*

She was much perturbed with wondering what she should do with the
sumptuous dressing-case he had given her for a wedding present.

Directly there was no longer room for doubt that her union with Perigal
would, in the fulness of time, bear fruit, she wrote telling him her
news, and begging him to see her with as little delay as possible. In
reply, she received a telegram, curtly telling her to be outside
Dippenham station on Saturday afternoon at four.

This was on a Wednesday. Mavis's anxiety to hear from Perigal was such
that her troubled blood set up a raging abscess in the root of a tooth
that was scarcely sound. The least movement increased her torments; but
what troubled her even more than the pain, was that, when the latter
began to subside, one of her cheeks commenced to swell. She was anxious
to look her very best before her lover: her lopsided face gave her a
serio-comic expression. The swelling had diminished a little before she
set out on the bleak December afternoon to meet her lover. Before she
went, she looked long and anxiously in the glass. Apart from the
disfigurement caused by the swelling, she saw (yet strove to conceal
from herself) that her condition was already interfering with her
fresh, young comeliness: her eyes were drawn; her features wore a
tense, tired expression. As she looked out of the carriage window on
her train journey to Dippenham, the gloom inspired by the darkening
shadows of the day, the dreariness of the bleak landscape, chilled her
to the heart. She comforted herself by reflecting with what eager
cheerfulness Perigal would greet her; how delighted he would be at
receiving from her lips further confirmation of her news; how loyally
he would fulfil his many promises by making the earliest arrangements
for their marriage. Arrived at her destination, she learned she would
have to wait twelve minutes till the train arrived that would bring her
lover from Wales. She did not stay in the comparative comfort of the
waiting-room, but, despite the pain that movement still gave her,
preferred to wander in the streets of the dull, quaint town till his
train was due. A thousand doubts assailed her mind: perhaps he would
not come, or would be angry with her, or would meet with an accident
upon the way. Her mind travelled quickly, and her body felt the need of
keeping pace with the rapidity of her thoughts. She walked with sharp,
nervous steps down the road leading from the station, to