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When Mother Cloke came up that evening to the Dower House to redress Mrs Roseingrave’s bed and set all the house in order for the night and the morrow, Miss Julia gave her a large glass of damson wine, a privilege that the old woman only had when Miss Julia was in a good humour or required some favour.

Mother Cloke, like many another wise, learned and laborious person, remained very poor. She would not work for any save Miss Julia, and the peasants were frightened to go near her, even though they often greatly longed to ask her for a potion or to implore her to weave a spell. She did a little trade in face washes and balms, and unguents, but this brought her in but a few pence.

She could not often afford such luxuries as a large glass of wine.

Miss Roseingrave watched her as she drank, seated in the neat kitchen, where everything was shining and furbished, and a blue bowl lavishly filled with roses stood on the scrubbed oak table.

Mother Cloke was a pale, meek looking woman, in colouring like a sandy cat. She always wore a mutch bonnet and a tippet of stiff white linen and a skirt of grey cotton damask. She was clean in her person, too, which was one reason why Miss Roseingrave employed her. Her clothes and her hands always had a faint perfume from the herbs that she so constantly touched.

‘I wish,’ said Miss Roseingrave, watching the old woman relish gratefully the thick purple liquid, ‘that you really were a witch, Mother Cloke, and that some of your herbs had the virtues that the rustics think they have.’

‘And what would you want of me, my dear, if that were true?’ asked Mother Cloke pleasantly. She had a soft, pleasant voice that seemed cultured above her station.

‘I would ask you for a love potion.’

‘And I have been asked for that often enough.’ The herb woman nodded above her wine. ‘But what need would you have, Madame Julia, for such a thing?’

‘Why should I not have need of it?’

The young woman drew her thick black brows together in a heavy frown.

‘There is never a man round here worth your pains, Madame Julia.’

‘The young squire came home last night, Mrs Cloke, and if you had such a potion as I have mentioned I would take it up to him and see that Mrs Barlow mixed it with his caudle.’

‘Is he, then, so brave and goodly, Madame Julia?’

‘As to that, nothing much. As far as I marked him, but an ordinary kind of man. But I think of his place and his power, Mrs Cloke, and his parks and his houses, and how pleasantly gorgeous the world might be for the woman who was his wife.’

Miss Roseingrave turned about and stirred the pap for her mother that was cooking in a small pot on the little fire which was gathered to one corner of the hearth.

Mother Cloke finished the last drop of the damson wine and said:

‘I did not think you were ambitious, Madame Julia, you have stayed here so long and so patiently.’

‘When one has no hope one is patient.’

‘And have you now a little hope, Miss Roseingrave?’

The young woman rose from her task; the spoon on which the milk steamed was still in her hand. She looked very thin in her tight-laced cotton gown and swayed like a willow herb in the breeze as she spoke. She was moved, it seemed, by some considerable emotion.

‘Look you, Mother Cloke, surely you know of something which the ignorant call a love potion, that confuses the senses and raises the appetite and might make this man desire me, seeing there is no other woman within his reach, nor like to be these many weeks, save sluts, at whom I am sure he would not look.’

Mother Cloke shook her head and pursed her lips.

‘I have never meddled in such matters,’ she muttered. ‘I can tell you many secrets and have already told you a few, Madame Julia, for easing the stomach and the head, for beautifying the complexion, stopping the bleeding of green wounds, even for checking the ague and driving away a mad fit, for giving sleep and raising the spirits; but as for love potions, could I have discovered them, I should have been a rich woman long ago.’ She added on a whistling sigh: ‘Poisons were ever easy to find, but everything else is difficult.’

Miss Roseingrave looked angry.

‘I have never been discontented till now,’ she said. ‘But he is a fool who does not take an opportunity when it comes his way.’

‘Take it by natural means,’ suggested the old woman uneasily. ‘No pretty lady should need to ask for the help of spells.’

‘I want but a charm to bring him here,’ muttered Julia Roseingrave. ‘Once I could see him and frequently, the thing were done, as I take it. How can I go up to the Grange without a sacrifice of my pride and making a mockery of myself to the servants?’

‘As to that,’ said Mother Cloke, setting the tray for the invalid woman, ‘I daresay I can contrive it and in a lawful manner.’