he is
coming,' said John after they had gone upstairs. 'I understand he's
quite a reformed character.'

* * * * *

Because she fancied she had noticed that the window at the end of the
corridor was open, she came out of the bedroom a few minutes later, and
traversed the dark corridor to satisfy herself, and found the window
wide open. The night was cloudy and warm, and a breeze moved among the
foliage of the garden. In the mysterious diffused light she could
distinguish the forms of the poplar trees. Suddenly the bushes
immediately beneath her were disturbed as though by some animal.

'Good night, Ethel.'

'Good night, Fred.'

She shook with violent agitation as the amazing adieu from the garden
was answered from the direction of her daughter's window. But the
secondary effect of those words, so simply and affectionately whispered
in the darkness, was to bring a tear to her eye. As the mother
comprehended the whole staggering situation, the woman envied Ethel for
her youth, her naughty innocence, her romance, her incredibly foolish
audacity in thus risking the disaster of parental wrath. Leonora heard
cautious footsteps on the gravel, and the slow closing of a window. 'My
life is over!' she said to herself. 'And hers beginning. And to think
that this afternoon I called her a schoolgirl! What romance have I had
in my life?'

She put her head out of the window. There was no movement now, but above
her a radiance streaming from Rose's dormer showed that the serious girl
of the family, defying commands, plodded obstinately at her chemistry.
As Leonora thought of Rose's ambition, and Ethel's clandestine romance,
and little Millicent's complicity in that romance, and John's sinister
secrets, and her own ineffectual repining--as she thought of these five
antagonistic preoccupied souls and their different affairs, the pathos
and the complexity of human things surged over her and overwhelmed her.

CHAPTER II

MESHACH AND HANNAH

The little old bachelor and spinster were resting after dinner in the
back-parlour of their house near the top of Church Street. In that abode
they had watched generations pass and manners change, as one list
hearthrug succeeded another in the back-parlour. Meshach had been born
in the front bedroom, and he meant to die there; Hannah had also been
born in the front bedroom, but it was through the window of the back
bedroom that the housewife's soul would