the situation. It
was drastic, but it was magnificent. He had gone out of the house and
out of her life. As she gazed at the dim swaying roof of the cab,
magically the roof was taken off, and she could see the ravaged and
stricken figure within, sitting grimly in the dark between the wheels
that rolled him away from her. The vision was intolerable. She moved
aside and wept passionately. How could he help doing all he had done?
She had possessed him--the memories of his embrace told her how utterly!
All that he had said was true; and this being so, who could blame his
conduct? He had only risked and lost.

Sarah Gailey suddenly appeared in the room, and shut the door like a
conspirator.

"Then--" she began, terror-struck.

And Hilda nodded, ceasing to cry.

"Oh! My poor dear!" Sarah Gailey moaned feebly, her head bobbing with
its unconscious nervous movements. The sight of her worn, saddened
features sharpened Hilda's appreciation of her own girlishness and
inexperience.

But despite the shock, despite her extreme misery, despite the anguish
and fear in her heart and the immense difficulty of the new situation
into which she was thus violently thrust, Hilda was not without
consolation. She felt none of the shame conventionally proper to a girl
deceived. On the contrary, deep within herself, she knew that the
catastrophe was a deliverance. She knew that fate had favoured her by
absolving her from the consequences of a tragic weakness and error.
These thoughts inflamed and rendered more beautiful the apprehensive
pity for the real victim--now affronted by a new danger, the menace of
the law.

* * * * *

BOOK VI
HER PUNISHMENT

CHAPTER I
EVENING AT BLEAKRIDGE

I

When Hilda's cab turned, perilously swaying, through the gate into the
dark garden of the Orgreaves, Hilda saw another cab already at the open
house door, and in the lighted porch stood figures distinguishable as
Janet and Alicia, all enwrapped for a journey, and Martha holding more
wraps. The long facade of the house was black, save for one window on
the first floor, which threw a faint radiance on the leafless branches
of elms, and thus intensified the upper mysteries of the nocturnal
garden. The arrival of the second cab caused excitement in the porch;
and Hilda, leaning out of the window into the November mist, shook with
apprehension, as her vehicle came to a halt behind the other one. She
was now t