`She's downstairs, if you'll believe me!' cried the widow. `Out o' bed she got, and nothing could turn her. What will come o't I do not know!'

On entering, there indeed by the fireplace sat the old woman, wrapped in blankets, and turning upon them a countenance like that of Sebastiano's Lazarus. They must have looked their amazement, for she said in a hollow voice:

`Ah - sceered ye, have I! I wasn't going to bide up there no longer, to please nobody! 'Tis more than flesh and blood can bear, to be ordered to do this and that by a feller that don't know half as well as you do your-self! ... Ah - you'll rue this marrying as well as he!' she added, turning to Sue. `All our family do - and nearly all everybody else's. You should have done as I did, you simpleton! And Phillotson the schoolmaster, of all men! What made 'ee marry him?'

`What makes most women marry, Aunt?'

`Ah! You mean to say you loved the man!'

`I don't meant to say anything definite.'

`Do ye love un?'

`Don't ask me, Aunt.'

`I can mind the man very well. A very civil, honourable liver; but Lord! - I don't want to wownd your feelings, but - there be certain men here and there that no woman of any niceness can stomach. I should have said he was one. I don't say so now, since you must ha' known better than I - but that's what I should have said!'

Sue jumped up and went out. Jude followed her, and found her in the outhouse, crying.

`Don't cry, dear!' said Jude in distress. `She means well, but is very crusty and queer now, you know.'

`Oh no - it isn't that!' said Sue, trying to dry her eyes. `I don't mind her roughness one bit.'

`What is it, then?'

`It is that what she says is - is true!'

`God - what - you don't like him?' asked Jude.

`I don't mean that!' she said hastily. `That I ought - perhaps I ought not to have married!'

He wondered if she had really been going to say that at first. They went back, and the subject was smoothed over, and her aunt took rather kindly to Sue, telling her that not many young women newly married would have come so far to see a sick old crone like her. In the afternoon Sue prepared to depart, Jude hiring a neighbour to drive her to Alfredston.

`I'll go with you to the station, if you'd like?' he said.

She would not let him. The man came round with the trap, and Jude helped her into it, perhaps with unnecessary attention, for she looked at him prohibitively.

`I suppose - I may come to see you some day, when I am back again at Melchester?' he half-crossly observed.

She bent down and said softly: `No, dear - you are not to come yet. I don't think you are in a good mood.'