gan to cry. Emma at once turned to the little one
with smiles of re-assurance. Kate would have preferred to deal slaps,
but contented herself with taking a cup of tea to the fireside, and
sulking for half an hour.

Emma unrolled the bundle of work, and soon the hum of the sewing-machine
began, to continue late into the night.

CHAPTER XIX

You remember that one side of the valley in which stood New Wanley was
clad with trees. Through this wood a public path made transverse ascent
to the shoulder of the bill, a way little used save by Wanley ramblers
in summer time. The section of the wood above the path was closed
against trespassers; among the copses below anyone might freely wander.
In places it was scarcely possible to make a way for fern, bramble,
and underwood, but elsewhere mossy tracks led one among hazels or under
arches of foliage which made of the mid-day sky a cool, golden shimmer.
One such track, abruptly turning round a great rock over the face of
which drooped the boughs of an ash, came upon a little sloping lawn,
which started from a high hazel-covered bank. The bank itself was so
shaped as to afford an easy seat, shaded even when the grass in front
was all sunshine.

Adela had long known this retreat, and had been accustomed to sit here
with Letty, especially when she needed to exchange deep confidences with
her friend. Once, just as they were settling themselves upon the bank,
they were startled by a movement among the leaves above, followed by the
voice of someone addressing them with cheerful friendliness, and making
request to be allowed to descend and join them. It was Hubert Eldon,
just home for the long vacation. Once or twice subsequently the girls
had met Hubert on the same spot; there had been a picnic here, too, in
which Mrs. Eldon and Mrs. Waltham took part. But Adela always thought
of the place as peculiarly her own. To others it was only a delightfully
secluded corner of the wood, fresh and green; for her it had something
intimately dear, as the haunt where she had first met her own self face
to face and had heard the whispering of secrets as if by another voice
to her tremulous heart.

She sat here one morning in July, six months after her marriage. It was
more than a year since she had seen the spot, and on reaching it to-day
it seemed to her less beautiful than formerly; the leafage was to her
eyes thinner and less warm of hue than in earlier years, the grass had
a coarser