of it frightened her. She
knew she was rattling to Harry all the while he fetched her cloak and
put it on her, and she was glad now of that ability she had cultivated
in herself of making a smooth crust of talk over her seething feelings.
She talked the harder, she even took hold of Harry's arm to be sure of
keeping him there between her and what she was afraid of, as they came
out on the sidewalk and stood waiting in the windy night for the
approach of their carriage lights.

Row upon row of street lamps flared in the traveling gusts. The midnight
noises of the city were at their loudest; and half their volume seemed
to be a scattered chorus of hoarse voices yelling all together like a
pack of wolves. Thin, ragged shapes shot in and out among the crowd,
ducked under horses' feet and cut wild zigzags across the street like
flying goblins. The sense of their cry was indistinguishable, but it was
the same--the same inarticulate shape of sound on every tongue. First
one throat, then another took up the raucous singsong shout, then all
together again, as if the pack were in full cry on the scent of
something. What was this fresh quarry of the press, Flora wondered, that
made it give tongue so hideously? The hunting note of it made her want
to cover her ears, and yet she strained to catch its meaning.

She had stooped her head to the carriage door, when Harry stopped and
took one of the damp papers from a crier in the pack. She saw the
head-line. It covered half the sheet--the great figure that was offered
for the return of the Chatworth ring.

IX

ILLUMINATION

Just when the two ideas had coalesced in her mind Flora couldn't be
sure. It had been some time in the first dark hour that she had spent
wide awake in her bed. There had been two ideas distinctly. Two
impressions of the evening remained with her; and the last one, the
great figures that had stared at her from the paper, the fact that had
been Harry's secret, made common now in round numbers, had for the
moment swallowed up the first.

For all the way home that sum was kept before her by Clara's talk. She
could remember nothing of that talk except that it hadn't been able for
a moment to leave the Chatworth ring alone. It had been aimed at Harry,
but it had fallen to Flora herself to answer Clara's quick
speculations, for Harry had been obstinately silent, though not
indifferent, as if in his own mind he was as unable to leave it alone as
Clara. One