ONE:Boarzell Fair had been held every year on Boarzell Moor for as long as the oldest in Peasmarsh could remember. The last Thursday in October was the date, just when the woods were crumpling into brown, and fogs blurred the wavy sunsets.His return had been complete. All that she had ever had and lost of empire had re-established itself during that hour at Cheat Land. He wanted her as he had wanted her before he met Rose, but with a renewed intensity, for he was no longer mystified by his desire. He no longer asked himself how he could possibly love "a liddle stick of a woman like her," for he saw how utterly love-worthy she was and had always been. For the first time he saw as his, if only he would take it, a great woman's faithful love. This love of Alice Jury's had nothing akin to Naomi's poor little fluttering passion, or to Rose's fascination, half appetite, half[Pg 327] game. Someone loved him truly, strongly, purely, deeply, with a fire that could be extinguished only by death orhe realised in a dim wayher own will. The question was, should he pay the price this love demanded, take it to himself at the cost of the ambitions that had fed his life for forty years?
FORE:The little Ralph grew up with a strong predilection for the sea, contracted, it was often suspected, by the strange stories he had heard the galleyman repeat; and it is upon record, that Ralph de Boteler, Baron of Sudley, was the first high admiral of England. The young heir always evinced a strong affection for Margaret; so much so, indeed, as sometimes to raise a suspicion in the baroness that her son loved his foster-mother better than herself.
FORE:Naomi's money had been the greatest possible help. He had roofed the Dutch barn, and retarred the oasts, he had bought a fine new plough horse and a waggon, and he was going to buy another piece of Boarzellten or twelve acres this time, of the more fruitful clay-soil by the Glotten brook. Naomi was pleased to see all the new things. The barn looked so spick-and-span with its scarlet tiles, and the oasts shone like polished ebony, she loved to stroke the horse's brown, snuffling nose, and "Oh, what a lovely blue!" she said when she saw the waggon.
