us straits. She would consult Uncle Meshach.

The front door banged. And then Rose entered the room.

Leonora drove back the tears.

'Your father has been suggesting that we sell this house, and go and
live at Sneyd,' she said to the girl in a trembling voice. 'Aren't you
surprised?' She seldom talked about John to her daughters, but at that
moment a desire for sympathy overwhelmed her.

'I should never be surprised at anything where father was concerned,'
said Rose coldly, with a slight hint of aloofness and of mental
superiority. 'Not at anything.'

Leonora got up, and, leaving the room, went into the garden through the
side door opposite the stable. She could hear Millicent practising the
Jewel Song from Gounod's _Faust_. As she passed down the sombre garden
the sound of the piano and of Milly's voice in the brilliant ecstatic
phrases of the song grew fainter. She shook violently, like a child who
is recovering from a fit of sobs, and without thinking she fastened her
coat. 'What a shame it is that he should want to sell my house! What a
shame!' she murmured, full of an aggrieved resentment. At the same time
she was surprised to find herself so suddenly and so deeply disturbed.

* * * * *

At the foot of the long garden was a low fence separating it from the
meadow, and in the fence a wicket from which ran a faint track to the
main field-path. She leaned against the fence, a few yards away from the
wicket, at a spot where a clump of bushes screened the house. No one
could possibly have seen her from the house, even had the bushes not
been there; but she wished to isolate herself completely, and to find
tranquillity in the isolation. The calm spring night, chill but not too
cold, cloudy but not too dark, favoured her intention. She gazed about
her at the obscure nocturnal forms of things, at the silent trees, and
the mysterious clouds gently rounded in their vast shape, and the sharp
slant of the meadow. Far below could be seen the red signal of the
railway, and, mapped in points of light on the opposite slope, the
streets of Bursley. To the right the eternal conflagration of the
Cauldon Bar furnaces illumined the sky with wavering amber. And on the
keen air came to her from the distance noises, soft but impressive, of
immense industrial activities.

She thought she could decipher a figure moving from the field-path
across the gloom of the meadow, and as she strained her eyes the