“Oh!  George!” she protested lovingly.  “It could so easily happen—­a thing like that could.  It was just bad luck.”

A cushion!  The divinest down cushion!  That was what she was!  She was more.  She defended a man against himself.  She restored him to perfection.  Her affectionate faith was a magical inspiration to him; it was, really, the greatest force in the world.  Most women would have agreed with him, however tactfully, that he had been careless about the letter.  An Adela would certainly have berated him in her shrewish, thin tones.  A Lois would have been sarcastic, scornfully patronizing him as a ‘boy.’  And what would Agg have done?...  They might have forgiven and even forgotten, but they would have indulged themselves first.  Marguerite was exteriorly simple.  She would not perhaps successfully dominate a drawing-room.  She would cut no figure playing with lives at the wheel of an automobile.  After all, she would no doubt be ridiculous in the costume of Bonnie Prince Charlie.  But she was finer than the other women whose images floated in his mind.  And she was worth millions of them.  He was overpowered by the sense of his good fortune in finding her.  He went cold at the thought of what he would have missed if he had not found her.  He would not try to conceive what his existence would be without her, for it would be unendurable.  Of this he was convinced.

“Do you think he’ll go talking about it?” George asked, meaning of course Mr. Haim.

“More likely she will,” said Marguerite.

He positively could feel her lips tightening.  Futile to put in a word for Mrs. Haim!  When he had described the swoon, Marguerite had shown neither concern nor curiosity.  Not the slightest!  Antipathy to her stepmother had radiated from her almost visibly in the night like the nimbus round a street lamp.  Well, she did not understand; she was capable of injustice; she was quite wrong about Mrs. Haim.  What matter?  Her whole being was centralized on himself.  He was aware of his superiority.

He went on quietly: 

“If the old man gets chattering at the office, the Orgreaves will know, and the next minute the news’ll be in the Five Towns.  I can’t possibly let my people hear from anybody else of my engagement before they hear from me.  However, if it comes to the point, we’ll tell everybody.  Why not?”

“Oh, but dearest!  It was so nice it being a secret.  It was the loveliest thing in the world.”

“Yes, it was jolly.”

“Perhaps father will feel differently in the morning, and then you can——­”

“He won’t,” said George flatly.  “You don’t know what a state he’s in.  I didn’t tell you—­he called me a spy in the house, a dirty spy.  Likewise a jackanapes.  Doubtless a delicate illusion to my tender years.”

“He didn’t!”

“He did, honestly.”

“So that was what upset you so!” Marguerite murmured.  It was her first admission that she had noticed his agitation.