erself," reflected Dick, looking back at the dejected
figure in the darkening room. Being a simple youth, he felt vaguely
uncomfortable at the sight of such trouble over the doings of one who
was no relation, and began to take a little blame to himself for
thinking lightly of the girl's downfall.

"Well, she's very good," he concluded in his thoughts, "but she's
peculiar;" and he tramped heavily through the yard into the lane.

Anne did not stir. She was so shocked that her bodily faculties seemed
to have ceased, and her mind to have remained sorrowing and awake. This
lapse was even worse than that of Sir Richard's son, because it seemed
irretrievable. Then, too, it had happened before she knew anything about
it, whereas, in the other case, she had been active, and able to
expostulate and screen the young man's fall. And then, too, there was
the surprise of a middle-aged woman at the lapses of "young, strong
people," just as, if one of more maturity had fallen, the comment of the
young would have been equally certain, "an old thing like her."

To Anne, whose temptations were of the kind that betray rather than
assault, all faults of the flesh seemed of equal gravity--a man's
gluttony or drunkenness, or a woman's misdemeanour. The one did not
shock her more than the other. She thought of her old friend, the
grandmother who had brought up the girls, denying herself sleep and ease
that they might not run wild as many girls do, but might grow up girls
of good character. Since the grandmother died, Jane, who was young and
pretty, had tried to support herself. Anne did not know Richard Burton,
but he was older and a "married man," which, of itself, implied
responsibility to her mind. With the passion for justice, in which her
intellectual faculties found material for exercise, she declared that
Burton must be more to blame than Jane. He had money and position in the
country-side. But equally as he was more to blame he would be less
blamed. No one would dare to tell _him_ he was wrong. They would wait,
stone in hand, for the girl who had been a child among them, and when
she was forsaken and alone would throw and strike. Anne lived apart, but
she knew _that_. "It will be visited on the girl," she thought; and
indignation at Richard Burton rose steadily in her thoughts.

After a while she stirred, and, lighting a candle, slowly stooped and
raised the lid of the bread-mug. Pulling out half a loaf, she cut a
thick piece for su