At another point farther down the promenade, a boy suffering from a slight cold in his head offered for sale a tray of those snake-like paper missiles which can be shot out suddenly with startling effect. But he seemed rather ashamed of his job and kept in the gloom as much as possible, now and then making a sale among the children, who ran in and out behind the more sheltered seats where their elders sat in winter coats.

Mr. Graham—as the originator of these attractions—felt exceedingly impatient, both with his fellow-townspeople and the visitors, as he sat watching. A chill air blew down the back of his neck and he was conscious of an incipient cold, which all added to his feeling of bitterness. "No earthly use trying!" he burst forth, rising abruptly from his seat. "English people don't know how to enjoy themselves, and it's no use trying to teach them."

He scowled first at the scene before him and then at his wife, who sat with Mrs. Bradford and Miss Ethel on a long wooden seat.

"You couldn't imagine the weather would be like this, dear," said Mrs. Graham soothingly.

"The air will do us good," added Miss Ethel, a little pink about the nose, but wishful to be polite.

"Well, there's plenty of it," he said bitterly, grabbing his hat, which threatened to blow away.

It was plain that he jested with an anxious heart, thinking of what might be said of his venture at the next Council meeting. Those very offensive fellows who always were against him would, of course, make capital out of this. . . . Suddenly he braced himself up and strode away across the lawn. They should frisk, if any influence of his could make 'em!

His wife looked after him sympathetically, then turned to Miss Ethel. "That's right!" she said. "Arthur will soon put a little more spirit into them. You see he knows how it is done. I shall never forget the way he entered into the spirit of the thing that time when we were abroad. If you could have seen him going down the Plage with a sort of a rattle in his hand and his hat on one side—— But there's something in the climate, of course."

"I suppose there must be," said Miss Ethel, with an involuntary glance at the couples jigging solemnly about the grass in front of her.

They sat silent for a time, feeling colder and colder, but sparing Mrs. Graham's feeling by remaining where they were. "Isn't that Caroline?" said Mrs. Bradford, after a long pause.

"I dare say. She told me the arrangements were somewhat different this evening, and she was to come off duty at half-past nine," said Miss Ethel.

Then Mr. Graham came back and bumped himself down so heavily on the wooden seat that the ladies felt a slight jar.

"No life!" he exclaimed. "No gaiety! No joie de vivre!" He paused, blowing his nose. "Well, this is the last time. I'll never attempt anything of the sort again."

"You must not say that. I am sure the Thorhaven people are grateful," murmured Miss Ethel.

"Old fool!" blurted out Mr. Graham with alarming ferocity and suddenness. "A woman like that ought to be kept indoors when other people are enjoying themselves, and only taken out in a churchyard on a chain. Fit for nothing else!"

"Arthur! What are you talking about?" said his wife, naturally startled.

"Well," he said, then had to swallow and choke. "Well, I bought one of those paper snakes just to encourage the lad and set things going a bit. Then I let it run out as I passed a dull-looking group that seemed not to be enjoying themselves. And—and——"

"Well, Arthur?"

"A wretched woman turned round and called me an impudent old scoundrel—told me she didn't want any grey-haired married men after her girls."

"I don't believe it! I can't! She meant somebody else. Don't you feel sure she must have meant her remark for some other passer-by, Mrs. Bradford?" said Mrs. Graham, much agitated by his annoyance.

Mrs. Bradford eyed Mr. Graham with stolid thoroughness. "I think she must. He doesn't look at all like that. But my husband used to say that the sedate middle-aged-looking ones were often the worst, so perhaps she may have thought the same."

"If she did, she was an idiot," said Mrs. Graham; then abruptly changed the subject. "Oh, there's Godfrey Wilson! I suppose he often comes through here on his way to his rooms."

"Yes, that's it. No fear of his wanting to dance with the girls on the promenade nowadays," answered Mr. Graham, beginning to recover himself by degrees. "Well, Lizzie, I think we've had enough of this, don't you? Shall we go in and have a bit of supper? Then I will see Mrs. Bradford and Miss Ethel home."

But as they walked away, he could not refrain from casting a backward glance at the decent woman struggling with her unruly air-balloons, and a sense of disappointed joie de vivre came over him once more. "I wish to goodness the whole bag o' tricks would blow away into the sea," he said. "I'd willingly pay the piper. I'm sick to death of seeing the things bob up and down in the wind."

"Are you?" said Miss Ethel in her sharp way. "Then why don't you buy them all up and send them to the children at the Convalescent Home that Laura is so interested in?"

"Now that's an idea," said Mr. Graham at once. For the feeling that it was his duty to give to a charitable institution when he could, had been handed down to him—it was a part of life, no less natural than having his hair cut or going to the dentist's. Out in the new, changed world this instinctive generosity might already be taking flight—scared away, as the fairies had been by steam traffic—but in Thorhaven it still remained.

So he went back to the woman selling air-balloons with restored self-satisfaction, and stood there in the high wind, diving into his pockets for the amount required. The air balloons blew about—purple, pink and white—all looking almost equally colourless by the faint light as they bobbed about the woman's head, impeding her view of the purchaser. A few moments later she was making her way home, thankful to be done with a job which seemed to her ridiculous.



Chapter XII

The End of the Gala

Godfrey Wilson waited until Mr. Graham had departed, then strolled slowly along the promenade towards Caroline. He had no real objection to anyone knowing that he spoke to her, but preferred to say a necessary word or two about the type-writing machine when Miss Ethel and her party were not there. This is what he told himself as he went along the path to the place where she stood with another girl, watching the dancing.

All the same it was something deeper than argument which informed his movements—something stronger than common sense. It was a stirring of the insatiable curiosity of the human being who has begun to be sexually interested in another. Though not exactly coarse-fibred, he was so far removed from anything attenuated as almost to be so. He only thought of himself.

He wanted to know what she was thinking of him, whether she liked him more or less than when they last met. And yet in spite of that he believed himself to be quite honest when he assured his conscience that he only wanted to say something about a paper carrier which had not worked well. For instinct is such a wonderful hand at camouflage that he believed quite honestly—despite previous experience—that he wanted nothing more. For the most wonderful thing about this kind of deception is that the same old trick may seem new time after time. Just as a healthy woman forgets what she has gone through on having her child, so a very virile man will forget—in a way—what he has experienced in pursuit of a girl.

At any rate, Godfrey Wilson was not at all conscious of going over old ground; though when he approached Caroline saying rather formally, "Good evening, Miss Raby. I just wanted to ask you if that paper carrier was working satisfactorily now——" he could not quite ignore the suggestion of a giggle in the attitude of Caroline's companion, who moved away at once with some murmur about finding a cousin. The "Two's company and three's none!" in her tone spoke as plainly as that. Wilson felt annoyed by it.

"Oh well, that was all I wanted to know," he said when she had given the information, and he spoke rather loudly and distinctly, so that anyone near might hear.

But as Caroline at once moved away to follow her friend, he suddenly felt that he wanted to say something more.

"The Gala has not been a very gay affair, has it? Nearly over now, though," he said.

She stood still again and they both glanced up and down the long promenade, which was fast emptying: just then a heavy cloud sailed across the moon, obscuring everything but those islands of light near the gas-lamps. The little coloured globes were by now more than half blown out, while the rest flickered uncertainly, accentuating the windy darkness. It was the last dance, and the band played very quickly. The few couples left were mostly men and girls more or less in love with each other who wanted to spin out the happy hours.

"Come!" said Wilson, putting his arm round Caroline's waist, on the impulse of the moment. "Let's dance these last few bars. It is all over."

All over—— It was curious how the words echoed in his own mind as he circled round faster and faster. He would not be dancing with little girls on the Thorhaven promenade any more after to-night. He would be a married man when the next Gala took place—ranged, respected; and though he felt a deep affection for Laura, he knew it was not on that altar alone that he had sacrificed his freedom. His wife's fortune would also just lift him above the dead-level where opportunities are very few, into the region where a clever and enterprising man with ambition is certain to find many; but he was sufficiently fond of Laura to make the prospect of matrimony with her agreeable, though he was not what is called a marrying man.

But a bridegroom of his type is bound to have regrets, unless in the thrall of an engrossing passion; and to-night Wilson felt these misgivings more acutely than he had done since his engagement—perhaps because the loss of bachelor freedom was getting so near. Therefore his dance with Caroline—though such a trivial matter in itself—was not simply a dance, but a last fling: and he felt a ridiculous desire to call out to the band to go on when he heard them stopping, so as to prolong something in his own life which he knew to be nearly at an end.

He did not do so, of course; and the performers at once began to pack up, thankfully looking forward to warmth and bed. Wilson and Caroline chanced to stop dancing near the turnstile leading on to the cliff, so they went out that way, which was near his lodgings, and equally convenient for her to reach the Cottage. One or two couples passed out just before them, but Caroline and Wilson were the last, and when they stepped into the clayey ground at the beginning of the cliff path, they seemed to plunge all at once into absolute darkness.

"Careful!" cried Wilson sharply. "You'll be over the cliff in a minute, if you don't look out." And he put his hand through her arm.

The sea gleamed very faintly under the black sky as they turned their backs on it and walked cautiously along the uneven path leading to the main road. At the corner she stood still and withdrew her arm. "I can manage all right now. It was so dark under the shadow of that wall. Good night."

"Oh no. I can't let you go home alone. You would be walking into a fence or spraining your ankle over a stone heap before you got to the Cottage," he answered. "Come on." And he took her arm again. "There! You see you are stumbling already."

She had trodden carelessly, disturbed by his touch, and she felt his grasp strengthen—then felt some instinct in herself fighting against it. "No. I'll go alone. I can quite well. I'd rather. I hate bringing you so far out of your way." She spoke in short phrases, nervously.

"Of course, I can't let you walk home by yourself in this," he said, his assurance somehow increased by her fluttering nervousness. "Don't be a silly girl. What are a few hundred yards to me one way or another?"

"Oh well!" Caroline suddenly gave way, feeling she had been making ridiculously too much of it. "Must be after eleven," she murmured. "The Committee extended the time to eleven. I expect they'll wish they hadn't, when it was such a cold night."

"I suppose they've been out after eleven before." But she knew by his tone he was not thinking of what he was saying. All that they had really to say to each other seemed to be passing through the electric current which passed between his strong, warm fingers and the tingling flesh of her arm—though they actually did discourse about Mr. Graham, and the balloons, and the financial disappointment which the Gala must have been to the Committee.

But near the gate of the Cottage Caroline resolutely withdrew her arm. "Please don't come up the drive. I'd rather you didn't. Good night!" She spoke in a low voice, hurriedly.

"Sure you're all right?" he said.

"Yes. Yes. Good night," she repeated.

He let her go a few steps, then she suddenly felt an arm of iron about her, the brief touch of his lips on her cheek—heard his voice saying with a queer accent of triumph: "I knew it would be like that!"

He was gone, leaving her standing there. He had satisfied the urge of a burning curiosity which had assailed him first as she sat in the window of Laura's drawing-room, and he noticed the magnolia texture of her healthy pallor and the little golden powdering of freckles on her nose. He had fought against that recollection. He had been ashamed to have begun it there. Now as he strode away into the dark he swore to himself that he was satisfied; he would never let himself go again; that he would be faithful to Laura in thought and deed.

As for Caroline—well, he remembered that she had walked out with a young man named Wilf; probably with others before that. A kiss more or less was not a serious thing to a girl of that sort; though he felt sorry, all the same, that he had been betrayed into giving it.

* * * * * *

Caroline made her way up the dark drive, and on reaching the door she felt in her coat pocket for the latch-key. It was not there. Then she sought hastily in her other pocket and could not find it. Evidently she had dropped it on the road somewhere, but no one could see a small article like that now, even if it lay on the pathway.

Well, there was nothing for it but to knock at the door. She looked up at the house which loomed above her, a dark block with faintly gleaming windows, and the thud, thud, made by her knuckles seemed extraordinarily loud. But the stillness which followed seemed intense—seemed only to be accentuated by the heavy sound of the sea which she never consciously heard in the daytime, any more than Miss Ethel or the other Thorhaven people.

After a while she knocked again, but the house still lay quiet—with the peculiar deadness about it of houses seen from the outside when those within are all asleep. In the room just above the front door Miss Ethel was deep in the first stupid slumber of exhaustion produced by a long day's work and the evening walk in a high wind. She was so tired that she had ceased some time ago to lie awake and listen for Caroline coming in, though she felt it was her duty to do so. But nearly every night now she went to bed early and lay like a log, not caring about anything more until the morning. If the world came to an end, she must go to bed—she could no more.

Caroline down below stood hesitating whether to throw a stone up or not, but remembered that Mrs. Bradford was so timid that she always covered up her ears with the blanket for fear of hearing burglars in the night—priding herself indeed on this timidity, and telling people that when you once had had a husband you lost your nerve for sleeping alone. So Caroline knew there was no help to be had in that quarter, and yet she did not like to startle Miss Ethel after that fall among the half-built houses which had been more than an ordinary faint, though no one made anything of it.

However, she knocked again on the door, blows that seemed to echo through the whole of Thorhaven. She glanced nervously over her shoulder, picturing the male inhabitants of Emerald Avenue and Cornelian Crescent and Sapphire Terrace, hastily flinging on trousers and boots to see what the matter was, while their wives made shrill-voiced ejaculations from the bed. She saw it all quite plainly on the darkness as the noise reverberated through the still night. Suddenly she lost her nerve. That kiss at the gate still hovered in the back of her consciousness, waiting for a fuller realization; but it had left her fluttering and tingling with emotion, so that she was less mistress of herself than usual.

Not that she had not been kissed before, and by others besides Wilf; but it had never been like this, because now for the first time a kiss woke a response which bewildered her. She began to cry.

Then she tried to pull herself together. After all, it could not be very late. What an idiot to be standing there crying, when Aunt Creddle lived only a ten minutes' walk away! Of course she could go and stay the night there. Very likely Aunt Creddle might be still up, for she took in washing for one or two people, and sometimes did the ironing after the children were in bed——

Caroline gave a sob of relief as she got to this, and turning her back on the house she began to run stumbling down the drive. When she reached the open road and was free from the heavy shadow of the privet hedge, she felt her self-confidence gradually coming back to her.

All the houses in Emerald Avenue were in darkness, but on nearing the Creddles she saw a little glimmer of light through the glass pane of the front door. It was as she had hoped, for in response to her knock, Mrs. Creddle herself unchained the door and peered out into the dark. "Is that somebody from Mrs. White's?" she asked. "I thought she wasn't expecting until next week at the——" The good woman broke off suddenly and her voice went up several notes: "You, Caroline!"

"Yes. I lost my latch-key and I can't make them hear. I was afraid I should startle Miss Ethel if I threw anything up at her window," said Caroline, speaking quickly. "I didn't know if it might give her a turn, after that fall of hers. And you can't waken Mrs. Bradford. She wraps her head up in her petticoat and sleeps like the dead."

"Well, it's a lucky thing I happened to be up finishing the ironing," said Mrs. Creddle. "Your uncle wouldn't have liked it if you'd come hammering at our door and letting the whole street know you were locked out."

"I didn't lose the key on purpose," said Caroline rather sullenly, as she followed her aunt into the warm, light kitchen. "I couldn't help it."

"What made you so late in?" said Mrs. Creddle. "Here, sit you down and I'll get you a drink of cocoa. Girls never used to be having latch-keys and careering about at all hours in my day."

"But it isn't your day now, thank goodness!" said Caroline, who was feeling excited and irritable. "I had a dance on the green after I came off duty, that was all."

"Prom's been closed a long time," said Mrs. Creddle. "I heard the next-door folks come back. But we was all young once, and I dare say you and Wilf have been kissing and making friends again on the way home. Is that it?"

For some obscure reason this question angered Caroline almost beyond bearing.

"I told you I'd done with Wilf, and I have," she said rather hysterically. "I wouldn't let him kiss me now for anything on earth. I don't know how I ever could fancy him. I——"

"Hush!" said Mrs. Creddle, glancing towards the stairs. "There's your uncle moving. I'm afraid he won't be best pleased to see you here, Carrie. And he would have pickle for his tea, though I told him not, so he's a bit fretty to start with."

Before she had finished speaking Mr. Creddle was upon them, hastily dressed in night-shirt and trousers. "Now, what's all this?" he said, and his tone certainly did betray the effect of cheap vinegar on a weak digestion.

So Mrs. Creddle explained matters while Caroline stood listening.

"Who came home with you?" said Creddle, turning with a dark face towards the two women. "I saw the bills. Dancing was over a good bit since. Who brought you home?"

"That's my business," she answered, pale and obstinate.

"Is it? Well, it's my business to take you back to your place," he said. Then he went on, raising his voice: "Do you think I'm going to have a niece of mine—that I've brought up like my own—stopping out all night? The lasses in my family and in your aunt's family, too, have always been respectable—and you will be an' all, so long as I have anything to do with you."

"I'm not going back to the Cottage to-night, though. I'm going to stop here and sleep on the sofa," said Caroline defiantly.

"Hush, Carrie," pleaded Mrs. Creddle anxiously. "That isn't the way to speak to your uncle, you know. He only means it for your good."

Mr. Creddle reached for his boots. "I won't have her stop out all night," he repeated. "What would your mother ha' thought if you'd done such a thing when you were in service?"

"Only I aren't in service like aunt was," answered Caroline, getting excited again. "Things are quite different from what they used to be then. You can't judge by what went on when you were young, can he, aunt?"

But Mrs. Creddle only shook her head; for somehow those words "stopped out all night" came echoing on from her youth and she felt the force of tradition at this moment no less than her husband. Always that phrase had conveyed something derogatory concerning the girl about whom it was used; and never would she or her sister Ellen have earned it while they were in service for any earthly consideration. She was still faithful to all the traditions of that skilled trade to which she had served a long apprenticeship, and which is one of the most intricate and difficult in the world. For a mass of oral knowledge handed down from one to another—accuracy, intelligence, self-control, a very high standard of personal chastity—these things formed only a part of the equipment of Caroline's aunts when they were young, and such girls as they formed an unorganized guild of service which can never be excelled in England, whatever comes. They were the best maid-servants in the world, and they did not know it. But they had a great pride in themselves, if not in their fine calling, and Mrs. Creddle felt this stir within her as she listened to her husband.

"Your uncle's right," she said. "Maybe other people will get to know you lost your key, and they mightn't believe you. You wouldn't like it to get about that you'd stopped out all night."

"I shouldn't care. I know I've done nothing wrong," said Caroline, beginning to take off her hat.

"Now, my lass!" said Creddle grimly, as he finished lacing his boots, "you're coming with me. Don't let's have no nonsense!"

"I tell you, I'm not coming," said Caroline, pale about the lips and trembling a little.

"Come! Come! Carrie," said Mrs. Creddle, beginning to cry. "Don't anger your uncle. He's that wore out he didn't know where to put himself when he got home to-night, and yet here he is with his boots on ready to take you back to your place. And he's always treated you like his own, and so have I, so far as I know how. Many's the little treat we've gone without, and never grudged it, so as to bring you up nice; and this is how you pay us back."

"Oh, aunt, I know you have," said Caroline, and her eyes filled, though they had been hard and dry a minute before. "I do know how good you and uncle have been. Only I won't be taken back as if I were a little trapesing general that had been misbehaving herself. I can't!"

"There's no talk of misbehaving," said Creddle. "And I aren't going to have any. You get your hat on and come with me."

Caroline's face stiffened; then she felt the touch of Mrs. Creddle's roughened, kind hand on her arm, and saw that jolly face puckered with crying which had smiled a welcome on her all her life. She gave a great gulp and walked to the door, Creddle following her.

For she belonged—poor Caroline—to the company of those who can really love, and they are always liable to give way suddenly when fighting those they love, because they cannot bear to see the pain.



Chapter XIII

Next Morning

Miss Ethel came into the kitchen as Caroline finished washing up the breakfast things. There was a constrained atmosphere about both of them which seemed even to affect the small fire which burnt sulkily in the grate, but nothing was said concerning the events of the previous night.

"Oh! Caroline, I wonder if you would kindly take a message for me to Miss Temple on your way to the promenade?" said Miss Ethel, rather stiffly.

But on the whole the affair of the previous night had been less odious than Caroline had feared. Still it had been rather like an ugly nightmare, all the same—Uncle Creddle banging on the door until one startled woman opened it while the other peered over the banisters. They had thanked Mr. Creddle, saying Caroline ought to be more careful: and Mrs. Bradford added that some burglar had no doubt picked up the key and would come and murder them in their beds. But there the matter ended.

Now, however, with the mention of Laura's name, the recollection of that kiss at the gate last night sprang up from some deep place within Caroline's consciousness and overwhelmed everything else. She could not go to Laura's door and perhaps be obliged to answer kind words and pleasant looks; she could not do it. "I'm sorry, Miss Ethel," she muttered, bending over the washing-bowl, "but there's not time."

Miss Ethel glanced at the clock and saw that there was time; but she could not insist, and so thought it more dignified to go away without making any remark. Still she felt irritated to an unreasonable degree, for her disturbed night had left her tired and nervous.

A few minutes later Caroline went out. There had been a change in the wind, which now blew lustily from the north-east, and the sun was shining. As she came down the street leading to the promenade, the surface of her mind responded to the pricking liveliness of the salt air and the sight of the open sea in front of her. A heavy rain towards dawn had washed down mud from the cliffs which the high tide had carried away, so now the water was a milky dun-colour, scattered with millions of opal lights, answering more closely just then to the thought of a jewelled sea than even the sparkling sapphire Mediterranean.

A middle-aged visitor who had passed constantly in and out through the barrier and knew Caroline by sight, gave her a sprightly "Good morning" as he went through. "Most invigorating! Most invigorating!"

"Yes. Makes you feel as if you could jump over the moon, doesn't it?" said Caroline gaily—that surface mind responding to his brisk jollity.

"Ha! Ha! So long as you haven't a liver to weigh you down," jested the rosy-faced gentleman. Then he stepped away down the promenade, well pleased with himself and his surroundings, and feeling that he was not such an old dog yet, so long as he could enjoy a joke with a girl on the promenade.

Caroline looked after him with a smile which gradually faded from her lips as the slight stimulation from without ceased to act. For beneath it all there was something inside, deep down within her, which was not to be touched by the influences of sea air or sunshine—something that watched anxiously and doggedly for one thing and would heed no other.

But the people came and went—came and went—until her knee ached with the clutch and her whole being with watching. . . . And still the one man she was looking for never put his broad-palmed, long-fingered hand on the iron bar or turned his heavy-featured face towards her little window.

She kept telling herself that she was tired after last night, so as to explain the ache, but her little, pale face was looking pinched in the light from the sea when Laura Temple paused at the barrier to say a few words. The two girls spoke to each other through the little window; one smiling, the other rather grave and reluctant. They talked a moment or two of trivial things—the weather, the Gala—but Caroline felt a queer animosity towards this pleasant, kind girl whose lover had kissed her the night before. Though she told her surface self that the kiss was only a "bit of fun" and meant nothing, that other self knew well enough that it had meant quite enough to constitute an injury to a bride who was to be married in less than three weeks' time.

She replied abruptly, turning over the leaves of her account book; irritated by this contradictory sense of being obliged to feel she had done an injury when she knew she really had not. So at last Laura thought she had a headache or something, and soon went on towards the Cottage.

* * * * * *

Miss Ethel came to the door, and at once took Laura into the living-room. Mrs. Bradford sat as usual on an arm-chair, idle with a clear conscience, because of her great, successful effort in the past.

Laura greeted them both gaily, for she felt the world was an agreeable place that morning. "I received your message with an almond cake from the baker's. I do hope your news is something good, too," she said.

But Miss Ethel did not respond to the mild pleasantry. "Yes. I had to get the baker's boy to take a message, because I am not very well to-day, and Caroline declined to call round on her way to the promenade."

"Said she hadn't time," added Mrs. Bradford. "She had quite sufficient time. And considering that she came in at all hours last night after pretending to lose the latch-key, I think she might have done what Ethel asked. No doubt she had been wandering about with some man. She went to the Creddles, intending to stay the night there, but Creddle brought her back."

"Oh, I feel sure she really did lose the key," said Laura. "It is a thing I have done myself before now. And I'm sure I never wandered about at night with young men."

"But she pretended that she had been here earlier and was unable to make anyone hear. I didn't like that. We are not Rip van Winkles," said Miss Ethel crisply.

Laura laughed, anxious to conciliate them both for Caroline's sake. "I dare say she was afraid of disturbing you. She is a kind-hearted girl, I am sure, and she would remember that you have been ill, Miss Ethel."

"And yet she declined to go on a simple errand for me this morning," said Miss Ethel. "No, they are all alike: all for self. The young people of the present day think of nothing but their own amusement."

She paused and added, anxious to be just, "Though I must own that Caroline was kind when I was ill. I dare say there is something good-hearted about her, at the bottom: but it is her general attitude which I so dislike."

"If we only had Ellen back!" moaned Mrs. Bradford from the depths of the arm-chair. "Or somebody like Ellen."

"You may just as well wish for butter at fourteen-pence a pound or oranges twelve a penny like we used to get in Flodmouth Market," retorted Miss Ethel. Then her voice changed, taking on a heavy, inward note. "Those days are done. They'll never come back any more."

"I mean," said Mrs. Bradford, who had all the curiosity often shown by stupid people, "what sort of a young man Caroline has got now. A great deal depends on that." And she looked inquiringly at Laura.

"I'm sure I don't know," said Laura. "Caroline's young men are her affair, not mine."

"At any rate," said Miss Ethel, "we have not brought you here on a busy morning to talk about them. We know you must have a great deal on your hands just now, preparing for the wedding."

"Oh, it makes a great difference, having no house to get ready," said Laura, flushing at the mention of her wedding, as she could not help doing, though she felt such a sign of emotion to be ridiculous at this time of day. "We must stay in my cottage until the house Godfrey has taken is at liberty, and they say that won't be before the end of March at the earliest."

"I don't think I should have liked that," said Mrs. Bradford. "I remember how my dear husband insisted on having everything absolutely complete, down to the very toilet-tidies on the looking-glasses, before he took me home as a bride. But there are few like him." And she sighed and glanced up at the quite imposing photograph which she had long since come to believe exactly resembled Mr. Bradford in life.

Laura felt a very little annoyed for the moment, being sensitive on this point of a house because hints had not failed to reach her that Godfrey was considered to be feathering his nest at her expense; but the next minute she forgot her annoyance in a tender flow of sympathy for this other woman who had lost everything which she herself was about to possess.

"Godfrey and I thought it preferable to waiting until the spring," she said gently. "But of course I should have liked my new home to be all ready for me, as yours was."

"Well, you needn't regret the toilet-tidies," said Miss Ethel. "Green paper with magenta ribbon, if I remember right." Then she paused a moment, nervously trying to steel herself for an effort which was exceedingly painful to her. "But what we asked you to come in for was this——" She paused again to clear her throat. "We have decided to sell this house, and we thought you would kindly convey the message to Godfrey for us."

"Of course I will," said Laura readily. The question as to why a letter could not have been sent to Godfrey was latent in her tone, but Miss Ethel did not answer it, because she herself did not know how she dreaded the effort of writing the letter.

"We knew you would be seeing Godfrey this afternoon—we thought perhaps you would break it to him."

"We have only just decided," added Mrs. Bradford. "But I daresay we shall be all right in Emerald Avenue. There is a pleasant window in the front bedroom facing south. So long as I have my knitting and a warm corner I can make myself happy. My dear husband once said that my disposition made me immune from the arrows of adversity. It was a beautiful thing to say, and I have never forgotten it."

"I'll be sure to tell Godfrey," said Laura, for once bluntly disregarding Mrs. Bradford's reminiscences, because she understood far more than they thought. It was plain enough that Miss Ethel had sent in this haste so as to make the matter irrevocable—to strengthen a decision almost beyond her powers. But once they had talked openly about leaving the house, it became an established thing.

"Tell Godfrey we can be out by Christmas, if he is able to effect a sale," said Miss Ethel. "We must leave the roses, of course, as there will be no garden in Emerald Avenue. The privet hedge has been clipped this year, but it will want pruning in January."

"Oh, Miss Ethel!" said Laura, with a catch in her throat, suddenly feeling the tears running down, though she had no thought of crying a moment earlier.

For Miss Ethel, as she stood there very erect, talking in that dry, clear tone, with her thin face towards the light and the right temple twitching a little, looking out at the garden she had loved to tend, was a sight very touching to a sensitive heart. And though Laura knew that it was not such a terrible misfortune to leave an agreeable house with a nice garden for a smaller one less pleasant, she still felt—ridiculous though her reason knew it to be—that the atmosphere of the low room was charged with something momentous. The throb! throb! throb! of a heavy sea at low tide came through the window, and it sounded to Laura's excited perceptions like the tread of something dreadful coming. Perhaps she was in a state of heightened emotion owing to her nearly approaching marriage, and that made her unduly impressionable, but she did experience a queer, helpless sense of destiny approaching such as you feel in dreams.

But Miss Ethel had conquered a momentary trembling of the lips caused by Laura's tears, and she crisply broke the silence. "I dare say you think we are making a mountain out of a molehill."

"No, no," said Laura eagerly. "Only you will have less work to do, and by next year at this time you may be really glad you are not here."

"Shall I?" said Miss Ethel. "I hope it may be so!"

"Don't take it like that, Miss Ethel!" said Laura in a quick, sharp tone, most unusual for her. "Things can never be as they were again. Is it likely? Look out into the world. There's not a corner where you don't feel the backwash of a storm of some sort. You and I have lived in such a sheltered happy way here that we don't realize what's going on unless we are brought up against it by something in our own lives." She wanted to be kind—yet words which were not very kind came out in spite of herself: and she felt herself trembling a little, as if they had to do with a deep emotion of her own which it distressed her to bring to light. "You can't feel sure of anything or anybody in the whole world. Anybody may change. They can't help it, any more than you can help seeing it." She was very pale now, aghast at what had grown from a faint stirring of unformulated doubt to a spoken reality. Almost every sensitive person has trembled thus before something which has sprung up into sight through the accidental touching of a hidden spot in the mind.

But that only lasted a moment—the next, she was not going to leave it so. Every particle of her being rebelled against what she had seen and she would rather doubt her senses than her love. "I except Godfrey, of course," she said, lifting up her head with a little laugh. "He remains stable."

"Yes. Yes. Of course," responded Miss Ethel absently, her mind so full of what they had just decided to do that she could think of nothing else. "Then you will tell Godfrey? I don't think there is any need for me to write."

"He will come in to see you, no doubt." Laura had remained standing since that moment when she rose hastily from her seat, and she went forward now with a gesture which showed she did not intend to sit down again. "I have such heaps to do this morning. I'm afraid I must run away now."

But as she touched Miss Ethel's hand with her own she was startled by its icy coldness. In a moment her sympathy flowed back again over those dreadful thoughts, washing them away. "I know you'll love your new home when you get settled, and you will have all your friends just the same. More, because you will be nearer the town." And she pressed her lips to that white cheek.

Miss Ethel did not seem to relax in that embrace, or to be in the least sensible of the natural kindness which permeated every fibre of Laura's being like the sweetness of sun-warmed fruit, but perhaps she did feel a little comforted by that soft human contact all the same.

For she went with the guest to the door and stood alone there watching until the sound of steps and the click of the gate gave place to silence. The builders had gone away for their dinner-hour, and the close-shaven grass in the sunshine near the high hedge seemed so cloistered—so much more remote than it really was. Before those new houses came, you need not see anything beyond the privet hedge unless you wished—— But now the outside was close upon her. It was time to give in and go away.

As she stood there with the neat curled hair over her forehead blowing in the wind, and her short skirt and blouse trimly set about her spare figure, she was thinking thoughts which were almost incredibly different from what she looked—seeking all over the world with a sort of desperate forlornness for a corner where her mind could find rest.

Then the very quiet of the half-built houses over the hedge reminded her that she must go in to fry the rissoles for the midday dinner, but she revolted from the anticipated smell of hot fat with a sensation of physical sickness. For she had never possessed a robust appetite, and until this last year had scarcely ever sat down to a meal prepared by herself: so she did not bring to the task that interest which a good appetite or a natural taste for cooking will give even to those who have had no previous experience.

However, it had to be done, so she went in, catching sight as she passed through the hall of a roll of music returned by Laura: but it failed to stir any regret that she was always too tired to practise nowadays. Leisure—which she had all her life regarded as a right, no more to be considered than water or air—was hers no longer.

But she had no idea that she was sharing the exact experience of thousands of women throughout England—throughout Europe: that as she stood there alone over a stove in a quiet little house in a remote part of Yorkshire, carrying out the everyday details of her narrow existence, she was more widely and actually international than the manual workers themselves.

She only knew that she loathed the smell of frying fat.



Chapter XIV

The Cliff Top

Caroline had just come back from her tea and stood at the door of the pay-box, talking to Lillie, who was about to go off duty. The bright light reflected from the sea shone on the two girls, and on some children with brown legs and streaming hair who raced along the promenade.

"Going for a walk?" said Caroline, glancing idly in front of her at the expanse of dappled water.

"No. Mother has a bad cold and we're full up with visitors. I shall go straight home."

Then—just at this least expected moment—the thing happened for which some hidden feeling within her had been so intently waiting all day. She saw Godfrey standing there as she had pictured, with his broad, long-fingered hand on the iron bar; the hand so indicative—had she but known—of the contradictions in his character.

Lillie sat down again to release the clutch, and he passed through to the promenade. "Oh, lovely afternoon, isn't it?" he said, and walked briskly away between the neat rows of bedding plants.

The two girls looked after him; at last Lillie said with a slight giggle: "Seems in a hurry, doesn't he? But I expect he's got his young lady waiting for him. My word, she'd give him beans if she knew he saw you home last night, wouldn't she?" A pause, during which Caroline failed to respond; then, rather shortly: "Well, so long!" But Caroline did not notice; her whole mind bent on Godfrey's retreating figure as it went firmly down the broad concrete walk of the promenade—for now the question she'd been craving to ask all day had been answered. He thought nothing about what happened last night. The kiss had been nothing to him. He intended to show her that he did not recognize any slightest claim on his attention which she might think she had gained from it.

Then she had to cease looking after him in order to answer a stout lady visitor who made a point of being nice to the girl at the pay-box. "Yes—a great pity the weather was not like this for the Gala."

But all the time she was saying to herself, with the queer, dazed feeling which comes from a sudden shock of discovery: "I'm gone on him! I'm fair gone on him, and him going to be married!"

Even in her thoughts she usually chose her words—just as she kept herself scrupulously "nice" underneath to match her carefully tended hands and well-brushed hair. But now she reverted back to the expressions of her earliest girlhood. "I only meant a bit of fun, and I'm fair gone on him."

Oh! it was desolating—most miserable. There was nothing on earth to be got from it but heartache. She had tried to do the best for herself, and Fate had treated her like this—stabbed her from behind. It was abominable that she should be punished so for a bit of fun when other girls got off scot-free who had done all sorts of things that she would be ashamed of doing. Life was unfair. It was horribly unfair——

An Urban District Councillor on his way home separated himself from the stream of men with bags which emerged blackly from the railway station and flowed over Thorhaven between half-past five and half-past six. "Fine evening! Fine evening!" he said, bustling through the barrier.

For a moment the agony lifted; but when he was gone it started again worse than ever—like the pain in an inflamed nerve. The waste of it! She had thrown away her best asset for nothing. She could no longer fall in love with the rich young man who might want to marry her one day—as she had always more or less sub-consciously expected—because she loved Godfrey. Instinct warned her that the best goods in her shop window were gone without any return, and for the moment her chief feeling was an intense anger against fate first and then against Godfrey.

Not that she blamed him particularly for the kiss. Any man would kiss a girl when he saw her home if he had a chance, of course. But she was vaguely furious with him because he was the cause of such a disorganization of all her life plans. She felt cheated, though she did not realize what she was cheated of, as she sat there looking out of her little window towards the north.

Through the remainder of the evening and all the next day her mood remained thus—indrawn and sombre. The people going on the promenade passed by her like marionettes, and she like another marionette responded, but there was no feeling in it at all. She might equally well have seen the whole lot of them, herself included, jerked by wires from a sardonic heaven that had no purpose, no plan—only such figures of thought were not within her scope; still the feeling was there, corroding her faith in life.

At last Saturday night came. But the week of long working hours during which she had been constantly in the sea air and yet protected from wind and rain, had left her filled with vitality, despite her bitterness of mind. The night was not dark, because of a growing moon and pale stars peppering the sky, and as she walked along the light road with no care for her footsteps she found a vent for that unusual vitality in a certain habit of her girlhood which she had almost entirely dropped during the past year or two. Often enough before that, she had walked about the Thorhaven streets imagining herself in all sorts of impossible situations, though always happy, beloved and rich. But she had since given it up, as she had put away her dolls a year or two earlier; and she now felt a secret shame in abandoning herself to it again—as if she had at fourteen taken to playing with dolls once more.

So she let herself imagine Godfrey walking by her side with his arm through hers—kissing her at the gate. After all, nobody would ever know. It hurt nobody; it was all she would ever get. Then weakened by her dreaming she actually did see Godfrey come forth from a clump of dark elders and had not the power to walk straight on as she would have done half an hour earlier. Instead, she stood still and looked at him—disturbed, unhappy, yet with the dull bitterness suddenly gone.

He was close to her before he spoke; then he said hurriedly: "I only wanted to apologize for the other night. I hope you were not offended?" But he knew quite well she was not: it was the urge of that curiosity still burning within him which drove him to find out what she had felt—how his kiss had left her—whether he had been able to reach anything in her.

"You didn't seem to be bothering much about me when you went through into the promenade," she said at last.

He was answered in part; the next moment she felt his arm through hers, just as she had been dreaming on the road, only the reality had a compelling magnetism which was beyond any dreams. "Let us go a little way along the cliff," he said. "I want to speak to you. I want to explain." He spoke excitedly, with a sort of jaded eagerness in his tone; and though she knew her own unwisdom, she went with him.

The turning towards the cliff was just beyond the Cottage, on the opposite side of the road, and consisted of a gravel path that opened out into a small space on the cliff top. It was a lonely spot, out of the way of strolling visitors at that time of night: the bench in the middle of the gravelled space lay empty in the luminous sea-twilight with a great arch of sky overhead and the waves below catching a gleam from moon and stars on every ripple. Though Thorhaven might not be beautiful on a Gala evening, with futile little lamps and starved visitors blown about by the wind, it had, on such nights as these, an exquisite, cool beauty which appealed to the spirit as well as the senses.

As they sat down, Caroline could feel his fingers trembling on her arm; suddenly his kiss struck hard on her lips and her head fell back so that he could see the dark rims of her eyelashes. "Ah! You're in it too—you're in it too," he murmured triumphantly—caring for nothing but that triumphant knowledge.

She knew what he meant—they were both in it. Their oneness enveloped her in a cloud of rapture. Then she jerked herself out of his embrace. "No. No. I can't have you kissing me. It isn't fair to take your fun out of me when you're going to be married directly. I don't know how you can want to do it."

He jumped up without speaking and walked towards the cliff edge. "Good God!" he burst out. "You don't imagine I want to be in love with you! I'm in hell—hell! Whatever I do, I see your face. It's beyond all reason——" He stopped short, amazed and enraged by this strange, biting curiosity which made him mad about a girl who was nothing—who was not even really pretty. What could influence men in this way—driving them to insane acts for the sake of some one woman out of all the millions? There must be something not yet understood. Suddenly he dropped on to the seat, holding his head in his hands. "I don't know what on earth I am going to do," he said.

She looked at him—so helpless in his passion—and the protective instinct of a real woman for her man began to stir in her: so, in spite of her own pain, she tried hard to find something to say that would comfort him. "You—you'll get over it," she said, her voice shaking. "It isn't as if you and I had been going together long, you know. You'll soon forget me."

"Don't!" he said sharply.

She drew back offended. "Oh! All right." She rose with a sort of dignity. "I think I'd better be going home. It must be getting late."

"Now you're vexed." He peered at her—haggard-eyed in that curious twilight from the sea. "Can't you see that everything you do and say makes me want you more? If you'd only turned out a fool!" He drew a long breath.

"I must be going home," she repeated, moving away.

He caught hold of her dress as she went. "Carrie, I can't let you go. I can't do without you."

"You'll have to," she said sombrely. "We shall both have to. There's no help for it."

He waited a moment, then the words seemed to come out of themselves—despite him. "I'm not married yet, you know."

She started. "You don't mean——" Then she backed away from him, the silhouette of her slim figure very clear against the luminous background of sea and sky—every line of it dragging at his senses—hurting him with pity. "You know you couldn't do it," she said after a pause. "We neither of us could. It would kill her. Besides, I couldn't sneak another girl's man after the banns were up and the cake bought—a girl who'd never done me any harm. I aren't so low down as all that, yet."

"Anything is better than marrying without love," he said, but he said it half-heartedly. How was a decent man to throw over a charming devoted girl to whom he was to be married in a fortnight, shaming her before all her little world after he had sought and won her? He thought of Laura's soft acquiescence with an agony of self-reproach and impatience. Then he heard Caroline speaking again, her voice low and clear with the murmur of the sea running in and out of it—he felt it go to his heart.

"It's too late to begin to think whether you'll be miserable or not now," she said. "You made her fond of you. It was your own doing. And you wouldn't get me if you did give her up. I'd no more take you from her, now she's got her wedding-dress and all, than I'd stick a knife into a baby sleeping in its pram. She worships you—can't you see that? It would spoil all her life."

"What about yours—and mine?" he said. "You don't really care for me, or you couldn't talk like that."

She looked away to the glimmering sea, not troubling to answer him. What was the use? He knew.

"Well, I'll be getting on," she said at last.

But he found the hopelessness in her voice unbearable.

"Carrie, we can't leave it like this," he said. "I can't do without you; that's a fact. We must arrange something." He hesitated. "You—you won't cease to be friends with me just because I'm married, will you?"

She moved so quickly out of the reach of his hand that she stood poised on the extreme edge of the cliff. "What do you mean?" she said fiercely. "Is that what you take me for? Then let me tell you I never carried on with a married man in my life and never shall. You're as good as married now. Leave me alone. You think you can talk to me like that because I'm fond of you. But before I'd have anything to do with those underhand ways, I'd jump over this cliff and have done with it. I would, too. I aren't that sort, you know—though I have behaved like a silly fool."

But her very defiance only gave his curiosity a keener edge, and he moved towards her with his hand outstretched. "You won't get out of it like that," he said. "Do you suppose I'm going to let you go now, and never see you alone again? I will see you, or I'll chuck the whole thing up to-morrow morning, come what may."

She glanced at him sideways, temporizing: "I shall be meeting you, no doubt."

But he was not to be deceived. "You mean you have done with me unless I break off my engagement. Very well. I'll do it."

She shook her head. "That's nonsense," she said sharply. "You know you can't do it."

"It is only what you did yourself," he said sullenly. "You threw over that young man I saw you with at the dance, and I don't suppose you considered it a crime."

They spoke as enemies, throwing the barbed words back and forth.

"Of course I didn't."

"But why not? It was the same thing."

"No; that was quite different," she said.

"I don't see it. Why different?"

"Because——" She struggled: but suddenly her voice began to tremble. "Oh, I didn't know what love was like then. But he never cared as Miss Laura does. And I shouldn't have minded so much about her, if I hadn't found out for myself——" She broke off. "Only three weeks from the wedding. You couldn't do it, either. Not when it came to only three weeks from the wedding, you couldn't. You know that as well as I do."

"But you always say everybody ought to do the best for themselves. I remember your saying so. What sense is there in spoiling our two lives for the sake of a third?" he said, eagerly and yet heavily. "Why can't you act up to what you believe in this instance, just as you did when you threw over that young man?"

She shook her head, looking at him through unshed tears. "I don't know," she said. "But when it comes to, you can't do it. You know you can't, either. If we were the weak sort, we might."

He let fall her hand which he had been holding and sat down heavily, almost with a groan, upon the wooden bench. It was true enough, what she said. They were both better than their word.

And yet it was not any hope of a future reward which sustained them as they sat there side by side, not touching each other, while the Flamborough lights swung out monotonously across the sea and the waves washed up with regular beat upon the shore. They imagined they believed this life to be probably all—and yet they did not seize what they could get and let everything else go. It was because love constrained them. They felt within themselves the stirring of their own immortality. But they experienced none of the exultation of sacrifice as they turned away from the cliff edge and walked silently, glumly, towards the high road, she trying to wipe the tears away with her fingers so that he should not notice.

As they neared the gate of the Cottage, Godfrey said suddenly: "You don't think I'm frightened of what people say?"

She shook her head. "I aren't so silly as that." She hesitated, then held out her hand. "It's good-bye, then." But her voice trembled again, though she tried to keep it steady, and the next minute she was in his arms, crying her heart out.

"Caroline! What are we to do? What are we to do?" he said, the tears hot in his own eyes. "I can't give you up. I can't live without you."

She clung to him, not answering, and his mind darted back to the name he had given her that first time he had his arm about her at the promenade dance. A nymph on fire. There was something just so fresh and cool about her in the midst of all her passion——

Then he felt her releasing herself gently, but with determination. "What's the use of beginning it all over again?" she said. "You know there's nothing to be done. I aren't that sort. And you aren't either. Don't you know she's got the bride-cake bought, poor girl?"

He could not speak. Her childish insistence on the wedding-cake having been purchased was like a knife through his heart. If only he had left her alone!

"I deserve to be shot for letting you in for this," he said hoarsely. Then he broke out again. "I can't stand it! I must break off my engagement—whatever it costs and however she suffers. You're suffering. And I am! Good God, I should think I am."

But he spoke the last word to empty air—and the next moment he could hear the click of the gate as she slipped away from him up the dark drive.



Chapter XV

The Cinema

On Monday evening Caroline stood at the corner of Emerald Avenue, not sure whether to go down it or not, for she had not visited the Creddles since Mr. Creddle so ignominiously took her back to the Cottage at midnight.

While she was hesitating a cab-load of sunburnt children, accompanied by a stout, jolly-looking mother, went by on their way to the railway station. It was the beginning of that exodus which would grow more general every day during the next fortnight until the season was over. Already cards had appeared in one or two windows, and those who had let their houses furnished for "August month" while they found shelter in tumble-down cottages, tents or converted railway carriages, were coming back—glad now the money was in their pockets that they had borne the discomfort, though each year on departing they said "Never again!" A sea-gull flew across the sky with the pink sunset on its outspread wings, and below, the grey church stood in a tender haze against a sheet of gold. But this peaceful time at the end of summer only increased Caroline's restlessness. There was nothing she wanted to do. She neither liked to walk alone, nor to find friends.

So she stood there listlessly, trying to make up her mind whether she should go to see Aunt Creddle or not; and as she did so a slim woman of about forty who had been very pretty came down the Avenue. Caroline remembered quite well what Mrs. Creddle had said about her. She had gone into an office as typist instead of being in service like the other sisters, and thought herself too fine for those who wanted her, but was not fine enough for those she wanted. So one sister married a farm labourer who became a prosperous farmer, the other did not disdain a chimney sweep, and both now possessed houses and children and warm places of their own in the world, while the prettiest still tripped with a rather over-bright smile about the Thorhaven streets, aware of really superior refinement, but not finding much comfort in it.

She stopped to speak to Caroline—and without knowing why, Caroline felt as if a cold wind out of the future had blown drearily across her mind.

"Waiting for Wilf?" asked the girl, smiling. "He must have missed you, for I met him a minute ago. I suppose you are going to this new play there is on at the Cinema."

"Oh, I don't know," said Caroline vaguely. "I don't see much of Wilf now. Lovely night, isn't it?"

This was crude but sufficient, and the woman went on, leaving Caroline once more aimlessly pondering. At last she began to walk slowly down the Avenue to the Creddles' house, calling out at the door as usual: "Hello, aunt!"

Mrs. Creddle at once came out of the kitchen, her jolly face rather anxious. "You never came near yesterday, Carrie. We couldn't think what had gotten you."

"I was busy at home when I wasn't at the prom.," said Caroline. "I've come now to see if Winnie would like to go with me to the pictures."

"Well——" Mrs. Creddle hesitated. "Your uncle was in a fine taking on Thursday night. He seems to have an idea in his head that you were with somebody you daren't speak about. But you'd never have aught to do with a married man, I'm sure, Carrie."

"Well, you may make your mind easy, aunt. The man I was with was single. But I'm not going to say anything more about him. If I have to be answerable to you and uncle for every young fellow I chance to walk home from the prom. with——"

"You know we don't expect that," said Mrs. Creddle, still a little uneasy. "But I told your uncle I could trust you, and I do."

"Where is uncle?" said Caroline, seizing on the nearest pretext for changing the subject.

"Oh, he's gone to the Buffaloes," said Mrs. Creddle; and though her tone implied contempt and disapproval, it was but the natural prejudice of all good women for an institution purely masculine. "They have a Grand Council or some such rubbish to-night," she added; then she raised her voice and called "Winnie!" and imparted the joyful news to a little, rosy-faced girl whose eyes shone with ecstasy. To go to the pictures—at night—and with Cousin Carrie—Life could hold no more, and she sped off to change her frock, like an arrow from the bow.

Caroline had turned away and was staring rather moodily out of the window. Then she felt a hand on her arm. "Carrie, it wasn't young Mr. Wilson you were with, was it?" Mrs. Creddle said in a low voice.

In the involuntary start which followed the words she had her answer; letting her hand drop, she turned an agitated face towards Caroline. "Then you weren't after no good on Thursday night. Your uncle was right. Oh, Carrie, how could you—with him going to be married in a fortnight? I should have thought you would have more self-respect."

Caroline swung round upon her, eyes ablaze. "Who told you I was with Mr. Wilson? You don't want to listen to everything you hear in Thorhaven, surely! And if I was, I was doing no wrong."

"I don't know how you could, Carrie," repeated Mrs. Creddle. "Trapesing about at night with Miss Laura's young man when you ought to have been abed—and after the way she has always treated us all. Why, the very frock Winnie is putting on now is made out of one of hers. I should take shame to try and make mischief between her and her young man, and with him going to be married directly."

"Don't talk such rot, aunt. I have done nothing to be ashamed of," said Caroline rudely, "and I've not set eyes on him since Thursday night. You may talk about Miss Laura—but I owe her nothing. I've paid all back, and more." She paused a moment, but pride, suspense, emotion unnaturally repressed—all combined to betray her into saying what she had never meant to say to any human being. "You think I've behaved badly, do you? Well! I might have taken him away from her altogether. He wanted to throw her over, only I wouldn't have it."

"Oh!" Mrs. Creddle gasped; then went on in a low tone of apprehension and unhappiness. "I didn't think it was as bad as that, Carrie."

"Bad!" Caroline stared with genuine surprise at this reception of her bomb-shell. "He wanted to marry me, I tell you."

Mrs. Creddle shook her head. "Poor Miss Laura! Well, I didn't think he was that sort, but you never know." She paused, then said gently: "My dear little lass, don't you know all men talk like that when they want to make fools of silly girls? I don't suppose there's hardly a girl gone wrong in Thorhaven but the man has sworn he wanted to marry her. It's a trick as common as sin."

"You don't know what you're talking about! You've lived among a low lot in this terrace until your mind has got poisoned," cried Caroline, maddened with anger and shame. "You're a wicked woman to have such horrible thoughts. I'm telling you the truth. May I die to-night if I aren't!"

"Oh, Carrie!" said Mrs. Creddle, wincing as if she had been struck. "How can you speak to me like that? I don't doubt you think it is all true. I don't doubt he said he would throw her over and marry you. But he didn't mean it. You never suppose he is going to give up Miss Laura and all that money, to marry a girl that is nobody and has nothing; I can't believe it! I never should believe it unless I saw you with his wedding-ring on your finger."

"You can believe or not, as you like," replied Caroline, regaining a little of her self-control. "At any rate, you must swear to keep it to yourself, or I will never tell you anything again as long as I live."

"I shan't want to spread such news abroad, you may be sure," said Mrs. Creddle. "But you must promise me not to trust yourself with him alone any more, Carrie. You don't know men as I do, and he can't be up to any good if he talks like that to you."

"Oh, very well," said Caroline, looking out of the window.

"I can see he's got hold of you," said Mrs. Creddle anxiously. "Oh dear! I don't know what I am to do. I daren't tell your uncle, for there's no saying what that would lead to. But you must be fond," she continued, exasperated, "if you think he really wants to make you his wife. Just fancy your marrying a relation of Miss Ethel's! Why, she'd fall down dead on the spot!"

"That wouldn't stop me," said Caroline grimly. "Lots of matches far more unequal than that come off nowadays. But you may make your mind easy. I aren't going to marry him—and I aren't going to behave in the way you seem to be afraid of, either. Only I'll just tell you this, aunt—I can never, never feel the same to you again after what you've said."

"Well, I can't help it!" answered Mrs. Creddle. "You'll come to thank me some day, Carrie, and I suppose I shall have to wait for that." All the same, the good woman's lip was trembling.

But Caroline, angry and dry-eyed, went to the door and called in a shrill voice: "Winnie! Winnie! Are you ready?"

* * * * * *

Once outside, however, in the broad evening light, with the cool wind from the sea touching her face and the colours of the girls' bright dresses on the road growing faint, like flowers in a garden at sunset, Caroline began to feel somewhat less bitterly towards Mrs. Creddle. She remembered that her aunt had been in service as a girl, and that no self-respecting maid-servant of those days would have walked out late at night with a man who was a relative of their mistress, nor would any decent-living gentleman have suggested such a thing. But Aunt Creddle forgot that she was a business girl—self-poised, making her own position in the world as she chose.

Still her pride continued to smart even when she reached the little Thorhaven picture house. She sat down in the semi-darkness and fixed her eyes mechanically on the screen before her, but very little of Winnie's clear happiness communicated itself to her. After a while, however, she did begin to feel less miserable, because no one can be the cause of that rippling joy in a delighted child without being touched by it a little. But her main feeling was relief. At last she was free to be as utterly wretched as she liked. No one could peer into her mind as she sat there, apparently enjoying herself; she was wrapped in a secrecy so deep that no human being could touch even the fringe of what she was thinking about, for Winnie's remarks were only like the chirp of a bird on the window-sill when the window is closed.

But beneath all her restless unhappiness she was still certain that every word Godfrey said to her on Thursday night was sincere. A sort of nobleness in her own love—despite the flippant beginnings of it—made her able to believe that he had not considered money or ambition any more than she had done. It was the defenceless kindness of Laura herself which had conquered them both. They were unable deliberately to deal her such a blow.

But across her thoughts came the legend on the screen after the whirl of moving figures. At first she followed the words without being aware of them; when all at once they leapt into her consciousness with a sort of shock.

"I swear I want to marry you!"

Immediately on that a man appeared on the screen with a girl in his arms, but Caroline was not going to let her mind accept any possible relationship between this story and her own. Then Aunt Creddle's speech forced itself through the barrier she tried to put up and she had to remember: "Men always talk like that, Carrie. Don't you know that men always talk like that when they want to get over a girl?"

She moved restlessly in her seat, turning to Winnie: "This is a silly film."

But she had to go on thinking about it. Supposing Aunt Creddle were right? No, she couldn't be!

The memory of Godfrey's face as he looked up at her on the cliff ledge after she had refused him came back more vividly than the picture on the screen. That was real. If she were to doubt him, she must doubt the sea booming on the sands and the moon in the sky——

But if men did always say that? He might love her. She could not believe that he felt no real love for her then. But could he be wanting her love and everything else as well—like the man in the film?

She remembered that at the beginning of the interview he had suggested their being friends after his marriage. Could it be that he really had that in his mind all the time? Did he somehow know—though he loved her so then, and really meant what he said—that he was not going to mean it twenty-four hours later?

Suddenly she felt an overwhelming desire to ask him these questions. She must know. She must have an answer. It was all very well to say they would not meet again. When she said it she meant it most sincerely; but there must be some sort of settling up before they parted for the whole of their lives. It could not be cut off short like that; just a kiss and running away down a dark garden. They must for once know exactly where they stood before the shutter went up and they could never truly look into each other's thoughts any more.

She turned to the child, who sat wide-eyed and rosy-cheeked, staring at the pictures. "I say, Winnie, I think we must be going home now," she said. "It's getting late."

She spoke gently, with a guilty consciousness of dragging Winnie away from a rare treat; but her restlessness would not let her sit still watching these changing, grimacing faces any longer.

Poor Winnie looked a little crestfallen but cheered up under the promise of chocolates, and a minute or two later they were outside in the starlit night, tasting the salt freshness of the air.

Caroline halted a moment, looking down, taking no notice of Winnie, then she said abruptly:

"We'll go by Beech Lane."

"But that's so dark," pleaded Winnie, looking up anxiously, sensitive as children are to the changed atmosphere when something goes wrong in the mysterious grown-up world.

"Oh no; not with the houses still lit up," said Caroline.

"There's such a lot of trees. I hate them old trees," said Winnie under her breath.

But Caroline did not hear her, and the two walked on silently, side by side, under the shadow of the large beech trees which formed an avenue beside the pavement. They went so very slowly that Winnie asked if Caroline were tired, but receiving no answer she plodded on, still full of the vague puzzled discomfort which all children know, and which they never speak of to any human soul. At last she felt the hand in her own close nervously, and then two people emerged from a gateway in front of them.

"Oh!" she said, in her high little voice, "there's Mr. Wilson and Miss Temple. They're going into the house. I like Miss Temple, don't you? She gave mother——"

"Hush!" interrupted Caroline, her whole being absorbed in watching the couple who now stood together in the bright light which streamed from the open door.

"Coming in, Godfrey?" said Laura. Caroline could hear quite plainly from her dark ambush under the beeches.

Then followed a moment's silence, during which Caroline's heart beat so loudly that it almost seemed to her as if they must hear the thump! thump! thump! ever so far away, like a sound of drums beating. Then Godfrey said: "Oh yes; I'll come in. It is only about half-past nine."

She went first into the house, and he waited outside a moment with the light streaming through the doorway full on his face. All at once Caroline started to run—she must see him alone. She must speak to him.

"Cousin Carrie!" piped Winnie. "You're hurting my hand! You're hurting my hand!" But the door closed before they got across the road, and they were alone in the dark lane.

Caroline looked at that shut door, moved by an emotion which was not only the outcome of the experience of the moment, but which was also a part of her very flesh and blood. Her own mother. Aunt Creddle, Aunt Ellen, generations of women before them—all had lived "in service" and had watched the drama of life going on behind room doors which were always closed lest "the servants" should hear or see. And so acute had these senses become, sharpened by closed doors, that they always did see and hear, though they did not in the least resent this attitude of their employers, considering it just a part of the existing scheme of life.

But Caroline was different; and as she walked slowly along with Winnie disconsolately trudging by her side, she had an angry sense of being shut out from all sorts of things which she had as much right to possess as any other girl. She hated that shut door—Laura and Godfrey inside, and herself outside; then she thought how easily she could destroy all that if she liked, and how Laura's easy, flowery courtship was only possible because she allowed it.

Winnie spoke again and had to be answered; then Caroline went back to the aching round of thoughts again. She wouldn't be put aside like that—knowing nothing. She would give up, but she would not be left outside, guessing what was going on behind closed doors.

She tramped along, dull, dry-eyed, assailed by a strange feeling that she belonged nowhere, neither to Aunt Creddle's sort, nor to Laura's; yet all the time passionately aware that she was a "business girl" and as good as anybody.

Then there was Winnie again. Well, poor kid, she'd had no sort of an evening—— "Look here, Winnie, I'll take you again next week and we'll stop all the time."

"Honour bright?" said Winnie.

"Honour bright!" said Caroline. So Winnie cheered up, because she knew Cousin Carrie did not break promises.



Chapter XVI

New-Comers

During the night the wind freshened, then for three days it blew half a gale from the south-west. The sea was no longer a playfellow for little boys and girls, but a monster whose white fangs gleamed through the grey-blue water far out towards the horizon, ready to crunch the bones of ships and sailors alike with a sort of roistering glee.

A few visitors still fought their way up and down the promenade; and if of a sanguine temperament, they shouted above the wind, as they passed Caroline in the pay-box, that this really ought to blow the cobwebs away! But the furnished houses and apartments near the sea, where a turn-up bed on the landing could not be obtained for love or money six weeks ago, were now mostly empty. Even the visitors from Flodmouth who had remained in Thorhaven because they were so near home, began to think comfortably of lighted streets, theatres, cinemas, concerts—a general settling down to their ordinary routine of work and play.

When Caroline came out of the pay-box at the tea hour, she also realized that the season was over. A sort of flat finality lay over everything, despite the crispness of the air and the aromatic, clean fragrance of the masses of sea-weed which had been torn from the floor of the ocean in the storm and now lay drying on the shore.

Well, that was all over. She said so to herself as she walked away, feeling dull, resigned—it would be all the same a hundred years hence.

She had not seen Godfrey since that night on the way from the cinema when she and Winnie caught a glimpse of him from under the dark shadow of the trees, therefore it was plain that he must be avoiding her. He knew her hours at the promenade, and could easily have said a word in passing through even if he did not wish for anything more. He had taken her at her word; but being a woman, the desire to talk everything out grew during those three long stormy days to an agony of exasperation which was almost worse to bear at the moment than the loss of Godfrey himself.

After passing out of the promenade she came back again, saying to Lillie over her shoulder that she would go home by the cliff because she had a headache and a blow would do it good. She told herself the same thing. But beneath all that she was eagerly aware that Godfrey's lodgings lay in that direction. As she went down the terrace she could see the windows all open and the landlady moving about inside with a duster. For a moment she stood perfectly still, experiencing that sensation of physical sickness which comes from sudden emotional disappointment. She did not think at all, only suffered under the maddening frustration of her desire to have it all out with Godfrey once more before they finally parted. The waves and the sky did not exist for her, though they would always give dignity to the memory of what passed between Godfrey and herself that night on the cliff top. For while the seaside accords with frothy impermanence in love as no other background seems able to do, it is because those playing at passion feel subconsciously how little their light loves matter in face of that unchangeableness. Caroline stood there until she recovered herself; then the landlady came to shake the duster from the window and she walked slowly towards the Cottage.

* * * * * *

The ladies were already seated at tea when Caroline opened the front door. Miss Ethel at once rose from the table with a dish of jam in her hand. "Caroline's tea," she said briefly.

"But you have not taken any yourself," objected Mrs. Bradford. "And I must say I don't see why Caroline should have it when our stock is getting so low."

"We promised to board and lodge her properly in return for her service, and I'm going to do it," said Miss Ethel with a tightening of the lips.

"Well, no one can say she has done her fair share of the bargain; at least, during the last few days," said Mrs. Bradford. "She seems in a sort of dream. Here! give me a bit more of that jam before you take it away."

"Caroline has never forgotten to bring my morning tea once since I was ill," said Miss Ethel. "But she certainly does not seem herself now. I don't know what is the matter with her."

"Got her head full of young men, no doubt," said Mrs. Bradford. "It makes some girls like that, of course."

She glanced instinctively at her husband's picture, speaking as one having first-hand information on all amatory matters.

Miss Ethel went into the kitchen where Caroline was already lifting the kettle from the fire; but when the girl turned round, her face looked so queer and drawn despite the colour which the wind had whipped into her cheeks, that Miss Ethel felt sorry. Still, the barrier of "the room door" had not been more immovably established in the consciousness of Aunt Ellen and Aunt Creddle, than the iron law of not "talking to the servants" in the minds of Miss Ethel and Mrs. Bradford. They had been so trained in the idea—though, it only became general about a hundred and fifty years ago—that when Miss Ethel now wanted to speak of Caroline's unhappy looks as one simple, ordinary human being to another she could not manage to do it. She meant to be kind and yet was obliged to assume the tone and manner—throwing her voice flute-like, as it were, across a gulf neither must cross—which her mother had always employed in speaking to the servants.

"Oh! Caroline," she said, placing the jam on the table. "I thought you might like some of this for your tea. It is very stormy out to-night, is it not? I hope you have not caught cold?"

She had a habit of beginning that way—"Oh! Caroline"—when she intended to give an order or make a request.

In making her perfunctory reply, Caroline never imagined for one moment that her own healthy appetite was often satisfied at Miss Ethel's expense. She had bargained for food, and food was there; and there was an end of it. But the front-door bell rang, and something in Miss Ethel's expression did then pierce her self-engrossment.

"Is anything the matter, Miss Ethel?"

"No, no." Miss Ethel stood there, pressing her thin hands together—striving to speak calmly. "It is only the people to look over the house, I expect." Then she turned round and walked with her head erect across the hall.

The door opened to disclose a short, thin, alert man with a taller, well-nourished woman in handsome clothes, wearing a thick coating of scented powder on her full cheeks and thick nose. Over her whole person was written in characters for all to read the consciousness of having plenty of money. It was new to her, and never for a moment could she forget it; while her husband also fed his satisfaction in having plenty of money every time he looked at her. And yet they were not unkindly people; ready to do a kindness if it did not take away from them any of the luxuries, pleasures, delightful enviousness in others less successful, which gradually would give them atrophy of the soul.

So they thought good-naturedly enough, that though the old girl looked a bit frosty and forbidding, that was no wonder—it must be a nasty jar to have to turn out of a house where you had lived so many years. And they made every allowance for the somewhat ceremonious manner in which she conducted them through the rooms.

"Ah yes; when I used to see you come into the front seats at the Flodmouth concerts with your respected father, and me in the shilling gallery, I little thought—— But it's one down and the other come up in these days, Miss Wilson. Same all the world over."

"Look, William!" said the wife, jogging her husband's arm. "That's a beautiful old bureau." Then she turned to Miss Ethel. "I dare say you have a lot of old furniture here that will be too big for your little house. Couldn't we offer to relieve you of some of it? I could do very well with that bureau and no doubt other things besides."

William whipped out his pocket-book. "Yes, Miss Wilson, you just say what you want to part with, and I'll have the lot valued by anybody you like. Pity to let the things go out of the house." He paused, suddenly noticing the grey shade on Miss Ethel's face: then added encouragingly: "You're quite in the fashion, you know, Miss Wilson. Everybody's doing it, from dukes downwards."

"Of course," said Miss Ellen. [Transcriber's note: Ethel?]

Mrs. Bradford sat stolidly silent, taking no part in the affair, not even when the little man said in a low voice: "Deaf, I see. A great affliction—a great affliction!"

At last they had seen everything, and stood once more in the hall before the open door. "Well, we came just as a matter of form," said the husband. "Never do to buy a pig in a poke, you know! But we shall go straight to Mr. Wilson and tell him we have decided to buy. You may make your mind at rest about that. Of course, there is a good deal to be done inside. But what I say is, it is a gentleman's house."

Then the wife said, glancing through the open door. "Oh! by the way, Miss Wilson, we wondered if you would mind our man coming in one day to dig up the privet hedge? You know labour is so difficult to get in Thorhaven, and we happen to have a man engaged for another month; so perhaps you——" Her voice trailed off into silence, for she was a little abashed by that look in Miss Ethel's pale eyes. "It won't look so pretty, of course, but it will let light and air into the house."

"Oh yes," said Miss Ethel, smiling with strained lips.

Then they went down the drive, leaving her there in the doorway staring at the privet hedge. Over the hedge, a fire had just been lighted in the scarcely completed bungalow, so that the white smoke streamed like a flag from the tall chimney, just moved a little from the south so that it swung over towards the Cottage. A week or two more and the hedge would be down. There would be no barrier at all between this quiet garden and all those rows of houses which had been marching on, nearer and nearer, ever since the first one was built. As Miss Ethel stood there, she felt beaten. She knew at last, what she had fought so hard not to know, that the powers against her in the world were too strong—that her opposition was ridiculous and futile. Nothing that she could ever say or do would make the slightest difference.

She returned to the room where Mrs. Bradford was sitting. "They will be sending some one to take up the hedge in a few days," she said.

"You don't mean it!" exclaimed Mrs. Bradford, startled into animation. "Oh, what a thing it is to be without a man in a matter like this! I know my dear husband would never have allowed it."

But Miss Ethel was at the window again, quietly looking out. "They say it will let light and air into the house. It won't look so pretty, but it will let light and air into the house."

Then they ceased speaking for the moment because Caroline had come into the room to take away the tea-tray; but before she had closed the door, Mrs. Bradford began again, still for her excitedly: "Ethel! Mrs. Graham ran in for a minute while you were upstairs, and she says Laura Temple's wedding is put off." There came a sudden crash of crockery just beyond the door. "Caroline!" cried Miss Ethel, "have you let the tray fall?"

Caroline did not answer at first; then she said in a low voice: "There's nothing broken, Miss Ethel."

But she did not move away—only forced her hands to hold the tray steadily so that they should not know she was there. The next moment she heard Miss Ethel cross the room and was obliged to go back to the kitchen.

There she stood washing up over the sink, seething with a conflict which almost maddened her. The old habit of Aunt Creddle and Aunt Ellen—grown into an instinct in course of generations—to guess, and listen for chance words, and piece together any drama that was going on "in the room" because their own lives were so circumscribed, fought with her own free impulse to return openly and ask the plain question: "Do you know why Miss Temple's engagement is broken off?"

The conflict made her feel terribly over-excited and nervous; but she had one over-mastering reason for not obeying that impulse to ask a direct question—she was afraid lest these two women might see she was in love with Godfrey. Then she happened to glance at the clock, and saw she was already late for the promenade; but as she hurried down the drive she heard the whistle of a railway engine and stood perfectly still just as if some one had called to her. But that was the five-twenty-five train, of course. That by which Godfrey invariably returned when he had spent the day in the city, was half an hour later. If she waited outside the station until it came in, she would be certain to see him. He must speak to her then. This maddening agony of uncertainty and suspense would be over at least.

But as she hurried along to the station with the moist west wind in her face, she saw—behind those engrossing thoughts—the other girl waiting angrily to be released from the pay-box. Still, that didn't matter to Caroline. Nothing mattered in the world, but getting that talk with Godfrey. For she had reached a point now, when all these business men and shopping ladies who began to flow past her from the platform—drawing their scarves closer, and buttoning their coats as they merged into the cool, salt air after the warmer atmosphere of the city—seemed no more to her than flies buzzing round a path she was bent on following.

Wilf came past, taking long strides and wearing a new hat which he removed slightly; giving a sideways, condescending nod which said as plainly as words: "If you're waiting for me, miss, it's no go!"

But though she nodded in return, she was not actually aware of him. Her heart beat unevenly and she felt a suspense which ran through every nerve and every vein—she had no feeling beyond it. Her face was ashen as she stood by the entrance to the station, with the breakers beyond looking cruel in the cold light. Her eyes shone black, owing to the pupils being so distended, but she appeared pinched and quiet as she stood there, at the edge of the crowd, for her whirling emotions had now reached that point which looks like stillness.

All of a sudden the blood rushed up over her forehead, and she instinctively put her hand to her heart because it seemed to be leaping out of its place. Here was Godfrey at last, walking with another man. She moved forward and stood directly in his way, so that he must see her. "Good evening," he said, then continued his conversation with the broad, prosperous-looking merchant who walked by his side.

Caroline remained planted there, staring after them with an almost foolish expression on her face. She could not take it in. It seemed incredible. Then the two men vanished round the corner, and at the same moment she heard a girl saying in her ear: "Cheer up, Carrie! If Wilf hasn't caught this, he will get the next. He isn't dead."

"What do you mean?" said Carrie, but her voice sounded muffled and vague, even to herself.

"Why, you came to meet your boy, didn't you? And he hasn't turned up. That's what you looked like, anyway," said the girl, laughing.

Carrie made an immense effort to fight off that feeling of faintness, saying jerkily: "Oh, well, I'm off with Wilf, you know." But the words seemed to echo in some great, vague place a long distance away.



Chapter XVII

The Benefit Concert

During the evening and many hours of the night Caroline remained in a white heat of anger and hurt pride which left no room for regret. It was true, then, that Godfrey had only been behaving to her all the time as Aunt Creddle said gentlemen did behave to working girls upon whom they bestowed their attentions. She'd been treated exactly like any little ignorant servant girl waiting at a street corner for her young man: just such a one as her aunts and her mother had been; and yet she felt violently that she was different. In the middle of the night she woke to find herself muttering: "I aren't going to stand it! I aren't going to stand it!" Then she bit the sheet to prevent herself from breaking out into a storm of weeping. She loved him so, but was no longer certain of his love. She could give him up almost gladly if he loved her and would always love her—but this was more than she could bear. There seemed to her no paradox in that—it was just what she felt.

Then she saw his heavily cut face on the darkness, as he had looked when he walked past her with that other man—both of them solid, self-contained, out of her reach! And with that the cold wave of anger swept over her again, overwhelming her. "I can't stand it! I aren't going to stand it. He'd no right to treat me like that, as if I were dirt beneath his feet. I'm as good as he is."

So the conflicting thoughts went on during the night hours; all the doubts and feelings which she had inherited, or had imbibed from the Creddles, warring with her own independence and pride. A girl like herself was good enough for any man. He'd no right to insult her by passing her like that in the street when they'd kissed as they did on the cliff top. She'd given him up, but she was going to be treated properly—not like a girl who had done something of which they were both ashamed. And again the helpless threat: "I aren't going to stand it!"

At last it was time to get up, and after a while to go down to the promenade. She was by now so exhausted with emotion that she could not feel any more and let her perceptions drift vaguely over outside things. A bill was up on the road-side, announcing the Benefit Concert for the band for that evening; another advertised second-hand tents and folding chairs for sale, cheap. A girl told her about a tent that had blown down the day of the gale, revealing a fat lady in a bathing towel—behaviour of rude Boreas which seemed to have put an end to bathing from tents for the season. Then a man came down the road with a barrow, crying, "Meller pears! Fine meller pe-a-a-rs!" Caroline bought some to take to Aunt Creddle, though she had had no definite thought of going there when she started ten minutes earlier than usual, but the ache of her exhausted emotion drew her subconsciously towards the jolly, serene nature as a hurt child runs to its mother.

The house door was open, so she walked straight in and put the pears down on the table. But she did not kiss her aunt, because she instinctively feared that the slightest breath of emotion might upset her self-control. "I bought these off a barrow. Don't know if they'll be sweet," she said. "Can't stop!"

"Sit down a minute," said Mrs. Creddle. "You look fit to drop. Aren't you feeling well, Carrie?"

"Oh, I'm all right," she answered impatiently. "What's that you are ironing?"

"It's some curtains for Miss Temple. I was there ironing yesterday, but didn't get these finished."

Caroline sharply turned with her back to the kitchen, looking out of the window. "Did they say anything about the wedding being put off?"

"Yes. Miss Laura's got a chill. Something to do with her digestion. She can't scarcely eat nothing."

"Oh!" Caroline could not say another word.

"Of course, it's hard on Mr. Wilson; but I think she's in the right on it. No use going away to them grand hotels if you can't enjoy the food," pursued Mrs. Creddle.

"Did you—did you hear how long it was put for?" said Caroline.

"Not exactly, as you may say," answered Mrs. Creddle. "Miss Panton came into the kitchen while I was there, and she said delays was dangerous. You know her way. She seemed to think it would be next month." She paused, then added uncomfortably: "I was on pins and needles for fear they might have heard about you and Mr. Wilson, Carrie, you know—being about the lanes at night together, and that. But I'm sure they hadn't." She paused again. "Well, I aren't sorry you had a lesson that night you were locked out, Carrie. Your mother and I had the same sort of temptations when we were out in placing—though you mayn't think it. There was a young gentleman from college in my last situation who begged me almost on his bended knees to walk out with him, but I knew what that led to." She paused again. "Cheer up, lass; it hurts a bit at the time, but it's all for the best. Once bitten, twice shy."