CHAPTER VII.

AUNT ANNE went slowly along Portman Square. She felt, and it was a cruel moment to do so, that she was growing very old. Her feet almost gave way beneath her; her hands had barely strength to hold her cloak together over her chest. There was a little cold breeze passing by; as it swept over her face she realized that she was half stunned and sad and sick at heart. But she dragged on, step by step, stopping once, to hold by the iron railings of a house, before she could find strength enough to turn into a side-street.

“I won’t believe it,” she said; “it was not for the money. He could not have known; his uncle would not have told him—it is not likely that he would have betrayed the confidence of a client.” And then she remembered what Sir William had said about the debt to the landlady in the Gray’s Inn Road and to the mother in the country. Of course that meant Liphook. It gave her a world of comfort, had lifted a terrible dread from her heart, so that, even in spite of the insults of the last hour, she felt that her morning’s visit had not been wholly thrown away. She had not the faculty of looking forward very far, and it did not occur to her as yet that, by revealing her marriage, she had ruined her prospects with her cousin. It was the insults that had enraged her; the going back to Witley, the day’s dinner, and the very near future, that perplexed her. A month, even a week hence, might take care of itself, provided to-day were made easy; it had always been so with her.

She was bewildered, staggered, for want of money; she had just two shillings in the world. Florence and Walter were still away; she could think of no one of whom to borrow. She came to a confectioner’s shop, and looked at it hesitatingly, for she was tired and exhausted. Even though Alfred Wimple waited at the other end, mercilessly ready to count the coins with which she returned, she felt that she must buy a few minutes’ rest for herself. She wanted to sit down and think. She tottered into the shop, and having asked for a cup of tea, waited for it, with a sigh of relief, in a dark corner. But she was too much stupefied and beaten to think clearly. When the tea came, hot and smoking, in a thick white cup, to which her lips clung gratefully, she felt better. She began to burn with indignation, which was an excellent sign; she crushed Sir William Rammage out of her thoughts, and winked almost savagely, as though she had felt him under her foot. She told herself again that Alfred could not have known about the will, and had not deceived her about Liphook. She even tried to think of him affectionately, though that was difficult, with the dread of his face before her if she returned empty-handed. But she did not think of the money question as despairingly now as she had done a few minutes since; she had a firm belief in her own power of resource. She felt certain that when she had reflected calmly, something would suggest itself. She remembered Mrs. North; but it was not possible to borrow of her, for she had forfeited all consideration to the regard Aunt Anne thought it necessary to feel for any one from whom she could accept a loan.

“I cannot do that, even for Alfred,” she said. “I have always held my head so high; I cannot lower it to Mrs. North, even for him.” But she took the letter from her pocket and read it over again. “She does not seem to comprehend the difference in our positions,” she said, as she put it back into the envelope, though not before she had noticed, with a keen eye, that Mrs. North had said she would be back in England very soon, and calculated that that could not mean just yet. “If Walter and Florence were in London, I should be relieved of this anxiety immediately,” she thought. Then a good idea occurred to her. She considered it from every point of view, and felt at last that it was feasible. “I am quite sure,” she told herself, “that Florence would say I was justified in going to her mother in her absence. I will explain to her that there are some things her daughter would wish me to buy, and ask her to let me have sufficient money to defray their cost. Besides,” she added, as an afterthought, “I must see those dear children; Florence, I know, would wish me to do so; and it is an attention I ought not to omit, after all the regard and kindness that she and dear Walter have always shown me.” She got up and looked longingly at the buns and tarts in the window; though she had only one unbroken shilling left, she could not wholly curb her generosity.

“Would you put me a couple of sponge-cakes into a bag?” she said to the young woman, “I hope they are quite fresh; I prefer them a little brown.” She walked away, justified and refreshed, holding the paper bag by the corner.

But when she arrived at the house near Regent’s Park, it was only to be told that Florence’s mother had gone out for the day, and that the children had not yet returned from their morning walk. The servant, seeing how disappointed she looked, begged her to come in and wait for a little while. “I don’t think they’ll be long, ma’am,” she said almost gently. “For,” as she explained to her fellow-servants afterwards, “I could not help being sorry for an old lady who had made a stupid of herself like that.” Aunt Anne hesitated a moment. “There’s a nice fire in the dining-room,” the servant continued, and having persuaded her to enter, she turned the easy-chair round, and asked if she should make a cup of tea.

“Thank you, no,” said Aunt Anne, in a tone that showed she was sensible of the desire to please her, but was, nevertheless, aware of her own position in society. “I do not require any refreshment; I have just partaken of an early lunch.” She turned, gratefully, to the fire when she was alone, and, putting her feet on the fender, faced her difficulties once more. She could not remember any human being in London from whom, under any pretext whatever, she could borrow. She was baffled and at bay. The memory of Sir William’s taunts vanished altogether as, with a fright that was gradually becoming feverish, she went over in her mind every possible means of raising even a few shillings—though a few shillings, she knew, would be virtually useless against the tide she had to stem. Of a very small sum she was already certain, for she had devised a means of raising it, but she feared it would only be sufficient to provide food for the evening, and perhaps for to-morrow—and then? She folded her hands and looked into the fire, shaking her head once or twice, as if various schemes were presenting themselves, only to be rejected. The clock on the mantelpiece struck half-past one; at half-past four her train left Waterloo Station. There was little time to lose. She got up, took off her cloak, and examined it carefully, then put it round her once more, fingering the clasp, while she fastened it, as if it were a thing she treasured. As she did so, her eye caught a little pile on the mantelpiece; it consisted of seven shillings in silver, with a half-sovereign on the top. She looked at it as if fascinated, and calculated precisely all it would buy. She remembered, with dismay, that Jane Mitchell’s weekly wages were due that evening, that Jane’s mother was ill, and the money was necessary. She heard again the hard voice in which Alfred had said, “Unless you bring back money, I shall not stay here any longer.” She could see his eyes, dull and unrelenting.

“I know they would give it to me; I know that Walter and Florence would deny me nothing that was really for my happiness,” she thought, and rang the bell. “I fear I shall not be able to stay and see the children,” she said haughtily to the servant, but with a little excitement she could not keep out of her voice; “my train is, unfortunately, an early one. And would you tell their grandmother that I have ventured to borrow this seventeen shillings on the mantelpiece? I came up to town with less money than I find I require; I will write to her in a day or two, and return it.”

“It’s the children’s money, ma’am; I heard their grandmother say they were to save it up for Christmas.”

“Dear children,” said the old lady, with a little smile; “they will be delighted to hear that I have borrowed it. Tell them that Aunt Anne is their debtor. Give them these two sponge-cakes, they will think of me while they eat them.” She snapped her purse as she put the money into it, and left the house with a light footstep.

She walked on towards Portland Road. There was only one thing more to do, and that must be done quickly. It would add perhaps ten shillings to her purse, but even that would be a precious sum. She hesitated a moment. A threat of rain was in the air, but she did not feel it. The chilly wind touched her face, but it did not make her shiver, now that her courage had returned. She looked up and down Great Portland Street doubtfully, then went slowly, but with decision, towards a street she knew well.

A quarter of an hour later she was in an omnibus, going to Waterloo Station. The cloak with the steel clasp had disappeared; on her face was an expression that betrayed she had gone through an experience that depressed her. She watched the people hurrying by in hansoms, and remembered the day she had driven in one herself to see Alfred Wimple off to the country—the day on which Florence had given her the five-pound note. She was very weary, and beginning to long for home. She planned the evening dinner, and got out a little before she reached Waterloo, in order to buy it at the shops near the station. There had been concealed beneath her cloak all the morning a square bag, made of black stuff, which now she carried on her arm. When she stood on the platform waiting for her train it was no longer flat and empty, but bulged into strange shapes that were oddly suggestive. In her hand she carried three bunches of primroses, and a smaller one of violets; under her arm were some evening papers. She looked satisfied, and almost happy, for she felt that a few hours at least of contentment were before her. She entered her third-class carriage, thinking of the day she had seen Alfred Wimple off to Liphook; she remembered, with a little triumph, how she had exchanged his ticket. “I am sure the papers will be a solace to him,” she said; “writing for the press must give him a deep interest in public affairs—it must have been a great deprivation to him not to know all that was going on. My dear Alfred! these violets shall be my offering to him as soon as I arrive; I cannot do enough to compensate him for William’s cruel aspersions on his character. My darling, if I only had thousands, I would give them to you; I would make them into a carpet for you to walk upon.”

She was alone in the carriage; she put her bag carefully down beside her on the seat, and shut the windows, for the drizzling rain was coming in aslant, and chilled her. Once or twice a sharp pang of pain darted through her shoulders, but she did not mind; she was dreaming among illusions, and found a passing spell of happiness that brought a smile to her lips and a wink of almost merry anticipation to her eye, as she saw the little dinner she had devised set out, and Alfred facing her at table. She imagined him saying, in the solemn manner in which he said everything, “I feel better, Anne,” when he had finished, and she knew that in those few words she would find a balm for all the insults and misery of the last few hours. She repented now that she was returning by the early train; it seemed like treachery to him. It had been almost noble of him to conceal from her the embarrassing debt he had at Liphook. “He has evidently been reticent,” she thought, “from a desire to save me pain. My dear one,—I have wronged him lately, but I will make it up to him this evening. I will tell him that there is no poverty or sorrow I should not think it a privilege to share with him.” She peered out of the window at the landscape dulling with the rain. “I hope he is not in the garden,” she thought. “He will catch cold, and his cough was so bad last week. I am glad I remembered to bring some lozenges for him.”

The train sped on past Woking and the fir-woods beyond; they reminded her of the trees round the cottage at Witley. When it was dark to-night, she would look up at them before she bolted the door after Jane Mitchell. And then she and Alfred would sit over the fire and talk; he would feel so much better after his dinner, she was sure he would be kind to her. He had been worried lately with poverty, but just for a little while he should forget it. With the future she did not concern herself, for she had already devised a plan that would make it easy. She would go and see Mr. Boughton, and of course he would help them when he heard that Alfred was her husband. He would continue the allowance he had given them, and when Sir William Rammage made a new will he would take care that it was not an iniquitous one. It had never seriously occurred to her that William would leave her money, though, once or twice, the possibility had crossed her mind. But she had never been able to look forward at all for herself. “Now,” she thought, “I must give the future my consideration. I must think of it for my dear Alfred. Luxuries are necessary to him; he cannot divest himself of his longing for them. Perhaps when Mr. Boughton returns he will make William ashamed of his conduct to me to-day, and he will do something for us before he dies; it would be very detrimental to his pride that we should starve, and I did not mince words to-day.” The train passed Milford Station; in a few minutes she would be at Witley. “I hope Alfred won’t be angry with me for coming by the earlier train,” she thought, with some misgiving. “I will explain to him that I had finished my commissions in town sooner than I had anticipated, and, seeing that the weather was not likely to improve, I thought it better to return, even at the risk of his displeasure.”

The governess-cart was waiting for her.

“I brought an umbrella,” Lucas said, “as it was raining. I noticed you went without one this morning, and the weather has come on that unexpected bad, I was afraid you would get wet through.”

“I am most grateful for your thoughtfulness,” Aunt Anne said, with distant graciousness. She put her bag out of reach of the rain, and cared little for herself. She was too full of other matters to trouble about the weather. As she went along the straight road, of which by this time she knew every yard, she mentally counted up the shillings in her pocket, and considered that she ought to give one of them to Lucas. “He has been most attentive,” she said, and she managed to extract the coin from her pocket, and put it into her black silk glove, ready for the end of the journey, which she considered would be the right moment to present it. The rain came down steadily. It was no longer aslant or fitful, and in the sky overhead there were no changing clouds. “I fear you have had an unfavourable day,” she said to Lucas.

“It has rained mostly all the time. I hope you won’t catch cold, ma’am. I thought I saw you with a cloak this morning; have you left it behind?”

Aunt Anne resented the question; she thought it was unduly familiar, and she answered coldly,

“I have left it behind—for a purpose. It required renovating,” she added.

“I might have brought you a shawl, or something, if I had known. I called at the house as I passed to see if Mr. Wimple would like to come and meet you. But he wasn’t in.”

“I hope he is not out in the rain,” she thought. “Did the servant say if he had been out long?” she asked.

“She said he had been gone about an hour. It’s a pity I missed him.”

“He probably had an engagement,” she said, and a little uneasiness stole over her. Another mile. She could scarcely conceal her impatience. “Couldn’t the pony run up this little hill?” she asked.

“It could,” said Lucas, rather contemptuously; “but Mrs. Burnett don’t like him to run uphill, she don’t—she thinks it’s bad for him.” Aunt Anne was too much engrossed in her own thoughts to answer. “He goes faster than the donkey did last year, anyhow, ma’am; do you mind the donkey?”

“I frequently drove him.”

“He was a deal of trouble, he was,” Lucas went on; “and they didn’t do well by him—gave four pound ten for him, and when they come to sell him a year later they only got two pound five.”

“So that they were mulcted of just half the sum for which they had purchased him,” she said absently, having quickly reckoned up the loss in her head. “Was there any reason for that?”

“Well, you see, this was it,” said Lucas—“when gentry first come to live about here they took to keeping donkeys, so donkeys went up; then after a bit they found they wouldn’t go, and they took to selling them and buying ponies, so donkeys went down. I am afraid you are getting very wet, ma’am. I wish I had thought to bring a rug to cover you. But here we are at the house, and you’ll be able to dry yourself by the fire.”

“Thank you, Lucas, thank you,” and she slipped the shilling into his hand, and, taking her bulging bag from under the seat, walked into the house by the back door.

“Jane,” she asked, the moment she crossed the threshold, “where is Mr. Wimple?”

“He went out an hour and a half ago, ma’am, or a little more perhaps.”

“Do you know in what direction he went?”

“Well, last time I saw him he was in the garden; then I see him going down the dip.”

She was silent for a moment, then she asked gently—

“Was he at home all the morning?” and received an answer in the affirmative. She was silent, and seemed to turn something over in her mind.

“You are quite sure he went down the dip, and not much more than an hour and a half ago?” She stood by the kitchen fire, and she spoke absently. “I have brought a sole for dinner,” she said. “I must ask you to cook it more carefully than you did the last one, Jane. Mr. Wimple is most particular about fish—he cannot eat it unless it is quite dry. After the sole there is a chicken and some asparagus. Give me my bag—there are some other things in it, and a bottle of claret at the bottom, which I wish put on the dining-room mantelshelf for an hour. I trust you have made a good fire, Jane?”

“Yes, ma’am; but I had to do it of wood, for the coals are nearly out.”

“I prefer wood; it is not my intention to have in more coal just yet,” said Aunt Anne, firmly. “Where have you put the primroses I brought? I wish to arrange them in a bowl for the centre of the table.”

“Hadn’t you better take off your shawl first, ma’am—it’s wringing wet—and let me make you a cup of tea?”

“No, thank you, I will not trouble you to do that,” Aunt Anne said gently. “But put Mr. Wimple’s slippers by the fire in the dining-room.” She went into the drawing-room and held a match to the grate, and stood beside it while the paper blazed and the wood crackled, thinking that she and Alfred would sit over the fire cosily that evening after dinner.

“I am sure he is worried about money,” she said to herself, “and that he is in debt; but he shall not have these anxieties long—it is much better that his uncle should know about our marriage.” Her eyes turned towards the window and the garden and the trees with the rain falling on them. “I wonder if he has gone far; I hope he is not depressed. I fear he worries himself unduly,” she said, and went into the dining-room. The slippers were toasting in the fender; she turned the easy-chair towards the fire and put beside it a little table from the corner of the room. Then she went for the papers she had brought from London, and arranged them on the table, and put the bunch of violets in a glass and set it by the papers. She drew back and looked at the cosy arrangement with satisfaction. “My darling Alfred!” she said to herself; and then, softly, as if she were afraid of Jane hearing her, she crept out of the front door and under the verandah that went round the house, and looked out at the weather. The rain had nearly stopped, but the sky was grey and the air was cold. She pulled her shawl closer, and, trying to shake off the chill that was overtaking her, went swiftly down the garden pathway. At the far end the grass was long and wet; the drops fell from the beeches and larches above. She found the narrow pathway that led to the dip, and went along it. She looked anxiously ahead, but there was no sign of Alfred. “I know he will be glad to see me,” she thought. “I know the silent tenderness of his heart—my darling—my darling, you are all I have in the world!”

On she went among the gorse, between the firs, and over the clumps of budding heather, a limp black figure in the misty twilight. She had no definite reason for supposing he would return that way; but she knew it to be a short cut from the Liphook direction, and some strange instinct seemed to be sending her on: she did not hesitate or falter, but just obeyed it. The pathway was very narrow, the wet growth on either side brushed her skirts as she passed by—down and down—lower and lower—towards the valley. On the other side, a quarter of a mile away, she could see the little thatched shed the children called their “house,” where perhaps in past days a cow had been tethered. There was not a sign of Alfred. “Perhaps he is a little farther on, over the ridge,” she said, and sped on. A miserable aching was upon her; she had been out of doors many hours; she was wet and cold through and through. Every moment the long grasses and the dead bracken of a past year swept over her feet. The mist stole up to her closer and closer. The drops fell from the leaves above on to her shoulders. “He must be so cold and wet,” she thought; “I know he will make his cough worse; I am glad I kept the lozenges in my pocket.” She hesitated at the bottom of the valley for a moment, and then began the upward path. “I know he wants me,” she said aloud, with an almost passionate note in her feeble voice; “I can feel that he wants me.” She looked through the straggling firs that dotted the ground over which she was now making her way. Still, there was not a sign of Alfred. Only the trees and the undergrowth, sodden with the long day’s rain.

Suddenly there was the sound of a woman’s laughter. She stopped, petrified. It came from the little thatched shed twenty yards away. The side of the shed was towards her and only the front of it was open, so that she could not see who was within it. But she knew that two people were there. One was a woman, and something told her that the other was Alfred Wimple. For a minute she could not stir. Then, as if it had been waiting for a signal, the rain began to fall, with a soft, swishing sound, upon the thatched roof of the shed, upon Aunt Anne’s thin cashmere shawl, upon all the drooping vegetation. The mistiness grew deeper, and from the distances the night began to gather. The black figure standing in the mist knew that a few yards off there was hidden from her that which meant life or death. She went a little nearer to the shed, but her feet almost failed her, her heart stood still, a sickening dread had laid hold of her. “I will go round and face them,” she thought, and dragged herself up to the shed. But as she reached the corner she heard Alfred Wimple’s voice—

“You know it’s only for her money that I stay with the old woman, Caroline.” She stopped, and rested her head and hands against the back and sides of the shed, from sheer fright at what was coming next.

“Well, but you don’t give me any of it,” the woman answered.

“I don’t get any myself now.”

“Then what do you stay with her for?”

“Because it won’t do to let her slip.”

“It’s mother that makes such a fuss—it’s not me; though, of course, it’s hard, you always being away like this.”

“Tell her she won’t gain anything by making a fuss,” Alfred Wimple said, in the hard voice Aunt Anne knew so well.

“She says all the four years we have been married you have not kept me decently three months together.”

Aunt Anne held on to the shed for dear life, and her heart stood still.

“I shall keep you decently by-and-by, Caroline.”

“And then she’s always going on about what you owe her. I daren’t go up to London any more, she leads me such a life.”

“Tell her I’ll pay her by-and-by,” Alfred Wimple said.

“I’m sure if it wasn’t for grandmother being at Liphook, I don’t know what I’d do. Sometimes I think I’d better get a place of some sort—then I’d be able to help you.”

“But your grandmother doesn’t lead you a life, Caroline, does she?”

“Well, you see, it was she made us get married, so she can’t well, and she has kept mother quiet on that account; but couldn’t you come to us again, Alfred? I don’t believe grandmother would mind. She thinks you are very wise to stay with your aunt if you’re going to get her money, and often tells me I am impatient, but I can’t bear being parted like this.”

“And I can’t bear it either”—something that was equivalent to tenderness came into his voice. Aunt Anne drew her breath as she heard it. “You know I am fond of you; I never was fond of anybody else.”

“Mother says when you first had her rooms in the Gray’s Inn Road, there was some girl you used to go out with?”

“She was fond of me,” he said; “I didn’t care about her.”

“My goodness! look at the rain,” said the woman, as it came pouring down; “we must stay here till it’s over a bit. Alfred, you are sure you are as fond of me as ever?”

“I am just as fond of you; I am fonder. You don’t suppose I stay with an old woman from choice, do you? I do it just as much for your sake as mine, Caroline.”

“Call me your wife again—you haven’t said it lately—and kiss me, do kiss me.”

“You are my wife,” he said, “and you know I am fond of you, and——” Aunt Anne heard the sound of his kisses. “I like holding you again,” he went on; “it’s awful being always with that old woman.”

“Well, you don’t have to kiss her, as she’s your aunt,” she said with a laugh.

“I have to kiss her night and morning,” he answered; “but I get out of her way as much as possible—you can bet that.”

“Mother and grandmother are always saying, perhaps she will give you the slip and leave her money to somebody else.”

“I don’t think she’ll do that,” he said; “but that’s one reason why I keep a sharp look-out.”

“Hasn’t she got anything now? You don’t seem to get much out of her, if she has.”

“She’s a close-fisted old woman. Come up closer on my shoulder—I like feeling your face there.”

“Suppose she died to-morrow,” the woman said—“where would you be then?”

“Of course there’s that danger. One must risk something.”

“And is she sure to get money when this—what is it—her cousin—dies?”

“She’ll get five and twenty thousand pounds. I have seen his will, so I know it’s true.”

“Does she know herself?”

“No”—and he laughed a little short laugh.

Aunt Anne, listening and shuddering, remembered, oddly, that she had hardly ever heard him laugh in her life before.

“But how did you manage to see the will?”

“I told you before, Caroline, I saw it in my uncle’s office; so there is no mistake about it, if that is what you mean.”

Aunt Anne nodded her weary head to herself. “William Rammage is right,” she thought; “he is justified. I might have known that at least he would not deceive me.”

“And has she left it all to you, Alfred?” the girl’s voice—for it was a girl’s voice—asked.

“Every penny. I took good care of that; and I’ll take good care she doesn’t alter it, too.”

“But when do you think she’ll get it?”

“As soon as this cousin of hers dies. He has been dying these ever so many months,” Alfred Wimple said discontentedly; “only he’s so long about it.”

“But she won’t give it to you right away when she has got it herself. You’ll have to wait till she dies.”

“I don’t think she’ll live long,” he said grimly; “I’m half afraid, sometimes, that she won’t last as long as he will, unless he makes haste.”

“We’ll have good times, Alfred, once we’ve got our money?”

“Yes, we will,” he answered with determination.

“You mustn’t think that I care only for the money,” the girl went on; “it’s your being away that I care about most.”

“I care about money; I want money, Caroline. I don’t like being poor.”

“You see, I have always been poor, and don’t mind so much.”

“You won’t be poor by-and-by, when the old woman is dead. I hope she’ll be quicker than her cousin over it, for I can’t stand it much longer.”

“Isn’t she kind to you?”

“I suppose she means to be kind,” he said gratingly. “But she whines about me so, and is always wanting to kiss me”—and he made a harsh sound in his throat. “I can’t bear being kissed by an old woman.”

“It doesn’t matter when she is your aunt; it isn’t as if you were married to her. Wouldn’t it be awful to be married to an old woman?”

“Ugh! I think I should kill her, Caroline. Let’s talk about something else.”

“Let’s say all we’ll do when we get our money, Alfred dear,” the girl said in a wheedling voice. “I am glad of this rain, for we can’t go back till it leaves off a bit; let’s say all we’ll do when we get her money.”

“I believe you care more about her money than you do about me,” he said, in the grumbling voice Aunt Anne knew well.

“No, you don’t”—and she laughed a little; “you don’t think that a bit. I am fonder of you than the day I was married.”

“You were fond enough then,” he said almost tenderly; “I remember seeing you kiss your wedding-gown as you sat and stitched at it the night before.”

“I thought I’d never get it done in time.”

“You were determined to have a new one, weren’t you?”

“I thought it would be unlucky if I didn’t, though there wasn’t anybody but you to see it. It isn’t that I care for money, Alfred,” she went on—“don’t think it. It’s only mother that makes the fuss. We’ll pay her up quick when we’ve got it, and we’ll be awfully good to grandmother; but, as for me, I wouldn’t care if you hadn’t a penny. It’s only you I want.”

“And it’s only you I want,” he said, with a little cough that belied his words.

“What is that rustling, Alfred—is there any one about?”

“It’s only the rain among the grass and leaves; I wish it’d leave off—I ought to be getting in.”

“What time is she coming from London?”

“I expect she’ll be here soon now. You had better give me that money, Caroline.”

“It’s hidden in my dress—wait till I get it out. I hope mother won’t hear I was paid, or she’ll wonder what I’ve done with it.”

“I can’t do without a little money,” he said, in the tone Aunt Anne had often heard; “and the old woman is so close-fisted she expects me to account for everything she gives me.”

“Well, there it is—twenty-two shillings and sixpence. I don’t want grandmother to know, for she said last time she wondered you liked taking it.”

“A man has a right to his wife’s earnings,” he said firmly.

“Well, I’ve got three dresses in the house to do; they’ll come to a good bit. It isn’t that I mind giving it. Alfred! there’s some one against the back of the shed.”

“It’s only the branches of the trees brushing against it,” he said. “I must go back—the old woman will be coming home.”

“Don’t go till it stops raining a bit,” she pleaded; “and put your arms tighter round me, I am not with you so often now. Aren’t you glad I am not an old woman?”

“Ugh!”—and he made a sound of disgust again. “Old women make me sick.”

“Well, you’ll be old long before I am,” she said, with a triumphant laugh. “My goodness! look at the rain.”

Aunt Anne went slowly along the narrow pathway, down into the valley, and up towards the larch and fir-trees again. Her strength was almost spent when she reached the garden. She bent her head beneath the downpour, and dragged herself, in such frightened haste as she could manage, to the house. She stopped for a moment beneath the verandah, as if to be sure that she was awake. She looked, half incredulously down at her wet and clinging clothes, and then into the darkness and distance. Beyond the trees and across the valley she knew that two people were saying their good-byes. She imagined their looks and words, and their caresses. It seemed as if the whole world were theirs—it had been pulled from under her feet to make a heaven for them. She was trembling with cold and fear, but she told herself that there was one thing left at which she must clutch a little longer—her self-control and dignity.

“I thought,” she said bewildered, and with the strange hunted look on her face, as she entered the cottage—“I thought God had forgiven me and sent him back, but it is all a mistake. Perhaps it is part of my punishment.” Everything looked strange to her; as if years had passed since she had gone out only an hour ago. She stood by the drawing-room door for a moment, looking in at the fire that had burned up and made a cheerful blaze, but she was afraid to go nearer to it. She felt like an outcast from everywhere; there was no place for her in the world, no one who wanted her, nothing left to do. And there was no love for her, and no forgetfulness; she had to bear pain—that alone was her portion. She wanted most of all to lie down and die, but death and love alike are often strangely difficult to those who need them most. She meandered into the kitchen, without any settled plan of what she was going to do.

“Jane,” she said, “the moment you have finished taking in the dinner, I want you to go upstairs and follow the directions I will give you.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Jane answered, with some astonishment when she had listened to them; “but do you mean to-night?”

“Yes, I mean to-night,” Aunt Anne said, and turned away.

“Let me take your shawl, ma’am; it is wringing wet.”

“I shall be glad if you will divest me of it,” the old lady said gently, “and if you will bring me my cap and slippers; I am fatigued, and cannot ascend the stairs.” She sat down for a minute, and listened to Jane’s footsteps going and returning. It seemed as if the whole house were full of shame and agony; a single step in any direction might take her into its midst—she did not dare venture there till she had finished the task that was before her. She went into the dining-room, with a strange, bewildered air still upon her, as if she were doubtful whether it was the room that she had known so well, or if it had, somehow, been changed in the last hour. The cloth was laid; the primroses were in their place; the candles were lighted, for it was nearly dinner-time; the blinds were down, and the curtains drawn. She looked at the easy-chair she had put ready for Alfred, with the little table beside it, and the papers and the violets. Then she went up to the mantelpiece and rang a hand-bell that stood on it.

“Jane,” she said, “take away Mr. Wimple’s slippers—he will not require them; put them with the other things as I told you.” She pushed the easy-chair to its place, away from the fire, put the little table back into the corner, and hid the papers and the violets out of sight, for she could not bear to see them. She looked at the cloth again, and taking up the things that had been laid for her carried them to the sideboard.

“You need not set a place for me,” she said to Jane, who still lingered, half wonderingly. “I dined early in town; it is only for Mr. Wimple”—and she went back to the drawing-room. She hesitated for a moment by the door; she felt as if the dead people who had known it in bygone years were softly crowding into it now, as if they would witness the scene that was before her, and look on at all she had to bear, just for a little while, before she became one of them. She gathered courage to walk to one of the chairs; she put the peacock screen beside her and waited. A quarter of an hour went by, while she stared at the fire with her hands clasped and her head drooping, or at the darkness outside the windows that looked towards the garden. But she could scarcely bear to turn her head in that direction. All the time she was listening, curiously and with a shrinking dread, for the sound of footsteps. Jane came to her.

“The dinner is ready,” she said; “it’s a pity Mr. Wimple don’t come—I wanted to get home to mother a bit early to-night. Her cough was worse this morning.”

“You can go as soon as you have finished your duties,” Aunt Anne said; “and remind me to pay you your wages, for I am often oblivious——”

The words died away on her lips. She heard the handle of the hall-door turn.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]