esire, or need, for love. At the back of her mind somewhere
was the fixed idea, the fixed intention of finding love, a man. But
as yet, at this period, the idea was in abeyance, it did not act.
The craving that possessed her as it possesses everybody, in a
greater or less degree, in those parts, sustained her darkly and
unconsciously.

A hot summer waned into autumn, the long, bewildering days drew in,
the transient nights, only a few breaths of shadow between noon and
noon, deepened and strengthened. A restlessness came over everybody.
There was another short strike among the miners. James Houghton,
like an excited beetle, scurried to and fro, feeling he was making
his fortune. Never had Woodhouse been so thronged on Fridays with
purchasers and money-spenders. The place seemed surcharged with
life.

Autumn lasted beautiful till end of October. And then suddenly, cold
rain, endless cold rain, and darkness heavy, wet, ponderous. Through
the wind and rain it was a toil to move. Poor Miss Frost, who had
seemed almost to blossom again in the long hot days, regaining a
free cheerfulness that amounted almost to liveliness, and who even
caused a sort of scandal by her intimacy with a rather handsome but
common stranger, an insurance agent who had come into the place with
a good, unused tenor voice--now she wilted again. She had given the
rather florid young man tea in her room, and had laboured away at
his fine, metallic voice, correcting him and teaching him and
laughing with him and spending really a remarkable number of hours
alone with him in her room in Woodhouse--for she had given up
tramping the country, and had hired a music-room in a quiet street,
where she gave her lessons. And the young man had hung round, and
had never wanted to go away. They would prolong their tete-a-tete
and their singing on till ten o'clock at night, and Miss Frost would
return to Manchester House flushed and handsome and a little shy,
while the young man, who was common, took on a new boldness in the
streets. He had auburn hair, high colouring, and a rather
challenging bearing. He took on a new boldness, his own estimate of
himself rose considerably, with Miss Frost and his trained voice to
justify him. He was a little insolent and condescending to the
natives, who disliked him. For their lives they could not imagine
what Miss Frost could find in him. They began even to dislike her,
and a pretty scandal was started about the pair, in the pl