Devote the women to the infernal regions; and, so dismissing _them,_ try
and think of something else. Of what? Of something worth thinking of,
this time--of filling another pipe.

He took out his tobacco-pouch; and suddenly suspended operations at the
moment of opening it.

What was the object he saw, on the other side of a row of dwarf
pear-trees, away to the right? A woman--evidently a servant by her
dress--stooping down with her back to him, gathering something: herbs
they looked like, as well as he could make them out at the distance.

What was that thing hanging by a string at the woman's side? A slate?
Yes. What the deuce did she want with a slate at her side? He was in
search of something to divert his mind--and here it was found. "Any
thing will do for me," he thought. "Suppose I 'chaff' her a little about
her slate?"

He called to the woman across the pear-trees. "Hullo!"

The woman raised herself, and advanced toward him slowly--looking at
him, as she came on, with the sunken eyes, the sorrow-stricken face, the
stony tranquillity of Hester Dethridge.

Geoffrey was staggered. He had not bargained for exchanging the dullest
producible vulgarities of human speech (called in the language of slang,
"Chaff") with such a woman as this.

"What's that slate for?" he asked, not knowing what else to say, to
begin with.