as prepared to sell herself to the highest bidder--that it was Mrs.
Romer's money that kept him from her. Well, let him go to her, then? but
for herself life must begin afresh.

And then she set to work to think about what she could do. To remain here
at Sutton any longer was impossible. It was absolutely necessary that she
should get away from it all, from the family upon whose hands she was
nothing now but a beautiful, helpless burden, and still more from the
haunting memories of Kynaston and all the unfortunate things that had
happened to her here.

Suddenly, out of the memories of her girlhood, she recollected the
existence of a woman who had been her friend once in the old happy days,
when she had lived with her sister Theodora. It was one of those passing
friendships which come and go for a month or two in one's life.

A pretty, spoilt girl, married four, perhaps five, years ago to a rich
man, a banker; who had taken a fancy to Vera, and had pleased herself by
decking her out in a quaint costume to figure at a carnival party; who
had kissed her rapturously at parting, swearing eternal friendship,
giving her her address in London, and making her promise never to be in
England without going to see her. And then she had gone her way, and had
never come back again the next winter, as she had promised to do; a
letter or two had passed between them, and afterwards Vera had forgotten
her. But somewhere upstairs she must have got her direction still.

It was to this friend she would go; and, turning her back for a time
at least upon Meadowshire and its memories, she would see whether, in
the whirl of London life, she could not crush out the pain at her heart,
and live down the fatal weakness that had led her astray from all the
traditions of her youth, and from that cold and prudent wisdom which had
stood her in good stead for so many years.

CHAPTER XX.

A MORNING WALK.

And e'en while fashion's brightest arts decoy,
The heart, distrusting, asks if this be joy.

Goldsmith.

A bright May morning, cold, it is true, and with a biting wind from the
east--as indeed our English May mornings generally are--but sunny and
cloudless as the heart can desire. On such a morning people do their best
to pretend that it is summer. Crowds turn out into the park, and sit
about recklessly on the iron chairs, or lounge idly by the railings; and
the women-folk, with that fine disregard of what is, when it is
antagoni