And, through it all, she possessed the boy on whom to spend her heart, in
whose interests to employ her foresight and singular capacity of
money-making. For love's sake therefore, and for his sake also, she had
lived without reproach, a woman chary even of friendship, chary, too, of
laughter, chary above all of purposeless gaddings and of gossip.
Business, and the boy's sea-going or returning, might take her as far as
Southampton, Plymouth, Cardiff, more rarely London or some northern port.
But Deadham village rarely beheld her, and never, it is to be feared, did
the inside of Deadham church.
Yet Deadham church bell plaintively, insistently tolling, the sound
reaching her muted by the thickness of the fog, kept her attention on the
stretch for the ensuing hour. Startling as it was poignant, Charles
Verity's demand to see her, six days ago, brought the story of her love
to full circle. Their meeting had been of the briefest, for he was
exhausted by pain. But that he had sent, and she had gone, was unlocked
for largesse on the part of fortune, sufficient to give her deep-seated
and abiding sense of healing and of gain.
Pages:
829
830
831
832
833
834
835
836
837
838
839
840
841
842
843
844
845
846
847
848
849
850
851
852
853