Not in being a love-child, there were plenty of them in the village, but their parents generally married later, and even if they did not, then the female partner in crime would be one of the unmentionable women about whom other people talk so much....  She would live by the harbour plying a trade which allowed her to have a love-child or so without it being an occasion for undue remark, or, if she did not descend to those depths where no one expects anything better and censure consequently ceases through ineffectiveness, then at least everyone knew the author of her fall to be an honest, loutish Englishman, no worse than most of his neighbours.

Loveday was without either of these two rights to existence.  Her mother had been a respectable girl till her fall, and, as far as anyone was aware, since, for she had died of the fruit of her guilty connection, and though her portion was doubtless hell-fire, there is nothing to show that one cannot keep respectable even under such disquieting circumstances.  The elder Loveday had clung obstinately to her self-respect under circumstances which her neighbours had tried to render nearly as trying on earth.  She had died, as she had lived, impenitent and only crying for the foreigner who had seduced her, while he was then lying, had she but known it, in the lap of his first mistress, the sea, who, perhaps from jealousy at his straying, had taken him forcibly into her embrace on the same night that Loveday the younger was born.

Old Madgy, the midwife, who was also more than suspected of being somewhat of a witch, declared that the expectant mother did know it—­that she had been made aware, through a supernatural happening, of the loss of her lover, and that that was why the babe saw the light in such undue haste, and the mother took her departure almost as swiftly to that place where alone she could ever hope to rejoin him.  For, as evening drew on, Madgy, having called to see how Loveday did, though nothing was thought of yet for a clear week, found her in the dairy (the Stricks had not yet fallen on that poverty which came to their roof under Aunt Senath’s shrewish management) standing as one wisht beside the great red earthen pan of scalded cream.

“And ’ee can b’lieve me or no as it like ’ee, my dears,” old Madgy would say to many a breathless circle in a farm kitchen during the intervals of her duties overstairs, “but there was the cream in the pan a-heavin’ up an’ down in gurt waves, like a rough sea, and her staring at ’en like one stricken, as she was poor sawl, sure enough.  Eh, it was sent for a sign to her, and a true sign, for that avenen’ her man was drowned on his way to her, with his fine cargo of oil and onions and all.  And there was the cream heavin’ in waves for a sign of the rough seas that took him, though wi’ us the skies was fair and the water in the bay as smooth as silk.”

A story that filled simple souls in kitchens with awe, but naturally was treated more scornfully in drawing-rooms, where it was felt that signs and portents would hardly be sent to inform a cottage girl of the death of an onion-seller.  For, after all, that is what he amounts to, and the horrid secret is out....  An onion-seller ... the very words stink in the nostrils and are fatal to romance.