et another
dress. It's that, or stopping away from the dance."

Still Caroline hesitated, standing there on the blue linoleum with the
bright light shining through the open door on her face. "Oh! all
right," she exclaimed finally, then glanced at the clock. "Goodness, I
shall be late! You can measure the dress against my old frock. I
haven't a minute." And she was out, banging the door behind her.

But before she was many yards away, the door burst open again and Mrs.
Creddle's anxious face looked out. "Carrie! Carrie! You don't want
to tell your uncle if you come across him. He'd have a fit if he knew
you were going to the dance on the prom., let alone wearing that fine
frock. You know what he is!"

"Don't I just!" responded Caroline, her spirits beginning to rise
again. "Well, what he doesn't know he can't grieve about, so you keep
a still tongue in your head and I'll run round for the dress when I
leave the prom. after tea." Then at last she was running along the
grey pavements with the clean wind blowing towards her from the sea.

In her haste she almost ran into three men who were coming along from
the direction of the Cottage with measuring tapes and other appliances
in their hands, but she took no particular notice of them, never
dreaming that these three commonplace looking men in ordinary dark
clothes could even now be haunting another person's imagination with
the sinister effect of birds of prey who mark the approach of an
invading horde.

But Miss Ethel had seen them from her upper window, and the sight of
them walking about in the field had produced an acute physical feeling
of nausea and faintness; for her fear lest the field should be built
upon and the last seclusion spoilt, had already made one of those deep
ruts in the mind along which every thought runs when not actually
driven in another direction. And each time Miss Ethel's thoughts
passed that way, the rut was bound to become deeper. Though she
imagined herself so self-controlled, and seemed so safe as she went
quietly about her work removing the dust from corners where Caroline
had left it, she was indeed a woman in real danger, still fighting all
the great forces of change arrayed against her, and which she must give
in to or be destroyed.

_Chapter V_

_The Dance on the Promenade_

A night in June brings to the mind of most people soft airs--the scent
of roses--a time when the young can sit out-of-doors in the moon