“Come in, come in!” Horrocleave roared.

She entered, blushing, excusing herself, glancing from one to the other, and by her spotless Easter finery emphasizing the squalor of the den.

In a few minutes Horrocleave was saying to Rachel, rather apologetically—­

“Louis and I are going to part company, Mrs. Fores.  I can’t keep him on.  His wages are too high for me.  It won’t run to it.  Th’ truth is, I’m going to chuck this art business.  It doesn’t pay.  Art, as they call it, ‘s no good in th’ pottery trade.”

Rachel said, “So that’s what you wanted to see him about on a Sunday morning, is it, Mr. Horrocleave?”

She was a little hurt at the slight on her husband, but the wife in her was persuaded that the loss would be Mr. Horrocleave’s.  She foresaw that Louis would now want to use his capital in some commercial undertaking of his own; and she was afraid of the prospect.  Still, it had to be faced, and she would face it.  He would probably do well as his own master.  During a whole horrible week her judgment on him had been unjustly severe, and she did not mean to fall into the same sin again.  She thought with respect of his artistic gifts, which she was too inartistic to appreciate.  Yes, the chances were that he would succeed admirably.

She walked him off to church, giving Horrocleave a perfunctory good-bye.  And as, shoulder to shoulder, they descended towards St. Luke’s, she looked sideways at Louis and fed her passion stealthily with the sight.  True, even in those moments, she had heart enough left to think of others besides.

She hoped that John’s Ernest would find a suitable mate.  She remembered that she had Julian’s curtains to attend to.  She continued to think kindly of Thomas Batchgrew, and she chid herself for having thought of him in her distant inexperienced youth, of six months earlier, as that man.  And, regretting that Mrs. Tams—­at her age, too!—­could be so foolish, she determined to look after Mrs. Tams also, if need should arise.  But these solicitudes were mere downy trifles floating on the surface of her profound absorption in Louis.  And in the depths of that absorption she felt secure, and her courage laughed at the menace of life (though the notion of braving a church full of people did intimidate the bride).  Yet she judged Louis realistically and not sentimentally.  She was not conspicuously blind to any aspect of his character; nor had the tremendous revulsion of the previous night transformed him into another and a more heavenly being for her.  She admitted frankly to herself that he was not blameless in the dark affair of the bank-notes.  She would not deny that in some ways he was untrustworthy, and might be capable of acts of which the consequences were usually terrible.  His irresponsibility was notorious.  And, being impulsive herself, she had no mercy for his impulsiveness.  As for his commonsense, was not her burning of the circular addressed to Mrs. Maldon a sufficient commentary on it?