He turned away from her and leaned heavily on the balustrade for a minute or two, apparently watching the hired men toiling among his ruined wheat. Then he slowly looked around again.
"Well," he observed, "I'm glad you have told me about the thing; but I'm somewhat surprised that you didn't realize that you could have disarmed Nevis--and freed yourself--by mentioning it earlier."
"I was ashamed--though there was in one sense no reason why I should be. It would have looked--so suggestive."
Hunter interrupted her with a little bitter laugh.
"No; when I asked you what interest you took in Nevis it wasn't quite what I meant. I merely thought your answer might throw some light on his views, which I wanted to be sure of. You are too dispassionate, and too much alive to your own benefit, to make much of a sacrifice for the sake of any man."
Florence winced at this, but she rose and laid her hand on his arm.
"Try me, Elcot," she begged. "I know I'm fond of ease and luxury--perhaps it's because I had so little of them before I married you, but now you must give me nothing for the next twelve months. Cut the household expenses down by half and send everybody but one maid away."
"I'm afraid you'll have to be prepared for something of the kind," replied Hunter quietly. "In the meanwhile, I'll take the boys and the binders over to Thorne's place in the morning."
He moved away toward his ruined crop without another word, but Florence did not resent the attitude he had adopted. Indeed, his uncompromising directness had appealed to her in his favor. When, soon after their marriage, she had by various means made it plain that he was expected to keep his distance and leave her largely to her own devices it had been a relief that he had fallen in with her views without protest, though it had been evident that it had grievously hurt him. Then his forbearance and apparent content with the situation had by degrees grown galling, and now, when at last he seemed inclined to assert himself, she was not displeased. It had, as she had admitted to Alison, begun to dawn on her that she had somehow never recognized her husband's good qualities, and that there were unexpected possibilities in the simple farmer. Besides this, she was seized with a fit of wholly genuine penitence.