Mynors turned to Anna.He recognised her, stared fixedly, and nodded with his grotesque and ambiguous grin.The Tellwrights had been in Bursley a year, but no visitor had crossed their doorsteps except the minister, once, and such poor defaulters as came, full of excuse and obsequious conciliation, to pay rent overdue.And this attitude extended not only to the intimacy, but to Beatrice's handsome clothes and facile urbanity, which by contrast emphasised her own poor little frock and tongue-tied manner.Then, having bidden adieu to Mynors, whose parting glance sang its own song to her, Anna took Agnes by the hand and left him and Beatrice together.Stylishly clad in a dress of pink muslin, with harmonious hat, gloves, and sunshade, she made an agreeable and rather effective picture, despite her plain, round face and stoutish figure.In the tone of each there was an obscure constraint, and something in Mynors' smile of salute to Beatrice showed that he too shared it.

'Seen you before,' Beatrice said to him familiarly, without taking his hand; then she bent down and kissed Agnes.Grafted on to the original simple honesty of her eyes there was the unconsciously-acquired arrogance of one who had always been accustomed to deference.Beatrice had been used to teach in the afternoon school, but she had recently advanced her labours from the afternoon to the morning in response to a hint that if she did so the force of her influence and example might lessen the chronic dearth of morning teachers.She wondered what the business could be, and felt relieved to know that his visit would have at least some assigned pretext; but already her heart beat with apprehensive perturbation at the thought of his presence in their household.Socially, Beatrice had no peer among the young women who were active in the Wesleyan Sunday-school.'Papa says it will send up the value of that land over there enormously,' said Beatrice, pointing with her ribboned sunshade to some building plots which lay to the north, high up the hill.There, close against the bandstand, stood her father, a short, stout, ruddy, middle-aged man in a shabby brown suit.Anna knew that they were related, and also that Mynors was constantly at the Suttons' house, but the close intimacy between these two came nevertheless like a shock to her.The mere existence of Beatrice so near to Mynors was like an affront to her.Yet at heart, and even while admiring this shining daughter of success, she was conscious within herself of a fundamental superiority.As the two women said good-bye their eyes met, and in the brief second of that encounter each tried to wring from the other the true answer to a question which lay unuttered in her heart.Anna looked at Henry Mynors as he uttered the astonishing words.