tell you I would prefer that state to marrying a man in his fifties."

"Oh! Anna." He was laughing at her again.

"I know one thing for sure, I could never lose my temper with you, I just have to laugh at you."

She had a flashing mental picture again of his hand coming up first to one side of his wife's face then to the other, and also the tale that Cherry had brought back from Mrs. Praggett's, that he would have throttled his wife on the day that Ben died if the menservants and Mr.

Timothy hadn't intervened.

He had taken a step towards her and she couldn't move backwards now because the sawing cradle was in the way, and his voice was very low as he said, "I somehow got the impression some time ago that you didn't dislike me, even that we were both of a similar way of thinking, because, in spite of my wife being there, you came back, and I hoped it wasn't only because of the child. Then quite suddenly you changed. I felt it. Why? It wasn't as if the fact of my marriage had suddenly been sprung on you. You had known that all along and although no word of endearment had passed between us, I felt you knew that I'd come to care for you, and that you were aware of the obstacles but were ignoring them. What made you change towards me, Anna? Tell me."

She stared into his face for a full minute before she said, "When I saw you strike your wife and knock her to the ground."

He stepped back from her, his face screwed up in disbelief.

"You mean to say, because I was outraged at the way she had treated you and perhaps could have killed you if that mortar pestle had struck you fully on the temple, and because I was angry for you and so therefore struck her that turned you against meY " No; it didn't turn me against you. I still think kindly of you, but if you were free tomorrow, I wouldn't marry you. "

There was utter disbelief in his voice as he said, "Just because of that incident?"

"I don't know for sure, but yes, I think so. I only knew that my father, under any provocation, would never have done that. He'd had a wife, whom I am sure you have heard about, who drank and showed him up in public, so much so that she threatened his livelihood, and for years he had to work to keep her at bay. And I'm sure he had more provocation to strike her than you had your wife, at least as fiercely as you did."

As he shook his head while muttering, "My God!" she went on, her voice rising, "You say you did it because you were angry at her treatment of me. That wasn't the reason. You did it because you had wanted to do it for a long time, because she had deceived you, because she had made you father of a child that wasn't yours. That was it, wasn't it? You had never struck her before; you had just ignored her. And that's what turned her into the fiend that I knew, and made her jealous of anyone you looked at."

There was a look of amazement on his face, but he made no effort to call a halt to her tirade, and she went on, "I've never hated anyone in my life although I've had reason to, especially among the villagers, but I hate your wife because she killed my brother. That was no accident; the horse didn't rear because the child was near it; it reared because she pulled on the reins and dug her heels into its sides. And I know now that she had meant to turn that horse on me, not on my brother. Yet, feeling as I do towards her, I understand her reactions towards me, and in a way I feel sorry I was the cause of them. " Her voice sank at this stage and she ended, " So now you must see that it would be foolish on your part to go on hoping that there could be anything between us, even friendship. What is more, my father could not bear it. "

"Oh, your father!" The words came out in a loud, indignant burst.

"It is always your father. Have you ever thought what that man has done to you? What he and your mother have done to you all? He has scarred you all for life. He has made you all the butt of the village.

You are afraid to walk through it. He prides himself on educating you all, but you are only partly educated because his knowledge is limited.

But the fact that he has made you all think and aware of what you are, to my mind has added insult to injury, for you know you are carrying a stigma, whereas, if he had left you like the rest of the clodhoppers in the village and round about, they would have accepted you, and laughed at you, and with you, and joked about your bastardy; no, he had to go and pump his bit of knowledge into you, which aroused your sense of awareness, and all the while priding himself that he was doing the right thing by you. Oh! don't talk to me about your father."

She sidled along by the wood cradle until she was standing a good arm's length from him and, gasping as if out of breath, she said, "No.

I won't talk to you about my father, nor anything else. You have made yourself and your feelings quite plain, and I hope I have too. I'll only say this, then I'll never want to talk to you again: you would have

been quite willing to act as my father did and take me as a mistress until you got your divorce, by which time, and not having the strength of my father, you would likely have become tired of me. Goodbye, Mr.

Brodrick. I won't expect to see you this way again. "

He didn't move away, but just remained staring at her, his jaws so tight that the muscles of his face stood out white against his skin.

Then suddenly swinging about, he strode from her.

She did not wait to see him loosen the horse from the other side of the wood-pile, but she hurried down through the trees, across the garden and into the house. And Maria, meeting her, said, "What is it?

What's the matter, girl? " And she shook her head and pressed her mother aside as she made for her bedroom. There she threw herself on the bed and burst into tears.

Back in the living-room Maria turned as Nathaniel entered from the kitchen and said to him, "She's in a state. She's gone into her room."

And he, nodding at her, said, "He's been. I saw him come, and I saw him go, and I saw her cross the yard. And by the look on her face, I don't think we'll see him again."

To this Maria answered, "Well, thank God for that'; then added, " What did Miss Netherton say about the fencing? Has she heard any news? "

"I didn't go to her, my dear. Let them get on with it. If we are fenced in then they are fenced out. It doesn't matter any more."

"But!" she protested now, 'what if we have to go through the village all the time? "

"Well, we'll have to do that, dear. They can only kill us." He smiled wanly at her now, then went towards the fireplace and sat in his big chair, while she stood looking at him and shaking her head. He had become a lost man. He might think Ben was still here, but because he couldn't touch him, he had become a lost man.

It was on her visit during the following week that Miss Netherton once more came to the rescue, and in two ways. First, she said she would see to it that their horse-fodder and groceries were brought from the town in her trap and put over the fence at a point where they could easily be picked up. But in the meantime she was going into the matter of the law concerning the enclosure of land. Secondly she raised a more important issue. She was touching the fading scar on Anna's cheek, saying, "It'll disappear gradually, except where it bled, and you might have two or three little spots there. But that'll be nothing," when, turning to Maria, she asked, "Does she know about the business of the cross?" And when Maria shook her head and said, "No; none of them does," Miss Netherton said, " Well, it's about time they did. So, come, Nathaniel, and sit down; we have a little business to discuss. "

Anna saw the glance exchanged between her parents before they looked at her and walked slowly to the table.

When they were all seated Miss Netherton turned to Maria and said, "I needn't remind you of the contract we made: I was to buy the cross from you for the sum of five-hundred pounds. Remember?"

Nathaniel nodded, and Maria said, "Only too well, Miss Netherton, only too well. We are still grateful ..."

"Oh, well, you might be more grateful still. Now listen." At this point she turned and looked at Anna and said to her, "I won't go into how all this started but your parents can enlighten you later on."

Then turning back to Maria, she added, "I've thought: there it is, lying in my box in the bank. I had it recorded in my will what was to become of it; but on thinking further, I came to the conclusion that, being who I am and also a stubborn individual, I could go on for years, and it's now that you need more help. So, having a friend in the jewellery business in Newcastle, and he is a friend, and an honest man, as far as a jeweller can be, dealing with gems--' She smiled here, then went on, "I told him part of the story as to how I had bought the cross, but not from whom, yet how it had been found, and he was more than interested to see it. So, I got it from the bank and there' she put her hand on the table " I laid it in front of him and I've never before seen a man struck dumb in such admiration. He said he had seen many beautiful pieces of jewellery of all shapes and sizes but nothing like that, I then told him I wanted to sell it and to the highest bidder. And to this he said there should be no bidding in this case; that would bring it into the open. It must go to one man, someone who bought precious things like this just to possess them, and there were a number of such about, but not in this end of the country.