Polly meantime sat up very straight, and was no longer talkative. Lunch had not improved her complexion, as the mirror hanging opposite showed her. Every now and then she too threw little restless glances across at Laura.
"Why, we needn't go to the works at all if we don't like," said Polly. "Can't we get a fly, Hubert, and take a jaunt soomwhere?"
Hubert bent forward with alacrity. Of course they could. If they went four miles up the river or so, they would come to real nice country and a farmhouse where they could have tea.
"Well, I'm game," said Mr. Seaton, magnanimously slapping his pocket. "Anything to please these ladies."
"I don't know about that seven o'clock train," said Mason doubtfully.
"Well, if we can't get that, there's a later one."
"You may trust me," said Seaton pompously. "I know my way about a railway guide. There's one a little after eight."
Hubert shook his head. He thought Seaton was mistaken. But Laura settled the matter.
"Thank you--we'll not miss our train," she said, rising to put her hat straight before the glass--"so it's the works, please. What is it--furnaces and red-hot things?"
In another minute or two they were in the street again. Mr. Seaton settled the bill with a magnificent "Damn the expense" air, which annoyed Mason--who was of course a partner in all the charges of the day--and made Laura bite her lip. Outside he showed a strong desire to walk with Miss Fountain that he might instruct her in the details of the Bessemer process and the manufacture of steel rails. But the ease with which the little nonchalant creature disposed of him, the rapidity with which he found himself transferred to Polly, and left to stare at the backs of Laura and Hubert hurrying along in front, amazed him.
"Isn't she nice looking?" said poor Polly, as she too stared helplessly at the distant pair.
Her shawl weighed upon her arm, Mr. Seaton had forgotten to ask for it. But there was a little sudden balm in the irritable vexation of his reply:
"Some people may be of that opinion, Miss Mason. I own I prefer a greater degree of balance in the fair sex."
Meanwhile, as Laura and Hubert walked along to the desolate road that led to the great steel works, Hubert knew a kind of jealous and tormented bliss. She was there, fluttering beside him, her delicate face often turned to him, her feet keeping step with his. And at the same time what strong intangible barriers between them! She had put away her mocking tone--was clearly determined to be kind and cousinly. Yet every word only set the tides of love and misery swelling more strongly in the lad's breast. "She doan't belong to us, an there's noa undoin it." Polly's phrase haunted his ear. Yet he dared ask her no more questions about Helbeck; small and frail as she was, she could wrap herself in an unapproachable dignity; nobody had ever yet solved the mystery of Laura's inmost feeling against her will; and Hubert knew despairingly that his clumsy methods had small chance with her. But he felt with a kind of rage that there were signs of suffering about her; he divined something to know, at the same time that he realised with all plainness it was not for his knowing. Ah! that man--that ugly starched hypocrite--after all had he got hold of her? Who could live near her without feeling this pain--this pang?... Was she to be surrendered to him without a struggle--to that canting, droning fellow, with his jail of a house? Why, he would crush the life out of her in six months!