Ross Poldark by Winston Graham

disquiet. Verity looked away and abruptly said: “You would be surprised to learn—to learn about Francis and Elizabeth—”
    “I had no option on the girl.”
    “It was strange,” she went on haltingly, “the way it happened. Francis had scarcely seen her until this summer past. They met at the Pascoes. Then he could—could talk of nothing else. Naturally I told him you had been friendly with her. But she had already told him that.”
    “Kind of her—”
    “Ross… I’m certain sure that neither of them wished to do anything unfair. It was just one of the things that happen. You do not argue with the clouds or the rain or the lightning. Well, this was like that. It came from outside them. I know Francis and he couldn’t help himself.”
    “How prices have risen since I went away,” said Ross. “I paid three and three a yard for Holland linen today. All my shirts have been eaten by the moths.”
    “And then,” said Verity, “there was the rumour of your having been killed. I do not know how it came about, but I think it was the Paynters who stood most to gain.”
    “Not more than Francis.”
    “No,” said Verity. “But it was not he.”
    Ross kept his tortured eyes on the sea. “That was not a pretty thought,” he said after a moment.
    She pressed his arm. “I wish I could help you, my dear. Will you not come over often? Why d’you not have dinner with us every day? My cooking is better than Prudie's.”
    He shook his head. “I must find my own way out of this. When are they to be married?”
    “November the first.”
    “So soon? I thought it was to be more than a month.”
    “They decided last night.”
    “Oh. I see…”
    “It is to be at Trenwith, for that suits us all best. Cusgarne is nearly falling down and full of draughts and leaks. Elizabeth and her mother and father are coming in their carriage in the morning.”
    She chattered on, aware that Ross was hardly attending but anxious to help him over this difficult period. Presently she was silent and followed his example in staring out to sea.
    “If,” she said, “if I were sure not to get in your way this winter, I would come over when I could. If—”
    “That,” he said, “would help more than anything.”
    They began to walk back towards the house. He did not see how red she had gone, flushing up to the roots of her hair.
    So it was to be November the first, less than a fortnight forward.
    He went a little way with his cousin, and when they parted he stood at the edge of the pine copse and saw her walking quickly and sturdily in the direction of Grambler. The smoke and steam from the mine was drifting in a cloud across the desolate rubble-scarred moorland towards Trenwith.
3
    Beyond the rising ground which made up the southeastern rib of Nampara Combe was a hollow in which lay a cluster of cottages known as Mellin.
    It was Poldark land, and in these six cottages, built in the form of a friendly right-angle so that everyone could the more easily watch everyone else's comings and goings, lived the Triggses, the Clemmows, the Martins, the Daniels, and the Viguses. Here Ross went in search of cheap labour.
    The Poldarks had always been on good terms with their tenants. Distinction of class was not absent; it was under stood so clearly that nobody needed to emphasize it; but, in districts where life centred round the nearest mine, polite convention was not allowed to stand in the way of common sense. The small landowners with their long pedigrees and short purses were accepted as a part of the land they owned.
    On his way to the Martins, Ross had to pass three of the cottages, before the door of the first of which Joe Triggs sat sunning himself and smoking. Triggs was a miner in the mid-fifties, crippled with rheumatism and supported by his aunt, who made a bare living fishjousting in Sawle. It did not seem that he had moved since Ross went away twenty-eight months ago. England had lost an empire in the west; she had secured her