TWO:The idea of Sudbury's danger had been confirmed by the behaviour of those whom his presence had arrested in guilt; and the monk, whose sympathies were thus awakened, hastened away, and gained the court-yard. Here his ears were assailed by a loud shout, which was repeated thrice, and which, he conjectured, proceeded from Tower-hill.She was no longer merely dissatisfied. In her heart she passionately rebelled. She hated herself, and her condition, for now she hated Reuben. The vague hostility she had felt towards him during Fanny's short[Pg 100] life had given place to a definite hatred. She looked upon Reuben as the murderer of her child, and she hated him. During the first days of her grief he had been so kind to her that she had grown dependent on him and hatred was delayed, but now dependence and dazed gratitude had passed away, and in their place was a sick, heavy loathing for the man whose neglect and indifference she believed had killed her child. She could not endure the thought of giving him another. Sometimes she thought she would like to kill herself, but she was too weak a soul for anything desperate.
TWO:"I will tell her," returned the monk, "that a love so devoted, so disinterested, deserves in return an affection as pure: but if, after all this, her heart still prefers the yeoman Holgrave, I will say no more."His plans of conquest were more definite now. He had been forming them for five years, and he could not deny that during his father's illness he had shaped them with a certain finality. The road was clear before him, and to a slight extent fate had been propitious, keeping open a way which might well have been blocked before he began to tread it. Reuben had never been able to settle what he should do if the Squire's first project were fulfilled and the Moor sold in building plots. House property entered with difficulty into his imagination, and he coveted only Boarzell virgin of tool and brick. Luckily for him, Bardon's scheme had completely failed. The position of the common was bad for houses, windy and exposed in days when the deepest hollows were the most eligible building[Pg 24] sites; the neighbourhood was both unfashionable and unfruitful, therefore not likely to attract either people of means or people without them. Also there were grave difficulties about a water supply. So Boarzell remained desolate, except for the yearly jostle of the Fair, and rumour said that Bardon would be only too glad to sell it or any piece of it to whoever would buy.
