‘That’s all right,’ he exclaimed.  ‘If you come you conquer.’  They passed on their ways.

Leonora’s existence had slipped back into its old groove since the departure of Twemlow, and the groove had deepened.  She lived by the force of habit, hoping nothing from the future, but fearing more than a little.  She seemed to be encompassed by vague and sinister portents.  After another brief interlude of apparent security, John’s situation was again disquieting.  Trade was good in the Five Towns; at least the manufacturers had temporarily forgotten to complain that it was very bad, and the Monday afternoon football-matches were magnificently attended.  Moreover, John had attracted favourable attention to himself by his shrewd proposals to the Manufacturers’ Association for reform in the method of paying firemen and placers; his ability was everywhere recognised.  At the same time, however, the Five Towns looked askance at him.  Rumour revived, and said that he could not keep up his juggling performance for ever.  He was known to have speculated heavily for a rise in the shares of a great brewery which had falsified the prophecies of its founders when they benevolently sold it to the investing public.  Some people wondered how long John could hold those shares in a falling market.  Leonora had no definite knowledge of her husband’s affairs, since neither John nor any other person breathed a word to her about them.  And yet she knew, by certain vibrations in the social atmosphere as mysterious and disconcerting as those discovered by Roentgen in the physical, that disaster, after having been repelled, was returning from afar.  Money flowed through the house as usual; nevertheless often, as she drove about Bursley, consciously exciting the envy and admiration which a handsome woman behind a fast cob is bound to excite, her shamed fancy pictured the day when Prince should belong to another and she should walk perforce on the pavement in attire genteelly preserved from past affluence.  Only women know the keenest pang of these secret misgivings, at once desperate and helpless.

Nor did she find solace in her girls.  One Saturday afternoon Ethel came back from the duty-visit to Aunt Hannah and said as it were confidentially to Leonora:  ’Fred called in while I was there, mother, and stayed for tea.’  What could Leonora answer?  Who could deny Fred the right to visit his great-aunt and his great-uncle, both rapidly ageing?  And of what use to tell John?  She desired Ethel’s happiness, but from that moment she felt like an accomplice in the furtive wooing, and it seemed to her that she had forfeited both the confidence of her husband and the respect of her daughter.  Months ago she had meant by force of some initiative to regularise this idyll which by its stealthiness wounded the self-respect of all concerned.  Vain aspiration!  And now the fact that Fred Ryley had begun to call at Church Street appeared to indicate between him and Uncle Meshach a closer understanding which could only be detrimental to the interests of John.