ONE:The tones were not unkindly, and Reuben plucked up courage.After the ceremony nearly a hundred guests were fed at Starvecrow. All the most important farmers of the neighbourhood were there, except of course Realf of Grandturzel. Rose was like her name-flower, flushed and scented. Very different from his earlier bride, she sat beside Reuben with head erect and smiling lipsshe drank with everyone, and the wine deepened the colour of her cheeks and made her eyes like stars. She talked, she laughed, she ate, she was so happy that her glances, full of bold languor, swept round the table, resting on all present as well as the chosen manshe was a gay wife.
TWO:
ONE:Though the country in general chose to go to the dogs, Reuben had the consolation of seeing a Conservative returned for Rye. He put this down largely to his own exertions, and came home in high good humour from the declaration of the Poll. Mr. Courthope, the successful candidate, had shaken him by the hand, and so had his agent and one or two prominent members of the Club. They had congratulated him on his wonderful energy, and wished him many more years of usefulness to the Conservative cause. He might live to see a wheat-tax yet.
TWO:Reuben received the blow in silenceit stunned him. He did not go over to Cheat Landsomething, he scarcely knew what, kept him away. In the long yellow twilights he wandered on Boarzell. The rain-smelling March wind scudded over the grass, over the wet furrows of his cornfields, over the humming tops of the firs that, with the gorse splashed round their trunks, marked the crest of the Moor and of his ambition. Would they ever be his, those firs? Would he ever tear up that gorse and fling it on the bonfire, as he had torn up the gorse on the lower slopes and burned it with roars and cracklings and smoke that streamed over the Moor to Totease? Perhaps Realf would have the firs and the gorse, and pile that gorgeous bonfire. Tilly would put him up to her father's gameReuben's imagination again failed to conceive the man who did not want Boarzellshe would betray Odiam's ambitions, and babble its most vital secrets. Tilly, Reuben told Boarzell, was a bitch.
ONE:Then followed the vassals who held lands for watching and warding the castle. These were considered superior to the other vassals from the peculiar nature of their tenure, as the life-guards, as it were, of their lord.
TWO:"Aye, aye!" shouted the confederates, "that will dothat is the first thing that must be done."