Caroline----" And her voice, though heavy and rather husky, put the
same immeasurable distance between Caroline and every Wilson in the
world as Miss Ethel's clear tones, speaking the same words, had always
done. "I am expecting Mr. Wilson on business after tea. Will you show
him into the breakfast-room if you have not gone out when he comes?"

Caroline murmured acquiescence, angry to feel herself blushing; and
when she looked up Mrs. Bradford's little eyes were fixed on her with
the insatiable curiosity of the dull; so she looked steadily down again
at the bowl of potatoes. After a pause that seemed very long, she
heard the pad-pad-pad of a heavy, elderly woman's walk sounding along
the passage.

Mrs. Bradford, waiting for her lunch, also looked at the wheel-marks
left by the passing of the workman's barrow over the place where the
privet hedge used to be. She might not like it, but she was without
that fiery hatred of change which did actually release Miss Ethel's
spirit for its escape to certainty.

_Chapter XXIII_

_On the Shore_

Mrs. Bradford was timid about being alone in the house after sunset
since her sister's death, so Caroline usually went out between tea and
early supper. On this occasion she hurried off directly tea was over,
in her anxiety to avoid a possible meeting with Godfrey. She did not
even wait to go upstairs and change her dress, but kept on the old
blouse and skirt she had been wearing beneath her overall, put on an
old garden hat and ran down the drive, fearing all the time to hear
Mrs. Bradford calling from the doorway.

However, she reached the road in safety, thankful that there was now no
chance of being obliged to usher in Godfrey with Mrs. Bradford's dull
rather malicious gaze fixed on her. But even while she waited a
second, out of breath, she caught sight of his figure coming along the
road from the town, and hurried on again towards the cliff top. There
was the bench on which she had sat that moonlight night with Godfrey,
when it seemed to her that they could love each other for ever just the
same, no matter what might divide them. She had been filled then with
the exultation which is so difficult to distinguish at the time from
happiness--which seems so independent of human accident--a joy never to
be assailed by common experience.

But all that had gone. Now she was going down the rough, muddy path on
the side of the clay cliff--slipping, making her shoes and