ating smile; Mr. Dain blushed, the vision was too much for his
composure; he moved his horse forward a yard or two, and then jerked it
back again, gruffly advising it to stand still. Stanway turned to her
bluntly, unceremoniously, as to a creature to whom he owed nothing. She
noticed once more how the whole character of his face was changed under
annoyance.

'Here, Nora!' he said, speaking with the raw anger of a man with a
new-born grievance, 'run this home for me. I'm going over to Hanbridge
with Mr. Dain.'

'Very well,' she agreed with soothing calmness, and taking the reins she
climbed up to the high driving-seat.

'And I say, Nora--Wo-_back_!' he flamed out passionately to the
impatient cob, 'where're your manners, you idiot? I say, Nora, I doubt I
shall be late for tea--half-past six. Tell Milly she must be in. The
others too.' He gave these instructions in a lower tone, and emphasised
them by a stormy and ominous frown. Then with an injured 'Now, Dain!' he
got into the equipage of his legal adviser and departed towards
Hanbridge, trailing clouds of vexation.

Leonora drove smartly but cautiously down the steep slope of Oldcastle
Street; she could drive as well as a woman may. A group of clay-soiled
girls lounging in the archway of a manufactory exchanged rude but
admiring remarks about her as she passed. The paces of the cob, the
dazzle of the silver-plated harness, the fine lines of the cart, the
unbending mien of the driver, made a glittering cynosure for envy. All
around was grime, squalor, servitude, ugliness; the inglorious travail
of two hundred thousand people, above ground and below it, filled the
day and the night. But here, as it were suddenly, out of that earthy and
laborious bed, rose the blossom of luxury, grace, and leisure, the final
elegance of the industrial district of the Five Towns. The contrast
between Leonora and the rough creatures in the archway, between the
flower and the phosphates which nourished it, was sharp and decisive:
and Leonora, in the September sunshine, was well aware of the contrast.
She felt that the loud-voiced girls were at one extremity of the scale
and she at the other; and this arrangement seemed natural, necessary,
inevitable.

She was a beautiful woman. She had a slim perfect figure; quite simply
she carried her head so high and her shoulders so square that her back
seemed to be hollowed out, and no tightness on the part of a bodice
could hide this charming conc