And not one word of all her trouble did Denas titter. She spoke only of Roland's great love for her; of their trials endured together; of his resignation to death; of her own loneliness and suffering since his burial; and then, clasping her father's and mother's hands, she said:
"So I have come back to you. I have come back to my old life. I shall never act again. I shall sing no more in this world. That life is over. It was not a happy life. Without Roland it would be beyond my power to endure it."
"You be welcome here as the sunshine. Oh, my dear girl, you be light to my eyes and joy to my heart, and there is no trouble can hurt me much now."
Then Joan said: "'Twas this very morning I put clean linen on your bed, Denas. I swept the room, and then made the pie, and clotted the cream, and I never knew who I did it for. Oh, Denas, what a godsend you do be! John, my old dear, our life be turned to sunshine now."
And long after Denas had fallen asleep they sat by their fire and talked of their child's sorrow, and Joan got up frequently and took a candle and, shading it with her hand, went and looked to see if the girl was all right. When Denas was a babe in the cradle, Joan had been used to satisfy her motherly longing in the same way. Her widowed child was still her baby.
In the morning John went from cottage to cottage and told his friends to come and rejoice with him. For really to John "the dead was alive and the lost was found." And it was a great wonderment in the village; men nor women could talk of anything else but the return of Denas Tresham. Many were really glad to see her; and if some visited the poor, stricken woman thinking to add a homily to God's smiting, they were abashed by her evident suffering, by her pallor and her wasted form, and the sombre plainness of her black garments. For some days life was thus kept at a tension beyond its natural strain, and Joan and her daughter had no time to recover the every-day atmosphere. But no excitement outlasts the week's perchances and changes, and after the second Sunday all her acquaintances had seen Denas, and curiosity and interest were at their normal standard.
All her acquaintances but Tris Penrose. Denas wondered that he did not come to see her, and yet she had a shy dislike to make inquiries about him. For the love of Tris Penrose for Denas Penelles had been the village romance ever since they were children together, and she feared that a word from her about him might set the women to smiling and sympathising and to taking her affairs out of her own hands.