Martin's conduct during the day was
not reassuring. He had lost all his ferocity and bitterness; he was
very quiet, speaking to no one, lying on a sofa that over-looked the
moor, watching.
Mrs. Bolitho's really soft heart was touched by his pallor and
weakness, but she could not deny that there was something queer
here." Maggie almost wished that his old mood of truculence would
return. She was terrified, too, of these night scenes, because they
were so bad for his heart. The local doctor, a clever young fellow
called Stephens, told her that he was recovering from the pneumonia,
but that his heart was "dickey."
"Mustn't let anything excite him, Mrs. Warlock," he said.
There came then gradually over the old house and the village the
belief that Martin was "fey." Mrs. Bolitho was in most ways a
sensible, level-headed, practical woman, but like many of the
inhabitants of Glebeshire, she was deeply superstitious. It was not
so very many years since old Jane Curtis had been ducked in the St.
Dreot's pond for a witch, and even now, did a cow fall sick or the
lambs die, the involuntary thought in the Glebeshire "pagan mind"
was to look for the "evil eye.
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