d so
prove your purity.'

'Stephen, once in London I ought to have married you,' she said
firmly. 'It was my only safe defence. I see more things now than I did
yesterday. My only remaining chance is not to be discovered; and that we
must fight for most desperately.'

They stepped out. Elfride pulled a thick veil over her face.

A woman with red and scaly eyelids and glistening eyes was sitting on a
bench just inside the office-door. She fixed her eyes upon Elfride with
an expression whose force it was impossible to doubt, but the meaning of
which was not clear; then upon the carriage they had left. She seemed to
read a sinister story in the scene.

Elfride shrank back, and turned the other way.

'Who is that woman?' said Stephen. 'She looked hard at you.'

'Mrs. Jethway--a widow, and mother of that young man whose tomb we sat
on the other night. Stephen, she is my enemy. Would that God had had
mercy enough upon me to have hidden this from HER!'

'Do not talk so hopelessly,' he remonstrated. 'I don't think she
recognized us.'

'I pray that she did not.'

He put on a more vigorous mood.

'Now, we will go and get some breakfast.'

'No, no!' she begged. 'I cannot eat. I MUST get back to Endelstow.'

Elfride was as if she had grown years older than Stephen now.

'But you have had nothing since last night but that cup of tea at
Bristol.'

'I can't eat, Stephen.'

'Wine and biscuit?'

'No.'

'Nor tea, nor coffee?'

'No.'

'A glass of water?'

'No. I want something that makes people strong and energetic for the
present, that borrows the strength of to-morrow for use to-day--leaving
to-morrow without any at all for that matter; or even that would take
all life away to-morrow, so long as it enabled me to get home again now.
Brandy, that's what I want. That woman's eyes have eaten my heart away!'

'You are wild; and you grieve me, darling. Must it be brandy?'

'Yes, if you please.'

'How much?'

'I don't know. I have never drunk more than a teaspoonful at once. All I
know is that I want it. Don't get it at the Falcon.'

He left her in the fields, and went to the nearest inn in that
direction. Presently he returned with a small flask nearly full, and
some slices of bread-and-butter, thin as wafers, in a paper-bag. Elfride
took a sip or two.

'It goes into my eyes,' she said wearily. 'I can't take any more. Yes,
I will; I will close my eyes. Ah, it goes to them by an inside route. I
don't want i