Tregenza could estimate it. Her mind reached that far, and the
bank-notes, for her, lay just within the estimation of avarice. Every snowy
fragment meant a hundred pounds--a hundred sovereigns--two hundred
ten-shilling pieces. The first shock overpast, and long before she grew
sufficiently calm to associate the treasure with its possessor, Mrs.
Tregenza began spending in her mind's eye. The points in house and garden,
outhouse and sty, whereon money might be advantageously expended, rose up
one after the other. Then she put aside eight hundred and fifty out of the
grand total and pictured herself taking it to the bank. She thought of a
nest-egg that would "goody" against the time Tom should grow into a man;
she saw herself among the neighbors, pointed at, whispered of as a woman
with hundreds and hundreds of pounds put by; she saw the rows of men
sitting basking about in Newlyn, as their custom is when off the sea; and
she heard them drop words of admiration at the sight of her. Presently,
however, this gilded vision vanished, and she began to connect the money
with Joan. She solved the mystery then with a brutal directness which hit
the mark in one direction; as to the source of the money, but went wide of
it in some measure upon the subject of the girl. Thomasin held briefly that
her stepdaughter had fallen, and now, knowing her condition, had informed
some man of it, with the result that from him came this unutterable gift.
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