"And he drives me to do what I wouldn't; yes, he does!--Tall, come indoors." After this collapse, not very dignified for the head of an establishment, she went into the house, Tall at her heels.

Here she sat down and hastily scribbled a note between the small convulsive sobs of convalescence which follow a fit of crying as a ground-swell follows a storm.

The note was none the less polite for being written in a hurry.

She held it at a distance, was about to fold it, then added these words at the bottom:-- "DO NOT DESERT ME, GABRIEL!" She looked a little redder in refolding it, and closed her lips, as if thereby to suspend till too late the action of conscience in examining whether such strategy were justifiable.

The note was despatched as the message had been, and Bathsheba waited indoors for the result.
It was an anxious quarter of an hour that intervened between the messenger's departure and the sound of the horse's tramp again outside.