Jane had sufficient sense to recognise that the social conditions of herself and her husband were very different, and she had plucked up sufficient courage to speak to him about it.
'Joseph,' she said, 'I understand that you are a gentleman and a scholar, and have grand relations. I should be miserable among them. They would laugh at me and my country ways. That would make you angry, and in defending me you would get across with them. Joseph,' she continued, and laid her hand on his arm, and looked into his face with tear-brimming eyes, 'Joseph, let it be thought that I am not your wife, only come often to me; come to me and to your child. I do not ask for more. I know that I am an honest woman: but it is no odds to me if my good name suffer rather than that you should be put into difficulties. I can bear that, but I cannot bear to lose you.'
It was on her saying this that he had protested fidelity whilst falsehood was in his heart, and from that hour he had not set eyes on her.
Olver Dench acted throughout as intermediary. In the first place, he induced Jane to remove from Lyme Regis, and out of Dorsetshire into the adjoining county, and to settle in a cottage on the cliff above the sea. That was one thing gained.
Then he told her, what was false, that the marriage was invalid, as Joseph Holwood was under age, as the parson was under suspension, and as the church was no longer employed for divine service.
She had believed him, and had submitted, but she was restive and incredulous at the suggestion that she was abandoned.
Olver Dench brought her money when the first payment arrived, and she had taken it without scruple, as she clung to the belief that Joseph was detained by his official duties, and that his absence was not premeditated.
But when, slowly yet surely, the conviction was formed in her that he had deserted her and would never return, never acknowledge her or his child, then she refused to receive any more money sent from him. No――if Joseph Holwood repudiated her, in her wrath, her resentment, she declared she would accept thenceforth nothing from him.
When the next quarterly payment arrived, Dench brought the money to her; it was rejected with scorn by the proud and suffering woman. Then the temptation to appropriate it to himself had been too strong for the boatman to resist, and thenceforth, as it arrived, he had retained it for his own use.