"What journey?"

"Among the mines."

"Not I."

"You have changed your mind, then?"

"What, didn't you see I was joking?"

"No!" (very dryly.)

Soon after this little dialogue Dame Meadows proposed to end her visit
and return home. Her son yielded a cheerful assent. She went gravely
and quietly back to her little cottage.

Meadows had determined to make himself necessary to Susan Merton. He
brought a woman's cunning to bear against a woman's; for the artifice
to which his strong will bent his supple talent is one that many women
have had the tact and temporary self-denial to carry out, but not one
man in a hundred.

Men try to beat an absent rival by sneering at him, etc. By which
means the asses make their absent foe present to her mind and enlist
the whole woman in his defense.

But Meadows was no ordinary man. Susan had given his quick
intelligence a glimpse of a way to please her. He looked at the end,
and crushed his will down to the thorny means.