l. Her ear had been
caught, too, by a low whining sound in the next room. By and by she heard
him speak her own name--hers and Clem's together--and glanced around
nervously. She had a particular dislike of being prayed for by name.
It made her blush and gave her a curious sinking sensation in the pit of
the stomach. Her eyes, as it happened, came to rest on her Uncle
Samuel's, who withdrew his gaze at once and stared into the fireplace.

A moment later Mr. Tulse brought his reading to an end. There was a
pause, broken by someone's pushing hack a chair. She gazed around
inquiringly, thinking that this perhaps might be a signal for all to
kneel.

Her aunt had risen, and stood for a moment with twitching face,
challenging a look from Mr. Samuel, who continued to stare at the shavings
in the fireplace.

Whatever Mrs. Purchase had on her lips to say to him, she controlled
herself. But she turned upon Myra and Clem, and her eyes filled.

"My poor dears!" she said, stretching out both hands. "My poor, poor
dears!"

Myra thought it passing strange that, if she and Clem were to be pitied
for losing their grandfather, Aunt Hannah should have waited till now.
She paid, however, little heed to this, but ran past her aunt's
outstretched arms to the door of the counting-house. Within, on the rug
beside the empty chair, weak with voluntary starvation, lay stretched the
little greyhound, and whined for her master.

BOOK II.

CHAPTER VIII.

HESTER ARRIVES.

Hester Marvin stood on the windy platform gazing after the train.
Her limbs were cramped and stiff after the long night journey; the grey
morning hour discouraged her; and the landscape--a stretch of grey-green
marsh with a horizon-line of slate-roofed cottages terminated by a single
factory chimney--was not one to raise the spirits. Even the breeze
blowing across the marsh had an unfamiliar edge. She felt it, and
shivered.

She had been the only passenger to alight here from the train, which had
brought her almost all the way from the Midlands; and as it steamed off,
its smoke blown level along the carriage roofs, her gaze followed it
wistfully, almost forlornly, with a sense of lost companionship.
She knew this to be absurd, and yet she felt it.

Between the chimney and this ridge the train passed out of sight; but
still her gaze followed the long curve of the metals across the marsh.
They stretched away, and with them the country seemed to expa