Euphemia's back at work, and for a little while she doesn't see Tane. She's avoiding him - she even switches her days off so she doesn't have to see him. He realizes this, and is amused. Ellen gets engaged to her curate (who has a name, as it turns out: Tom), which puts an end to Euphemia's pipe-dream of Ellen marrying a millionaire and paying off the mortgage.
Tane comes to see Euphemia while she is staying with Ellen and their aunt, and catches Euphemia eating an apple. He egocentrically asks her: "Can it be pure chance [that she happens to be eating an apple when he arrived with no warning whatsoever], or are you tempting me?" (p. 153) Of course Tane's not egocentric - yet. This is Betts's heavy-handed way of trying to tie in the lame apples/temptation joke that Tane made in chapter 2. Sigh. I'm afraid that humor is not Betts's strong point.
Any goodwill that Tane has built up in these seven and a half chapters completely evaporates for me (and for Euphemia, aside from that tiresome part where she's in love with him) when he buys the mortgage for Euphemia's house from the small private company that had held it. Euphemia's furious - as she points out, if she fails in a payment, he could foreclose at any time. And it doesn't make much sense - now Tane pays Euphemia rent, which she sends right back to him in the form of a mortgage payment. She tells Tane that she doesn't "want to see you or speak to you ever again!" (p. 159).
Sadly, this resolution won't last, because at the very end of the chapter, there's a catastrophic disaster! Of course, this means that (sigh) Tane will come to save the day in chapter 9.
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