had felt his moist and pudgy hand squeeze hers; but she knew it was the
eyes and hand of the widow-woman, the owner, but for Ishmael, of Cloom
Manor, with which the lawyer had dallied. Her sense of her position was
flattered and a glimpse of a yet more consequential one flashed before
her, but no thrill went with it. It was in the grip of what she would
have thought a very different emotion that she had gone up to her room.
For Tonkin had told her of a noted revivalist who was coming through
West Penwith, and already she felt the first delicious tremblings of
that orgy of fear which should be hers.

Hers and another's, for she was set on the redemption of her beloved
first-born, her beautiful Archelaus. Him she would lead to the heavenly
courts and win forgiveness for the sin of his creation; he, the brand
she had lit, should by her be plucked from the burning. Crossing over to
her window, she had leaned her hot brow against the pane, closing her
eyes in an ecstasy of prayer. It was very dim still in the house, but
without the first faint pallor of the dawn was growing, and against it
every solid object showed distinct and black. And, opening her eyes,
Annie saw, silhouetted darkly with the precision of sculpture against
the paling sky, the figures of Archelaus and a girl. He was half-lifting
her over the stile whose stone steps crested the edge of the hill, and
for a second the two figures stayed poised on the topmost step. The girl
seemed protesting, even struggling, though with slaps that were more
horseplay than earnest, and the next moment the boy's big arms had
caught her and dragged her out of sight down on the far side of the
stile.

The whole quick vignette was over in a flash, but Annie fell back from
the window with all the egoism in her dulled nature torn awake. A more
normal mother, of a more refined type, might have thought what she had