Emma Harte’s blessing of Paula and Jim Fairley marks a decisive break with the family hostility that has kept them apart. Emma admits that her old grievance has made her selfish and foolish, tells Paula that Jim’s intentions remain serious, and gives the couple both her permission and her love. The scene’s intimate reunion between grandmother and granddaughter also answers a much older history: love between Harte women and Fairley men repeatedly obstructed by family circumstance, class, and secrets.

The inheritance of an old feud

Emma’s resistance to Jim and Paula’s relationship is rooted in a history far older than their courtship. As a young woman, Emma loved Edwin Fairley, but when she told him she was pregnant, he recoiled. His fear of losing his father’s support and his future as a barrister at Cambridge combined with his conviction that the class difference between a servant and the gentry could not be overcome. Emma understood his silence as repudiation and left him without his claiming her or their child.

The separation left lasting consequences. Emma concealed Edwin’s identity as the father of her daughter, Edwina Harte. When Blackie O’Neill explained that the law required a father’s name on Edwina’s birth certificate, Emma refused to name the real father. Blackie offered to put his own name on the certificate instead, reasoning that this would be preferable to recording the father as unknown; he insisted on accompanying Emma to the registrar. Later, when Emma accepted Joe Lowther’s proposal, she told him that Edwina was illegitimate but withheld her father’s identity, repeating the account she had earlier given Blackie. These choices show how the earlier rejection continued to shape Emma’s handling of family, respectability, and the truth.

The past is also preserved in objects and places. While searching her mother’s wooden jewellery box, Emma discovered a hidden gold locket beneath its velvet lining. Inside were a youthful photograph of Elizabeth Harte and a small lock of fair hair. Later, in a cave, Emma found names for Elizabeth scratched into the wall, beside the name Adam and a heart pierced by an arrow marked with the initials A E. The inscription made the concealed connection between Elizabeth and Adam Fairley visible in the same place where Emma’s own relationship with Edwin had unfolded. What had seemed to be a private feud thus belonged to a longer pattern of Harte and Fairley attachments crossed by circumstance.

Emma changes her answer

By the time Emma speaks to Paula, she has already spoken with Jim. She explains that she invited him because he is involved in family business matters, but acknowledges that she also invited him for Paula. Jim, she says, was delighted to accept. Emma had learned that he still felt the same way about Paula and had always had serious intentions. She had told him that afternoon that if he wished to marry Paula, he had not only her permission but her blessing.

Emma presents the change not as the disappearance of the past, but as a decision not to let it govern the present. She describes herself as tough and tired, shaped by a struggle to survive, and recognizes that the pride of an old woman should not obstruct the person she loves most. The events of sixty years earlier, she acknowledges, have been clouding her judgment. Her admission matters because she does not ask Paula to deny the family’s history; she chooses not to make Paula pay for it.

Paula initially cannot absorb what she is hearing. For months she has tried not to think about Jim and has forced her feelings aside, pouring her energy into work while believing that they had no future. Emma’s announcement first leaves her incredulous and then brings her to tears. Emma’s firm confirmation that she has changed her mind gives Paula the certainty her restrained hope could not provide.

A private reconciliation

The blessing turns on physical gestures as much as explanation. Emma leaves her place, sits beside Paula, takes her hand, and touches her face. When Paula finally breaks into sobs, Emma gathers her into her arms and strokes her hair as she did when Paula was a child. The old family opposition gives way, within the scene, to an established bond of care: Emma comforts Paula rather than instructing her to suppress what she feels.

Emma tells Paula that she never wants to see her unhappy again and recognizes that she has already endured enough unhappiness for both of them. The words connect Emma’s approval to a personal understanding of suffering, not merely a change in policy. Paula, still overwhelmed, repeats Jim’s name, and Emma gently redirects her toward him. She says he is still at the paper and waiting, and suggests that Paula call him, invite him to dinner, or drive into Leeds to dine with him alone. She adds that she will have other family members for company, freeing Paula to leave at once.

Paula embraces and kisses Emma before hurrying out. Emma imagines her as going to her love, then remains alone with her thoughts. That brief contrast gives the blessing its emotional measure: Paula’s sudden movement toward a future is made possible by Emma’s willingness to remain behind with the memories that had once prevented it.

A message from the previous generation

The reconciliation also acquires a second meaning through a painted stone passed down from Adam Fairley. Years earlier, Edwin had given the pebble to Adam, who recognized that the painted face resembled Olivia Wainright. Much later, Jim brings the object to Emma after Adam, near death, entrusts it to him and explains that the portrait was of Elizabeth, not Olivia. Emma says she had suspected as much and is glad to have an image of her mother to treasure.

Jim also conveys Adam’s plea that the pattern of Harte women and Fairley men being drawn together and crossed in love should end with their generation. Adam had hoped Emma would give Paula and Jim her blessing, so that they might find the happiness denied to earlier couples, including Emma and Edwin and Elizabeth and Adam. He entrusted Jim with the stone as a reminder and asked him to tell Emma that she alone could finally join the families through marriage. Jim had planned to bring the message earlier, but Emma and Paula had gone to America, Emma had fallen ill after returning, and he did not want to disturb her while she was recovering. Before he could speak, Emma approached him herself and approved the match.

The timing makes the blessing both Emma’s independent choice and the answer to Adam’s deathbed appeal. It does not erase the pain or injustice of the earlier relationships: the locket, cave markings, and stone portrait preserve their evidence. Instead, the scene changes what that inheritance demands of the living. The old feud no longer has to dictate Paula’s future, and Emma’s consent becomes the act that allows a family history of thwarted love to move toward a different ending.