hat
northern town, a countryside that was peaceful, sweet and beautiful.

"Will you kindly move aside?"

This time he realised what he was doing, and he stepped into the wet
grass.

"I beg your pardon," he said, and then unconsciously he lifted his hat.
He knew that the girl was thinking of their former meeting, thinking of
his own rudeness, thinking, too perhaps, of the circumstances under
which he had come back to Brunford. He walked on like a man in a
dream. "I had just come out of prison," he said, "and I spoke to her
like a clown. What must she think of me?" And then a feeling of
bitterness came over his heart. "She's with that Wilson girl," he
said, "and I know what they'll say."

But why should he care? What had he in common with this young girl,
whose thoughts and feelings must be far removed from his own?

The Lancashire operatives pay little attention to caste or class
distinction. With them one man is as good as another, even although
they are greatly influenced by the fact of success and the amassing of
money. But the inwardness of the word Aristocracy has little or no
meaning to them; it is too elusive, too intangible. But at that moment
Paul realised something of what it meant. This girl belonged to a
class of which he knew nothing. She created an atmosphere utterly
different from that breathed in a Lancashire manufacturing town. He
could not put it into words, but he knew it was there, a refinement, a
suggestion of thoughts to which he was a stranger. What was she doing
there? She had nothing in common with that Wilson girl, even although
the Wilsons were the wealthiest people in Brunford. And then there was
something more, he knew not what, only somehow it made life different.
It made him feel how small his world had been, what a little thing
money-making was. It suggested a larger world, a higher life of which
hitherto he had been ignorant.

When he reached the next stile he found George Preston waiting for him.
"Been talking with Wilson's lass?" asked he with a laugh.

Paul shook his head. "Who's the other one?" he asked. "Is she not a
stranger in these parts?"

"Don't you know?" asked Preston.

"No, I don't know."

"Why, she's Miss Bolitho. She's the daughter of the man who had so
much to do in sending you to quod."

It seemed as though someone had struck him a blow. Unconsciously he
had been weaving fancies around her, unconsciously, too, something had
come into his