"Ah, it WAS you, then? I knew it was you that sent him away!"

He looked at her in surprise. "Didn't he tell you so? I thought he
understood." He spoke slowly, with difficult pauses, "I didn't name
you to him: I'd have cut my hand off sooner. I just told him I couldn't
spare the horse any longer; and that the cooking was getting too heavy
for Verena. I guess he's the kind that's heard the same thing before.
Anyhow, he took it quietly enough. He said his job here was about done,
anyhow; and there didn't another word pass between us.... If he told you
otherwise he told you an untruth."

Charity listened in a cold trance of anger. It was nothing to her what
the village said... but all this fingering of her dreams!

"I've told you he didn't tell me anything. I didn't speak with him last
night."

"You didn't speak with him?"

"No.... It's not that I care what any of you say... but you may as well
know. Things ain't between us the way you think... and the other people
in this place. He was kind to me; he was my friend; and all of a sudden
he stopped coming, and I knew it was you that done it--YOU!" All her
unreconciled memory of the past flamed out at him. "So I went there last
night to find out what you'd said to him: that's all."

Mr. Royall drew a heavy breath. "But, then--if he wasn't there, what
were you doing there all that time?--Charity, for pity's sake, tell me.
I've got to know, to stop their talking."