he pressed it to her heart,
once she touched it with her lips, and then put it from her beyond
recall. It was done; there was no going back now. And even as she stood
the postman came up, whistling, and opening the box carelessly swept its
contents into his canvas bag. Could he have known what lay among them he
would have whistled no more that day.

Beatrice continued her journey, and by three o'clock arrived safely at
the little station next to Bryngelly. There was a fair at Coed that day,
and many people of the peasant class got in here. Amidst the confusion
she gave up her ticket to a small boy, who was looking the other way at
the time, and escaped without being noticed by a soul. Indeed, things
happened so that nobody in the neighbourhood of Bryngelly ever knew that
Beatrice had been to London and back upon those dreadful days.

Beatrice walked along the cliff, and in an hour was at the door of
the Vicarage, from which she seemed to have been away for years. She
unlocked it and entered. In the letter-box was a post-card from her
father stating that he and Elizabeth had changed their plans and would
not be back till the train which arrived at half-past eight on the
following morning. So much the better, she thought. Then she disarranged
the clothes upon her bed to make it seem as though it had been slept it,
lit the kitchen fire, and put the kettle on to boil, and as soon as it
was ready she took some food. She wanted all her nerve, and that could
not be kept up without food.

Shortly after this the girl Betty returned, and went about her duties in
the house quite unconscious that Beatrice had been away from it for
the whole night. Her sister was much better, she said, in answer to
Beatrice's inquiries.

When she had eaten what she could--it was not much--Beatrice went to her
room, undressed herself, bathed, and put on clean, fresh things. Then
she unbound her lovely hair, and did it up in a coronet upon her head.
It was a fashion that she did not often adopt, because it took too much
time, but on this day, of all days, she had a strange fancy to look
her best. Also her hair had been done like this on the afternoon when
Geoffrey first met her. Next she put on the grey dress once more which
she had worn on her journey to London, and taking the silver Roman ring
that Geoffrey had given her from the string by which she wore it about
her neck, placed it on the third finger of her left hand.

All this being done, Be