and I think that
to-night I have shown it. But oblige me by not presuming. I am Mrs.
Maldon and you are Rachel. After all, I have not yet known you for a
month."

IX

A very loud rasping noise, like a vicious menace, sounded from the
street, shivering instantaneously the delicate placidity of Mrs.
Maldon's home. Mrs. Maldon gave a start.

"That'll be John's Ernest with the car," said Mr. Batchgrew, amused;
and he began to get up from the chair. As soon as he was on his feet
his nose grew active again. "You've nothing to be afraid of, missis,"
he added in a tone roughly reassuring and good-natured.

"Oh no! Of course not!" concurred Mrs. Maldon, further enforcing
intrepidity on herself. "Of course not! I only just mentioned burglars
because they're so much in the paper." And she stooped to pick up the
_Signal_ and folded it carefully, as if to prove that her mind
was utterly collected.

Councillor Batchgrew, leaning over the table, peered into various
vessels in search of his gloves. At length he took them finickingly
from the white slop-basin as though fishing them out of a puddle. He
began to put them on, and then, half-way through the process, abruptly
shook hands with Mrs. Maldon.

"Then you'll call in the morning?" she asked.

"Aye! Ye may count on me. I'll relieve ye on [of] it afore ten
o'clock. It'll be on my way to Hanbridge, ye see."

Mrs. Maldon ceremoniously accompanied her trustee as far as the
sitting-room door, where she recommended him to the careful attention
of Rachel. No woman in the Five Towns could take leave of a guest
with more impressive dignity than old Mrs. Maldon, whose fine Southern
accent always gave a finish to her farewells. In the lobby Mr.
Batchgrew kept Rachel waiting with his overcoat in her outstretched
hands while he completed the business of his gloves. As, close behind
him, she coaxed his stiff arms into the overcoat, she suddenly
felt that after all he was nothing but a decrepit survival; and his
offensiveness seemed somehow to have been increased--perhaps by the
singular episode of the gloves and the slop-basin. She opened the
front door, and without a word to her he departed down the steps.

Two lamps like lighthouses glared fiercely along the roadway, dulling
the municipal gas and giving to each loose stone on the macadam a
long shadow. In the gloom behind the lamps the low form of an open
automobile showed, and a dim, cloaked figure beside it. A boyish voice
sa