rn, harsh, and rude. The sick man wiped from his sunken features
the sweat which continually gathered there. Then he turned upon his side
with a grunt.

'Thou must fetch th' lawyer,' he said at length, 'for I'll cut thee
off.'

It was a strange request--like ordering a condemned man to go out and
search for his executioner; but Mark answered with perfect naturalness:

'Yes. Mr. Ford, I suppose?'

'Ford? No! Dost think I want _him_ meddling i' my affairs? Go to young
Baines up th' road. Tell him to come at once. He's sure to be at home,
as it's Saturday night.'

'Very well.'

Mark turned to leave the room.

'And, young un, I've done with thee. Never pass my door again till thou
know'st I'm i' my coffin. Understand?'

Mark hesitated a moment, and then went out, quietly closing the door. No
sooner had he done so than the girl, hitherto so passive at the window,
flew after him.

There are some women whose calm, enigmatic faces seem always to suggest
the infinite. It is given to few to know them, so rare as they are, and
their lives usually so withdrawn; but sometimes they pass in the street,
or sit like sphinxes in the church or the theatre, and then the memory
of their features, persistently recurring, troubles us for days. They
are peculiar to no class, these women: you may find them in a print gown
or in diamonds. Often they have thin, rather long lips and deep rounded
chins; but it is the fine upward curve of the nostrils and the fall of
the eyelids which most surely mark them. Their glances and their faint
smiles are beneficent, yet with a subtle shade of half-malicious
superiority. When they look at you from under those apparently fatigued
eyelids, you feel that they have an inward and concealed existence far
beyond the ordinary--that they are aware of many things which you can
never know. It is as though their souls, during former incarnations, had
trafficked with the secret forces of nature, and so acquired a
mysterious and nameless quality above all the transient attributes of
beauty, wit, and talent. They exist: that is enough; that is their
genius. Whether they control, or are at the mercy of, those secret
forces; whether they have in fact learnt, but may not speak, the true
answer to the eternal Why; whether they are not perhaps a riddle even to
their own simple selves: these are points which can never be decided.

Everyone who knew Mary Beechinor, in her cousin's home, or at chapel, or
on Titus Pri