The Devil

Truly she was thinking of him now as though he had been a total stranger, some important person that she had known well by name but never chanced to meet. She listened to the faint clinking of bricklayers' trowels, watched men with hods going slowly up and down ladders, men carrying poles, men unloading half a dozen carts; thought what a quantity of money was being expended, and how grateful in the future the little desolate children would be when their costly home was ready for them; and only as it were by accident did she remember that she too had cost the estate money, and perhaps also ought to be grateful. But she had long since ceased to think about the legacy. What the yokels would call her "small basket fortune" had served a purpose handsomely, and there was an end of it. The man from whom it came had gone as completely as the morning mist went when the sun began to shine.

The harm he had done her was nothing. If she purposely dragged out its memory, it seemed much less strong and actual than half one's dreams. Incredible that little more than a year ago she had been in such dire and dreadful trouble.

She struck the highroad again a little way short of the Abbey Cross Roads, and came swinging homeward with long strides, feeling healthy, hungry, happy. And the nearer she drew to home, the deeper grew the happiness. "Oh, what a lucky woman I am," she said to herself.

And with a quite unconscious selfishness that is an essential attribute of joy, and that makes all very successful and contented people think themselves singled out, watched over, and especially guided by fate, she blessed and applauded the beneficently omniscient Providence which had given just enough worry in her youth to enable her to appreciate comfort in mature years, which had delayed motherhood until she could best bear a hearty child, which had wiped out Mr. Barradine and restored her husband's love, which, last of all, had removed Aunt Petherick from North Ride and sent her to live at the seaside.

A small thing, this, perhaps; and yet a Providential boon, a filling of one's lap with bounties. There would have been great awkwardness in having Aunt so near, but forbidden to darken one's door. Will was very firm there: Auntie was not to be admitted at Vine-Pits on any pretext whatever. But it had all worked out so neatly, without the least friction. The new owner of the Abbey wanted North Ride. He had, however, been very kind about the lease or the absence of a lease, and had paid the tenant for life, as she described herself, to surrender possession. Auntie, one might therefore say, was not at all badly treated.