in her agony.

And on the road to Upthorne, under the arches by the sinister towers,
Alice Cartaret, crouching on her stone, sobbed and shivered.

Not long after seven Essy's child was born.

* * * * *

Just before ten the three sisters sat waiting, as they had always
waited, bored and motionless, for the imminent catastrophe of Prayers.

"I wonder how Essy's getting on," said Gwenda.

"Poor little Essy!" Mary said.

"She's as pleased as Punch," said Gwenda. "It's a boy. Ally--did you
know that Essy's had a baby?"

"I don't care if she has," said Ally violently. "It's got nothing to
do with me. I wish you wouldn't talk about her beastly baby."

As the Vicar came out of his study into the dining-room, he fixed his
eyes upon his youngest daughter.

"What's the matter with you?" he said.

"Nothing's the matter," said Alice defiantly. "Why?"

"You look," he said, "as if somebody was murdering you."

XXXV

Ally was ill; so ill this time that even the Vicar softened to her.
He led her upstairs himself and made her go to bed and stay there. He
would have sent for Rowcliffe but that Ally refused to see him.

Her mortal apathy passed for submission. She took her milk from her
father's hand without a murmur. "There's a good girl," he said, as she
drank it down.

But it didn't do her any good. Nothing did. The illness itself was no
good to her, considering that she didn't want to be ill this time. She
wanted to die. And of course she couldn't die. It would have been too
much happiness and they wouldn't let her have it.

At first she resented what she called their interference. She
declared, as she had declared before, that there was nothing the
matter with her. She was only tired. Couldn't they see that she was
tired? That _they_ tired her?

"Why can't you leave me alone? If only you'd go away," she moaned,
"--all of you--and leave me alone."

But very soon she was too tired even to be irritable. She lay quiet,
sunk in the hollow of her bed, and kept her eyes shut, so that she
never knew, she said, whether they were there or not. And it didn't
matter. Nothing mattered so long as she could just lie there.

It was only when they talked of sending for Rowcliffe that they roused
her. Then she sat up and became, first vehement, then violent.

"You shan't send for him," she cried. "I won't see him. If he comes
into the house I'll crawl out of it."

* *