quite prosaically, but with more
pathos in her voice than she was aware of, "or I shall make my nose
quite red."

[Illustration: The Marquis of Walderhurst]

Though Batch was able to supply fish, he was unfortunately not able to
send it to Mallowe. His cart had gone out on a round just before Miss
Fox-Seton's arrival, and there was no knowing when it would return.

"Then I must carry the fish myself," said Emily. "You can put it in a
neat basket."

"I'm very sorry, miss; I am, indeed, miss," said Batch, looking hot and
pained.

"It will not be heavy," returned Emily; "and her ladyship must be sure
of it for the dinner-party."

So she turned back to recross the moor with a basket of fish on her arm.
And she was so pathetically unhappy that she felt that so long as she
lived the odour of fresh fish would make her feel sorrowful. She had
heard of people who were made sorrowful by the odour of a flower or the
sound of a melody but in her case it would be the smell of fresh fish
that would make her sad. If she had been a person with a sense of
humour, she might have seen that this was thing to laugh at a little.
But she was not a humorous woman, and just now----

"Oh, I shall have to find a new place," she was thinking, "and I have
lived in that little room for years."

The sun got hotter and hotter, and her feet became so tired that she
could scarcely drag one of them after another. She had forgotten that
she had left Mallowe before lunch, and that she ought to have got a cup
of tea, at least, at Maundell. Before she had walked a mile on her way
back, she realised that she was frightfully hungry and rather faint.

"There is not even a cottage where I could get a glass of water," she
thought.

The basket, which was really comparatively light, began to feel heavy on
her arm, and at length she felt sure that a certain burning spot on her
left heel must be a blister which was being rubbed by her shoe. How it
hurt her, and how tired she was--how tired! And when she left
Mallowe--lovely, luxurious Mallowe--she would not go back to her little
room all fresh from the Cupps' autumn house-cleaning, which included the
washing and ironing of her Turkey-red hangings and chair-covers; she
would be obliged to huddle into any poor place she could find. And Mrs.
Cupp and Jane would be in Chichester.

"But what good fortune it is for them!" she murmured. "They need never
be anxious about the future again. How--how wonderful it