r worship. For more than a year, until lately, she
had been almost sure of him, and then came a faint vague rumour
concerning Lionel and May Lawton, a rumour which she had refused to take
seriously. The encounter of that afternoon, and Miss Lawton's triumphant
remark, had dazed her. For seven hours she had existed in a kind of
semi-conscious delirium, in which she could perceive nothing but the
fatal fact, emerging more clearly every moment from the welter of her
thoughts, that she had lost Lionel. Lionel had proposed to May Lawton,
and been accepted, just before she surprised them together; and Lionel,
with a man's excusable cowardice, had left his betrothed to announce
the engagement.

She tore up the photograph, put the fragments in the grate, and set a
light to them.

Her father's step sounded on the stairs; he hesitated, and knocked
sharply at her door.

'What's burning, May?'

'It's all right, father,' she answered calmly, 'I'm only burning some
papers in the fire-grate.'

'Well, see you don't burn the house down.'

He passed on.

Then she found a sheet of notepaper, and wrote on it in pencil, using
the mantelpiece for a desk: 'Dear home. Good-night, good-bye.' She
cogitated, and wrote further: 'Forgive me.--MAY.'

She put the message in an envelope, and wrote on the envelope 'Jim,' and
placed it prominently in front of the clock. But after she had looked at
it for a minute, she wrote 'Father' above Jim, and then 'Herbert' below.

There were noises in the hall; the boys had returned earlier than she
expected. As they went along the corridor and caught a glimpse of her
light under the door, Jim cried gaily: 'Now then, out with that light! A
little thing like you ought to be asleep hours since.'

She listened for the bang of their door, and then, very hurriedly, she
removed her pink frock and put on an old black one, which was rather
tight in the waist. And she donned her hat, securing it carefully with
both pins, extinguished the candles, and crept quietly downstairs, and
so by the back-door into the garden. Carlo, the retriever, came halfway
out of his kennel and greeted her in the moonlight with a yawn. She
patted his head and ran stealthily up the garden, through the gate, and
up the waste green land towards the crown of the hill.

IV

The top of Toft End is the highest land in the Five Towns, and from it
may be clearly seen all the lurid evidences of manufacture which sweep
across the border