ll bear it, Mr. Buckton," he said in a
peevish voice. "It is heavily burdened as it is. If a five-pound note
would be of any use----"

"I can't see that we are called upon to do anything, Jarvis," his wife
put in again. "In fact, Mr. Buckton, you may take it that we do not
intend to do anything more for Miss Gray."

"Very well, Lady Iniscrone."

Mr. Buckton turned away and busied himself with his papers. He could not
trust himself at the moment to speak lest he should forget his
professional discretion.

But Mary had not waited for the result of his intercession on her
behalf, of which, indeed, she knew nothing. Mary, who was sensitive to
every breath of praise and blame, had fled out of the dear house, the
atmosphere of which had become suddenly unfriendly. A good many friends
would have been glad to have had her. Lady Agatha Chenevix was away,
else she would have been by her friend's side to take her part with
passionate generosity and indignation. She was away, but Jessie Baynes's
little house on the edge of the sea, a bare little homely place, full of
sunlight and the sea-wind, had its doors open to her. One could not
imagine a better place for a sad and sorrowful heart than Jessie's
little spare room, with its balcony opening like the deck of a ship on
to the blue floor of the sea. Mildred Carruthers had come at once, in
the first hour of the girl's grief, to carry her off to the big house,
which was now amply justified by the size of the doctor's practice.

Only, where would Mary go to but home? In all those years in the great
house on the Mall she had never come to find Wistaria Terrace too little
and lowly for her. Indeed, there was a wonderful wholesomeness and
sweetness to her mind about the little house. The transfiguring mists of
her love lay rosily over even the drudgery of her childish days. To be
sure, there had been hard work and short commons. She had been
insufficiently clad in winter, too heavily clad in summer. Her people
had gone without fires and many other things which some would have
considered essential. But there had always been love. Looking back on
those days, Mary saw with the eyes of the spirit which miss out
immaterial material things.

She fled back home. She took nothing with her but what she stood up in.
Only her friend, Simmons, while Lady Iniscrone was absent from the
house, packed up all Mary's belongings, and conveyed them, with the
assistance of the coachman, across the lane